Lecturer: Dr.

Niklaas Fredericks
Email: nfredericks@nust.na
niklaas.fredericks@gmail.com
Office tell: 0612072410

Consultation times: 8h00 – 16h00

Monday to Thursday
Human language, that unique characteristic of
our species.

What than is the difference between Language

and linguistics?
Language = Is a communication tool

Linguistics = Is the study of the science of

language
 Occurs when one person acts with the intention
of influencing the mind of another. E.g. Getting
him entertain some idea.
 Language = is a means of communication.

 Communication = necessitates the presence of

at least two people: an addresser and an
addressee.

 Discourse = is a length of text which is

coherent and complete
 Language = Khoekhoegowab, Oshiwambo

 Communication = letters, speeches

 Discourse = Any writing

 What are the major differences between
language, Communication and Discourse?
 Compose 2 examples of language,
Communication, and Discourse
 Where do language, Communication and
Discourse overlap, and where do they differ?
 20 minutes
 Is a device for generating grammatical
sentences (Chomsky, 1962)

 Grammar is the art of writing

 Grammar derived from Latin or Greek roots
 Latin is an organized language which can be
broken down into clear classes or categories,
the earlier Latin teachers started a system of
analyzing languages by these categories. The
books they wrote to explain their analysis of
the structure of Latin were called grammars.
 They introduced the system of classifying
words into parts of speech according to their
meaning (e.g. Nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions.

 This traditional approach is the foundation of

all other approaches to language analysis
which build on it.
 Prescriptive = Thinking about language as
incorrect/correct as good or bad etc.

 Descriptive = Concerned with describing and

understanding the linguistic behavior of
community, without judging.
 Their new way of analyzing language, using
more formal approach and describing language
according to its structure, led to their being
called structural grammarians.
 Structural linguistics involves collecting a
corpus of utterances and then attempting to
classify all of the elements of the corpus at their
different linguistic levels: the phonemes,
morphemes, lexical categories and syntax.
 Word form
 Function of words
 Word order
 Intonation & accent
 Priority should be given to spoken language.
Traditional grammar over emphasizes the
written form
 The spoken form is infinitely older and wider
spread than written form.
 Language is dynamic. Language change
constantly and keep growing.
 A modern linguist is interested in all
languages.
 Langue and Parole
 Diachronic and synchronic
 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic
 Signifier and Signified
 Langue can be defined as the formal system of
language: the units which make up that system
and the relations between them. Speakers draw
on knowledge of these system.
 Parole : refers to any act of speaking (or using
language)
 Thus parole refer to the actual instances of
language in use – when language is used for
real communicative purposes.
 Diachronic study: Study a language over a
given period of time.

 Synchronic study of language: Study of

language at a given moment in time
 Saussure argues that a single sign is
differentiated from other signs within the
system in two ways (along two axes).
 Refers to the range of option or choices one has
at any point within the system
 Refers to the way in which those signs are
combined. These axes are also sometimes
referred to as the rules of selection
(paradigmatic) and rules of combination
(syntagmatic).
 When referring to a child , we can choose from
a number of words, including : Child, Kid,
youngster
 Signifier : refer to the form of the sign. Printed
or spoken word e.g. Dog

 Signified: refers to the meaning. Concept or

meaning of the dog
 Explains that sentences can be derived from
other sentences because language inherently
has the ability to be generative.
 Noam Chomsky. Looking at language in the
eyes of a political scientist interested in cultures
all over the world, caused him to think
creatively about how language is generated (or
made up) by babies all over the world,
regardless of their culture or geography.
 Discovered that languages all over the world
have certain things in common, which we call
Universal Grammar.

 Sentence is generated by the application of the

following rule.
 Sentence NP + VP
 Is a structure generated only by phrase
structure rules and lexical rules.

 * not Niklaas past can sing well

 A deep structure that has be transformed into a
grammatical English sentence

 Niklaas could not sing well

Acquisition usually refers to the gradual
development of ability in a language by using it
naturally in communicative situations.
 Behaviourist theories
 The innateness hypothesis
 Social Interactionism
 This approach was underpinned by the belief
that all behaviours (such as language learning)
is a result of people (and animals) forming
habits in response to stimuli in their
environment.
 Imitation: According to imitation theory,
children acquire language by listening to and
repeating speech.
 Reinforcement: Children learn grammatical
utterances through reinforcement
 Ability to learn language is innate or
genetically predisposed; all we need in order to
acquire language is to exposed to it. There are
specific areas in the brain designed to acquire
language, the so-called Language acquisition
device (LAD).
 Social interaction point to the importance of
child care-giver interactions in the language
acquisition process.
 Phonetics and Phonology
 The lexicon
 Morphology
 Semantics
 Syntax
 Phonetics is the study of sounds which human
beings produce to communicate through
language

 Phonology is the study of sound system of

language
Refers to where in the mouth the sounds are
produced and how the articulators (Lips, tongue,
teeth) are positioned during production of sounds.

Bi-labial : Bi means two. When both lips come

together and touch each other e.g. [b] in bag and
[m] in man
The term originates from two Latin words: Labium
(lip) and dens (tooth). Sounds are produced when
lower lip lightly touches the upper teeth.
Examples. [f] in farm
 A Sound that is made when the tongue touches
or comes near the upper teeth is called dental.
E.g. initial sound in word think
 These sounds are produced when the tip of the
tongue touches or moves close to the alveolar
ridge. The alveolar ridge is the from section of
the upper part in the mouth, the gum ridge
behind the teeth. Examples….
 Speech sounds articulated by bringing the front
of the tongue in touch with the location
between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate.
The palate is the hard area of the mouth behind
the alveolar ridge. Examples.
 …..Sheet, ship, wash
 Treasure
 Church
 Judge
 Palatal sounds are produced when the tongue
is raised towards the upper part of the mouth-
the palate. Example:..
 Velar sounds are produced by raising the back
of the tongue against the velum. Behind the
hard palate there is a soft area at the roof of the
mouth.
 At the back of the velum, there is a small flap
of tissue which hangs down. Contact between
back of the tongue and the uvula produces
uvular sounds.
 Pharyngeal sounds are produced by
constricting the walls of the pharynx. There are
no such sounds in English.
 The glottis is the space between the vocal folds.
 Plosives : are produced when focal vocal track
is totally blocked.
 Fricatives: No total blockage
 Affricates: vocal
 Liquids
 Glides:
 Nasals: Sounds produced with lowered velum
so air flows into nasal cavity
 Voiced sound is produced when the vocal
cords are together during airflow. The air
forces its way through the vocal cords.
 Voiceless sounds are recognised when there is
no vibration of the vocal cords.
 The meaning changing sounds in any language
are called phonemes.
 Minimal pairs comprises two forms or words
with distinct meanings that differ by only one
segment found in the same position in each of
the two forms. Example.
 A variant of a phoneme. Allophones of a
phoneme form a set of sounds that (1) do not
alter the meaning of a word; and (2) are all very
similar to one another.
 Name and explain the three parameters
(features to describe consonants?
 Write in Phonetic brackets the sound which fits
the descriptions below.
 A. Voiceless labiodental fricative
 B. Velar nasal
 C. Voiced alveolar stop
 D. Voiceless alveolar fricative
 Give 3 sets of minimal pairs in your mother
tongue.
 The study of words and how they are
composed is called morphology.
 Morphemes are the smallest grammatically
independent unit of meaning.
 Free morpheme: Morpheme with meaning and
can be used independently as a word. E.g
Dance
 Bound morpheme: Those morphemes that
never stand alone as words, but only occur as
parts of words. e.g. –s in girls.
 When a derivational affix is attached to a free
morpheme, it can change the meaning of the
word as well as the word class of the free
morpheme. Verb enjoy to noun enjoyment
 When added to a word does not alter or change
the meaning of the word, but merely affect
grammatical form- that is shows tense, number
etc.
 Who is doing what to whom?

 Niklaas hit Anna

 Anna hit Niklaas
 Subject, object, verb
 Subject: Is the word that performs the function
 Object: Is the word to which action has been
performed
 Subject always refer to the Subject of the verb.
 If we examine the position of a word in a sentence,
we are actually looking at the environment. We
look at what it is doing in the sentence. Structural
grammar focus on which words come where in the
sentence and what function they perform in a
sentence. The organisation is called the syntax of
the sentence.

 Write down two sentences in your mother tongue

and clearly indicate the subject, object and the
verb. State whether your language is SOV or SVO.
 It is important to ensure that the subject and
the verb in a sentence agree.
 Meaning in semantics
 Multiple meaning
 Lexical description
 Sense relations
 Collocation
 Denotation and Connotation
 Phrase. Is part of a sentence or clause which
holds together as a meaningful unit on its
own, and contributes in a unified way to the
meaning of the whole sentence or clause.
 Open word Classes
 Nouns (N)
 Verbs (V)
 Adjectives (A)
 Adverbs (Adv)
 Nouns typically name a range of entities, both
concrete and abstract, and include the names
for humans, creatures and things.
Example: Afternoon, shadows, slope
 Verbs are members of the open class of words
and typically are words indicating an action,
event or state. Examples: was, lengthened,
appeared, showed, wore
 Are words that typically decribe an attribute of
a noun.
 Example: Steady, imposing, long, dark brown
 Adverbs are the word class that qualify
(modify) verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.
Example: Quickly, Smartly, nevertherless,
gradually
 Determiners: words that co-occur with a noun.
 Examples: Articles like a, an, the

 Conjunctions: and, that,but, because, although

 Pronouns: it, they, he, she, her
 Auxiliary verbs:only close word class that can
be inflected e.g. have, having
 The Noun Phrase – NP
 The verb Phrase - VP
 The Adjective Phrase – AP
 The adverb Phrase -Adv P
 The prepositional phrase _PP