Introduction to the Study of Language (2013, Drábková) – přednáška 1 Adéla Jursíková, AMP2

I. THE PROPERTIES OF HUMAN LANGUAGE

 unique system of communication

 Informative signals: signals which you have not intentionally sent  body
language
 Communicative signals: signals you use intentionally to communicate something
 Unique:
o Displacement
 human language can refer to past and future time and to other
locations
o Arbitrariness
 no natural connection between linguistic form and its meaning -> If
you give a name to a thing, you don’t describe it
o Productivity
 An ability to create new words
o Cultural transmission
 Language is passed on from one generation to the next
o Discreteness
 Each sound is unique
 put x but
o Duality
 Two levels:
 sound
 meaning
o Structure dependance
 Language is dependent on structure – syntactic rules
o Semanticity
 Language carries meaning
 Meaning of words
 Not unique:
o Vocal auditory channel
o Reciprocity
 there must be 2 sides (write & reader; speaker & listener…)
o Specialization
o Non-directionality
 if you talk to your friend, anyone can hear and understand your
conversation, not only you and that friend
o Rapid fade
 you can hear it in that moment, when it is saying

II. MORPHOLOGY

 WORD = combination of sounds and meaning, consists of one or more morphemes, a

minimum unit of a sentence

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o lexical/content/full: (N, V, ADJ, ADV) – have their own meaning, are open
(=> create a new word easily)
o functional: (PREP, DETERM, CONJ, PRONOUNS, INTER…) – close,
certain grammatical function – grammar words
o simple: enable to broke down, consist of one morpheme (dog, cat, man, tree)
o complex: consists of more than one morpheme, one free form and one bound
form (quick-er, meet-ing)
o compound: consists of more than one morpheme, two or more free forms
(black-bird, birth-day)
o Phonemes-> morphemes -> words -> phrases -> clauses -> sentences
o Exocentric = we can’t know what it means if we don’t learn it (walkman,
birdbrain, pickpocket, whitecollar,…)
o Endocentric = compound, possible to guess it’s sence according to the
meaning of its parts (traffic-light, saleroom, darkroom,…)

 LEXEME = an abstract unit, a word or group of words that has a meaning that cannot
be understood from the meaning of the parts of which it consists

 WORD FORMATION PROCESS:

o Compounding
 putting words together (breastfeeding, greenhouse)
o Derivation
 using prefixes, suffixes (meet->meeting)
o Clipping
 shortening, to make the language faster (influenza -> flu, advertisement
-> adv)
o Borrowing
 take over word from other languages (haute couture)
o Acronyms
 abbriviation, shortening – saying as a word (NATO, UNICEF)
o Initialism
 abbriviation, shortening – spelling (FBI, BBC)
o Blending
 taking parts of words together (breakfast+lunch -> brunch)
o Conversion= zero derivation
 it changes the word category, not the form (butter -> to butter, a church
-> to church)
o Back-formation
 changes the word category and the new word is shorter (television ->
televise)
o Coinage
 creating of completely new words, connected with new products
 Neologism = a very recent word

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 MORPHEME = the smallest semantic unit in a language; minimum part into which
the word can be devided
o root
 cannot be analyzed any further in both derivational and inflectional
morphology. It remains when all inflectional and derivational affixes
are removed.
o free: ‘believ’ can stand alone
o bound: ‘un-‘, ‘-able’ have to stand with other morphemes
 derivational - -able; change word category or meaning
 inflectional - -s; change only the form (always suffixes)
 affixes
 prefix
 suffix
 infix – un-fucking-believ-able-s
o A morph is a practical written or spoken form (realization) of a particular
morpheme.
o An allomorph is a phonetically (s,z,iz), lexically (oxen) or grammatically
modified morph or its variation.
o Stem - term used in inflectional morphology. Inflectional (not derivational)
affixes are added to it.
o Base – term used in derivational morphology, any form to which affixes of
any kind can be added.

III. THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

 animals use signs (sounds, smell, movement, changing colours…)

 LANGUAGE
o the most important way of communication used among human beings; the
system of symbols, verbal way of communication, human ability to speak
(thanks to brain, teeth, tongue, mouth, vocal organs)
 We don’t know, when language began but we know that spoken form is older than
written one.

 THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN SPEECH

o The mama theory – language began with the easiest syllables attached to the
most significant objects
o The ta-ta theory – Sir Richard Paget; body language preceeded language,
language began as a unconscious vocal imitation of these movements
o The divine theory – language was developed by the God as everything else
o The natural sounds source
 The bow-wow theory – Language began as imitation of natural sounds;
onomatopoeic words = words that echoes natural sounds
 The pooh-pooh theory – language began with interjections, instinctive
emotive cries such as oh! for surprise and ouch! for pain

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The ding-dong theory – Max Müller; small, sharp, high things tend to
have words with high front vowels in many languages, whale big, round,
low things tend to have round back vowels
 Yo-heave-ho theory – Language began as rhytmic chants
o The oral-gesture source
 a link between physical gesture and orally produced sounds
 The sing-song theory – Jeperson; language come out of play and
emotions, first words long and musical
 The hey you theory – Revesz; language began as sounds to signal both
identity (here I am) and belonging (I am with you.)
 The hocus pocus theory – language began by calling out to game animals
with magical sounds, which became their names
 The eureka theory – language was consciously invented, idea of giving
names to certain things
o Physiological adaptation
 this speculative proposal aims at some of the physical aspects of humans
which are not shared with other creatures (human teeth, lips and larynx)
 monogenesis – language was invented once
 polygenesis – language was invented many times by many people
o Speech and writing
 interactional – how humans use language to interact with each other
(socially or emotionally = speech)
 transactional – human use their linguistic abilities to share knowledge,
skills and information = writing

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

 PICTOGRAM = picture writing, each picture describes one concrete thing

o international -> used at public places
o non-arbitrary -> one pictogram represent one thing
 IDEOGRAM = picture writing, one picture can have many meanings, not so concrete
 HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING OF EGYPTIANS (3, 000 BC)
o combination if pictograms and ideograms and phonograms
 CUNEIFORM = wedge-shaped writing (klínové písmo)
o used to be in Mezopotamia
o each wedge represents one symbol
o on clay tablets
o syllabic writing
o arbitrary
 LOGOGRAMS = word writing, one symbol symbolizes one word
o modern logograms: @, &
 PYNYIN = spelling system in China => transmission into Latin alphabet
 REBUS-WRITING = one symbol represents a word or syllable
 SYLLABIC-WRITING = Japan, 1 symbol symbolizes one syllable

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 ALPHABETIC WRITING = one symbol represents one sound, by Greek from

Persians
o Cyrilic
o Latin
o Arabic

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V. WORDS AND LINGUISTICS

 Beginning of John's Gospel – word, beginning of cosmos, beginning of our

communication, word is creative, it changes the world
 Children acquire the awareness of words earlier than sentences, 2-3 yr old ones already
correct their vocabulary, not their syntax.
 Language consists of skeleton and flesh
o Skeleton – rules, grammar, structure, form = closed system
o Flesh – words, vocabulary, content, meaning, semantics = open system
 Words are studied in two separate disciplines in linguistics:
o Morphology studies word forms
o Lexicology studies word meaning
 Etymology is the study of the history of words
 The historical development of English
o The Modern English: from 1500 to present.
o Old English 7th - 11th century.
 Germanic languages
 spoken by a group of tribes from northern Europe
 invaded British Isles in the 5th century AD
 Angels, Saxons, Jutes
 basic terms: mann (man), wif (woman), cild (child), feohtan (fight)
 Anglo-Saxons were pagan settlers
 Soon (6-8 cent.) converted to Christianity – terms from the language of
religion, Latin came into English (angel, bishop, candle, church, martyr)
 From the 8th cent. through the 9th and 10th another group of northern
Europeans came to plunder the coastal region of Britain. The Vikings -
Old Norse (give, law, leg, skin, sky, take, they)
o Middle English from 1100 to 1500
 The arrival of the Norman French in England; their victory at Hastings
under William the Conqueror in 1066; These French-speaking invaders
proceeded to take over the whole England. They became the ruling class
– the language of nobility, the government, the law and the civilized
behaviour in England for the next 200 years was French (army, court,
defence, faith, prison, tax).
 Yet the language of the peasants remained English (sheep, cows and
swine). The upper class French would talk about mutton, beef and pork.
(Modern English: “on the hoof “as opposed to “on the plate”).
o Sound changes
 Metathesis (reversal position of two adjoining sounds: hros→horse,
bridd→bird, frist→first).
 Epenthesis (an addition of a sound to the middle of a word:
aemtig→empty, spinel→spindle, timr→timber).
 Prothesis (not found in English, an addition of a sound to the beginning
of a word: Latin → Spanish, e.g. schola→escuela, spiritus→espiritu.

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o Syntactic changes
 The word order; in Old English texts the word order “SVO” (subject-
verb-object) is found but also different orders which are no longer
possible.
 Double-negative constructions were also possible.
o Lexical changes
 broadening of meaning (holy day → holiday, dog as one specific breed
→today any dog)
 narrowing of meaning (hound → used to denote any dog, today a special
breed, wife → any woman, today a married woman)
 A special kind of narrowing can lead to negative ( ) or to a better
(minister) meaning.
o The process of change
 some changes linked to major social changes (wars, invasions)
 process of cultural transmission
 occasional desire to be different
 languages will not remain stable
 studied diachronically (from the historical perspective) and
synchronically (at present state)
o Early Modern English (1500-1800 AD)
 An important transition period, new thinking, William Caxton
introduced printing in 1476, books, circulation, spelling.
 Scholars began to seriously talk about language, grammar, vocabulary,
spelling and style.
 Renaissance period until 1650, interest in classical art and literature,
protestant reformation, scientific discoveries, Africa, Asia, Americas -
huge impact on language. American and Asian vocabulary, thousands
of Greek and Latin words because translators could not find
equivalents in English.
 Influx of foreign vocabulary raised criticism from purists. They tried
to dig out the vocabulary.
 Shakespeare's works and the King James Bible.
 Language was being enriched, critics called it "unruly", "corrupt",
"unrefined" and "barbarous". Necessity to stabilize and standardize the
language occurred.
 Academy solutions in France and Italy, but not in England and America,
only in South Africa.
 Therefore, only grammar manuals, spelling guides, pronunc. manuals.
o Modern English (1800 - )
 unprecedented growth of scientific and professional vocabulary
 dominance of American English
 emergence of new Engishes
 Industrial revolution, increase in education level, scientific theories
made for the public, academic journals, theories,
 American English, leading economic power. It is interesting that the two
biggest versions of English (American and British) are becoming still
more and more alike: mass media, uk open to influences, American
"culture". Number of speakers 250 000 000 vs 60 000 000.
 New Englishes: Indian, South African, Philippine, etc.

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 Ferdinand DeSaussure
o Word discussed as a linguistic sign
o Linguistic sign is a mental unit consisting of two faces which cannot be
separated: a concept and acoustic image. A Sign can be applied to sentences,
phrases, even morphemes, not only words.
 concept is the "signifié" or the thing meant
 acoustic image is "signifiant"
o Alteration in the acoustic image causes difference in concept and vice versa
(This does not apply to homonyms). Form and meaning of a linguistic sign.
o Word is a linguistic sign, the discussion about the word meaning focuses at the
relationship between the two sides of the sign.
o Arbitrariness - there is no natural reason why a particular sign should be
attached to a particular concept
 Types of meaning
o DENOTATIVE – the dictionary meaning (bus -> name of vehicle)
o CONNOTATIVE – the ‚personal‘ meaning connected with emotions,
experience etc. (bus -> traveling, going to school…)
o GRAMMATICAL - Expressed by inflectional endings, individual forms or
some other grammatical devices
 Monosemy – one meaning
 Polysemy – more than one meaning, there’s relation between meanings (foot – leg x
foot - hill)
 Homonymy – the same spelling, more meanings, no relation (bank)
 Synonymy – words that have similar or same meaning
 Antonymy – words with opposite meaning
o non-gradable – dead x alive
o gradable – big x small
o relational – buy x sell, student x teacher
 Hyponymy – ‘slovo podřadné’ (cat)
 Hyperonym – ‘slovo nadřazené’ (animal)
 Ambiguity – not clear meaning (more possible)
 incompatibility – ‘neslučitelnost’, cannot coexist (cat & dog)

VI. LANGUAGE AND BRAIN

 Neurolinguistics = the study of the relationship between language and the brain
 Parts of the brain:
o Broca´s area
o Wernicke´s area
o The motor cortex and the arcuate fasciculus

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 Language Acquisition
o Critical Period in First Language:
 Acquisition of L1 is impaired after puberty
o Critical Period in Second Language:
 Acquisition of L2 is impaired after puberty Evolution of Language:
 Gestures were important
 Language Disorders:
o Paraphasia:
 Substitution of a word by a sound, an incorrect word, or an unintended
word
o Neologism:
 Paraphasia with a completely novel word
o Nonfluent speech:
 Talking with considerable effort
o Agraphia:
 Impairment in writing
 Major types of Aphasia:
 Broca’s aphasia
o Nonfluent speech
 Wernicke’s aphasia
o Fluent speech but unintelligible
 Global aphasia
o Total loss of language
 Conduction aphasia
o Typically mispronouncing words, but no articulation
problems
o Alexia:
 Disturbances in reading
 Dyslexia – problem in learning to read (x high IQ)

 Lateralization of functions
o Left-hemisphere:

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Sequential analysis
 Analytical
 Problem solving
 Language
o Right-hemisphere:
 Simultaneous analysis
 Synthetic
 Visual-Spatial skills
 Cognitive maps
 Personal space
 Facial recognition
 Drawing
 Emotional functions
 Recognizing emotions
 Expressing emotions
 Music

VII. LANGUAGE HISTORY AND CHANGE

 19th century: the historical study of languages, philology.

 Proto-Indo-European
o The original form (proto) of a language which was the source of modern
languages in the Indian sub-continent (Indo) and in Europe (European).
 more than 4,000 languages in the world
 Cognate = a word in another language (e.g. German) which has a similar form and is,
or was, used with a similar meaning.
o English forms mother, father, friend are cognates of the German forms Mutter,
Vater, Freund.

VIII. PARTS OF SPEECH

 PARTS OF SPEECH:
o Noun
 A noun is a naming word. It names a person, place, thing, idea, living
creature, quality, or action.
 Examples: cowboy, theatre, box, thought, tree, kindness, arrival
o Verb
 A verb is a word which describes an action (doing something) or a state
(being something).
 Types of verbs: lexicals, modals, auxiliaries
 Examples: walk, talk, think, believe, live, like, want
 3 tenses (past, present, future)
o Adjective
 An adjective is a word that describes a noun. It tells you something about
the noun.

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 Examples: big, yellow, thin, amazing, beautiful, quick, important

o Adverb
 An adverb is a word which usually describes a verb. It tells you how
something is done. It may also tell you when or where something
happened.
 Examples: slowly, intelligently, well, yesterday, tomorrow, here,
everywhere
o Pronoun
 A pronoun is used instead of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun
 personal – I/me, relative – which, whose, that, demonstrative – this, that,
indefinite – none, some, every, reflexive - myself, reciprocal – each other,
one another, interrogative – how, why, possessive – my
 Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
o Conjunction
 A conjunction joins two words, phrases or sentences together.
 Examples: but, so, and, because, or
o Preposition
 A preposition usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. It
joins the noun to some other part of the sentence.
 Examples: on, in, by, with, under, through, at
o Interjection
 An interjection is an unusual kind of word, because it often stands alone.
Interjections are words which express emotion or surprise, and they are
usually followed by exclamation marks.
 Examples: Ouch!, Hello!, Hurray!, Oh no!, Ha!
o Article
 An article is used to introduce a noun.
 Examples: the, a, an
 Descriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by
speakers and writers.
 Prescriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it
should be used.
 Standard English - ordinary

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IX. STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS

 Basic tendencies of development
o Structuralism in linguistics means, first of all, a new approach to facts already
known

 THREE BASIC TYPES OF EUROPEAN STRUCTURALISM

o GENEVA SCHOOL
 the classic structuralism of Ferdinand De Saussure which nowadays
belongs to the past
o PRAGUE SCHOOL
 functional linguistics
o NEO-SAUSSURIANISM
 (tendency to abstractness which is in harmony with De Saussure’s
interpretation of the linguistic sign), their concern is more in general
theory about the language sign than in concrete linguistic problems

 STRUCTURALISM IN AMERICAN LINGUISTICS

o Originated at Yale university and was founded by Bloomfield, hence the school
is also known as the BLOOMFIELDIANS

 FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
o The Swiss linguist, founder of the Geneva School
o language is an organized system with a specific social function
o IDEAS:
 language is a system of sings correlated in such a way that the values of
each of them are mutually conditioned (facts of language are in fact
organized in pairs of oppositions)
 a language sign is complex in character (the sound form = signifiant and
the meaning = signifié itself, = > semiology)
 the use of a language sign is not necessarily implied by its meaning (i.e.
the value of a word, e.g. synonymy)
 human speech is linear in the sense that every element of which it
consists has to be successively pronounced in a spoken chain
 psychological categories such as analogy and association have a
powerful influence on linguistic development
 language (langue) is a property of the whole speaking group, but is
actually realized by the speech of the individual (parole)
 language can be studied in two directions – synchronically and
diachronically

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X. THE PRAGUE LINGUISTIC CIRLE

 The Prague School, properly the Prague Linguistic Circle, was one of the most
important linguistic and literary movements of the early twentieth century, and its
work still continues to this day.
 CZE: Vilém Mathesius, Bohuslav Trnka, Bohuslav Havránek, Jan Mukařovský
 RUS: Roman Jakobson, S. Karcevskij, N. Trubetzkoy
 Greatly influenced by the structuralism of Saussure, the Prague linguists made
significant contributions to phonetics, phonology and semantics.
 The programme of the Prague Linguistic Circle was published in 1929 and can be
summarised as follows:
o Language is a system of means of expression which serves to promote mutual
understanding.
o Language is a reality (i.e. an actual, physical phenomenon) whose type is
largely conditioned by external (non-linguistic) factors: social environment, the
audience, the subject matter, etc.
o Language includes both the intellectual and the emotional manifestations of
human personality.
o Written and spoken language are not identical, each has its own specific
characteristics.
o Synchronic investigation should be of primary interest for linguists, because it
has a direct bearing on actual linguistic reality. However, the system must
always be kept in view in diachrony, and diachrony in synchrony.
o The comparative method should make possible work on the typology of
languages, i.e. description of particular types of linguistic structure.

XI. THE BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

SCHOLARSHIP

 19th century: historicism & accumulating facts

 20th century: deeper interpretation of the acquired knowledge & systematization of
accumulated facts, age of new knowledge, terms
 The working slogan of the 20th century scholars says that in order to complete our
knowledge of the world, we should search for the structure of the system, that is, the
relationship between the members of the system.
 the era of structualism in scientific research
 typology of language, history of language, comparative linguistic studies, etymological
studies, syntax and semantics, modern philology
 At present, linguistics is marked by two essential features:
o the victory of structuralism over the neo-grammarian conception of language
o the large-scale co-operation with other disciplines (i.e. interdisciplinary
approach)

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XII. LANGUAGE VARIETIES

 THE STANDARD LANGUAGE

- is a variety used in
 printed texts: newspapers, books, etc.
 in the mass media
 taught in schools
 English as a Second Language
considered the only type of correct English

 ACCENT & DIALECT

o Accent can be defined as aspects of pronunciation which identify where an
individual speaker is from, regionally or socially
o Dialect covers features of grammar and vocabulary and aspects of pronunciation
(e.g. regional dialects)

 ISOGLOSS
o Is a line across a map separating the two areas; a boundary between the areas with
regard to the one particular linguistic item. A number of them indicates dialect
boundary

 BILINGUALISM
o The use of two distinct and different languages (e.g. in Canada)

 LANGUAGE PLANNING
o Government, legal and educational bodies decide which variety is to be used for
official business. For example, Israel = Hebrew, India = Hindi, etc.

 PIDGINS & CREOLES

o Pidgins – a variety of language which developed for some practical purpose
(Pidgins have no native speakers). There is usually an absence of complex
grammatical morphology and limited vocabulary (e.g. Melanesian Pidgin spoken in
New Guinea).
o Creoles – when a Pidgin develops it can become the first language of a social
community (e.g. French Creole spoken in Haiti, Louisiana; English Creole spoken
in Jamaica, etc.)

XIII. LANGUAGE, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Social dialects:
- social class and education
- age and gender
- style, register and jargon
- diglossia = a situation in which two different varieties of language co-exist in a
speech community, each with specific social function (High/low variety)

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Language universals
 any language can be learned by children, employs an arbitrary symbol system, can be
used to send and receive messages, every language has noun like and verb like
components etc.)

XIV. PIDGINS AND CREOLES

 pidgin = a simplified language derived from two or more languages

o used by people from different areas who don’t share common language
o structure very simple
o developed bcs Africans from North American plantations needed to
communicate with their bosses etc.; bcs of colonization
o superstrate language = a dominant language in a pidgin
 creole = if the pidgin is used long enough, it can get native speakers (children who learn
a pidgin as their first language) => pidgin becomes creole
 Creole, Louisiana Creole – FR and African Languages

XV. SCHOOLS OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS

 Ferdinand DeSaussure
o word discussed as a linguistic sign
 concept is the "signifié" or the thing meant
 acoustic image is "signifiant"
o arbitrariness
o alteration
 Ivor Richards
o the semantic triangle

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 Noam Chomsky
o ‘the grandfather of syntax’
o The new idea was that syntax is something separate from phonology,
morphology and particularly semantics.
o Chomsky isolated that there is something called syntax which is going on in
our brains on a different level than where meaning is taking place.
o Syntax is innate, it is called universal grammar
o We are born with universal grammar, not with Slovak grammar, English
grammar etc.
o One of his crucial insights is that children do not make all mistakes they could
possibly do.
 Generative Grammar
o language is a structure of the human mind
o The goal of generative grammar is to make a complete model of this inner
language