UNIT 1

1. LANGUE AND PAROLE

French-Swiss Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction between two aspects of language. He had
introduced three terms. They are Language, langue and Parole. The first is ‘Langue’ and the second is ‘ Parole’. They
are French words. Langue means Language. It includes all the rules and conventions regarding combination of sounds,
words, sentences, pronunciation and meaning. These words are coined by Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.

Language:

According to Saussure, Language is a grammatical system. Language is a self Regulating and Self contained
system. Language is one structure and it always has system of rules. For instance, English Language has some
structures, sentence patterns ( Subject, verb, Agreement) , use of Articles, uses of different tenses and so on. These
rules make it a ‘langue’
These two words are coined by
Langue- Competence Noam Chomsky. Competence-
capacity. So we all have the
Parole- Performance
capacity/ potential to use the
Langue: (language/ tongue) language.
If you have the potential to use the
Langue is social- shared by all the speakers of the
language, you can perform it- that
Language. is called Parole.

Langue is Abstract- which means exist in the minds of the

Speakers, who belong to that society that has created in langauge

Langue is a complete system of signs and system of rules in any language

Language can be studied- it is well defined: it is in form of written symbols

The following rules and conventions constitute Langue:

The combination of sounds and pronunciation ( phonetic and phonology)

Formation of words( morphology)

Construction of sentence ( syntax)

Contextual meanings (pragmatics)

Words relationships (semantics)

Briefly, langue is a system that includes all the elements of a language.

Parole: ( speech/ speaking)

Parole is Individual- individual Performance of the language

Parole is Concrete- it makes use of physiological mechanisms which includes, speech organs, uttering of
words and sentences.
 It is the outcome of our knowledge of the language.

Parole cannot be studied- unpredictable speech act. It cannot be accurately represented hence it cannot be
studies.

The way a particular person speaks is called Parole. Parole changes, because it is a speech, it is an
outcome, it is the use of language which changes from person to person, from culture to culture, from society to
society.

It belongs to the individual and not to the society as a whole

It is the individual performance of language in a speech or writing

Language

Langue ( Language) Parole( Language Performance)

Langue and parole are interrelated not separate. Parole is not possible or effective without Langue. Langue also
changes gradually under the effect of Parole.

2. ACCENT AND DIALECT

We all speak with an accent. It is a myth that some speakers have accents while others do not. Some speakers have
easily recognized types of accent while others may have more subtle or less noticeable accents, but every language-
user speaks with an accent.

The term “accent” is restricted to the description of aspects of pronunciation that identify where an individual
speaker is from, regionally or socially. It is different from the term dialect, which is used to describe features of
grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of pronunciation.

Following example two British English speaking visitors (B and C) and a local Irish English speaker (A) are
involved in a conversation in Donegal, Ireland.

A: How long are youse here?

B: Till after Easter. (Speaker A looks puzzled.)

C: We came on Sunday.

A: Ah. Youse’re here a while then.

It seems that the construction How long are youse here?, in speaker A’s dialect, is used with a meaning close
to the structure “How long have you been here?” referring to past time. Speaker B, however, answers as if the question
was referring to future time (“How long are you going to be here?”). When speaker C answers with a past time
response (We came on Sunday), speaker A acknowledges it and repeats his use of a present tense (Youse’re here) to
refer to past time. Note that the dialect form youse (= “you” plural) seems to be understood by the visitors though it is
unlikely to be part of their own dialect.

DIALECTOLOGY

The study of dialect or dialectology is used to distinguish between two different dialects of the same language (whose
speakers can usually understand each other) and two different languages (whose speakers can’t usually understand
each other).

DIALECT IDIOLECT REGISTER

 A language is spoken in  Idiolect is the  The same individual can

variety of ways. It is
determined by the
speakers social and
geographical background
 Language may vary from
one region to another
 In Britain there are
numerous dialects of
English according to the
area where these ate
spoken
 e.g. Lancashire dialect
The Scottish dialect
The Yorkshire dialect and so on
Thus within a language, we have
a number of dialects. Between
two dialects there may be
grammatical, lexical and
phonological difference
individual’s personal
variety of the community
language system
 Within a given dialect
one may find differences
of speech between
individuals. No two
speaker speak exactly
alike. The idiosyncracies
of an individual speaker
is called idiolect.
 Idiolect is different from
style. style is more often
a matter of choice. A
person’s style can vary in
different situations of
speech and writing. A
poet can choose one type
of style for one poem and
another style for other
poems.
 register of commerce, the
use different varieties of
a language depending
upon the situation. This
language used according
to the situation is called
Register
 Example: The kind of a
language a lecturer uses
in a classroom is
different from the
language he uses with
his wife and the language
he uses while addressing
the meeting.
 Through his
conversation, we may
find formal register,
informal register, the
register of linguistics, the
register of law, the
literary register, the
register of science and so
on.
 DISTINGUISH RESITER WITH DAILECT: (add on points)

REGISTER DIALECT

 These are variations of use
 A single speaker may use a number of
registers for different situations
 It is determined by the situation in which a
speaker is
 It is conditioned by the situations and need
of speaker
 It shows what you are doing
 These are variations according to the user
 A single speaker is normally in command
of a single dialect
 It is determined by the speakers
background
 It is determined by caste, social status etc
 It shows who or what you are

Comparison between standard and non- standard Dialect

STANDARD NON STANDARD

 A standard language is a variety of  People use non standard forms or

language that is used by government in dialect in their daily use
the media.  Describes language that does not
 It is the variety of used by educated follow the grammatical rules and forms
users, e.g. those in the professions, the of standard English
media and so on  Example: ain’t
 It is regarded as most correct and Cool, damn, ya’ll
socially acceptable than other varieties
 Examples: am not, very good, you all

ISOGLOSSES

We can look at some examples of regional variation found in a survey that resulted in the Linguistic Atlas of the Upper
Midwest of the United States. One of the aims of a survey of this type is to find a number of significant differences in
the speech of those living in different areas and to be able to chart where the boundaries are, in dialect terms, between
those areas. If it is found, for example, that the vast majority of informants in one area say they carry things home
from the store in a paper bag while the majority in another area say they use a paper sack, then it is usually possible to
draw a line across a map separating the two areas, as shown on the accompanying illustration. This line is called an
isogloss and represents a boundary between the areas with regard to that one particular linguistic item.
 DIGLOSSIA

 Speaking two languages. It was termed by Charles Ferguson in 1959. The term was introduced into socio
linguistics to describe the situation found in places like Greece, the Arabic speaking world, German
speaking Switzerland, and the island of Haiti. In all these societies there are two distinct varieties.
 Therefore, Diglossia is a linguistic situation in which two distinct language are used in the same
linguistic community. One variety will be regarded as higher variety and other will be known as lower
variety.
 Example:
IN Arabic, Classical Arabic is used in formal lectures, serious political events and especially in religious
discussions. The low variety is the local version of the language, such as Egyptian Arabic or Lebanese
Arabic

BILUNGUALISM

 Bilingualism is the phenomenon of speaking and understanding two or more languages

 Bilingualism people may able to speak , read, write fluently in two languages
 Bilingualism has been used since the British period in India, people who are educated are using
English in their conversation just to show their status in the society and consider speaking English
is the prestige
 In this form of bilingualism, a member of a minority group grows up in one linguistic
community, mainly speaking one language (e.g. Welsh in Britain or Spanish in the United
States), but learns another language (e.g. English) in order to take part in the larger dominant
linguistic community.

BIDIALECTAL:

Proficient in or using two dialect of the same language

INTERNATIONAL VARITIES

ACCENT:

 Simply the way someone produces words in a language. Whether one speaks in the standard variety of
a language or not, one always speaks with an accent.
 It also refers to the way how people pronounce specific words and phrases.
Example: british people pronounce the word car as /ka:/ while American pronounce as /ka:r/
 As George Yule states: “the term accent is restricted to the description of aspects of pronunciation that
identify where an individual is from, regionally or socially”.
  Example: your accent is the way you sound when you speak
 Accent is related to pronunciation.
 Same language speakers can have different accents. ( some speakers have easily recognizable while
others have less noticeable accent.)

STYLE:

 In sociolingusitics, a style is a set of linguistic variants with specific social meaning. In this context,
social meaning can include group membership, personal attributes or beliefs.
 Speakers can adopt different styles of speaking. You can speak very formally or very informally. In
other words, style refers to the degree in formality in using a language.
 Generally speaking style refers to the degree of formality in using a language which is determined by
co-participants, setting, mode, the purpose and the emotions involved when using language.
 A speaker may use different styles depending on context
 A style is not a social or regional dialect but a variety of language used for a specific purpose.
 The concept of style was first introduced by William Labov in 1960.
 Speakers can convey the same information differently. They change the style of their speech
according to the – address and context

SLANG:

 Slang is a kind of speech variety

PIDGIN AND CREOLE:

pidgin languages, it is generally agreed that in essence, these represent speech-forms which do not have
native speakers, and are therefore primarily used as a means of communication among pcople who do not share a
common language. The degree of development and sophistication attained by such a pidgin depends on the qpe and
intensiry of communicative interaction among the i$ users. Miihlhiusler (r986) makes three basic distinctions amongst
speech-forms that crcolists have referred to as pidgins - (rather unstable) jargons, stable pidgins, and expanded pidgins
(see further chapter 3). To turn to creole lalguages (or just creoles), one vital difference from pidgins is that pidgins do
not have nativespeakers, while creoles do. This is not always an easydistinction to make, as one aspect of the
worldwide increase in linguistic conformity and the concomitant reduction in linguistic diversity is that extended
pidgins are beginning to acquire native speakers. This has happened for instance with Tok Pisin, Nigerian Pidgin
English, and Sango (Central African Republic), to name but three cases. In panicular, this has tended to occur in urban
environments, where speakers from different ethnic groups have daily contactwith each other. The pidgin then
becomes the town language. The children of mixcd marriages frequently grow up speaking the home language -the
pidgin - as their native language.

CREOLIZATION:

Creolization is the process through which Creole languages and cultures emerge.[1] Creolization was first used
by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages. Still, now scholars in other social sciences use
the term to describe new cultural expressions brought about by contact between societies and relocated peoples.
[2]
Creolization is traditionally used to refer to the Caribbean, although it is not exclusive to the Caribbean and some
scholars use the term to represent other diasporas.[3] Furthermore, creolization occurs when participants select cultural
elements that may become part of or inherited culture. Sociologist Robin Cohen writes that creolization occurs when
“participants select particular elements from incoming or inherited cultures, endow these with meanings different from
those they possessed in the original cultures, and then creatively merge these to create new varieties that supersede the
prior forms.

BRITISH ENGLISH VS AMERICAN ENGLISH:

British and American English can be differentiated in three ways: o Differences in language use conventions:
meaning and spelling of words, grammar and punctuation differences. o Vocabulary: There are a number of important
differences, particularly in business terminology. o Differences in the ways of using English dictated by the different
cultural values of the two countries.

Dates. In British English, the standard way of writing dates is to put the day of the month as a figure, then the
month (either as a figure or spelled out) and then the year. For example, 19 September 1973 or 19.09.73. The standard
way of writing dates in American English is to put the month first (either as a figure or spelled out), then the day of the
month, and then the year. For example, September 19th 1973 or 9/19/73. Commas are also frequently inserted after the
day of the month in the USA. For example, September 19, 1973

o and ou. In British English, the standard way of writing words that might include either the letter o or the
letters ou is to use the ou form. For example, colour, humour, honour, behaviour. The standard way of writing such
words in American English is to use only o. For example, color, humor, honor, behavior

Note, however, that some words must always end in -ise whether you are using British or American English
standards. These include: i. advertise advise ii. arise comprise iii. compromise demise iv. despise devise v. disguise
enfranchise vi. excise exercise vii. franchise improvise viii. incise merchandise ix. premise revise x. supervise surmise
xi. surprise televise

LANGUAGE CHANGE, PROTOS, FAMILY REALTIONSHIP:

As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics. An accurately identified
family is a phylogenetic unit; that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all attested descendants of
that ancestor are included in the family. Most of the world's languages are known to belong to language families. For
the others, family relationships are not known or only tentatively proposed.

The concept of language families is based on the assumption that over time languages gradually diverge
into dialects and then into new languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than biological ancestry,
because there are extreme cases of languages mixing due to language contact in conquest or trade, whereas biological
species normally don't interbreed. In the formation of creole languages and other types of mixed languages, there may
be no one ancestor of a given language. In addition, a number of sign languages have developed in isolation and may
have no relatives at all. However, these cases are relatively rare and most languages can be unambiguously classified.

The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly, since most languages have a relatively short
recorded history. However, it is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative
method—a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist August Schleicher. This can demonstrate the
validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families. For example, the reconstructible common
ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European is not attested by
written records, since it was spoken before the invention of writing.

Sometimes, though, a proto-language can be identified with a historically known language. For instance, dialects
of Old Norse are the proto-language of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic. Likewise, the Appendix
Probi depicts Proto-Romance, a language almost unattested due to the prestige of Classical Latin, a highly stylised
literary dialect not representative of the speech of ordinary people.

Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family
because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. However, the term family is not
restricted to any one level of this "tree". The Germanic family, for example, is a branch of the Indo-European family.
Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus in how to do so. Those who
affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, and groups into complexes. The terms superfamily, phylum,
and stock are applied to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally
considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods.

Languages that cannot be reliably classified into any family are known as isolates. A language isolated in its own
branch within a family, such as Greek within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate; but the meaning
of isolate in such cases is usually clarified. For instance, Greek might be referred to as an Indo-European isolate. The
isolation of modern Greek, however, is not typical of its relationship to other languages at other times in its history.
Several Greek dialects evolved out of the larger Indo-European language group; and later, Greek words influenced
many other languages. By contrast, the Basque language is a living modern language and a near perfect isolate. The
history of its lexical, phonetic, and syntactic structures is not known, and is not easily associated to other languages,
though it has been influenced by Romance languages in the region, like Castilian Spanish, Occitan, and French.

Connections within and between language families are often used by geneticists and archaeologists, in combination
with DNA evidence and archaeological evidence, to help reconstruct prehistoric migrations and other prehistoric
developments, such as the spread of the Neolithic complex of farming, herding, pottery, and polished stone utensils.
For the scientists concerned, this is treacherous but necessary ground: the linguistic evidence is often vital to resolving
the problems concerned, but must be handled with caution, for two reasons: first, it is often a delicate matter to relate
languages to archaeological cultures, on the one hand, and to genetic lineages, on the other; second, many proposed
language relationships are controversial, which often requires non-linguists to take a stand on linguistic issues, a
professionally uncomfortable but often inevitable situation.

The Linguist List is now working on a National Science Foundation funded project entitled Multitree, to build a
database of all hypothesized language relationships, with a full searchable bibliography for each.

COGNATES:

A cognate is a word that has the same linguistic derivation as another. For example, the word "atencion" in Spanish
and the word "attention" in English are cognates originally drawn from Latin. This means that both words originated
from the same root word in Latin ("attentionem"). In other words, cognates are words with the same origin that appear
in two or more different languages.

Cognates are similar and sometimes even identical in spelling, pronunciation, and/or meaning. (Identical cognates are
called "perfect cognates.") Language learners will find that knowing cognates is extremely helpful in learning a new
language, and especially while traveling in a foreign country.

For example, let's say that Haley, an English-speaking young lady who is vacationing in France, needs to exchange
some money. She sees a sign that says, "Banque." The French word "banque" is a cognate with the English word
"bank." It comes from the same root and is very similar in spelling and pronunciation, as well as identical in meaning.
So Haley confidently walks in to "la banque" to exchange her dollars for Euros.

UNIT 2

SYNTAX

WHAT IS GRAMMAR?

MISCONCEPTIONS REGARDING GRAMMAR:

A traditional grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of a language. The roots of traditional
grammar are in the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists. The formal study of grammar based on these
models became popular during the Renaissance. Traditional grammars may be contrasted with more modern theories
of grammar in theoretical linguistics, which grew out of traditional descriptions. While traditional grammars seek to
describe how particular languages are used, or to teach people to speak or read them, grammar frameworks in
contemporary linguistics often seek to explain the nature of language knowledge and ability. Traditional grammar is
often prescriptive, and may be regarded as unscientific by those working in linguistics. Traditional Western grammars
generally classify words into parts of speech. They describe the patterns for word inflection, and the rules of syntax by
which those words are combined into sentences. The formal study of grammar became popular in Europe during the
Renaissance. Descriptive grammars were rarely used in Classical Greece or in Latin through the Medieval period.
During the Renaissance, Latin and Classical Greek were broadly studied along with the literature and philosophy
written in those languages. With the invention of the printing press and the use of Vulgate Latin as a lingua franca
throughout Europe, the study of grammar became part of language teaching and learning. Although complete
grammars were rare, Ancient Greek philologists and Latin teachers of rhetoric produced some descriptions of the
structure of language. The descriptions produced by classical grammarians (teachers of philology and rhetoric)
provided a model for traditional grammars in Europe. According to linguist William Harris, "Just as the Renaissance
confirmed Greco-Roman tastes in poetry, rhetoric and architecture, it established ancient Grammar, especially that
which the Roman school-grammarians had developed by the 4th [century CE], as an inviolate system of logical
expression." The earliest descriptions of other European languages were modeled on grammars of Latin. The primacy
of Latin in traditional grammar persisted until the beginning of the 20th century.

DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR:

he story of the development of English grammar involves not only the history of the English language but also the
history of England itself. The starting point of the English language is the language we call West Germanic, and the
starting point of England is the arrival of West Germanic peoples in Britannia in the fifth century. These West
Germanics were Angles, Saxons and Jutes, all speaking relatively close versions of West Germanic. West Germanic is
itself a version of the ancient Germanic language which had arrived with the Germanic peoples in north-west Europe
about 1000 BC. Germanic evolved into three separate languages: North Germanic, West Germanic, and East
Germanic. The East Germanic languages have disappeared. The North Germanic languages exist today as Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. The West Germanic languages exist today as English, German, Dutch and their
variants.

English’s West Germanic grammar has been radically changed in the course of its sixteen hundred years in the British
Isles. Modern English grammar is very different from Modern German grammar. First, English grammar was changed
by Norse-speaking invaders in the ninth and tenth centuries. Second, it was changed by Norman-French speaking
invaders in the eleventh century. Third, it was changed by scholars and antiquarians in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Fourth, English grammar is being changed in the twenty-first century by globalisation, the internet, and new
notions of authority.

From the West Germanic of the fifth century to the global English of the twenty-first century, we can then distinguish
five stages in the development of English grammar, and we will want to look at all of them, but, first, we should say
something about the development of that grammar in the thousands of years before West Germanics arrived at the
continental coast of the North Sea. Almost all the languages of Europe (and many in India) have evolved from a
language known as Proto-Indo European. Proto-Indo European was spoken by a tribe that lived somewhere between
the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea four to six thousand years ago. Proto-Indo European was never written down, and
its structure has been conjectured by working backwards from its hundred and more descendant languages that exist
today in India and Europe. The work of reconstructing Proto-Indo-European was began by Sir William Jones in
Bengal in the 1780s. It was he who first recognized the links between Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.

Sir William, who knew thirteen languages fluently and twenty-eight very well, believed Latin, Greek and Sanskrit to
be among the finest of languages but, of the three, he gave the palm to Sanskrit: ‘more perfect than the Greek, more
copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either’(1). The grammars of these ancient languages were
fully formed. There is no sense in which they were primitive. Grammar has developed in the last three thousand years,
but it has not improved and it has not degenerated. It has merely changed. Constant, slow change without
improvement and without degeneration is a characteristic of grammar in all languages. The grammars of English,
Sanskrit and Proto-Indo European are all equally good, equally valid, equally able to do what grammar does. So what
is it that grammar does?

An answer is provided by Daniel Everett, a linguist who has studied the languages of the Amazonian Indians. He
begins by pointing out that not only do human use words, they also use sentences. By contrast, animals have words,
but they do not have sentences. The sentence allows for complex thinking to be expressed, and the sentence is a
reflection of the human brain’s self-reflexive capacity. That capacity allows for what linguists call ‘duality of
patterning’. Humans, says Everett, ‘organize their sounds into patterns and then organize these sound patterns into
grammatical patterns of words and sentences. This layered organization of human speech is what enables us to
communicate so much more than any other species, given our larger, but still finite, brains’(2).
“Whether we use gestures or sounds,” says Everett, “we need more than just words to have a grammar. Since grammar
is essential to human communication, speakers of all human languages organize words into larger units - phrases,
sentences, stories, conversations, and so forth. This form of compositionality is called grammar by some and syntax
by others. No other creature has anything remotely like duality of patterning or compositionality. Yet all humans have
this’ (3).

The cries of animals work by establishing a one-to-one relationship between a sound and a thing or a sound and an act.
One cry can mean ‘Predator’; another can mean ‘Climb’. Certain monkeys have a wide range of cries, and we can call
those cries words. But it appears that only humans have the ability to move beyond the one-to-one relationship of
word to thing or act. Humans can create relationships between one word and another.

We do that in two ways: by changing the shapes of our words and by changing the order of our words. Grammarians
call shape changing morphology. We can take a word ‘dog’ and change its shape by adding an ‘s’ to produce the word
‘dogs’. Grammarians call order changing syntax. We can say ‘The dog bit the man’ or ‘The man bit the dog’.
Morphology and syntax together make up what we call grammar, and we can see, at once, that small changes in
grammar can result in large changes in meaning.

Grammar is then a demonstration of the complexity of the human mind; it is something that evolved as we evolved; it
is a product of nature not of culture. That is why English grammar is no better and no worse than Sanskrit grammar.
So what are the basic features of English grammar? I am going to answer that question historically, and I will take as
my starting date the state of English grammar in the year 700 when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had been in this
island over two hundred years, and would very shortly be using the word ‘English’ to describe the language they were
talking and the word ‘England’ to describe the place they found themselves in.

Their English was a Germanic language. Therefore, it was an inflected language with nouns of three genders:
masculine, feminine and neuter. These nouns had four case endings - nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. As
well as coming in three genders, Old English nouns came in seven declensions. Old English adjectives came in two
declensions, five cases and three genders. Old English verbs came in two conjugations: strong and weak. Strong verbs
indicate tense by a change in the quality of a vowel, while weak verbs indicate tense by the addition of an ending.
(Modern English retains that division: sing, sang, sung v. love, loved, loved.) Old English’s two verb conjugations
came in regular and irregular forms as did its seven noun declensions and two adjectival declensions. That is a brief
summary of Old English morphology or word shape.

Now, to look at Old English syntax or word order. Since subject and object could be distinguished by case endings,
Old English was not dependent on word order to give its sentences meaning; nonetheless, it tended to the form
Subject-Verb-Object. Number was important as it is in Modern English and in all European languages.

Old English verbs, nouns, adjectives and pronouns, all the time indicate whether they are singular or plural. Asian
languages, such as Chinese or Japanese, only indicate number if it is necessary to do so. That fact goes to show that
grammatical features of a language are often apparent only by contrast with other languages. Old English was a
language very much like present-day Frisian, an island dialect spoken in the most isolated corner of Holland. Frisian is
English’s nearest living relative, and it is one of Europe’s least changed languages. English, Frisian’s nearest living
relative, on the other hand, is one of Europe’s most changed languages. So English is at once like and unlike Frisian.
Why has English changed so much? The answers to that give us the story of the development of English grammar.
While Frisian has been a very sheltered language in the last sixteen-hundred years, English has a very exposed
language. From the year 400 to the year 800, Old English changed very little, but in the year 835, a great force for
change arrived in the form of Viking invaders. While they were simply landing, looting and going home, they made
no difference to English, but when they arrived to stay, settle, intermarry and have Anglo-Norse children, they made a
considerable difference.

The Vikings spoke a North Germanic language called Norse. Ready intermixing was facilitated by the fact that the
Norse and English languages may have been mutually intelligible. They were certainly close enough to influence each
other in the most subtle ways. Old Norse even affected that most important of all words - the verb ‘to be’. Today, most
of us say ‘they are’ not ‘they be’. The older form of what the dictionary calls this ‘irregular and defective verb’ was
gradually displaced by the Norse verb form. (OED) The modern English third-person present tense takes forms such
as ‘he walks’. The older form was ‘he walketh’. That change is probably a result of Norse influence. It may even be
that the English way of forming a question by reversing the subject-verb order so that ‘I am’ becomes ‘Am I?’ is
related to the same pattern in Norse. (Wikipedia) It is certainly true that English replaced its third person plural
pronouns ‘hi, hem, hir’, with the Norse ‘they, them, their’. (OED)

There is considerable uncertainty about the exact nature of Norse influence on English because we have no ongoing
written record by which to track them. Changes were beginning as early as the year 900 perhaps, but they do not
become apparent for five and a half centuries. The reason for that was a single invasion that was even more significant
than the very many Danish invasions. The great invasion was that of the Norman French in 1066.

In 1066, French-speaking invaders arrived in sufficient numbers with sufficient military power and they stayed for a
sufficiently long time to bring about major changes in the grammar of English. Within three hundred years, Norman
French had become blended with Old English, and the effects were startling. Grammatical gender was replaced by
logical gender; most noun endings were lost; word order became paramount. English had ceased to be a normal
Germanic language. The overall change was so great that ‘English first came into existence in roughly the form in
which we know it today around 1350, when the influence of 300 years of Norman French occupation had been
assimilated into a basis of Germanic dialects.’ English is now the least Germanic of Germanic languages.

By 1400, English had fully supplanted French as the dominant language of England, and, by 1500, Westminster
English had established itself as the dominant dialect, what linguists call the prestige dialect. At the same time as
Westminster English was on the rise, another of England’s languages was on the decline. That language was Latin. All
the learned spoke it as well as wrote it. It was the universal language of the Church and of Europe. But by 1600, it was
apparent that Latin was not the only language of learning and science in England. It was also about this time that the
first English-language grammars and dictionaries begin to appear. Until this time, the word ‘grammar’ had meant
Latin grammar; now, it became evident that there was something that could be called English grammar.

The first English grammars were modelled on Latin grammars. These made English appear to fall short in a number of
ways. It is not possible to end a sentence with a preposition in Latin; double negatives are not used in Latin; double
comparatives are impossible in Latin; infinitives cannot be split in Latin. A sense that English was inferior became
inbuilt. Even though English gradually superseded Latin, it continued to be thought second best, and not only to Latin.
As David Crystal puts it in The Stories of English, writers believed that English was ‘not as “good” as French and
Latin and that it needed to be improved - a mind set which became a dominant theme of the sixteenth century.’ As a
result of this bias towards foreign grammar, written English was set against the grain of spoken English, and at any
moment a writer’s guard might drop. It was an unhappy fact that not a single one of the best writers could be relied
upon to write correctly. Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Pope, Johnson were all found to have broken some of
the rules at some time in some of the works.

Nonetheless, with the publication in 1755 of Dr Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, it may be said
that the rules for a Standard English Grammar had been established. His ‘Preface’ to the Dictionary is one of the best
statements of those rules; the Dictionary itself, of course, fixed the spelling of the educated man’s vocabulary. By the
end of the century, what is probably the most influential of all English grammars was published. It was the work of an
American called Lindley Murray. It appeared in its first

edition in 1795 with the title The English Grammar Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners. With an Appendix,
Containing Rules and Observations, for Assisting the More Advanced Students to Write with Perspicuity and
Accuracy. It is worth noting that it not simply a description of English grammar, but it is in addition a handbook for
the writing of good English. It has never been out of print; it was in use, along with the cane, in every public school in
nineteenth-century England; it is a book so famous that Charles Dickens had only to mention it to make his readers
laugh.

By 1800, the rules of English grammar had been established with such authority that for many they are still taken as a
matter of fact and not a matter of convention. In the nineteenth century those rules became canonical: they were
maintained not only by the schools but also by the universities, the publishing houses and the newspapers. But if you
go back to the seventeenth century, you will see that the very rules of English grammar that people find difficult to
follow are the rules based on the linguistically false premise that Latin grammar is superior to Germanic grammar. In
fact you might well suspect that if you have to have a self-conscious rule to tell you that one form is right and another
form is wrong, then you are being asked to go against the natural bent of the language. Natural English inclines to
double negatives, double comparatives, split infinitives and sentence-ending prepositions.

However, the English were not alone in correcting their language. The Accademia della Crusca had been founded in
Florence in 1583 with a mission to maintain the purity of the Italian language. The Academie francaise had been
founded in Paris in 1634 with a mission to establish a literary language based on the French of the Ile de France. The
Real Academia Española had been founded in Madrid in 1715 with a mission to secure the Castilian language.
Jonathan Swift’s call in 1712 for the foundation of an English Academy with the task of ‘Correcting, Improving, and
Ascertaining the English Tongue’ might have been taken for a sign that the English were merely catching up, but
neither the English nor, in their turn, the Americans took that route for correcting their language. Nonetheless, English
was corrected quite as effectively as Italian, French and Spanish. It might also be said that it was corrected quite as
ineffectively. Italian, French, Spanish and English continued to evolve, continued to take on new vocabularies, and
continued to feel the tension between the energised varieties of spoken forms and the conservative version of a written
form. English, at least, has continuing defects – an excessive vocabulary, an unreformed spelling, and a hapless
punctuation – but it nonetheless has become the fast, efficient and universal medium that the reader reads today.
In 2010, the Great English Grammar Settlement of 1755 is threatened, and the stability of that grammar is under threat
from three forces: new social attitudes, the internet, and globalisation. The new social attitudes are not so new in fact,
and they can be dated to the 1960s and the permissive society. In the seventies, the teaching of grammar dropped out
of the state school curriculum in England and Wales, and children were expected to find their own way to Standard
English. It is worth noting that many of them did, but the right and wrong of grammar had been called into question.

Today, Great English Grammar Settlement is further threatened by the internet. English is the dominant language of
the internet, and, from a linguistic point of view, one the most striking things is that much of the most available web
material is in an English unmediated by professional editing. Blogs, chats, emails, texts and tweets pour out in a
language that is an interesting intermediate between forms of spoken and written English. This informal English is of
a kind once only to be found in personal letters and secret diaries, but now it is broadcast to the world.

It is too early to treat this latest stage in the development of English with any certainty, but guesses. The major change
that net writing is likely to have on English is a merging of the grammars of spoken English and written English. In
the eighteenth century, it was decided to censure double negatives, double comparatives, misplaced modifiers,
terminal prepositions, and split infinitives. Today, those rules are on the slide with the exception of the one against
double negative; that is holding up well. Soon English will have forgotten altogether the differences between owing to
and due to, less and fewer, who and whom, different from and different to, shall and will, that and which.

Meanwhile the fact that the language most used on the internet is English reflects its status as a global language.
Indeed, it is now the global language. It is still ahead of Mandarin in a number of ways and likely to remain so. There
are some two billion users of English with, of course, every level of ability. Linguistically, and, we might say,
grammatically, the important statistic is that only one quarter of those users are natives peakers. 500,000,000 is a large
number of speakers of any language, but native speakers of English are out-numbered three to one by non-native
speakers. In terms of world history, this is a new linguistic phenomenon, and it may have substantial effects on the
language. There are two ways that linguists are identifying this impact: a second-language effect and a lingua-franca
effect.

Let’s look first at the second-language effect. We talk about English as a First Language, English as a Second
Language and English as a Foreign Language. English as a Second Language is an English learned by people who
come in contact with an English-speaking community and learn to speak English themselves in the process. English as
a Foreign Language is an English learned by people who come into contact with English through the classroom.
Second-language English is felt to be more intuitive and more robust since it has been acquired in a natural context.
Very important here is the age at which the language is acquired: the younger the learner, the more complete the
learning. Today, we have a remarkable development in the number of people learning English as a Second Language
since in so many countries English is being introduced in primary schools, and, in many non-English speaking
countries, secondary education is being conducted in English. The distinction between English as a Second Language
and English as a Foreign Language may be an artificial one in a situation where young English-language speech
communities are being created. Huge numbers of fluent, multilingual speakers of English will use the language with
ease, confidence and competence. That could have a high impact on general English since a language belongs to its
users, and its users make the language.
In addition to this massive and unpredictable development of English as a Second Language, we have the
phenomenon called English-as-a-Lingua-Franca or ELF. ELF is the English used by speakers who do not consider
English their first language to communicate with other speakers who do not consider English their first language. ELF
is the English used when native-speakers are not present, and it comes in a variety of forms. It is, for example, the
English of the European Union. Barbara Seidlhofer of the University of Vienna emphasizes that ELF is now
recognized as a form of English on an equal footing with native English versions. The development of ELF will, she
argues, have distinct effects on the usage of English. When ELF speakers are together, communication involves the
ability to read the other speakers’ different cultural elements, idioms, and local references. In international meetings,
she says, non-native speakers often have an advantage over native speakers since linguistic accommodation is a
conscious skill of the ELF speaker.

So the Great English Grammar Settlement of the eighteenth century is under threat from new social attitudes, the
internet, and globalisation. The questions are How much threat? and Should we be worried? Well, the threat is
considerable, but I, for one, am not worried. First of all, if we look across the world of published books and major
newspapers, the settlement is holding up very well. Second, we must not expect any aspect of the English language to
be static. Even without outside influences, languages slowly change. Change itself is not evidence of decline. Third,
the Great English Grammar Settlement was a compromise; we could even say that much of it was a botch.

Should we be worried by the coming changes to English grammar? Well, no. A fundamental reason for saying that
arises from the fact that language is biological not cultural. That ensures that language never degenerates into
gibberish, the great fear of the language conservatives. Fear of degeneration of the language has been as constant as its
failure to happen. It was a very great fear in the eighteenth century when it was believed the English language and
English civilisation with it were going to smash. Conservative grammarians, the Queen’s English Society, Lynne
Truss, the Apostrophe Society, and others tend to get hysterical about matters of grammar. Why do they get
hysterical?

First of all is a matter of deep, even evolutionary, psychology. Some biologists believe that the primary function of
language is not to exchange information but to allow very large numbers of primates to live in groups. Language is
seen as the biological equivalent of the grooming engaged in by the other great apes that have fur but do not have
language. Apes live in smaller groups than humans, and the argument is that humans, in large, furless groups, talk all
the time to create and cement group cohesion.

A remarkable thing about our languages is how sensitive we are to accents. In the old days, accents varied village by
village. In times before villages and when humans lived in caves, accent discrimination may well have had a survival
value. Women and children would keep quiet until they heard the voices of the returning males. It is certainly true that
we are very sensitive to accents, and we love our own and we can easily find ourselves hating other peoples’. Standard
Grammatical English operates like an accent. Its consistent and proper use requires long training, the internalizing of
arbitrary rules, and constant attention. As a result, it serves as a class indicator and status marker.

There is a difference between the linguist’s and the populist’s view here. The linguist’s view is put by R. B. Le Page
‘A discussion on the nature of language argues the following:
(1) the concept of a closed and finite rule system is inadequate for the description of natural languages; (2) as a
consequence, the writing of variable rules to modify such rule systems so as to accommodate the properties of natural
language is inappropriate; (3) the concept of such rule systems belongs instead to a world of stereotypes about
language, which are usually politically or ideologically motivated and which must be constantly re-examined, or to
written language, which is different in nature and not an alternative representation of spoken language.’

Page asks us to recognize two major distinctions: between natural languages and artificial languages, and between
spoken language and written language. His first distinction reminds that human language is a natural not a cultural
phenomenon; it is more true to say that language makes us rather than that we make language. How human language
works at its deepest levels is little better understood than how human consciousness works. Page’s second distinction
reminds us that whatever rules we might like to establish for the written language, they should not apply to the spoken
language.

If we want to talk about correct English, proper English, good English, then we must remember that to do so we must
be ‘politically or ideologically motivated’. Correct English is an ideological matter. If we wish to make an impression
in the world, we will use it ourselves, and, if we want our children to get good jobs, we will teach them to use it too.
Nonetheless, correct English is a limited and limiting concept in relation to the ageold story of English grammar, a
grammar that we can see evolving steadily since it arrived in these islands. It has changed its form on average every
three hundred years, and it appears to be going through one of its evolutions even as we use it today.

Latinate Fallacy: -

The first defect of traditional grammar according to structuralists is the use of one language framework in the
description of another language. It is said that most of the traditional grammarians who wrote an English grammar
were trained in Latin grammar. So, they used the framework of Latin language in the description of English language.
But according to structuralist English language and Latin language have different structures and frameworks. Hence
we cannot use the Latin framework system to examine English language system. It would be like using the Sanskrit
framework to describe German language. What the structuralists tried to say is that it is wrong to impose one language
framework in the description of another language. Each language has unique sense and unique gramma

Logical Fallacy:-

This is the second weakness of the traditional approach to language. This is called as the ‘Logical Fallacy’.
Traditional grammarians assumed that the laws of logic and the principles of grammar are the same. According to the
structuralists laws of language are not logical.

Semantic Fallacy:-

Structaralists pointed out that many of the traditional grammars categories were based on meaning. They
called it as the Semantic Fallacy’. ‘Semantic Fallacy’ means the use of meaning in the definition of grammatical
categories. Structuralists said that meaning cannot be studied scientifically because it is not verifiable. Meaning
according to them is a matter of introspection therefore it is beyond the scope of scientific investigation. Examples of
this kind of fallacies are as follows. i) A noun is the name of a person, place or thing. ii) An interrogative is a sentence
that asks a question. Structuralists objected the use of meaning as a tool in grammatical analysis. Another problem
with the meaning based definitions according to structuralists is that these definitions gives scope to subjective
interpretation and it cannot be used with precision.

Prescriptive Fallacy:

The traditional grammar tended to be prescriptive. Structuralists pointed out that grammar of any language
must be scientific and descriptive.

IC ANALSYIS:

Structuralist tool for syntactic analysis • Introduced by Bloomfield followed by Roulon Wells and Zelling
Harris • Analysing each utterance into the smallest meaningful units possible. • Units at the last level are called
ultimate constituents • Constituents --- any word or morpheme or construction which enters into some larger
construction • Construction ----any group of words or morphemes or a phrase or sentence

Immediate Constituent analysis is one of the strong methods of analyzing a sentence linguistically. It aims at finding
out the ultimate constituents of a sentence and their relationship with one another. The constituents are nothing but the
morphemes or group of morphemes which, is the discovery of these constituent analysis or I.C. analysis. This term
was first introduced by Bloomfield in 1939. The technique of Immediate constituent of analysis or I.C. analysis is used
to analyse utterances to their components or constituents. In other words, this technique shows how any given
construction can be broken down to smallest meaningful units. This smallest meaningful unit can be a morpheme at
the morphological level or a word at the syntactical level. Many of the words in English or other languages have and
internal hierarchical structure (this can be represented by means of a free diagram) for example –the word
unfriendliness can be broken down to several constituents which follows a hierarchical structure.

Immediate constituent analysis, also called IC Analysis, in linguistics, a system of grammatical analysis that
divides sentences into successive layers, or constituents, until, in the final layer, each constituent consists of only a
word or meaningful part of a word. (A constituent is any word or construction that enters into some larger
construction.) In the sentence “The old man ran away,” the first division into immediate constituents would be
between “the old man” and “ran away.” The immediate constituents of “the old man” are “the” and “old man.” At the
next level “old man” is divided into “old” and “man.” The term was introduced by the United States linguist Leonard
Bloomfield in 1933, though the underlying principle is common both to the traditional practice of parsing and to many
modern systems of grammatical analysis.

PHASE STRUCTURAL RULES:

Phrase Structure Rules

1. Phrase structure rules

 the grammar contains a set of rules that generate the trees -

phrase structure rules
 o phrase structure rules that will produce the structure of

The child found the puppy in the garden

[The child] [found the puppy in the garden]

NP VP

[The child] [found] [the puppy] [in the garden]

Det N Vt NP Prep P

Det N Prep NP

the puppy in the garden

Det N

 these rules describe all the steps in the generation of the phrase structure tree:

1. Begin with rule 1

o create the node S

o one line below it, create the nodes NP and VP
o connect the NP and VP nodes to S

2. Then apply rule 2

o one line below VP, create three nodes VT, NP, and PrepP
o connect each of them to VP

3. Continue with rule 3

o one line below PrepP create a node Prep and its object NP node
o connect the NP node to PrepP

4. Finally, apply rule 4

o now, below each NP, create two nodes, Det and N

o connect each Det and each N to the NP node that immediately dominates it
he terms deep structure and surface structure were introduced by

DEEP STRUCTURE AND SURFACE STRUCTURE:

Noam Chomsky as a part of his work on transnational grammar.
As per Chomsky, deep structure refers to concepts, thoughts,ideas & feelings whereas surface structure refers to the
words / language we use to represent the deep structure.
The NLP Meta Model is a series of Language Patterns used in Neuro linguistic programming. The use of the NLP
Meta Model is extremely specific. NLP Meta Model Language pattern is all about Information gathering.

The NLP Meta Model consists of:

1. The Surface Structure
2. The Deep Structure
3. The Experience. 1) The Surface Structure: If you hear people in NLP speaking about the Surface
structure they are speaking about the "Tip of the Iceberg" which is the person's way of using language
via Stories, Metaphor, explanations and details that they want to share with you at any given time.
This communication, has been prepared to be the most pleasing or effective in getting their point
across coming from the Conscious Mind and is not necessarily congruent with the whole person.

2) The Deep Structure: Is the way in which a Person sorts for information and processes through their own
Communication Model. This Involves their:
 Beliefs
 Sensory experience
 Preferred Processing Style
 Meta Programs
 Past Experience
 Perceptions of Choice and possibility
 Sub modalities

KERNALS AND TRANSFORMS:

According to American linguist, Noam Chomsky, "[E]very sentence of the language will either belong to the kernel or
will be derived from the strings underlying one or more kernel sentences by a sequence of one or more
transformations. . . .

"[I]n order to understand a sentence it is necessary to know the kernel sentences from which it originates (more
precisely, the terminal strings underlying these kernel sentences) and the phrase structure of each of these elementary
components, as well as the transformational history of development of the given sentence from those kernel sentences.
The general problem of analyzing the process 'understanding' is thus reduced, in a sense, to the problem of explaining
how kernel sentences are understood, these being considered the basic 'content elements' from which the usual, more
complex sentences of real life are formed by transformational development."

Transformations
British linguist P. H. Matthews says, "A kernel clause which is both a sentence and a simple sentence, like His engine
has stopped or The police have impounded his car, is a kernel sentence. Within this model, the construction of any
other sentence, or any other sentence that consists of clauses, will be reduced to that of kernel sentences wherever
possible. Thus the following:

'The police have impounded the car which he left outside the stadium.'

is a kernel clause, with transforms Have the police impounded the car which he left outside the stadium? and so on. It
is not a kernel sentence, as it is not simple. But the relative clause, which he left outside the stadium, is a transform of
the kernel sentences He left a car outside the stadium, He left the car outside the stadium, He left a bicycle outside the
stadium, and so on. When this modifying clause is set aside, the remainder of the main clause, The police have
impounded the car, is itself a kernel sentence."

COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANACE:

COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE. In LINGUISTICS, the distinction between a person's knowledge of

language (competence) and use of it (performance). Performance contains slips of the tongue and false starts, and
represents only a small sample of possible utterances: I own two-thirds of an emu is a good English sentence, but is
unlikely to occur in any collected sample. The terms were proposed by Noam CHOMSKY in Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax, when he stressed the need for a GENERATIVE GRAMMAR that mirrors a speaker's competence and
captures the creative aspect of linguistic ability. In Knowledge of Language (1986), Chomsky replaced the terms
with I-language (internalized language) and E-language (externalized language). A similar dichotomy, LANGUE and
PAROLE, was proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1915), who stressed the social aspects of langue, regarding it as
shared knowledge, whereas Chomsky stressed the individual nature of competence.

UNIT 3

WRITING IN THEORY

PRE WRITING, POST WRITING AND REVISION

The pre-writing stage could also be dubbed the "talking stage" of writing. Researchers have determined that talking
plays an important role in literacy. Andrew Wilkinson (1965) coined the phrase oracy, defining it as "the ability to
express oneself coherently and to communicate freely with others by word of mouth." Wilkinson explained how oracy
leads to increased skill in reading and writing. In other words, talking about a topic will improve the writing. This
connection between talk and writing is best expressed by the author James Britton (1970) who stated: "talk is the sea
upon which all else floats.”

Writing is often described as a linear process, moving from the first stage to the last stage in an orderly fashion.
However, the writing process often requires moving back and forth between steps and is often more complex than
the linear model represents. If you are working on a larger project you may have to break down the work into
smaller parts to make it manageable; therefore you can be at different stages of the writing process in different
parts of your project. You may also have to make changes in sections that you thought were finished as the
contents are affected by what you write in other sections. Furthermore, new questions may arise along the way that
will make it necessary to return to an earlier stage of the process, for example to do further research.

Pre-writing

In the pre-writing stage you plan and prepare your writing. This is also the stage where you research your topic
and look for relevant sources.

Early in the pre-writing stage you should give thought to the subject and purpose of your assignment. If you are
assigned a broad subject by your instructor you will need to narrow it down and focus on a smaller subject area,
preferably something that interests you. In order to write effectively you also need to know the purpose of why
you are writing. Each type of writing has a unique set of guidelines and knowing your purpose for writing will
help you produce a text of high quality and relevance. In order for you to know the purpose of your writing you
will need to interpret the task. See more information below about this.

Doing thorough preparatory work is important for your writing and will save you a lot of time in the long run. It
will help you keep your focus during the writing process. As your project progresses you may have to make some
changes to your initial plan.

At the beginning of the writing process it is important to take time to create a timetable for writing in order to
ensure that you will have a finished product when the assignment is due. When planning your time, take into
account that the revising phase may take as much time as the initial writing, or perhaps even longer. This is in
many ways similar to planning your studies in general.

TRANSITIONAL PHRASES:

Transitional expressions function to connect one idea to another between or within sentences and to alert
readers to connections between paragraphs or blocks of the text. They are signals that help readers follow the direction
of your thoughts as a writer. Transitional expressions include conjunctive adverbs used to join or to connect
independent clauses such as however, hence, also, consequently, meanwhile, nevertheless, moreover, and furthermore
as well as transitional phrases such as after all, even so, in addition, on the other hand, for example, as a result, and in
conclusion.

When a transitional expression appears at the beginning of a sentence or within an independent clause, it is
generally set off with commas.

Meanwhile, we had little choice but to wait for him to make his decision. (conjunctive adverb) As a result, the
department made the following recommendations. (transitional phrase)

Many of our competitors, on the other hand, are reluctant to bid for the project. The first speaker, for example, was
both professional and entertaining
When a transitional expression links two independent clauses in a compound sentence, it is preceded by a semicolon
and usually set off with commas

Depending on where you want to place the emphasis in communicating the direction of your thoughts, you have some
flexibility as a writer in how to structure the sentences and in the placement of transitional expressions either before or
within a particular clause.

It is important not to confuse transitional expressions with coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, so, for, yet)
when connecting two independent clauses into one sentence. Transitional expressions appear between independent
clauses preceded by a semicolon and usually followed by a comma. Coordinating conjunctions are preceded by a
comma when they link independent clause.

Functioning as transitional expressions, conjunctive adverbs are used to connect independent clauses and indicate the
relation between the clauses. Similar to transitional phrases, conjunctive adverbs can be used with a semicolon to join
two independent clauses into one sentence or set off with commas to stand alone with an independent clause.

Using transitional phrases is a way to guide your reader from one thought to the next. These are used within your
paragraphs as you move from one idea to another as well as when you need to move your reader to the next paragraph.
Think of transitions as the links that help your writing flow. You can also think of a transition as a sort of bridge between
ideas or between paragraphs. Rather than leap from one idea to the next, a transitional word or phrase will offer
connection and flow. Different transitions serve different purposes, such as showing a contrast, showing cause and
effect, or elaborating upon an idea.

COHERENCE AND COHESION: Cohesion and coherence are important features of academic writing. They are
one of the features tested in exams of academic English, including the IELTS test and the TOEFL test. This page gives
information on what cohesion is and how to achieve good cohesion. It also explains the difference between cohesion
and coherence, and how to achieve good coherence. There is also an example essay to highlight the main features of
cohesion mentioned in this section, as well as some exercises to help you practise.

What is cohesion?

For another look at the same content, check out YouTube or Youku, or the infographic.
It is important for the parts of a written text to be connected together. Another word for this is cohesion. This word
comes from the verb cohere, which means 'to stick together'. Cohesion is therefore related to ensuring that the words
and sentences you use stick together.

Good cohesion is achieved through the following five main methods, each of which is described in more detail below:

 repeated words/ideas
 reference words
 transition signals
  substitution
 ellipsis

Two other ways in which cohesion is achieved in a text, which are covered less frequently in academic English
courses, are shell nouns and thematic development. These are also considered below.

Cohesion is an important feature of academic writing. It can help ensure that your writing coheres or 'sticks
together', which will make it easier for the reader to follow the main ideas in your essay or report. You can
achieve good cohesion by paying attention to five important features. The first of these is repeated words.
The second key feature is reference words. The third one is transition signals. The fourth is substitution. The
final important aspect is ellipsis.

The words it, which and these are reference words. The first two of these, it and which, both refer to 'cohesion' used in
the preceding sentence. The final example, these, refers to 'important features', again used in the sentence that
precedes it.
 UNIT 4

WRITING IN PRACTISE

Paraphrasing:

The words ‘paraphrasing’ and ‘summarising’ are sometimes used interchangeably, but usually they are used to mean
two different techniques. If you’re not sure if you are required to summarise or paraphrase, check with your tutor. A
paraphrase is rewriting a piece of text in your own words, while retaining the meaning. It is usually similar in length to
the original text. A summary, in contrast, is a description of the main ideas of a text, and so it is shorter than the
original text. A journal article might be summarised in a single paragraph, for example, or a whole book summarised
in a few paragraphs. To summarise something – like a TV show or an article – is to condense it down to the ‘bare
bones’. Both paraphrasing and summarising are important techniques in academic writing. You’ll use paraphrasing
and summarising both when you take notes during your research and when you incorporate evidence from sources
into your own work.

First, make sure you understand the source itself. Check the definitions of any keywords if you are unsure.

2. Next, put the reading aside and make some notes from memory.

3. Then compare your notes with the reading to make sure you have included all the key information. Redraft your
paraphrase if necessary.

4. Place quotation marks around any unique phrases you have borrowed directly from the source. Note that it is OK
not to change technical words, as there often will not be appropriate synonyms for these.

5. Make sure to note down the full details of the source so you can properly cite the material.

ORIGINAL TEXT:

The challenge for you as a student nurse is to move beyond mastering the skills of data collection to develop your
confidence in analysing and interpreting findings, identifying and clustering abnormal data and determining nursing
priorities. Although beginning nurses lack the depth of knowledge and expertise that experienced nurses have, they
can still learn to improve their clinical judgement skills. Etheridge (2007) found that new nurse graduates learned to
“think like a nurse” and develop confidence in making clinical judgements through multiple clinical experiences with
a wide variety of patients, support from educators and experienced nurses, and sharing experiences with their peers.
Making the most of clinical placements by seeking opportunities to develop these skills is essential in the transition
from student nurse to beginning practitioner.

PARAPHRASE:

Student nurses need to progress from collecting data to being confident in analysing data to find abnormalities and
prioritise tasks. New nurses do not have much knowledge or experience, but they can still develop their clinical
judgement. According to Etheridge (2007, as cited in Lewis & Foley, 2014, p. 61), novice nurses can “think like a
nurse” and gain confidence if they have experience with different patients, help from colleagues, and discuss
experiences with their fellow nurses. Student nurses should look to improve their clinical skills during placement to
assist in the passage to starting work.

REVIEW WRITING:

 Be informative and insightful: Be specific and relevant to the place you’re reviewing, and describe what
other visitors are likely to experience. Highlight what makes the place special, and try to share something
unique and new.
 Be authentic: Review your own experience, and explain what the place was like and the service you
received. Try to be as accurate as possible, and include both the positive and negative aspects of your visit.
 Be respectful: Business owners often use feedback to improve their offerings. Even if you’re frustrated,
make sure your criticism is constructive. Additionally, please avoid profanity.
 Write with style: Check your spelling and grammar, and avoid excessive capitalization and punctuation. In
general, a paragraph is a great length for a review.
 Avoid personal and professional information: Do not include the phone numbers or URLs of other
businesses in your reviews. Additionally, do not write reviews for places where you are currently or formerly,
an employee.
 Avoid general commentary: Certain locations may become the subject of larger public debate or
conversation due to recent news coverage or current events. While we respect and value your opinion, Local
Reviews are not meant for social or political commentary. Forums, like blogs or social networks, are much
more appropriate for those types of conversations. Please write about your firsthand experience with the
place and not general commentary on the place in relation to recent news.

REPORT WRITING:

A report is a written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated. It is a
systematic and well organised presentation of facts and findings of an event that has already taken place
somewhere. Reports are used as a form of written assessment to find out what you have learned from your
reading, research or experience and to give you experience of an important skill that is widely used in the work
place.

Generally, two types of reports are asked in the exam, namely, newspaper report or a magazine report. Newspaper
report is the one which is published in a newspaper and magazine report is generally written for a school magazine.
A well written report will must possess the following traits:
 adherence to the specifications of report brief;
 analysis of relevant information;
 structuring material in a logical and coherent order;
 presentation in a consistent manner according to the instructions of the report brief;
 making appropriate conclusions that are supported by the evidence and analysis of the report;
FORMAT OF A MAGAZINE REPORT

1. Heading– A descriptive title which is expressive of the contents of the report.

2. By line– Name of the person writing the report. It is generally given in the question. Remember, you
are not supposed to mention your personal details in your answer.
3. Opening paragraph (introduction) – It may include the ‘5 Ws’ namely, WHAT, WHY, WHEN and
WHERE along with WHO was invited as the chief guest.
4. Account of the event in detail– The proper sequence of events that occurred along with their
description. It is the main paragraph and can be split into two short paragraphs if required.
What Is Content Writing?

Content writing is the process of planning, writing, and editing web content, typically for digital marketing purposes
with the aim of solving a problem for a specific audience. By solving the audience’s challenges, you create value and
importance for the target audience thus establishing trust; a necessity in building a brand. It can include writing blog
posts and articles, scripts for videos and podcasts, as well as content for specific platforms, such as tweetstorms on
Twitter or text posts on Reddit.

What is creative writing?

As the name suggests, creative writing is a form of writing that goes beyond the traditional realms of normal,
professional, academic or technical forms of writing.

Instead, it encompasses a number of different genres and styles across a whole range of fields of both fictional and
non-fiction writing; storytelling, playwriting, poetry, prose, journalistic, and more.

Though the definition can be quite vague, creative writing can, for the most part, be considered as any type of writing
that is original and expressive of oneself. Typically, it can be identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, focusing on
elements such as character development, narrative and plot, infusing its structure with imagination, invention and
story.

In this sense, creative writing can technically be considered any writing of contemporary, original composition - it's
bound by no standard conventions and uses a whole range of elements in its craft.

In an academic setting, creative writing is typically divided into fiction, poetry, or scriptwriting classes, with a focus
on writing in an original style, not defined by pre-existing structures and genres.

What are the different types of creative writing?

Creative writing comes in many forms, encompassing a number of genres and styles. There are lots of different types
of creative writing, which can be categorised as fiction or non-fiction. Some of the most popular being:

 Biographies
  Fiction: novels, novellas, short stories, etc.
 Speeches
 Poetry and spoken word
 Playwriting/scriptwriting
 Personal essays
 Speeches

UNIT V

EVOLUTION OF INTERNET ENGLISH

What Is Internet Plagiarism?

Internet plagiarism is a term used to describe the illegal use of written work, photographs, or graphics on a website. It
is usually taken from another website without giving credit to the creator of the original content. The laws governing
online content are the same as for printed materials, meaning they are protected by copyright infringement laws.

When something is written or a picture or graphic is created, it is automatically copyrighted and protected under the
law from being stolen. Internet plagiarism is sometimes harder to detect than with printed materials because of the
ease of which materials can be stolen. There are software programs which can alert content creators when their work
is being used elsewhere, and legal action cane be taken when this occurs. Most search engines will block a site using
plagiarized materials from showing up in search results. Their websites may also be taken down, although the exact
action may depend on what the original content creator's desires.

Internet plagiarism can include things aside from content and pictures. Anything taken from another website, or print
materials, and placed in another place can be considered plagiarism. This includes social networking sites, personal
blogs, and private emails. The original creator of whatever content is being used should be given full credit for his or
her work. To do this, it is generally acceptable to list the name of the author, photographer or artist. If this information
is not available, listing a link to the website where the content was found is often acceptable.

Those who feel they have been the victim of Internet plagiarism should contact the appropriate officials with a link to
the offending website or person. Sometimes it is more effective to contact the person using the content first, since
many people don't realize that they are breaking the law. Sometimes, simply requesting the content be taken down or
that credit be given to the rightful content owners is enough to remedy the situation.

EMAIL AND BLOGGING

Email blogging is a form of content marketing that involves sending relevant and helpful emails to people
who are interested in the information you’re sharing. If you have an email list of people who like what you write or
do, then email blogging is a great method to keep them engaged with your content.
Email blogging is a tactics to build relationships with your readers by sending them personalized emails that include
content you’ve written.
Here are the main peculiarities of email blogging:

1. It’s free – you can write blogs in any email service (like Gmail or Outlook), and there’s no need to pay for an
account or software. You can simply choose a template, add photos and text, and send it out!

2. It’s easy – even if you’re not a technical writer, you can create beautiful emails with just a few clicks! Just
download a template and edit it as needed—you don’t have to write code at all.

3. It’s personal – when someone opens an email from your company, they expect it to be personalized and relevant to
them—not just another generic one-size-fits-all message from “Marketing.” This means that every time you send an
email, it should feel like it was written specifically for each recipient—and that’s exactly what happens when you use
email blogging templates!

MICROBLOGGING:

Microblogging is a combination of instant messaging and content production. With a microblog, you share short
messages with an online audience to improve engagement. Social channels like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and
Pinterest offer popular platforms for microblogging.

Microblogging makes it easier to communicate with audiences quickly. Rather than writing pages of text, a micro blog
allows for quick, conversational connections with customers.

Short microblogging messages appear in various content formats, including audio, video, images and text. The trend
for microblogging began when social media emerged to provide quicker ways for companies to engage customers.
Microblogging also keeps customers informed about the longer content on your website.

As more customers look to develop relationships with companies, short and frequent social posts are critical.
Additionally, microblogging appeals to the mobile browsing community. Examples of microblogging platforms
include:

 Twitter: One of the best-known channels in the microblogging world. Twitter is a quick and convenient way to
share short posts, GIFs, article links, videos and more.
 Pinterest: Companies on Pinterest link to products, articles and other useful information for audiences.
Descriptions allow for quick content connections.
 Instagram: A visual form of microblogging, Instagram allows organizations to share stories and snaps as part
of an online narrative.
 Facebook: One of the most popular social platforms, Facebook is an effective microblog channel. Users share
text, live videos and more to connect with customers.
 Tumblr: Tumblr is another highly popular microblogging platform. You can tag specific topics to attract
attention from targeted audiences.
 ABSTRACTING:

An effective and well-written abstract helps readers understand the scope of your paper and whether the
information is relevant to their studies. An abstract is also useful for indexing in online databases.

In this article, we discuss what an abstract is, the different types of abstracts and how to write one. We also share an
example of an abstract to help you draft your own

 An abstract is a concise summary of a longer work, such as a dissertation or research paper, and allows
readers to decide whether to read the full paper.
 Abstracts should be written after the full paper is written, and are usually about 150-250 words and one to two
paragraphs long.
 An abstract should include a statement of the problem you are trying to solve and the purpose of your
research, the methods used to find the solution, the results and the implications of your findings.


SYNOPSIS WRITING:

A synopsis is a brief summary which gives readers an overview of the main points. In an academic context, this is
usually a summary of a text (a journal article, book, report etc) but in some instances you might be writing a synopsis
of a talk, film or other form of presentation. A synopsis is a neutral summary, objectively capturing the main points,
rather than your own perspective or critique, and it focusses directly on the text you’re summarising rather than being
a wider discussion of a topic, as an essay might be.
A synopsis aims to give the reader a full, if brief, account of the whole text so that they can follow its main points
without having to read it themselves. It’s not a ‘trailer’ designed to tempt your audience to read the text itself, so you
don’t have to worry about ‘hooking’ them in with hints and high points or ‘spoiling the ending’ - give the whole text
equal coverage, including the conclusions. You could add some commentary which gives the reader a bit of context
about the text, including the authors and circumstances it was written in (for example, if it is part of a debate,
particular school of thought or its significance and what impact it’s had).

Challenges
Writing a good synopsis is a skill, and there are a number of challenges:

 Separating the main points from the minor detail

 Knowing what to leave out as well as what to include
 Giving a sense of the overall narrative as well as listing the key points
 Covering the whole text within a small word limit
 Knowing how closely to stick to the original, especially in terms of the wording
 Whether to give all key points equal treatment, or cover some more briefly, even combining them
  Rephrasing things concisely without losing the meaning or misrepresenting it
 Not leaving out anything crucial to understanding the whole overall message
A good synopsis will allow the reader to feel as if they’d skimread the whole text themselves, understanding the
overall gist and highlighting what they need to know. A poor synopsis will get bogged down in detail, giving a
confused account of the whole story by just listing points, miss out major points or give an inaccurate or one-sided
account or stick so closely to the original that it becomes plagiarism without demonstrating a real understanding by the
person summarising it.
How to prepare a synopsis
Boiling down the key points and overall narrative of the original means good reading and note-taking skills which aim
to identify and boil down key points to their essence. You could try some of the following approaches:

 Read the whole text, and afterwards, without re-reading, jot down your first initial summary in 50 words to
capture its overall point. You can check it back for accuracy or anything you left out, but stick within ca 50
words
 Read the introduction and first line of each paragraph to get a sense of the overall structure and key points
within it
 Highlight one sentence in each paragraph that you think is essential detail to understanding that section
 Alternatively, with a marker pen, cross out anything that isn’t essential to an understanding of the whole
section or text
 Jot down only key words as a summary of each point rather than whole sentences
 Read each paragraph and summarise it without looking, in one sentence of your own
 Consider how many points you can make within your word count, and reduce or combine your list of
summarised points down to this number
You could start small, identifying just keywords or sentences at first and then work them up into phrases, bullet points
and sentences as a rough plan or draft, or you could start big with the original text and reduce each section, paragraph
and sentence summary again and again until you have boiled it down to its essence.
When you start to prepare your first plan or draft, try to use your notes or memory and step away from the original as
much as you can. You can go back and check it afterwards, but you need to create some distance to be able to create
your own account and have confidence in the points you have identified as essential.

SRIPT WRITING:

When script writing, your script, also known as a screenplay, should detail character dialogue, scene settings, and
actions that take place throughout a film, TV show, or another visual story. Your screenplay should properly tell your
film’s entire story from start to finish because it’s a blueprint of the plot and character development before the film
comes to life on screen.

How To Write A Script

Writing a script helps express your creativity and make a story come to life. It often takes time and dedication to craft

well-rounded characters and a compelling plot. These steps can help you create a captivating script:
1. Read Other Scripts
Download a few scripts or screenplays to find examples of well-written dialogue, characters, and storylines and to

learn what producers are looking for in terms of genre conventions and themes. It might help to take a few writing

workshops to develop your skills or better understand how to craft a strong script.

As a writer, you want to consider the production probability of actually selling the script:

 Realistic budgets. Although it may be fun to write a science fiction film with heavy visual
effects, production design, and costumes, these elements make the film more expensive.
 Intellectual property infringement. For feature films, unless the property is public domain or bought by the
writer, the writer should focus on creating an original story. In contrast to television scripts that might create
spec scripts for existing shows, using franchises like Star Wars or Harry Potter for sample scripts could cause
liability issues.
For story marketability, writers are typically encouraged not to follow market trends since by the time the script has

been polished, the trend may no longer be popular.

In general, you should write what is interesting to you with a story that you are passionate about.

2. Build Your World

Think about the location of your story. Detail your world well enough to help audience members vividly imagine it.

Consider the genre of movie that you want to create. A few elements to consider in world-building are:

 Time period: Does your story take place in the past, present, or future? Though the script doesn’t have to
mention an exact date, keep it in mind as you write.
 Weather and climate: Is it hot or freezing? How does the weather in this world affect your characters and the
overall plot?
 Story themes: Determine your themes and what your audience should gain from this film. Do you want them
to leave feeling happy, or do you want to convey messages that make people think deeply?
 Location: Where are your characters and where do they go? Abandoned houses, New York City, etc.
3. Develop Your Characters
Determine who your main character is and note their:

 Strengths
 Flaws
 Goals
 Obstacles keeping them from overcoming these goals
For other characters:

 How do they interact with the main character?

 Do they help your protagonist?
 Are they acting as an antagonist and keeping them from achieving these goals?
When building an antagonist, consider:

 What do they want from the main character?

 What does the main character want from them?
 Why does the antagonist want to keep your protagonist from achieving their goal?
4. Organize Your Story With A Synopsis
A film synopsis outlines the story in the order that your audience will view it. The stages of your story typically

include:

 An introduction to the main character and their world

 An inciting incident that gets the story moving
 The first turning point that presents the character with a new situation or challenge
 A call to action where the hero’s goal gets specific
  A point of no return when your protagonist risks or loses everything
 The all is lost point where the hero faces great danger and will have to rise to the occasion
 A second turning point where the stakes become higher as the character redeems themselves
 The climax when the story comes to a resolution
5. Write Your First Draft
As you build your first draft, follow your synopsis, and start building your story.

 Write out scenes that create conflicts and challenges for your character
 Create other scenes showing how they overcome them
Take risks while you write this first draft, and try to get your ideas out as best as you can. You can revisit these ideas

later during your rewrite to see if they work well with your plot.

Consider writing a 1-2 sentence logline that summarizes the plot of your script so anyone can easily understand what
the main ideas of your story are. Ex: the logline for A Quiet Place might be: “A family must live in dead silence so
they can avoid monsters with incredible hearing abilities”