1 The scope of applied linguistics (Language and education; Language, work and law; Language,

information and effect)

SCOPE OF LINGUISTICS/ APPLIED LINGUISTICS

o The term ‘applied linguistics’ raises fundamental difficulties,... it is difficult to decide on what
counts as ‘linguistics’. Given these difficulties within linguistic proper, it is perhaps unfair to expect
clean solutions and clear delimitations for defining ‘applied linguistics’”

o The journal Language Learning, founded in 1948, was the first journal in the world to carry the
term ‘applied linguistics’ in its title, but by “applied linguistics” what was meant was the “linguistics
applied” version.

o Problems applied linguistics concerns itself with (social problems involving language):

 How can we teach languages better?

 How can we diagnose speech pathologies better?
 How can we improve the training of translators and interpreters?
 How can we write a valid language examination?
 How can we evaluate a school bilingual program?
 How can we determine the literacy levels of a whole population?
 How can we helpfully discuss the language of a text?
 What advice can we offer a Ministry of Education on a proposal to introduce a new medium of
instruction?
 How can we compare the acquisition of a European and an Asian language?
 What advice should we give a defence lawyer on the authenticity of a police transcript of an
interview with a suspect?

o Since language is implicated in so much of our daily lives, there is a large number of quite disparate
activities to which applied linguistics is relevant. So the scope of applied linguistics remains rather
vague. Some general conceptual areas of study can be identified under the following three headings:

 Language and education

 Language, work and law
 Language, information and effect

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

o first-language education: child studies their first language(s);

o additional-language education
  second-language education (sy studies their society’s majority or official language which is
not their home language,
 foreign-language education (sy studies the language of another country)

o clinical linguistics: study and treatment of speech and communication impairments, whether
hereditary, developmental, or acquired (through injury, stroke, illness, age);

o language testing (assessment and evaluation of language achievement and proficiency (in first and
additional languages) for general and specific purposes.

TEST TYPES

 proficiency tests
 measure general ability in a language regardless of previous training
 diagnostic tests
 identify students’ strengths and weaknesses to benefit future instruction; difficult to
construct
 placement tests
 assign students to classes/programs appropriate to their level of proficiency
 achievement tests
 measure how successful students are in achieving objectives of a lesson/ course/
curriculum; closely related to the content of a particular lesson/course/curriculum;
final/progress achievement test; frequency
 aptitude tests
 predict a person’s future success in learning a (any) foreign language; taken before
actual testing
 progress tests
 assess students’ mastery of the course material (during the course)
 language dominance tests
 assess bilingual learners’ relative strength of the two languages
 Objective vs. Subjective tests
 Communicative Language Testing (communicative nature of tasks; authenticity of tasks)
 Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT)

LANGUAGE, WORK AND LAW

workplace communication

 study of how language is used in workplace, and how it contributes to the nature and power
relations of different types of work
language planning

 the making of decisions, often supported by legislation, about the official status of languages
and their institutional use, including their use in education, i.e., corpus planning, status
planning, acquisition planning
o corpus planning: prescriptive intervention in the forms of a language, whereby
planning decisions are made to engineer changes in the structure of the
language/describe language
o status planning: the allocation or reallocation of a language or variety to functional
domains within a society, thus affecting the status, or standing of a language
o acquisition planning: type of language planning in which a national, state or local
government system aims to influence aspects of language, such as language status,
distribution and literacy through education

forensic linguistics

 deployment of linguistic evidence in criminal and other legal investigations, e.g., to establish
the authorship of a document, or a profile of a speaker from a tape-recording

LANGUAGE, INFORMATION AND EFFECT

literary stylistics

 study of the relationship between linguistic choices and effects in literature

critical discourse analysis (CDA)

 study of the relationship between linguistic choices and effects in persuasive uses of
language, of how these indoctrinate or manipulate (e.g., in marketing, politics), and the
counteracting of this through analysis

translation and interpretation

 the formulation of principles underlying the perceived equivalence between a stretch of

language and its translation, and the practices of translating written text and interpreting
spoken language
 what makes the difficulty to translate literary pieces?
o culturebound terms -> typical for the culture
o creating new words -> give footnotes to them, historic background of a phase

information design
  arrangement and presentation of written language, including issues relating to typology and
layout, choices of medium, and effective combinations of language with other means of
communication such as pictures and diagrams

lexicography

 planning and compiling of both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, and other language
reference works such as thesauri
2 History of applied linguistics, American, Australian, British applied linguistics

HISTORY OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS

A symposium held at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in St Louis in 2001
considered the history of applied linguistics in four different countries. Angelis (2001), discussing the
USA, proposed a four-fold division of time over the period since the 1920s:

NORTH AMERICAN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

 Applied Linguistics in North America does have identifiable roots in linguistics.

 While North American applied linguistics has evolved over time in its orientation and
 scope, so has North American linguistics.
 A significant amount of work directed to real-world issues involving language can be attributed
to leading North American linguists, although not characterised as applied linguistics.
 Much of what can now be seen as ground-breaking applied linguistics type of activity was carried
out prior to the formal appearance of applied linguistics (Angelis, 2001).

AUSTRALIAN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

o people carried out linguistic research before they knew that they are in the field of applied
linguistics

o (McNamara, 2001): the applied linguistics of modern languages and the languages of immigrants,
rather than of English

o the development of teaching materials and writing systems for aboriginal languages;

o English was in the context of mother tongue teaching and of the teaching of English to immigrants
(ESL) rather than as a foreign language (EFL)

o Distinctive about applied linguistics in Australia is its concern for language in education (with
regard to both new migrant languages (language maintenance) and literacy in English.

Three main periods:

 ASSIMILATION (1901 to the mid-1960s)

 INTEGRATION (the mid – 1960s to 1972)
 o In 1966 the Government effectively ended the White Australia Policy by allowing the
admission of well-qualified people from Asia.
 MULTICULTURALISM (from 1972)
o The Australian origins of the public policy of multiculturalism are found in a range of
critiques of Australian society in the late 1960s and early 1970s that were concerned
with issues of equity.
o In 1977, the first formal public policy of Australian multiculturalism was defined in the
Australia as a Multicultural Society report by the Australian Ethnic Affairs Council.
o Australia’s multicultural policy rest on three principles:
 the value of social justice -> everybody is equal in the society
 the right to cultural identity -> it is allowed to keep your culture/identity
 the interest in economic efficiency -> you are expected to support/work for Australia
o Australia values equality of treatment and opportunity, and seeks the removal of
barriers based on race, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, gender or place of birth.

-> No distinction made between people.

o All Australians can, within carefully defined limits, express and share their individual
heritage, including their language and religion.
o Australia recognises the economic benefits of maintaining, developing and using
effectively the skills and talents of individuals from all backgrounds.

The National Policy on Languages of 1987 (NPL) (Lo Bianco 1987) became the official and definitive
statement on language policy in Australia.

The first and primary principle is:

 the availability of English and English literacy for all

o education of English; ability to read and write
 support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait languages
o the few that remained must be supported
 a language other than English for all
o LOTES = Language Other Than English; second language -> often mother-tongue
 access for all to widespread and equitable language services
o there are volunteers that can be called by phone of the client -> must interpret
 Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian/Malay, Italian, Japanese and Spanish
o preferred in 1987, in alphabetical order

o The ‘White Paper’ was released in August 1991. Its title was ‘Australia’s Language: The Australian
Language and Literacy Policy.
o The paper claims to “deliver the Prime Minister’s promise to maintain and develop the National
Policy on Languages, incorporating the principles of the NPL into a new language and literacy policy
(ALLP)”.

o A general economic rationalist spirit motivates the White Paper.

o The goals of the White Paper’s Australian Language and Literacy Policy (ALLP) are

the following:

 All Australian residents should develop and maintain a level of spoken and written English
which is appropriate for a range of contexts, with the support of education and training
programs addressing their diverse learning needs.
 The learning of languages other than English must be substantially expanded and improved
to enhance educational outcomes and communication both within the Australian and
international community. -> make people able to speak and write English
 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages should be maintained and developed where
they are still transmitted.
 Other languages should be assisted in an appropriate way, for example, through recording.
 These activities should only occur where the speakers so desire and in consultation with
their community, for the benefit of the descendants of their speakers and for the nation’s
heritage.

o Language services provided through interpreting and translating, print and electronic media and
libraries should be expanded and improved.

The social goals of the Australian language policy relate to the four E’s: equality, economics,
enrichment and external.

 EQUALITY
o refers to the correlation between language on the one hand and social and economic
equality or lack of it on the other
 ECONOMIC
o goal has to do with multilingualism as a productive asset
 ENRICHMENT
o goal draws on arguments for the cognitive, educational and cultural benefits deriving
from multilingualism
 EXTERNAL
o goals bring is the geopolitical situation of the country, development cooperation, the
transfer of technology and supporting bi- and multilateral relations with other countries

BRITISH APPLIED LINGUISTICS

 (Davies, 2001): British Association of Applied Linguistics was established in 1967 with the aim:
“the advancement of education by fostering and promoting, by any lawful charitable means, the
study of language use, language acquisition and language teaching, and fostering the
interdisciplinary collaboration in this study”
 deliberate attempt to establish a distinctive applied linguistics which was not linguistics (so by
implication, not linguistics-applied) applied linguistics was about language teaching in the 1960s
and 70s.
 Mouton de Gruyter (leading publisher) devotes a 45-page brochure to its applied linguistics list:
o language acquisition (L1 and L2),
o psycho/neurolinguistics,
o language teaching,
o sociolinguistics,
o humour studies,
o pragmatics,
o discourse analysis/rhetorics,
o text/processing/translation,
o computational linguistics – machine translation,
o corpus linguistics corpus: any text produced by somebody
o language control/dialectology.
3 The distinction: applied linguistics and linguistics applied

In the case of applied linguistics, intervention is crucially a matter of mediation … applied linguistics
… has to relate and reconcile [ˈrekənsaɪl] (összeegyeztet, összehangol) different representations of
reality, including that of linguistics without excluding others.

 A-L looks outward, beyond language in an attempt to explain social problems; it studies a
language problem (aphasia, speech impediment, e.g., speech therapist studies) with a view to
correcting it.
 L-A looks inward, concerned not to solve language problems “in the real world” but to explicate
[ˈeksplɪkeɪt] tsi a) kifejt, részletez, fejteget and test theories about language itself. L-A uses
language data to develop our linguistic knowledge about language;

The difference is large but not always clear-cut. Linguistics and applied linguistics are distinguished in
terms of difference of orientation: Linguistics is primarily concerned with language in itself and
language problems in so far as they provide evidence for better language description or for teaching
a linguistic theory; Applied linguistics is interested in language problems for what they reveal about
the role of language in people’s daily lives and whether intervention is either possible or desirable.

So >→

(a) Applied linguistics is as much concerned with context as with language and will therefore be likely
to draw on [igénybe vesz (vmt), merít (vmből)] disciplines other than linguistics, e.g., anthropology,
education, psychology;

(b) The language problems with which applied linguistics concerns itself are often concerned with
institutions, e.g., the school, the workplace, the law-court, the clinic.

Conclusion: distinction between L-A and A-L is not easily found in the topics of interest but in the
orientation of the researchers and why they are investigating a problem and collecting their data.

Do the researchers regard themselves as linguists applying linguistics or as applied linguists doing
applied linguistics? If they are investigating to validate a theory then it is L-A. If they seek a practical
answer to a language problem then it is A-L.
4 Language prescription and description

Young children speak idiosyncratically. At school the child is expected and taught to use language
‘correctly’.

Controversial aspect: standard form of language vs. dialects.

 Standard: written communication, taught in schools, codified in dictionaries and grammar books
 Dialects: regional and social-class varieties; differ from standard in pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, seldom written down

Schools are a good barometer of both language use and social values. Any language is subject to
enormous variation: differences between individuals, social groups, generations, nations, and
language is used differently in speech and writing. Many people are intolerant of this variation, they
struggle for a single ‘standard’ way of using the language.

Applied linguists need to approach such debates with both caution and respect.

Tasks: to understand the nature of variation in the system itself; to see why this variation can be
such an emotive issue (more important).

All variants are equally valid simply by virtue of the fact that they occur, and no one form is any
more or less correct than another. The task is not to evaluate but to describe and explain. Linguists
tend to favour description (what does happen) over prescription (what ought to happen) and argue:
from a linguistics point of view, the standard is neither superior nor more stable than any other
variety.

 If there was never any deviation from the norm, languages would never change;
 If a standard was absolute, regional standards would never gain independence.
 Dialects have their own consistent rule governed grammars (e.g., double negative)
 Standard form of a language is often similar to the usage of the most economically and
politically powerful class or region.
 Grammar of written language differs from that of speech, even among speakers whose
variety is closest to the standard; writing carries more more prestige and authority.

Standard is often the only form of the language used in writing.

Applied linguists have a responsibility:

 to investigate the reasons behind the insoluble situation between descriptivists and
prescriptivists: to engage with the practical consequences of holding one view over another;
 to mediate between academic and public concerns.
They must relate to and negate between the descriptivist and prescriptivist view. Applied
linguistics’s task: find points of contact in the contrary views so that necessary decisions can be
made.

Descriptivist and prescriptivist points of view: not competing alternatives. Correct language use is
needed: speech therapy, foreign language teaching, language testing. Criteria of correctness may
change, but they must exist.

Applied linguistics’s task: to bring about what these criteria are and how they are decided;

to mediate between the two very different perspectives.

This is what applied linguistics does and what makes it worthwhile.

5 World Englishes

English: ‘world language’, World English, Global English, International English, Lingua Franca – a
language for world-wide communication;

‘World Englishes’ – refers to a whole range of languages which are forms of, or related to English; a
cover term for a diverse group of languages spread around the globe which are ‘English’, e.g.,
standard and non-standard forms (pidgin, creole)

The three circles: (Braj Kachru - scholar of World Englishes)

1 The inner circle – sole all-purpose language (12 countries, 300 million speakers), Anglo-Englishes
(‘Older Englishes’), settlement colonies: UK, USA, Canada, AU, NZ, the Caribbean – ‘normproviding’
countries for Standard English.

- English is taught as a Native Language (ENL)

- Primary language

- Learnt from the previous generations

2 The outer circle – official lang. 21, co-official lang. 16 countries, 450 million speakers, nonAnglo-
Englishes, exploitation colonies: Nigeria, Kenya, India, Singapore, Philippines

- English is used in administration, media, law, education (as media of instruction), literature (varies
from country to country)

- ‘Norm-developing’ countries (their own local standards of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary)
- English is taught as a Second Language (ESL)

- English is used in a complementary fashion

3 The expanding circle – no strong historical connection through colonisation, but increasingly
important in various aspects of life; trade connections may go back centuries, 1,000 million speakers:
Hungarian, Russia, Japan.

- English is recognised as an international lang.

- English is taught as a Foreign Language (EFL)

-It can have some role in the local media (Sweden)

-‘Norm-dependent’ – lack of speaker base which would allow them to develop their own English
norms

-Educators must make the assumption that it is not used outside certain limited settings
- English is used for ‘outward-looking’ purposes (commercial and diplomatic dealings with foreign
countries, in their own tourist industries)

- English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) – serves as a means of communication between people none of
whom are first-language speakers of it.

Diverse ways of learning English: three types of acquisition:

1. Normal transmission: lang is acquired in early childhood from adults who speak it to the child,
child speaks the lang. in an almost identical form to that of the parents (lang changes across
generations)

2. Abnormal transmission: pidginization and creolization are two processes which involve abnormal
transmission of lang.

 Pidginization: a version of lang. which is grammatically simplified and reduced in vocabulary is

learnt informally, usually in adulthood as a lingua franca (Pidgin Englishes, e.g., Tok Pisin in
Papua New Guinea)
 Creolization: a pidgin becomes first language of some group of speakers (children growing up in
an environment where pidgin is the main lang. of communication. The outcome of both
pidginization and creolization is a restructured lang. (has superficial resemblances with English,
but radically different in structure).

3 Indirect transmission: English as a second or foreign lang. can be acquired through formal
education (not in family setting); teachers are local (pronunciation). It can lead to the establishment
of two distinct local varieties of English: Standard Singaporean English, Singapore Colloquial English.

English in the Inner Circle:

 Regarding the written standard, the differences are extremely small, differences in grammar and
style can be detected stylistically using corpus method, which deploy bevet computers to
interrogate vast collections of text in electronic form.
 Vocabulary differences are prevalent (terjedt), in the colloquial, slang and taboo areas of lang.
use, where there are likely to be regional and local words which are not shared with any other
varieties.
 Variation in the spoken language is most noticeable in terms of accent: varieties mentioned have
distinctive accents.

Changing trends in English as a world language:

Important aspect of current expansion of English: its growth as a lingua franca for use as a common
lang. between speakers or writers for all of whom it is a second or foreign lang.:
- International diplomacy

- Academic conferences

- Business meetings

- University courses

- Amateur sports and games

- Internet chatrooms, discussion forums

- Higher education in Continental Europe

6 Languages in contact (conditions in which bilingualism develops)
There are two extreme definitions of bilingualism: “whoever speaks two languages” is bilingual
“someone who speaks two languages perfectly” is bilingual.
There are a number of variables in the definition of bilingualism which must be specified to better
understand the matter:
Firstly, a distinction must be made between proficiency in the language and use of the language.
Secondly, the proficiency level differs in the four linguistic skills (speaking, reading, writing,
listening).
Thirdly, just a few bilinguals have the same proficiency in both languages; usually one language is
stronger and more developed than the other, the so-called “dominant language”.
Fourthly, the degree of bilingualism can change during time due to the living environment.
These four points show how difficult it is to give a simple and correct definition to bilingualism.
Bloomfield defined bilingualism as “a native-like control of two languages”; Weinreich states: “I will
define bilingualism the practice of alternately using two languages”; MacNamara defined a bilingual
as “anyone who possesses a minimal competence in only one of the four language skills”

TYPES OF BILINGUALISLM: The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, however, identifies two main types:
a) Coordinate Bilingualism: the person learns the languages in separate environments, and words of
the two languages are kept separate with each word having its own specific meaning (subtractive
bilingualism)
b) Compound Bilingualism: the person learns the two languages in the same context where they are
used concurrently, so that there is a fused representation of the languages in the brain, e.g., a child
is brought up by bilingual parents (additive bilingualism)

Myers-Scotton enumerates a number of circumstances that promote the conditions in which

bilingualism develops:
(i) Military invasion and sequent colonisation: important factors, especially if the conquest was
followed by a long period of stability, i.e., a population finds itself with speakers of an alien language
in charge and finds it expedient to learn their language e.g. Norman Conquest in 1066 motivated bilingualism
(ii) Living in a border area or an ethnolinguistic enclave. Because there are borders between nations
and between ethnic groups within many nations these border residents become bilingual,
sometimes they learn each other’s languages, but sometimes the learning is onedirectional with the
less numerous or less economically powerful group learning the other group’s language.
Within nations – often because history redrew borders – there may be enclaves of L1 speakers who
only speak the dominant or official language of the nation as an L2, e.g., enclaves of L1 speakers of
Hungarian in Slovakia, the Ukraine, Austria and Romania (Transylvania).
(iii) Education as a factor in bilingualism. Specific languages have always been seen as the hallmark
of the educated person; those languages have been studied in schools during their time of
importance. For example, Latin became the language the educated person would learn with the spread of
Christianity in Europe.
(iv) Spread of international languages. As the number of persons learning a given language
increases, this increases pressure for others to learn the same second language, e.g., Latin in the
Middle Ages; English today.
(v) Ethnic awareness: New valuation placed on ethnic identity or the rise of nationalism. While
nationalism may result in the formation of new nations, expressions of ethnicity tend to promote
bilingualism, with the ethnic language viewed as an additional language.
(vi) Migration for social and economic reasons: to find better living conditions, which give them not
only new social and economic opportunities, but also reasons to learn a new language, e.g., mass
migrations from Europe to North America, Australia, and New Zealand (19th, 20th cent.) so learning English
became a necessity for these immigrants.
7 Languages in contact (diglossia, domains of language use)
Language Choice in bilingual communities: favourite topic in recent sociolinguistic work
Ferguson introduced the notion of “diglossia” to delineate situations where two related language
varieties are applied in complementary distribution across different situations.

In diglossic communities:
- one of the varieties, the H(igh) language, is employed in more official, public domains such as
education, government, literature, etc.,
- the other, designated the L(ow) language, is used in more private informal domains such as family,
neighbourhood, friendship, etc.
The varieties involved in diglossia, while related, are still quite divergent in structure and lexicon, and
only one of them, the L variety, is typically acquired as a first language; the H variety has to be
acquired as a second language, usually at school.

In spite of Ferguson’s rather strict definition of diglossia, the concept has been extended to
situations where any two languages are in contact and even to cases where two or more varieties of
the same language are used in various social settings. The concept now extends to the coexistence of
all forms of speech in a society, whether the forms are different languages, different dialects, or
different social varieties of the same language.

Domains of language use

Fishman introduces the concept of “sociolinguistic domains” to delineate the contexts of interaction
into which social life is organised, and which have an impact on the language of interaction. He
defines domains as ‘institutional contexts and their congruent behavioural co-occurrences'.
The five domains of language behaviour for the community are: family/home,
friendship/neighbourhood, work/employment, education, and religion

Myers-Scotton introduces the notion of allocation, which means that the choice of the languages on
behalf of the speakers in different domains is an important clue in terms of language maintenance.
However, domain analysis is not a theoretical model, and research results based on it are not
explanations on their own, but they can provide proposed explanations.
Myers-Scotton’s other concern is that bilingual situations generally cannot be regarded entirely
stable, and in case of a minority community language use when a shift is in progress, uniform
language use is difficult to find in a given domain.

Csernicskó states that ‘the organizing principles behind language use according to domains of
language use, provide valuable insight into the functions and status of a given language and the
relationship of the language within a bilingual or multilingual setting’.

Language Maintenance Efforts

Pauwels states that “the ultimate survival of a language depends on intergenerational transfer”. She
also adds that the habitual ways as to how parents, grandparents and other relatives use languages
are determinative in laying the fundamental principles for the maintenance of a minority language
among imminent generations.

The Language use of Hungarians in Australia

• Home/family H: 74% E: 28%
• Friends H: 82% E: 88%
• Neighbours H: 6% E: 100%
• Relig., pray. H: 88% E: 43%
• Relig., church H: 70% E: 68%
• Workplace H: 12% E: 92%
• TV programs H: 37% E: 91%
• Informal letter H: 85% E: 68%
8 Languages in contact (codeswitching)

a) Grosjean “the alternate use of two or more languages in the same utterance or conversation”
b) Auer’s: codeswitching is the alternative use of two (or more) different languages or codes during
the same conversational event
c) Lanstyák and Szabómihály’s: “it is a way of speaking in which, within a single stretch of discourse,
more than one language (ormore than one language variety) plays an active role”.

“Classic code-switching includes elements from two (or more) language varieties in the same clause,
but only one of these varieties is the source of the morphosyntactic frame for the clause”.
Composite codeswitching is “bilingual speech in which even though most of the morphosyntactic
structure comes from one of the participating languages, the other language contributes some of the
abstract structure underlying surface forms in the clause”. Basically, it is the combination of code-
switching and convergence. (Myers-Scotton)

Rational Choice Model – a bilingual may see switching languages at some point in a conversation as
a way to optimise rewards (bilinguals are making the choice they consider “best”). With regard to
language choice, “they weigh the relative costs and rewards of speaking one language rather than
another”. The model views choices subjective rather than objective, “with the emphasis on mental
conclusions about getting the best outcome”.

Relevance Theory
Sperber and Wilson (1988) relevance theory is an attempt to work out in detail one of Grice’s central
claim: an essential feature of most human communication is the expression and recognition of
intentions. The relevance-theoretic account is based on Grice’s central claims: utterances
automatically create expectations which guide the hearer towards the speaker’s meaning.

Grice (1975) described these expectations in terms of the Co-operative Principle:

• Maxims of quantity (informativeness)

• Maxims of quality (truthfulness)

• Maxim of relation (relevance)

• Maxims of manner (clarity)

Sperber and Wilson assume that human cognition is relevance-oriented: people pay attention to
information that seems to be relevant to them. Since every act of communication starts out as a
request for attention, it creates an expectation of relevance. Relevance is defined in terms of
contextual effect and processing effort.

Contextual effects cost some mental effort to derive. The effort needed to compute the contextual
effects of an utterance depends on three main factors:
(i) linguistic complexity of the utterance;
(ii) accessibility of the context;
(iii) inferential levezetett, (ki)következtetett effort needed to compute the contextual effects of the
utterance in the chosen context.
To sum up: the greater the contextual effects, the greater the relevance; the smaller the effort
needed to achieve those effects, the greater the relevance.

Although the newspaper which provides the corpus of the research is “the only Hungarian weekly in
Australia” – as indicated both in Hungarian and English on the front page – it contains some pure
English advertisements (approximately 4 per cent of the entire corpus). The commercial and private
bodies advertising in the English language are assured that their texts are also relevant to the target
audience. Following Poplack’s (1980) classification these advertisements are examples of
extrasentential switching on the level of the newspaper.

Poplack’s third class is intrasentential codeswitching, where switching may be caused by

1) borrowing pure loanwords:
• (4) GARAGE SALE — hűtőszekrény, mosógép, TV, stereó, bútorok, edények, ágynemű, függöny,
szőnyeg, stb, stb kiárusítása. Személyes vásárlás június 31-én, pénteken, július l-jén, szombaton és 2-
án, vasárnap reggel 9-től Cím: 5/42 Milton St. Elwood. (2000/24/20/2)
• (5) Építész/Builder: Horváth L. Lic. No. 3730 C), P.O. Box 1515 DeeWhy 2099. Tel: 0418-202.518;
(2000/1/8/98)
2) creating hybrid creations:
• (6) KORONA PRESSO-BAR Értesítjük kedves vendégeinket, hogy a Nyitvatartási idő: péntek —
szombat este 6-tól 11-ig vacsorára vasárnap 11-től 5-ig ebédre. Az étterem FULLY LICENSED

3) by using loanblends, i.e. derivational blends:

• (7) SZOBA KIADÓ egyedülálló személynek Coogee-ban, 5 percre a bevásárlóközponttól és beachtől.
Telefon reggel 9315-7261. (2000/49/28/1) (beach-ABL)
• (8) KÉRJÜK olvasónkat, aki Gladesville-ben június 20-án vásárolt Money Ordert küldött be, hívja a
sydneyi szerkesztőséget és adja meg a nevét. (2000/24/20/1) (money order-ACC)
9 Discourse analysis (discourse-related studies, 4 linguists’ approaches)

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

It is an umbrella term for all those studies within applied linguistics which focus on units/stretches of
language beyond the sentence level. In discourse analysis the highest unit of language is the text,
and language is studied in its context. Discourse analysis considers language in its full textual, social,
and psychological context.

Discourse analysts:

 notice patternings of language in use and the circumstances (participants, situations, purposes,
outcomes) with which these are typically associated
 do the noticing consciously, deliberately, systematically, objectively and to produce accounts
(descriptions, interpretations, explanations) of what their investigations have revealed

DA – part of applied linguistics but does not belong exclusively to it; a multi-disciplinary field, hugely
diverse in the range of its interests.

DA (broadly speaking) can be defined as the study of language viewed communicatively and/or of
communication viewed linguistically

o More detailed definition involves:

 reference to concepts of language in use,

 language above or beyond the sentence,
 language as meaning in interaction,
 language in situational and cultural context.

o Depending on their particular convictions and affiliations linguists will tend to emphasize one or
some rather than others in the list. E.g. A: You THREW it so you GET it B: I’ll call my MUM

 Linguist 1 sees a Text – verbal record of a speech event, sg visible consisting of various bits
of linguistic meaning (words, clauses, prosodic features) This linguist is mainly interested in
the way the parts of the text relate to each other to constitute a unit of meaning.
 Linguist 2 sees beyond the text to the Event – of which it is the verbal record. He is
interested in the relationship bw the various factors in the event; participants, their cultural
background, relationship with each other, setting, what is going on, various linguistic choices
made.
 Linguist 3 sees the text, the event but then beyond them the performance being enacted,
i.e., the drama. What has happened, who is responsible, how the girls evaluate these facts
(relate them to some existing framework of beliefs and attitudes about how the world -their
world- works), how they respond to them, what each is trying to achieve, their strategies for
attempting to achieve these objectives. -> interested in the dynamics of process
  Linguist 4 sees the text, the event, and the drama, but beyond these and focally, the
framework of knowledge and power which will explain how it is possible for the two
children, individually and jointly, to enact and interpret their drama in the way they do.

All interpretations are needed for a full understanding of what discourse is and how it works.
10 Discourse analysis (4 headings under which approaches to discourse analysis are summarised –
one of them in more detail)

(1) RULES AND PRINCIPLES

(2) CONTEXTS AND CULTURE

(3) FUNCTIONS AND STRUCTURES

(1) POWER AND POLITICS

(1) RULES AND PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE IN USE

They are approaches which seek to understand the means by which language users make sense of
others’ utterances and want their own to be understood more or less as they intend.
(a) Pragmatics - Speech act theory -
John Austin, language philosopher, introduced the idea of speech acts, utterances which have some
effect beyond simply stating information. (For example, if you say “I’m sorry for accidentally killing
your spider”, you’re not just saying something – you’re apologizing. SPEECH ACTS: situation-specific
utterances; basic units of communication; combine two functions – convey message and bring about
changes in the state of affairs. There is no utterance made without the speaker’s intention –
illocutionary force. The intention manifests itself in the particular utterance – locutionary force. The
effect exerted – perlocutionary force. Communication is successful: if perlocutionary force (effect)
and illocutionary force (intention) coincide; i.e., receiver arrives at the same interpretation as
intended by the sender. Conclusion: every utterance is performative

The Cooperative Principle

A basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we are trying to
cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations.

The Maxims of Conversation

Grice came up with the following maxims of conversation.

• Quantity – Make your contribution as informative as required. (Do not say too much or too little.);
Make the strongest statement you can.

• Quality – Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate
evidence.

• Relation – Be relevant. (stay on topic.)

• Manner – Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief. Be orderly.

Politeness theory: deals with (a) concept of face, (b) acts which are potentially damaging to face, (c)
linguistic strategies used for limiting such damage (when it is avoidable)
Conversation analysis: (a) rules of turn-taking, (b) topic-management, (c) sequencing rules
governing relation between acts.
Rules: members’ rules (not analysts’): norms of behaviour, discoverable in the recurring patterns of
the actions itself, in which members orient in order to manage and make sense of what is going on.

2 CONTEXTS AND CULTURES OF LANGUAGE IN USE

They are approaches which focus on the sensitivity of ways of speaking (writing) to situational and
cultural differences. Ethnography of communication:
(a) offers a framework for the study of speech events, seeking to describe the ways of speaking
associated with particular speech communities and to understand the role of language in the making
of societies and cultures;
(b) involves both insider-like understanding of culturally specific ways of communicating (verbal,
non-verbal); and outsider-objective (etic) framework of speech event components (encapsulated in
Hymes SPEAKING – acronym). Knowledge that members of communities have of the ways of
speaking includes: knowing when, where, how to speak, what to speak about, with whom, etc.

Hymes SPEAKING - acronym):

Setting & scene,
Participants,
Ends (purposes, outcomes),
Act sequences,
Key (attitudinal aspects),
Instrumentalities (norms and styles of speech),
Norms of interaction and interpretation,
Genre (discourse type)
Speakers need knowledge not only of what is grammatically possible but also of what is appropriate
and typically done.

3 FUNCTIONS AND STRUCTURES OF LANGUAGE IN USE

Some text-friendly models of language and grammar-friendly approaches to text:
Text linguistics is a single approach to discourse having indeterminate set of interests: Text
linguistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts as communication systems. Its original aims
lay in uncovering and describing text grammars. Text linguistics takes into account the form of a text,
but also its setting, i.e. the way in which it is situated in an interactional, communicative context.
Both the author of a text, as well as its addressee are taken into consideration in their respective
(social and/or institutional) roles in the specific communicative context.
Text Types
Most linguists agree on the classification into five text-types: narrative, descriptive, argumentative,
instructive, and comparison/contrast. Some classifications divide the types of texts according to
their function. Others differ because they take into consideration the topic of the texts, the producer
and the addressee, or the style.

4 POWER AND POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN USE

”Critical” approaches to DA do not hold a monopoly on interest in the power and politics of
discourse. Pragmatic and sociolinguistic approaches to power in language necessarily share this
concern: e.g.,
(a) in Searle’s speech act theory ”having the authority to do so” is one of the felicity conditions for
issuing an order;
(b) In Brown & Levinson’s politeness theory, difference in power bw speaker and hearer is a factor in
choosing a strategy to manage a face-threatening act;

The relationship betwen language use and social structure ensures that issues of power must always
be on the agenda. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) sees language as ”everywhere and always”
political. By politics Gee means ”anything and anyplace where human social interactions and
relationships have implications for how ‘social goods’ are or ought to be distributed,” and by social
goods ”anything that a group of people believes to be a source of power, status or worth.”
When we speak or write we ”always take a particular perspective on what the ‘world’ is like.
This involves in taking perspective:
(a) on what is ‘normal’ and not;
(b) what is ‘acceptable’ and not;
(c) what is ‘right’ and not.”
But these are all, perspectives on how we believe, wish or act as if potential ‘social goods’ are, or
ought to be distributed. CDA is a political enterprise in the additional and crucial sense that it is
motivated by a particular political agenda; it seeks not just to understand the social world, but to
transform it.

ISSUES OF APPROACH, FOCUS, METHOD

(a) Approach – adoption of one, or a combination of the ways and discourse analysis outlined above;
(b) Focus – particular attention to certain aspects of the total discourse reality (on grounds of
theoretical preference or perceived relevance to particular issues of particular problem solving);
(c) Method – decisions relating to data collection and analysis, quality, quantity, subjectivity,
generalizability, etc.

To some extent these issues are interdependent: particular focus or approach implies particular
choices relating to method. To some extent they are separable: there are general issues of research
method in discourse analysis which arise whatever the chosen focus or approach. Discourse research
is mainly qualitative because it is inherently interpretive – there is no raw data for the analyst to
work with. There is the ”text-asrecord” but it (if spoken discourse) is subject to some ”cooking” in
the process of transcription.
11 Conversation analysis

CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS (CA)

The study of conversation itself. It is an approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both
verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life. Conversation analysis as a branch
within discourse analysis tends to describe and explain the ways in which conversation works. As its
name implies, CA began with a focus on casual conversation, but its methods were subsequently
adapted to embrace more task and institution-centred interactions, such as those occurring in
doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media.
Primary focus of research in Conversation Analysis (CA): talk rather than language.

o CA – one of a number of approaches to the study of spoken language.

o CA pays particular attention to temporality (focus on two sides of the ”time” coin): silence (it can
affect how some talk that precedes or follows it, is understood) and simultaneous talk (it may be
indicative of how speakers are understanding or feeling about each other) in conversation.

o Purposes of conversation: Exchange of information & Creating and maintaining social relationships

TALK

It is understood to be an occasion when people act out their sociality. Talk is a complex activity,
where language, cognition, sociality meet.
o crucial activity at the centre of worldchanging events:

 summit meetings between world leaders

 policy decisions in board rooms of multinational companies
 international conferences on environmental policies
 exchange of greetings with a neighbour
 polite chit-chat with workmates
 ordering a snack at lunchtime
 important life events of courtship, divorce, death are talked through

o Virtually no complex modern activity (in politics, law, education, commerce, electronic media,
defence, finance, medicine, sport) can take place without written documents or computerised
communication.

o Of these modes, only talk exists in all human social groups.

o Talk is ontogenetically (=egyedfejlődés(tan)i) primary: children learn talk by mere exposure to their
caregivers, whereas literate and electronic forms of communication need to be actively taught.

o Language is central and essential component of talk.

o Applied linguists’ concern: how language is used for communication, so an understanding how
language is used in talk must be a central foundation for CA.

o Talk is seen as co-constructed by listeners and speakers (speakers design their contributions
specifically for the recipients of the talk, and listeners in turn influence the speaker by the responses
they give.

CONVERSATIONAL RULES AND STRUCTURE

o OPENINGS: There are conventional routines for openings. (e.g., greetings, introduction, opening
questions);

o CLOSINGS: Intentions to close a conversation are usually expressed with closing signals such as
'well', 'so', 'okay‘ used with falling intonation.

o TURN-TAKING MECHANISMS: intention to let the conversational partner speak is signalled with
low voice, slowing down, putting a question, body movement. In smooth communication less than
five per cent is delivered in overlap.

o ADJACENCY PAIRS: utterances which require an immediate response or reaction from the partner
(greeting-greeting, offer-accept, compliment-thank, question-answer); there are always preferred
and non-preferred answers, and it is difficult for learners to distinguish between them.

o BACK-CHANNELING: signals that show the speaker that his/her message is understood and listened
to. Examples: Uhhuh, yeah, right.
12 Lexicology, lexicography, dictionaries

Lexicology is the part of linguistics, which studies words, their nature and meaning, words'
elements, relations between words (semantic relations), word groups and the whole lexicon.
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines: Practical lexicography is the art or craft of
compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. (Theoretical lexicography)

Microstructure of dictionary: what is within entries (layout of page);

Macrostructure of dictionary: structure above the level of entries.

Mouse ( definition)
• NOUN [COUNTABLE] /maʊs/
1 a small furry animal with a long tail • The cat's caught another mouse.
2 plural, mouses or mice
COMPUTING a small object that you move in order to do things on a computer screen. When you
press on a part of the mouse, you click on it. You also click on things on the computer screen itself,
using a mouse • Click on the left mouse button.
3 INFORMAL someone who is quiet and prefers not to be noticed Phrase quiet as a mouse very quiet
• Related dictionary definitions

Dictionaries: reference works about words;

Encyclopaedias are reference works about things.

Dictionary types:

1 Age of users – most dictionaries are for grown-ups, children’s dictionaries have an important place
in English lexicography
2 Number of languages
(a) Monolingual dictionaries (”explanatory” in Hungarian) are for native speakers;
(b) Translation dictionaries (bilingual, multilingual)

3 How much they contain: size – how fully the word stock is covered (never clearly defined,
notorously unreliable)
Five sizes may be distinguished in current English monolingual dictionaries:

 (1) dictionaries with upwards of 400,000 entries (Webster’s Third)

 (2) Dictionaries with 200,000-plus entries (Random House Dictionary)
 (3) College dictionaries with fewer than 200,000 entries;
 (4) Desk dictionaries with 60-80,000 entries;
 (5) Pocket dictionaries (even smaller)

The smaller the size, the simpler the structure, the fewer the meanings, the briefer the definitions.
4 What they contain: coverage
(a) Coverage by subject – according to the subject covered, general dictionaries contrast with
special(ised), i.e., special-field dictionaries, e.g., dictionaries of law, linguistics, economy, computers.
(b) Coverage by type of language – the type of language covered: general dictionaries contrast with
special-purpose dictionaries. Their speciality is genuinely linguistic (non subjectrelated), e.g., dialect
dictionaries, etymological, pronunciation and spelling dictionaries etc.
(c) Period of time featured – diachronic (historical) dictionaries oppose synchronic ones. Etymology
may be a feature of any dictionary but of the etymological dictionary it is an integral part.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) – largest dict of English, provides hundreds of thousands of
illustrations of the various senses of words down the centuries right back to their first occurrence.
TRANSLATION DICTIONRIES: All bilingual dictionaries have a direction, and contain a source and a
target language (e.g., Hungarian-English dictionary: Hungarian – source, English – target).

Function of dictionaries:
(a) Comprehension (decoding) dict. – when messages in a source language are being decoded (e.g.,
a Hungarian uses an EnglishHungarian dict to read English poetry);
(b) Production (encoding) dict. – when you express yourself (e.g., produce messages in a target
language, Hungarian-English dict is used)

MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARIES – target two kinds of user:

(a) Native speakers – native speaker dictionaries; FOR COMPREHENSION
(b) English as a second language-users – ESL or learner’s dictionaries: less in terms of quantity, but
more in terms of sophistication (pronunciation, collocations, style, usage, idioms, grammar –
countability of nouns, transitivity of verbs, comparison. FOR PRODUCTION

Five learner’s dictionaries:

(a) Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary ”Hornby” - oldest
(b) Longman series and three relatively new ones;
(c) Collins-Cobuilt dictionaries
(d) Cambridge International Dictionary of English (CIDE) Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
(e) Macmillan English dictionary (MED) – youngest
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (MEDAL)
1 Phonetics and phonology, sound types, segmental and suprasegmental features of speech

PHONETICS

 the scientific study of the segmental and suprasegmental features of speech

 is the study of the articulation of speech sounds and of their physical properties
 It describes how speech sounds are produced by the vocal apparatus, and
 The description and classification of speech sounds is the main aim of phonetic science. Sounds
may be identified with reference to their production or articulation in the vocal tract, their
acoustic transmission, or their auditory reception.
 Phoneticians study:
o (a) how speech sounds are produced by speakers (articulatory phonetics)
o (b) how they are perceived by listeners (auditory phonetics)
o (c) how sound travels through the air (acoustic phonetics).

PHONOLOGY

 also deals with speech and sounds

 it describes the functions the segments have in speech
 deals with the relationships they contract with each other
 study of systems, patterns and functions of sounds in human language and English phonology is
the study of the sound structure of English
 studies sounds in the context of languages and other speech varieties. It is concerned with which
sounds a language uses and how it arranges them and also with the contribution of sounds to
the task of communication.
 Phonologists want to understand how the sound system of a language functions.

Phoneme: a sound or a group of sounds that is functionally distinctive in a language system; a

speech sound that is distinct from other sounds in the language. Changing a phoneme changes the
meaning of a word. A pair of words that are distinguished by just one segment is called a minimal
pair. Minimal pairs are pairs of words with different meanings and exactly one sound difference
(e.g., /cat/ and /bat/).

Allophone: a speech sound that is a variation of some phoneme in a language. An allophone of a

phoneme is a version of that phoneme which is always found in some particular environment.
Whether a pair of sounds represents two different phonemes or allophone variants of the same
depends on the language.

Free variation: Sounds are said to be in free variation if they normally contrast meaning and are
therefore separate phonemes, but very occasionally, they are used interchangeably without
affecting meaning. The /p/ of ‘cup’ might be heard with a tiny amount of audible breath (aspiration)
following its release or a relatively large amount. But the different amounts of aspiration do not
affect the meaning of the word: replacing weakly aspirated (ph) by strongly aspirated (ph) does not
change ‘cup’ into some other word. These sounds are said to be in ‘free variation’.

 manner and place of articulation are segmental features of speech

 stress and intonation are suprasegmental features of speech

Suprasegmental: Larger chunks of pronunciation are called suprasegmental fetures, they are
situated “above” segments, they affect elements which are higher up in the hierarchy of linguistic
units: syllable, phrases, sentences.

o Stress: the pronunciation of a word or syllable with more force than the surrounding
words or syllables, i.e. when it is produced with more air from the lungs
o Intonation: is the contrastive use of pitch in speech. Intonation performs a variety of
different functions
 Emotional: the most obvious function is to express a wide range of attitudinal
meanings – excitement, boredom, surprise, friendliness, reserve etc.
 Grammatical: intonation plays an important role in the marking of grammatical
contrasts.
 Information structure: intonation conveys a great deal about what is new and
what is already known in the meaning of an utterance – what is referred to as
the information structure of the utterance.
 Textual: intonation is not only used to mark the structure of sentences; it is also
an important element in the construction of larger stretches of discourse.
 Psychological: intonation can help to organise language into units that are more
easily perceived and memorized.
 Indexical: suprasegmental features also have a significant function as markers of
personal identity – they help to identify people as belonging to different social
groups and occupations.
2 Morphology, branches of morphology, word formation, word classes

Morphology is devoted to the study of the internal structure of words: it is concerned not only with
speakers’ knowledge of the structure of existing, well-established words, but also with the rules used
to form or interpret new words. Examples: earwitness, McJob, televangelist

A word is not the smallest unit of morphological structure. The word ‘girls’ contains two meaningful
units: girl and –s (plural). The minimal unit which has a meaning (e.g., girl) or a grammatical function
(e.g., -s (plural) is called a morpheme.

Morphemes are classified as free morphemes or bound morphemes.

Free morpheme: can occur in isolation (as a word), e.g., man, handsome, do.

Bound morpheme: cannot occur in isolation, e.g., in the forms –ish, un–, –ed, –ly, re–, ing.

Morph: any form that is used to represent a morpheme (the word child-ish has two morphs)

 Allomorphs are distinct with regard to form but they have the same grammatical and semantic
function. Allomorphs are always in complementary distribution, just like allophones. E.g.,
indefinite article in English has two allomorphs a or an; they have the same meaning but occur in
different contexts, i.e., in complementary contributions.

Affix: a bound morpheme that must be attached to a base. If it precedes the base it is called a prefix,
e.g., re-, un-; if it follows the base it is called a suffix, e.g., -ish, -ed, -ly.

Infixes – affixes that occur in the middle of a word – are very rare in English. Eliza Doolittle's
‘absobloominlutely’.

Another major dichotomy is between lexical morphemes (content words), e.g., nouns, adjectives,
verbs and adverbs and functional morphemes (function words), which signal syntactic relationships,
e.g., prepositions, pronouns, determiners.
Inflection versus derivation

Bound morphemes come in two varieties: derivational and inflectional.

The addition of derivational morphemes creates new words: e.g. happy – happiness – unhappiness.
Derivation is not motivated by syntax; its role is to create new lexical items. It involves one

or both of these two things:

(a) creating a new lexical item with a different meaning from that of the original word; e.g., do –
undo (changing meaning) and/or
(b) changing the syntactic class of the input lexical item; e.g., sing (verb) – singer (noun).

The addition of inflectional morphemes merely changes word form.

WORD FORMATION

Derivation as one process to introduce new words into a language; it is generally assumed to be the
most productive word formation process.

Other word formation processes:

Conversion: Highly productive word formation process; a word class change without any
morphological marking. When conversion occurs, the syntactic context is the only indicator that
word class has changed.

Compounding: Compounds are complex words containing at least two bases that are themselves
words. Normally compounds are classified on the basis of the word class of their constituents and
the class of the entire resulting word. Compounds always have a headword which assigns its
syntactic properties to the entire word, and thanks to the right-hand head rule, it is normally the
right-hand-most word. (e.g., classroom = class + room; wallpaper = wall + paper)
Borrowing: a word is imported from another language.
Clipping: shortening longer words is a popular strategy for conserving breath when speaking and
space when writing or typing. Clipping or trimming words in the front or back (and sometimes both)
is thus another word formation process in English. (e.g., air plane -> plane - front clipping;
advertisement -> ad - back clipping; influenza -> flu - front and back clipping

Blending: Blends are combinations of two or more words in which the sound patterns overlap. Often
parts of either or both words are reduced or lost in the blend, though usually the initial components
are still recognizable. (e.g., brunch = breakfast + lunch; motel = motor + hotel; smog = smoke + fog)
Initialisms and Acronyms: Other forms of shortenings are initialisms (also called alphabetisms) and
acronyms, which reduce each component word to its initial letter. The difference between the two
types lies in how the resulting word is pronounced in spoken language, namely letter by letter or
without intermission. Initialisms: TV, CD, MP3; Acronyms: UNESCO, NATO.

Back-formation: Sometimes speakers of a language will analyze a word as containing affixes where
none are present. By removing these assumed affixes a lexeme can be back-formed. (e.g., editor-

to edit; babysitter-to babysit).

Defining word classes:

The sentence is the largest unit of language that we are concerned with in grammar. To show how
words pattern in sentences, we need to recognise units that are intermediate in size between a word
and a sentence. These intermediate units are phrases and clauses.
a) noun phrase (my hair) – the main word, i.e., head of the phrase) is a noun;

b) verb phrase (has been growing);

c) adjective phrase (very untidy);

d) adverb phrase (just recently);

e) prepositional phrase (to Joe, decided on dropping the matter)

NOUNS

Function: nouns can function as the head of a noun phrase (e.g., the best journey ever) (Have you
heard about/How much do you know about?) Most nouns can change their form from singular to
plural (regular, irregular forms).

Meaning:

(a) concrete nouns can refer to physical things (student), objects (book), places (city),

substances (gold);

(b) abstract nouns can refer to events, states, times (birth, happiness, life).

We distinguish the various subclasses in terms of form, function and meaning:

(i) Count/non-count nouns (=countable, uncountable) (BUT Her hair is brown. I found two hairs in
my soup.)
(ii) Proper/Common nouns: Proper nouns denote an individual person, place; normally begins with a
capital letter (e.g., Mallorca). Common nouns classify things into types; count/noncount nouns are
common nouns.

(iii) Collective nouns: Generally count nouns, but even in the singular they refer to groups of people,
animals or things (e.g., family, government).

ADJECTIVES

1. Funtion: (a) head of an adjective phrae (very rich); (b) modifier in a noun phrase (a rich man)

2. Form: Most common adjectives can have comparative and superlative forms.

3. Meaning: typically describe some quality attributed to nouns e.g., to narrow down, or specify
precisely, the reference of nouns:
(i) physical qualities of colour, size, shape, etc.: (blue)

(ii) psychological qualities of emotion, etc.: (funny)

(iii) evaluative qualities: (clever, good)

VERBS (main verbs)

1. Function: main element of verb phrase; can stand on their own, or follow auxiliaries. (Good to
start analysing a sentence by looking for the (main) verb first.)

2. Form: verbs have five different inflectional forms: plain form, s-form, ed-form, ingform, en-form.
Regular and irregular verbs.

3. Meaning: verbs can express action, events, states, etc., which can be physical (eat), mental (think),
perceptual (see), social (buy).

ADVERBS (a vague class of words to define)

There are three major types of adverbs (there is a considerable overlap between them).

1. Most adverbs add some kind of circumstantial information (of manner, place, time) to the state of
affairs expressed in the main part of the clause: (We sold the car hurriedly yesterday.)

2. Some adverbs modify adjectives and other adverbs in terms of degree: (fairly new, very unhappy)

3. Sentence adverbs: apply semantically to the whole clause or sentence, express an attitude to it, or
a connection between it and another clause or sentence: So – connects what was said before,
frankly – is the speaker’s attitude to what he is saying.)

Function: primary function is to be head of an adverb phrase; it can stand alone or preceded or
followed by another word, which is often an adverb. (She spoke softly. She spoke very softly indeed.
She spoke too softly for me.)

Form:
(i) many adverbs are formed by adding –ly to an adjective;
(ii) some adverbs resemble adjectives in having comparative and superlative forms, e.g., soon,
sooner, soonest, well, better, best.

Meaning:
manner adverb (How?) – well, nicely; place adverb (Where?) – here, anywhere, home; direction
adverb (Where to, where from?) – up, down, away, ahead;

time-when adverb (When?) – then, once, tonight, soon; frequency adverb (How often?) – always,
weekly, often; degree adverb (To what degree? How much?) – rather, much.

Unlike these, sentence adverbs (e.g., fortunately, probably, actually, however) do not answer

Questions. They can be divided into two main types.

Attitude adverbs (fortunately, actually, perhaps, surely)

Connecting adverbs (so, moreover, however, therefore, though). (Fortunately elephants can’t fly.
Some of them can run pretty fast, however.)
3 Syntax, clause patterns (clause types), Immediate Constituent Analysis, Structural classification
of sentences, Formal classification of sentences, Discourse functions of sentences

The study of that structure is syntax. Syntax is the study of the ways in which words combine into
such units as phrases, clauses, and sentences. It is usually word order, the use of inflections and the
use of function words that help to detect ‘togetherness’ in a sentence. Like words and phrases,
clauses can be viewed either from ‘inside’, in terms of their form and structure; or from ‘outside’, in
terms of their function in sentences.

Clause: the major constituent of a sentence which contains a verb; it forms a sentence or part

of a sentence.

Sentence: structure which contains two main constituents: NP (noun phrase) – functions as S;

and a VP (verb phrase) – functions as its predicate.

Complementative Clause Constituents:

S (Subject)

V (Verb)

O (Object: direct, indirect)

C (Complement: subject, object)

A (Obligatory Adverbial)

Clause patterns or clause types:

2. SV The sun is shining.

3. SVCs Your dinner seems ready.

4. SVA My office is in the next building.

5. SVOd That lecture bored me.

6. SVOiOd I must send my wife a card.

7. SVOdCo Most students found her helpful.

8. SVOdA You can put the dish on the table.

Ambiguities:

I//found//her//an entertaining partner. (SVOdCo or SVOiOd)

She//called//him//a//steward. (SVOdCo or SVOiOd)

Immediate Constituent Analysis:

Syntactic analysis aims at identifying the constituents and specify the function and category of the
constituents. Immediate constituent analysis is a widely used technique to display constituent
structure. Constituent analysis can help to avoid ambiguities, e.g.,: John found a book on Broadway.

1. What did John find? SVO (3 constituents)

2. Where did John find a book? SVOA (4const.s)

Structural classification of sentences: simple, compound, complex, composite

1. Simple sentence: contains only one finite (tensed) verb; an idependent clause, e.g., You must not
say such things.

2. Compound sentence: consists of two or more simple sentences linked by the co-ordinating
conjunctions. Simple sentences may be linked together by means of the following co-ordinating

conjunctions and adverb/adverbial phrases:

(a) Copulative (denoting addition): and, not only…but (also), neither…nor; now, then, furthermore,
besides, likewise, moreover, again, in addition, etc. e.g., He ran out and (he) fell over the suitcase.

(b) Disjunctive (indicating choice): or, either…or, else, otherwise e.g., Either come in or go out.

(c) Adversative (denoting contradiction or contrast): but; yet, still, however, nevertheless, none the
less, all the same, on the other hand, whereas, while. e.g., He drove badly, yet he passed his test.

(d) Resultative (denoting inference, consequence, conclusion): so, therefore, then, thus, hence,
accordingly, consequently. e.g., It was late, so I went to bed.

(e) Explanatory: for e.g., I went to bed , for it was late.

1. Complex sentence: consists of a combination of an independent and a dependent clause,

e.g., a relative clause is a dependent clause. Commonest subordinating conjunctions: after,

(al)though, as…as, because, before, if, since, until/till, when, where, whether…or not, which/that,
while. Subordinate clauses cannot occur alone, they depend on the main clause.

2. Composite (Compound-complex) sentences: combination of complex sentences joined by

coordinating conjunctions, e.g., I saw him when he arrived the first time but I didn’t see him when he
came again.

Formal classification of sentences:

(a) Declarative: affirmative - You have read it. negative - You have not read it.

(b) Interrogative: affirmative - Have you read it? negative - Haven’t you read it?

(c) Imperative: affirmative - Read it. negative - Don’t read it.

(d) Exclamative: affirmative - What a reading!

Discourse functions of sentences:

(a) Statements: used to convey message

(b) Questions: used to seek information on a specific point

(c) Directives: used to instruct sy to do sg

(d) Exclamations: used for expressing the extent to which the speaker is impressed by sg.
4 Semantics, Set phrases, Semantic relationships between words

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. The term is taken from the Greek seme, meaning
sign. When studying semantics, attention is focused on content words, function words belong to

the field of syntax. Semantics is a branch of linguistics devoted to the study of linguistic meaning.

Set phrases:
1.) The first type of set phrase, the collocation, may be defined as “set phrase which still makes
sense” e.g., make noise. One simply doesn’t say to produce noise, even though such a phrase would
be perfectly understandable.
Since collocations still may be taken literally, they can be paraphrased using regular syntactic
transformations: Noise was made by the children.

2.) Phrases whose words no longer make sense when taken literally are called idioms. e.g., to kick
the bucket

When the phrase can only be understood as an entity, it is an idiom. This independence of the
meaning of their constituent words gives idioms great freedom. This freedom allows idioms to be
more pleasing to the ear by such means as rhyme. It allows them to reflect some aspect of the
society’s history or culture.

The semantic relations between words: modern studies of semantics are interested in

meaning primarily in terms of word and sentence relationships.

in idiomatic set phrases may be illogical to varying degrees: soap opera. Idioms cannot be
paraphrased by regular means, because they do not participate in the regular syntactic relations of
the language: John kicked the table--The table was kicked by John. vs. John kicked the bucket.

Synonyms are words with similar meanings. They are listed in a special type of dictionary called a
thesaurus. Synonyms usually differ in at least one semantic feature.
Sometimes the feature is objective (denotative), referring to some actual, real world difference in
the referents: walk, furniture.

Sometimes the feature is subjective (connotative), referring to how the speaker feels about the
referent rather than any real difference in the referent itself: die, pass away, give up the ghost, kick
the bucket, croak.
Antonyms are words that have the opposite meaning. Oppositeness is a logical category. There are
three types:

1. Complementary pairs are antonyms in which the presence of one quality or state signifies the
absence of the other and vice versa. Single/married. There are no intermediate states.

2. Gradable pairs are antonyms which allow for a gradual transition between two poles, the
possibility of making a comparison--a little/a lot good/bad, hot/ cold
3. Relational opposites are antonyms which share the same semantic features, only the focus, or
direction, is reversed: buy/sell, father/son.

Homonyms are words that have the same form but different meanings. There are two major types
of homonyms, based upon whether the meanings of the word are historically connected or result
from coincidence.

Coincidental homonyms are the result of such historical accidents as phonetic convergence of two
formerly different forms or the borrowing of a new word which happens to be identical to an old
word. There is usually no natural link between the two meanings: the bill of a bird vs. the bill one

has to pay.

The second type of homonym, polysemous homonyms, results when multiple meanings develop
historically from the same word. The process by which a word acquires new meanings is called
polysemy.

homophones – same pronunciation but different spellings: meet/meat, peace/piece,

whether/weather, flour/flower, through/threw, to/two/too.

homographs – words spelled alike but pronounced differently in each of their meanings. In English,
most homographs are polysemous homographs: use (the noun vs. the verb), record (the noun vs.
the verb).