BELAJAR, BEKERJA, BERDOA DAN TAWAKAL

The Origin of Language

Erwin Hari KurniawanFebruary 14, 2013Education

 Chapter 1

The Properties of Language 

            Five thousand is a fair guess as to how many languages are in active use in the
world today in-in Colombia, for example, almost two hundreds separate languages and
dialects have been identified. But “dialect” is a key word-what is “ a language” really?
Swedish and Norwegian have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, but we count them as
two. “One language”, Chinese, includes Cantonese and Mandarin, which are about as
dissimilar as Portuguese and Italian. To be scientific we have to ignore politics and forget
that Sweden and Norway have separate flags and mainland China one.  True differences
are quantitative: how much should we allow before graduating X from “a dialect of Y” to “a
language, distinct from Y”?

However this is reckoned, the number of different languages is formidable and awesome if
we include the tongues once spoken but now dead. Languages are like people: for all their
underlying similarities, great numbers mean great varieties. Variety confronts us with these
questions: Do we know enough about languages to be able to describe language? Can we
penetrate the differences to arrive at the sameness underneath?

The more languages we study, the more the answer seems to be yes. Variety is enormous,
but similarities abound, and we can even attempt a definition-something like ”Human
language is a system of vocal-auditory communication, interacting with the experiences of
its users, employing conventional signs composed of arbitrary patterned sound units and
assembled according to set rules.” However we word it-and obviously no one-sentence
definition will ever be adequate-there is enough homogeneity to make some sort of
definition possible.

1. Language is human

Languages are alike because people have the same capacities everywhere. All infants
babble-even those deaf at birth. The incredibly complex system that constitutes every
known language is largely mastered before a child learns to divide ten by two. No one
knows yet how far the great apes may progress in communicating with people and with
other apes using human being language, but for all their skill in using it, they did not invent
it.

2. Language is thought and activity

A language can disappear without a trace when its last speaker dies. This is still true of the
majority of the world’s languages, in spite of the spread of presses and tape recorders.
Written and spoken recordings to ently; but the essence of language is a way of thinking
and acting. Our linguist, but in a sense it is false.

What is the something thing-like, because it is transmitted from speaker to speaker, is the
system that underlies the thinking and acting: the competence each of us acquires that
enables us to perform at any given moment. Competence is to performance as a
composer’s skill is to an improvisation or the writing of a musical work. This is what makes
language so special, so different from inborn abilities like breathing, grasping, and crying.
With language, all we are born with is a highly specialized capacity to learn. As the child
acquires language, the system is probably engraved somehow on the brain; if we had the
means to make the system visible we could interpret it. For the present we can only listen
to our thoughts and observe how others act, and linguists are useful because, since we are
not mind readers, we need specialist to study the behavior and infer the system. All
languages use the same channel for sending and receiving: sound waves, the vibrations of
the atmosphere. All set the vibration moving by the activity of the speech organs. And all
organize the vibrations in essentially the same way into small units of sound that can be
combined and recombined in distinctive ways. Except for this last point, human
communication is the same as that of many other warm blooded creatures that move on or
over the earth’s surface.

What sets human speech apart also sets it above dependence on any particular medium:
the capacity for intricate organization. The science of phonetics, whose domain is the
sound of speech, is to linguistics what numismatics is to finance: it makes no difference to
a financial transaction what alloys are used in coin, and it makes no difference to the brain
what bits of substance are used as triggers for language-they could be pebbles graded for
color or size, or if we had a dog’s olfactory sense, a scheme of discriminated smells. The
choice of sound is part of our human heritage, probably for good reason. We do not have
to look at touch the signaler to catch the signal, and we do not depend on wind direction as
with smell; nor, as with smell, are we unable to turn it off once it is emitted. Most important,
we can talk and do other things at the same time.  This would be difficult if we could only
make signs with our hands.

Language is sound in the same sense that a given house is wood, we can conceive of
other materials, but it is the only tools we had were woodworking ones. If we learn a
language we must learn to produce sounds. Other mediums are used only as incidental
helps, except among the deaf, whose sign language rivals spoken language in intricacy
and efficiency. So part of the description of language must acknowledge that the sound
that enters into the organization of language is as indispensable as the organization itself.

3. Language is Hierarchic

Though fluent speakers may seem to talk in a continuous stream, language is never truly
continuous. To convey discrete meanings there have to be discrete units, and the first task
in breaking the code of a new language is finding what they are. At the lowest level are bits
of distinctive sound meaningless in themselves-the hum of an m or the explosion of a p,
which occurs in clumps that we call syllables. A syllable is the smallest unit that is normally
spoken by itself. It is the poet’s unit, the unit of rhythm and audibility.

Above the level of meaningless sounds and syllables are the levels that are segmented
both for sound and for meaning. Firs are words and parts of words that we recognize as
having meaningful shape, such as the prefix trans- or the suffix – ism. Above the word level
is the level of syntax, itself a complex of levels, since the unit that we call a sentences is
often made up of a combination of simpler sentences, usually in some abbreviated form;
and these in turn contain smaller units termed phrases, such as the prepositional phrases,
such as the prepositional phrase to the west and the verb ran fast. Still higher units have to
be recognized-question-and answer, paragraph, discourse-but the larger they get, the
harder it is to decide just what the structure is supposed to be. Most linguistic analysis up
to very recently has stopped with the sentence.

Stratification-this organization of levels on levels-is the physical manifestation of the

“infinite use of finite means,” the trait the most distinguishes human communication and
that provides its tremendous resourcefulness. Dozens of distinctive sounds are organized
into scores of syllables, which become the carriers of hundred of more or less meaningful
segments of words, and which in turn are built into thousands of words proper. With
thousands of words we associate millions of meanings, and on top of those millions the
numbers of possible sentence and discourses become astronomical. One linguist call this
scheme of things “multiple reinvestment”.

Underlying multiple reinvestment is the “structural principle”, whereby instead of having

unique symbols for every purpose, which would require as many completely different
symbols as there are purposes, we use elementary units and recombine them. With just
two units at the word level, meanings in answer to the request Describe the house:
 It’s brick.         It’s brick red.

It’s red .           It’s red brick.

4. Language changes to outwit change

Every living language is in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Infinite    changes occur in every
act of speech and rarely make an impression-they are not imitated or perpetuated,
because hearers ignore them (for example, the fumbling of someone who talks in a hurry
or coughs in the middle of the word). Now and then a scintilla is captured and held. We
hear a novel expression and like it. It is adaptive-fits a style or names a new object or
expresses an idea succinctly. Others take it up and it “become part of the language,” the
equilibrium is temporarily upset but reestablishes itself quickly as the new expression
marks out its territory, and the older inhabitants defend what is left of theirs.

The vast open-endedness of language that results from multiple reinvestments makes it
both systematic and receptive to change. The parts are intricately interwoven, and this
maintains the fabric; but they are also infinitely recombinable, and this makes for gradual,
nondestructive variation. The linguistic code is like the genetic code-so much so that
geneticists refer to “the syntax of the DNA chain.” The hierarchical organization of
meaningful units in language – from words through phrases and sentences and on up to
discourses-is paralleled by ranks of genetic sequences with their inherited messages that
control growth and development. Underlying both codes are meaningless subunits, called
phonemes in language and nucleotide bases in genetics . Changes in language and
mutations in genetics serve a similar purpose: to outwit the random changes in society in a
nature. One cannot predict an accident, but one can provide enough to survive. This is no
guarantee against disaster; and languages as well as species do perish. But it suffices to
cope with the normal rate of random intrusions.

5. Language is embedded in gesture

If language is an activity, we cannot say that it stops short at the boundary

of verbal speech activity, or human actions are not so easily compartmentalized. In a
primary language encounter-face to face speech-the language is reinforced by
both audible and visible gesture. Even when speaking on the telephone a person may
sneer, and we will hear the sneer because the sound wave is distorted in characteristic
ways.

Audible and visible gestures are usually

termed paralanguage and kinesics, respectively. Body language is another word for
kinesics, but is generally reserved for movements that communicate without being part of a
clearly established social code-we might say that they are unconscious.  Even when
nothing appears to be going on at all, something may be communicated-there is a
language of silence. Skilled comedians know exactly when and for how long to pause to let
a point sink in; spoken language demands time for decoding as well as time for speaking.
But silence is affective only when one commands the field and fends off would-be
interrupters. To avoid being interrupted while gathering their thoughts, speakers use a kind
of audible gesture called a hesitation sound, usually a low-pitched uh or unh. Sometime
words are employed for the same purpose; well or ya know in English, este (‘this’) in
American Spanish. If you are asked what time it is and you know, you will reply without
hesitation. But if  you have to look your watch, you may say it’ now-w-w ten fifteen, using a
drawled now to keep command of the situation. The amount or verbalized makeweight with
which speaker packs a conversation gesture to keep from yielding the floor is incalculable.
This is one of the great stylistic differences between spoken and written language, and is
why the latter appears so carefully pruned.

Gesture may occur alone as when we nod assent, or may accompany verbal speech. If the
sentence still, he did his best is accompanied by a pouting lower lip and a shrug of the
shoulders, visible gesture turns the words into an ironic apology. If oh, Jack’s all right, but
hell….. is spoken with a deprecatory grimace on the last two words and with a drop of pitch
on hell, the result is a trio of verbal language, visible gesture, and audible gesture.

Gesture systems that are substitutes or virtual substitutes for spoken language are a study
in themselves. The American Sign Language used by the deaf and the sign languages of
the Plains Indians are the best-known examples. Whistle languages and African drum
languages are based in their own particular ways on speech, and telegraphic and
semaphoric signaling are based on writing-that is, on spelling. The finger-spelling used by
the Japanese is similar, but is used along with speech to clear up ambiguities caused by
the many sound-alike words in that language (like the English deign and Dane).

The gesture, both audible and visible, that accompany ordinary speech are of two main
types and four subtypes. The first main type is learned gesture. These are acquired as part
of a speaker’s culture, just as words are; and those of the first subtype, which can be
called lexical, resemble words closely enough to have standard spelling: uh-huh for
“yes,” huh? For ‘what? ’hmm for ‘I wonder’ tsk-tsk for the click of tongue used to show
disapproval. Visible gestures in this subclass include waving the hand for ‘good-bye,’
holding both hands out with palms up and shoulders raised for ‘I don’t know’, and putting
the index finger against the lips for ‘Be quite’ (often accompanied by the audible lexical
gestures shhh), or similar ones with different meanings. Our gesture for ‘come here’ is
holding the hand out cupped palm up with the fingers beckoning; in some other areas- for
example, Mexico-it is the same except that the hand is cupped palm down.

The second main type of gesture is instinctive, with subtype involuntary and voluntary. No

one has to learn to laugh or smile or cry or dodge a blow or blink when an object comes
unexpectedly toward the eyes. These actions are controlled by the autonomous nervous
system and frequently cannot be avoided even with practice. People who blush easily
betray embarrassment in spite of themselves. But the line between involuntary and
voluntary is a shifting one. In human beings the limbic system of the brain, which controls
involuntary actions, is overlaid by higher systems, and this leads to some measure of
voluntary control of reactions that in other animals are purely automatic.

A sign of adulthood is the ‘insincerity’ of originally autonomous actions. A smile may no

linger be a symptom of feeling but a purposive act intended to please. The hollow laugh
and the crocodile tear are instinctive gestures acquire a social significance and take on
local modifications, one reason why members of one culture may behave awkwardly when-
transplanted to another.
All gesture, but instinctive gestures especially, cooperate with language in a total
communicative act. While we can usually guess a speaker’s intend, we may be unsure if
the gestural part is extracted. In the following utterance, You don’t meanit.

                                            Lexical

LEARNED

                                            Iconic

                                          involuntary

INSTINCTIVE

                                          Voluntary

Audible

uh-huh

shhh

buzz

cough

sneeze

cough for getting

attention

Visible

nod of head finger to lips

hand indicates height from ground

blink of eye blush

smile to please
Everything can remain the same, yet with one’s head slightly forward, eyes widened, and
mouth left open after the last word, the result is a half-question (‘you surely don’t mean it,
do you?), while with the head erect, eyes not widened, and mouth closed afterward, it is a
confident assertion. In the first case, cooperation is asks. When this happens the gestural
meaning is usually closer to the heart of the matter than the meaning of the words and
syntax-sentence like he’s a great guy can be the reserved in meaning by a knowing look
(we call such remarks ironic). Gestures of pointing are often indispensable. The
sentence He doesn’t know you’re on my side immediately precede by a sidewise toss of
the head in the direction of the person referred to makes it clear, by pointing, who he is.
Gestures of the hands and head are also used to reinforce the syllables on which an
accent falls. A person too far away to hear a conversation can often tell what syllables are
being emphasized by the way the speaker hammers with a fist or jabs downward with the
jaw.

In most accounts of language, gesture has been underrated or ignored. Body language,
along with other bodily functions, has been a partially tabooed subject; even today we
would feel embarrassed by saying to someone, “why did you trust your head forward when
you said that?” though a question like “why did you say absolutely ”when you weren’t
sure? is commonplace. As a reflection of this, linguists have traditionally concentrated on
the language of information-prepositional language-which is the only kind writing can
convey with a high degree of efficiency, but even this kind of language, when spoken, is
signaled as true false, positive or doubtful, welcome or unwelcome, by gesture; and all
other forms of language-questions, commands, wishes, exclamations, denials-are heavily
dependent on it.

6. Language is both arbitrary and non-arbitrary

If people are to cooperate the must understand one another by sharing values. Sometimes
we deliberately agree to agree, as in learning the mathematical formula c = πr2 or the
symbols H2O for water. In such a case the arbitrariness and conventionality of the symbols
and their relation to reality stand out boldly.

Language is similarity conventionality and arbitrary. There is no need for us to worry about
our different perceptions of what a dog looks like, feels like, or sounds like, in order to refer
to one. If we are agreed on calling it dog we can give socially vital warnings like Mad
dog with assurance. Dog has an arbitrary, conventional value in our society, as do most of
the words in any language.

The obvious exceptions are few, if there were always a close connection between the
sound of a word and its meaning, we would not need to know the language to guess the
word if we knew the meaning and guess the meaning if we knew the word. Now and then
we can do this: meow in English and mieow in French sound the same and mean the
same. Yet even with words that imitate sounds this seldom happens (to caw in English
is croasser in French; to giggle in English kitchen in German). With other words it is
practically never found: square and box-shaped have similar meanings but no
resemblance in sound.

Arbitrariness comes from having to code a whole universe of meanings. The main problem
with such vast quantities is to find not resemblances but differences, to make a given
combination of sounds sufficiently unlike every other combination so that no two will be
mistaken for each other.  It is more important to make wheat and barley sound different
than to use the names to express a family relationship as a botanist might do.

Syntax –the grammar of arrangement-is somewhat less arbitrary than words, especially in
the order of elements. We say He came in and sat down because that is the sequence of
the actions; if we said He sat down and come in it would have to mean that the opposite
sequence occurred-perhaps he decided to get into his wheelchair to proper himself into the
room. To reserve the order we need a specific grammatical instruction, say the
word after :He sat down after he came in. But arbitrariness lingers even without such traffic
signs: ground parched corn has first been parched and then ground.

The most rigidly arbitrary level of language is that of the distinctive units of sound by which
we can distinguish between skin and skim or spare and scare. It was noted earlier that
using sound for this purpose, while practical, was not necessary for the system. And even
when sound became the medium, particular sounds did not matter so long as they could
be told apart. What distinguishes skin from skim is the sound of  [n] versus the sound of
[m], but could just as well as be [b] versus [g]- there is nothing in the nature of skin that
decrees it shall be called skin and not skib. The only “natural” fact is that human beings
are limited by their speech organs to certain dimensions of sound. But given the sets of
sounds we can make (not identical, of course, from one language to another, but highly
similar), arbitrariness frees us to combine them at will. The combinations do not have to
match anything in nature, and their number is therefore unlimited.

Still, arbitrariness has its limits. Whenever one thing stands for another-as pictures,
diagram and signals do-it is normal to look for resemblances. A for a television set
represents each part and connection in detail. If someone asks directions and the right, the
direction of travel is also to the right. Most gestures have at least an element of guess
ability about them; the lexical gesture for ‘ I don’t know’ described earlier uses empty hands
to mean ‘I have no information.’

Even the distinctive units of sound are not always arbitrary. There seems to be a
connection, transcending individual languages, between the sounds of the vowels
produced with the tongue high in the mouth and to the front-especially the vowel sound
in wee, teeny-and the meaning of ‘smallest, while those with tongue low suggest
‘largeness’. The size of the mouth cavity-this ee sound has the smallest opening of all-is
matched with the meaning. We chip a small but chop a large one; a slip is smaller than
a slab and a nib is smaller than a knob. Examples crop us spontaneously – “A freep is a
baby frope”, said a popular entertainer in a game of scrabble.

The curious thing about the balance between arbitrariness and its opposite is that, given
language (or anything else) as a fact of life, much of the arbitrariness falls away. We can
say that the shape of an apple is arbitrary because it. “Might as well” be square. But apples
are a fact of life, and they are not square; and this relates them, non-arbitrarily, to the other
fruits in the universe of fruit. The letter F “might as well” have the shape L, but it does not,
and this relates it non-arbitrarily to the other shapes of the same letter, F and f. if we accept
the initial arbitrariness of the existence of almost anything, non arbitrariness follows in most
of its subsequent connections. The English language seems inexcusably arbitrary to the
speaker of French. Yet it is a word to itself, and within that world there are countless more
or less self-evidence relationships. For example, given the set of words bolt (of lightning),
(frisky) colt and jolt, it is natural to the tie a similar jarring meaning to volt (named for
Alessandro Volt). The more volts the bigger the jolt.

Almost nothing about language is arbitrary in the sense that some person sat down on
some occasion and decided to invent it, for virtually everything in language has a non
arbitrary origin. Some things evolve to ward greater arbitrariness, others toward less.

7. Language is vertical as well as horizontal

When we hear and look at a display of speech or writing, the dimension we are most
conscious of is a horizontal one-the stream of time in speech, the span of lines in writing.
Almost everything that we put in a message has to go to the right or left of something else.
Much that happens when a language changes is due to collisions or confusions along this
course. It may be only a lapse, as when a speaker, intending to say discussing shortly, say
discoing, bringing a sound that belongs on the right over to the left. Or it may be
permanent, as is in horseshoe, in which everybody sounds the s of the first element so that
it disappears into the sh of the second.

If people merely parroted and never assembled utterance on their own, language might
have just a single dimension. But they do assemble, and the question is, where do they go
for the parts? It must be to a stockroom of some sort. And stockrooms require a scheme
for storage, or we could never find what we are looking for. This is the vertical dimension of
language. It is everything that our brains have hoarded since we learned our first syllable,
cross-classified in a wildly complex but amazingly efficient way. Nothing less depends on it
than the means to summon whatever we need the instant we are framing our ideas for the
next phrase and probably still uttering the last one. This vast storehouse of items,
categories, and connections is the competence that we identified earlier. When we utter a
sentence, we choose from a sort of vertical array of word;

Small                           leaped

Tiny                             jumped

The      miniature         dog      hopped            in to my lap

Toy                              flew

etc.                              etc

The number of vertical sets runs into the thousands, and the classes they represents may
be small, tight, highly structured ones whose alternative follows some fairly strict
grammatical rule, or loose and partially open semantic ones that may even cause speakers
to hesitate at times in making a selection. An example of the former is the set of
possessives that are used as nouns, which fill the slots in I had mine, you had _______,
We had _______, and They had ______, an example of the latter is the set of “coin”
(penny, nickel, dime, quarter) versus the set of “values” (eight cents, two bits, a dollar
seventy-five).
The horizontal dimension of language is the domain of syntax which is literally a “putting
together”. The vertical dimension is the domain of paradigms, any of the vertical sets that
we have just discussed as well as the sets that are tied together by some grammatical rule,
such as pronoun with their cases, or verbs their inflections for number, tense, and person.

8. Languages are similarly structured

Language can be related in three ways: genetically, culturally, and typologically. A genetic
relationship is one between parent and child or between two siblings or cousins; there is
common ancestor somewhere the family line. A cultural relationship arises from contacts in
the real world at a given time; enough speakers command a second language to adopt
some its features, most often terms of cultural artifact but sometimes other features as well
(the borrowed words may contain an accustomed sounds, which are the domesticated in
the new language if conditions are favorable). A typological relationship is one of
resemblances regardless of where they came from. English is related genetically to Dutch
through the common ancestry of Germanic and Indo-European. In the United States it is
related culturally to North American Indian languages, from which it has taken many place
names and terms (Wisconsin, moose, squash, sequoia). And it is related typologically to
Chinese, which it resembles more than it resembles its own cousin Latin in the
comparative lack of inflections on words.

Though genetic and cultural relationships tend to parallel typological ones, it often happens
that languages of the sane family diverge so radically in the course of time that only the
most careful analysis will demonstrate their kinship. The opposite happens too: languages
unrelated genetically may ”converge” to a high degree of similarity. Typological
resemblance reveals traits that are universal to all humankind. If we find that languages in
scattered parts of the world, which could hardly be related historically, use the pitch of the
voice to distinguish questions from statements, or show a predilection for certain vowel
sounds over others, or manifest without exception a class of thing-words that may be
called nouns we can be fairly sure that this somehow reflects the physical and mental
equipment that all speakers are born with, regardless of their linguistic heritage.

Typological similarities can be found at all levels; the degree and number of them make it
possible to classify languages by types. We can match them in terms of the numbers and
kinds of distinctive sounds that they have, the way they buid words, and the way they
arrange sentences. The second of these three methods was long  the favorite; languages
have been classified as analytic(modifications of meaning expressed by separate words:
English  I will go versus French firai); synthetic (modifications built in:
English went or departed versus did go or did depart); and polysynthetic (extremely
complex internal structure, roughly as in English antidisetalishmentarianism). Cutting
accross these categories are others depicting how modifications of meaning are
handled: isolating (arrangement alone distinguish relationships, as in English show me
Tom versus Show Tom me);  agglunative (relationships are shown by attaching elements
that nevertheless retain a clear identity, as in greenish); fusional (elements are attached
that virtually lose their identity in the process, as in dearth from dear + –th;
darling from dear + -ling); and modulating (internal changes are made without the addition
of anything readily seen as having an identity of its own, as in  steal, stole). It is significant
that examples of all these types of structure can be found in English. They are useful as
statistical generalizations: most languages are typically more or than another –for example,
Chinese is isolating and analytic, Latin and synthetic-but all are mixture to some extent.

More recently, interest has shifted to sentence structure, in particular the sequence of
subject, verb, and object in simple declarative sentences. Languages are classed as SVO,
SOV, or VSO.  These arrangements are somehow basic, since other facts of structure can
be predicted from them. For example, taking V and O as the most essential elements, it
generally happens that a qualifier will use whichever one of these the elements it qualifies
as a fulcrum and will  occur on the opposite the other elements. A negative, for example,
which primarily modifies the verb will adjectives, uses the noun (the object) as a fulcrum,
resulting in the order AdjOV or VOAdj.

These are some of the large-scale generalizations that can be made about similarities in
structure. There are small-scale ones as well. For example, it is predictable that even if a
language has a linking verb, young children will not use it; they will say Daddy
here, not Daddy is here.

9. Language is heard as well as spoken

Though every speaker is also a hearer, the psychology of one role is not always the same
as that of the other. The principle of least effort decrees that speakers will work no harder
than they have to in order to make themselves understood. This form of laziness results in
blurring of sounds. But the same principle decrees that listeners will work no harder than
they have to in order to understand. And this form of laziness compels speakers to use
care if they expect cooperation and if they do not want to have to repeat themselves.
These are the radical and the conservative forces in language, which account for change
and for resistance to change. As they are never quite evenly balanced at any one time,
changes do occur, but then the conservative force steps in and reestablishes a norm.

Key terms and concepts

Competence                               types of languages

Performance                               analytic

Phonetics                                    synthetic

Syllable                                      polysynthetic

Paralanguage                              isolating

Kinesics (body language)     agglutinative

Gesture                                    fusional

Arbitrariness vs. non-arbitrariness

Syntax, syntagmatic
Paradigm, paradigmatic

Study Questions and Discussion Topics

1. Can the sense of touch be used for communicating in language? Consider the
reading of Braille. Can the temperature sense be so used? If not, why?
2. What type of gesture is a handshake? Could one male be sure, if he held out his
hand to a male member of some unknown culture, that the other male would not take it
as a challenge to a wrestling match?
3. Is the supposed “cooperation” between language and gesture sometimes
contrapuntal, in that one says one thing and the other says the opposite? Think of
another example.
4. If we think of families of words related in meaning as being less arbitrary if the
relationship shows somehow in the word form, how do the families inch, foot, yard,
mile and milimeter, centimeter, meter, kilometer compare? List two other opposing
series like these (say popular versus the scientific names a family of plants).
5. A gesture may imitate an actual event. In kissing, for example. We have the real
thing; then the perfunctory kiss; then the kiss in the air, which may be “tossed”. Think
of another example.
6. A story by Robert Louis Stevenson contains the sentence As the night fell, the wind
rose. Could this expressed As the wind rose, the night fell? If not, why? Does this
indicate a degree of non arbitrariness about word order?
7. Consider the two headlines Woman Running Across Street Killed and Woman Killed
Running Across Street. Does syntax tend to be non-arbitrary in terms of putting
together things that belong together?

CHAPTER 2

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

            It remains, however, a speculation. We simply do not know how language

originated. We do know that spoken language developed well before written language. Yet,
when we uncover traces of human life on earth dating back half a million years, we never
find any direct evidence relating to the speech of our distant ancestors. There are no dusty
cassette tape fragments among the ancient bones, for example, to tell us how language
was back in the early stages perhaps because of this absence of physical evidence, there
has been no shortage of speculation about the origins of human speech. In this chapter,
we shall consider the merits of some of those speculations.

A. The divine source

According to one view, God created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof” (Genesis, 2:19). Alternatively, following a Hindu
tradition, language came from the goddess Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the
universe. In most religions, there appears to be a divine source who provides human with
language. Accordingly, it is also mentioned in the Holy Qur’an that “And He taught Adam
the names of all things; then He placed them before the angels, and said: ‘Tell Me the
names of these if ye are right.’” (QS Al-Baqarah: 31). Therefore, Moslems also believe that
language originated from the Creator of Adam, the first human being.

In order to rediscover this original, divine language, a few experiments have been carried
out, with rather conflicting result. The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if infants
were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then they would spontaneously
begin  using the original God-given language. An Egyptian pharaoh named psammetichus
tried the experiment with two newborn infants around 600 B.C. After two years in company
of sheep and a mute shepherd, the children were reported to have spontaneously uttered,
not an Egyptian word, but the Phrygian word bekos, meaning ‘bread’. The children may not
have picked up this ‘word’ from any human source, but, as several commentators have
pointed out, they must have heard what the sheep were saying.

James IV of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around A.D. 1500 and the children
were reported to have started speaking Hebrew. It is unfortunate that all other cases of
children who have been discovered living in isolation, without coming into contact with
human speech, tend, not to confirm the result of either of these ’divine-source’
experiments. Children living without access to human speech in their early years grow up
with no language at all. If human language did emanate from a divine source, we have no
way of reconstructing that original language, especially given the events in a city called
Babel, “because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth” (Genesis, 11:9).

2. The natural sounds source

A quite different view of the beginnings of human speech is based on the concept of
‘natural sound’. The suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations of the
natural sounds which early men and women heard around them. When an object flew by,
making a CAW-CAW sound, the early human imitated the sound and used it to refer to the
object associated with the sound. And when another flying object made a CUCKOO sound,
that natural sound was adopted to refer to that object. The fact that all modern languages
have some words with pronunciations which seem to ‘echo’ naturally occurring sounds
could be used to support this theory. In English, in addition to cuckoo, we have splah,
bang, boom, mantle, buzz, hiss, screech, and forms such as bow-wow. In fact, this type of
view has been called the ”bow-wow theory” of language origin. While it is true that a
number of words in any language are onomatopoeic (echoing natural sounds), it is hard
to see how most of the soundless, not to mention abstract, entities in our world could have
been referred to in language that simply echoed natural sounds, we might also be rather
skeptical about a view which seems to assume that language is only a set of words which
are used as ‘names’ for entities.

It has also been suggested that the original sounds of language came from natural cries
of emotion, such as pain, anger and joy. By this route, presumably, OUCH came to have
its painful connotations. However, it has been noted that the expressive noises people
make in emotional reactions contain sounds which are not otherwise used in their
language, and, consequently, seem to be unlikely candidates as source-sounds.

One other ‘natural sound’ proposal has come to be known as the “yo-heave-ho theory”.
The sound of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language,
especially when that physical effort involved several people and had to be coordinated. So,
a group of early humans might develop a set of grunts and groans and swear words which
they used when lifting and carrying bits of trees of lifeless mammoths. The appeal of this
theory is that it places the development of human language in some social context. Human
sounds, however produced, and may have had some principled use within the social life of
the human group. This is an interesting idea, though still a speculation, which may relate to
the use of humanly, produced sounds. It does not, however, answer the question regarding
the origins of the sounds produced. Apes and other primates have grunts and social calls,
but they do not seem to have developed the capacity for speech.

3. The oral-gesture source

One suggestion regarding the origins and of the sounds of language involves a link
between physical gesture and orally produced sounds. It does seem reasonable that
physical gesture, involving the whole body, could have been a means of indicating a wide
range of emotional states and intentions. Indeed, many of our physical gestures, using
body, hands and face, are a means of nonverbal communication still used by modern
humans, even with their developed linguistic skill.

The “oral-gesture theory”, however, proposes an extremely specific connection between

physical and oral gesture. It is claimed that originally a set of physical gestures was
developed as a means of communication. Then a set of oral gestures, specifically involving
the mouth, developed, in which the movements of the tongue, lips and so on were
recognized according to the patterns of movement similar to physical gestures. You might
think of the movement of the tongue (oral gesture) in a ‘goodbye’ message as
representative of the waving of the hand or arm (physical gesture) for a similar message.
This proposal, involving what was called “a specialized pantomime of the tongue and lips”
by Sir Richard Piaget (1930), does seem a bit outlandish now. We can, indeed, use mine
of specific gestures for variety of communicative purposes, but it is hard to visualize the
actual ’oral’ aspect which would mirror many such gestures. Moreover, there is an
extremely large number of linguistic messages which would appear to defy transmission
via this type of gesturing. As a simple experiment, try to communicate, using only gesture,
the following message to another member of your species: My uncle thinks he’s
invisible. Be prepared for a certain amount of misunderstanding.

4. Physiological adaptation

One further speculative proposal about the origin of human speech concentrates on some
of the physical aspects of humans which are not shared with other creatures, not even with
other primates. These physical features are best thought of as partial adaptation which, by
themselves, would not lead to speech production, but which are good clues that a creature
possessing such features probably has the capacity for  speech.

Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes, and they are roughly
even in height. Such characteristics are not needed for eating, but the are extremely
helpful in making sounds such as f, v and th. Human lips have much more intricate muscle
interlacing that is found in other primates and their resulting flexibility certainly helps with
sounds like p, b, and w. The human mouth is relatively small, can be opened and closed
rapidly, and contains a very flexible tongue which can be used to shape a wide variety of
sounds.
The human larynx, or ‘the voice box’ (containing the vocal cords), differs significantly in
position from that of monkeys. In the course of human physical development, the
assumption of an upright posture by the human moved the head forward and the larynx
lower. This created a longer cavity, called the pharynx, above the vocal cords, which can
act as a resonator for any sounds produced via the larynx. One unfortunate consequence
is that the position of the human larynx makes it much more possible for the human to
choke on pieces of food. Monkeys may not be able to use the larynx to produce speech
sounds, but they do not suffer from the problem of getting food stuck in the windpipe.

The human brain is lateralized, that is, it has specialized functions in each of the two
hemispheres. Those functions which are analytic, such as tool-using and language, are
largely confined to the hemisphere of the brain for most humans. It may be that there is am
evolutionary connection between the tool-using and language-using abilities of humans,
and that both are related to the development of the human brain. Most of the other theories
of the origin of the speech have humans producing single noises or gestures to indicate
objects in their environment. This activity may indeed have been a crucial stage in the
development of language, but what it lack is any ’manipulative’ element. All languages,
including sign language, require the organizing and combining of the sounds or sign in
specific constructions. This does seem to require a specialization of some part of the brain.

In the analogy with tool-using, it is not enough to be able to grasp one rock (make one
sound); the human must also be able to bring another rock (other sounds) into proper
contact with the first. In terms of linguistic structure, the human may first developed the
naming ability, producing a specific noise (e.g. bEEr) for a specific object. The crucial
additional step which was then accomplished was to bring another specific noise
(e.g. gOOd) into combination with the first to build complex message (bEEr gOOd). A few
hundred thousand years of evolution later, man has honed this message-building capacity
to the points where, on Saturdays, watching a football game, he can drink a sustaining
beverage and proclaim this beer is good. Other primates cannot do this.

CHAPTER 3

 THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

            When we consider the development of writing, we should bear in mind that a very
large number of the languages found in the world today are only used in the spoken form.
They do not have a written form. For those languages which do have writing systems, the
development of writing, as we know it, is a relatively recent phenomenon. We may trace
human attempts to represent information visually back to cave drawings which were made
at least 20.000 years ago, or to clay tokens from about 10.000 years ago which appears to
have been an early attempt at bookkeeping, but these artifacts are best described as
ancient precursors of writing. Writing which is based on some type of alphabetic script can
only be traced back to inscriptions dated around 3,000 years ago.

Much of the evidence used in the reconstruction of ancient writing systems comes from
inscriptions on stone of tablets found in the rubble of ruined city. Many of these inscriptions
have never been deciphered. It may be the some of this evidence is not the significant
documentation of great events, but is the remains of scribbles and the graffiti of the day.
Yet, tracing the development of those inscriptions allows us to discover the roots of a
writing tradition going back a few thousand years whereby the human has sought to create
a more permanent record of what was thought and said.

1. Pictograms and ideograms

Cave drawing may serve to record some event (e.g. Human3, Buffaloes1), but they are not
usually thought of as any type of specifically linguistic message. They are normally
considered as part of a tradition of pictorial art. When some of the ‘pictures’ came to
represent particular images in a consistent way, we can begin to describe the product as a
form of picture-writing, or pictograms. Thus, a form such as          might comes to be used
for the sun. An essential part of this use of a representative symbol is that everyone should
are similar forms to convey roughly similar meaning. In time, this picture might take on a
more fixed symbolic form, such as         , and come to be used for ‘heat’ and ‘daytime’, as
well as for ‘sun’. This type of symbol id considered to be part of a system of idea-writing,
or ideograms. The distinction between pictograms and ideograms is essentially a
difference in the relationship between the symbol and the entity it represents. The more
‘picture-like’ forms are pictograms, the more abstract, derived forms are ideograms. A key
property of both pictograms and ideograms is that they do not represent words or sounds
in a particular language. Modern pictograms, such as those represented in the
accompanying illustration, are language-independent.

            It is generally thought that there are pictographic or ideographic origins for a large
number of symbols which turn up in later writing systems. For example, in Egyptian
hieroglyphics, the symbol    is used to refer to a house and derives from the diagrammatic
representation of the floor-plan of the house. In Chinese writing, the character       is used
for a river, and has its origins in the pictorial representation of a stream flowing between
two banks. However, it should be noted that both these Egyptian and Chinese written
symbols are not in fact pictures of a house or a river. There is an abstraction away from the
form of the real-world entity in producing the symbol.

When the relationship between the symbol and the entity or idea becomes sufficiently
abstract, we can be more confident that the symbol is being used to represent words in a
language. In Egyptian writing, the ideogram for water was

Much later, the derived symbol       came to be used for the actual word meaning ’water’.
When symbols come to be used to represent words in a language, they are described as
examples of word-writing, or logogram.

2. Logograms
A good example of logographic writing is that used by the Sumerians, in the southern part
of modern Iraq, between 5.000 and 6.000 years ago. Because of the particular shapes
used in their symbols, these inscriptions are more generally described
as cuneiform writing. The term ‘cuneiform’ means ‘wedge-shape’ and the inscriptions
used by the Sumerians were produced by pressing a wedge-shape implement into soft
clay tablets, resulting in form like          .

The form of this symbol really gives no clue to what type of entity is being referred to. The
relationship between the written form and the object it represents has become arbitrary,
and we have a clear example of word-writing, or a logogram. The form above can be
compared with a typical pictographic representation of the same fishy entity:      We can
also compare the ideogram for sun, presented earlier as      , with the logogram used to
refer to the same entity found in cuneiform writing           .

So, by the time of the Sumerians, we have evidence that a writing system which was word-
based had come into existence. In fact, it is Sumerians cuneiform inscriptions which are
normally referred to when the expression “the earliest known writing system” is used.

A modern writing system which is based, to a large extent, on the use of logograms is
Chinese. Many Chinese written symbols, or characters, are used to representations of the
meaning of words and not of the sounds of the spoken language. One of the advantages of
such a system is that two speakers of very different dialects of Chinese, who might have
great difficulty understanding each other’s spoken forms, can both had the same written
text. The major disadvantage is that an extremely large number of different written symbols
(well over 70.000) exists within this writing system. Apparently, a working knowledge of
only about 5.000 characters is sufficient for reading the daily newspaper. Remembering
large numbers of different word-symbols, however, does seem to present a substantial
memory load, and the history of most other writing systems illustrates a development away
from logographic writing. To accomplish this, some principled method is required to go
from symbols which represent words to a set of symbols which represent sounds.

3. Rebus writing

One way of using existing symbols to represent the sounds of language is via process
known as Rebus writing. In this process, the symbol for one entity is taken over as the
symbol for the sound of the spoken word used to refer to the entity. That symbol then
comes to be used whenever that sound occurs in any words. We can create an example,
working with the sound of the English word eye. We can imagine how the pictogram     
Could have developed into the logogram       . This logogram is pronounced as eye, and
with the Rebus principle at work, you should be able to refer to yourself as       (“I”), to one
of your friends as +     (“Crosseye”), combine this form with the logogram for ‘deaf’ and
produce “defy”, with the logogram for ‘boat’ and produce “bowtie”, and so on. Take
another, non-English, example, in which the ideogram           becomes the logogram      
For the word pronounced ba (meaning ‘boat’). We can then produce a symbol for the word
pronounced baba (meaning ’father’) which would be

What this process accomplishes is a sizeable reduction in the number of symbols needed
in a writing system.
4. Syllabic writing

In the last example, the symbol which is used for the pronunciation of parts of a word
represents a combination of a consonant and a vowel (e.g. ba). This combination is one of
type of syllable. When a writing system employs a set of symbols which represent the
pronunciations of syllables, it is described as syllabic writing.

There are no purely syllabic writing systems in use today, but modern Japanese has a
large of single symbols which represent spoken syllables and is consequently often
described as having a (partially) syllabic writing system. In the nineteenth century, an
American Indian named Sequoyah invented a syllabic writing system which was used by
the Cherokee Indians to produce written messages from the spoken language. In these
Cherokee examples,     (ho),     (sa) and      (ge), note that the symbols do not correspond
to single consonants or vowels, but to syllables.

Both the Egyptian and the Sumerian writing systems evolved to the point where some of
the earlier logographic symbols were used to represent spoken syllables. However, the full
use of a syllabic writing system neither does nor appear until that used by the Phoenicians,
inhibiting what is modern Lebanon, between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. It is clear that
many of the symbols which they used were taken from earlier Egyptian writing. The
Egyptian form    , meaning ‘house’, was adopted, in a slightly reoriented from, as      After
being used logographically for the word pronounced beth (still meaning ’house’), it came to
represent syllables beginning with a b sound. Similarly, the Egyptian form      , meaning
‘water’, turn up as      , and is used for syllables beginning with an m sound. So, a word
which might be pronounced muba could be written as       , and the
pronunciation bima as       Note that the direction of writing is from right to left. By about
1000 B.C, the Phoenicians had stopped using logograms and had a fully developed
syllabic writing system.

5. Alphabetic writing

If you have a set of symbols being used to represent syllabic beginning with, for example,
a b sound or an m sound, then you are actually very close to a situation in which the
symbols can be used to represent single sound types in a language. This is, in effect, the
basis of alphabetic writing. An alphabet is essentially a set of written symbols which each
represent a single type of sound. The situation described above is generally what seems to
have occurred in the origins of the writing systems of Semitic languages such as Arabic
and Hebrew. The alphabets of these languages, even in their modern versions, largely
consist of consonant symbols. This early form of alphabetic script, originating in the writing
systems of Phoenicians, is the general source of most other alphabets to be found in the
world. A modified version can be traced to the East into Indian writing systems and to the
West through Greek.

Significantly, the early Greek took the alphabetizing process a stage further by also using
separate symbols to represent the vowel sounds as distinct entities, and so a remodeled
alphabet was created to include these. In fact, for many writers on the origins of the
modern alphabet, it is the Greeks who should be given credit for taking the inherently
syllabic system from the Phoenicians, and creating a writing system in which the single
symbol to single sound correspondence was fully realized.
From the Greek, this revised alphabet passed to the rest of Western Europe via the
Romans and, of course, it underwent several modifications to fit the requirements of the
spoken languages encountered. Another line of development took the same Greek writing
system into Eastern Europe where Slavic languages were spoken. The modified version,
called the Cyrillic alphabet (after St Cyril, a ninth century Christian missionary), is the
basis of the writing system used in Russia today.

The actual form of a number of the letters in modern European alphabets can be traced, as
in the illustration, from their origins in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Study Questions

1. Which modern language uses a partially syllabic writing system?

2. What are the disadvantages of logographic writing system?
3. What is the process known as Rebus Writing?

Discussion Topics

1. It has been claimed that alphabetic writing is “the most efficient writing system
possible” (Hughes, 1962: 124). Do you agree? What criteria are involved in decisions
about ‘efficiency’? What might Chinese and Japanese speakers think about this claim?
2. One point not dealt with in this chapter concerns the fact that not all the writing
systems mentioned use the same linear direction for their scripts. Egyptian
hieroglyphics are read in columns, for example. In Phoenician writing, like modern
Arabic, the script has to be read from right to left. In Roman writing, like modern
English, the script has to be read from left to right. This means that there must have
been a period during which the development of alphabetic writing underwent  a shift
from right-to-left to left-to-right. Are there any clues in the chapter as to when this
probably occurred?

CHAPTER 4

THE RELEVANCE OF LINGUISTICS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

            If we look for direct applications of linguistics to language teaching, we will be

disappointed, meaning that we should not bring abstract linguistic description into the
classroom. Even if we did and the pupils enjoyed analyzing sentences according to the
current school of linguistics, it would not increase their proficiency in the language. The
fundamental reason is that the aims in linguistics are quite different from the aims in the
language teaching. Linguists want to find out how a language works and to describe this in
the best way possible. Language teachers, on the other hand, want to enable their pupils
to use the language in communication.

When we say linguistics is relevant to language teaching, we do not mean that linguistics
can solve all the problems of language teachers. The language teaching profession today
has become more and more complex, and it has three main straits: 1) theoretical
contributions from linguistics, psychology and social theory, 2) methodology and teaching
techniques, 3) aids and equipment. As we can see, linguistics forms only a part of it. Let us
try to clarify what linguistics can and cannot do. Can it tell the teacher how language is
learned? No. can it tell her what factors affect language teaching? No, the teacher will be
more likely to find the answers to the above questions in the realms of psychology,
pedagogy and sociology. What then, is the role of linguistics in the language teaching?

1. A teacher who has been exposed to linguistics will be more aware of the nature of
language and how it works. This is indeed an important contribution to language
teaching, because we need to have a better understanding of the subject we teach.
Acquaintance with the basic linguistic concepts and attitudes can bring valuable
insights to all language teachers. Some of these insights are derived from the linguist’s
attitude to speech in relation to writing, from the distinction between form and meaning,
from the idea of language as structure and the idea that grammatical structure has
greatest importance in language learning. This increased awareness of language
should make a language more competent in his job, though it is possible to be a good
teacher without knowledge of linguistics.
2. Linguistics can provide a rigorous description of the language to be taught  as well
as the native language. It is here that linguistics can be more directly applied to
language teaching. The more comprehensive, the clearer the description, the more
insights it will provide as the basis for the preparation of language teaching materials.
A comparison of the two languages that highlights areas of difficulty will be particularly
helpful to new and inexperienced teachers.
3. Linguistics can be the source of assumptions and has certain implications for
language teaching, as the following chapters will show. However, these assumptions
and implications cannot be taken at face value. They must be put to the test in actual
teaching situations. Teachers are also well aware that subject matter is only one of the
important ingredients in any teaching situation. The method and the learner are equally
important.

It is only fair to warn the teachers who come to linguistics with high expectations that
different ways of describing a language may produce much the same result. Linguists may
use different criteria and different approaches but the central facts of language and the
relationships in a language are not changed thereby. The content of a language teaching
produced by modern linguistic description may not be much different from that produce by
a traditional grammar, if the language has been much investigated. A linguistic description
of a language that has been little studied previously may produce “new” facts of interest to
language teachers. This note of warning is sounded because some linguists are inclined to
make exaggerated claims for linguistics and what it can contribute to language teaching.
The result of such claims is to make language teachers fell inadequate when they have
little knowledge of linguistics or cannot understand the latest development in linguistics
cannot provide answers to the questions posed in this section, and since the content to be
taught is little changed by it, language teachers should not shake like a reed in the wind of
linguistic fashions. That is to say, language teachers’ should not think that each new school
of linguistics brings in its wake, the right methodology or a new inventory of items to be
taught with the best sequence, and that they need to change their teaching strategies
accordingly. They should incorporate whatever insights linguistics can offer, of course, but
they should hold firmly to their intuitions with regard to the learner and their experience of
what has been effective in the classroom.
Rather that follow the current fashion in linguistics or adhering to a particular school of
linguistics, the teacher should be eclectic. For one level or aspect of the language she
teaches, the analysis or approach of the structural school of linguistics may be most
helpful, for another aspect of language the transformational approach may provide a better
basis for developing her method of teaching or preparation of materials. In fact, for some
areas one must go outside formal description. There are good reasons for being eclectic if
she understands the basis of the different linguistic approaches. For one thing, pattern
practice as a teaching technique existed before structural linguistics, and the pupils were
asked to transform sentences long before transformational grammar was even thought of.
For another, no school of linguistics has as yet, produced a complete description of English
or any other language and the linguists cannot agree among themselves about certain
fundamental issues or even about how best to analyze some parts of a language within a
particular school. The third reason is that the teacher will be in good company, for the
linguists themselves are inconsistent (eclectic?). Ney   points out those Supporters of
transformational grammar advocate pattern practice. The last and perhaps best reason is
that, as Carroll  point out, the psychological bases of the different schools of linguistics in
relation to language teaching are not so different as the linguists would like to make out.
(Maybe this is why they sometimes seem inconsistent?) To conclude, the teacher should
make linguists their allies, but not their masters.

CHAPTER 5

LANGUAGE AS DISTINCTIVE SOUNDS

Most  English –speaking children by the age of five or six know the word picture. Few know
such relatable words as pictorial, depict, and pigment- “cognates” of picture, to the
etymologist. Like all other words in the child’s early vocabulary, picture is unique
combination of sounds contrasting with all other combinations. This chapter is about the
relatively uncomplicated sounds of that first stage, typified by picture. The picture-
picturial-depict stage will be described later.

How do the two stages differ? Besides picture, our child knows such words as pin, pillow,
pound, and pie, all containing a sound that distinguishes them from tin, willow,
round, and die. Most early learned words are like these-simple in structure, usually native
to English (not many Latinisms), and starkly independent-that is, unburdened with the
connections that the child learns to make later: love-lovely-loveliness-beloved, question-
quest-request-inquest-query-inquiry- inquisitive-questionable-questionnaire. The simple
stock of early words, all maximally different, demands a sound system that will
set difference above any other requirement. Sounds have but one purpose: to help tell
words apart.

So it happens that as a byproduct of the early words, the child comes to identify the
distinctive sounds that make each word different from the rest. One by one the p sound
of pin , the s of house, the m of animal, and t of toy  are picked out and take on a life of
their own. House is distinguished from mouse by the contrast
of h and m, and much from chum by revising the positions of m and ch. The relationship
among the sounds at this stage is one of simple opposition. Though some may resemble
each other more than others (d is more like t  than like ch), in their function all are totally
different: dip is different from tip as it is from chip

Phonetics and phonology

The distinctive sounds come wrapped in an envelope of other disturbances of the air that
convey such information as whether the speaker has a cold or has been eating or feels
angry or is a long way off or is an adult rather than a child. Only part of sound wave
corresponds to the central organization, a narrow and precisely limited set of contrast
between various combinations of pitches, durations, loudness, and voice and whisper,
which are the audible results of the way we exercise our speech similar enough to
generalize about them.

We are so accustomed to look at print with its tightly formed letter symbols and neat
spaces that we tend to think of “units” of sound in the same way. But clear separations of
sound are rare: though we can hear a hissing segment followed by a nasal segment in the
word smell, generally things are rather badly smeared together-as we can tell with a word
such as arm by trying to imagine where the ar- part ends and the –m part begins. Most
speakers will say arm with the nasal passage open during the whole word-the nasality of
the m is heard throughout. Furthermore, the sound of the r overlaps the vowel, and the
tongue remains in the  r position while lips negotiate the m. these are no beads on a string,
but a jumble  that the brain must somehow keep track of.

Of course the important thing is to recognize the word-missing part or a sound or two will
probably make no difference. Sometimes one can miss the whole word and still guess it-
He held me at ________length  begs for the   word arm’s. The redundancy- surplus
information- that overflows most things we say enables us to get away with sloppy
pronunciation much of the time. Listeners can make sense even if what they hear is
deliberately distorted. The result is that “distinctive sounds” do not have to be precise: they
represent a range rather than a point. Though we can idealize each range and treat it like a
point (a bull’s-eye on a target) so long as the targets themselves are far enough apart,
anything but a clean miss will count as a hit. The distinctive sounds thus carve up a
continuum, each with its proper zone or target area, and with unused buffer zones
between.

The vowel sounds provide a clear example. Take a language that has a system of just
three vowels, the ee of meet, the a of father, and the u of blue, as happens with the
Tagalog language spoken in the Philippines. A speaker could
“mispronounce” meet as mit is closer to ee than to a or to u. English has more than three
vowels and accordingly makes a distinction between meet and mit  that would not be
found in the area of distinctive sound is the free-vowel language. This means that English
speakers have learned to be a bit more discriminating in this one zone. But in any
language there is enough room within phonetic space for vowels to be on center target
every time.

The idealization that represents each target area of distinctive sound is the phoneme. A
phoneme is not a sound but an abstraction, just as a word is an abstraction: we can utter
the sounds of please. But that set of single utterances is not the word please, for if it were,
by saying it we would use it up and never be able to say it again. It goes on, as a trace in
our minds, or nervous systems, or wherever. But hearing please over and over, used
appropriately, is what put the trace there in the first place, and the same goes for the
phonemes. This makes it possible to describe phonemes as if they really were sounds.
There is no danger so long as we remember that no two languages carve up the
continuum in exactly the same way, and what is distinctive in one may not be distinctive in
another. Some targets are big enough to include the range of two targets in another
language; or two targets in two languages may be the same size, but overlap. From years
of selective listening the speakers of a language simply do not hear what is not significant
for them. This poses a problem when they try to learn another language. The Japanese
confuse r and l in English because in Japanese there is a single sound where English has
two. English speakers learning German sometimes substitute k for the sound of ch, as
in ach (which can be heard in the English pack-horse spoken rapidly). In this case it is
German that has two sounds, which contrast in acht “ban” and Akt “act”, and English that
has one.

The study of sounds is acoustics;  that of speech sound is phonetics. The systematic use

of sound in language is the field of phonology. Articulatory phonetics look at how speech
sound is produced, acoustic phonetics looks at the wave form: its shape, intensity,
periodicity versus noise, presence of overtones, and so on.

Voiced and voiceless sounds

In articulatory phonetics, we investigate how speech sounds are produced using the fairly
complex oral equipment we have. We start with the air pushed out by the lungs up through
the tracheas (the ‘windpipe’) to the larynx. Inside the larynx are your vocal which take two
basic positions.

1. When the vocal cords are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them
unimpeded. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless.
2. When the vocal cords are drawn together. The air from the lungs repeatedly pushes
them apart as it passes through, creating a vibration. Sounds produced in this way are
described as voiced.

As examples of this distinction, you can try saying the words pick and fish, which have
voiceless sounds at the beginning and the end. Then say the big and viz, which have
voiced sounds at the beginning and end. The distinction can also be felt physically if you
place a fingertip gently on the top of your ‘Adam’s apple’ (i.e. part of your larynx) and
produce sounds like Z-Z-Z-Z-Z or V-V-V-V-V. since these are voiced sounds, you should
be able to feel some vibration. Keeping your fingerstip in the same position, make the
sounds S-S-S-S-S or F-F-F-F-F. Since these are voiceless sounds. There should be no
vibration. Another trick is to put a finger in each ear, not too far, and produce the voiced
sounds (e.g. Z-Z-Z-Z) to hear some vibration, whereas no vibration will be heard if the
voiceless sounds (e.g. S-S-S-S) are produced in the same manner.

Place of articulation

Once the air has passed through the larynx, it comes up and out through the mouth and/or
the nose. Most consonant sounds are produced by using the tounge and parts of the
mouth to constrict, in some way, the shape of the oral cavity through which the air is
passing. The terms used to describe many sounds are those which denote the place of
articulation of the sound, that is, the location, inside the mouth, at which the constriction
takes place.

What we need is slice of head. If you crack a head right down the middle, you will be able
to see which parts of the oral cavity are crucially involved in speech production.

to describe the place of articulation of most consonant sounds, we can start at the front of
the mouth and work back. We can also keep he voiced-voiceless distinction in mind and
begin using the symbols of the phonetic alphabet to denote specific sounds. These
symbols will be enclosed within square brackets [ ]

Bilabials, These are sounds formed using both lips. The initial sounds in the words pat,
bat and mat  are all bilabials. They are represented by the symbol [p], which is voiceless,
and [b] and[m], which are voiced. The [w] sound found at the beginning of way, 
walk and world is also a bilabials.

Labiodentals. These are sounds formed with the upper teeth and the lower lip. The initial
sounds of the words fat and vat and the final sounds in the words safe  and save  are
labiodentals. They are represented by the symbols [f], which is voiceless, and [v], which is
voiced. Notice that the final sounds of laugh and cough, and the initial sound of photo,
despite the spelling difference, are all pronounced as [f].

Dentals. These sounds are formed with the tongue tip behind the upper front teeth. The
term ‘interdental’ is sometimes used to describe a manner of pronunciation with the tongue
tip between the upper and lower voiceless dentals. The symbol used for this sound is [ ].
The voiced dental is represented by the symbol [ð] and is found in the pronunciation of the
initial sound of thus and the final sound of bathe.

Alveolars. These are sounds formed with the front part of the tongue on the alveolar ridge,
Which is the rough, bony ridge immediately behind the upper teeth. The initial sounds
in tio, dip, sit, zoo and nut are all alveolars. The symbols for these sounds are quite easily
remembered – [t], [d], [z], [n]. of these [t] and [s] are voiceless, whereas [d], [z] and [n] are
voiced. It may be clear that the final sounds of the words bus and buzz  have to be [s] and
[z] respectively, but what about the final sound of the word raise? The spelling is
misleading because the final sound in this word is voiced, and so must be represented by
[z[. Notice also that despite the different spelling of knot and not, both these words are
pronounced with [n] as the initial sound.

Other alveolars are the [i] sound at the beginning of words such as lap and lit, and the [r]
sound at the beginning of right, write and rip.
Alveo-palatals. If you fell back behind the alveolar ridge, you should find a hard part in the
roof of your mouth. This is called the palate. Sounds which are produced with the tongue at
the very front of the palate, near the alveolar ridge, are called alveo-palatals. Examples are
the initials sounds in the words shoot and child, which are voiceless. Although there are
two letters in the spelling of ‘sh’ and ‘ch’, the sounds are represented by the single phonetic
symbols [š], and the word church begins and ends with the voiceless alveo-palatal sound
[č].

One of the voiced alveo-palatal sounds, represented by the symbol [ž],is not very common
in English, but can be found as the middle in rouge. The other voiced alveo-palatal sound
is represented as [ǰ] and is the initial sound in words like joke and gem. The
word judge and the name george  both begin and end with the sound [ǰ], despite the
obvious differences in spelling.

One sound which is produced with the tongue in the middle of the palate is the [y] sound to
be found at the beginning of words like you and yet. This sound is usually described as
a palatal.

Velars. Even further back in the roof of the mouth, beyond the hand palate, you will find a
soft area which is called the soft palate, or the velum. Sounds produced with the back of
the tongue against the velum are called velars. There is a voiceless velar sound,
represented by the symbol [k], which occurs not only in kid and kill, but is also the initial
sound in car and cold. Despite the variety in spelling, this [k] sound is both the initial and
the final sound in the words cook, kick and coke. The voiced velar sound to be heard at the
beginning of words like go, gun and give is represented by [g]. This is also the final sound
in words like bag, mug, and, despite the spelling, plague.

One other voiced velar is represented by the symbol [ŋ] sound is at the end of sing,
sang, and, despite the spelling, tongue. It would occur twice in the form ringing. Be careful
not to be misled by the spelling – the word bang ends with [ŋ] sound only. There is no [g]
sound in this word.

Glottals. There are two other sounds which are produced without the active use of the
tongue and other parts of the mouth. One is the sound [h] which occurs at the beginning
of have and house, and, for most speakers, as the first sound in who and whose. This
sound is usually described as a voiceless glottal. The ‘glottis’ is the space between the
vocal cords in the larynx. When the ‘glottis’ is open, as in the production of other voiceless
sounds, but there is no manipulation of the air passing out through the mouth, the sound
produced is that represented by [h].

When glottis is closed completely, very briefly, and then released, the resulting sound is
called a glottal stop. This sound occur in many dialects of English, but does not have a
written form I the roman alphabet. The symbol used in phonetic transcription is [ʡ]. You can
produce this sound if you try the words butter or bottle without pronouncing the –it- sound
in the middle. In Britain, this sound is considered to be a characteristic aspect of Cockney
speech and, in the United States, of the speech of many New Yorkers.

Manner of articulation
So far, we have concentrated on describing consonant sounds in terms of where they are
articulated. We can, of course, describe the same sounds in the terms of how they are
articulated. Such a description is necessary if we wish to be able to differentiate between
some sounds which, in the preceding discussion, we have placed in the same category.
For example, we can say that [t] and [s] are both voiceless alveolar sounds.

How do they differ? They differ in their manner of articulation, that is, in the way they are
pronounced. The [t] sound is one of a set of sounds called stops and the [s] sound is one
of a set called fricatives.

Stops. Of the sounds we have already mentioned. The set [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g], [ʡ] are all
produced by some form of complete ‘stopping’ of the airstreams (very briefly) and then
letting it go abruptly. This type of consonant sound resulting from a blocking or stopping
effect on the beginning of a word like ten is as a ‘voiceless alveolar stop’. On occasion only
the manner of articulation is mentioned, as when it is said that the word bed, for example,
begins and ends with ‘voiced stops.

Fricatives. The manner of articulation used in producing the set of sounds [f], [v], [θ],[ð],
[š], [ž] involves almost blocking the air stream, and having the air push through the narrow
opening. This type air is pushed through; a type of friction is produced and the resulting
sounds are called fricative. If you put your open hand in front of your mouth when making
these sounds, [f] and [s] in particular, you should be able to feel the stream of the air being
pushed out. A word like fish will begin and end with ‘voiceless fricative’. The word those will
begin and end with the ‘voiced fricative’ [ð] and [z].

Affricates. If you combine a brief stopping of the air stream with an obstructed release
which causes some friction, you will be able to produce the  sounds [č] and [ǰ]. These are
called affricates and  occur at the beginning of the words cheap and jeep. In the first of
these, there is a ‘voiceless affricates’, and in the second a ‘voiced affricates’.

Nasals. Most sounds are produced orally, with the velum raised preventing airflow from
entering the nasal cavity. However, when the velum is lowered and the airflow is allowed to
flow out through the nose to produce [m], [ŋ], the sounds are described as nasals. These
three sounds are all voiced. Words like morning, knitting and name begin and end with
nasals.

Liquids. The initial sounds in the words led and red are generally described as liquids.

The [l] sound is formed by letting the air stream flow around the sides of the tongue as it
makes contract with the alveolar ridge. The [r] sound is formed with the tongue tip raised
and curled back behind the alveolar ridge.

Glides. The sounds [w] and [y] are produced very much as transition sounds. They are
called glides, or ‘semi-vowels’. In pronunciation. They are usually produced with the tongue
moving, or ‘gliding’. They are both voiced. Glides occur at the beginning of we, wet,
you ,and yes.

This rather lengthy list of the phonetic features of English consonant sounds is not
presented as a challenge to your ability to memorize a lot of terminology and symbol. It is
presented as an illustration of how a through description of physical aspects of speech
production will allow us to characterize the sounds of spoken English, independently of the
vagaries of spelling found in written English. They are, however, some sounds which we
have not yet investigated. These are the types of sounds known as vowels and diphthongs.

Vowels

While the consonant sounds are mostly articulated via closure or obstruction in the vocal
tract, vowel sounds are produced with a relatively free flow of air. To describe vowel
sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue influences the ’shape’ through which the
airflow must pass. Because these sounds are not so easily defined in terms of places and
manner of articulation, we use labels which serve to indicate how each vowel sounds in
relation to the others. Thus, we talk of there being a ’high’, front vowel in the pronunciation
of heat because the sound is made with the front part of the tongue in a raised position,
whereas the vowel sound in hot is produced with the back of the tongue in a relatively
lower position and is described as a ‘low, back vowel’. These labels are usually presented
in the form of a chart, as shown below, which provides a means of identifying the most
common vowel sounds of English.

                                        Front                  Central                  Back

                                     i

High                                                                                                          u

l                                                                       u

e                                 ə                            ο

Mid                                     ε                                                 ɔ

low                                        æ                                         a

The easiest way to become familiar with the distinctions within the set of vowel sounds is to
have some examples of familiars words which for a lot of American English speakers, most
of the time, contain those sounds. The following list goes from the high front vowels
through to the low back vowel and ends with three diphthongs;

[i] see, eat, key                            [u] put, could, foot

[l] hit, myth                                [o] no, know, though

[e] tzil, great, weight        [ɔ] raw, fall, caught

[ε] pet, said, dead                       [a] cot, father, body

[æ] sat, laugh                             [aу] my, buy, eye

[ə] the, above                             [aw] cow, loud

[ʌ] putt, blood, though     [ɔу] boy, void

[u] move, two, glue

Diphthongs.  The last three symbols in the list above contain two sounds. This ‘combined’
vowel sounds are called diphthongs. Note that is each case they begin aith a vowel sound
and end with a glide. With the majority of single vowel sounds, the vocal organs remain
relatively steady, but in pronouncing diphthongs, we move from one vocalic position to
another. If you try to pronounce the consonants and diphthongs in the following
transcription, you should recognize a traditional speech training exercise; [haw naw brawn
kaw].

Study questions

1. What are the general terms used to describe the sounds produced (a) when the
vocal cords are drawn together and (b) when the vocal cords are spread apart?
2. Try pronouncing the initial  sounds of the following words and then determine the
place of articulation (e.g. bilabial, alveolar, etc.) of each:

(a)    foot                  (d) chips

(b)   tooth                (e) think

(c)    box      (f) cup

3. Which of the following words end with voiceless sounds and which end with voiced
sounds?

a)                        touch                              d) lip

b)                        pig                                  e) lathe

c)                        maze                               f) sit

4. Produce a phonetic transcription of your own pronunciation of the following words:

(a)    bee                   (d) dope

(b)   tape                 (e) walk

(c)    fell                   (f) sigh

5. Which written English words are usually pronounced as transcribed here?

a)        [fes] (f) [bæk]

b)      [šip]               (g) [bɔt]

c)      [ðə]               (h) [haw]

d)      [hu]               i) [ǰɔу]

e)      [eitθ] j) [šɛf]

Discussion topics/projects

1. Below is a set of English words with different written forms representing the same
sounds in a number of ways. Can you identify the alternative spellings of the sounds
[i], [f] and [e]?

Elephant, rare, marines, pear, hay, feet, quay, air, suite, weigh, giraffe, pier, tough, keys,
meat, Sikh

How many different ways of spelling the sounds [s], [k], [š] and [ɛ] can you discover?

2. Using the first two examples as a guide, can you provide a description, in terms of
manner of articulation, of your pronunciation of the initial consonants of the following
English words?

1. mist (NASAL)                         g. thin

2. bat (VOICED STOP)             h. near
3. far                                            i. tall
4. wall                                          j. joke
5. rope                                         k. shop
6. zoo                                          l. gun
1. flem              5. ksin              9. čris
2. θrinz             6. šlop              10. blʌnk
3. θiətər           7. kwık 11. fɛrtəm
4. sɔng              8.  zun             12. bɔуlıŋ

3. Consider the following set of transcribed ‘word’. Can you divide the set into those
forms which are English words, those which could not possibly be English words, and
those which are not English words at this time, but might possibly become English
words? How do you make the decision regarding with goes in the second or third
group?

CHAPTER 6

WORDS AND WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES

            Imagine that a new word came into use as a general term to refer to anyone who
worked as a technical assistant on projects. Say that the new word was somp, and that, if
you asked a friend what she was doing these days, she might say oh, I’m a somp at a local
radio station. you might hear variations of the term in conversatation: Are somps well paid?
Oh, it’s not bad. But I can’t imagine somping for the rest of my life. The term may turn up in
headlines or advertisements such as the Sompist Role in Broadcasting or Sompism as a
Vacation.

The point of considering these examples is that, although you had never heard the
term somp before; you probably had no difficulty understanding the meaning of the other
new words, somps, somping, sompist, and sompism. That is, you can very quickly
understand a new word in your language and cope with the use of different forms of that
new word. This ability must derive in part from the fact that there is a lot of regularity in the
word-formation processes in your languages. In this chapter, we shall explore some of
those basic processes by which new term are created.

Word-formation process

In some respects, the study of the process whereby new words come into being in a
language like English seems relatively straightforward. This apparent simplicity, however,
masks a number of controversial issues, some of which we shall consider in the following
chapter. Despite the disagreements among scholars in the area, there do seem to be some
regular processes involved and, in the following sections, we shall cover the technical
terms used to describe those processes and identify examples currently in use which are
the result of those processes. It should be remembered that these processes have been at
work in the language for some time and many words in daily use today were, at one time,
considered barbaric misuses of the language. It is difficult now to understand the view
expressed in the early nineteenth, or the horror expressed by a London newspaper in 1909
over the use of the newly coined word aviation. Yet many terms of recent currently cause
similar outcries. Rather than heed such protests that the language is being debased, we
might prefer to view the constant evolution of new terms and new uses of old terms as a
reassuring sign of vitality and creativeness in the way a language is shaped by the needs
of its users. Let us consider that ways.

a. Coinage

One of the least common processes of word-formation in English is coinage, that is, the
invention of totally new terms. Our fanciful creation of somp would be one example. Words
like aspirin and nylon, originally invented trade names, are others. Familiar recent
examples are kleenex and xerox, which also began as invented trade names, and which
have quickly become everyday words in the language.

b. Borrowing

One of the most common sources of the new words in English is the process simply
labeled borrowing. That is, the taking over of words from other languages. Throughout its
history, the English language has adopted a vast number of loan-words from other
languages,
including alcohol (Arabic), boss (Dutch), croissant (French), lilac (Persian), piano (Italian), 
pretzel (German), Robot (Czetch), tycoon (Japanese), yogurt (Turkish), and zebra (Bantu).
Other language, of course, borrow terms from English, as can be observed in the
Japanese use of suupaamaaketto (‘supermarket’)and rajio (‘radio’), or Hungarians talking
about sport, klub and futbal, or the French discussing problems of le parking, over a glass
of le whisky,  during le weekend.

A special type of borrowing is described as loan-translation, or calque. In this process,

there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language. An
interesting example is the French term un gratte-ciel, which literally translates as ‘a scrape-
sky’, and is used for what, in English, is normally referred to as a  skyscraper. The English
word superman is thought to be a loan-translation of the German ubermensch,  and the
term loan-word itself is  believe to have come from the German  Lrhnwort. Nowdays, some
Spanish speakers eat perros calientes (literally ’dogs hot’), or hot dogs.

Structuralism —————  strukturalisme  (phonological and orthographical adjustments)

c. Compounding

In some of those examples we have just considered, there is a joining of two separate
words to produce a single form. Thus, Lehn and Wort are combined to
produce Lehnwort in German. This combining process, technically known
as compounding, is very common in languages like French and Spanish. Obvious English
examples would be bookcase, fingerprint, sunburn, wallpaper, doorknob, textbook,
wastebasket and waterbed.

This very productive source of new terms has been well-documented in English and
German, but can also be found in totally unrelated languages, such as Hmong, in South
East Asia, which combines hwj (‘pot’) and kais (‘spout’) to produce hwjkais (‘kettle’). The
forms pajkws (‘flower’ + ‘corn’ = ‘popcorn’) and hnab looj tes (‘bag’ + ‘cover’ + ‘hand’ =
‘glove’)are recent creations.

d. Blending

This combining of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also present in the
process called blending. However, blending is typically accomplished by taking only the
beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word. In some parts of the
United States, there’s a product which is used like gasoline, but it made from alcohol, so
the ‘blended’ term for referring to this product is gasohol. If you wish to refer to the
combined effects of smoke and  fog, there’s the term smog. Some other commonly used
examples of blending are brunch (breakfast/lunch), motel (motor/hotel)
and telecast (television/broadcast). The British have, for a number of years, considered the
feasibility of constructing a tunnel under the English Channel to France, and newspapers
inevitably refer to this project by using the blended expression channel. A fairly recent
invention, based on the blending process, was President Reagan’s version of economic
policy, that is, Reaganomics.

Information + entertainment = infotainment

e. Clipping
The element of reduction which is noticeable in blending is even more apparent in the
process described as clipping. This occurs when a word oR more that one syllable is
reduced to a shorter form, often in casual speech. The term gasoline is still in use, but
occurs much less frequently than gas, the clipped form. Common examples
are ad (‘advertisement’), fan (‘fanatic’), bus, plane, prof, lab and flu.

f. Backformation

A very specialized type of reduction process is known as backformation. Typically, a word

of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form another word of a different type (usually a
verb). A good example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first
came into use and then the verb televise was created from it. Other examples of words
created by this process are: edit (‘editor’), donate (from ‘donation’), opt ( from
’option’), emote (from ‘emotion’) and enthuse (‘enthusiasm’).

g. Conversion

A change in the function of a word, as, for example, when a noun comes to be used as a
verb (without a reduction) is generally known as conversion. Other labels for this very
common process are ‘category change’ and ‘functional shift’. A number of nouns, such
as paper, butter, bottle, vacation, can, via the process of conversion, come to be used as
verbs, as in the following sentences: he’s papering the bedroom walls; have you buttered
the toast?; We bottled the home-brew last night; They’re vacationing in France.

This process is particularly productive in modern English, with new uses occurring
frequently. The conversion can involve verbs becoming nouns, with guess,
must  and spy as the sources of a guess, a must and a spy. Or adjectives, such as dirty,
empty, total;, crazy and  nasty, can become the verbs to dirty, to empty, to total, or the
nouns a crazy and a nasty. Other forms, such as up and down, can also become verbs,
as in They up the prices or We down a few beers.

h. Acronyms

Some new words are formed from the initial letters of a set of other words.
These acronyms often consist of capital letters, as in NATO, NASA or UNESCO, but can
lose their capitals to become everyday terms such as laser (‘light amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation’), radar (‘radio detecting and ranging’). You might even
hear talk of a snafu which is reputed to have its origins in ‘situation normal. All fouled up’.

i. Derivation

In our list so far, we have not dealt with what is by far the most common word-formation
process to be found in the production of new English words. This process is
called derivation, and it is accomplished by means of a large number of small ‘bits’ of the
English language which are not usually given separate listings in dictionaries. These small
‘bits’ are called affixes and a few examples are the elements un-, mis-, pre, -ful,-less, -ish,
-ism, -ness which appears in words like unhappy, misrepresent, prejudge, joyful, careless,
boyish, terrorism and sadness.

j. Prefixes and suffixes

In the preceding group of words, it should be obvious that some affixes have to be added
to the beginning of a word (e.g un-). These are called prefixes. The other affix forms are
added to the end of the word (e.g. -ish) and are called suffixes. All English words formed
by this derivational process use either prefixes or suffixes, or both. Thus, mislead has a
prefix, disrespectful has both a prefix and a suffix, and foolishness has two suffixes.

k. Infixes               

There is a third type of affix, not normally to be found in English, but fairly common in some
other languages. This is called an infix and, as the term suggests, it is an affix which is
incorporated inside another word. It is possible to see the general principle at work in
certain expressions, occasionally used in fortuitous or aggravating circumstances by
emotionally aroused English speakers: Hallebloodylujah!,
Absogoddamlutely! And unfuckingbeliavable! We could view these ‘inserted’ forms as a
special version of infixing. However, a much better set of examples can be provided from
Kamhmu, a language spoken in South East Asia. These examples are taken from
Merrifield et al. (1962):

(‘to drill’)                       see-srnee              (‘a drill’)

(‘to chisel’)                     toh – trnoh                      (‘a chisel’)

(‘to eat with a spoon’)    hiip – hrniip                   (‘a spoon’)

(‘to tie’)             hoom – hrnoom                 (‘a thing with which to tie’)

It can be seen that there is a regular pattern whereby the infix –rn- is added to verbs to
form corresponding nouns. If this pattern is generally found in the language and you know
that the form krnap is the Kamhmu word for ‘tong’, then you should be able to work out
what the corresponding verb ’to grasp with tongs would be’. It is kap.

                                                    

l. Multiple processes

Although we have concentrated on each of these word-formation processes at work in

isolation, it is possible to trace the operation of more that one process at work in the
creation of a particular word. For  example, the term deli seems to  have become a
common American English expression via a process of first ’borrowing’ delicatessen (from
German) and then ‘clipping’ that borrowed form. If you hear someone complain
that problem with the project have snowballed, the final term can be noted as an example
of ‘compounding’, whereby snow and ball have been combined to form the noun snowball,
which has then undergo‘ conversion’ to be used as a verb. Forms which begin as
‘acronyms’ can also undergo other processes, as in the use of lase as a verb, the
form WASP (‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’) has lost its capital letters and gained a suffix
in the ‘ derivation’ process.

Many such forms can, of course, have a very brief life-span. Perhaps the generally
accepted test of the ‘arrival’ of recently formed words in a language is their published
appearance in a dictionary, However, even this may not occur without protests from some,
as Noah Webster found when his first dictionary, published in 1806, was criticized for citing
words like advocate and test as verbs, and for including such ‘vulgar’ words
as advisory and presidential. It would seem that Noah had a keener sense than his critics
of which new word-forms in the language were going to last.

abovementioned

Study Questions

1. The term Vaseline was originally a trade name for a product, but has become
ordinary English word. What is the technical term used to describe this process
2. Identify the affixes used in the
words unfaithful, readability, unacceptable, refillable, disagreement, and decide
whether they prefixes or suffixes.
3. Can you identify the word-formation processes involved in producing the italicized
forms in these sentences?

(a)    Laura parties every Saturday night.

(b)   Tom was worried that he might have AIDS.

(c)    Zee described the new toy as fantabulous.

(d)   Eliza exclaimed, “Absobloominglutely!”

1. More than one process was involved in the creation of each of the indicated forms
below. Can you identify them?

(a)    I just got a new car-phone.

(b)   Shiel wants to be a footballer.

(c)    The negotiators blueprinted a new peace proposal.

(d)   Another skyjacking has just been reported.

  

Discussions Topics/Projects

1. The compound word birdcage is formed from a noun bird plus another noun cage,

while the word widespread is formed from an adjective wide and a verb spread. So,
compounds differ in terms of the types of elements which are combined. Can you
identify the different elements involved in each of the following compounds?

Bedroom, blackbird, brainwash, catfish, clean-shaven, crybaby, haircut, heartbeat,

hothouse, hovercraft, leadfree, madman, ready-made, sea-stick, sunflower, sunrise,
telltale, well-dressed. Well-prepared, well-known

1. A number of interesting word-formation processes can be discerned in some of the

following examples. Can you identify what is going on in these, and have you come
across any comparable examples?

When I’m ill, I want to see a doc, not a vet.

I was a deejay before, but now I emcee in a nightclub.

That’s a-whole-nother problem.

The deceased’s cremains were scattered over the hill.

He’s always taking pills, either uppers or downers.

1. Only a handful of the English words borrowed from other languages were presented
in this chapter. Can you find out, by consulting a dictionary (an etymological dictionary
if possible), which of the following words are borrowings and from which languages
they came?

Advantage, assassin, caravan, cash, child, clinic, cobalt, cockroach, crime, have, laundry,
measles, physics, pony, ranch, scatter, slogan, violent, wagon, yacht, zero.

 Infotainment, politainment

ATM anjungan tunai mandiri

  

    

CHAPTER 7

MORPHOLOGY

            Throughout the preceding chapter, we approached the description of processes

involved in word-formation as if the unit called the ‘word’ was a regular and easily
identifiable form. This doesn’t seem unreasonable when we look at a text of written
English, since the ‘words’ in the text are, quite obviously, those sets of things marked in
black with the bigger spaces separating them. Unfortunately, there are a number of
problems with using this observation as the basis of an attempt to describe language in
general, and individual linguistic forms in particular.

Morphology

In many languages, what appear to be single forms actually turn out to contain a large
number of ‘word-like’. For example, in Swahili (spoken throughout East Africa), the
form nitakupenda conveys what, in English, would have to be represented as something
like I will love you. Now, is the Swahili from a single word? If it is a ‘word’, then it seems to
consist of a number of elements which, in English, turn up as separate ‘word’. A very rough
correspondence can be presented in the following way:

Ni   – ta       -ku      -penda

‘I’   ‘will’   ‘you’   ‘love’

It seems as if this Swahili ’word’ is rather different from what we think of as an English
‘word’. Yet, there clearly is some similarity between the languages, in that similar elements
of the whole message can be found in both. Perhaps a better way of looking at linguistic
forms in different languages would be the use this notion of ‘elements’ in the message,
rather than to depend on identifying ‘word’. The type of exercise we have just performed is
an example of investigating forms in language, generally known as morphology. This
term, which literally means ‘the study of forms’, was originally used in biology, but, since
the mid nineteenth century, has also been used to describe that type of investigation which
analyzes all those basic ’element’ which are used in a language. What we have been
describing as ‘elements’ in the form of a linguistic message are more technically known
as morphemes.

Morphemes

We do not actually have to go to other languages such as Swahili to discover that   ‘word-
forms’ may consist of a number of elements. We can recognize that English word-forms
such as talks, talker, talked and talking must consist of one element talk , and a number of
other elements such as –s, -er, -ed ,-ing. All these elements are described as morphemes.
The definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. Let’s
clarify this definition with some examples. We would say that the word reopened in the
sentence The police reopened the investigation consists of three morphemes. One minimal
unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re- (meaning ‘again’), and a
minimal unit of grammatical function is –ed (indicating past tense). The word tourists also
contains there morphemes. There is one minimal unit of meaning, tour, another minimal
unit of meaning –ist (meaning ’person who does something’), and a minimal unit of
grammatical function –s (indicating plural).

1. Free and bound morphemes

From these two examples, we can make a broad distinction between two types of
morphemes. There are free morphemes, that is, morphemes which can stand by
themselves as single words, e.g. open and tour. There are also bound morphemes, that
is, those which cannot normally stand alone, but which are typically attached to another
form, e.g. re-, -ist,-ed, -s. You will recognize this last set as a group of what we have
already described in chapter 7 as affixes. So, all affixes in English are bound morphemes.
The free morphemes can be generally considered as the set of separate English word-
forms. When they are used with bound morphemes, the basic word-form involved is
technically known as the stem. For example:

                  Undressed                                                                    carelessness

 
Un-                      dress              -ed                                  care         -less            -ness

Prefix             stem             suffix                         stem        suffix         suffix

(bound)         (free)            (bound)                      (free)       (bound)     (bound)

It should be noted that this type of description is a partial simplification of the morphological
facts of English. There are a number of English words in which the element which seems
to be the ‘stem’ is not, in fact, a free morpheme. In words like receive, reduce, repeat we
can recognize the bound morpheme re-, but the elements –ceive, -duce and –peat are
clearly not free morphemes. There is still some disagreement over the proper
characterization of these elements and you may encounter a variety of technical terms
used to describe them. It may help to work with a simple distinction between forms like –
ceive and –duce as ‘bound stems’ and forms like dress and  care as ;free stems’.

a. Free morphemes

What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first category is
that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs which we think of as the words which carry
the ‘content’ of messages we convey. These free morphemes are called lexical
morphemes and some examples are: boy, man, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere, open,
look, follow, and break.

The other groups of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. Examples

are: and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in, the, that, it. This set consists largely of
the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, preposition articles and
pronouns.

b. Bound morphemes

The set of affixes which fall into the ‘bound’ category can also be divided into two types.
One type we have already considered in chapter 7 are the derivational
morphemes. There are used to make new words in the language and are often used to
make words of a different grammatical category from the stem. Thus, the addition of the
derivational morpheme –ness changes the adjectives good to the noun goodness. A list of
derivational morphemes will include suffixes such as the –ish in foolish, the –
ly in badly and the –ment in payment.  It will also include prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-,
dis-, co-, un-  and many more.
The second set of bound morphemes contains what are called inflectional
morphemes. These are not used to produce new words in the English language, but
rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. Inflectional morphemes
are used to show if a words is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not, and if is a
comparative or possessive form. Examples of inflectional morphemes at work can be seen
in the use of –ed to make jump into the past tense form jumped, and the use of –s to
make the word boy into the plural boys. Other examples are the –ing, -s, -er, -est and -
–‘s inflections in the phrases Myrna is singing, she sings, she is smaller, the
smallest and Myrna’s horse. Note that, in English, all inflectional morphemes are suffixes.

2. Morphological description

Armed with all these terms for the different types of morphemes, you can now take most
sentences of English apart and list the ‘elements’. As the example, the English
sentence the boy’s wildness shocked the teachers contains the following elements:

The                  boy                  -‘s                 wild               -ness

(fuctional )     (lexical        (inflectional)          (lexical       (derivational)

Shock              –ed                  the                teach    -er                           -s

lexical)       inflexional)     (fuctional)          lexical       (derivational)           (inflectional)

As a useful way to remember the different categories of morphemes, the following chart
can be used:

Lexical

Free

Functional

Morphemes

Derivational                                                               Bound

Inflectional

Problems in morphological description

The rather neat chart presented above conceals as a number of outstanding problems in
the analysis of English morphology. So far, we have only considered examples of English
words in which different morphemes are easily identifiable as separate elements. Thus, the
inflectional morpheme –s is added to cat and we get the plural cats. What is the
inflectional morpheme which make sheep the plural sheep, or men the plural of man? A
related question concerns the inflectional which makes went the past tense of go. And yet
another question concerns the derivation of an adjective like legal. If –al is the
derivational suffix, as it is in forms like institutional, then what is the stem? No, it isn’t leg.
These problematic issues, and many others which arise in the analysis of different
languages, have not been fully resolved by linguists. The solutions to these problems are
clearer in some cases than in others. The relationship between law and legal is a reflection
of the historical influence of other languages on English word-forms. The modern
form law is a result of a borrowing into Old English from Old Norse, over 1,000 years ago.
The modern form legal is a borrowing from the Latin form legalist (‘of the law’).
Consequently, there is no derivational reflection of the historical influence of other
languages on English word-forms.  Relationship between the two forms in English, nor
between the noun mouth (an Old English form) and the adjective oral (a Latin borrowing).
It has been pointed out that an extremely large number of English forms owe their
morphological patterning to languages like Latin and Greek. Consequently, a full
description of English morphology will have to take account of both historical influences
and the effect of borrowed elements.

Morphs and allomorphs

The solution to other problems remains controversial/ one way to treat differences in
inflectional morphemes is by proposing variation in morphological realization rules. In order
to do this, we draw the analogy with some processes already noted in phonology. If we
consider ‘phones’ as the actual phonetic realization of ‘phonemes’, then we can
propose morphs as the actual forms used to realize morphemes. Thus, the form cat is a
single morph realizing a lexical morpheme. The form cats consists of two morphs, realizing
a lexical morpheme and an inflectional morpheme (‘plural’). Just as we noted that they
were ‘allophones’ of a particular phoneme, then we can recognize allomorphs of a
particular morpheme. Take the morpheme ‘plural’. Note that it can be attached to a number
of lexical morphemes to produce structures like ‘cat+plural’, ‘sheep +plural’, and
‘man+plural’. Now, the actual forms of the morphs which result from the single morpheme
‘plural’ turn out to be different. Yet they are all allomorphs of the one morpheme. It has
been suggested, for example, that one allomorph of ‘plural’ is a zero-morph, and the plural
form of sheep is actually ‘sheep+ …’. Otherwise, those so-called ‘irregular’ forms of plurals
and past tenses in English are described as having individual morphological realization
rules. Thus, ‘man+plural’ or ‘go+past’, as analyses at the morpheme-level, are realized
as men and went at the morph-level.

Study Questions

1. List the ‘bound’ morphemes to be found in these words:

2. What are the functional morphemes in the following sentence:

The old man sat on a chair and told them tales of woe

1. What are the inflectional morphemes in the following phrases:

(a)    the teacher’s books

(b)   it’s snowing

(c)    the newest model

(d)   the cow jumped over the moon

 1. What would we list as allomorphs of the morpheme ‘plural’ from this set of English
words: dogs, oxen, deer, judges, curricula?

CHPATER 9

SYNTAX:

THE SENTENCE PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE

We have already considered two levels of description used in the study of language. We
have described linguistic expressions as sequences of sounds which can be represented
phonetically. For example:

We can take the same linguistic expression and describe it as a sequence of morphemes.
For example:

With these descriptions, we could characterize all the words of a language in terms of their
phonetic and morphological make-up.

Grammar

However, we have not yet accounted for the fact that these words can only be combined in
a limited number of patterns. We recognize that the phrase the lucky boys is a well-formed
piece of English, but that the following two ‘phrases’ are not at all well-formed:

*boys the lucky            *lucky boys the

So, we need a way of describing the structure of phrases and sentences which will account
for all the grammatical sequences and rule out all the ungrammatical sequences. Providing
such an account involves us in the study of grammar. We should note that this term is
frequently used to cover a number of different phenomena.

Types of Grammar

Each adult speaker of a language clearly has some type of ‘mental grammar’., that is, a
form of internal linguistic knowledge which operates in the production and recognition of
appropriately structured expressions in that language. This ‘grammar’ is subconscious and
is not the result of any teaching. A second, and quite different, concept of ‘grammar’
involves what might be considered ‘linguistic etiquette’, that is, the identification of the
‘proper’ or ‘best’ structures to be used in a language. A third view of ‘grammar’ involves the
study and analysis of the structures found in a language, usually with the aim of
establishing a description of the grammar of English, for example, as distinct from the
grammar of Russian or French or any other language. There are, in fact other ways in
which the term ‘grammar’ may be used. However, given these three concepts, we can say
that, in general, the first may most interest to a psychologist, since it deals with what goes
on in the people’s minds, the second may be of interest of a sociologist, since it has to do
with people’s social attitudes and values, while the third is what occupies many linguists,
since the concern is with the nature of language, often independently of the users of the
language. The study of grammar, in this narrow sense of the study of the structure of
expressions in a language, has a very long tradition.

We have already known that the grammar of a language

The parts of speech

You may already be familiar with many of the terms used in grammatical description,
particularly the terms for the parts of speech, as illustrated in this sentence:

The      lucky                boys     saw      the       clowns             at

The      circus

CHAPTER 10

SYNTAX

In the course of the preceding chapter, we moved from a consideration of general

grammatical categories and relations to specific methods of describing the structure of
phrases and sentences. If we concentrate on the structure and ordering of components
within a sentence, we are studying what is technically known as the syntax of a language.
The word syntax came originally from Greek and literally meant ‘a setting out together’ or
‘arrangement’. In earlier approaches to the description of syntax, there was an attempt to
produce an accurate analysis of the linear structure of the sentence. While this remains a
major goal of syntactic description, more recent work in syntax has taken a rather different
approach in accounting for the ‘arrangements’ we observe in the structure of sentences.

Generative grammar

Since the 1950s, particularly developing from the work of the American linguist Noam
Chomsky, there have been attempts to produce a particular type pf grammar which would
have a very explicit system of rules specifying what combinations of basic elements would
result in well formed sentences. (Let us emphasize the word ‘attempts’ here, since not fully
worked-out grammar of this or any other type yet exist.) This explicit system of rules, it was
proposed, would have much in common with the types of rules found in mathematics.
Indeed, a definitive early statement in Chomsky’s first major work betrays this essentially
mathematical view of language; “I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of
sentences” (Chomsky, 1957; 13).

This mathematical points of view helps to explain the meaning of the term generative,
which is used to describe this type of grammar. If you have an algebraic expression like 3x
+ 2y, and you can give x and y the value of any whole number, then the simple algebraic
expression can generate an endless set of values, by following simple rules of arithmetic.
When x=5 and y=10, the results is ‘generated’ by the operation of the explicitly formalized
rules, there must be a set of explicit rules which yield those sentences. Such a set of
explicit rules is a generative grammar.
Some properties of the grammar

A grammar of this type must have a number of properties, which be described in the
following terms. The grammar will generate all the well-formed syntactic structures (e.g
sentences) of the language and structures and fail to generate any –ill formed structures.
This grammar will have a finite (e.g. limited) number of rules, but will be capable of
generating an infinite number of well-formed structures. In this way, the productivity of
language (I. e the creation of totally novel, yet grammatical, sentences) would be captured
within the grammar.

The rules of this grammar will also need the crucial property of recursiveness, that is, the
capacity to be applied more than once in generating a structure. For example, whatever
rule yields the component that chased the cat in the sentence this is the dog that chased
the cat, will have to be applied again to get that killed the rat and any other similar
structure which could continue the sentence. This is the dog that chased the cat that killed
the rat……There is, in principle, no end to the recursion which would yield ever-longer
versions of this sentence, and the grammar must provide for this fact (Recursive ness is
not only to be found in descriptions of sentence structure. It is an essential part of the little
old lady’s view of the role of turtles in cosmic structure, as quoted at the beginning of this
chapter.)

This grammar should also be capable of revealing the basis of two other phenomena: first,
how some superficially distinct sentences are closely related, and second, how some
superficially similar sentences are in fact distinct. We need some exemplification for those
points.

Deep and surface structure

Two superficially distinct sentence structures would be, for example, Charlie broke the
window and The window was broken by Charlie. In traditional terminology, the first is an
active sentence and the second is passive. The distinctions between them, it can be
claimed, is a difference in their surface structure, that is, the syntactic form they take as
actual English sentences. However, this difference on superficial from distinguish the fact
that two sentences are very closely related, even where the basic components shared by
the two sentences would be represented, has been called their deep structure. The deep
structure is an abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements
determining structural interpretation are represented. So, the grammar must be capable of
how a single underlying, abstract interpretation can become different surface structure.

Symbols used in Syntactic Description

 
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