The English Language

System
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER OVERVIEW

In other aspects,
patterns and
structures are
fundamental. These
help them identify the
core of a problem, and
to generalize from a
specific example to a
more general
understanding.
CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Structures and
patterns as well,
help in
identification
and classification
of trees.
 CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The roles of patterns and
structures are not that far
from those aspects. The
study of language is
complex but this could
have been made easier
through the underlying
patterns and structures of
language just like
knowing the age of the
tree through counting its
annual rings.
CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Language as a
system of systems
that illustrates the
sound patterns,
structures and
meaning words
and sentences will
be studied in this
chapter.
“If words are not
things, or maps are
not the actual
territory, then,
obviously, the only
possible link between
the objective world
and the linguistic
world is found in
structure, and
structure alone.”
 

-Alfred Korzybski
 At the end of this chapter you are expected to:
 transcribe the words using IPA;
 show how the structure of words in a language can be
described;
 apply morphological rule in analyzing the structure of the
words;
OUTCOMES  generate realization about the thought of words;
 create new words using different word formation processes;
 draw tree diagrams showing the syntactic structures of
sentences;
 make remarks on similarities and differences between
morphology and syntax;
 produce semantic analysis; and
 present the concept of face through a video clip.
Phonology: Sound
Patterns
Lesson 6
 At the end of the lesson, you can:
 explain how speech sounds are
produced;
 identify the main types of speech
sounds and how they are classified;
Objectives  differentiate phonology from
phonetics;
 describe the sounds of English; and
 transcribe the words using IPA.
  When you know a language, you know the sounds of
that language, and you know how to combine those
sounds into words.
 When you know English, you know the sounds
represented by the letters b, s, and u, and you can
combine them to form the words bus or sub.
Introduction  Although languages may contain different sounds,
the sounds of all the languages of the world together
constitute a class of sounds that the human vocal
tract is designed to make.
 The scientific study of speech sounds is phonetics,
and is divided into three main branches: articulatory,
acoustic, auditory.
Introduction
to Ultrasound
Technology in
Linguistics
Introduction
to Articulatory
Phonetics
(Vowels)
Introduction
to Articulatory
Phonetics
(Consonants)
Articulatory
Phonetics
Introduction
to
International
Phonetic
Alphabet
  A minimal pair is a pair of words that have
different meanings. They are pronounced the
same except for one sound.

The Minimal  Examples:

Pairs
 [teɪk] vs. [teɪp] "take" vs. "tape"
 [tim] vs. [dim] "team" vs. "deem"
Morphology: Words
Lesson 7
 At the end of the lesson, you can:
 illustrate understanding on the key
concepts in the study of the structure of
words: morpheme, morph, allomorph;
Objectives  explain the main types of morpheme;
 show how the structure of words in a
language can be described;
 apply morphological rule in analyzing
the structure of the words.
 The meaning is either associative
‘with, together’ as
Answer in compare, cohabit, coexist, collect,
etc., or intensive ‘completely’, as
in correct, contend, corrode, etc.
Your Own
Concept of
Word
  Morphology is a system of categories and rules
involved in word formation and interpretation.
There are two basic goals in studying morphology:
 to isolate the component parts of words; and
 to determine the rules by which words are formed
 Morphemes, allomorphs and morphs
 Although a morpheme is an abstract unit of meaning, a
Morphology morph is a formal unit with a physical shape. A
morpheme is the description of what a morph is or does
to a word.
 Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes.
 Example:
 mats [mat + (-s)]
 ashes [ash + (-es)]
  On the other hand, allomorphs are any of the
different forms of a morpheme.
 Example:
 Past Tense: rolled [-d], walked [-t], gifted [-ed]
 Morpheme: [-d]
Morphology  Allomorphs: /-d/ /-t/ /-ed/

 Plural Formation: flasks [-s], wars [-z], glasses [-

ez]
 Morpheme: [-s]
 Allomorphs: /-s/ /-z/ /-ez/
 collect cohabit collide
correct coalesce corrode
Writing connect collate confess
Morphemic commute commend cohere
Rules combat contend coexist
compute consent coincide
compare condemn
 
  Word is the most noticeable unit in
grammar of human languages, and to
the speakers.
 Since the limits of words in spoken
Introduction utterances are not clearly marked, we
need criteria for identification.
 The internal structure of words can be
divided into smaller units.
 The scientific investigation of this
domain is called morphology.
  A. The orthography is a bit misleading. The allomorphs seem to
be col-, cor-, con-, co-, and com-. However, the phonological
forms are actually [kə], [kən], [koʊ], and [kəm] since the [l] in col-,
the [r] in cor-, the [n] in con- before the alveolar nasal, and the
[m] in com- before the bilabial nasal is actually part of the root.
 B.
{CON} → [kə]/ before liquids and nasals
[kən]/ before dentals (alveolars and
labiodentals)
Answer
[kəm]/ before bilabial stops
[koʊ]/ before vowels and [h]
 It is rather difficult to know which is the “elsewhere” form in this
case. Historically, the com- [kom] form is original. If it is
considered the underlying form, the [kən] form is derived by
assimilation in place of articulation to the following stop with
vowel reduction, the [kə] form by reduction of the vowel and loss
of the [m] before liquids and nasals, and the [koʊ] form by loss of
the [m] and vowel shift.
  Affixes cannot be not attached to the root
simultaneously.
 Morphemes in words have a strict and systematic
linear order.
The
 Within words, morphemes are also organized in
Hierarchical highly patterned ways.
Structure of  To provide a more complete representation of the
Words structure of a word, we need to consider the
following:
  The fact that every simple word contains one root.
  The derivational affixes in the word contain meanings.
  The fact that each lexical item represents a part of
speech.
  To visualize the hierarchical structure of words we
can use trees, just as we can with sentences and
grammar.
The
Hierarchical
Structure of
Words

 
The Lexicon
Lesson 8
 At the end of the lesson, you can:
 be acquainted with two primary concepts, the
lexicon and parts-of-speech;
 identify the parts-of-speech of every word in a
sentence;
Objectives  generate realization about the thought that not
all words are neutral, but can evoke emotional
responses in speakers of a language and be used
to soften or make harsher unpleasant realities;
and
 create new words using different word formation
processes.
  Linguistic theories generally regard human
languages involves two parts: a lexicon,
basically a list of a language's words; and a
grammar, a system of rules that permits the
combination of those words to create
meaningful sentences.
Introduction
 The knowledge that a native speaker has about
a language includes information about the
form and meanings of words and phrases; the
appropriate usage of words and phrases; the
relationships between words and phrases; and
the categories of words and phrases.
Syntax: Sentence
Patterns
Lesson 9
 At the end of the lesson, you can:
 identify the different types of phrases,
clauses and sentences;
 draw tree diagrams showing the
Objectives syntactic structures of sentences;
 explain the need to identify syntactic
relation; and;
 make remarks on similarities and
differences between morphology and
syntax.
  Languages have rules.
 The rules of a language are called the grammar.
 The reason for these rules is that a person
needs to be able to speak an indeterminately
large number of sentences in a lifetime.
Introduction  The effort would be impossibly great if each
sentence had to be learnt separately.
 Look and observe the sets of sentences below
and explain how finite rules govern to create an
infinite number of sentences.
How any
The kindhearted boy had many
speaker of any girlfriends.
human The kindhearted, intelligent boy
language can had many girlfriends.
produce and
understand an The kindhearted, intelligent,
infinite handsome boy had many
number of girlfriends.
sentences?
How any
John found a book in the
speaker of any library.
human John found a book in the
language can
produce and library in the stacks.
understand an John found a book in the
infinite library in the stacks on the
number of
sentences? fourth floor.
How any The cat chased the mouse.
speaker of any
The cat chased the mouse that ate
human
language can the cheese.
produce and The cat chased the mouse that ate
understand an the cheese that came from the cow.
infinite The cat chased the mouse that ate
number of the cheese that came from the cow
sentences? that grazed in the field.
 The part of grammar that represents a
speaker’s knowledge of sentences and
their structures is called syntax.
 The rules of syntax combine words
into phrases and phrases into
sentences.
 Among other things, the rules specify
the correct word order for a language.
 For example, English is a Subject–Verb–
Object (SVO) language.
 Openness
 Syntax is concerned with the means available in
languages for putting words together in
sequences.
 It provides additional means of ‘opening’ the
Key Concepts grammatical system for the expression of new
of Syntax meanings, nuances of meanings, precision in
meaning and links between ideas; it provides
means for speakers to go beyond the
limitations of the morphology and lexicon.
 Syntax enhances creativity of expression in
language (McGregor, 2009).
 Grammaticality
 Grammaticality denotes that the usage conforms
to the rules that native speakers follow or that
native speakers would find acceptable in a given
situation (Funk & Kolln, 2013).
Key Concepts  A sentence made up of a string of words that
of Syntax observe the syntactic patterns of a language is
grammatical; otherwise it is an ungrammatical
string.
 Study of ungrammatical strings, and comparison
with ungrammatical sentences, can yield insights
into syntax of a language (McGregor, 2009).
 Hierarchical Structure
 Hierarchical structure refers to the fact that
linguistic units and clumps tend to “nest” within
one another (Payne, 2010).
 The structure of sentence is hierarchical. Words in a
Key Concepts sentence go together to form groups of
intermediate sizes—clauses and phrases—identified
of Syntax by criteria of movability, contractibility and
ambiguity.
 The hierarchical structure of sentences into clauses,
phrases, words and morphemes can be represented
in tree diagrams, the nodes of which are labeled
according to the type of unit (McGregor, 2009).
Does
grammar
matter?
 A language also contains specific
Phrase rules for properly connecting
Structure syntactic atoms to form
Rules sentences, these are called
phrase structure rules.
Syntactic
Relations
Semantics: Meaning
Lesson 10
 At the end of the lesson, you
can:
discuss the concept of
semantics;
Objectives
produce semantic analysis;
identify lexical relations; and
explain the study of semiotics
through a reflective essay.
  When we communicate, we put together words
and phrases to communicate some sort of
message.
 The hearer constructs/interprets the intended
message based on his or her linguistic
knowledge, his or her knowledge of the world,
Introduction and context.

 For thousands of years philosophers have

pondered the meaning of meaning, yet speakers
of a language can easily understand what is said
to them and can produce strings of words that
are meaningful to other speakers.
  The semantic meaning of any unit of
language is determined by the
The Principle semantic meanings of its parts along
of with the way they are put together
Compositionality
(Fasold & Connor-Linton, 2014).
 The Principle of Compositionality:
 The semantic meaning of any unit of
language is determined by the semantic
meanings of its parts along with the way
The Principle they are put together.
of  The meaning of a sentence like Mary liked
Compositionality you is determined by (a) the meanings of
the individual morphemes that make it
up (Mary, like, you, “past”) and (b) the
morphological and syntactic structures of
the sentence.
 The Principle of Compositionality:
 The Principle of Compositionality doesn’t
just apply to sentences. It also implies
that the meaning of the verb phrase liked
The Principle you is determined by the meanings of its
of parts and the grammatical structure of
Compositionality the verb phrase, and that the meaning of
the word liked is determined by the
meanings of the two morphemes that
make it up (like and (e)d).
  On the next page, there are cartoons
The Principle accompanying each of the following
expressions that depict theirs compositional
of
Compositionality meaning.
 However, each expression also has a
noncompositional (idiomatic) meaning.
 Click icon to add picture

He is barking
up the wrong
tree.
 Click icon to add picture

Don’t cry over a

spilled milk.
 Click icon to add picture

He is sitting on
the fence.
Semantics is the study of the
meaning of words, phrases and
sentences (Yule, 2010).
It focuses on focuses on the link
between the lexicon and the
grammar and semantic meaning
(Fasold & Connor-Linton, 2014).
  

The most fundamental semantic concepts describe

how words, phrases, and sentences relate to each
Fundamental other and to the world.
Semantic  Synonymy. Two words, phrases, or sentences are
Concepts synonyms if they have the same semantic meaning.
(Fasold &
 I saw more than two and fewer than five dogs is
Connor-Linton, synonymous with I saw three or four dogs.
2014)
 Antonymy. Two words are antonyms if they are
opposed in semantic meaning.
 Tall and short are antonyms.
  Hypernymy. A word is a hypernym of another if its
semantic meaning is more general than the other’s.

Fundamental  Animal is a hypernym of dog.

Semantic
 Ambiguity. A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous
Concepts
if it has multiple semantic meanings.
(Fasold &
Connor-Linton,  Polysemy is a kind of ambiguity. Bank is ambiguous (river
2014) bank vs. financial institution).

 Entailment. A sentence entails another if the truth of

the first guarantees the truth of the second.
 I like all animals entails I like pigs.
  Tautology. A sentence is a tautology if it must be true.

 If something is a big animal, it’s an animal is a tautology.

Fundamental
Semantic  Contradicts. A sentence contradicts another if they
Concepts can’t both be true.
(Fasold &  I like dogs contradicts I hate all animals.
Connor-Linton,
 Contradiction. A sentence is a contradiction if it cannot
2014) be true.
 That is a big animal, and it’s not an animal is a contradiction.
(Intuitively, a contradiction is a sentence that contradicts
itself.)
S
E
M
I
O
T
I
C
S
1. black/white
2. left/right
3. above/below
4. lend/borrow
5. poor/rich
6. master/servant
7. awake/asleep
8. beginning/end
9. buy/sell
10.alive/dead
Pragmatics: Meaning
and Context
Lesson 11
 At the end of the lesson, students can:
Objectives  be introduced with the four key concepts of
pragmatics: indexicality, presupposition,
speech acts, and implicature;
 identify the following:
 illocutionary acts;
 the maxim of conversation is being flouted and
give the implicature for the said violation; and
 distinguish presupposition from entailment
in the given sample sentences.
  Knowing a language is not simply a matter of knowing
how to encode a message and transmit it to a second
party who then decodes it in order to understand what
we intended to say.
 If language use were a matter simply of encoding and
decoding messages—in other words, of grammatical
Introduction competence every sentence would have a fixed
interpretation irrespective of its context of use
(Finegan, 2014).
 Communication clearly depends on not only
recognizing the meaning of words in an utterance, but
recognizing what speakers mean by their utterances.
 The study of what speakers mean, or “speaker
meaning,” is pragmatics (Yule, 2010).
  Pragmatics is fundamentally about how
the context of use contributes to
Key Concepts meaning, both semantic meaning and
of Pragmatics speaker’s meaning.
 It concerns both the relationship
between context of use and sentence
meaning, and the relationships among
sentence meaning, context of use, and
speaker’s meaning (Fasold & Connor-
Linton, 2014).
 Indexicality
 Indexicals are words whose semantic meanings
depend in a direct way on the context of use.
Key Concepts  Some simple examples are I, you, here, and
now. Indexicality is similar to the phenomenon
of Pragmatics of vagueness.
 Adjectives like old can be vague, in that what
counts as old depends on what is being talked
about.
 Another term, deixis, is also used for cases in
which meaning depends on context of use, and
the terms deixis and indexicality are often used
interchangeably (Fasold & Connor-Linton,
2014).
 Presupposition
 When we use a referring expression like this, he or
Shakespeare, we usually assume that our listeners
Key Concepts can recognize which referent is intended.
of Pragmatics  In a more general way, we design our linguistic
messages on the basis of large-scale assumptions
about what our listeners already know.
 Some of these assumptions may be mistaken, of
course, but mostly they’re appropriate.
 What a speaker (or writer) assumes is true or
known by a listener (or reader) can be described
as a presupposition (Yule, 2010).
 Speech acts
 Besides what we accomplish through physical acts as
cooking, eating, bicycling, gardening, or getting on the
Key Concepts bus, we accomplish great deal each day by verbal acts.
of Pragmatics  In face-to-face conversation, telephone calls, job
application letters, notes scribbled to a roommate, and a
multitude of other speech events, we perform verbal
actions of different types.
 In fact, language is the principal means we have to greet,
compliment, and insult one another, to plead of flirt, to
seek and supply information, and to accomplish
hundreds of other tasks in a typical day.
 Actions that are carried out through language are called
speech acts (Finegan, 2014).
 Implicatures
 In conversation, we sometimes, infer or conclude based
Key Concepts not only on what was said, but also on assumptions
about what the speaker is trying to achieve.
of Pragmatics
 Such inferences are known as implicatures.
Implicatures are deductions that are not made strictly
based on the content expressed in discourse.
 Rather, they are made in accordance with the
conversational maxims, taking into account both the
linguistic meaning of the utterance as well as the
particular circumstances in which utterance is made
(Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2014).
  Speech acts are the actions speakers
perform in uttering sentences, including
informing, promising, requesting,
questioning, commanding, warning,
Illocutionary preaching, congratulating, laying bets,
Acts swearing and exclaiming.
 The type of action performed by a
speaker in making an utterance is
referred to as its illocutionary force
(McGregor, 2014).
  For a speech act to achieve its intended
purposes, its illocutionary force conditions must
Felicity be satisfied; these are called felicity conditions.
Conditions  For instance, a performative such as I pronounce
you man and wife will only succeed in marrying
a couple if the speaker is an authorized
marriage celebrant, and only if its uttered in a
particular place in the context of a marriage
ceremony.
 Failing these conditions, the speech act cannot
achieve its intended ends, and it is infelicitous
(McGregor, 2014).
  The principles that govern the interpretation of
utterances are diverse and complex, and they
The differ somewhat from culture to culture. Even
Cooperative within a single culture, they are so complex
that we may wonder how language succeeds at
Principle communication as well as it does (Finegan,
2014).
 The cooperative principle, as enunciated by
philosopher H. Paul Grice, is as follows:
 Make your conversational contribution such as
is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by
the accepted purpose or direction of the talk
exchange in which you are engaged.
 The
 This pact of cooperation touches on four
Cooperative
Principle areas of communication, each of which
can be described as a maxim, or general
principle.
 These maxims were first discussed by the
British philosopher H. Paul Grice and are
sometimes called Gricean Maxims.
 Name of Description of Maxim
Here is a summary Maxim
of the four
conversational Quantity Say neither more nor less than
maxims, parts of the discourse requires.
the broad Relevance Be relevant.
cooperative
principle
(Fromkin, Manner Be brief and orderly; avoid
Rodman, & ambiguity and obscurity.
Hyams, 2014).
Quality Do not lie; do not make
unsupported claims.
 John is reading a book entitled: A walk to
remember.
Alice: Hey John! What are you reading?
Example John: A book.
Conversations
Henry: Hey Joe! Have you seen my cap?
Joe: I’m not a lost and found corner.
 A family was on a trip have their 4 year son with them.
Mr. A: Honey, I’m so hungry. Where will we have our
lunch?
Example Mrs. A: We can have in any fast food chain but not in J-O-
Conversations L-L-I-B-E-E.

Mrs. B: Darling am I looking old?

Mr. B: No darling, you’re look like you’ve just turned 18.
 Presuppositions are different from
entailments in that they are
felicity conditions taken for
Presupposition granted by speakers adhering to
vs. Entailment the cooperative principle.
Unlike entailments, they remain
when the sentence is negated
(Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams,
2014).
  If someone tells you Your brother is waiting
outside, there is an obvious presupposition
that you have a brother.
 If you are asked Why did you arrive late?,
Presupposition there is a presupposition that you did arrive
vs. Entailment late.
 If you are asked the question When did you
stop smoking?, there are at least two
presuppositions involved.
 In asking this question, the speaker
presupposes that you used to smoke and
that you no longer do so
 Entailment a sentence entails
Presupposition another if the truth of the first
vs. Entailment guarantees the truth of the
second (Fasold & Connor-
Linton, 2014).
 The thing in the cage is a lion
⁄ The thing in the cage is an animal
Presupposition
vs. Entailment The thing in the grass is a snake
⁄ The thing in the grass is a reptile

The thing in the tree is not a sparrow

X The thing in the tree is a bird
  We can think of politeness in general terms
as having to do with ideas like being tactful,
modest and nice to other people.
 In the study of linguistic politeness, the most
relevant concept is “face.” Your face, in
Politeness pragmatics, is your public self-image.
Theory  This is the emotional and social sense of self
that everyone has and expects everyone else
to recognize.
 Politeness can be defined as showing
awareness and consideration of another
person’s face.
  If you say something that represents a
threat to another person’s self-image, that
is called a face-threatening act.
 For example, if you use a direct speech act
to get someone to do something (Give me
Politeness that paper!), you are behaving as if you
Theory have more social power than the other
person.
 If you don’t actually have that social power
 (e.g. you’re not a military officer or prison
warden), then you are performing a face-
threatening act.
  An indirect speech act, in the form
associated with a question (Could you pass
me that paper?), removes the assumption
of social power.
Politeness  You’re only asking if it’s possible.
Theory  This makes your request less threatening
to the other person’s face.
 Whenever you say something that lessens
the possible threat to another’s face, it can
be described as a face-saving act.
 Negative face is the need to
be independent and free from
The Concept imposition.
of Face Positive face is the need to be
connected, to belong, to be a
member of the group.
  So, a face-saving act that emphasizes a person’s
negative face will show concern about
imposition (I’m sorry to bother you…; I know
you’re busy, but…).
 A face-saving act that emphasizes a person’s
The Concept positive face will show solidarity and draw
of Face attention to a common goal (Let’s do this
together…; You and I have the same problem,
so…).
 Ideas about the appropriate language to mark
politeness differ substantially from one culture
to the next.
  If you have grown up in a culture that has
directness as a valued way of showing solidarity,
and you use direct speech acts (Give me that
chair!) to people whose culture is more oriented
to indirectness and avoiding direct imposition,
then you will be considered impolite.
The Concept  You, in turn, may think of the others as vague
of Face and unsure of whether they really want
something or are just asking about it (Are you
using this chair?).
 In either case, it is the pragmatics that is
misunderstood and, unfortunately, more will be
communicated than is said.