Introduction To Linguistics

Definition of Language A. Linguistics and English Language

Language Teaching
•a system of conventional spoken, manual, or
written symbols by means of which human beings, as
members of a social group and participants in its
culture, express themselves.
•The functions of language include
communication, the expression of identity, play,
imaginative expression, and emotional release (Robert
Henry Robins, David Crystal).
 Introduction To Linguistics
Views about Language
1 •The structuralists believe that language can be
described in terms of observable and verifiable data as
it is being used.
•They also describe language in terms of its
structure and according to the regularities and
patterns or rules in language structure.
•To them, language is a system of speech sounds,
arbitrary assigned to the objects, states, and concepts
to which they refer, used for human communication.
➢Language is a means of
communication
•Language is an important means of
communicating between humans of their ideas,
beliefs, or feelings. Language gives shape to people’s
thoughts, as well as guides and controls their activity.
➢Language is primarily vocal
•Language is speech, primarily made up of vocal
sounds produced by the speech apparatus in the
human body.
•The primary medium of language is speech.
Speech is language; the written record is but a
secondary representation of the language. Linguists
claim that speech is primary, writing secondary.
•Therefore, it is assumed that speech has a priority in
language teaching.
➢Language is a system of systems
•Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic
combination of sounds. Sounds are arranged in
certain fixed or established, systematic
order to form meaningful units or words.
•Examples:
A.No words in English
starts with bz-, lr-, or zl- combination, but
there are those that begin with spr-, str-
(as in spring and string).
B.•The sentence “Vince
bought a new book” is acceptable but the
group of words “ Vince bought new book
a” is not acceptable as the word order of
the latter violates the established
convention in English grammar, the
Subject- Verb- Object or SV-O word order.
•Language is a system of
structurally related elements or ‘building
blocks’ for the encoding of meaning, the
elements being phonemes (sounds),
morphemes (words), tagmemes (phrases
and sentences/ clauses). Language
learning, it is assumed, entails mastering
the elements or the building blocks of the
language and the learning rules by which
these elements are combined, from
phoneme to morpheme to word to phrase
to sentence.
#Language is arbitrary
• There is no inherent relation
between the words of language and their
meanings or the ideas conveyed by them.
Put another way, there is no one to one
correspondence between the structure of
a word and the thing it stands for.
• Examples:
Filipino- ibon ,
Spanish- pajaro , English- bird
2. The transformationalists believe that language is
a system of knowledge made manifest in linguistic
forms but innate and, in its most abstract form,
universal.
#Language is a mental phenomenon
•It is not mechanical
➢Language is innate
•The presence of the language acquisition
device (LAD) in the human brain predisposes all
normal children to acquire their first language in an
amazingly short time, around five years from both.
➢Language is universal
•It is universal in the scene that all
normal children the world over acquire a mother
tongue but it is also universal in the sense that, at a
highly abstract level, all languages must share key
features of human languages, such as all languages
have sounds; all languages have rules that form
sounds into words, words into phrases and clauses;
and all languages have transformation rules that
enable speakers to ask questions, negate sentences,
issue orders, defocus the doer of the action, etc.
➢Language is creative
•It enables native speakers to produce and
understand sentences they have not heard nor used
before.
 Introduction To Linguistics
performing social transactions between
individuals.
3. •The functionalists believe that language is a •It is a tool for creating and
dynamic system through which members of a maintaining social relations through
community exchange information. conversations. Language teaching
•It is a vehicle for the expression of functional content, according to this view, may be
meaning such as expressing one’s emotions, specified and organized by patterns of
persuading people, asking and giving information, exchange and interaction.
making people do things for others.
#This view of language emphasizes the
meaning and functions rather than the grammatical
characteristics of language, and leads to a language
teaching content consisting of categories of meaning/
notions and functions rather than of elements of
structure and grammar.

4. •The interactionists believe that language is a

vehicle for establishing interpersonal relations and for