Linguistic First Draft

OPEN UNIVERSITY
of MAURITIUS
BA (Hons.) English
Linguistics
OUba015123
BA (Hons.) English
Linguistics
OUba015123
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Project Coordinator: Mansa Daby (Ms)
Copyright: Open University of Mauritius, February 2014
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without prior written permission from the Open University of Mauritius. Commercial use and
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Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

CONTENTS

Unit 1: The Origin and Evolution of Language 1
Unit 2: Evolution of the English Language 12
Unit 3: Phonology and Phonetics 22
Unit 4 : Word Formation Processes and Morphology 40
Unit 5:
Syntax 59
Unit 6:
Semantics 74
Unit 7:
Pragmatics 88
Suggested Answers 98
References 111
Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

UNIT 1 THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE
Overview:
In this Unit we shall introduce you to the theories on the origin and evolution of language. We shall
also discuss various speculations that were made about how language originated and evolved.
Objectives:
At the end of this Unit, you should be able to:
1) Define language
2) Explain the origin of language
3) Explain the evolution of language
4) Differentiate between animal and human communication
Activity
Try and answer the following questions:
What is language?
How do human beings acquire languages?
What are the different functions of language?
Why do human beings talk?
Where do all languages come from? Who invented them?
Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 1

Introduction
We rarely ask ourselves where languages come from. Human beings are the only species on
earth with a predisposition to talk and use language to communicate. Digging deep down the
history of the origin and evolution of language, we will discover that no theorist has ever
been able to explain fully how language originated. It is only suspected that spoken language
developed between 100, 000 and 50, 000 years ago and written language developed about 5,
000 years ago. There is a lack of evidence to suggest how human speech came into existence.
Human language remains a complex phenomenon. It is generally believed that the origins of
language are closely linked with the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agree-
ment about the implications and directionality of this connection.
Definition of language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex
systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication.
The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics.
Language as a communication system is thought to be fundamentally different from and of

much higher complexity than those of other species as it is based on a complex system of rules
relating symbols to their meanings, resulting in an indefinite number of possible innovative
utterances from a finite number of elements.
Language is processed in many different locations in the human brain, but especially in Broca’s
and Wernicke’s areas. Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood,
and children generally speak fluently when they are around three years old.
The use of language has become deeply entrenched in human culture and, apart from being used
to communicate and share information, it also has social and cultural uses, such as signifying
group identity, social stratification and for social grooming and entertainment.
The word “language” can also be used to describe the set of rules that makes this possible, or
the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules.
2 Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

Consider the following quotations and discuss them.
Bloch and Trager (1942):

“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by
means of which a social group co-operates.”
Noam Chomsky(1957):
“Language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in
length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”
Sapir, E (1921):
“Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas,
emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”
Michael Halliday (2003):

“A language is a system of meaning- a semiotic system”
“speech breaks silence to say something; however, silence can say more than
speech”.
“Word is spoken to that who does not understand”.
NOTE: THERE SEEMS TO BE NO SINGLE DEFINITION THAT DEFINES

LANGUAGE ACCURATELY. ALL THE DEFINITIONS HAVE SOME
LIMITATIONS.

Discussions about language
Is it the need for communication that gave rise to language?
Is ‘Language’ is superior to other tools (non-verbal human communication)?

WHAT IS LANGUAGE THEN?
In what sense is language a complex phenomenon?
Origin of language
Theories about the origin of language can be divided according to their basic assumptions.
Language is thought to have originated when early hominids first started cooperating, adapting
earlier systems of communication based on expressive signs to include a theory of other minds
and shared intentionality. This development is thought to have coincided with an increase in
brain volume, and many linguists see the structures of language as having evolved to serve
specific communicative functions.
Some theories are based on the idea that language is so complex that one cannot imagine it
simply appearing from nothing in its final form, but that it must have evolved from earlier pre-
linguistic systems among our pre-human ancestors. These theories can be called continuity-
based theories.
The opposite viewpoint is that language is such a unique human trait that it cannot be compared
to anything found among non-humans and that it must therefore have appeared fairly suddenly
in the transition from pre-hominids to early man. These theories can be defined as discontinuity-
based.
Similarly, some theories see language mostly as an innate faculty that is largely genetically
encoded, while others see it as a system that is largely cultural, that is learned through social
interaction.

Consider the following 6 theories :
1) MONOGENESIS:18th C.:
‘...all ancient and modern languages branched off from a single proto-language.’
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
(But it cannot explain that human language arose simultaneously at many

different places.)
2) POLYGENESIS:
‘Present language families derive from many original languages.’
3) 5 theories from The Danish Linguist Otto Jespersen(1860-1943):

(i) speech arose through Onomatopoeic words but few of these exist in language.
(ii) speech arose through people making instinctive sounds caused by pain, anger
or emotions. For ex. İnterjections
(iii) universal use of sounds for words of a certain meaning-sound symbolism-
For example –mam is supposed to reflect the movement of the lips as the
mouth approaches to the food. And bye-bye or ta-ta show the lips and tongue
respecitively “waving” good-bye.
(iv) speech arose as peole worked together, their physical efforts produced
communal, rhythmical grunts which in due course developed into chants, and
thus language.
(v) If any single factor was going to initiate human language , it would arise
from the romantic side of life-sounds associated with love, play, poetic feeling,
perhaps even song.

The Divine source
According to the Judeo-Christian beliefs, in the Bible, God created Adam and gave him the
power to name all things.
“And out of the ground the Lord God formed every best of the field, and every fowl of the air,
and brought them unto Adam to see what he could call them; and whatsoever Adam
called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
(Genesis 2:19)
According to the Egyptians, the god Thoth was the creator of speech. Similarly, in the Hindu
tradition, our unique language ability is given by Sarasvati, the wife of Bramha who created the
Universe.
In many religions only special languages may be used in prayers and rituals. The Hindu priests
of the fifth century B.C.E believed that the original pronunciations of Vedic Sanskrit had to be
used. This led to important linguistic study, as their language had greatly changed since the
hymns of the Vedas had been written.
Panini, the first linguist ever known, in the 4th and 5th Centuries believed that Sanskrit was the
mother of all languages and has given birth to many languages.
It might be argued that there is no way to prove or disprove the divine origin of language, just
like one cannot argue scientifically for or against the existence of God. Experiments in this field
came up with conflicting conclusions.
The Natural Sound source
The view that primitive words could have been an imitation of natural sounds which early men
and women heard around them originates from the concept of natural sounds. They imitated the
sound to refer to the things associated with the sound (CAW-CAW, COO-COO).
This theory is supported by the fact that all modern languages have some words whose
pronunciations seem to echo naturally occurring sounds (e.g cuckoo, splash, bang, boom, buzz,
rattle…..). This type of view has been called the ‘bow-wow’ theory of language origin.
Despite all the contrary evidence, the idea that the earliest form of language was imitative,
or ‘echoic’, was proposed up to the twentieth century. It has been suggested that the original
sounds of language may have come from natural cries of emotion such as pain, anger and joy.
The ‘yo-he-ho’ theory originates from the idea that sounds of persons involved in physical
effort could be the source of language.

Consider and discuss the following.
Apes have grunts and social calls but they have not developed the capacity for speech.
Why do only human beings and no other species have language?
What are the differences between animals and human beings that make language possible
for our species?
Why does language take the forms it does, and not others?
The Physical Adaptation source
Human beings and other creatures are different since only human beings developed speech.
Instead of looking at the types of sounds as the source of human speech, it is worthwhile to
consider the human physical features, especially those that are distinct from other creatures,
which may have been able to support speech production. At some early stage, our ancestors
made a very significant transition to an upright posture, with bi-pedal (two feet) locomotion,
and a revised role for the front limbs. Such changes can be seen in the physical differences
between the skull of a gorilla and that of Neanderthal man from around 60, 000 years ago.
The reconstructed vocal tract of the Neanderthal suggests that some consonant like sound
distinctions would have been possible.
In the study of evolutionary development, there are certain physical features, best thought of
as partial adaptations, which appear to be relevant for speech. They are streamlined features
found in other primates. By themselves, such features would not necessarily lead to speech
production, but they indicate that a creature possessing such features probably has the capacity
for speech.
The importance of the teeth, lips, mouth, larynx and pharynx in human speech
Human teeth are upright, not slanting like those of apes, and they are roughly even in height.
Such characteristics are adapted for grinding and chewing as opposed to ripping or tearing food.
They are helpful in making sounds such as ‘f’ and ‘v’. Muscles in the human lips are intricate
and interlacing compared to those in other primates and the flexibility in them allows human
beings to make sounds like ‘p’ and ‘b’.

The human mouth being small, it can be opened and closed rapidly and it contains a small, thick
and muscular tongue which can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds inside the oral cavity
compared to other primates.
The human larynx or ‘voice box’ differs significantly in position from that of other primates
like monkeys. In the course of the human physical development, the assumption of an upright
posture moved the head more directly above the spinal column and the larynx dropped to a
lower position. The longer cavity called the pharynx is above the vocal cords. The pharynx acts
as a resonator for increased range and clarity of the sounds produced via the larynx.
Did you know?
One unfortunate consequence of the low position of the larynx might cause people
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 their
windpipe.
The Human Brain
The function of the human brain cannot be dissociated from sound production in human beings.
The human brain is laterized that is it has specialized functions in each of the 2 hemispheres.
The left hemisphere controls motor movement such as speaking and object manipulation.
All languages including sign language require the organization and combination of sounds or
signs in specific arrangements. A part of our brain does these arrangements.
The Genetic source
At birth, the human baby’s brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight and the larynx is much
higher in the throat, therefore allowing babies to breathe and drink at the same time. In a short
period of time, the larynx descends and the brain develops, the child assumes an upright posture
and starts walking and talking.
Even deaf children become fluent in sign language. Human beings are born with a special
capacity for language. This refers to the innateness hypothesis which cannot be overlooked
while discussing the origins of language. It is innate, no other creature seems to have it, and it
isn’t tied to a specific variety of language.

The degree to which human language is biologically conditioned (or innate) and the degree to
which it is learnt is one of the fundamental questions in linguistics.
But how did language evolve?
Language first appeared between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago in the species Homo sapiens.
Currently, there are two rival answers to this question: the first and more common explanation
is that language was an adaptation of some sort; the second is that language is a spandrel, a
non-adaptive element arising as a byproduct of other processes.
Language as a Spandrel
Some people believe language to be the byproduct of other evolutionary processes, not a special
adaptation that arose by ordinary natural selection acting on mutations.
As Stephen Jay Gould puts it,
“Natural selection made the human brain big, but most of our mental properties and
potentials may be spandrels - that is, non-adaptive side consequences of building
a device with such structural complexity”.
In other words, our ancestors encountered environments which required the type of advanced
reasoning only provided by a larger brain; however, language capability was not one of those
functions for which the brain was selected.
This view has been reinforced by the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, who argues that the
brain’s language capability cannot be explained in terms of natural selection.
Chomsky attempts to explain the brain not through biology or engineering principles, but in-
stead through the effects of physical laws. According to him, there may be unexpected emergent
physical properties associated with the specific structure of the brain that explain language.
Language as an Adaptation
The mainstream view is that language is an adaptation, evolved in response to some selec-
tion pressure towards improved communication between humans. This explanation is associ-
ated with many speculative possibilities and proposals for the adaptive function of language,
and some (such as Steven Pinker) postulate “mental modules” that compartmentalize linguistic
functions.

There are many different possible “adaptationist” explanations for the evolution of language.
For instance, perhaps there was a need for improved communication between hunters at some
point in the history of Homo sapiens, and oral expressions were simply the optimal way to solve
the problem. More plausibly (or at least more importantly), sharing information between indi-
viduals probably conferred an extremely major advantage: groups of humans with language,
or even “proto-language”, could share a wealth of information about local hunting conditions,
food supplies, poisonous plants, or the weather.
A possible source of selection pressure towards better linguistic abilities is the social group.
Social interactions between people with widely divergent or conflicting interests “make formi-
dable and ever-escalating demands on cognition”.
Increasing cognitive ability could easily have focused on the improvement of language as well,
since so many social interactions depend on effective persuasion.
Language Evolution and Memes
Susan Blackmore reveals a different theory of language evolution: she proposes that it evolved
for the sake of memes, not as an adaptation for the benefit of genes. Blackmore explains that
memes first came into existence with the advent of true imitation in humans, which allowed
memes to spread through populations. She proposes that language came into existence as a
mechanism for improving the fecundity of memes.
Sound transmission has many advantages for the purpose - sounds can be heard by multiple
listeners and can be used even at night. She explains that those alterations that produce the
most copies of the highest fidelity will be those that predominate, thus improving the language.
Blackmore believes that language is an unavoidable result of the existence of memes, which
follow naturally from the ability to imitate (an ability that is, surprisingly, realized in very few
species). She states, “verbal language is almost an inevitable result of memetic selection”.
Summary
In this Unit you have been introduced to the theories pertaining to the origins and
development of language. Since there is no evidence about the origins of human
language and how it developed, we cannot but consider the exhaustive speculations
made about it.

Questions
1) Why is it difficult to accept one definition of language? Discuss a few defini-

tions provided in this Unit.
2) How are religions accountable for the belief that the origin of language is the
divine source?
3) What does the ‘bow-wow’ theory of language origin suggest?
4) What special features of human teeth make them useful for the production of
speech sounds?
5) Where is the pharynx situated and how did it become an important of human
sound production?
6) Referring to the innateness theory, explain why it would support the idea that
young deaf children become fluent in sign language.

UNIT 2 EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Overview
In this Unit we shall introduce you to the evolution of the English language. You will learn how
the history of England has shaped and influenced the development of English.
Objectives:
1) Understand the Indo-European family tree.
2) Explain how the English language evolved.
3) Explain how other nations influenced our modern English.
Introduction
The English language that we use today is actually a blend of many languages. It has absorbed
its vocabulary from a number of sources. The English language has been subject to a number
of changes before it became the modern English in present use. Historical events in England as
well as other nations/languages have greatly influenced the evolution of the English Language.
History and change
The study of the origins of any language involves digging deep down in history and tracing out
the changes that historical events brought to it. Investigating the features of older languages,
and the ways in which they developed into modern languages, involves us in the study of
language history and change, also known as philology.
The nineteenth century was dominated by philology which studied language and this resulted
in the creation of ‘family trees’ to show how languages were related.

Family trees
During the nineteenth century, the term ‘Proto-Indo-European’ was established to refer to a
common ancestor for a number of languages. Scholars set out to identify the branches of the
Indo-European family tree tracing the lineage of modern languages in their family branches.
From this diagram, it is evident that English evolved from Germanic.
The Indo-European Family of Languages
The Indo-European family tree is quite puzzling in terms of how these diverse languages are
related.
Our English vocabulary is not something to be studied in isolation but is related in one way
or another to many of the other languages of the world. Therefore we might view the place of
English in perspective, along with the many languages of mankind.
(German) Milch is very close in sound to the English milk; likewise, the German Wasser and
English water, Brot and bread, Fleisch and flesh closely resemble each other, not to mention a
great many additional examples. Perhaps we can see this similarity best if we place side by side
in systematic form the words for mother, father, and brother, as they appear in various tongues.

English German Dutch Danish
Mother Mutter moeder Moder
Father Vater vader Fader
Brother Bruder broeder Broder
While the spelling of these words makes their similarities obvious, we would be even more
struck by the likeness if we heard them pronounced. For instance, a German “v” (as in Vater)
sounds the same as an English “f”; also, a brief consideration of one’s own speech will show
that the sounds represented by “t,” “th,” and “d” are closely related.
At first glance we might conclude that the similarities among these languages are due to
borrowing, that because these languages are spoken by people living relatively close to one
another, such words were adopted from one of the languages by the others. This is not the case.
Spanish French Latin Greek

Madre Mere mater Meter
Padre Père pater Pater
* Frère frater (phrater)
* We note some gaps and irregularities in this pattern; the Spanish for brother is hermano,
related to English germane, while the Greek phrater means “member of a clan” (originally, “of
a brotherhood”).
The similarities between these languages cannot be explained in terms of borrowing.
The cause of their resemblance lies rather in the fact that they are descendants of a single parent
language. Thus, most of the major languages of Europe, and some of the languages of Asia,
belong to one family known as the Indo- European family of languages. (There are exceptions
like Finnish and Hungarian, which belong to the Ural-Altaic family of languages.)
The original Indo-European parent language became extinct long before written records existed.
It was spoken by a prehistoric people whose homeland was somewhere in Eastern Europe. The
location of their origin, however, remains an unsolved problem.
Cognates
The process by which we can establish a possible family connection between different languages
involves looking at cognates. A cognate of a word in one language (e.g English) is a word in
another language (e.g German) that has similar form and is or was used with a similar meaning.
The English words mother, father and friend are cognates of the German words mutter, vater
and freund. On the basis of these cognates, we would imagine that modern English and modern
German probably have a common ancestor in what has been labeled as the Germanic branch of
Indo-European.

Old English
The primary sources for what developed as the English Language were the Germanic languages
spoken by a group of tribes from Northern Europe who moved into the British Isles in the fifth
century. These tribes constituted of the Angles, Saxons and the Jutes hence the term Anglo-
Saxons to describe these people.
It is from the first tribe that we get the word for their language Englisc for their new home
Engla-land.
From this early version of Englisc, evolved Old English. There are many of the most basic
terms in the language.
Consider the following
mann for man
wíf for woman
cild for child
hús for house
etan for eat
drincan for drink
feohtan for fight
Woden and Thor are two names which commemorate the Gods of the pagan
settlers. The weekdays have been named after them. (Wednesday and Thursday)
Christianity and the influence of Latin
From the sixth to the eight century, the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity. Since
Latin was the language of the religion, a number of terms from Latin came into English at that
time. The origins of the contemporary English words angel, bishop, candle, church, martyr,
priest and school date back to this period.
The Vikings Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 15

From the eighth to the tenth centuries, a group of Northern Europeans known as the Vikings
came to settle in the coastal regions of Britain. It is from their language, Old Norse, that the
original forms of give, law, leg, skin, sky, take and they were adopted.
Middle English
The arrival of the Norman French in England, following their victory in Hastings under William
the Conqueror in 1066, marked the end of Old English and the beginning of the Middle English
period. The French speaking invaders became the ruling class. As a result, the language of the
nobility, the government, the law and civilized life in England for the next two hundred years
was French.
French is the source of words like army, court, defense, faith, prison and tax. Often both the
French word and its English equivalent were kept, sometimes with varying shades of meaning,
and this has tended to make English vocabulary rich and varied.
However the language of the peasant remained English.
Consider the following
The peasants worked on the land and reared sheep, cows and swine (words from
Old English).
The upper classes talked about beef and pork (words of French origin).
During this period, French or rather an English version of French was the
language of prestige. Chaucer acknowledges this through one of his Canterbury
pilgrims who could speak it.
She was cleped Madame Eglentyne
Ful wel she soing the service dyvyne,
Entuned in her nose ful seemly,
And Frenche she spak ful faire and fetisly.
(The above quotation is an example of Middle English, written in the late fourteenth
century.)

The language of this period is called Middle English, and it reached its fullest development in
the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. Before the language took on its modern form many changes
were yet to take place. The vowel sounds of Chaucer’s time were very different from those we
hear in similar words today. The following illustrates this:
Chaucer lived in hoos with his weef and hay drinks a bottle of weena with heer by the
light of mona.
Notable also during the 14th century in England was the translation of the Bible into English
by John Wycliffe. By 1500, a new force had begun to exert itself on the English language, this
time the result of an intellectual movement rather than of a military conquest. The movement
was the Renaissance or Revival of Learning, which was marked by the rapid advance of the
sciences, a renewal of interest in the Greek and Roman classics, the rise of nationalism, and by
such events as the Protestant Reformation, the invention of the printing press, and the discovery
of the New World. The additions to English from Greek and Latin entered English during or
after the Renaissance.
Many English writers, however, felt that their own language was still not sufficiently developed
to meet the demands of the new learning; therefore, to remedy what they considered deficiencies
in vocabulary, they borrowed wholesale from Latin, which most of them knew almost as well
as English. Further, the revival of interest in the ancient classics brought with it a flood of new
ideas, especially from Greece; and when a new concept is imported from another culture, there
is a strong tendency to import the word that denotes the concept as well. Not only were words
borrowed in great numbers directly from the pages of Greek and Roman authors, but countless
new words were also coined, by combining elements from the classical languages. In fact, the
practice of using Greek and Latin as the basis for new scientific terms is one that still continues.
From the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century that separated Chaucer and Shakespeare,
the sound of English underwent a substantial change known as the ‘Great Vowel Shift’. The
effects of this general raising of the long vowel sounds such as [o:] moving up to [u:] as in mona
which became moon. Such pronunciations of Early Modern English were significantly different
from earlier periods.

Internal and external Change
Borrowed words from Norman French and influences from outside are examples of external
change in language. Other types of changes which occurred within the historical development
of English and other languages do not seem to have been caused by outside factors only. The
following are some of the processes of internal change:
Sound changes
Many sounds disappeared from the pronunciation of certain words from Middle to Modern
English, for example, the ‘silent letters’ of contemporary English. Consider the words, knee
and gnaw. Word-initial velar [k] and [g] are no longer pronounced before nasal [n]. But the two
words are still written with the remnants.
Note the following sound changes
• e.g nicht as [nıxt] (close to the modern German pronunciation) = night (English)
Velar fricative [x] is absent in the contemporary form
• acsian → ask frist→ first brinnan→ beornan (burn)

bridd→bird hros→ horse woeps→ wasps
(The sound change known as methasis involves a reversal of position of two

sounds in a word)
• oemtig→ empty spinel → spindle timr→ timber
(The sound change known as epenthesis involves the addition of a sound in the
middle of a word)
• schola→ escuela (school) spiritus→ espiritu (spirit)

(Latin to Spanish)
(The sound change known as prosthesis involves the addition of a sound at the
beginning of a word, though not in English)
*Some Mauritian speakers often put a prothetic vowel at the beginning of some English
words, with the result that some words like story and strange may sound like ‘istory’ and
‘istrange’.

Syntactic Changes
Old English and Modern English have seen differences in sentence structure involving word
order. The structure commonly found in both Old English and Modern English is Subject-verb-
object. However Old English had a number of different orders which are no longer used.
e.g fērde he (he travelled)
he hine geseah (he saw him)
him man ne sealed (no man gave [any] to him)
The most remarkable change in Modern English was the loss of a large number of inflectional
affixes. Consider the following examples:
Sealed (he gave) and sealdest (you gave) are differentiated by inflectional suffixes (-e, -est) that
are no longer used in Modern English.
Semantic Changes
Changes in meaning are as common as changes in form.
Old English fæger ‘fit, suitable’, Modern English fair came to mean ‘pleasant, enjoyable’ then
‘beautiful’ and ‘pleasant in conduct’, from which the second modern meaning ‘just, impartial’
derives. The first meaning continued to develop in the sense of ‘of light complexion’ and a third
one arose from ‘pleasant’ in a somewhat pejorative sense, meaning ‘average, mediocre’, e.g. He
only got a fair result in his exam.
Gentle was borrowed in Middle English in the sense of ‘born of a good-family, with a higher
social standing’. Later the sense ‘courteous’ and then ‘kind, mild in manners’ developed because
these qualities were regarded as qualities of the upper classes.
Two processes of semantic change are broadening of meaning and narrowing of meaning.
e.g of broadening of meaning
• holy day changed from a religious feast to being a very general break from work called
a holiday
• foda changed from fodder for animals to refer to all kinds of food
e.g of narrowing of meaning
• hund once used for any kind of dog, now refers to hound
• mete once used for any kind of food now refers to meat

Diachronic and synchronic variation
All the changes that marked the evolution of the English language did not happen overnight.
They were gradual and probably difficult to discern while they were in progress. This Unit
concentrated on the variation in language viewed diachronically, that is, from the historical
perspective of change through time.
Synchronic variation in terms of differences within one language in different places and among
different groups at the same time, has not been treated in this Unit.
Influence of other nations on Modern EnglIish
Because of its conglomerate background, English has shown a greater tendency to borrow
more than most languages. The sources of its words are, therefore, from the whole world, often
reflecting the great extent of English based commerce and colonization. The modern European
languages, especially those of France, with its leadership in cooking and fashion, and Italy, with
its preeminence in the arts, have continued to supply us with a store of words.
Note the following borrowings
• “check”, “divan”, “pajamas”, and “tiger” → Near East, Persian (Farsi)
• “cotton”, “admiral”, “syrup”→ Arabic
• “algebra”, “alcohol”, and “alkali”→ “al-“, the Arabic definite article
• “punch”, “bungalow”, “loot”, “thug”, and “dungaree”→ Indian languages
• “tea”, “typhoon”, and “catsup”→ Chinese
• “tycoon” and “kimono”→ Japanese
• “bamboo” and “bantam” → Malayan
• “tattoo”, “taboo”, and “hula” → The Islands of the Pacific
• “caucus”, “raccoon”, “hickory”, and “skunk” → American Indian languages
• “pretzel”, “hamburger”, and “delicatessen”→ German

The borrowings by English in the New World remind us of the different cultures with which the
colonists and pioneers came in contact. Thus we have seen something of the composite nature
of English, and the many sources of its words. No other important language possesses such a
complexity and variety of vocabulary; and this richness, while it has increased the difficulty of
learning English, has made it an extremely flexible instrument.
Summary
In this Unit you have seen, in outline, the major forces which have shaped the English language.
The English vocabulary has been greatly influenced by other nations and their languages.
Discussing the evolution of the English language involves considering certain aspects of the
history of England that caused the language to change and evolve.
Questions
What is meant by the term cognate? Explain with references from specific languages.
1) What does the Indo-European family tree suggest?
2) What gave rise to Old English?
3) How did French influence the development of Old English to Middle English.
4) Explain, with examples, what is meant by:
(i) Sound changes
(ii) Syntactic changes
(iii) Semantic changes
(iv) Diachronic and synchronic variation
5) and ne sealdest pῡ mē noēfre ãn ticcen
and not gave you me never a kid
‘and you never gave me a kid’
Consider the above example and explain fully what type of change it is.

UNIT 3 PHONOLOGY AND PHONETICS
Overview
In this Unit we shall introduce you to the terms ‘phonetics’ and ‘phonology’ and show you how
we can give a phonetic description of speech sounds.
Objectives:
1) Explain what is meant by phonology and phonetics
2) Demonstrate knowledge of phonemes in the English language
3) Transcribe phonetically
Introduction
Phonetics is concerned with how sounds are produced, transmitted and perceived. Phonology
is concerned with how sounds function in relation to each other in a language. In other words,
phonetics is about sounds of language, phonology about sound systems of language. Phonetics
is a descriptive tool necessary for the study of the phonological aspects of a language.
Phonetics and phonology are worth studying for several reasons. One is that as all studies of
language, the study of phonology gives an insight into how the human mind works. Two more
reasons are that the study of the phonetics of a foreign language gives us a much better ability
both to hear and to correct mistakes that we make, and also to teach pronunciation of the foreign
language to others.
As phonetics and phonology both deal with sounds, and as English spelling and English
pronunciation are two very different things, it is important to keep in mind that we are not
interested in letters here, but in sounds.

Definition
Let’s consider the following definitions:
Phonology is the study of sound patterns in languages.
Phonetics is the general study of the characteristics of speech sounds.
Phonemes refer to the distinguishing sounds in a language.
Note 1:
In standard English (Received Pronunciation),
• there are 44 phonemes
• there are 6 vowels: “a, e, i, o, u, y”. (the alphabets)
• there are 20 different vowel sounds all written by different combinations of the
6 different letters
Note 2:
• Received Pronunciation (RP) is the standard accent of Standard English in

England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in
other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional
forms.
• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Chart shows its most common
applications to represent English language pronunciations.

Below is the IPA chart for standard English.
The Speech Organs
All the organs shown in the figure below are related to the production of speech. All the sounds
of English are made using air on its way out from the lungs. The lungs pull in and push out air,
helped by the diaphragm. The air goes out via the trachea, where the first obstruction it meets
is the larynx, which it has to pass through. Inside the larynx the air passes by the vocal folds,
which, if they vibrate, make the sound voiced. Afterwards the air goes up through the pharynx,
and escapes via either the oral or the nasal cavity.

Almost all the organs involved in speech production also have other functions. The lungs and
the diaphragm are obviously involved in breathing, as is the nasal cavity, which cleans, heats
and humidifies the air that is breathed in. The teeth and the tongue play a part in digestion, and
in a way, so do the vocal folds, as they have to be closed when swallowing, to keep the food
from going down the wrong way.
Consonants
On the way out the air flow can be more or less obstructed, producing a consonant, or is simply
modified, giving a vowel. If you pronounce the first sound of the word ‘paper’ you close your
mouth completely and that is the utmost obstruction, whereas if you pronounce the first sound
of the word after the mouth is more open than normal, the air flows as freely as it possibly can.
Consonants are often classified by being given a so-called VPM-label. VPM stands for Voicing,
Place and Manner:
- voicing means that the vocal folds are used; if they are not, the sound is voiceless (note that
vowels always imply the use of vocal folds).
- place of articulation is the place where the air flow will be more or less obstructed.
- manner is concerned with the nature of the obstruction.
The consonant sounds are as follows:

Voiceless and Voiced Sounds
The larynx is in the neck, at a point commonly called Adam’s apple. It is like a box, inside
which are the vocal folds, two thick flaps of muscle. In a normal position, the vocal folds are
apart and we say that the glottis is open. When the edges of the vocal folds touch each other, air
passing through the glottis will usually cause vibration. This opening and closing is repeated
regularly and gives what is called voicing.
The only distinction between the first sounds of sue and zoo for example is that [s] is voiceless,
[z] is voiced. The same goes for few and view, [f] is voiceless, [v] is voiced. If you now say
[ssssszzzzzsssss] or [fffffvvvvvfffff] you can either hear the vibrations of the [zzzzz] or [vvvvv]
by sticking your fingers into your ears, or you can feel them by touching the front of your larynx
(the Adam’s Apple).
This distinction is quite important in English, as there are many pairs of sounds that differ only
in voicing. In the examples below the first sound is voiceless, the other is voiced: pie/buy , try/
dry, clue/glue , chew/Jew , thigh/thy . This distinction can also be made in between two vowels:
rapid/rabid , metal/medal , or at the end of a word: pick/pig , leaf/leave , rich/ridge .
The unvoiced and voiced consonants (Source: abcteach.com)

Place of Articulation
As we saw above [p], [t] and [k] are all voiceless, so there must be another way to distinguish
between them, otherwise we would not be able to distinguish between try and pry or cry ,
or pick and tick or kick . Apart from the behaviour of the vocal folds, sounds can also be
distinguished as to where in the oral cavity they are articulated (i.e. where in the mouth there
is most obstruction when they are pronounced).
Bilabials
Bilabial sounds are produced when the lips are brought together. Examples are [p], which is
voiceless, as in pay or [b] and [m] which are voiced, as in bay , may . We can also describe the
[w] sound found at the beginning of way, walk and world as a bilabial.

Labiodentals
Labiodental sounds are made when the lower lip is raised towards the upper front teeth.
Examples are [f]as in safe (voiceless) and [v] as in save (voiced).
Dentals
Dental sounds are produced by touching the upper front teeth with the tip of the tongue.
Examples are [θ] as in oath (voiceless) and [ð] as in clothes (voiced).
Alveolars
Alveolar sounds are made by raising the tip of the tongue towards the ridge that is right behind
the upper front teeth, called the alveolar ridge. Examples are [t] and [s] as in too ,sue , both
voiceless, and [d],[z],[n],[l],[r ] as in do, zoo , nook, look, rook , all voiced.
Palatals
Palatoalveolar sounds are made by raising the blade of the tongue towards the part of the palate
just behind the alveolar ridge.
Examples of palatals are the initial sounds in the words shout and child, which are both voiceless.
The sh sound is represented as [ʃ] and the ch sound is represented as [tʃ]. So, the word shoe-
brush begins and ends with the voiceless palatal sound [ʃ] and the word church begins and ends
with the other voiceless palatal sound [tʃ].
One of the voiced palatals, represented by the symbol [ᴣ], is not very common in English, but
can be found as the middle consonant sound in words like treasure and pleasure, or the final
sound in rouge. The other voiced palatal is [dᴣ], which is the initial sound in words like joke and
gem. The word judge and the name George both begin and end with the sound [dᴣ] despite the
obvious differences in spelling. One other voiced palatal is the [j] sound used at the beginning
of words like you and yet.

Velars
Velar sounds are made by raising the back of the tongue towards the soft palate, called the
velum. Examples [k] as in back , voiceless, and [g], [ŋ] both voiced as in bag , bang .
Glottals
Glottal sounds are produced when the air passes through the glottis as it is narrowed: [h] as in
high.
Charting Consonant Sounds
Limitations of the Chart
The chart is incomplete. It contains the majority of consonant sounds used in the basic
description of English pronunciation. There are, however, several differences between this basic
set of symbols and the much more comprehensive chart produced by the International Phonetic
Association (IPA) which describes the sounds of all languages. The most obvious difference is
the range of sounds covered.

Manner of Articulation
We can now distinguish between English consonants from two points of view, that of voicing,
and that of place. We can see that [b] and [t] are different in both respects, [b] is voiced and
bilabial, and [t] is voiceless and alveolar. [p] differs from [b] only in being voiceless, as both are
bilabial, and [p] differs from [t] only in being bilabial, as both are voiceless.
There are still pairs of sounds where we cannot yet describe the difference of one from the
other, e.g. [b] and [m] as in bend , mend as both are voiced and bilabial, and [t] and [s] as in
ton , son where both are voiceless and alveolar. As the examples show, we can however tell the
words apart, and this is because the sounds are different in a way we have not yet discussed, and
that is with respect to their manner of articulation.
The manner of articulation has to do with the kind of obstruction the air meets on its way
out, after it has passed the vocal folds. It may meet a complete closure (plosives), an almost
complete closure (fricatives), or a smaller degree of closure (approximants), or the air might
escape in more exceptional ways, around the sides of the tongue (laterals), or through the nasal
cavity (nasals).
Stops or Plosives
Plosives are sounds in which there is a complete closure in the mouth, so that the air is blocked
for a fraction of a second and then released with a small burst of sound, called a plosion (it
sounds like a very small explosion). Plosives may be bilabial [p] and [b] as in park , bark ,
alveolar [t] and [d] as in tar , dark or velar [k] and [g] as in car , guard. There is a fourth kind
of plosive known as the glottal stop.
In English a voiceless plosive that occurs at the begining of a word and is followed by a vowel,
is rather special in the sense that at the release of a plosion one can hear a slight puff of air
(called aspiration) before the vowel is articulated e.g when we pronounce ‘pen’. These aspirated
voiceless plosives are not considered to be different sounds from unaspirated voiceless plosives
from the point of view of how they function in the sound system. This difference, which can be
clearly heard, is said to be phonetic.

Fricatives
The manner of articulation used in producing the set of sounds [f], [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z],[ʃ],[ᴣ]
involves almost blocking the airstream and having the air push through the very narrow opening.
As the air is pushed through, a type of friction is produced and the resulting sounds are called
fricatives. 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 air being pushed out. The usual pronunciation of the word
fish begins and ends with the voiceless fricatives [f] and [ʃ]. The word ‘those’ begins and ends
with the voiced fricatives
[ð] and [z].
Affricates
Affricates are a combination of a plosive and a fricative (sometimes they are called “affricated
plosives”). They begin like a plosive, with a complete closure, but instead of a plosion, they have
a very slow release, moving backwards to a place where a friction can be heard (palatoalveolar).
The two English affricates are both palatoalveolar, [tʃ ] which is voiceless, as in chin , rich , and
[dᴣ] which is voiced, as in gin , ridge . The way an affricate resembles a plosive followed by
a fricative is mirrored in the symbols. Both consist of a plosive symbol followed by a fricative
one: [ t+ ʃ ], [d+ ᴣ].
Nasals
Nasals resemble plosives, except that there is a complete closure in the mouth, but as the velum
is lowered the air can escape through the nasal cavity. Though most sounds are produced with the
velum raised, the normal position for the velum is lowered, as this is the position for breathing.
The three English nasals are all voiced, and [m] is bilabial, ‘ram’ , [n] is alveolar, ‘ran’ , and [ŋ]
velar, ‘rang’ . In the section on places, the dotted line on the pictures of bilabial, alveolar, and
velar articulations illustrate the three nasals.

Liquids/Lateral Liquids
The initial sounds in led and red are described as liquids. They are both voiced. The [l] sound is
called a lateral liquid and is formed by letting the airstream flow around the sides of the tongue
as the tip of the tongue makes contact with the middle of the alveolar ridge. The [r] sound at the
beginning of red is formed with the tongue tip raised and curled back near the alveolar ridge
Glides
The sounds [w] and [j] are described as glides. They are both voiced and occur at the beginning
of we, wet, you and yes. They are typically produced with the tongue in motion (or ‘gliding’) to
or from the position of vowels and are sometimes called semi-vowels or approximants.
The sound [h] as in Hi and Hello, is voiceless and can be classified as a glide because of the way
it combines with other sounds.
The Glottal Stop and the Flap
The glottal stop occurs when the space between the vocal cords (glottis) is closed completely
(very briefly), then released. Try saying the expression Oh oh. Between the first Oh and the
second oh, we typically produce the glottal stop.
American English speakers pronounce the word ‘butter’ in a way that is close to ‘budder’, then
it is said that they are making a flap. It is represented by [D]. This sound is produced by the
tongue tip tapping the alveolar ridge briefly. Many American English speakers have a tendency
to flap [t] and [d] consonants between vowels.
Common flaps in casual speech:
latter and ladder
writer and rider
metal and medal
(as if there are no middle consonants)
The student who was told about the importance of ‘Plato’ in class and wrote it in
his notes as ‘play-dough’ was clearly a victim of a misinterpreted flap.

Vowels
While the consonant sounds are mostly articulated via closure or obstruction in the vowel tract,
vowel sounds are produced with a relatively free flow of air. They are typically voiced. To
describe vowel sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue influences the ‘shape’ through
which the airflow must pass. To talk about a place of articulation, we think of the space inside
the mouth as having a front versus a back and a high versus a low area. We talk about ‘high,
front’ vowels because the sound is made with the front part of the tongue in a raised position.
Diphtongs
Diphtongs are combined vowel sounds. So far we have only been considering vowels that were
constant, i.e. vowels that were pronounced at one and the same place. Such vowels are called
monophthongs, and English has 12 of them.
English also has 8 diphthongs, which are vowels that change character during their pronunciation,
that is, they begin at one place and move towards another place. Compare for example the
monophthong in car with the diphthong in cow, or the monophthong in girl with the diphthong
in goal . The vowels of cow and goal both begin at a given place and glide towards another one
. In goal the vowel begins as if it was [ ǝ], but then it moves towards [ Ʊ]. Therefore it is written
[ǝƱ ], as in [gǝƱl] goal , with two symbols, one for how it starts and one for how it ends.

Subtle Individual Variation
Vowel sounds are notorious for varying between one variety of English to the next, often being
a key element in what we recognise as different accents.
Some subtle variations
• Caught and cot where [a] is used in both with no distinction between the vowels.
• We might not make a significant distinction between the central vowels [ǝ] and
[^]. Then the symbol [ǝ], called schwa can be used. A schwa is the unstressed
vowel (underlined) in the everyday use of words such as : afford, collapse, oven,
photograph, wanted.

There are many other variations in the actual physical articulation of the sounds we have
considered here. The more we focus on the subtle differences of the actual articulation of each
sound, the more likely we are to find ourselves describing the pronunciation of small groups or
even individual speakers. Such subtle differences enable us to identify individual voices and
recognize people we know as soon as they speak. But those differences don’t help us understand
how we are able to work out what total strangers with unfamiliar voices are saying.
Activity
1) Find the phonetic symbol for the first sound in each of the following words:
(i) theory
(ii) christianity
(iii) psychology
(iv) phonology
(v) gin
(vi) one
2) Find the phonetic symbol for the last sound in each of the following words:
a. tough f. shapes
b. kicked g. bones
c. loved h. parking
d. health i. wave
e. dog j. large
3) Classify the words accordingly :
[I] and [i:]

Ill, eel, kneel, nil, will, wheel, sit, seat, field, bean, filled, bin, ski, sick
4) Explain what nasal sounds are. Give examples of words having nasal sounds
in them.

5) Name the different places of articulation and write down the sounds produced
in these places.
6) Try transcribing the fololowing paragraph phonetically.
‘Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and
talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of
justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the
human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure
and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.’

The Sound Pattern of Language
At the beginning of this Unit the terms phonology and phonemes have been defined. We shall
now look at the sound patterns.
Phones and Allophones
While the phoneme is the abstract unit or sound type (in the mind), there are many different
versions of that sound type regularly produced in actual speech (in the mouth). We can describe
those different versions as phones. Phones are phonetic units and appear in square brackets.
When we have a group of several phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we refer
to them as as allophones of that phoneme.
For example, the [t] sound in the word ‘tar’ is normally pronounced with a stronger puff of air
than is present in the [t] sound in the word ‘star’.
The distinction between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one phoneme for another
will result in a word with a different meaning (as well as a different pronunciation), but
substituting allophones only results in a different pronunciation of the same word.
Minimal Pairs and Sets
Phonemic distinctions in a langauge can be tested via pairs and sets of words. When two words
such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the
same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.
When a group of words can be differentiated , each one from the others, by changing one
phoneme (always in the same position in the word) , then we have a minimal set.
e.g feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot
e.g big, pig,rig, fig,dig, wig
Phonotactics
Forms such as [fsIg] or [rnIg] do not exist or are unlikely ever to exist. They have been formed
without obeying some constraints on the sequence or position of English phonemes. Such
constraints are called the phonotactics (i.e, permitted arrangement of sounds) in a language
and are obviously part of every speaker’s phonological knowledge.

Syllables and Clusters
A syllable must contain a vowel (or vowel like) sound. The most common type of syllable in
language also has a consonant ( C) before the vowel (V) and is typically represented as CV.
Technically, the basic elements of the syllable are the onset (one or more consonants) and the
rhyme. The rhyme consists of a vowel, which is treated as the nucleus, plus any following
consonant (s), described as the coda.
Syllables like me, to or no have an onset, a nucleus but no coda. They are known as ‘open’
syllables. When a coda is present, as in the syllables up and cup, at or hat, they are called
‘closed’ syllables. The basic structure of the kind of syllable found in English in words like
green (CCVC), eggs (VCC), and (VCC), ham (CVC), I (V), am (VC) is shown in the diagram
below.
Syllable
onset rhyme
consonant(s) nucleus coda

vowel consonant(s)
Both the onset and the coda can consist of more than one consonant, also known as a consonant
cluster.
Co-Articulation Effects
Most of our talk is fast and spontaneous, and it requires our articulators to move from one sound
to the next without stopping. The process of making one sound almost at the same time as
the next sound is called co-articulation. Assimilation and elision are two well co-articulation
effects.
Assimilation
When the two sound segments occur in sequence and some aspect of one segment is taken or
‘copied’ by the other, the process is known as assimilation.

Elision
The process of not pronouncing a sound segment that might be present in the deliberately
careful pronunciation of a word in isolation is described as elision.
Normal Speech
These two processes of assimilation and elision occur in everyone’s normal speech and should
not be regarded as the same type of sloppiness or laziness in speaking. In fact, consistently
avoiding the regular patterns of assimilation and elision used in a language would result in
extremely artificial-sounding talk.
Summary
In this Unit you have been introduced to the terms ‘phonetics’ and ‘phonology’ and
you have been shown how we can give a phonetic description of consonant and
vowel speech sounds.
Questions
1) Distinguish between an allophone and a phoneme.
2) What are minimal pairs? Give examples.
3) What is meant by the phonotactics of a language?
4) What is the difference between an ‘open’ and a ‘closed’ syllable?
5) Which segments in the pronunciation of the foloowing words are most likely to be
affected by ellision?
(i) family
(ii) telephone
(iii) chocolate
(iv) camera

UNIT 4 WORD FORMATION PROCESSES AND MORPHOLOGY
Overview
In this Unit we shall introduce to word formation processes and morphology. You will also learn
about the importance of the different types of morphemes.
Objectives:
1) Explain word formation processes
2) Identify morphemes
3) Identify the prefixes, suffixes, roots and stems
Introduction
When we think of a human language, we naturally think of words as being the most fundamental
units of phrases, clauses and sentences. While using or learning a language, we should be able
to understand and analyse the words while at the same time it is interesting to consider the
origin of those words and know about the various properties that they have.
Note
How are new words created?

• Words have origins and histories.
• There is a constant evolution of new words.
• There are new uses of old words.
• There are many different ways in which a new word can enter a language. New
words are created by some basic word-formation processes.

PART 1: WORDS AND WORD-FORMATION PROCESSES
Words
A word is a unit of meaning. Words might be made up of several bits and pieces that carry
meaning and have grammatical functions. Consider the word ‘imperfections’.
im/perfect/ion/s
negative marker
adjective noun marker plural marker
There are two types of words:

(i) Content words: They would include nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives in a
language. They are also referred to as the ‘open class’ of the lexical items. New
words/terms are always being invented by human beings and are being added to this
class. Content words form a very large part of the vocabulary.
(ii) Function words: Also called grammatical words, they include parts of speech such
as conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns. They are also called ‘closed classes of
words’. New lexical items cannot be added to the list.
Word-Formation Processes
There are different processes of the formation of words in language. They can be classified as
major and minor processes.
Major Processes Minor Processes

• Coinage
• Borrowing • Blending
• Compounding • Clipping
• Conversion • Backformation
• Derivation • Acronyms

Major Processes
1) Borrowing
Points for discussion
What do you notice about these words?
1. Croissant
2. Dope
3. Lilac
4. Piano
5. Sofa
6. Tattoo
7. Tsunami
8. Yogurt
9. Zebra
10. Bangle
Borrowing = taking over/adopting words from other languages. The English lan-
guage assimilates new terms. It loans words from other cultures and languages.
Another type of borrowing is called loan translation or ‘calque’. In this process,

there is a direct translation of the elements of the word into the borrowing language.
e.g ‘gratte-ciel’ which means ‘scrape sky’ has become ‘sky-scraper’.

2) Compounding
What could be another possible word for…
1. Girl + Friend
2. Text + Book
3. Wall + Paper
4. Finger + Print
5. Sun + Burn
How is this different from ‘Blending’?
Compounding= joining of 2 or more independent words to produce a

single word. The words are not reduced. There is no limit to the kinds of combi-
nation that occur in English.
Rules about compounding:
1) When 2 words belong to the same grammatical category (e.g adjective),

the compound will be in the same category.
e.g girl (noun) + friend (noun)= girlfriend (noun)
2) However when the 2 words fall in different categories, it is the class of the
final word which will be the grammatical category of the compound.
e.g head (noun) + strong (adjective) = headstrong (adjective)
3) There are compounds formed with a preposition. They are in the category
of the non-prepositional part of the compound.
e.g in (preposition) + form (verb)= inform

3) Conversion
Why are parts of speech such tricky things?
• The one who sits on this chair has to chair the meeting
• This butter tastes good, have you buttered your bread?
Conversion = changing the function of a word. A noun comes to be used

as a verb without any reduction. Conversion is also known as category
change or functional shift. Conversion can also include verbs becoming a
noun e.g ‘must’ is a verb which can also be used as a noun.
4) Derivation
Turn these words into opposites…
• Happy
• Pleasure
• Partial
• Sociable
• Responsible
How did you do this?

Derivation= most common word-formation process.
The addition of an ‘affix’ (affixation) to a create a new word
Such an affix usually applies to words of one lexical category (part of speech) and
changes them into words of another lexical category.

Minor Processes
1) Coinage
• Have you ever used vaseline on your lips?
• Have you ever worn nylon clothing?
• How many of you have blown your nose with a kleenex?
• How many of you have ever eaten a sandwich?
• Do you wear jeans?
• Have you ever googled information for your assignment?
Coinage = invention of totally new terms. It is the least common process. New
words enter a language through coinage meaning they did not exist before.
Consider invented trade names that have become general terms for any version of that
product. Yoplait and Karcher are other examples. Earl of Sandwich was the first person
in 18th century to ask for his bread and meat together. Genoa in Italy is where the type
of cloth (denim) was first made.
2) Blending
What could be another possible word for….
1. camera+recorder?
2. motor+hotel?
3. emotion+icon?
4. modulator+demodulator
Blending refers to the combining of two separate forms to produce a sin-

gle new term. It is accomplished by combining the parts of two different
words, usually the beginning of one word and the end of another.
e.g breakfast + lunch = brunch

3) Clipping
What do you notice about these words?

Do they remind you of any other words?
1. Fax
2. Memo
3. Gas
4. Flu
5. Phone
6. Plane
7. Exam
8. Gym
9. Lab
10. Math
11. Doc
Clipping = a word of more than 1 syllable is reduced to a shorter form. Clipping is
another term for abbreviation. ‘ad’ is a clipping of the word ‘advertisement’.
4) Backformation
• What does a painter do?

• What does a sculptor do?
• What does a babysitter do?
• What does an editor do?
What happens to the noun?
Backformation= a word of 1 type (usually noun) is reduced to form a word of
another type (usually verb).
e.g ‘television’ (noun) is reduced to form ‘televise’ (verb).
It implies that in history, the television was discovered first, the verb came
later.

5) Acronyms
Do these sentences make sense to you?
• I study at the OUM.
• I need to withdraw money from the ATM.
• It is important to keep your PIN number secret.
• VCRs are historical items now.
• I forgot to save my work on my USB.
• This CD isn’t playing properly.
Acronyms are derived from the initials of several words. Each of the
letters stands for something.
What is an affix?
Small ‘bits’, or elements, of the English language which are not usually given separate listings
in dictionaries & are placed at the beginning or end of a root, stem, or word, or in the body of a
word, to modify its meaning are affixes.
• What examples can you think of?
• Where do you add them to the word?
Prefix= affix added to the beginning of a word
Suffix= affix added to the end of a word
Examples:
un - unhappy,
mis - misinterpret,
dis - disrespect,
pre - prejudge,
ful - joyful,

less - careless,
ish - boyish,
ism - terrorism,
ness - sadness.
THIRD KIND OF AFFIX KNOWN AS INFIX not normally used in English, affix incorporated
inside another word to create a new word or intensify meaning. In English the only things that
can be infixed are those expressive words which are used to intensify meaning, these are often
expletives (curses or swear words).
Activity
1. Make the affixation
Prefixation Suffixation
Unity Rapid
Obey Kind
Possible Delight
Happy Coward
Nationalize Debate
Do Bag
Child
2. Make as many words as you can from:
• Talk
• Open
• Help

PART 2: MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the study of basic forms in a language. In other words, it studies the internal
structure of words. It is the analysis of the basic ‘elements’ used in a language.
These ‘elements’ are described as morphemes.
MORPHEME
A word may be composed of one or more than one morpheme. A morpheme is the minimal
linguistic unit of a language that carries meaning.
e.g ‘house’= one morpheme (cannot be broken further)
‘houses’= two morphemes ( ‘s’ here is a marker of plurality)
One morpheme can be as short as one alphabet or can be as long as adding one or even two
syllables.
Consider the following examples:
Un/fortun/ate/ly = 4 morphemes
Un/gentle/man/li/ness = 5 morphemes
Anti/dis/establish/ment/ar/ian/ism = 7 morphemes
Derivational and Inflectional morphology
Derivational morphemes are used to make new words in a language, used to make words from
a different grammatical category or from a stem.
e.g good(adjective) + ness = goodness (noun)
Inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words in the English language. They
indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. They are used to show, e.g, if a word is
singular or plural.
e.g boy + s = boys (‘s’ is a plural marker. Note that the word remains a noun)
play + ed = played (‘ed’ constitutes the inflectional morpheme as the past tense marker)

RECAP
Inflectional Derivational
These morphemes are used to make new They are used to indicate as-
words or to make words of a different pects of grammatical function of
grammatical category from the stem a word (singular or plural etc.)
May cause word class change No word class change
Precede inflectional morphemes in a word Follow derivational morphemes

in a word
FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES
(i) Free morphemes include words like ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ because they are independent
and do not need to be attached.
(ii) Bound morphemes are always parts of words. All affixes are bound morphemes.
They consist of prefixes which occur before words e.g ‘un-‘, ‘dis-‘, ‘in-‘, ‘anti-‘,
‘im-‘ . The suffixes also form part of bound morphemes. They are placed after words
e.g ‘-er’, ‘-ly’, ‘-ist’.
Which is free, which is bound?
Stand by themselves Cannot stand by themselves

Single words Attached to another form

LEXICAL AND FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES
Lexical morphemes
A lexical morpheme is a free morpheme that is a content word such as noun or verb. In other
words they are the words that carry the ‘content’ of the messages we convey.
Examples: Girl, man, house, lion, happy, blue, drive
They are called sometimes the open class words because we can and regularly do add new
words to these classes.
Functional morphemes
Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. Functional words in the
language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns.
Examples: An, but, when, near, the, that
Function words are sometimes described as a ‘closed’ class of words. We almost never add new
functional morphemes to the language.
Activity
Which are lexical morphemes & which are functional morphemes?
• House
• Tiger
• Because
• Break
• And
• In
• Sincere
• That
• Yellow
• Near

MORPHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of a

given language’s morphemes and other linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of
speech.
Refer to the difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes earlier in this Unit. An
inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word.
e.g both wild and wilder are adjectives.
The –er inflection here simply creates a different version of the adjective.
However a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word.
e.g if we add the derivational morpheme –er to the verb build it becomes the noun builder.
Therefore the suffix –er in modern English can be an inflectional morpheme as part of an
adjective and also a distinct derivational morpheme part of a noun. The morpheme –er added to
words does not always serve the same purpose.
Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the same word,
they always appear in that order. The derivational morpheme –er is attached to build, then the
inflectional morpheme –s is added to produce builders.
The different types of morphemes in most sentences in English can be identified and all the
‘elements’ can be listed. Consider the following sentence:
The lady’s delicateness mesmerized the planters.
The = functional lady= lexical ‘s = inflectional delicate = lexical ness = derivational
mesmerize=lexical ed = inflectional the = functional plant = lexical er = derivational
s = inflectional

The following diagram will help remember the different types of morphemes.
STEM AND ROOT
A stem is the element consisting of a free morpheme and one or more than one bound morpheme
to which an affix is added. We can say that all affixes, prefixes and suffixes, in English are
bound morphemes. When the single word is used with a bound morpheme attached, the basic
word form is technically known as a STEM (the stem word)
The base form to which affixes are attached are stem words. Consider the following example:
e.g Uncovered
Un- cover -ed
Prefix stem suffix
(bound) (free) (bound)
STEM WORDS
Free stem words Bound stem words
CAN STAND ON THEIR OWN CANNOT STAND ON THEIR
OWN

Free stem
Look at the following words:
• dress
• care
The above free stem words can stand on their own and should be kept distinct from ‘bound
stems’.
Bound stems
Look at the following words:
• receive
• reduce
• repeat
In the above words (-ceive ,-educe , -epeat) do not occur in isolation and they acquire meaning
in combination with other morphemes.
A root is the element consisting of a single free morpheme which cannot be analysed into
smaller parts. It refers to non-affix lexical content morphemes (such as ‘cran’ in ‘cranberry’)
which can be bound or free. When an affix is attached to a root, it is referred to as a stem.

Activity
Break down the following words to find the STEM word
• Undressed
• Thoughtfully
Break down the following words to find the STEM word
• Receive
• Recede
• Repeat
What have you learnt?
Turn the following into plural:
• Bus
• Sheep
• Man
• Child
All are variations of the inflectional morpheme ‘s’ (plural). They are allomorphs of
a particular morpheme.
Problems in morphological description
Earlier in this Unit we have considered examples of English words in which the different
morphemes are easily identifiable as separate elements. The inflectional morpheme –s is added
to book to make it plural books. What is the inflectional morpheme that makes sheep the plural
of sheep or men the plural of man. If –al is the derivational suffix added to the stem function to
give functional, then we can take –al off the word legal to get the stem leg?
In the analysis of language, there are many problematic cases. For example, the relationship
between law and legal is a reflection of the historical influence of different languages on
English word forms. The modern for law is a result of borrowing into Old English (lagu) from a

Scandinavian source over 1000 years ago. The modern word legal was borrowed about 500 years
later from the Latin form legalis (‘of the law’). There is no derivational relationship between
the noun law and the adjective legal in English. Similarly, there is no derivational relationship
between the noun mouth (from old English) and the adjective oral (a Latin borrowing).
A large number of English words owe their morphological patterning to languages like Latin and
Greek. Hence, a full description of English morphology cannot overlook historical influences
and the effect of borrowed elements.
Morphs
Morphemes are abstract grammatical or lexical units; morphs are their representations, or
realizations, in the spoken form.
e.g ‘dogs’ consists of two morphs, dog + s, realizing a lexical morpheme and an inflectional
morpheme (plural)
‘buses’ consists of two morphs, bus + es , realizing a lexical morpheme and an inflectional
morpheme (plural)
Allomorphs
Allomorph refers to all versions of one morpheme. It is a set of morphs.
The morpheme ‘plural’ can be attached to a number of lexical morphemes to produce structures
like ‘dog + plural’, ‘bus + plural’, ‘sheep + plural’ and ‘man + plural’. In these examples, the
actual forms of the morphs that result from the morpheme ‘plural’ are different. Yet they are
allomorphs of the one morpheme.
In short, all are variations of the inflectional morpheme ‘s’ (plural). They are allomorphs of a
particular morpheme.
What are the allomorphs for the morpheme ‘past tense’? The common pattern in the formation
of past tense is to add -ed, as in walked. There are special patterns also pertaining to irregular
past forms e.g go=went, eat=ate, break=broke. Some do not change, e.g cut.

Summary
In this Unit you have been introduced to word formation processes and morphology.
You have been explained how words come into a language and also how to analyse
words. You have also been introduced to the various types of morphemes and to
morphological description.
Questions
1. How many morphemes are there in the following words?
a. Politic
b. Political
c. Politically
d. Politician
e. Politicians
f. Politicize-
2. Underline the functional morphemes in this quote.
If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life
believing that it is stupid.
3. Add one derivational morpheme to the following words to create a new

word. Indicate the part of speech/word class.
a. perfect
b. care
c.confuse

4. Add one inflectional morpheme to the following words and explain the type
of inflection.
Boy
Walk
Smart
Teacher
Take
5. Explain the word formation process of the following underlined words.
a. I am not feeling well, so I am going to the doc.
b. The CD is not working.
c. His favourite singer is Alain Ramanisum.
d. The primary school textbooks are being reworked.
e. They need a wok to prepare the fried noodles.
6. Differentiate with examples between conversion and backformation as word

formation processes.

UNIT 5 SYNTAX
Overview
In this Unit, you will be introduced to syntax as another important component in linguistics.
This Unit considers the system of rules and categories that underlies sentence formation in the
human language.
Objective:
1) Explain the importance of syntax in language acquisition
2) Describe the different phrase structure rules
3) Describe the structure of sentences using tree diagrams
Introduction
In linguistics, the study of the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form
phrases, clauses, and sentences is called syntax. Syntax is one of the major components of
grammar. It refers to the way words and clauses are arranged to form sentences. That
arrangement contributes to and enhances meaning and effect.

Discussion
Which sentence is grammatical?
1) Sold shoes Sandy.
2) Sandy sold shoes.
3) Shoes sold Sandy.
4) Sold Sandy shoes.
5) Sandy shoes sold.
What is the word order in English?
Sandy sold shoes
subject verb object
The subject of the sentence is “Sandy.”
The verb of the sentence is “sold.”

The object of the sentence is “shoes.”
Syntax deals with the structures of sentences.
Generative Grammar
In linguistics, a grammar (or set of rules) that indicates the structure and interpretation of
sentences which native speakers of a language accept as belonging to the language is called
generative grammar.
“Generative grammar can be regarded as a kind of confluence of long-forgotten concerns of

the
study of language and mind, and new understanding provided by the formal sciences.”
(Noam Chomsky, The Minimalist Program. The MIT Press, 1995)

Properties of generative grammar
• It will generate well-formed syntatic structures.

• It will have a finite number of rules
• It will need the meaning of recursion.
Syntactic Structures
Generative grammar defines the syntactic structures of a language. The grammar will generate
all the well-formed syntactic structures (e.g sentences) of the language and will not generate any
ill-formed structures. This has been called the ‘all and only’ criterion, that is, all the grammatical
sentences and only the grammatical sentences will be produced.
The grammar will have a finite (i.e 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.
our ability to create totally novel yet grammatically accurate sentences) would be captured
within the grammar. The grammar should also be capable of revealing the basis of two other
phenomena: first, how some superficially different sentences are closely related and, second,
how some superficially similar sentences are in fact different.
Deep And Surface Structure
Let’s look at two superficially different sentences shown in these examples.
Lisa sewed the dress.
The dress was sewn by Lisa.
The first sentence is called an active sentence, focusing on what Lisa did, and the second is a
passive sentence, focusing on The dress and what happened to it. The distinction between them
is a difference in their surface structure, that is, the different syntactic forms they have as
individual English sentences. However, this superficial difference in form disguises the fact that
the two sentences are very closely related, even identical, at some less superficial level.
This other ‘underlying’ level, where the basic components (noun phrase +verb + noun phrase)
shared by the two sentences can be represented, is called their deep structure. That same deep
structure can be the source of many other surface structures such as It was Lisa who sewed the
dress and Was the dress sewn by Lisa?

In short, the grammar must be capable of showing how a single underlying abstract representation
can become different surface structures.
Think about the deep and surface structures of the following

sentences:
1) The planter planted cabbages.
2) The policeman stopped the cars.
3) The teacher the pupils the worksheets.
4) The gentleman wore a nice suit.
5) The lady typed the work.
Structural Ambiguity
Let’s say we had two distinct deep structures. One expresses the idea that ‘Rita had a stick and
she beated the clown with it.’ The other expresses the idea that ‘Rita beated the clown who
happened to be carrying a stick.’ Now, these two different versions of events can actually be
expressed in the same surface structure form: Rita beated the clown with a stick. This sentence
provides an example of structural ambiguity. It has two distinct underlying interpretations
that have to be represented differently in deep structure.
Note: Syntactic ambiguity refers to the presence of two or more possible

meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words.
Activity
Discuss the element of syntactic ambiguity in the following

sentences:
1) I killed a cockroach in my suit.
2) She gave him dog food.
3) We don’t just serve hamburgers, we serve people.
4) Put the box on the table by the window in the kitchen.
5) The astronomer married a star.
Can you think of other such sentences?

Recursion
The term recursive means ‘repeated a number of times’. Recursive rules have the capacity to be
used more than once in generating a structure. The rules of grammar are subject to recursion.
For example, we can create a sentence where we are able to repeat the rule that creates a
prepositional phrase over and over again.
e.g The car which was parked under the tree, near the main gate of the tower building close to
the Open University of Mauritius belonged to Mr. Tim.
In order to generate a sentence like the above example, we must be able to repeat the rule to
create a prepositional phrase.
We must also be able to put sentences inside other sentences.
e.g My mum noticed that I was talking to someone on the phone.
In the above sentence, there is the sentence I was talking to someone on the phone inside it. And
those two sentences can be generated inside another sentence such as:
My dad thought my mum noticed that I was talking to someone on the phone.
In fact, there is no end to the recursion that would produce longer and complex sentences with
this structure.

Symbols Used In Syntactic Description
This refers to the ways in which syntactic analysis is presented.
The following are the abbreviations that are employed in Syntactic

description.
• S- sentence e.g I study Linguistics.
• N-noun e.g honesty
• Art-article e.g a, an
• Adj-adjective e.g cute
• V-verb e.g draw
• Pro-pronoun e.g he, she
• Prep-preposition e.g in, on
• Adv-adverb e.g carefully
• NP- noun phrase e.g the little cat
• VP- verb phrase e.g met a guy
• PN- proper noun e.g John
• PP- prepositional phrase e.g at the hospital
Note:
* ‘ungrammatical sentence’
! ‘consists of’ or ‘rewrites as’
() ‘optional constituent’
{} ‘one and only one of these constituents must be selected’
NP → Art N is a short way of writing noun phrase (NP) such as the lady.
When we want to use a noun phrase, we can include an adjective (Adj) represented as follows:
NP → Art (Adj) N e.g the cute lady (this is optional in a grammatically well-formed noun phrase)

Tree Diagrams
A tree diagram or structure can be used to create a more explicit representation of the hierarchical
organization of a sentence or structure.
NP
The prince
Such diagrams show explicitly that there are different levels of analysis and illustrate the
hierarchical organization for a whole sentence. For example, there is a level of analysis at which
the constituent NP is represented and a different, lower level at which the constituent such as
N is represented.
Draw a tree diagram for the following sentences:

1) The women are happy.
2) The parents are angry with their children.
3) The cute children are playing joyfully in the yard.
4) He believed she was in love with the guy who sells vegetables on the street
and never proposed to her.
5) To have a house is a wonderful thing but to maintain the house might be

an awful thing.

Phrase Structure Rules
Phrase structure rules suggest that the structure of a phrase of a specific type will consist of one
or more constituents in a particular order.
Consider the sentence below.
e.g The boy kicked a new ball.
“the boy” is a noun phrase since “he”can be its substitute. “A new ball” is also a noun phrase.
“Kicked a new ball” is a verb phrase. In order to show the relation among these phrases, the
phrase structure rules are written.
Grammatical sentences
e.g John ran. (John did run.)
In the above sentence, “John”forms a noun phrase while “run” forms a verb phrase. We use “S”
for a sentence. The sentence above can be expressed as follows:
S → NP and VP
Phrase structure rules = PS rules
In order to accommodate all types of sentences, optional constituents are written inside of
parentheses. For example, articles in noun phrases are optional so we use Art in parenthesis.
The following are examples of Noun phrases:
Pens, the pens, the pens of steel
A noun phrase consists of a noun, an article and a prepositional phrase. Article and PP are
optional.
NP → (Art) N (PP)
A noun phrase can consist of a plural noun, a proper noun, or Art common noun etc.
1. plural noun → pens
2. article + noun → a pen, the pen
3. article + adjective + noun → a new baby.
4. article + quantifier + noun
5. article + noun + prepositional phrase
So we write:
NP → (Art) (Quant) (Adj) N (PP)

Verb phrases
1. intransitive verb (run, rise, weep): VP→ V
John runs. Jane weeps. The sun rises.
2. transitive verb + NP (take, buy): VP→ V NP
Julia drank beer. John took the test.
3. ditransitive verb + NP + NP (give, show):
VP → NP NP
e.g John gave her a necklace.
He showed Tom the picture of his family.
4. transitive verb + NP + PP: VP → V NP PP
The waiter put the glasses on the table.
VP → V (NP) (NP) (PP)
Lexical Rules
Phrase structure rules generate structures. For those structures to be recognizable in English,
we also need lexical rules that specify which words can be used when we rewrite constituents
such as N. The first rule in the following set states that “a proper noun rewrites as Rita or Tim”.
PN → {Rita, Tim} V→ {chased, read, saw}
N→ {girl, rabbit, boy, dog} Adj → {cute, small, crazy}
Art → {a, the} Prep→ {near, with}
Pro→ {it, you} Adv→ {recently, yesterday}

We can rely on these rules to generate the grammatical sentences 1–7 below, but not the
ungrammatical sentences 8–10.
1 The man chased the cat.
2 A boy helped the dog.
3 You saw it yesterday.
4 Rita loved Tim.
5 Rita saw a rabbit.
6 The cute rabbit saw Mary.
7 The small boy saw George with a crazy dog recently.
8 * You it saw recently.
9 * Mary helped boy.
10 * Followed the dog.
As a way of visualizing how the phrase structure rules form the basis of these sentences, we can
draw the tree diagram for sentence 7.

The very small set of phrase structure rules and lexical rules just described is a sample of what
might become a more complex phrase structure grammar of English, with many more parts.
However, we have still to incorporate recursion.
Back To Recursion
The simple phrase structure rules listed earlier have no recursive elements. Each time we start
to create an S, we only create a single S (sentence structure). We should be able to include
sentence structures within other sentence structures. These ‘sentence structures’ are described
as ‘clauses’ in grammar.
My mum noticed that I was talking to someone on the phone.
I was talking to someone on the phone is a sentence. We can put this sentence inside another
sentence beginning My mum noticed that [I was talking to someone on the phone.]
Being once more recursive, we can put this sentence inside another sentence beginning Dad
thought [my mum noticed that [I was talking to someone on the phone.]
In these sentences, two new proper nouns and two new verbs have been used. We have to expand
our earlier set of lexical rules to include PN => {dad, mum} and V => {thought, noticed}. After
verbs such as thought and noticed, as in these examples, the word that introduces a ‘complement
phrase’.
I was talking to someone on the phone.
My mum noticed that I was talking to someone on the phone.
Dad thought my mum noticed that I was talking to someone on the phone.

Complement Phrases
ask → noun phrase
Sam asked the price of the antique lamp.
ask → indirect object direct object
Jane asked him his name.
ask → wh-clause
Jane asked where John parked his car.
ask → that –clause
Andy asked that his friend sweep the room.
The word that, as used in these examples, is called a complementizer (C). The role of that
as a complementizer is to introduce a complement phrase (CP). For example, in the second
sentence (my mum noticed ... ), we can identify one CP which contains that plus I was talking
to someone on the phone.

Transformantional Rules
These are rules which will change or move constituents in the structures derived from the
phrase structure rules.
e.g Recently Rita saw Tim.
Rita saw Tim recently.
For this type of rule, we have to specify which type of constituent can be moved in this way, as
well as from where to where. It can be illustrated as follows.
Adv NP VP
V NP
Recently Rita saw Tim.
NP VP
V NP Adv

We also use transformational rule to derive English question structures as follows:
You will marry me.
Will you marry me?
To describe this process, the phrase structure rule needs to be expanded to include and auxiliary
verb (Aux) such as will as part of the sentence.
NP Aux VP
Pro V NP
You will marry me
Aux NP VP
Pro V NP
PN
Will you marry me
There are many other rules and concepts involved in the analysis of syntax.

Summary
In this Unit you have been introduced to syntax and some of the fundamental devices
involved in the analysis of sentence formation. These devices are of different types,
e.g, phrase structure rules that determine the architecture of the deep structure
of a sentence. You have seen how these devices make up an important part of our
overall linguistic competence in that they provide the means to combine words into
sentences in a number of ways.
Activity
1) Read the passage below and identify the parts of speech that have been
underlined.
It was a beautiful spring day, but Vanessa was just standing outside looking
sad. She and her family had just moved into a new neighborhood and Vanessa
hadn’t made very many new friends yet. However, she had made one friend,
Leo. He was her next door neighbour and also attended Vanessa’s school.
They’d been friends for as long as they could both remember. When Leo saw
Vanessa just standing there, he went over to her and said, “What’s wrong
Vanessa?”
2) How can syntax be helpful while teaching or learning a second language?
3) Explain what is meant by ‘transformational rules’. Support your answer with

examples.
4) How are tree diagrams important?
5) Draw tree diagrams for the following:
(i) A linguist discovered the answer.
(ii) This module about linguistics interests the students.

UNIT 6 SEMANTICS
Overview
In this Unit you will be introduced to semantics which refers to the analysis of meaning in
human language.
Objectives:
1) define semantics
2) explain the difference between conceptual and associative meaning
3) analyse meaning in terms of semantic features
4) explain lexical relations
Introduction
The study of sound patterns, morphological structure and syntactic organization focuses on the
form of utterances. However, there is more to language than just the form. For language to fulfill
its communicative function, utterances must convey a message and must have content. This
message or content in utterances carries meaning. Semantics refers to the analysis of meaning
in human language.
What is semantics?
The term, ‘semantics’, is taken from the Greek seme, meaning sign. The word meaning can
be defined in many ways, but the definition most pertinent to linguistics is that meaning is “the
function of signs in language.”

Look at the following sentences:
1) John saw the thieves with binoculars.
2) The pen is mightier than the sword.
3) The lady cannot bear kids.
4) After working on this unit I lost my strength.
5) Mike opened the door with the key. The key opened the door. The door
opened.
6) The restaurant forbids animals.
7) The Afghans who were terrorists did not like to talk.
8) The Afghans, who were terrorists, did not like to talk.
9) The puppy can smell better than we can, but he usually smells worse.
10) Language without meaning is meaningless.
Discuss what is meant by each of these examples while considering the following
definitions.
Note:
Semantics- The study of meaning words, phrases and sentences
Pragmatics- linguistic and physical context/speaker’s intended meaning/how

meaning is inferred from context
Definition of semantics
1) Semantics is the study of meaning in language.
2) Semantics can be defined as “the study of the meaning of morphemes,
words, phrases and sentences.”
Did you know:
The Greek philosophers were the first people known to have debated the nature of
meaning. They held two opposing views on the subject.

The Naturalist View
The naturalist view, held by Plato and his followers, maintained that there was an intrinsic
motivation between a word and its meaning. The meaning of a word flows directly from
its sound. The Greek word thalassa, sea, in its classical pronunciation, supposedly sounded
like the waves rushing up onto the beach. If the naturalist view was entirely correct for all
words, we would be able to tell the meaning of any word just by hearing it. However, only a few
onomatopoeic words in each language actually sound something like what they mean:
e.g buzz, swoosh, splash, bow wow, meow
Activity
Read the following poem and identify the onomatopoeic words.
Poets can skillfully use words with sound features that heighten the meaning in-
tended:
Running Water
water plops into pond
splish-splash downhill
warbling magpies in tree
trilling, melodic thrill
whoosh, passing breeze
flags flutter and flap
frog croaks, bird whistles
babbling bubbles from tap
Discuss how the words make meaning self-evident.
Try and imitate the sounds.
Poetic sound imagery represents a rare, highly clever use of language, therefore, the naturalist
approach is applicable to only a tiny portion of any language.

The Conventionalist View
The conventionalist view of Aristotle and his followers holds that the connection between
sound and meaning is completely arbitrary, a matter of social convention and prior
agreement between speakers. It is true that the form of most words is arbitrary from an
extra-linguistic point of view. This position is much nearer the truth.
However, the form of a word may be motivated by the forms of other words in a language.
That is, although a word’s meaning is arbitrary from the point of view of the real world,
it is often somehow motivated by the system of the language it is a part of. Since words
often originate from other words, a word very often has some historical reason for being
the shape it is. Sometimes the origin (or etymology) of a word is completely transparent,
as in the case of unknown from known, or discomfort from comfort. At other times the origin
of a word is less immediately obvious but nevertheless present in the form of a word, as in the
case of acorn = oak + orn.
Meaning And Concept
Philologists (people who study language as well as anything created with language) often
make a distinction between meaning and concept.
Note:
Concept refers to the totality of real world knowledge about an item, while meaning is a category
of language.
It is possible to know the meaning of the word without knowing everything about the
concept referred to by that meaning.
e.g diamond : The chemical composition of the stone is not really that important to understand
its meaning. We know that the word diamond means a type of gemstone without understanding
the full concept associated with that gemstone in the real world.
Sometimes, however, meaning and concept cannot be so easily differentiated. For instance, the
meaning of many abstract words completely parallels the concept they refer to, as with the word
tradition and the concept “tradition.” It is arguable that one cannot know the meaning of the
word “tradition” without understanding the concept “tradition.”

Sense And Reference
Linguists have a second way of looking at the distinction between linguistic and real-world
knowledge. They often discuss the difference between a word’s sense and its reference.
Note:
A word’s sense is how the word relates to other words in a language; it’s reference
is how it relates to real world concepts.
The French word mouton refers to a sheep as well as to the meat of the animal as used for food
(the sense of the word combines two references). In English we have two separate words for
each extra-linguistic reference. The sense of the English word sheep is limited by the presence
of the word mutton in English.
The distinction between a word’s sense and its reference, or between linguistic meaning and
real-world concept--difficult though this distinction may be to draw in many cases--is useful in
comparing semantic categories across languages. Languages may divide the same set of real-
world concepts in very different ways.
Conceptual And Associative Meaning
Conceptual meaning (sometimes called ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning) is widely assumed

to be the central factor in linguistic communication. It refers to the literal use of the word.
However, different people might have different associations or connotations associated with a
word, hence giving the word an associative meaning.
When linguists investigate the meaning of words they are more interested in characterizing
the conceptual meaning and are less interested in the associative or stylistic meaning of
words. Linguists are interested in the basic essential components of meaning which are
conveyed by the literal use of the word.

Consider the word ‘needle’
(i) Needle→ sharp, pointed object used for stitching (literal or conceptual
meaning)
(ii) Needle → can mean pain (associative meaning)
Think about what you associate the following words with:
rose, snake, pig, white
Note:
- Such associations may differ from one person to the other.
- Poets, novelists, advertisers and lovers may be interested in using words in such
a way that certain associative meanings are evoked and literary critics often
write about this language use.
Semantic Features
There are different ways of analyzing meaning. One way of doing so is through the use of
semantic features.
Identify what’s odd about the following sentences:
The rounder ate the boy.
The chair watches TV.
The cat is reading the book.
The cockroach which was wearing sunglasses boogied on the floor.
NOTE:
Syntactically these sentences are perfect. However, they are semantically odd. We
need to identify the source of the problem.

Analysing meaning in terms of semantic features
To describe the meaning of words, plus (+) or minus (-) a particular feature can be used.
Consider the following examples of the basic elements involved in differentiating meaning
of words:
+ animate → denotes an animate being (e.g man) or - animate → does not denote an
animate being (e.g rounder)
+ human or - human
+ female or - female
e.g the semantic features of ‘boy’ → +animate, +human, +male
The following table shows analysis of semantic features.
chair Girl man puppy

Animate - + + +
Human - + + -
Female - + - +/-
Adult - - + -
Semantic features are helpful to show us which sentences are odd, not correct, logical or
not logixcal in the English language.
Let’s use semantic features to analyse the following sentence:
My cat studies linguistics.
This approach gives us the ability to predict which noun makes this sentence
semantically odd. Cat does not have the required feature (+human) for it to appear
as the subject of the verb, supplementing the syntactic analysis with semantic
features.

SEMANTIC ROLES
Rather than looking at words as ‘containers’ of meaning, we can look at the ‘roles’ they
fulfill within the situation described by the sentence. If the situation is a simple event, as
in The teacher wiped the board, then the verb describes an action (wiped). The noun phrases in
the sentence describe the roles of the entities, such as people and things involved in the action.
We can identify a small number of semantic roles (also called thematic roles) for these noun
phrases.
Agent And Theme
In the example sentence, one role is taken by the noun phrase The teacher as the entity that
performs the action, technically known as the agent. Another role is taken by the board as the
entity that is involved in or affected by the action, which is called the theme.
Lexical Relations
Words can be treated as ‘containers’ of meaning or as fulfilling ‘roles’ in events, they can
also have relationships with each other. In everyday talk, we often explain the meaning of
words in terms of their relationships.
Let’s explain the meaning of the following words:
Conceal = the same as hide
Shallow= the opposite of deep
Chrysanthemum= a kind of flower
In doing so, we are characterizing the meaning of each word, not in terms of its component
features, but in terms of its relationship to other words. This approach is used in the semantic
description of language and is treated as the analysis of lexical relations.
Note the lexical relations:
Synonymy → conceal/hide
Antonymy →shallow/deep
Hyponymy →chrysanthemum/flower

Synonymy
The term synonymy refers to sameness of meaning. Synonyms are words which have the
same or nearly the same meaning. They can often but not always substitute each other
in sentences. Common examples of synonyms are: beautiful/pretty, cab/taxi, buy/purchase,
almost/nearly.
However, there are no perfect synonyms, that is, no two words ever have exactly the same
meaning. There are many situations where one word is appropriate in a sentence but its synonym
would be odd.
e.g The student had only one correct answer for the test. Here, the word reply cannot replace
the word answer and would sound odd.
Antonymy
Two forms with opposite meanings are called antonyms. Some common pairs are: alive/
dead, man/woman, happy/sad, hot/cold, married/single.
Importance of antonymy
Antonymy is a key feature of everyday life. Should further evidence be required,

try visiting a public lavatory without checking which is the ‘gents’ and which is the
‘ladies.’ On your way out, ignore the instructions which tell you whether to ‘push’
or ‘pull’ the door. And once outside, pay no attention to whether traffic lights are
telling you to ‘stop’ or ‘go.’ At best, you will end up looking very foolish; at worst,
you will end up dead.
Antonyms are usually divided into two main types:
 gradable – opposites along a scale
 non-gradable – direct opposites
Gradable antonyms, such as big / small, can be used in comparative constructions like I’m
bigger than you and A pony is smaller than a horse.
The negative of one member of a gradable pair does not necessarily imply the other. For
example, the sentence My car isn’t old does not necessarily mean My car is new.

With non-gradable antonyms (also called ‘complementary pairs’), comparative constructions
are not normally used. We don’t typically describe someone as deader or more dead than another.
The negative of one member of a non-gradable pair does imply the other member. That is, My
grandparents aren’t alive does indeed mean My grandparents are dead.
Although we can use the ‘negative test’ to identify non-gradable antonyms in a language, we
usually avoid describing one member of an antonymous pair as the negative of the other.
 For example, while undress can be treated as the opposite of dress, it does not mean
‘not dress’. It actually means ‘do the reverse of dress’. Antonyms of this type are called
reversives.
Hyponymy
When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, the relationship is
described as hyponymy.
Examples are the pairs: animal / dog, dog / poodle, vegetable / carrot, flower / rose, tree /
banyan.
The concept of ‘inclusion’ involved in this relationship is the idea that if an object is a rose, then
it is necessarily a flower, so the meaning of flower is included in the meaning of rose. Or rose
is a hyponym of flower.
When we consider hyponymous connections, we are essentially looking at the meaning of

words in some type of hierarchical relationship.
We can represent the relationships between a set of words as a hierarchical diagram as follows:
living things
creature plant
animal insect vegetable flower tree
horse dog snake cockroach ant carrot daffodil banyan pine
asp

From this diagram, we can say that horse is a hyponym of animal or that ant is a hyponym of
insect. We can also say that two or more terms which share the same superordinate (higher-up)
term are co-hyponyms. So, horse and dog are co-hyponyms, and the superordinate term is
animal.
The relation of hyponymy captures the idea of ‘is a kind of ‘, as when you give the meaning
of a word by saying “an asp is a kind of snake”. It is often the case that the only thing some
people know about the meaning of a word in their language is that it is a hyponym of another
term. That is, you may know nothing more about the meaning of asp other than that it is a kind
of snake.
Prototypes
The concept of a prototype helps explain the meaning of certain words like bird, not in terms of
component features (e.g. ‘has feathers’, ‘has wings’), but in terms of resemblance to the clearest
example.
While words like canary, cormorant, dove, duck, flamingo, parrot, pelican and robin are all
equally co-hyponyms of the super-ordinate bird, they are not all considered to be equally good
examples of the category ‘bird’.
According to some researchers, the most characteristic instance of the category ‘bird’ is robin.
Thus, even native speakers of English might wonder if ostrich or penguin should be hyponyms
of bird (technically they are), but have no trouble deciding about sparrow or pigeon. These last
two are much closer to the prototype.
Homophones And Homonyms
When two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation, they are described as
homophones. Common examples are bare / bear, meat / meet, flour / flower, pail / pale, right /
write, sew / so and to / too / two. We use the term homonyms when one form (written or spoken)
has two or more unrelated meanings, as in these examples:
Bat (flying creature) – bat (used in sports)
mole (on skin) – mole (small animal)
pupil (at school) – pupil (in the eye)
race (contest of speed) – race (ethnic group)

Consider the example of the word ‘bank’.
e.g bank ( of a river) – bank (financial institution)
The temptation is to think that the two types of bank must be related in meaning. They are not.
Homonyms are words that have separate histories and meanings, but have accidentally come to
have exactly the same form.
Polysemy
When we encounter two or more words with the same form and related meanings, we have what
is technically known as polysemy. Polysemy can be defined as one form (written or spoken)
having multiple meanings that are all related by extension. Examples are the word head, used to
refer to the object on top of your body, on top of a glass of beer, person at the top of a company
or department and many other things.
Other examples of polysemy are foot (of person, of bed, of mountain) or run (person does,
water does, colours do).
If we are not sure whether different uses of a single word are examples of homonymy or polysemy,
we can check in a dictionary. If the word has multiple meanings (i.e. it is polysemous), then
there will be a single entry, with a numbered list of the different meanings of the word.
If the two words are treated as homonyms, they will typically have two separate entries.
It is possible for two forms to be distinguished via homonymy and for one of the forms also to
have uses via polysemy.
The words date (= a thing we eat) and date (= a point in time) are homonyms.
Date (= a point in time) is polysemous in terms of a particular day and month (= on a letter), an
arranged meeting time (= an appointment), a social meeting (= with someone we like), and even
a person (= that person we like).

Metonymy
A type of relationship based on a close connection in everyday experience, which can be based
on:
 container-contents relation (bottle / water, can / juice)
 whole-part relation (car / wheels, house / roof)
 representative-symbol relationship (king / crown, the President / White House)

Using one of these words to refer to the other is an example of metonymy.
It is our familiarity with metonymy that makes it possible for us to understand He drank the
whole bottle although it sounds absurd literally (i.e. he drank the liquid, not the glass object).
We also accept The White House has announced… or Downing Street protested… without being
puzzled that buildings appear to be talking.
Many examples of metonymy are highly conventionalized and easy to interpret. However, other
examples depend on an ability to infer what the speaker has in mind. Examples include:
Get your butt over here.
The strings are too quiet.
I prefer cable.
Making sense of such expressions often depends on context, background knowledge and
inference.
Collocation
We know that some words tend to occur with other words. If you ask a thousand people what
they think of when you say hammer, more than half will say nail. If you say table, they will
mostly say chair, and butter elicits bread, needle elicits thread and salt elicits pepper.
One way we seem to organize our knowledge of words is simply on the basis of collocation, or
frequently occurring together.

Summary
In this Unit you have been introduced to semantics. You have been explained how to
analyse words in terms of their semantic features. Lexical relations have also been
explained lengthily in this Unit.
Activity
1) Differentiate between conceptual and associative meaning. Support your

answer with an example.
2) Explain how words can be analysed in terms of semantic features.
3) Explain the different lexical relations, using examples.
4) How can antonymy be important is everyday life?
5) How can homophones and homonyms create confusions in the minds of

those learning English as a second language?

UNIT 7 PRAGMATICS
Overview
In this Unit, you will be introduced to pragmatics and its main concern. While in Unit 6, you were
introduced to semantics as being related to meaning, in Unit 7 you will learn about pragmatics
as being related to use or performance in language.
Objectives:
At the end of the Unit, you should be able to:
1) know what is pragmatics and its main concern;
2) demonstrate a general idea about context and the notions of deixis, reference and anaphora;
3) explain the Speech Act theory, and Politeness Principles in Conversation.
Introduction
Pragmatics is the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker and interpreted

by a listener. It has more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterance than
what the words or phrases mean by themselves.
Definition of Pragmatics
 The study of language in use.
 The study of meaning in context.
 The study of speakers’ meaning,
utterance meaning,
& contextual meaning.

Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning:
• what do people mean in a particular context and how the context influences what is
said
• consideration of how speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who
they are talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances
Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning:

• how can listeners make inferences about what is said in order to arrive at an interpretation
of the speaker’s intended meaning?
•how can what is unsaid be recognized as part of what is communicated?
Pragmatics is the study of how more is communicated than is said:

• what determines the choice of what is being said or unsaid?
• decision based on the assumption of how distant the listener is (physical, social or
conceptual closeness implies shared experience)
Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance:

Pragmatics is the study of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful
communication. It studies the following topics: deixis, speech acts, indirect language,
conversation, politeness, cross-cultural communication, and presupposition.
Pragmatics is the study of speaker meaning, contextual meaning, how more gets communicated
than is said, the expression of relative distance.
What are your views about the following?
Think over: Meaning’s meaning
He meant to write.
A green light means go.
Health means everything.
What’s the meaning of life?
What does it mean to you?
What does ‘ghost’ mean?

Semanticists take meaning to be an inherent property of language, pragmatics regard meaning
as something that is realized in the course of communication.
Pragmatics is concerned with the interpretation of linguistic meaning in context. It is the study
of how speakers of a language use sentences to effect successful communication.
Invisible Meaning
Pragmatics is the study of invisible meaning, that is how to recognize, the underlined meanings
which are not apparently said or written.
For example, an advertisement shows the following words:
HEATED
ATTENDANT
PARKING
From the apparent meaning different interpretations can be assumed like:
You take an attendant, you heat him up, and this is the place where you can park him.
Another assumption may be like this:
It is a place where parking will be carried out by attendants who have been heated.
Despite these interpretations on the basis of apparent meanings, we would normally

understand that you can park your car in this place, that is heated area and that there will
be an attendant to look after the car.
These meanings have been inferred by taking into account the context and combination of the
words used by the speaker or writer.
In fact pragmatics is the study of investigation of such assumptions and expectations which
provide us with the insights into how more gets communicated than is said.

Context
• Linguistic context ( co-text)
• Physical context
Linguistic Context
It refers to the set of other words used in the same phrase or sentence. This surrounding co-text
has a strong effect on what we think the words mean.
The word Bank is a homonym, a form with more than one meaning. We know about the actual
meaning of this word on the basis of linguistic context.
If the word “ bank “ is used in a sentence together with words like steep or overgrown, we have
no problem deciding which type of bank is meant. Similarly when we hear someone say that
she has to get to the bank to cash a cheque, we know from the linguistic context which type of
bank is intended.
Physical Context
Physical context (time and place in which we encounter linguistic expression) plays a vital role
in making us understand much of what we read or hear.
For example, if we see the word BANK on the wall of a building in a city, the physical location
will influence our interpretation. So we know what words mean on the basis of another type of
context i.e Physical context.
Deixis
It is a Greek word which means “pointing” via language.
Certain words like here, there, this, that, now , then, yesterday as well as most pronouns such
as I , you, him, her , them can only be understood if we know about the context in which they
are used.
For example, the sentence, “You’ll have to sort that out again tomorrow, because he isn’t here”,
out of the context, will be quite unintelligible because this sentence contain a large number of
certain expressions (Deixis) which depend, for their interpretation, on the immediate physical
context in which they are uttered.

Types of Deixis
PERSON DEIXIS: Any expression used to point to a person ( me, you, him, them) is an
example of PERSON DEIXIS.
PLACE DEIXIS: Words used to point to a location (here, there) are examples of place Deixis.
TIME DEIXIS: The expression used to point to a time (now, then, tonight, last week, yesterday)
are examples of TIME DEIXIS.
All these expressions have to be interpreted in terms what person, place or time the speaker has
in mind. There is broad distinction between what is marked as distant (that ,there, then). It is
also possible to mark whether the movement is happening towards the speaker’s location (come)
or away from speaker’s location (go). If you are looking for someone and he or she appears
moving towards you, you tend to say: “Here she Comes!” If, however, she/he is moving away
from you in the distance, you are more likely to say “There she goes!”
Did you know?
Deixis can be used to have fun.

e.g The bar owner who puts up a big sign that reads “Free Beer Tomorrow” ( to
get you to return to his bar) can always claim that you are one day too early for the
drink.
Reference
This refers to the words we use to identify things are in some direct relationship to those things.
In discussing deixis we assumed that the use of words to refer to people and things was a simple
matter. However, words themselves don’t refer to anything.
Inference
Inference is an additional information used by the listeners to connect what is said to what must
be meant. If you are studying linguistics, you might ask someone, Where is your Yule? And
get the response, It is sitting on the shelf. We can use names associated with things to refer to
people and use names of people to refer to things.

Discussion
Do you understand these?
Picasso is in the museum.
I saw Shakespeare in London.
I enjoy listening to Mozart.
Anaphora
Anaphora is a subsequent reference to an already introduced entity. Mostly we use anaphora

in a text to maintain reference. When we establish a referent (e.g. Can I borrow your book?)
and subsequently referee to the same object (Yeah, it’s on the table), we have particular kind
of referential relationship between book and it. The second (and any subsequent) referring
expression is an example of anaphora and the first mentioned is called the “antecedent”.
As with other types of reference, the connection between referent and anaphora may not
always be direct. For example, in a complaint “I was waiting for the bus, but he just drove by
without stopping”, notice that the antecedent is bus and the anaphoric expression is “ he” we
would normally expect it to be used for a bus. Obviously there is an inference involved here:
if someone is talking about a bus in motion, assume that there is a driver. That assumed driver
is the inferred referent for “he” .The term “inference” has been used here to describe what the
listener or reader does.
Presupposition
What a speaker assumes as true or is known by the hearer can be described as presupposition.
When a speaker uses referring expressions like this, he or Shakespeare in normal

circumstances, she/he is working with an assumption that the hearer knows which referent
is intended. In a more general way, speakers continuously design their linguistic messages
on the basis of assumptions about what the hearer already knows. These assumptions may be
mistaken of course, but they underlie much of what we say in the everyday use of language.
For example, if someone tells you “Your brother is waiting outside for you”, there is an obvious
supposition that you have a brother.

Speech Acts
Speech acts are the ways through which we interpret meanings and use actions to convey the
meanings, such as, requesting, commanding, questioning and informing. It is typically the case
that we use the following linguistic forms with the following functions:
• Did you drink milk? Question
• Shut the door (please). Imperative
• The earth is round. Declarative
When a form such as: Did he…………? Are they………? Or Can you………? is used to ask
a question, it is described as Direct speech act.
When a speaker does not know something and asks the hearer to provide the information, he or
she typically produces a direct speech act of the following type:
Can you drive a car?
If we compare this utterance with: Can you pass the salt? In this second example, we would
not usually understand the utterance as a question about our ability to do something. In fact we
would not treat this as a question at all. We would treat it as a request and perform the action
requested, yet this request has been presented in the syntactic form usually associated with the
question. Such an example is described as indirect Speech Act. Whenever one of the forms in
the set above is used to perform a function other than the one listed beside it (on the same line)
the result is an indirect speech act.
The crucial distinction in the use of these two types of speech acts is based on the fact that
indirect commands or requests are simply considered more polite and are based on some
complex social assumptions.
Politeness
Politeness refers to ideas like being tactful, modest and nice to other people. There are several
ways to think of politeness. These might involve ideas like being tactful, modest and nice to the
other people. In the study of linguistic politeness the most relevant concept is ‘face’. Your face
in pragmatics is your public self image. This is the emotional and social sense of self that every
person has and expects everyone else to recognize.

Learn to be polite
Could you please drop me home?
May I go out please?
Face Threatening Act
If someone says something that represents a threat to another person’s self image that is called
a face threatening act. For example, if you use a direct speech act to order someone to do
something, for example, Give me the money! You are acting as if you have more social power
then you are performing a face threatening act.
Face Saving Act
An indirect speech act in the form of a question, for example, Could you hand me the money
please? removes the assumption of social power . You appear to be asking about ability. This
makes your request less threatening to other person’s sense of self. Whenever you say something
that lessens the possible threat to another’s face it is called a face saving act. You have both a
negative face and positive face.
Negative Face
In negative face speech act there is the need to be independent and to have freedom from
imposition. Thus a face saving act that emphasizes a person’s negative face will show concern
about impression.
For example, I’m sorry to bother you……
I know you are busy but…………………..

Positive Face
Your positive face is your need to be connected to belong, to be a member of the group. A face
saving act that emphasizes a person’s positive face will show solidarity and draw attention to a
common goal. For example, Let us do this together ……………….
You and I have the same problem, so ……………..
Ideas about the appropriate language to mark politeness differ substantially from one culture
to the next. If you have grown up in a culture that has directness as a valued way of showing
solidarity and you use direct speech acts (Pour me some coffee) to people whose culture is more
oriented to indirectness and avoiding direct imposition, then you will be considered impolite.
You in turn may think of others as vague and unsure of what they want. In either case it is the
pragmatics that is misunderstood and unfortunately much more will be communicated than is
said.
What is your view on this?
When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;
When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;
When he says no, he is not a diplomat.
When a lady says no, she means ‘perhaps’;
When she says perhaps, she means ‘yes’;
When she says yes, she is not a lady.
Voltaire (Quoted, in Spanish, in Escandell 1993.)
Summary
1) In this Unit, you have been introduced to pragmatics and its main concern.
You have also been introduced to the idea of context and the notions of deixis,
reference and anaphora and to the Speech Act theory, and Politeness Principles
in Conversation.

Activity
1) What kind of deictic expressions are used in this utterance?
He is taken up right now so you need to go. Come back after a while.
2) What are the anaphoric expressions in this sentence?
The lover told his girlfriend that he was deeply in love with her and that if she
is agreeable he can arrange for them to get married soon.
3) What kind of inference is involved in interpreting each of the following

utterances?
(i) You can take my Chaucer and give it back to me tomorrow.
(ii) The twelve thirty canceled and so the doctor had an early lunch.
(iii) The fried noodles left after paying.
(iv) The hernia in room 3 was calling the doctor but he had already left.
4) What is one presupposition of a speaker who says:
(i) Why are you always late?
(ii) Is that your car?
(iii) Are you very busy at the moment?
(iv) Why didn’t you bring your husband along?
5) Give 3 examples of speech acts for each of the following where the speaker
is :
(i) Appealing to positive face.
(ii) Appealing to negative face.

Suggested answers
Unit 1:
1) Why is it difficult to accept one definition of language? Discuss a few definitions
provided in this Unit.
All the definitions of language seem to be limited in some way and do not capture all the
functions that language performs. There is no clear, concise and well accepted definition
of language.
Definitions
Bloch and Trager (1942): “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of
which a social group co-operates”. This definition makes no appeal to the communicative
function of language but instead puts all the emphasis on its social function.
Noam Chomsky(1957): “Language is a set of finite number sentences, each finite in length
and constructed out of a finite set of elements.” This definition does not claim that in some
form or the other the speaker has internalised rules of sentence construction and that he
has tacit or unconscious knowledge of grammatical rules. According to the Egyptians,
the god Thoth was the creator or speech. Similarly, in the Hindu tradition, our unique
language ability is given Sarasvati, the wife of Bramha who created the Universe.
Sapir, E (1921): “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating

ideas,
emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.” Much more is communicated
by language than merely ‘ideas’ , ‘emotion’ and ‘desire’. There are also other means of
expression and not just ‘produced symbols’ e.g gestures, postures, eye-gaze etc.

2) How are religions accountable for the belief that the origin of language is the divine
source?
In most religions, there seems to be a divine source who provides human beings with
language. According to the Judeo-Christian beliefs, in the Bible, God created Adam and
gave him the power to name all things. According to the Egyptians, the god Thoth was the
creator or speech. Similarly, in the Hindu tradition, our unique language ability is given
Sarasvati, the wife of Bramha who created the Universe.
3) What does the ‘bow-wow’ theory of language origin suggest?
This theory is supported by the fact that all modern languages have some words whose
pronunciations seem to echo naturally occurring sounds (e.g cuckoo, splash, bang, boom,
buzz, rattle…..). It suggests that the first human languages developed as onomatopoeia,
imitations of natural sounds.
4) What special features of human teeth make them useful for the production of speech
sounds?
Human teeth are upright, not slanting like those of apes, and they are roughly even in
height. Such characteristics are adapted for grinding and chewing as opposed to ripping
or tearing food. They are helpful in making sounds such as ‘f’ and ‘v’.
5) Where is the pharynx situated and how did it become an important of human sound
production?
The pharynx is above the vocal cords. It acts as a resonator for increased range and clarity
of the sounds produced via the larynx.
6) Referring to the innateness theory, explain why it would support the idea that young
deaf children become fluent in sign language.
Human beings are born with a special capacity for language. This innate capability to
communicate explains the fact that deaf children are able to communicate through sign
language. If these deaf children do not develop speech first, then their language ability
would not seem to depend on physical adaptations of the teeth and larynx, etc, that are
involved in speaking.

Unit 2:
1) What is meant by the term cognate? Explain with references from specific languages.
A cognate of a word in one language (e.g English) is a word in another language (e.g
German) that has similar form and is or was used with a similar meaning. The English
words mother, father and friend are cognates of the German words mutter, vater and freund.
2) What does the Indo-European family tree suggest?
The ‘Indo-European’ family tree was suggests that there is a common ancestor for a
number of languages. It suggests that diverse languages are related.
3) What gave rise to Old English?
The primary sources for what developed as the English Language were the Germanic
languages spoken by a group of tribes from Northern Europe who moved into the British
Isles in the fifth century. These tribes constituted of the Angles, Saxons and the Jutes. It
is from the first tribe that we get the word for their language Englisc for their new home
Engla-land. From this is early version of Englisc, evolved Old English.
4) How did French influence the development of Old English to Middle English.
The arrival of the Norman French in England, following their victory in Hastings under
William the Conqueror in 1066, marked the end of Old English and the beginning of
the Middle English period. The French speaking invaders became the ruling class. As a
result, the language of the nobility, the government, the law and civilized life in England
for the next two hundred years was French. French is the source of words like army, court,
defense, faith, prison and tax. Often both the French word and its English equivalent were
kept, sometimes with varying shades of meaning, and this has tended to make English
vocabulary rich and varied.

5) Explain, with examples, what is meant by:
(i) Sound changes
Many sounds disappeared from the pronunciation of certain words from Middle to
Modern English, for example, the ‘silent letters’ of contemporary English. Consider the
words, knee and gnaw. Word-initial velar [k] and [g] are no longer pronounced before
nasal [n]. But the two words are still written with the remnants of
(ii) Syntactic changes
Old English and Modern English have seen differences in sentence structure involving
word order. The structure commonly found in both Old English and Modern English is
Subject-verb-object. However Old English had a number of different orders which are no
longer used.
e.g fērde he (he travelled)
he hine geseah (he saw him)
him man ne sealed (no man gave [any] to him)
(iii) Semantic changes
Semantic changes refer to changes in meaning. Old English fæger ‘fit, suitable’, Modern
English fair came to mean ‘pleasant, enjoyable’ then ‘beautiful’ and ‘pleasant in conduct’,
from which the second modern meaning ‘just, impartial’ derives. The first meaning
continued to develop in the sense of ‘of light complexion’ and a third one arose from
‘pleasant’ in a somewhat pejorative sense, meaning ‘average, mediocre’, e.g. He only got
a fair result in his exam. ‘Gentle’ was borrowed in Middle English in the sense of ‘born
of a good-family, with a higher social standing’. Later the sense ‘courteous’ and then
‘kind, mild in manners’ developed because these qualities were regarded as qualities of
the upper classes.
(iv) Diachronic and synchronic variation
All the changes that marked the evolution of the English language happened gradually
and were probably difficult to discern while they were in progress. Diachronic variation
in language refers to the historical perspective of change through time.
Synchronic variation refers to differences within one language in different places and
among different groups at the same time.

6) and ne sealdest pῡ mē noēfre ãn ticcen
and not gave you me never a kid
‘and you never gave me a kid’
Consider the above example and explain fully what type of change it is.
This is an example of syntactic change which affects grammar in its morphological and
syntactic aspects.
Unit 3:
1) Distinguish between an allophone and a phoneme.
While the phoneme is the abstract unit or sound type (in the mind), there are many
different versions of that sound type regularly produced in actual speech (in the mouth).
We can describe those different versions as phones. Phones are phonetic units and appear
in square brackets. When we have a group of several phones, all of which are versions of
one phoneme, we refer to them as as allophones of that phoneme.
For example, the [t] sound in the word tar is normally pronounced with a stronger puff of
air than is present in the [t] sound in the word star.
The distinction between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one phoneme for
another will result in a word with a different meaning (as well as a different pronunciation),
but substituting allophones only results in a different pronunciation of the same word.
2) What are minimal pairs? Give examples.
Phonemic distinctions in a langauge can be tested via pairs and sets of words. When
two words such pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme,
occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.
e.g feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot
e.g big, pig,rig, fig,dig, wig

3) What is meant by the phonotactics of a language?
Forms such as [fsIg] or [rnIg] do not exist or are unlikely ever to exist. They have been
formed without obeying some constraints on the sequence or position of English phonemes.
Such constraints are called the phonotactics (i.e, permitted arrangement of sounds) in a
language and are obviously part of every speaker’s phonological knowledge.
4) What is the difference between an ‘open’ and a ‘closed’ syllable?
Syllables like me, to or no have an onset, a nucleus nut no coda. They are known as ‘open’
syllables. When a coda is present, as in the syllables up and cup, at or hat, they are called
‘closed’ syllables.
5) Which segments in the pronunciation of the foloowing words are most likely to be
affected by ellision?
(i) family (fam-i-ly/fam-lee)
(ii) telephone (tel-e-phone/ tel-phone)
(iii) chocolate (choc-o-late/choc-lat)
(iv) camera (cam-e-ra/ cam-ra)
Unit 4:
1. How many morphemes are there in the following words?
a. Politic-1
b. Political-2
c. Politically-3
d. Politician-2
e. Politicians-3
f. Politicize-2

2. Underline the functional morphemes in this quote.
If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
3. Add one derivational morpheme to the following words to create a new word. Indicate
the part of speech/word class.
a. perfect –perfection (noun)
b. care-careful/less (adj)
c.confuse-confusion (noun) confused (adj)
4. Add one inflectional morpheme to the following words and explain the type of inflection.
Boy-s, ‘s
Walk-s, ed
Smart-er/est
Teacher-s, ‘s
Take-n
5. Explain the word formation process of the following underlined words.
a. I am not feeling well, so I am going to the doc. (clipping)
b. The CD is not working.(acronym)
c. His favourite singer is Alain Ramanisum. (derivation)
d. The primary school textbooks are being reworked. (compound)
e. They need a wok to prepare the fried noodles. (borrowing)

6. Differentiate with examples between conversion and backformation as word formation
processes.
Backformation= a word of 1 type (usually noun) is reduced to form a word of another type
(usually verb) ex. painter to paint
Same for conversion but main difference is no change in spelling-email to email
Unit 5:
1) Read the passage below and identify the parts of speech that have been underlined.
(i) beautiful= adjective
(ii) but= conjunction
(iii) outside= adverb
(iv) a=article/determiner
(v) Vanesssa= proper noun
(vi) However= connective/conjunction
(vii) Her= pronoun
(viii) school= noun
(ix) remember=verb
(x) There= adverb
2) How can syntax be helpful while teaching or learning a second language?
Learning the syntactic categories needed for using a language is a very important pre-
requisite. Syntactic rules must be acquired and internalized by learners since they are
useful in descriptions of sentences.
3) Explain what is meant by ‘transformational rules’. Support your answer with examples.
These are rules which will change or move constituents in the structures derived from the
phrase structure rules.
e.g Recently Rita saw Tim.
4) How are tree diagrams important?

A tree diagram or structure can be used to create a more explicit representation of
the hierarchical organization of a sentence or structure. It shows explicitly that there
are different levels of analysis and illustrates the hierarchical organization for a whole
sentence.
5) Draw tree diagrams for the following:
(i)
NP VP
Det N V NP
Det P

A linguist discovered the answer
(ii) S

NP VP

Det N V NP
N PP
Det N

P N
This module about linguistcs interests the students

Unit 6:
1) Differentiate between conceptual and associative meaning. Support your answer

with an example.
Conceptual meaning (sometimes called ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning) is widely

assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication. It refers to the literal use
of the word. However, different people might have different associations or connotations
associated with a word, hence giving the word an associative meaning.
Needle→ sharp, pointed object used for stitching (literal or conceptual meaning)
Needle → can mean pain (associative meaning)
2) Explain how words can be analysed in terms of semantic features.
To describe the meaning of words, plus (+) or minus (-) a particular feature can be used.
+ animate → denotes an animate being (e.g man) or - animate → does not denote an
animate being (e.g rounder)
+ human or - human
+ female or - female
e.g the semantic features of boy → +animate, +human, +male
3) Explain the different lexical relations, using examples.
Synonymy refers to sameness of meaning. Synonyms are words which have the same or
nearly the same meaning. They can often but not always substitute each other in sentences.
Common examples of synonyms are: beautiful/pretty, cab/taxi, buy/purchase, almost/nearly.
Antonmy: Two forms with opposite meanings are called antonyms. Some common pairs
are: alive/dead, man/woman, happy/sad, hot/cold, married/single.
Hyponymy: When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, the
relationship is described as hyponymy. Examples are the pairs: animal / dog, dog / poodle,
vegetable / carrot, flower / rose, tree / banyan.

4) How can antonymy be important is everyday life?
Antonymy is a key feature of everyday life. To function in society and in public, it is

important to be able to pay attention and differentiate between signs which indicate
direction or which give instructions. E.g ‘gents’ and ‘ladies’, ‘push’ and ‘pull’, ‘enter’ and
‘exit’.
5) What are homophones and homonyms? How can they create confusions in the
minds of those learning English as a second language?
When two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation, they are
described as homophones. Common examples are bare / bear, meat / meet, flour / flower,
pail / pale, right / write, sew / so and to / too / two. We use the term homonyms when one
form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meanings, as in these examples:
Bat (flying creature) – bat (used in sports)
mole (on skin) – mole (small animal)
pupil (at school) – pupil (in the eye)
race (contest of speed) – race (ethnic group)
Consider the example of the word ‘bank’.
e.g bank ( of a river) – bank (financial institution)
The temptation is to think that the two types of bank must be related in meaning. They
are not. Homonyms are words that have separate histories and meanings, but have
accidentally come to have exactly the same form.
If the meanings and spellings of homophones and if homonyms are used in the wrong
context, it might create confusions in the minds of those learning English as a second
language.

Unit 7:
1) What kind of deictic expressions are used in this utterance?
He is taken up right now so you need to go. Come back after a while.
Person deixis: he, you
Time deixis : now, a while
2) What are the anaphoric expressions in this sentence?
The lover told his girlfriend that he was deeply in love with her and that if she is agreeable he
can arrange for them to get married soon.
The lover: he
The girlfriend: she
3) What kind of inference is involved in interpreting each of the following utterances?
(i) You can take my Chaucer and give it back to me tomorrow. (Chaucer who is the author,
used to refer to this book.)
(ii) The twelve thirty canceled and so the doctor had an early lunch. (It is assumed that the
patient who was supposed to come at twelve thirty canceled the appointment)
(iii) The fried noodles left after paying. (The client who had fried noodles is referred to as
fried noodles since he took the fried noodles)
(iv) The hernia in room 3 was calling the doctor but he had already left. (The hernia is used
to refer to the patient who has hernia.)
4) What is one presupposition of a speaker who says:
(i) Why are you always late? (that the person being addressed is never on time)
(ii) Is that your car? (that the person has a car)
(iii) Are you very busy at the moment? (that the person is not free)
(iv) Why didn’t you bring your husband along? (that the person is married and is
somebody’s wife)

5) Give 3 examples of speech acts for each of the following where the speaker is :
(i) Appealing to positive face.
Let us do this together as….
You and I have the same problem,….
If we remain united,…..
(ii) Appealing to negative face.
I am sorry to bother you…
I know you are busy but….
I am sure you do not care so…..

References
Bloch, B. &Trager, G.L. (1942), Outile of Linguistic Analysis, Baltimore, Linguistic Society
of America.
Chomsky, N. (1957), Syntactic Structures, The Hague: Mouton.
Crystal, D. (1971), Linguistics. Penguin Books.
Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R. (1993), An Introduction to Language(Fifth Edition), Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
Halliday, M.A.K. (2003) Introduction: On the ‘architecture’ of human language. In J.J.

Webster (ed.) On Linguistics and Language, Volume 3 in Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday,
1-29. London & New York: Continuum.
Lyons, J. (1977),Semantics Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, J. (1981),Language and Linguistics: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press.
Leech, G. (1981),SemanticsPenguin Books.
Kirby, S. (2007), The Evolution of Language. In Dunbar, R. and Barrett, L., editors, Oxford
Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, pages 669–681. Oxford University Press.
O’Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M., &Aronoff, M. (2001).Contemporary Linguistics, Fourth Edi-

tion. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Radford, A. (2004) English Syntax Cambridge University Press.
Roach, P. (2001) Phonetics Oxford University Press.
Roach, P. (2001) English Phonetics and Phonology (3rd edition) Cambridge
University Press.
Searle, J. R. Chomsky’s Revolution in Linguistics, The New York Review of Books, June 29,
1979 available online on www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19720629.htm
Van Valin, R.D.Jr (2001) An Introduction to Syntax Cambridge University Press.
Yule, G. (2006), The Study of Language, (3rd edition) Cambridge University Press.
Yule, G. (1996) Pragmatics Oxford University Press.

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Copyright: Open University of Mauritius, February 2014

Open University of Mauritius

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

Unit 2: Evolution of the English Language 12

Unit 3: Phonology and Phonetics 22

Unit 4 : Word Formation Processes and Morphology 40

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

At the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

2) Explain the origin of language

3) Explain the evolution of language

4) Differentiate between animal and human communication

Try and answer the following questions:

How do human beings acquire languages?

What are the different functions of language?

Why do human beings talk?

Where do all languages come from? Who invented them?

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 1

Language as a communication system is thought to be fundamentally different from and of

2 Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

Bloch and Trager (1942):

Michael Halliday (2003):

NOTE: THERE SEEMS TO BE NO SINGLE DEFINITION THAT DEFINES

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 3

Is it the need for communication that gave rise to language?

Is ‘Language’ is superior to other tools (non-verbal human communication)?

In what sense is language a complex phenomenon?

4 Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

(But it cannot explain that human language arose simultaneously at many

‘Present language families derive from many original languages.’

3) 5 theories from The Danish Linguist Otto Jespersen(1860-1943):

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 5

The Natural Sound source

6 Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

Why do only human beings and no other species have language?

The Physical Adaptation source

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 7

Did you know?

The Human Brain

The Genetic source

8 Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

But how did language evolve?

As Stephen Jay Gould puts it,

potentials may be spandrels - that is, non-adaptive side consequences of building

a device with such structural complexity”.

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 9

Language Evolution and Memes

10 Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

1) Why is it difficult to accept one definition of language? Discuss a few defini-

3) What does the ‘bow-wow’ theory of language origin suggest?

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 11

At the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

1) Understand the Indo-European family tree.

2) Explain how the English language evolved.

3) Explain how other nations influenced our modern English.

History and change

12 Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics

From this diagram, it is evident that English evolved from Germanic.

The Indo-European Family of Languages

Open University of Mauritius - BA (Hons.) English-Linguistics 13

Spanish French Latin Greek

The similarities between these languages cannot be explained in terms of borrowing.