Linguistics

Jean Aitchison

What is linguistics according to Jean Aitchinson ?

Linguistics can be defined as the systematic study of language - a discipline which

describes language in all its aspects and formulates theories as to how it works.
Language can be defined as the specialized sound signalling system which seems to be
genetically programmed to develop in humans.

Linguistics can also be defined as a scientific study because it follows the scientific
methods that is carried out by any sciences. It means that this investigation is done by
means of control empirical and verifiable observations. The scientific methods follow
important stages: observation, hypothesis, experimentation, a theory which contains
theoretical principles (rules) and specific terminology.

Noam Chomsky states that language is imprinted on human genes. The American
linguists Noam Chomsky believes that the faculty of language is something genetic.
According to him, the human race has a brain programmed to learn how to talk. Any
child, from any culture, learns, relatively quickly how to use language instinctively.
Chomsky also says that trying to teach human language to monkeys is simply nonsense:
monkeys will never learn how to talk because their brains are not genetically programmed
to do so. In this way, language loses all its mystery to become part of human biology.

Write about the Babel Tower and the Nostatrico.

For a very long period of time, it was believed that language diversity was an essential
characteristic of every historical period. However, it seems it was not always like this.
Archeological investigations are helping to decipher that Nostratic (a language that would
be 12.000 years old) would be the language all the other languages derive from.

According to the Bible, during Noah’s ark time shortly afterwards, all of the inhabitants of
the world spoke the same language and used the same words. But one day, those men
decided to build a gigantic tower. What those men did not bear in mind was the fact that
they were committing one of the most terrible sins: pride. The creator’s punishment was
almos immediate, so he decided to confuse the sinner’s languages so that none of them
could understand each other.

The tower of Babel is considered a metaphor of the incomprehensibility that the human
beings are condemned to suffer. From an strictly scientific point of view, a few people
dare to believe that just one single language was ever spoken in the whole world.
Professor Alexis Romer, a distinguished linguist assures that Nostratic, the most antique
language, is the one from which all the other languages are derived. ‘Nostratic’ comes
from the Russian and means ‘our language’. The term was coined by soviet investigators
with the purpose of naming a language which would have been spoken approximately
12.000 years ago. Today, a large number of linguists believe that all languages derive
from an unique language which was extinguished thousands of years ago.

Write about productivity, displacement, cultural transmission, duality - Yule

Displacement: it allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the
immediate environment. Indeed, displacement allows us to talk about things and place.

Productivity: humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by
manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. This
property is described as productivity.

Cultural transmission: we do not inherit language. We acquire in a culture with other

speakers and not from parental genes. This process whereby a language is passed on
from one generation to the next is described as cultural transmission. It is clear that
humans are born with some kind of predisposition to acquire language in a general sense.
We acquire our first language as children in a culture.

Duality: human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously. At one level,
we have distinct sounds (individual sounds like n, b, i), and, at another level, we have
distinct meanings (combination of sounds ‘bin) . We are capable of producing large
number of sound combinations (e.g words) which are distinct in meaning

Phonetics

Phonology: is the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a

language. Phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of the sounds in
language rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.

Phones and allophones: while the phonemes is the abstract unit or sound type (in the
mind) there are different versions of that sound. 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
allophones of that phoneme.

Tar aspirated version, writer - flap r, eight eith

The crucial distinction between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one
phoneme for another will result in a word with a different meaning, but substituting
allophones only results in a different pronunciation of the same word.

Minimal pairs: phonemic distinctions in a language 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 minimal
pairs. For example, fan-van, bet-bat, site- side

Word formation Yule

Etymology: it is the study of origin and history of a word. It comes to us from Latin, but
has its origins in Greek. There are many different ways in which new words can enter the
language (word formation processes)

Coinage: it is the invention of totally new terms. It invents trade names for commercial
products that become general terms. It represents new words bases on the names of a
person or place (eponyms). Moreover, it is a technical term based on the names of those
who first discovered/invented things. E.g Google, xerox, sandwich, aspirin.

Borrowing: it is the taking over of words from other languages. It is the direct translation
of the elements of a word into the borrowing language. E.g shampoo (Indian), piano
(Italian), sofa (Arabic)

Compounding: it is the joining of two separate words to produce a new term. It is very
common in German and English. E.g bookcase, notebook, wallpaper, makeup, etc.

Blending: it is the combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term,
typically accomplished by taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end
of other word. E.g. gasoline + alcohol = gasohol, smoke + fog = smog, motor + hotel =
motel, Spanish + English = spanglish, etc.

Clipping: it is the process of reduction in which a word of more than one syllable is
reduced to a shorter form, usually beginning in casual speech. English speaker’s usually
clip their names. There are words from educational environments. We can also have
hypocorism which is a particular type of reduction in which a longer word is reduced to a
single syllable then -y, or ie is added to the end. E.g gasoline = gas, advertisement = ad,
Mike, Sam, movie, television = telly, Australian = Aussie, etc.

Backformation: it is the reduction process in which a word of one type (usually a noun) is
reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb). There is a change in the word’s
function. E.g donation - donate, worker - work, emotion - emote, etc.

Conversion: it presents a change in the function of a word without any reduction. It is

also known as ‘functional shift’. We can find conversion in nouns that comes to be used
as verbs (chair, vacation), verbs becoming nouns (must, spy), phrasal verbs becoming
nouns (take over), complex verb combinations as a new noun (want to be = wannabe),
verbs become adjectives and adjectives becomes verbs of nouns (mastermind), other
forms up, down can also become verbs (to up, to down).

Acronyms: they are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. E.g
CD, VHS, FBI = initialism

Derivation: we can have affixes (prefixes and suffixes) E.g prefix unhappy, suffix careless.
We can also have infixes which are used in circumstances by emotionally aroused of the
speaker. E.g absogoyddamlutely

Multiple processes: it is the operation of more than one process at work in the creation
of a particular word. We can also have the analogy which is a process whereby new
words are formed to be similar in some way to existing words. E.g FedEx compounding +
conversion, carphone = clipping + compounding

Morphology

Morphology: this term, which literally mean ‘the study of forms’, was originally used in
biology, but, since the middle of the 19th century, has also been used to describe the
type of investigation that analyzes all those basic elements used in a language.

Morphemes: it is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. They can be

classified as it follows:

There are free morphemes which means they can stand by themselves as single words.
They are set of separate English word forms such as basic noun, adjective, adverb and
ver. They are technically referred as stem and they do not need to be connected with
others to exist.