Ver1.0 - Wstęp Do Językoznawstwa - Student

MANUAL PRZEDMIOTOWY - STUDENT
Wstęp do językoznawstwa
Wybór treści wykładu: dr Tomasz Górski
Projekt współfinansowany ze środków Unii Europejskiej

w ramach Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego
Literatura obowiązkowa:
1. Yule, G. (1996) The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press (lub następne
edycje)
2. Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Hyams, N. (2007) An Introduction to Language. Thomson
Wadsworth
3. O’Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M., Katamba, F. (1996) Contemporary Linguistics. An
Introduction. Longman.
4. Dirven, R., Verspoor, M. (1998) Cognitive Explorations of Language and Linguistics.
John Benjamins Company.
Literatura dodatkowa:
1. Crystal, D. (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Guild Publishing.
2. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (red.) (2002) Ways to Language. Łódź.
3. Jackendoff, R. (2003) Foundations of Language. Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution.
Oxford.
4. Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Przekład polski Tomasz P.
Krzeszowski Metafory w naszym życiu (1988). Warszawa.
5. Whorf, Benjamin, L. (1982) Język, myśl i rzeczywistość. Przekład polski Teresa
Hołówka. Warszawa.
6. Kövecses, Z. (2002) Metaphor. A Practical Introduction. Oxford.
7. Brown, G., Yule, G. (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge.
Zagadnienia do kolokwium zaliczeniowego:

Zakres problemów:
1. Linguistic disciplines and their characteristics.
2. Properties of human language.
3. Characteristics of linguistic sign.
4. Phonetic transcription.
5. Model of communication.
6. Places and manners of articulation of English sounds.
7. Voicing in English.
8. Tongue position for vowels articulation.

9. Diphthongs and triphthongs.
10. Allophones.
11. Principles of morphological analysis.
12. Derivation in English.
13. Inflection in English.
14. The morpheme and its types.
15. Allomorphs.
16. Word-formation processes: suppletion, prefixing and suffixing, backformation,

hypocorisation, conversion, compounding, coining, acronymisation, blending,
borrowing, clipping, reduplication.
17. Semantics: scope of language analysis; notions used in lexical semantics.
18. Semantics: thematic relations.
19. The notion of the act of speech.
20. Acts of speech and their types.
21. Conversational maxims.
22. Relevance Theory.
23. Discourse: its types and characteristics.
24. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
25. Cultural determinism, cultural relativism, and cultural ethnocentrism.
26. Variations of language.
27. Language registers.
28. Language variations.
29. Enculturation.
30. Pidgins and Creoles.
31. Evolution of language and historical linguistics.
32. The origin of language.
33. Language family.

34. Proto-language.
35. Basic assumptions of cognitive linguistics.
36. Conceptual metaphor.
37. Linguistic metaphor - major types and examples.
38. The experiential basis of metaphor.

MANUAL WYKŁADOWY
Wykład 1:
LINGUISTIC DISCIPLINES. BASIC NOTIONS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS
Zakres problemów:
1. Linguistics as the study of language.
2. Major linguistic disciplines.
3. The nature of linguistic sign.
4. Properties of human language.
5. Roman Jakobson's model of communication.
Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a

number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language
structure (grammar) and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Grammar
encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that
determine how words combine into phrases and sentences) and phonology (the study of
sound systems and abstract sound units). Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics
concerned with the properties of speech sounds (phones), and how they are produced and
perceived. Other sub-disciplines of linguistics include the following:
 evolutionary linguistics, which explains the origins of language;
 historical linguistics, which explores language change;
 sociolinguistics, which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social
structures;
 psycholinguistics, which explores the representation and functioning of language in
the mind;
 neurolinguistics, the study of the representation of language in the brain;
 language acquisition, which considers how speakers acquire their first language (first
language acquisition) and how children and adults acquire and learn their second
and subsequent languages (second and/or foreign language acquisition);
 discourse analysis, which is concerned with the structure of texts and conversations,

 pragmatics, related to how meaning is transmitted based on a combination of
linguistic competence, non-linguistic knowledge, and the context of the speech act.
Linguistics is narrowly defined as the scientific approach to the study of language, but
language can be approached from a variety of directions, and a number of other intellectual
disciplines are relevant to it and influence its study. Literary theoreticians study the use of
language in artistic literary texts.
Traditionally, linguistics falls into:
 Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of speech (or signed) production and
perception.
 Phonology, the study of sounds (or signs) as discrete, abstract elements in the
speaker's mind that distinguish meaning.
 Morphology, the study of internal structures of words and how they can be modified.
 Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences.
 Semantics, the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word
combinations (phraseology), and how these combine to form the meanings of
sentences.
BASIC NOTIONS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS
THE NATURE OF LINGUISTIC SIGN
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many
significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. The central notion Saussure's most
influential work, Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale), is that
language may be analyzed as a formal system of differential elements. Examples of these
elements include his notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of the signifier and the
signified, and possibly has a referent.
According to de Saussure, language is made up of signs, and every sign has two sides:
 the signifier (signifiant), the "shape" of a word, its phonic component, i.e. the
sequence of letters or phonemes, e.g. C-A-T.
 the signified (signifié), the ideational component, the concept or object that appears
in our minds when we hear or read the signifier, e.g. a small domesticated animal.
The signified is not to be confused with the "referent." The former is a "mental
concept," the latter the "actual object" in the world.
Furthermore, Saussure separated speech acts or performance (la parole) from the
system of conventional language (la langue). Parole was the free will of the individual
(his/her linguistic performance), whereas langue was regulated by the group.
Saussure also postulated that once the convention is established, it is very difficult to
change, which enables languages to remain both static, through a set vocabulary determined
by conventions, and to grow, as new terms are needed to deal with situations and
technologies not covered by the old.
PROPERTIES OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Human languages are proved to possess a number of unique features which are
absent from any other system of communication, including animal communication. The
most important are arbitrariness, cultural transmission, displacement, duality, and
productivity.
1). Arbitrariness
The relation between the signifier and the signified is "arbitrary," i.e. there is no direct
connection between the shape and the concept. For instance, there is no explanation why
the letters H-O-U-S-E (or the sound of these phonemes) produce exactly the image of a
building to live in our minds. It is a result of "convention": speakers of the same language
group have agreed (and learned) that these letters or sounds evoke a certain image.
Language is thus seen as a set of conventions.
2). Cultural transmission

Cultural transmission, is the way a group of people or animals within a society or
culture tend to learn and pass on new information. Learning styles are greatly influenced by
how a culture socializes with its children and young people.
The key aspect of culture is that it is not passed on biologically from the parents to
the offspring, but rather learned through experience and participation. The process by which
a child acquires his or her own culture is referred to as enculturation. On the basis of cultural
learning, people create, remember, and deal with ideas. They understand and apply specific
systems of symbolic meaning. Cultures have been compared to sets of control mechanisms,
plans, recipes, rules, or instructions
3). Displacement
Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not in the
immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally (the opposite of the out of sight, out of mind
concept). Displacement also refers to human ability to speak about past (went, have gone,
hadn't had) and future events (will speak, is going to decide).
4). Duality
Double articulation or Duality of Patterning refers to the way in which the stream of
speech can be divided into meaningful signs, which can be further subdivided into
meaningless elements. For example, the meaningful English word "cat" is composed of the
sounds [k], [æ], and [t], which are meaningless as separate individual sounds. This is an
important property of human languages, since it allows for the expression of a large number
of concepts using combinations of a small number of discrete sound elements or phonemes.
5). Productivity
Productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical
process, especially in word formation, to produce new words). A productive grammatical
process defines an open class, one which admits new words or forms. Non-productive
grammatical processes may be seen as operative within closed classes, but only previously
formed and learned structures show the results of those processes.
An open class (or open word class) is a word class that accepts the addition of new
items, through such processes as compounding, derivation, coining, borrowing, etc. Typical
open word classes are nouns, verbs and adjectives. Open-class words are not considered part
of the core language and as such they can be changed, replaced or dropped from the
common lexicon. Closed-class words, on the other hand, are always relatively few and

resistant to change. In English open classes typically include the following:
 nouns,
 main verbs (not auxiliary verbs)
 adjectives,
 adverbs,
 interjections
Slang is one of the major sources of new open-class words. Slang words appear first in
small segments of the population, and then spread to the mainstream speaking community
and become standard, or fade after a period of being in fashion.
Closed class is a word class to which no new items can normally be added, and that
usually contains a relatively small number of items. Typical closed classes found in many
languages, including English, are prepositions, determiners, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and
pronouns.
MODEL OF COMMUNICATION
Roman Jakobson’s model of communication:
Successful communication takes place between at least two agents, namely sender
(addresser of the message) and receiver (addressee of the message). The process of
interpreting a message sent by the addresser to the addressee is called decoding. Creating a
message for transmission by the addresser is called encoding.
A code is a set of conventions or sub-codes currently in use to communicate meaning.
The most common is spoken language, but there can be other codes, e.g. written. The
message is expressed in a given language (oral, written, sign, etc.) which both sender and
receiver are expected to understand. They also use a given channel of communication (oral,
written, non-verbal) while the context makes the meaning specific.

Functions of language:
 referential (allows for understanding the contextual information);
 aesthetic (auto-reflection);
 emotive (makes it possible to express emotions);
 conative (vocative or imperative addressing of receiver);
 phatic (keeps the channel of communication open; serves to maintain contact
between the participants);
 metalingual (uses language to refer to language).
One of the six functions is always the dominant function in a text and usually related
to the type of text. In poetry, for example, the dominant function is the poetic function: the
focus is on the message itself. It implies that poetry successfully combines and integrates
form and function, and that poetry turns the poetry of grammar into the grammar of poetry.
Część elearningowa (2 godziny):
Referring to the theoretical part of the lecture, focus on the following practical issues:
1. List the words (up to 10 items) which belong only to open and only closed class of
words. Are there any examples which may belong to both classes?
2. Have any kind of text of one page in length (a newspaper article, a coursebook
fragment, a literary passage etc.) and determine the function of language used in it.
Use Jakobson's observations as a starting point. Quote from the text to illustrate your
ideas. Which function of text prevails in the passage you have selected?

Wykład 2:
THE STUDY OF SOUNDS
Zakres problemów:
1. Phonetic symbols.
2. Organs of speech.
3. Classification of sounds.
4. Voicing.
5. Places of articulation.
6. Manners of articulation.
7. Tongue position, length, rounding.
8. Diphthongs and triphthongs.
9. Allophones.
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, and phonology about sound systems of
language. Phonetics is a descriptive tool necessary to the study of the phonological aspects
of a language.
Phonetics and phonology are worth studying for several reasons. One is that as all
study of language, the study of phonology gives us insight into how the human mind works.
As phonetics and phonology both deal with sounds, and as English spelling and
English pronunciation are two very different things: letters are used in writing while sounds
are spoken. Symbols used for phonetic transcription are given in the chart in the appendix.
ORGANS OF SPEECH
All the organs shown on the figure below1 contribute 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
1
Adapted from Alfred Reszkiewicz (2005) Correct your English pronunciation. Warszawa: PWN, p. 99.
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.

CLASSIFICATION OF SOUNDS
Sounds are normally grouped as vowels and consonants. The distinction between
vowels and consonants is based on three main criteria:
1. physiological: airflow / constriction;

2. acoustic: prominence;
3. phonological: syllabicity;
Sometimes, it is necessary to rely on two or three of these criteria to decide whether a sound
is a vowel or a consonant.
CONSONANTS
Consonants are often classified by being given a so-called VPM-label. VPM stands
for Voicing, Place and Manner:
1. 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).
2. place of articulation is the place where the air flow will be more or less obstructed.
3. manner of articulation is concerned with the nature of the obstruction.
VOICING:
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 (figure a below). When the edges of the
vocal folds touch each other, air passing through the glottis will usually cause vibration
(figure b below). 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.

Fig. 2. Voicing2
PLACES OF ARTICULATION
As we saw above, [p, t, k] are all voiceless, so there must be another way to
distinguish between them, otherwise we would not be able to tell try apart from pry or cry,
or pick from
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). Thus, we distinguish the following types of sounds:
→ 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.
→ Labiodental sounds are made when the lower lip is raised towards the upper front
teeth. Examples are [f] safe (voiceless) and [v] save (voiced).
→ Dental sounds are produced by touching the upper front teeth with the tip of the
tongue. Examples are [θ] oath (voiceless) and [ð] clothe (voiced).
→ 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, s ] too,
sue, both voiceless, and [d, z, n, l, r ] do, zoo, nook, look, rook, all voiced.
2
Adapted from Peter Roach (1983) English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 26, 27.
→ Palatoalveolar sounds are made by raising the blade of the tongue towards the part
of the palate just behind the alveolar ridge. Examples [ʃ, tʃ] pressure, batch (voiceless)
and [ʒ, dʒ] pleasure, badge (voiced).
→ Palatal sounds are very similar to palatoalveolar ones, they are just produced further
back towards the velum. The only palatal sound in English is [j] as in yes, yellow,
beauty, new and it is voiced.
→ Velar sounds are made by raising the back of the tongue towards the soft palate,
called the velum. Examples [k] back, voiceless, and [g, ŋ] both voiced bag, bang. [w] is
a velar which is accompanied with lip rounding.
→ Glottal sounds are produced when the air passes through the glottis as it is narrowed:
[h] as in high.
MANNERS 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, m] bend, mend as both are voiced and bilabial, and [t, s] ton, son
which 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).
1. 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, b] park, bark,
alveolar [t, d] tar, dark or velar [k, g] car, guard. There is a fourth kind of plosive, the glottal
stop. The word football can be pronounced without interruption in the middle as in [futbɔːl]
or with a complete closure of the glottis instead of [t]: [fuʔbɔːl].
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. Hence in “pen “we hear [phen].
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.
2. Fricatives have a closure which is not quite complete. This means that the air is not
blocked at any point, and therefore there is no plosion. On the other hand, the obstruction is
big enough for the air to make a noise when it passes through it, because of the friction. This
effect is similar to the wind whistling around the corner of a house. Fricatives may be
labiodental [f, v] wife, wives, dental [θ, ð] breath, breathe, alveolar [s, z] sink, zinc,
palatoalveolar [ʃ, ʒ] nation, evasion, or glottal [h] help. [h] is a glottal fricative. As it has no
closure anywhere else, and as all air passes between the vocal folds, this means that [h] is
like
aspiration unaccompanied by any obstruction.
A distinction may be made between sibilant and non-sibilant fricatives. Sibilant
sounds are the fricatives with a clear "hissing" noise, [s, z, ʃ, ʒ] and the two affricates [tʃ, dʒ]
choke, joke.
3. 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, chin, rich, and [dʒ] which is voiced, 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 + ʒ], [d + ʃ].
4. 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.
5. Laterals are sounds where the air escapes around the sides of the tongue. There is
only one lateral in English, [l], a voiced alveolar lateral. It occurs in two versions, the so called
"clear l" before vowels, light, long, and the "dark l" in other cases, milk, ball. Words like little,
lateral have one of each type. "Dark l" may be written with the symbol [ɫ]. "Clear l" is
pronounced with the top of the tongue raised, whereas for "dark l " it is the back of the
tongue which is raised. Here again, as with aspirated and unaspirated voiceless plosives, even
though "clear l" and "dark l" are phonetically different, they cannot be said to be different
sounds from the point of view of how they function in the sound system. If you produce a
"dark l" where usually you have a "clear l," for example at the beginning of the word long,
your pronunciation will sound odd but nobody will understand a different word.
6. Approximants are sounds where the tongue only approaches the roof of the
mouth, so that there is not enough obstruction to create any friction. English has three
approximants, which are all voiced. [r] is alveolar, right, brown, sometimes called post-
alveolar, because it is slightly further back that the other alveolar sounds [t, d, s, l]. [j] is a
palatal approximant, use, youth, and [w] is a velar approximant, why, twin, square. [w]
always has lip-rounding as well, and therefore it is sometimes called labio-velar. [r] only
occurs before vowels in southern British English, whereas other accents, e.g. Scottish, Irish,
and most American ones, also can have it after vowels. Therefore, those accents can make a
distinction between e.g. saw and sore, which are pronounced exactly alike in southern British
English.
The manners of articulation can be put into two major groups, obstruents and
sonorants. The obstruents are plosives, fricatives and affricates, all sounds with a high
degree of obstruction. Obstruents usually come in pairs, one voiceless, one voiced, e.g. [p/b,
t/d].
Sonorants have much less obstruction and are all voiced and therefore more sonorous. They
include nasals, the lateral, and approximants.
The manners can be illustrated as in the following diagram:
obstruents sonorant
plosive fricative affricate nasal lateral approx-

imants
The discussion on consonants above can be summarised in the table below3. A sound
on the left side of a column is voiceless, one on the right side is voiced:
VOWELS
We shall first have a closer look at the way in which vowels differ from consonants.
Then we analyze vowels phonetically, i.e. according to:
1. tongue position: how high in the mouth is the tongue, and which part of the tongue
3
Adapted from Peter Roach (1983) English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 62.

is the highest?
2. length: are the vowels long or short?
3. rounding: are the lips rounded or not?
4. nasality: is there free passage of air through the nose?
5. diphthongs: are they steady, or do they somehow change in character?
VOWELS VS CONSONANTS
Even though all the languages of the world contain both vowels and consonants, and
although almost everybody has some idea of whether a given sound is a vowel or a
consonant in his language, there is actually more than one way to distinguish between the
two classes of sounds. From a phonetic point of view one way of distinguishing is by
considering which sounds have the highest degree of obstruction. Although vowels have
almost no obstruction, and some consonants (obstruents, nasals, and the lateral) have a high
degree of obstruction, there is a group of consonants (the approximants) which would be
classified as vowels if this criterion was used: approximants have no more obstruction than
vowels. This can be seen by comparing the approximant [j] in yeast [jɪ:st] with the vowel [ɪ:]
in east [ɪ:st].
From a phonological point of view, it is possible to distinguish between vowels and
consonants by testing which sounds may be the nucleus of a syllable, i.e. the part of a
syllable
that cannot be left out. If you consider a syllable such as [kɑ:t] cart, the initial [k] may be left
out and we still have a syllable, [ɑ:t] art, the final [t] may be left out and we still have a
syllable, [kɑ:] car. In fact [k] and [t] may both be left out, and the remainder is still a syllable,
[ɑ:] are. If, however, you try to leave out the vowel, then there is no syllable anymore: *[kt].
[ɑ:] is then the sound that cannot be left out. Compare with yeast whereas [j] can be left out,
giving [ɪ:st], [ɪ:] can’t: *[jst]. Syllabicity seems to be the criterion to determine whether a
sound is a vowel or a consonant.
The above discussion would not be complete if we fail to mention the problem of so-
called syllabic consonants. This is the case when sounds like /r, l, n/ may function as a
separate syllable consisting of an only sound, as in /kɒt + n/ cotton or /æp + l/ apple, where
English speakers clearly hear two separate syllables. In these words, the /n/ and /l/ seem to
function as the nucleus of the second syllable of these words. However they cannot be
classified as vowels, as they can never occur alone as a word.
TONGUE POSITION
Tongue position is described using two criteria:

1. the height (how high is the tongue);
2. the part of the tongue involved in the production of the sound.
In English the tongue may either be high, i.e. when the speaker produces e.g. [ɪ:, u:]
in [bɪ:t, bu:t] beat, boot, intermediate, e.g. [e, ɔ:] in [bet, bɔ:t] bet, bought, or low, e.g. [ʌ, ɑ:]
in [bʌt, bɑ:t] bat, Bart.
a) tongue is at the highest b) tongue is at the lowest
Figure 3 (tongue position)4.
Depending on the language we can have several intermediate tongue heights. English
has three heights: high, mid and low, whereas French, for example, has two intermediate
tongue heights with a total of four tongue heights: high, mid high, mid low and low. The part
of the tongue involved in the production of a vowel can also be illustrated with the examples
above. If you say [ɪ:] and then [u:] just after it, you almost have the feeling that you are
moving your tongue backwards. This is because [ɪ:] is a front vowel, and [u:] is a back vowel,
or, in other words, the highest point in the pronunciation of [i:] is the front of the tongue,
whereas the highest point in [u:] is the back of the tongue. Figure 4 gives two examples of
4
See J.M.C. Thomas, L. Bouquieux, F. Cloarec-Heiss (1976). Initiation à la phonetique. Paris: PUF, p. 56.
tongue position:
a) is an example of the front of the tongue being at the highest,
b) it is the back of the tongue which is nearest to the palate.
Figure 45: tongue position: (a) front and (b) back.
Vowels are convincingly represented on a diagram which illustrates the places the
sounds in question are produced:
5
See J.M.C. Thomas, L. Bouquieux, F. Cloarec-Heiss (1976). Initiation à la phonetique. Paris: PUF, p. 56
Figure 56: Vowel diagram.
Diagram 57 is conventionalised as the complete diagram of English vowels is:
LENGTH
As seen above, there are two types of [i] sound in English placed in two different
positions. However, for the purpose of description, what is relevant is not the difference of
position but that of the perceived length of the vowel. Thus it is said that [i:] is a long vowel
and [ɪ] is a short one. The same is valid for [u:] / [ʊ], [ɜː]/[e], [ɔː]/ [o]. Symbols for long vowels
all have a colon. Phonologically, one can establish the rule such as only long vowels may be
the last sound of a syllable, whereas short vowels are always followed by at least a
consonant. If we take away the final [t] from court, [kɔː] is a possible syllable (core) whereas
[ko] could not possibly occur.
ROUNDING
Vowels may also be different from each other with respect to rounding. If you
compare [i:] in [tʃi:z] cheese with [u:] in [tʃu:z] choose, you will see that not only is [i:] a
6
See J.M.C. Thomas, L. Bouquieux, F. Cloarec-Heiss (1976). Initiation à la phonetique. Paris: PUF, p. 57.
7
Adapted from Peter Roach (1983) English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press,
p. 13.
front vowel and [u:] a back vowel, but [i:] is also unrounded where [u:] is rounded. When
pronouncing [u:] your lips are rounded, but when pronouncing [i:] the corners of the mouth
are much further apart.
Figure 6: lip positions.
DIPHTHONGS
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 [ə], but then it moves towards [u].
Therefore it is written [əu], as in [gəul] goal, with two symbols, one for how it starts and one
for how it ends.

Figure 78: diphthongs.
Diphthongs can be grouped as follows:
TRIPHTHONGS
Triphthongs is the most complex type of sound. They can be rather difficult to
pronounce, and very difficult to recognize. A diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another,
and then to a third, all produced rapidly and without interruption.
The triphthongs can be looked on as being composed of five closing diphthongs, with
/ə/ added on the end. Thus, we get:
 ei + ə = eiə; e.g. layer, player.
 aɪ + ə = aɪə; e.g. liar, fire.
 ɔɪ + ə = ɔɪə; e.g. loyal, royal.
 əʊ + ə = əʊə; e.g. lower, mower.
8
Adapted from Peter Roach (1983) English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
p. 118.
 aʊ + ə = aʊə; e.g. power, hour.
ALLOPHONES
Allophones are any different type of a phoneme that do not, unlike phonemes,
change the meaning of a word and are often barely audible. Each phoneme can be described
as a maximal set of distinctive features. We have seen that /p/ must be described as
‘voiceless bilabial plosive’ to account for all the oppositions it can be found in. Every sound
which is a realization of a given phoneme must show the same set of distinctive features. The
realisations of phonemes (or phones) are called allophones. All allophones of a phoneme
share the same set of distinctive features but each one can also show additional features. For
example the phoneme /p/ is realized as [ph] in [ph it], as it would be every time it occurs in a
word as initial consonant before a vowel, and as [p] in all other cases. [ph] and [p] are said to
be allophones because
1. they can both be described as voiceless bilabial plosives, and
2. if we substitute one for the other we do not get any change in meaning but rather an
odd pronunciation.
The feature 'aspirated,' which we find in [ph it], is context-bound. Its relevance is not
a change of meaning but its position in a string of sounds or context. [ph] and [p] are
realizations of the same phoneme, i.e. allophones that are in complementary distribution:
[p] can never occur instead of [ph] and vice-versa. Note that these non-phonological
variations are not always perceived.
Allophones can also be in free variation. That is, there are no restrictions as to their
appearance. Probably no one ever utters the same phoneme twice in the very same way:
with an appropriate acoustic instrument, one could always find a small difference between
two
allophones, a difference which can be attributed to a physiological state, the sort of
conversation held, the climate, etc.
Poniższy załącznik zawiera zestaw symboli fonetycznych używanych w transkrypcji w języku

angielskim wraz z przykładami. Wykładowca powinien omówić te symbole przed

rozpoczęciem tego wykładu.

Vowels
ɪ kit, bid, hymn, minute, bit, swim, dig, bin, aged, beloved, Monday, pretty
e dress, bed, head, many, pen, den, seven, ate, when, direction, many, Thames
æ trap, bad, apple, salad, back, Hanna, Spanish, palace, acid, clarity, static
ɒ lot, odd, wash, chop, flop, problem, bottle, body, toffe, belong, holiday
ʌ strut, mud, love, blunt, fun, other, begun, crumb, brother, rug, stuck, one
ʊ foot, good, put, bush,wool, should, took, cushion, sugar, put, stood, bull
iː fleece, sea, machine, he, she, me, extreme, evil, evening, tea, weed, easily
eɪ face, day, break, say, may,OK, way, gauge, champagne, lady, potato, reign
aɪ price, high, try, right, by, aisle, cycle, buy, time,bribe, night, neither, Christ
ɔɪ choice, boy, oil, avoid, oyster, noice, voice, join, enjoy, lawyer, Sawyer, toy
uː goose, two, blue, do, whose, soon, conoe, tune, cue, super, group, through
əʊ goat, show, no, go, know, yellow, hope, ghost, ocean, most, Dover, total
aʊ mouth, now, about, loud, sound, cow, how, round, crown, towel, out, south
ɪə near, here, weary, beard, theatre, Ian, pianist, Vera, frontier, diarrhoea
eə square, fair, various, air, care, Mary, prairie, aeroplane, Sarah, wear, heir
ɑː start, father, darling, grass, can’t, example, staff, car, bar, plant, Panama
ɔː thought, law, north, war, bought, board, Malta, talk, corn, awful, jaw, sword
ʊə poor, jury, cure, sure, moor, endure, insure, jewelery, you’re, tour, Muir
ɜː nurse, stir, learn, refer, girl, work, earn, murder, hurt, further, purpose, firm
ə about, common, standard, ago, England, human, water, often, student,
doctor, after, sofa, written, German, among, china, future, dollar, certain
əʊə slower, lower, mower, Goa, go a mile, sew a shirt
aʊə our, power, shower, sour, tower, dour, how are the boys?,
eɪə layer, player, mayor, mayonnaise, play a song,
aɪə fire, spiral, tyre, science, giant, ion, Ireland, hierarchy, admire, friar, hire,
ɔɪə Sawyer, employer, soya, lawyer
Consonants
p pen, copy, happen, pen, perfect, possible, expensive, explode, computer, pet
b back, baby, Job, bottle, bless, problem, branch, bat, balcony, table, being, box
t tea, tight, button, trousers, telephone, Theresa, twenty, between, Thames, toy
d ladder, odd, daddy, dream, blade, rode, don’t, Thursday, waited, called, lived
k key, clock, school, cash, quick, taxi, success, question, stomach, cheque, echo
g get, giggle, ghost, good, Greece, angry, synagogue, flag, begin, gold, eager
tʃ church, match, nature, lunch, chips, Christian, much, watch, mixture, cello
dʒ judge, age, soldier, gently, pyjamas, George, jar, jaw, surgery, engine, job
f fat, coffee, rough, photo, Freddie, furious, forest, left, life, hyphen, fur, fox
v view, heavy, move, victory, vioced, approve, give, vine, vast, vivid, visit, view
θ thing, author, path, thin, month, Thursday, throat, bath, birthday, sixth, earth
ð this, other, smooth, rather, breathe, teethe, mother, clothes, southern, worthy
s soon, cease, sister, city, sex, perhaps, seem, science, cinema, wants, ask, yes
z zero, music, roses, buzz, zoo, zoology, wagez, horison, these, was, his, close
ʃ ship, sure, national, wash, shame, cliché, moustache, share, sheep, ocean
ʒ pleasure, vision, Asian, usually, prestige, leisure, televsion, decision, garage
h hot, whole, ahead, him, inhuman, have, upheld, behind, hate, house, hill, hell
m more, hammer, sum, Emma, swim, mine, more, James, dim, examine, damn
n nice, know, funny, sun, never, minister, present, run, phone, been, gun, gnostic
ŋ ring, anger, thanks, sung, song, banger, tongue, wrong, belong, young, king
l light, valley, feel, aisle, although, life, almond, sell, tell, lots, English, along
r right, wrong, sorry, arrange, wrap, roof, tomorrow, Rome, drowning, worry
j yet, use, beauty, few, you, university, usually, scuba, UC, USA, young, yogurt
w wet, one, when, queen, wind, twice, once, squeeze, Orwell, water, Edward
ʔ department, football, glottal, bitter, bottle, written, important, cat, Hawaii,
Część e-learningowa (4 godziny)
1. Study the phonetic symbol chard carefully and remember the phonetic symbols
included into the lecture manual.
2. Attached are samples of phonetic transcription exercises from Bronisława Bałutowa's
Wymowa angielska dla wszystkich (Warszawa 1992; pp. 166-177). Cover the
orthographic version, focus on the transcription, then read out loud and put down
what you have read. Your version ought to be the same as the one you have hidden.

Wykład 3:
MORPHOLOGY
Zakres problemów:
1. Morphological analysis of language.
2. The morpheme and its types.
3. Allophones.
4. Inflection and derivation.
Morphology is interested in the internal structure of words. In morphological analysis

we can break down words into smaller units (morphemes) by analyzing their structure and
identify systematic processes that allow speakers to add new words to the lexicon and
indicate grammatical information such as tense and number.
To illustrate this point:
{houses} = {house} +{ –s}
It seems that house can be broken down into two parts, the first of which refers to
something in the world (a building) and the second indicating a grammatical category – in
this case number – and specifying plural.
The same approach can easily be applied to other kinds of words, interestingly, with the
same morpheme {–s}
{loves} ={love} + {–s}
While houses is a noun loves is a verb, yet the same rules apply. Loves can be
segmented into the first part that describes a kind of action (love) and the second part that
adds the information about the present tense third person singular (–s).
A further example of morphological analysis is as follows:
{dislikes} ={dis–} +{like} + {–s}

The morpheme {dis–} is meaningless on its own and, additionally, it is used in front of
the word it makes negative. Similarly {–s}, meaningless on its own, a marker of plural as in
houses and the marker of third person singular added to verbs in present tense, is always
used word finally. Morphological analysis is trying to explain the internal structure of words
and to give (grammar/morphological) rules regarding word formation.
MORPHEMES
In linguistic terminology the minimal parts of words are called morphemes.

Morphemes come in different varieties, depending on whether they are:
 free or
 bound.
Free morphemes
Free morphemes can stand by themselves (i.e. they are what we conventionally call
words) and either tell us something about the world (free lexical morphemes) or play a role
in grammar (free functional morphemes). Man, pizza, run and happy are instances of free
lexical morphemes, while and, but, the, to are examples for free grammatical morphemes.
It is important to note the difference between morphemes and phonemes:

morphemes are the minimal meaning-bearing elements that a word consists of and are
principally independent from sound. For example, the word neighbourgood consists of two
morphemes:
{neighbourhood} = {neighbour} + {hood}
Interestingly, the word hood does in fact mean something in English, but this meaning
is entirely unrelated to the -hood in neighborhood)
Bound morphemes
Not all morphemes can be used independently. Some need to be bound to a free
morpheme. In English the information “plural number” is attached to a word that refers to
some person, creature, concept or other nameable entity (in other words, to a noun) when
encoded in a morpheme and cannot stand alone. Similarly, the morpheme -er, used to
describe “someone who performs a certain activity” (e.g. a dancer, a teacher or a baker)
cannot stand on its own, but needs to be attached to a free morpheme (a verb in this case).
Bound morphemes come in two varieties,
 derivational and
 inflectional,
the core difference between the two being that the addition of derivational morphemes
creates new words while the addition of inflectional words merely changes word form.
Derivational morphemes
The signature quality of derivational morphemes is that they derive new words. In the
following examples, derivational morphemes are added to produce new words which are
derived from the parent word:
 happy – happiness – unhappiness

 frost – defrost – defroster
 examine – examination – reexamination
In all cases the derived word means something different than the parent and the word class
may change with each derivation. As demonstrated in the examples above, sometimes
derivation will not cause the world class to change, but in such a case the meaning will
usually be significantly different from that of the parent word, often expressing opposition or
reversal:
 probable – improbable
 visible – invisible
 tie – untie
 create – recreate
Independently of whether or not word class changes and how significantly meaning is
affected, derivation always creates (derives) new words from existing ones, while inflection is
limited to changing word form.

Inflectional morphemes
Inflection (the process by which inflectional morphemes are attached to words)

allows speakers to morphologically encode grammatical information.
The word girls consists of two morphemes
 the free lexical morpheme girl that describes a young female human being and
 the bound inflectional morpheme -s that denotes plural number
Examples for the morphological encoding of other grammatical categories are tense (past
tense -ed as in walked), aspect (progressive aspect as in walking), case (genitive case as in
Mike’s car) and person (third person -s as in Mike drives a Toyota).
The diagram below illustrates the categories of morphemes discussed above:
As far as the position of morphemes in a word is concerned, we have front, central (mid),
and end-position:

 Prefixes appear at the front of the stem; e.g. un-do, dis-like, un-interesting,
 Suffixes (or endings) are added to the back of the stem; e.g. look-ing, ox-en, final-ly,
 Infixes appear within the stem, it links together two stems into a compound; e.g.
abso-bloody-lutely, saxo-ma-phone.
INFLECTION VS WORD FORMATION
Given the notion of a lexeme, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of morphological

rules. Some morphological rules relate to different forms of the same lexeme; while other
rules relate to different lexemes. Rules of the first kind are called inflectional rules, while
those of the second kind are called word formation. The English plural, as illustrated by dog
and dogs, is an inflectional rule; compounds like dog catcher or dishwasher provide an
example of a word formation rule. Informally, word formation rules form "new words" (that
is, new lexemes), while inflection rules yield variant forms of the "same" word (lexeme).
MORPHS, MORPHEMES, ALLOMORPHS
When you look at certain inflectional endings that occur in English, you notice that
they are often but not always predictable. Here are a few examples for the plural morpheme:
 one car – two cars; one rose – two roses,
but
 one mouse – two mice,

 one man – two men,
 one ox – two oxen,
 one sheep – two sheep.
A vowel change (also called an umlaut plural) instead of a suffix marks the plural in
mice and men, in oxen the suffix we encounter is rather exotic (meaning this word is virtually
the only one that takes the -en ending) and in the last example there is no visible plural
marking at all.
The fact that plural number in English can be marked with several different
inflectional suffixes (-s, -en), by vowel change or by no (visible) change at all points to the
following distinction:
 morph – a concrete part of a word that cannot be divided into smaller parts,
 morpheme – the meaning-distinguishing, abstract dimension of morphs, e.g.
something like the plural morpheme,
 allomorph – different realizations of the same morpheme, e.g. -s, -en and nothing for
the plural morpheme in dogs, oxen and fish_.
When linguists talk about the allomorphs of the plural morpheme they are referring
to variants of the same functional element which do not impact meaning in any way. A plural
is still a plural, whether encoded by -s or something else.
BASE, STEM AND ROOT
Finally, in order to make the segmentation of words into smaller parts a little clearer,
we differentiate between the base, the stem and the root of a word in morphological terms.
 base: reactions
 stem: reaction (s)
 root: (re) act (ion) (s)
The stem is the base with all inflectional suffixes removed, whereas the root is what
remains after all affixes have been taken off. When doing computational text analysis
stemming (i.e. removing all inflectional endings) is frequently undertaken in order to avoid
counting different word forms (e.g. house and houses) as separate words.
1. Watch Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) in the original English version focusing
on the following morphological issues:
A. prefixation,
B. infixation,
C. suffixation.
While watching, make a list of most common affixes together with the word(s) they
are a part of. Which affixes are most frequent? Which purpose do they serve?

Wykład 4:
WORD FORMATION
Zakres problemów:
1. Inflection and derivation in English.
2. Word-formation processes: suppletion, prefixing and suffixing, backformation,

hypocorisation, conversion, compounding, coining, acronymisation, blending,
borrowing, clipping, reduplication.
Words are notoriously difficult entities to define, both in universal and in language
specific terms. It has been estimated that average language user knows from 45 000 to 60
000 words. Like most linguistic entities, they look in two directions ̶ upward toward larger
units of which they are parts (toward phrases), and downward toward their constituent
morphemes. This, however, only helps us understand words if we already understand how
they are combined into larger units or divided into smaller ones, so we will briefly discuss
several other criteria that have been proposed for identifying them.
One possible criterion is spelling: in written English text, we tend to regard as a word
any expression that has no spaces within it and is separated by spaces from other
expressions. While this is a very useful criterion, it does sometimes lead to inconsistent and
unsatisfactory results. For instance, cannot is spelled as one word but might not as two;
compounds (words composed of two or more words; see below) are inconsistently divided
(cf. influx, in-laws, goose flesh, low income vs. low-income).
Words tend to resist interruption; we cannot freely insert pieces into words as we do
into sentences. For example, we cannot separate the root of a word from its inflectional
ending by inserting another word, as in *sockblues for blue socks. Sentences, in contrast, can
be interrupted. We can insert adverbials between subjects and predicates: John quickly
erased his fingerprints. By definition, we can also insert the traditional interjections: We will,
I believe, have rain later today.
In English, though by no means in all languages, the order of elements in words is
quite fixed. English inflections, for example, are suffixes and are added after any derivational
morphemes in a word. At higher levels in the language, different orders of elements can
differ in meaning: compare John kissed Mary with Mary kissed John. But we do not contrast
words with prefixed inflections with words with suffixed inflections. English does not
contrast, for example, piece + s with s + piece. In English, too, it is specific individual words
that select for certain inflections.
Thus, the word child is pluralized by adding {-ren}, ox by adding {-en}. So, if a form
takes the {-en} plural, it must be a word. So words are units composed of one or more
morphemes; they are also the units of which phrases are composed.
English inflectional morphology
Inflectional morphemes, as we noted earlier, alter the form of a word in order to

indicate certain grammatical properties. English has only eight inflectional morphemes, listed
below, along with the properties they indicate. Except for {-en}, the forms are the regular
English inflections:
 nouns: {-s} plural (the birds)

 noun phrases: {-s} genitive/possessive (the bird’s song)
 adjectives/adverbs: {-er} comparative (faster), {-est} superlative (fastest)
 verbs: {-s} 3rd person singular present tense (proves), {-ed} past tense (proved),
{-ing} progressive/present participle (is proving), {-en} past participle (has proven)
(was proven)
They are regular because they are the inflections added to the vast majority of verbs,
nouns, adjectives, and adverbs to indicate grammatical properties such as tense, number,
and degree. They are also the inflections we typically add to new words coming into the
language, for example, we add {-s} to the noun throughput to make it plural. When we
borrow words from other languages, in most cases we add the regular English inflections to
them rather than borrow the inflections they had in their home languages; for example, we
pluralize operetta as operettas rather than as operette as Italian does; similarly, we sing
oratorios rather than oratori.
The regular inflections are the default inflections that learners tend to use when they
do not know the correct ones (for example, growed rather than grew).
However, because of its long and complex history, English (like probably all languages)

has many irregular forms, which may be irregular in a variety of ways.
 First, irregular words may use different inflections than regular ones: for example, the
modern past participle inflection of a regular verb is {-ed}, but the past participle of
freeze is frozen and the past participle of break is broken.
 Second, irregular forms may involve internal vowel changes, as in man/men,
woman/women, grow/grew, ring/rang/rung.
 Third, some forms derive from historically unrelated forms: went, the past tense of
go, historically was the past tense of a different verb, wend. This sort of realignment
is known as suppletion. Other examples of suppletion include good, better, and best,
and bad, worse, and worst.
 Fourth, some words show no inflectional change: sheep is both singular and plural; hit
is both present and past tense, as well as past participle.
 Fifth, many borrowed words, especially nouns, have irregular inflected forms:
alumnae and cherubim are the plurals of alumna and cherub, respectively.
Irregular forms demonstrate the abstract status of morphemes. Thus the word men
realizes (represents, makes real) the two morphemes {man} and {plural}; women realizes
{woman} and {plural}; went realizes {go} and {past tense}. Most grammar and writing
textbooks contain long lists of these exceptions. As a final issue here we must note that
different groups of English speakers use different inflected forms of words, especially of
verbs. When this is the case, the standard variety of the language typically selects one and
rejects the others as non-standard, or, illogically, as “not English,” or worse. For example,
many English speakers use a single form of be in the past tense (was) regardless of what the
subject of its clause is. So they will say, We was there yesterday. This is an uncontroversial
issue: was in instances like this is universally regarded as non-standard.
English derivational morphology
Derivation is the process of creating separate but morphologically related words.

Typically, but not always, it involves one or more changes in form. It can involve prefixing, as
in resaw, and suffixing, as in sawing, sawer, sawable. Another type of derivation, while not
visible, is at least audible. It involves a change in the position of the primary stress in a word.

Compare:
'permit (noun) vs. per'mit (verb)

'contact (noun) vs. con'tact (verb)
'perfect (adj.) vs. per'fect (verb)
'convert (noun) vs. con'vert (verb)
A type of derivation is backformation, a process of reduction in which a word of one

type is reduced (backformed) to a word of different type. The reduction normally forms verbs
from already existing nouns, as in work (from worker), editor (from edit), donate form
donation, babysit (from babysitter).
A peculiar type of backformation is hypocorism. It is a two-stage process of
(1) reducing a long word into a one syllable word, and
(2) adding -y or -ie suffix.
The process is favored by Australians, hence Aussie (Australian), but also movie (moving
picture), bookie (bookmaker), brekky (breakfast), telly (televison), hankie (handkerchief), and
Chissy pressies (Christmas presents).
A change of part of speech without any corresponding formal change is called
conversion (also functional shift or zero derivation). As a result, identical forms may belong
to different parts of speech, e.g., saw the noun and saw the verb:
This saw is too dull. (noun)

Don’t saw that board. (verb)
Other examples include hit, buy, dust, autograph, brown-bag, drink, book, which can
all be both verbs and nouns.
Compounding
Consider the following:
a. A sawmill is a noisy place.

b. Every workshop should have a chain saw, a table saw, a jig-saw, a hack saw, and a
bucksaw.
c. Sawdust is always a problem in a woodworker’s workshop.
d. Sawing horses are useful and easily made.
Such words are called compounds. They contain two or more words (or more
accurately, two or more roots, all, one, or none of which may be bound; cf. blueberry with
two free morphemes, and astronaut with two bound morphemes). Generally, one of the
words is the head of the compound and the other(s) its modifier(s). In bucksaw, saw is the
head, which is modified by buck. The order is significant: compare pack rat with rat pack.
Generally, the modifier comes before the head.
In ordinary English spelling, compounds are sometimes spelled as single words, as in
sawmill, sawdust; sometimes the parts are connected by a hyphen, as in jig-saw; and
sometimes they are spelled as two words, as in chain saw, oil well. (Dictionaries may differ in
their spellings.) Nonetheless, we are justified in classifying all such cases as compound words
regardless of their conventional spelling for a variety of reasons. First, the stress pattern of
the compound word is usually different from the stress pattern in the phrase composed of
the same words in the same order. Compare:
'White House vs. white 'house

'funny farm vs. funny 'farm
'blackbird vs. black 'bird
'flatcar vs. flat 'car
There are a number of ways of approaching the study and classification of compound
words, the most accessible of which is to classify them according to the part of speech of the
compound and then sub-classify them according to the parts of speech of its constituents.
The following selection is based on discussion in Bauer (1983)9.
1. Compound nouns
a. Noun + noun: bath towel; boy-friend; death blow
9
Laurie Bauer (1983) English Word-formation. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.
b. Verb + noun: pickpocket; breakfast
c. Noun +verb: nosebleed; sunshine
d. Verb +verb: make-believe
e. Adjective + noun: deep structure; fast-food
f. Particle + noun: in-crowd; down-town
g. Adverb + noun: now generation
h. Verb + particle: cop-out; drop-out
i. Phrase compounds: son-in-law
2. Compound verbs
a. Noun + verb: sky-dive
b. Adjective + verb: fine-tune
c. Particle + verb: overbook
d. Adjective + noun: brown-bag
3. Compound adjectives
a. Noun + adjective: card-carrying; childproof
b. Verb + adjective: fail safe
c. Adjective + adjective: open-ended
d. Adverb + adjective: cross-modal
e. Particle + adjective: over-qualified
f. Noun + noun: coffee-table
g. Verb + noun: roll-neck
h. Adjective + noun: red-brick; blue-collar
i. Particle + noun: in-depth
j. Verb + verb: go-go; make-believe
k. Adjective/Adverb + verb: high-rise;
l. Verb + particle: see-through; tow-away
4. Compound adverbs
 uptightly
 cross-modally

5. Neo-classical compounds
 astro-naut
 hydro-electric
 mechano-phobe
OTHER SOURCES OF WORDS
Besides derivation and compounding, languages make use of other processes to

create new words.
Coining is the creation of new words without reference to the existing morphological
resources of the language, that is, solely out of the sounds of the language. Most typical
sources of coinages are invented trade names for one's company product which become
general terms (without capital letters) for any version of that product. Examples include
aspirin, zipper, sellotape, teflon, xerox, coca-cola, adidas, nike, etc.
Abbreviation involves the shortening of existing words to create other words, usually
informal versions of the originals. There are several ways to abbreviate. We may simply lop
off one or more syllables, as in prof for professor, doc for doctor. Usually the syllable left over
provides enough information to allow us to identify the word it is an abbreviation of.
Alternatively, we may use the first letter of each word in a phrase to create a new expression,
an acronym, as in UN, US, or SUV. In these instances the acronym is pronounced as a
sequence of letter names. In other instances, such as UNICEF from United Nations
International Children’s Emergency Fund, the acronym can be pronounced as an ordinary
English word. Other examples are:
AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

HIV - Human Immunodeficiency Virus
GB - Great Britain
MP - Member of Parliament
SMS - Short Message Service
SOS - Save Our Souls
NY - New York

PIN - Personal Identification Number
IRA - Irish Republican Army
Blending involves taking two or more words, removing parts of each, and joining the
residues together to create a new word whose form and meaning are taken from the source
words. Smog derives from smoke and fog and means a combination of these two substances
(and probably lots of others), Spanglish means Spanish English, motel derives from motor
and hotel and refers to hotels that are convenient in various ways to motorists; Prevacid
derives from prevent acid; eracism derives from erase and racism and means 'erase racism'
or, if read against the grain, 'electronic racism' (cf. email, ecommerce, E-trade); webinar
derives from (worldwide) web and seminar.
Borrowing involves copying a word that originally belonged in one language into
another language. For instance, many terms from Mexican cuisine, like taco and burrito, have
become current in American English and are spreading to other English dialects. Borrowing
requires that the borrowing language and the source language come in contact with each
other. Speakers of the borrowing language must learn at least some minimum of the source
language for the borrowing to take place. Over its 1500 year history English has borrowed
from hundreds of languages, though the main ones are Latin (homicide), Greek (chorus),
French (mutton), Italian (aria), Spanish (ranch), German (semester), and the Scandinavian
languages (law). From Native American languages, American English has borrowed place
names (Chicago), river names (Mississippi), animal names (opossum), and plant names
(hickory).
The borrowed word never remains a perfect copy of its original. It is made to fit the
phonological, morphological, and syntactic patterns of its new language. For example, the
Spanish pronunciation of burritos is very different from the English pronunciation. At the very
least, the two languages use different /r/s and /t/s, and the plural marker {-s} is voiced in
English but voiceless in Spanish.
Clipping is taking a part of an existing word, normally polysyllabic ones, to produce a
shorter word (usually monosyllabic) of the same meaning:
 front clipping: plane from aeroplane

 back clipping: ad from advertisement

 mixed clipping: flu from influenza
Clipped forms are characteristic of casual speech, and quite common in names as Al,
Ed, Liz, Ron, Mike, Sam, Sue, Tom.
Reduplication is a process in which the root or stem is repeated exactly or with a

small change:
 rhyming reduplication: walkie-talkie, hokey-pokey, razzle-dazzle, super-duper,

boogie-woogie, teenie-weenie.
 exact reduplication: bye-bye, choo-choo, night-night, no-no, pee-pee, poo-poo.
 ablaut reduplication is a process which involves a change of (normally) high vowel to
(normally) low vowel: bric-a-brac, chit-chat, criss-cross, ding-dong, jibber-jabber,
kitty-cat, knick-knack, pitter-patter, splish-splash, zig-zag.
CLASSIFYING WORDS BY THEIR MORPHOLOGICAL PROPERTIES
Once the morphemes of a language have been identified, their allomorphs

determined, and their distributions specified, we can use our analysis to assign the words of
a language to parts of speech. For many words, inflections provide the main basis of this
assignment:
 Nouns can be identified as those words that can be inflected for plural.
 Verbs are words that can be inflected for 3rd person singular present.
 Tense, past tense, past participle, and progressive. These forms are often referred to
as the principal parts of the verb.
 Short adjectives and adverbs are words that can be inflected for comparative and
superlative.
Derivational regularities can also be used to classify words. We can, for example,
classify as adverbs words derived from adjectives by the addition of the suffix {-ly}, e.g.,
quickly.
Classifying words on the basis of their internal morphological structure works only up
to a point. There are lots of words that are not internally complex and so cannot be classified
without recourse to other types of criteria. For example, the preposition to has no internal
morphological structure and so cannot be assigned to a grammatical class on that basis.
Likewise, adverbs such as hard or fast lack the characteristic {-ly} ending. It becomes
necessary to use other criteria to classify these and many other words, namely parts of
speech.

A dictionary study
1. Study an English-English dictionary containing circa 100,000 words (which equals circa
50,000 headwords). Find 10 examples of the words which illustrate the word-
formation processes discussed in the lecture (suppletion, prefixing, suffixing,
backformation, hypocorisation, conversion, compounding, coining, acronymisation,
blending, borrowing, clipping, reduplication). Provide the context(s) which clearly
depict the way and the form they are used in.

Wykład 5:
SEMANTICS
Zakres problemów:
1. Semantics as a linguistic discipline.
2. Thematic relations.
3. Most important terms used in lexical semantics: synonym, antonym, homonym,

homophone, heteronym, capitonym, hyponym, hypernym, eponym, polysemy,
connotation, denotation, euphemism.
Semantics refers to aspects of meaning, as expressed in language or other systems of

signs. The field breaks out into three branches:
 Semantics: Relation between signs and the things they refer to, their denotata;
 Syntactics: Relation of signs to each other in formal structures;
 Pragmatics: Relation of signs to their impacts on those who use them.
Semantics contrasts with syntax, which is the study of the structure of sign systems
(focusing on the form, not meaning). When analyzing languages, an analysis can be said to
cover both the "syntax and semantics" concerning both the format and meanings of phrases
in a language. The term semantics can apply not only to natural languages, such as English,
German or Latin, but also to technical languages, such as a computer programming
language.
Semanticists generally recognize two sorts of meaning that an expression (such as the
sentence, "Kate ate a banana") may have:
1. the relation that the expression, broken down into its constituent parts (signs), has to
things and situations in the real world as well as possible worlds, and
2. the relation the signs have to other signs, such as the sorts of mental signs that are
conceived of as concepts.
Most theorists refer to the relation between a sign and its objects, as always including
any manner of objective reference, as its denotation. Some theorists refer to the relation
between a sign and the signs that serve in its practical interpretation as its connotation, but

there are many more differences of opinion and distinctions of theory that are made in this
case. Many theorists, especially in the formal semantic, pragmatic, and semiotic traditions,
restrict the application of semantics to the denotative aspect, using other terms or
completely ignoring the connotative aspect.
The traditional view of semantics, as a finite meaning inherent in a lexical unit that
can be composed to generate meanings for larger chunks of discourse, is being fiercely
debated in the emerging domain of cognitive linguistics and also in the Philosophy of
Language. The challenge is motivated by:
 factors internal to language, such as the problem of resolving indexical or anaphora

(e.g. this X, him, last week). In these situations "context" serves as the input, but the
interpreted utterance also modifies the context, so it is also the output. Thus, the
interpretation is necessarily dynamic and the meaning of sentences are viewed as
context-change potentials instead of propositions.
 factors external to language, i.e. language is not a set of labels stuck on things, but a
toolbox, the importance of whose elements lie in the way they function rather than
their attachments to things.
A concrete example of the latter phenomenon is semantic underspecification —

meanings are not complete without some elements of context. To take an example of a
single word, "red," its meaning in a phrase such as red book is similar to many other usages,
and can be viewed as compositional. However, the color implied in phrases such as "red
wine" (very dark), and "red hair" (coppery), or "red soil", or "red skin" - are very different.
Indeed, these colours by themselves would not be called "red" by native speakers. These
instances are contrastive, so "red wine" is so called only in comparison with the other kind of
wine (which also is not "white" for the same reasons).
Another set of concepts related to fuzziness in semantics is based on prototypes. The

work of Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff in the 1970s led to a view that natural categories
are not characterizable in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but are graded (fuzzy
at their boundaries) and inconsistent as to the status of their constituent members.
Systems of categories are not objectively "out there" in the world but are rooted in
people's experience. These categories evolve as learned concepts of the world — meaning is

not an objective truth, but a subjective construct, learned from experience, and language
arises out of the grounding of our conceptual systems in shared embodiment and bodily
experience. A corollary of this is that the conceptual categories (i.e. the lexicon) will not be
identical for different cultures, or indeed, for every individual in the same culture.
LEXICAL SEMANTICS
Lexical semantics is a subfield of linguistics. It is the study of how and what the words
of a language denote. Words may either be taken to denote (to refer to, to mean) things in
the world, or concepts, depending on the particular approach to lexical semantics.
Lexical units are the words so lexical semantics involves the meaning of each
individual word. Lexical semantics is the one area of linguistics to which we can continually
add throughout our lives, as we are always learning new words and their meanings, whereas
we can only learn the rules of our native language during the critical period when we are
young. It covers theories of the classification and decomposition of word meaning, the
differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure between different languages, and the
relationship of word meaning to sentence meaning and syntax.
A question asked is if meaning is established by looking at the neighborhood in the

semantic net a word is part of and by looking at the other words it occurs within natural
sentences or if the meaning is already locally contained in a word. Another question is how
words map to concepts. As tools, lexical relations like synonymy, antonymy (opposites),
hyponymy and hypernymy (see below) are used in this field.
Thematic relations is a term used to express the meaning that a noun phrase plays
with respect to the action or state described by a sentence's verb. For example, in the
sentence "Susan ate an apple," Susan is the doer of the eating, so she is an agent; the apple
is the item that is eaten, so it is a patient. While most modern linguistic theories make
reference to such relations in one form or another, the general term, as well as the terms for
specific relations, varies; 'participant role,' 'semantic role,' and 'deep case' have been used
analogously to 'thematic role.'
Here is a list of the major thematic relations:

1. Agent: deliberately performs the action (e.g., Bill quietly opened the door.).
2. Experiencer: the entity that receives sensory or emotional input (e.g. The smell of
lilies made Peter sneeze. Bill heard the latest news.).
3. Theme: undergoes the action but does not change its state (e.g., We believe in many
gods. I have two children.)
4. Patient: undergoes the action and changes its state (e.g., The boy broke the window)
5. Instrument: is used to carry out the action (e.g., Jamie cut the ribbon with a pair of
scissors).
6. Force or Natural Cause: mindlessly performs the action (e.g., The rain fell down and
washed the dust away).
7. Location: where the action occurs (e.g., Let's meet in Paris!).
8. Direction or Goal: where the action is directed towards (e.g., They kept on travelling
toward the distant oasis. He walked to school.).
9. Recipient: a special kind of goal associated with verbs expressing a change in
ownership, possession. (e.g., He bought his wife an expensive present).
10. Time: the time at which the action occurs (e.g., The rocket was launched yesterday).
It is vital to notice that the list is by far incomplete and that there are no clear
boundaries between these relations. For example, in "the hammer broke the window," some
linguists treat hammer as an agent, some others as instrument, while some others treat it as
a special role different from these.
IMPORTANT TERMS USED IN SEMANTICS:
1. Synonyms are different words with identical or at least similar meanings; e.g. baby and
infant (noun), student and pupil (noun), buy and purchase (verb), pretty and attractive
(adjective), sick and ill (adjective), quickly and speedily (adverb), on and upon
(preposition), freedom and liberty (noun), dead and deceased (adjective). The synonyms
are defined with respect to certain senses of words; for instance, pupil as the aperture in
the iris of the eye is not synonymous with student. Similarly, expired as having lost
validity (as in grocery goods) does not necessarily mean death. Some lexicographers

claim that no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of
language) because etymology, orthography, phonic qualities, ambiguous meanings,
usage, etc. make them unique. However, many people feel that the synonyms they use
are identical in meaning for all practical purposes, and are interchangeable. Different
words that are similar in meaning usually differ for a reason: feline is more formal than
cat; long and extended are only synonyms in one usage and not in others, such as a long
arm and an extended arm.
2. Antonyms are words with opposite or nearly opposite meanings. For example: dead and
alive, near and far, war and peace, increase and decrease. Antonyms are of four types:
 Gradable antonyms are two ends of the spectrum (slow and fast) but can have
variations.
 Complementary antonyms are pairs that express absolute opposites, like mortal
and immortal.
 Relational antonyms (converses) are pairs in which one describes a relationship
between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the
two objects are reversed, such as parent and child, teacher and student, or buy
and sell.
 Auto-antonyms are the same words that can mean the opposite of themselves
under different contexts or having separate definitions, e.g.
 enjoin (to prohibit, issue injunction; to order, command)
 fast (moving quickly; fixed firmly in place)
 cleave (to split; to adhere)
 sanction (punishment, prohibition; permission)
 stay (remain in a specific place, postpone; guide direction, movement)
Note: The words synonym and antonym are themselves antonyms.
3. Homonym is one of a group of words that share the same spelling or pronunciation (or
both) but have different meanings. The state of being a homonym is called homonymy.
Examples of homonyms are stalk (which can mean either "part of a plant" or "to follow
someone around") and the trio of words to, too and two (actually, to, to, too, too and
two, being "for the purpose of" as in "to make it easier," the opposite of "from," also,
excessively, and "2," respectively). Some sources state that homonym meanings must be
unrelated in origin (rather than just different). Thus right (correct) and right (opposed to
left) would be polysemous (see below) and not be homonyms.
4. Homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in
meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense
of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or your and you're. A short
example of a homophone are the words "know" and "no." Notice that they are
pronounced the same, but both have different meanings.
Homophones are often used to create puns and to deceive the reader (as in
crossword puzzles) or to suggest multiple meanings. The last usage is common in poetry
and creative literature. An example of this is seen in Dylan Thomas' radio play Under Milk
Wood: "The shops in mourning" where mourning can be heard as mourning or morning.
5. Heteronyms (also known as heterophones) are words with identical spellings but
different pronunciations and meanings. They may vary in vowel realisation or in stress
patterns, or both. Heteronyms are a special type of homonym – they are homographs
which differ in pronunciation, and are therefore not homophones. For example, the
homographs desert (abandon) and desert (arid region) are heteronyms, but mean
(intend) and mean (average) are not. Further examples are: axes [plural of axis] and axes
(plural of ax or axe) close (as in near) and close (to shut), conduct (actions) and conduct
(musical verb), content (satisfied) and content (information).
6. Capitonyms are words that change their meanings (and sometimes pronunciation) when
capitalized, and usually applies to capitalization due to proper nouns or eponyms. It is a
portmanteau of the word capital with the suffix -onym. A capitonym is a form of
homograph and, when the two forms are pronounced differently, also of heteronym. In
situations where both words should be capitalized (such as the beginning of a sentence),
there will be nothing to distinguish between them. Although some pairs, such as march
and March, are completely unrelated, in other cases, such as august and catholic, the
capitalized form is a name which is etymologically related to the uncapitalized form. For
example, August derives from the name of Imperator Augustus, who named himself
after the word augustus, whence English august. And both Catholic and catholic derive
from a Greek adjective meaning "universal." Pairs in which one word is simply a
secondary meaning of the other, e.g. Masonry (secret society), which is essentially a
peculiar use of the word masonry (wall building), are omitted.
7. Hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic range is included within that of another
word. For example, scarlet, vermilion, carmine, and crimson are all hyponyms of red. The
specific term is called a hyponym, and a genreal term – superordinate or hypernym:
hypernym hyponym
vehicle car, bus, train, lorry, van, etc.
move run, walk, swim, fly, etc.
animal dog, cat, ant, dolphin, etc.
8. A word A is a hypernym ('extra name') of another word B if A's meaning encompasses

the meaning of B, that is, if B is a kind of A. For example, vehicle denotes all the things
that are separately denoted by the words train, chariot, dogsled, airplane, and
automobile and is therefore a hypernym of each of those words. A hypernym is the
opposite of a hyponym. For example, plant is hypernymic to flower whereas tulip is
hyponymic to flower.
9. An eponym is the name of a person, whether real or fictitious, which has (or is thought
to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item.
Examples might be Down syndrome (coined after from the physician John Down);
Augustan age, Victorian era, Shakespearian sonnet. An eponymous person is the person
referred to by the eponym.
10. Polysemy – the capacity for a sign (e.g. a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple
meanings which are related; e.g.
 PLANE (‘a fixed-wing aircraft’ and ‘a flat surface’);
 BANK (‘an institution’ and ‘the building where such institution offers
services’);
 BOOK (‘a bound collection of pages’ and ‘a text reproduced and
distributed’ (thus, someone who has read the same text on a computer
has read the same book as someone who had the actual paper
volume),
 PUPIL ('a student' and 'a part of the eye');
 WOOD (‘a piece of a tree’ and ‘a geographical area with many trees’).
11. Connotation is a subjective cultural and/or emotional coloration in addition to the

explicit or denotative meaning of any specific word or phrase in a language, i.e.
emotional association with a word. Within contemporary society, connotation branches
into a mixture of different meanings. These could include the contrast of a word or
phrase with its primary, literal meaning (known as a denotation), with what that word or
phrase specifically denotes.
The connotation essentially relates to how anything may be associated with a word
or phrase, for example, an implied value judgment or feelings. A stubborn person may be
described as being either strong-willed or pig-headed. Although these have the same
literal meaning (i.e. stubborn), strong-willed connotes admiration for the level of
someone's will, while pig-headed connotes frustration in dealing with someone.
Likewise, used car and previously owned car have the same literal meaning, but many
dealerships prefer the latter, since it is thought to have fewer negative connotations.
12. Denotation is the strict, literal, dictionary definition of a word, devoid of any emotion,
attitude, or colour. Denotation often links with symbolism, as the denotation of a
particular media text often represents something further; a hidden meaning (or an
Engima Code) is often encoded into a media text, such as the images below:

The denotation of this example is a red rose with a green
stem. The connotation is that is a symbol of passion and love
- this is what the rose represents.
The denotation is a brown cross. The connotation is a symbol

of religion, according to the media connotation. However, to
be more specific, this is a symbol of Christianity.
The denotation is a representation of a cartoon heart. The

connotation is a symbol of love and affection, not in the way
of a rose, but a symbol of true love.
13. Euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression for one that
may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener; or in the case of
doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker. It also may be a substitution of
a description of something or someone rather than the name, to avoid revealing secret,
holy, or sacred names to the uninitiated, or to obscure the identity of the subject of a
conversation from potential eavesdroppers. Common examples are: restroom for toilet
room, to pass away for to die; acting like rabbits, making love to, getting it on, cheeky
time, doing it, or sleeping with for having sex with; ill-advised for very poor or bad; pre-
owned vehicles for used cars; mature for old or elderly; intellectually handicapped for
stupid, etc.
Część e-learningowa (2 godz.):

A dictionary study
1. The terms discussed at the lecture are: synonym, antonym, homonym, homophone,
heteronym, capitonym, hyponym, hypernym, eponym, polysemy, connotation,

denotation, euphemism. Study an English-English dictionary containing circa 100,000
words (which equals circa 50,000 headwords). Find 10 further examples of the words
which illustrate those terms. Provide the context(s) which clearly depict the way and
the form they are used in.

Wykład 6:
PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Czas trwania: 4 godz. (zajęcia e-learningowe)
Zakres problemów:
1. The notion of the act of speech.
2. Acts of speech and their types.
3. Conversational maxims.
4. Relevance Theory.
5. Discourse - its types and characteristics.
6. Basic elements of discursive analysis.
Pragmatics is concerned with bridging the explanatory gap between sentence

meaning and speaker's meaning. The study of how context influences the interpretation is
then crucial. In this setting, context refers to any factor — linguistic, objective, or subjective
— that affects the actual interpretation of signs and expressions. Pragmatics tries to
understand the relationship between signs and interpretations, while semantics tends to
focus on the actual objects or ideas that a word refers to, and syntax (or "syntactics")
examines the relationship between signs. Thus:
 Semantics is the literal meaning of an idea whereas pragmatics is the implied

meaning of the given idea.
 Pragmatics is interested predominantly in utterances, usually in the context of
conversations.
A distinction is made in pragmatics between sentence meaning and speaker meaning.

Sentence meaning is the literal meaning of the sentence, while the speaker meaning is the
piece of information (or proposition) that the speaker is trying to convey. The ability to
understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence, whilst an
utterance describing pragmatic function is called metapragmatic.

SPEECH ACTS
The philosopher J.L. Austin (1911-1960) claims that many utterances (things people
say) are equivalent to actions. When someone says: “I name this ship” or “I now pronounce
you man and wife,” the utterance creates a new social or psychological reality. To them we
can add many more examples:
 Sergeant Major: Squad, by the left… left turn!

 Referee: (Pointing to the centre circle) Goal!
 Groom: With this ring, I thee wed.
Speech act theory broadly explains these utterances as having three parts or aspects:
locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts.
 Locutionary acts are simply the speech acts that have taken place.
 Illocutionary acts are the real actions which are performed by the utterance, where
saying equals doing, as in betting, plighting one's troth, welcoming and warning.
 Perlocutionary acts are the effects of the utterance on the listener, who accepts the
bet or pledge of marriage, is welcomed or warned.
Types of illocutionary acts:
 Representatives: here the speaker asserts a proposition to be true, using such verbs
as: affirm, believe, conclude, deny, report.
 Directives: here the speaker tries to make the hearer do something, with such words
as: ask, beg, challenge, command, dare, invite, insist, request.
 Commissives: here the speaker commits himself (or herself) to a (future) course of
action, with verbs such as: guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, vow, undertake,
warrant.
 Expressives: the speaker expresses an attitude to or about a state of affairs, using
such verbs as: apologize, appreciate, congratulate, deplore, detest, regret, thank,
welcome.

 Declarations: here the speaker alters the external status or condition of an object or
situation, solely by making the utterance: I now pronounce you man and wife, I
sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you be dead, I name this ship... .
ANOTHER KIND: PERFORMATIVES
Performatives are speech acts of a special kind where the utterance of the right
words by the right person in the right situation effectively is (or accomplishes) the social act.
In some cases, the speech must be accompanied by a ceremonial or ritual action. Whether
the speaker in fact has the social or legal (or other kind of) standing to accomplish the act
depends on some things beyond the mere speaking of the words. These are felicity
conditions (see below), which we can also explain by the “hereby” test. To give an example:
in the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 19; 13-20) we read of some exorcists in Ephesus who
tried to copy St. Paul and cast out evil spirits in the name of Jesus:
“I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims”.
On one occasion the possessed man (or the evil spirit) attacked them, and said:
“Jesus I know and Paul I know; but who are you?”
Evidently, St. Paul not only knew the words, but also had the means to call on divine
aid for his exorcisms. In a slightly similar vein, Claudius, in Hamlet, sees that his prayer is
ineffectual because “Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.”
Outside of miracle or magic, there are social realities that can be enacted by speech,
because we all accept the status of the speaker in the appropriate situation. This is an idea
expressed in the American Declaration of Independence where we read, “Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”
Here are some examples from different spheres of human activity, where
performatives are found at work. These are loose categories, and many performatives
belong to more than one of them:

 Universities and schools: conferring of degrees, rusticating or excluding students.
 The church: baptizing, confirming and marrying, exorcism, commination (cursing) and
excommunication.
 Governance and civic life: crowning of monarchs, dissolution of Parliament, passing
legislation, awarding honours, ennobling or decorating.
 The law: enacting or enforcing of various judgements, passing sentence, swearing
oaths and plighting one's troth.
 The armed services: signing on, giving an order to attack, retreat or open fire.
 Sport: cautioning or sending off players, giving players out, appealing for a dismissal
or declaring (closing an innings) in cricket.
 Business: hiring and firing, establishing a verbal contract, naming a ship.
 Gaming: placing a bet, raising the stakes in poker.
THE “HEREBY” TEST
One simple but crude way to decide whether a speech act is of such a kind that we
can aptly call it a performative is to insert the word “hereby” between subject and verb. If
the resulting utterance makes sense, then the speech act is probably a performative. For
example,
 “I hereby confer upon you the honourable degree of Bachelor of Arts…”

 “I hereby sentence you to three months' probation, suspended for a year…”
 “I hereby appoint you Grandmaster of the Ancient, Scandalous and Disreputable
Order of Friends of the Hellfire Club …”
It is crude, because it implies at least one felicity condition: whatever it is to which

“hereby” refers. In the first example, “hereby” may refer to a physical action (touching on
the head or shoulder with a ceremonial staff or mace, say). In the second example it may
refer to the speaker's situation – in sitting as chairman of the bench of magistrates. The third
example is a (plausible) invention – showing how all sorts of private groups (Freemasons,
Rotarians, even the school Parent Teacher Association) can have their own agreements,
which give to some speakers the power to enact performatives.

FELICITY CONDITIONS
These are conditions necessary to the success of a speech act. They take their name
from a Latin root – “felix” or “happy.” They are conditions needed for success or
achievement of a performative. Only certain people are qualified to declare war, baptize
people or sentence convicted felons. In some cases, the speaker must be sincere (as in
apologizing or vowing). And external circumstances must be suitable: “Can you give me a
lift?” requires that the hearer has a motor vehicle, is able to drive it somewhere and that the
speaker has a reason for the request. It may be that the utterance is meant as a joke or
sarcasm, in which case a different interpretation is in order. Loosely speaking, felicity
conditions are of three kinds: preparatory conditions, conditions for execution and sincerity
conditions.
1. PREPARATORY CONDITIONS
Preparatory conditions include the status or authority of the speaker to perform the
speech act, the situation of other parties and so on. So, in order to confirm a candidate, the
speaker must be a bishop; but a mere priest can baptize people, while various ministers of
religion and registrars may solemnize marriages (in England). In the case of marrying, there
are other conditions - that neither of the couple is already married, that they make their
own speech acts, and so on. We sometimes speculate about the status of people (otherwise
free to marry) who act out a wedding scene in a play or film - are they somehow, really,
married? In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare has no worries, because the words of the
ceremony are not spoken on stage, and, anyway, Juliet's part is played by a boy. (Though this
may make the wedding scene seem blasphemous to some in the audience.)
In the UK only the monarch can dissolve parliament. A qualified referee can caution a
player, if he or she is officiating in a match. The referee's assistant (who, in the higher
leagues, is also a qualified referee) cannot do this.
2. CONDITIONS FOR EXECUTION

Conditions for execution can assume an exaggerated importance. We are so used to
a ritual or ceremonial action accompanying the speech act that we believe the act is
invalidated, if the action is lacking - but there are few real examples of this.
Take refereeing of association football. When a referee cautions a player, he (or she)
should take the player's name, number and note the team for which he plays. The referee
may also display a yellow card, but this is not necessary to the giving of the caution:
The mandatory use of the cards is merely a simple aid for better communication .
In knighting their subjects, English monarchs traditionally touch the recipient of the
honour on both shoulders with the flat side of a sword blade. But this, too, is not necessary
to the performance of the speech act.
3. SINCERITY CONDITIONS
At a simple level these show that the speaker must really intend what he or she says.
In the case of apologizing or promising, it may be impossible for others to know how sincere
the speaker is. Moreover sincerity, as a genuine intention (now) is no assurance that the
apologetic attitude will last, or that the promise will be kept. There are some speech acts –
such as plighting one's troth or taking an oath – where this sincerity is determined by the
presence of witnesses. The one making the promise will not be able later to argue that he or
she did not really mean it.
A more complex example comes in the classroom where the teacher asks a question,
but the pupil supposes that the teacher knows the answer and is, therefore, not sincere in
asking it. In this case “Can you, please, tell me X?” may be more acceptable to the child than
“What is X?”
We can also use our understanding of sincerity conditions humorously, where we ask
others, or promise ourselves, to do things which we think the others know to be impossible:
“Please can you make it sunny tomorrow?”
IMPLICATURES

In a series of lectures at Harvard University in 1967, the English language philosopher
Paul Grice outlined an approach to what he termed conversational implicature - how
hearers manage to work out the complete message when speakers mean more than they
say. An example of what Grice meant by conversational implicature is the utterance:
 “Have you got any cash on you?”
where the speaker really wants the hearer to understand the meaning:
 “Can you lend me some money? I don't have much on me.”
The conversational implicature is a message that is not found in the plain sense of the
sentence. The speaker implies it. The hearer is able to infer (work out, read between the
lines) this message in the utterance, by appealing to the rules governing successful
conversational interaction. Grice proposed that implicatures like the second sentence can be
calculated from the first, by understanding three things:
1. the usual linguistic meaning of what is said;
2. contextual information (shared or general knowledge);
3. the assumption that the speaker is obeying what Grice calls the cooperative
principle.
CONVERSATIONAL MAXIMS AND THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE
The success of a conversation depends upon the various speakers' approach to the
interaction. The way in which people try to make conversations work is sometimes called the
cooperative principle. We can understand it partly by noting those people who are
exceptions to the rule, and are not capable of making the conversation work. We may also,
sometimes, find it useful deliberately to infringe or disregard it – as when we receive an
unwelcome call from a telephone salesperson, or where we are being interviewed by a police
officer on suspicion of some terrible crime.
Paul Grice proposes that in ordinary conversation, speakers and hearers share a

cooperative principle. Speakers shape their utterances to be understood by hearers. The
principle can be explained by four underlying rules or maxims. They are called conversational
maxims. They are also sometimes named Grice's or Gricean maxims. They are the maxims of
quality, quantity, relevance, and manner.
1. Quality: speakers should be truthful. They should not say what they think is false, or
make statements for which they have no evidence.
2. Quantity: a contribution should be as informative as is required for the conversation to
proceed. It should be neither too little, nor too much. (It is not clear how one can decide
what quantity of information satisfies the maxim in a given case.)
3. Relevance: speakers' contributions should relate clearly to the purpose of the exchange.
4. Manner: speakers' contributions should be perspicuous: clear, orderly and brief, avoiding
obscurity and ambiguity.
Grice does not prescribe the use of such maxims. Nor does he suggest that we use
them artificially to construct conversations. But they are useful for analysing and interpreting
conversation, and may reveal purposes of which (either as speaker or listener) we were not
previously aware. Very often, we communicate particular non-literal meanings by appearing
to “violate” or “flout” these maxims. If you were to hear someone described as having “one
good eye,” you might well assume the person's other eye was defective, even though nothing
had been said about it at all.
RELEVANCE
Some linguists (such as Howard Jackson and Peter Stockwell, who calls it a
“Supermaxim”) single out relevance as of greater importance than Grice recognised (Grice
sees quality and manner as supermaxims). Assuming that the cooperative principle is at
work in most conversations, we can see how hearers will try to find meaning in utterances
that seem meaningless or irrelevant. We assume that there must be a reason for these.
Jackson and Stockwell cite a conversation between a shopkeeper and a 16-year old
customer:
Customer: Just these, please.
Shopkeeper: Are you eighteen?
Customer: Oh, I'm from Middlesbrough.
Shopkeeper: (after a brief pause) OK (serves beer to him).
It can be suggested that there is no explanation for the customer's bizarre reply.
Perhaps this should be qualified: we cannot be sure what the explanation is, but we can find
some plausible answer. Possible explanations might include these:
 The young man thought his being from Middlesbrough might explain whatever it was
about him that had made the shopkeeper suspicious about his youth.
 The young man thought the shopkeeper's question was provoked by his unfamiliar
manner of speaking, so he wanted to explain this.
 The young man was genuinely flustered and said the first thing he could think of,
while trying to think of a better reason for his looking under-age.
 The young man thought that the shopkeeper might treat someone from
Middlesbrough in a more indulgent manner than people from elsewhere.
Further, we may suggest that the shopkeeper “derived some inference or other” from
the teenager's reply, since she served him the beer. It might, of course, be that she had raised
the question (how old is this customer?) once, but when he appeared to have misunderstood
it, was not ready to ask it again or clarify it - perhaps because this seemed too much like hard
work, and as a stranger, the teenager would be unlikely to attract attention (from the police
or trading standards officers) as a regular under-age purchaser of beer.
In analysing utterances and searching for relevance we can use a hierarchy of
propositions - those that might be asserted, presupposed, entailed or inferred from any
utterance.
 Assertion: what is asserted is the obvious, plain or surface meaning of the utterance.
 Presupposition: what is taken for granted in the utterance. “I saw the Mona Lisa in
the Louvre” presupposes that the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre.
 Entailments: logical or necessary corollaries of an utterance; thus, the above example
entails:
 I saw something in the Louvre.

 I saw something somewhere.
 Something was seen.
 There is a Louvre.
 There is a Mona Lisa, and so on.
 Inferences: these are interpretations that other people draw from the utterance, for
which we cannot always directly account. From this example, someone might infer,
rationally, that the Mona Lisa is, or was recently, on show to the public. They might
infer, less rationally, that the speaker has been to France recently – because if the
statement were about something from years ago, he or she would have said so.
In conveying a message, we should think about more than just “who did what to
whom.” We also have to keep in mind what our listeners know already, and how to present
the message in an intelligible and coherent manner.
We should not assume that our listeners have particular knowledge. Even if we are
sure they do have knowledge of something about which we wish to speak, we may need to
introduce it, or recall what they already know. Our listeners may do this for us, as when one's
parent, irked by a personal pronoun demands to know: “Who's she? The cat's mother?”
Similarly, we should not introduce familiar things as if they were new. This may seem
patronizing, but can also be confusing, since our listeners may try to find a new
interpretation to match our implication of novelty.
DEFINITION OF DISCOURSE
Since its introduction to modern science the term 'discourse' has taken various,
sometimes very broad, meanings. In order to specify which of the numerous senses is
analyzed in the following dissertation it has to be defined. Originally the word 'discourse'
comes from Latin discursus which denoted 'conversation, speech.' Thus understood,
however, discourse refers to too wide an area of human life, therefore only discourse from
the vantage point of linguistics, and especially applied linguistics, is explained here.
Seven criteria which have to be fulfilled to qualify either a written or a spoken text as
a discourse have been suggested. These include:
 Cohesion, grammatical relationship between parts of a sentence essential for its

interpretation;

 Coherence, the order of statements relates one another by sense.
 Intentionality - the message has to be conveyed deliberately and consciously;
 Acceptability indicates that the communicative product needs to be satisfactory in

that the audience approves it;
 Informativeness - some new information has to be included in the discourse;
 Situationality - circumstances in which the remark is made are important;
 Intertextuality - reference to the world outside the text or the interpreters' schemata;
Nowadays, however, not all of the above mentioned criteria are perceived as equally
important in discourse studies, therefore some of them are valid only in certain methods of
the research.
FEATURES OF DISCOURSE
Since it is not easy to unambiguously clarify what a discourse is it seems reasonable

to describe features which are mutual to all its kinds. To do it thoroughly Saussurean
concepts of langue and parole are of use. Ferdinand de Saussure divided the broad meaning
of language into langue, which is understood as a system that enables people to speak as
they do, and parole - a particular set of produced statements. Following this division,
discourse relates more to parole, for it always occurs in time and is internally characterized
by successively developing expressions in which the meaning of the latter is influenced by
the former, while langue is abstract. To list some additional traits: discourse is always
produced by somebody whose identity, as well as the identity of the interpreter, is significant
for the proper understanding of the message. On the other hand, langue is impersonal that is
to say more universal, due to society. Furthermore, discourse always happens in either
physical, or linguistic context and within a meaningful fixed time, whereas langue does not
refer to anything. Consequently, only discourse may convey messages thanks to langue which
is its framework.

TYPES OF DISCOURSE
Not only is discourse difficult to define, but it is also not easy to make a clear cut
division of discourse as such. Therefore, depending on the form linguists distinguish various
kinds of communicative products. A type of discourse might be characterized as a class of
either written or spoken text, which is frequently casually specified, recognition of which aids
its perception, and consequently production of potential response. One of such divisions,
known as the Organon model, distinguishes three types of discourse depending of the aspect
of language emphasized in the text. If the relation to the context is prevailing, it conveys
some knowledge, thus it is an informative type of discourse. When the stress is on a
symptom aspect the fulfilled function is expression, as a result the discourse type is
narrative. Last but not least in this division is argumentative discourse which is characterized
by the accent on the signal aspect.
This distinction due to its suitability for written communicative products more than
for spoken ones, faced constructive criticism whose accurate observation portrayed that
there are more functions performed. Consequently, there ought to be more types of
discourse, not to mention the fact that these often mix and overlap. Thorough examination
of the matter was conducted, thus leading to the emergence of a new, more detailed
classification of kinds of spoken texts.
WRITTEN AND SPOKEN DISCOURSE
Apart from the obvious differences between speech and writing, like the fact that
writing includes some medium which keeps record of the conveyed message while speech
involves only air, there are certain dissimilarities that are less apparent. Speech develops in
time in that the speaker says with speed that is suitable for him, even if it may not be
appropriate for the listener and though a request for repetition is possible, it is difficult to
imagine a conversation in which every sentence is to be rephrased. Moreover, talking might
be spontaneous which results in mistakes, repetition, sometimes less coherent sentences
where even grunts, stutters or pauses might be meaningful. The speaker usually knows the

listener, or listeners, or he is at least aware of the fact that he is being listened to, which
enables him to adjust the register. As interlocutors are most often in face-to-face encounters
(unless using a phone), they take advantage of extralinguistic signals as grimaces,
gesticulation, expressions such as 'here,' 'now,' or 'this' are used. Employment of nonsense
vocabulary, slang and contracted forms (we're, you've) is another feature of oral discourse.
Among other significant features of speech there are rhythm, intonation, speed of uttering
and, what is more important, inability to conceal mistakes made while speaking.
In contrast, writing develops in space in that it needs a means to carry the

information. The author of the text does not often know who is going to read the text, as a
result he cannot adjust to readers' specific expectations. The writer is frequently able to
consider the content of his work for almost unlimited period of time which makes it more
coherent, having complex syntax. What is more, the reader might not instantly respond to
the text, ask for clarification, hence neat message organization, division to paragraphs, layout
are of vital importance to make comprehension easier. Additionally, owing to the lack of
context expressions such as 'now' or 'here' are omitted, since they would be ambiguous as
texts might be read at different times and places. One other feature typical of writing, but
never of oral discourse, is the organization of tables, formulas, or charts which can be
portrayed only in written form.
Naturally, this division into two ways of producing discourse is quite straightforward,
yet, it is possible to combine the two like, for example, in the case of a lesson, when a
teacher explains something writing on the blackboard, or when a speaker prepares detailed
notes to be read out during his speech. Moreover, some of the foregoing features are not so
explicit in the event of sophisticated, formal speech or a friendly letter.
DISCOURSE EXPRESSED FORMALLY AND INFORMALLY
The difference in construction and reception of language was the basis of its
conventional distinction into speaking and writing. Nevertheless, when the structure of
discourse is taken into consideration, more essential division into formal and informal
communicative products gains importance.

Formal discourse is more strict in that it requires the use of passive voice, lack of
contracted forms together with impersonality, complex sentence structure and, in the case of
the English language, vocabulary derived from Latin. That is why formal spoken language has
many features very similar to written texts, particularly absence of vernacular vocabulary and
slang, as well as the employment of rhetorical devices to make literary-like impact on the
listener.
Informal discourse, on the other hand, makes use of active voice mainly, with
personal pronouns and verbs which show feelings such as 'I think,' 'we believe.' In addition,
contractions are frequent in informal discourse, no matter if it is written or spoken.
Consequently it may be said that informal communicative products are casual and loose,
while formal ones are more solemn and governed by strict rules as they are meant to be
used in official and serious circumstances.
The relation of the producer of the message and its receiver, the amount of
addressees and factors such as public or private occasion are the most important features
influencing selecting either formal or informal language. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to
assume that the contemporary learner, who may easily travel and use his linguistic skills
outside class, will encounter mainly informal discourse, which due to its flexibility and
unpredictability might be the most difficult to comprehend. Accordingly, it seems rational to
teach all varieties of language relying on authentic oral and written texts.
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Discourse analysis is a primarily linguistic study examining the use of language by its
native population whose major concern is investigating language functions along with its
forms, produced both orally and in writing. Moreover, identification of linguistic qualities of
various genres, vital for their recognition and interpretation, together with cultural and social
aspects which support its comprehension, is the domain of discourse analysis. To put it in
another way, the branch of applied linguistics dealing with the examination of discourse
attempts to find patterns in communicative products as well as and their correlation with the
circumstances in which they occur, which are not explainable at the grammatical level.

LINKS WITHIN DISCOURSE
Links in discourse studies are divided into two groups: formal - which refer to facts
that are present in the analyzed text, and contextual - referring to the outside world, the
knowledge (or schemata) which is not included in the communicative product itself. Since it
is difficult to describe the processing of contextual links without referring to particular
psychological inquiries, therefore, this section is devoted to representation of formal links.
By and large, five types of cohesive devices are distinguished, some of which might be
subdivided:
 Substitution: in order to avoid repeating the same word several times in one
paragraph it is replaced, most often by one, do or so. So and do in its all forms might
also substitute whole phrases or clauses (e.g. "Tom has created the best web
directory. I told you so long time ago.")
 Ellipsis: it is very similar to substitution, however, it replaces a phrase by a gap. In

other words, it is omission of noun, verb, or a clause on the assumption that it is
understood from the linguistic context.
 Reference: the use of words which do not have meanings of their own, such as
pronouns and articles. To infer their meaning the reader has to refer them to
something else that appears in the text (e.g. Tom: "How do you like my new
Mercedes Vito?" - Marry: "It is a nice van, which I'm also thinking of buying.")
 Conjunction: specifies the relationship between clauses, or sentences. Most frequent

relations of sentences are: addition (and, moreover; e.g. "Moreover, the chocolate
fountains are not just regular fountains, they more like rivers full of chocolate and
sweets."), temporality (afterwards, next; e.g. "He bought her perfume at a local
perfume shop and afterwards moved toward a jewelry store.") and causality
(because, since).
 Lexical cohesion: denotes links between words which carry meaning: verbs, nouns,
adjectives. Two types of lexical cohesion are differentiated, namely: reiteration and
collocation. Reiteration adopts various forms, particularly synonymy, repetition,
hyponymy or antonymy. Collocation is the way in which certain words occur together,
which is why it is easy to make out what will follow the first item.
It is clear from the analysis of written language that when people produce discourse
they focus not only on the correctness of a single sentence, but also on the general outcome
of their production. That is why the approach to teaching a foreign language which
concentrates on creating grammatically correct sentences, yet does not pay sufficient
attention to regularities on more global level of discourse, might not be the best one.
Study questions:
Study the contents carefully and answer the following questions:
1. What are the speech acts? Characterise them briefly.
2. What are the felicity conditions?
3. What is the maxim of relevance?
4. Give examples of assertion, presupposition, entailment, inference as used in discourse
analysis.
5. What are the features of discourse?
6. What are the types of discourse?
7. What are the links within a discourse? Discuss them and give examples.

Wykład 7.
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, LANGUAGES IN CONTACT,
REGIONAL VARIATIONS OF LANGUAGE
Czas trwania: 4 godziny (wykład e-learningowy)

Zakres problemów:
1. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
2. Cultural determinism, cultural relativism, and cultural ethnocentrism.
3. Variations of language.
4. Language registers.
5. Language variations.
6. Enculturation.
7. Pidgins and Creoles.
10. Language family.
11. Proto-language.
THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis theorizes that thoughts and behavior are determined (or
are at least partially influenced) by language. If true in its strongest sense, the sinister
possibility of a culture controlled by Newspeak (as in Orwell's 1984) or some other language
is not just science fiction. Since its inception in the 1920s and 1930s, the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis has caused controversy and spawned research in a variety of disciplines including
linguistics, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and education. To this day it has not been
completely disputed or defended, but has continued to intrigue researchers around the
world.

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf brought attention to the relationship between
language, thought, and culture. Neither of them formally wrote the hypothesis nor
supported it with empirical evidence, but through a thorough study of their writings about
linguistics, researchers have found two main ideas.
 First, a theory of linguistic determinism that states that the language you speak
determines the way that you will interpret the world around you.
 Second, a weaker theory of linguistic relativism that states that language merely
influences your thoughts about the real world.
Edward Sapir studied the research of Wilhelm von Humboldt. About one hundred
years before Sapir published his linguistic theories, Humboldt wrote a strong version of
linguistic determinism: "Man lives in the world about him principally, indeed exclusively, as
language presents it to him." Sapir took this idea and expanded on it. Although he did not
always support this firm hypothesis, his writings state that there is clearly a connection
between language and thought.
Benjamin Lee Whorf was Sapir's student. Whorf devised the weaker theory of
linguistic relativity: 'We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that
all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe...
.' He also supported, at times, the stronger linguistic determinism. To Whorf, this
connection between language and thought was also an obligation not a choice. A collection
Whorf’s essays was translated into Polish by Teresa Hołówka and published in a book
entitled Język, myśl i rzeczywistość (1982).
Both Sapir and Whorf agreed that it is our culture that determines our language,
which in turn determines the way that we categorize our thoughts about the world and our
experiences in it.
If one is to believe the strong version of linguistic determinism, one also has to agree
that thought is not possible without language. What about the pre-linguistic thought of
babies? How can babies acquire language without thought? Also, where did language come
from? In the linguistic determinist's view, language would have to be derived from a source
outside the human realm because thought is impossible without language and before
language there would have been no thought. Supporters of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis must
acknowledge that their study of language in the "real world" is not without doubt if their
language influences how they categorize what they seem to experience.
Yet another problem with the hypothesis is that languages and linguistic concepts are
highly translatable. Under linguistic determinism, a concept in one language would not be
understood in a different language because the speakers and their world views are bound by
different sets of rules. Languages are in fact translatable and only in select cases of poetry,
humor and other creative communications are ideas "lost in the translation."
Despite all these problems facing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, there have been
several studies performed that support at least the weaker linguistic relativity hypothesis. In
1954, Brown and Lenneberg tested for color codability, or how speakers of one language
categorize the color spectrum and how it affects their recognition of those colors. Lenneberg
reports on a study showing how terms of colors influence the actual discrimination. English-
speaking subjects were better able to re-recognize those hues which are easily named in
English. This finding is clearly in support of the limiting influence of linguistic categories on
cognition.
Lucy and Shweder's color memory test (1979) also supports the linguistic relativity
hypothesis. If a language has terms for discriminating between color, then actual
discrimination/perception of those colors will be affected. Lucy and Shweder found that
influences on color recognition memory is mediated exclusively by basic color terms – a
language factor.
Kay and Kempton's language study (1984) found support for linguistic relativity. They
found that language is a part of cognition. In their study, English speakers' perceptions were
distorted in the blue-green area while speakers from Tarahumara – who lack a blue-green
distinction – showed no distortion. However, under certain conditions they found that
universalism of color distinction can be recovered.
Culture influences the structure and functions of a group's language, which in turn
influences the individual's interpretations of reality. Whorf saw language and culture as two
inseparable sides of a single coin. Indeed, deciding which came first the language or the

culture is impossible to discern. Language reinforces cultural patterns through semantics,
syntax and naming. Grammar and the forms of words show hierarchical importance of
something to a culture.
FURTHER APPROACHES AND CONCEPTS TO THE PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE-

CULTURE/CULTURE-LANGUAGE
 Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values,

attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations,
concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of
people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
 Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
 Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's
learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly,
behavior through social learning.
 A culture is a way of life of a group of people: the behaviors, beliefs, values, and
symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed
along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
 Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills,
knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned
and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
 Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and
transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups,
including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of
traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one
hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning
influences upon further action.
 Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are
generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from
generation to generation.

 Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of
one group or category of people from another.
THEORY OF CULTURAL DETERMINISM
Cultural determinism is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines
who we are at emotional and behavioral levels. This supports the theory that environmental
influences dominate who we are instead of biologically inherited traits.
Yet another way of looking at the concept of cultural determinism is to contrast it

with the idea of environmental determinism. The latter is the idea that the physical world,
with all its constraints and potentially life-altering elements, is responsible for the make-up
of each existing culture. Contrast this with the idea that we (humans) create our own
situations through the power of thought, socialization, and all forms of information
circulation.
It is also used to describe the concept that culture determines economic and political
arrangements. It is an idea which has recurred in many cultures over human history, from
ancient civilizations through the present.
The assumptions so-far discussed can be summarized as follows:
1. The position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs and values people learn as members of
society determines human nature. People are what they learn. Optimistic version of
cultural determinism place no limits on the abilities of human beings to do or to be
whatever they want. Some anthropologists suggest that there is no universal "right
way" of being human. 'Right way' is almost always 'our way;' that 'our way' in one
society almost never corresponds to 'our way' in any other society. Proper attitude of
an informed human being could only be that of tolerance.
2. The optimistic version of this theory postulates that human nature being infinitely
malleable, human being can choose the ways of life they prefer.
3. The pessimistic version maintains that people are what they are conditioned to be;
this is something over which they have no control. Human beings are passive
creatures and do whatever their culture tells them to do. This explanation leads to
behaviorism that locates the causes of human behavior in a realm that is totally
beyond human control.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities
should be understood in terms of his or her own culture. This principle was established as
axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th
century and later popularized by his students. Boas believed that the sweep of cultures, to
be found in connection with any sub species, is so vast and pervasive that there cannot be a
relationship between culture and race.
Different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There is no scientific
standards for considering one group as intrinsically superior or inferior to another. Studying
differences in culture among groups and societies presupposes a position of cultural
relativism. It does not imply normalcy for oneself, nor for one's society. It, however, calls for
judgment when dealing with groups or societies different from one's own. Information about
the nature of cultural differences between societies, their roots, and their consequences
should precede judgment and action. Negotiation is more likely to succeed when the parties
concerned understand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints.
CULTURAL ETHNOCENTRISM
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's own culture is superior to that of other
cultures. It is a form of reductionism that reduces the "other way" of life to a distorted
version of one's own. This is particularly important in case of global dealings when a
company or an individual is imbued with the idea that methods, materials, or ideas that
worked in the home country will also work abroad. Environmental differences are, therefore,
ignored. Ethnocentrism, in relation to global dealings, can be categorized as follows:

 Important factors in business are overlooked because of the obsession with certain
cause-effect relationships in one's own country. It is always a good idea to refer to
checklists of human variables in order to be assured that all major factors have been
at least considered while working abroad.
 Even though one may recognize the environmental differences and problems
associated with change, but may focus only on achieving objectives related to the
home-country. This may result in the loss of effectiveness of a company or an
individual in terms of international competitiveness. The objectives set for global
operations should also be global.
 The differences are recognized, but it is assumed that associated changes are so
basic that they can be achieved effortlessly. It is always a good idea to perform a
cost-benefit analysis of the changes proposed. Sometimes a change may upset
important values and thereby may face resistance from being implemented. The
cost of some changes may exceed the benefits derived from the implementation of
such changes.
Ethnocentrism can be seen in many aspects of culture – myths, folktales, proverbs,

and even language. For example, in many languages, especially those of non-Western
societies, the word used to refer to one’s own tribe or ethnic group literally means 'mankind'
or 'human.' This implies that members of other groups are less than human. For example, the
term ESKIMO, used to refer to groups that inhabit the arctic and subarctic regions, is an
Indian word used by neighbors of the Eskimos who observed their strange way of life but did
not share it. The term means 'eaters of raw flesh,' and as such is an ethnocentric observation
about cultural practices that were normal to one group and repulsive to another. On the
other hand, if we look at one subgroup among the Alaskan natives we find them calling
themselves Inuit, which means 'real people' (they obviously did not think eating raw flesh
was anything out of the ordinary). Here, then, is a contrast between one’s own group, which
is real, and the rest of the world, which not so “real.” Both terms, ESKIMO and INUIT, are
equally ethnocentric – one as an observation about differences, the other as a self-
evaluation. However, inuit is now seen as a more appropriate term because of its origin.
Another example of ethnocentrism in language can be found in the origin of the
English term barbarian. Originally a Greek word, the term was used to refer to tribes that
lived around the edge of ancient Greek society. The Greeks referred to these people as
barbars because they could not understand their speech. Bar-bar was the Greek word for
the sound a dog makes, like our word bow-wow. The Greeks, in a classic example of
ethnocentrism, considered those whose speech they could not understand to be on the
same level as dogs, which also could not be understood. They did not grant such people the
status of human being, much as the word eskimo gives those people subhuman status.
Shifting from language to myths and folktales, we find a good example of
ethnocentrism in the creation myth of the Cherokee Indians. According to this story, the
Creator made three clay images of a man and baked them in an oven. In his haste to admire
his handwork, he took the first image out of the oven before it was fully baked and found
that it was too pale. He waited a while and then removed the second image; it was just right,
a full reddish brown hue. He was so pleased with his work that he sat there and admired it,
completely forgetting about the third image. Finally he smelled it burning, but by the time
he could rescue it from the oven it had already been burnt, and it came out completely black.
VARIATIONS OF LANGUAGE
Sociolinguistics is a quickly developing branch of linguistics which investigates the

individual and social variation of language. Just as regional variation of language can give a
lot of information about the place the speaker is from, social variation tells about the roles
fulfilled by a given speaker within one community, or country. Sociolinguistics is a practical
scientific discipline researching the language that is actually used either by native speakers,
or foreigners, in order to formulate theories about language change.
There are numerous factors influencing the way people speak which are investigated
by sociolinguistics:
 Social class: the position of the speaker in the society, measured by the level of
education, parental background, profession and their effect on syntax and lexis used by
the speaker;
 Social context: the register of the language used depending on changing situations,
formal language in formal meetings and informal during meetings with friends for
example;
 Geographical origin: slight differences in pronunciation between speakers that point at
the geographical region which the speaker come from;

 Ethnicity: differences between the use of a given language by its native speakers and
other ethnic groups;
 Nationality: clearly visible in the case of the English language: British English differs
from American English, or Canadian English;
 Gender: differences in patterns of language use between men and women, such as
quantity of speech, intonation patterns;
 Age: the influence of age of the speaker on the use of vocabulary and grammar
complexity.
An important factor influencing the way of formulating sentences is according to
sociolinguists the social class of the speakers. Thus, there has been a division of social classes
proposed in order to make the description accurate. Two main groups of language users,
mainly those performing non-manual work and those with more years of education are the
‘middle class’, while those who perform some kind of manual work are ‘working class.’
Additional terms, ‘lower’ and ‘upper,’ are frequently used in order to subdivide the social
classes. Therefore, differences between upper middle class can be compared with lower
working class.
It is notable that people are acutely aware of the differences in speech patterns that
mark their social class and are often able to adjust their style to the interlocutor. It is
especially true for the members of the middle class who seem eager to use forms associated
with upper class, however, in such efforts the forms characteristic of upper class are often
overused by the middle class members. The above mentioned process of adopting own
speech to reduce social distance is called convergence. Sometimes, however, when people
want to emphasize the social distance they make use of the process called divergence
purposefully using idiosyncratic forms.
Sociolinguistics investigates the way in which language changes depending on the
region of country it is used in. To describe a variety of language that differs in grammar, lexis
and pronunciation from others a term dialect is used. Moreover, each member of community
has a unique way of speaking due to the life experience, education, age and aspiration. An
individual personal variation of language use is called an idiolect.
There are numerous factors influencing idiolect some of which have been presented
above, yet two more need to be elucidated, namely jargon and slang. Jargon is specific
technical vocabulary associated with a particular field of interest, or topic. For example,

words such as convergence, dialect and social class are sociolinguistic jargon, whereas slang
is a type of language used most frequently by people from outside of high-status groups
characterized by the use of unusual words and phrases instead of conventional forms.
LANGUAGE REGISTER
Parallel to social variations, languages are characterised by register – a form of

language used for a particular purpose. There are five language registers or styles. Each level
has an appropriate use that is determined by differing situations. It would certainly be
inappropriate to use language and vocabulary reserve for a boyfriend or girlfriend when
speaking in the classroom. Thus, the appropriate language register depends upon the
audience (who), the topic (what), purpose (why), and location (where). Thus, we can
distinguish the following registers:
1. Static Register
This style of communications RARELY or NEVER changes. It is “frozen” in time and
content; e.g. the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer, the Preamble to the US Constitution,
the Alma Mater, a bibliographic reference, laws.
2. Formal Register
This language is used in formal settings and is one-way in nature. This use of language
usually follows a commonly accepted format. It is usually impersonal and formal. A common
format for this register are speeches; e.g. sermons, rhetorical statements and questions,
speeches, pronouncements made by judges, announcements.
3. Consultative Register
This is a standard form of communications. Users engage in a mutually accepted
structure of communications. It is formal and societal expectations accompany the users of
this speech. It is professional discourse, e.g. when strangers meet, communications between
a superior and a subordinate, doctor and patient, lawyer and client, lawyer and judge,
teacher and student, counselor and client.

4. Casual Register
This is informal language used by peers and friends. Slang, vulgarities and
colloquialisms are normal. This is “group” language. One must be member to engage in this
register, e.g. buddies, teammates, chats and emails, and blogs, and letters to friends.
5. Intimate Register
This communications is private. It is reserved for close family members or intimate
people, e.g. husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, siblings, parent and children.
One can usually transition from one language register to an adjacent one without
encountering repercussions. However, skipping one or more levels is usually considered
inappropriate and even offensive. The features which interconnect to determine the register
of communication, oral or written, are:
 appropriateness;
 context;
 participants and their status;
 situation.
A change in any one of these will probably create a change in the register. We are
culturally so attuned to the 'appropriateness of the register' that we only pay attention to it
when someone makes a mistake in their use of register.
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE VARIATIONS
When studying languages, there is an inherent need to understand the concept of

language variation. Variations in languages are what help to establish various dialects. Even
core languages themselves incorporate variations, depending on an area's culture and direct
correlation to other cultures. In essence, cross-cultural communication is dependent on
language variation and its growth of dialects that spread way beyond the borders of an
established core language.

The concept of language variation is central in sociolinguistics. The English language
varies on individual, regional, national and global levels. Unfortunately, some people are
unaware of various social and regional dialects, and different varieties of English in the
world. Understanding variation within a language is important for every member of our
community, and especially for those who receive a college education. Sociolinguistics
investigates all these language variations.
Different factors affect how a language is spoken within a country. They can be
regional (geographical), ethnic (national and racial), and social (class, age, gender,
socioeconomic status and education). All these factors are interconnected. They are
reflected in every language variety’s pronunciation, vocabulary, grammatical constructions
and syntax.
One of the common misunderstandings of speakers of any language is the question

of standard and non-standard varieties of the language. The latter is often called a dialect,
and people who speak it are considered to be inferior to the speakers of the standard
variety.
It is erroneous to believe that the standard variety is the ‘correct’ one. Every
language has dialects, and no dialect is substandard to other dialects. We all speak a dialect
and we all have an accent.
All varieties of a language are systematic in their use, have a large number of
speakers and thus have their right for existence. The term dialect refers to any variety of a
language, and from the point of view of sociolinguistics, all dialects are equally correct,
systematic, logical, and meaningful.
The issue of standard vs. non-standard variety of a language is not a linguistic one,
but political. The standard dialect is associated with prestige in the society. That is why many
people prefer it to other varieties. Some people feel pressured to use the standard dialect to
conform to the rules of the society. However, some speakers of a non-standard dialect
prefer to use it to demonstrate their sense of belonging to their community or social/ethnic
group.

Besides all these variations, there are individual variations of language use that are
called idiolects. We all have unique ways of speaking that reflect our personal identities.
Through our linguistic choices we have an opportunity to express who we are and where we
are from. Our language changes over time as it gets into contact with various idiolects of
people who we interact with. It changes with our life experiences. There are no two speakers
who speak exactly the same way.
However, people are often unaware of their own dialects/accents, and sometimes
they negatively judge those whose ways of speaking differ from their own. Often, people
who speak non-standard dialects are erroneously marked as being uneducated, not knowing
English or having a speech pathology. This can lead to discrimination in professional and
educational settings, and irreversible personal tragedies.
These kinds of linguistic misperceptions are among the reasons why sociolinguistics is
important to everyone in our society. People need to know more about how dialects work to
avoid language prejudice.
The English language varies not only on individual and national levels but also even
more on the global level. It is becoming the language of international communication and is
acquiring the status of a global language. English is a major language because Great Britain
and the United States have been powerful militarily, politically, and economically for the
past two centuries. It is also used worldwide in such areas as business, science, aviation,
music, sport, and now the Internet. In spite of its popularity in the world, we need to
remember that English is not superior to other languages, and the use of other languages
should be respected.
Standard American and standard British English are just two of many varieties of the
language. Many other varieties of English (so called Englishes) can be found in countries
across the world, as well as within each country where it is widely spoken.
Different varieties of English are used throughout the world. We can identify three
concentric circles:

1. the Inner Circle, which includes countries where English is used as a primary
language, such as the U.S. and Canada;
2. the Outer Circle, which consists of countries where English is used as a second or
official language, such as India or Singapore;
3. the Expanding Circle, which refers to countries where English is studied as a foreign
language, such as Russia or China.
It is commonly agreed that non-native speakers of English outnumber native

speakers of English. Therefore, it is important to understand that no variety is superior over
another variety, and develop an increased tolerance for all varieties of English.
ENCULTURATION
Enculturation is defined as the process by which an individual learns the culture that
they are surrounded by. This enables them to function as members of that society.
Enculturation teaches, amongst other things, moral values, behaviors, expectations, rituals
and, the focus of this article, language. This helps unify people to create functional societies.
Enculturation can either refer to
1. formal learning, such as in a traditional education system, or

2. informal learning, such as the social feedback you receive from your parents and
friends as a developing child and beyond.
Both are critical to the enculturation process, and blend in unique ways to create different
personalities. Our entire lives may be viewed as an enculturation process as we constantly
learn more about the changing culture surrounding us, adding depth and breadth to our
knowledge. Other cultures enculturate children differently, obviously, but the broad strokes
tend to be the same.
With regards to language, the mechanisms by which one is enculturated include both
that formal and informal learning. Oral and listening skills are initially learning from the
cradle, often imparted by the parents and other close family members, in a deeply informal
process. In many cultures, a formal education process will teach reading and writing skills.
After the initial child training phase, you continue to be enculturated in your language
throughout your life. For instance, you are constantly learning new slang terms as the
language changes gradually over time through informal social contacts. If you continue your
formal education into college or beyond, or take a career branch that demands skill with the
language, you continue to finesse your use.
Also, enculturation can be either conscious or unconscious on the part of the learner.
For instance, the individual may be consciously actively attempting to understand what
people are saying, but they may also be unconsciously absorbing new vocabulary words and
slang from the conversations that occur around them.
Enculturation differs from a similar looking term, acculturation, in that enculturation

refers to the process by which one acquires a home culture, whereas acculturation refers to
the process by which one who already has that native culture adopts elements of another,
foreign culture
LANGUAGE CONTACT: PIDGINS AND CREOLES
Language contact can lead to the development of new languages when people
without a common language interact closely, developing a pidgin, which may eventually
become a full-fledged creole language through the process of creolization. A prime example
of this is Saramaccan, spoken in Suriname, which has vocabulary mainly from Portuguese,
English and Dutch, but phonology and even tones which are closer to African languages.
A much rarer but still observed process is the formation of mixed languages. Whereas
creoles are formed by communities lacking a common language, mixed languages are
formed by communities fluent in both languages. They tend to inherit much more of the
complexity (grammatical, phonological, etc.) of their parent languages, whereas creoles
begin as simple languages and then develop in complexity more independently. It is
sometimes explained as bilingual communities that no longer identify with the cultures of
either of the languages they speak, and seek to develop their own language as an expression
of their own cultural uniqueness.

Creole as a language, culture, identity and a means of expression is going through an
important stage of its evolution. In its etymology it stems from the Portuguese crioulo and
the Spanish criollo meaning 'to nourish,' 'to raise' or more precisely 'the servant raised in the
house.' Until recently the dictionaries defined it as the white person born in a European
colony. The term afterwards was used to define the black population and further
classification was needed to call this burgeoning race: white Creole, coloured Creole black
Creole, etc. Often shunned, banned and criticized the language is now enjoying a well-
deserved recognition. Historically, it is the result of two cultures and the evolutionary
process of using the vocabulary of one and the grammar and syntax of the other. With
colonization and slavery and from the contact between the European masters and the
slaves, a new set of languages emerged, namely the creoles of today’s world.
While English is the official language of parliament, traffic regulations, and school
administration, it is spoken by only 3% of the population. French is the native language of
Franco-Mauritians and is used by the mass media. Eighty percent of the newspapers are
written in French, which also dominates the advertising field. Mauritian Creole is the
national language and is spoken by the majority of Mauritians. Nearly the entire population
knows and uses Creole for communication.
The majority of words in Creole are of French origin, although more than 200 are
derived from English, 50 from Indian languages and several from Chinese and Arabic. The
history of the island plays an important role in explaining this unbelievable mixture.
Creolized languages are native to between 10 and 15 million people throughout the
world and most creole languages have vocabularies derived from major European languages.
French-based Creole, with 7 million speakers can be found in Haiti, Mauritius, Guadeloupe,
Martinique, Reunion Island, Guyana and other islands close to Mauritius such as Rodrigues,
Seychelles, Maldives, Agalega.
In Mauritius, for example, there seems to be a ‘diglossic’ situation which is the term
used to describe a society when it has two or three distinct languages showing functional
separation; that is one register being used in one set of circumstances, and the others in
entirely different sets. For example, French is used in media, English in parliament and court,
and Creole in communication.
Pidgins and creoles are primarily used in third world nations, created in response to
changes in the political and social environment of the community they are spoken in. There
are over one hundred pidgins and creoles spoken today. Most pidgins and creoles are based
on European languages, primarily on English, Spanish and French. Pidgins often serve as the
means of communication between two language groups. For example, they are often used
between immigrants and locals or missionaries and natives in order to be understood by
each other without having to learn the language of the other group.
The language on which the majority of the lexicon is based is called the base (usually
the European language). The language on which the grammatical structure is based is called
the substrate. In a pidgin, gender and case as well as other elements of language are often
dropped from the base European language. The phonology is extremely unstable and often
changes. Characteristics of a pidgin vary tremendously from speaker to speaker. Anything
can be said in pidgin that can be said in any other language, but at a great disadvantage,
because the pidgin language lacks the building blocks provided in other native languages for
successful communication. For example, articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and
subordinate clauses are often absent or sporadical in pidgin. Pidgin sentences are often little
more than strings of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Although the substance of the idea gets
across, many of the details and contextual information gets lost in the pidgin version.
Haitian creole was developed by the slaves imported to Haiti by the French for work on their
large plantations. People were gathered from all parts of Africa and forced to work together
for the French land owners. Because Africa is full of diverse language groups and dialects,
these slaves did not understand each other, and a pidgin was developed. Eventually, this
pidgin grew to a Creole and includes structure from African tribal languages and French
today.
As with the Haitians, many times a pidgin develops over time in such a way that it
becomes a creole. A creole has grammatical rules which are more uniform from speaker to
speaker and resemble structural rules of other creoles. One could say that the transition
from pidgin to creole is a natural process which usually occurs as generations pass and the
need for an intercessory language persists.
Many theories have developed as to where pidgins and creoles originated. The
monogenetic hypothesis states that pidgins and creoles are derived from a common
ancestor language. Also known as the family tree model, it is rejected by many linguists

today. Another idea called the polygenetic hypothesis states that pidgins and creoles each
developed independently of each other, but in a parallel manner. This is the theory most
commonly believed. It has been thought that because most creoles were invented in isolated
places, it is likely that some common element of human capability is responsible for the
linguistic similarities between creoles around the globe.
Study questions:
1. Read the content of the lecture carefully and focus on the following problems:
1. Discuss the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

2. What are the relations between language and culture?
3. What is meant by cultural determinism and how it is different from cultural
relativism?
4. Discuss the term 'cultural ethnocentrism.'
5. Which factors influence the way people use their language?
6. What are the styles or language registers as used by sociolinguists?
7. What are the Englishes?
8. In what ways are Pidgins different from Creoles?
2. An interesting example (though not thoroughly academic) of cultural diversification is

Sofia Coppola's movie Lost in Translation (2003). Watching the picture, pay attention
to the language-culture interface as experienced by the protagonists.

Wykład 8.
EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
Czas trwania: 4 godz. e-learningu
Zakres problemów:
3. Language family.
4. Proto-language.
Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language

change. It has five main concerns:
 to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages ;

 to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness,
grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics);
 to develop general theories about how and why language changes;
 to describe the history of speech communities;
 to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.
Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th century and grew out of the
earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents, which goes back to
antiquity.
At first historical linguistics was comparative linguistics and mainly concerned with
establishing language families and the reconstruction of prehistoric languages, using the
comparative method and internal reconstruction. The focus was on the well-known Indo-
European languages, many of which had long written histories. But since then, significant
comparative linguistic work has been done on the Uralic languages, Austronesian languages
and various families of Native American languages, among many others. Comparative
linguistics is now, however, only a part of a more broadly conceived discipline of historical

linguistics. For the Indo-European languages comparative study is now a highly specialised
field and most research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these
languages, particularly the development of the modern standard varieties.
Initially, all modern linguistics was historical in orientation – even the study of
modern dialects involved looking at their origins. But Saussure drew a distinction between
synchronic and diachronic linguistics, which is fundamental to the present day organization
of the discipline. Primacy is accorded to synchronic linguistics, and diachronic linguistics is
defined as the study of successive synchronic stages. Saussure's clear demarcation, however,
is now seen to be idealised. In practice, a purely synchronic linguistics is not possible for any
period before the invention of the gramophone: written records always lag behind speech in
reflecting linguistic developments, and in any case are difficult to date accurately before the
development of the modern title page. Also, the work of sociolinguists on linguistic variation
has shown synchronic states are not uniform: the speech habits of older and younger
speakers differ in ways which point to language change. Synchronic variation is linguistic
change in progress.
The biological origin of language is in principle a concern of historical linguistics, but

most linguists regard it as too remote to be reliably established by standard techniques of
historical linguistics such as the comparative method. Less standard techniques, such as mass
lexical comparison, are used by some linguists to overcome the limitations of the
comparative method, but most linguists regard them as unreliable.
The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the
groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in the prehistoric period. In practice,
however, it is often unclear how to integrate the linguistic evidence with the archaeological
or genetic evidence. For example, there are a large number of theories concerning the
homeland and early movements of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, each with their own
interpretation of the archaeological record.
THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
The origin of language (glottogony) is a topic that has attracted considerable

speculation throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous
and diagnostic traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other species. Unlike writing,
spoken language leaves no trace. Hence linguists have to resort to indirect methods in trying
to decipher the origins of language.
Linguists agree that there are no existing primitive languages, and all modern human
populations speak languages of comparable complexity. While existing languages differ in the
size of and subjects covered in their lexicons, all possess the grammar and syntax needed,
and can invent, translate, or borrow the vocabulary necessary to express the full range of
their speakers' concepts. All humans possess similar linguistic abilities, and no child is born
with a biological predisposition favoring any one language or type of language.
Though all animals use some form of communication, researchers generally do not
classify their communication as language. However, the communication systems of a few
animal species do share some attributes in common with modern human language.
Dolphins, for example, are able to communicate like humans by calling each other by name.
GREAT APE LANGUAGE
Not much is known about great ape communication in the wild, but in captivity they
have been taught rudimentary sign language and to use lexigrams (keyboards with symbols).
Some apes such as Kanzi have reportedly been able to learn several hundred words.
However, they do lack grammar or syntax. Furthermore the anatomical structure of their
larynx does not enable apes to make many of the sounds that humans do.
In the wild, the communication of vervet monkeys has been the most studied. They
are known to make up to ten different vocalizations. Many of these are used to warn other
members of the troupe about approaching predators, and include a "leopard call", a "snake
call", and an "eagle call." Each alarm triggers a different defensive strategy. Scientists were
able to elicit predictable responses from the monkeys using loudspeakers and prerecorded
sounds. Other vocalizations may be used for identification. If an infant monkey calls, its
mother turns toward it, but other vervet mothers turn instead toward that infant's mother to
see what she will do.
NEANDERTHAL LANGUAGE
There is considerable speculation about the language capabilities of ancient

hominids. Some scholars believe the advent of hominid bipedalism around 3.5 million years

ago would have brought changes to the human skull, allowing for a more L-shaped vocal
tract. The shape of the tract and a larynx positioned relatively low in the neck are necessary
prerequisites for many of the sounds humans make, particularly vowels. Other scholars
believe that, based on the position of the larynx, not even the Neanderthals had the
anatomy necessary to produce the full range of sounds modern humans make. The recent
discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone suggests that Neanderthals may have been
anatomically capable of producing sounds similar to modern humans, and studies indicate
that by 400,000 years ago the hypoglossal canal of living hominids had reached the size of
that in modern humans. The hypoglossal canal transmits nerve signals to the brain and its
size is said to reflect speech abilities. Hominids who lived earlier than 300,000 years ago had
hypoglossal canals more akin to those of chimpanzees than of humans.
However, although Neanderthals may have been anatomically able to speak, many
scholars doubt that they possessed a fully modern language. They largely base their doubts
on the fossil record of archaic humans and their stone tool kit. For 2 million years following
the emergence of Homo habilis, the stone tool technology of hominids changed very little.
Richard G. Klein, who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the crude
stone tool kit of archaic humans as impossible to break down into categories based on their
function, and reports that Neanderthals seem to have had little concern for the final form of
their tools. Klein argues that the Neanderthal brain may have not reached the level of
complexity required for modern speech, even if the physical apparatus for speech production
was well-developed. The issue of the Neanderthal's level of cultural and technological
sophistication remains a controversial one.
Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record 200,000 years ago in
Ethiopia. But while modern anatomically, these humans continued to behave just like the
hominids who existed before. They used the same crude stone tools and hunted inefficiently.
However, beginning about 100,000 years ago, there is evidence of more sophisticated
behaviour, and by 50,000 years ago fully modern behaviour is thought to have developed in
various parts of Africa. After this point, stone tools show regular patterns that are
reproduced or duplicated with more precision, and tools made of bone and antler appear for
the first time. The artifacts are also now easily sortable into many different categories based
on their function, such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and
piercing tools. Teaching offspring how to manufacture such detailed tools may have required
complex language.
The greatest step in language evolution would have been the progression from
primitive, pidgin-like communication to a creole-like language with all the grammar and
syntax of modern languages. Many scholars believe that this step could only have been
accomplished with some biological change to the brain, such as a mutation. It has been
suggested that the a gene such as FOXP2 may have undergone a mutation allowing humans
to communicate. Evidence suggests that this change took place somewhere in Africa around
50,000 years ago, which rapidly brought about significant changes that are apparent in the
fossil record. There is still some debate as to whether language developed gradually over
thousands of years or whether it appeared suddenly.
According to the Out of Africa hypothesis, around 50,000 years ago a group of
humans left Africa and proceeded to colonize the rest of the world, including Australia and
the Americas, which had never been populated by archaic hominids. Some scientists believe
that Homo sapiens did not leave Africa before that, because they had not yet attained
modern cognition and language, and consequently lacked the skills or the numbers required
to migrate.
Linguistic monogenesis (the "Mother Tongue Theory") is the hypothesis that there
was one single protolanguage (the "Proto-World language") from which all other languages
spoken by humans descend. All human populations from the Australian aboriginals to the
Fuegians living at the Southern tip of Argentina possess language. This includes populations,
such as the Tasmanian aboriginals or the Andamanese, who may have been isolated from the
old world continents by as long as 40,000 years. Thus, the multiregional hypothesis would
entail that modern language evolved independently on all the continents, a proposition
widely rejected as implausible.
All humans alive today are descended from Mitochondrial Eve, a woman estimated to
have lived in Africa some 150,000 years ago. This raises the possibility that the Proto-World
language could date to approximately that period. There are also claims of a population
bottleneck, notably the Toba catastrophe theory which postulates human population at one
point some 70,000 years ago was as low as 15,000 or even 2,000 individuals. If it indeed
transpired, such a bottleneck would be an excellent candidate for the date of Proto-World,
which also illustrates the fact that Proto-World would not necessarily date to the first

emergence of language.
Some proponents of a Proto-World hypothesis, such as Merritt Ruhlen, have

attempted to reconstruct the Proto-World language. However, most mainstream linguists
reject these attempts and the methods they use (such as mass lexical comparison) for a
number of reasons.
The gestural theory states that human language developed from gestures that were
used for simple communication.
Two types of evidence support this theory.
1. Gestural language and vocal language depend on similar neural systems. The
regions on the cortex that are responsible for mouth and hand movements border
each other.
2. Nonhuman primates can use gestures or symbols for at least primitive
communication, and some of their gestures resemble those of humans, such as the
"begging posture", with the hands stretched out, which humans share with
chimpanzees.
The important question for gestural theories is why there was a shift to vocalization.
There are two likely explanations:
1. Our ancestors started to use more and more tools, meaning that their hands were
occupied and could not be used for gesturing.
2. Gesturing requires that the communicating individuals can see each other. There
are many situations in which individuals need to communicate even without visual
contact, for instance when a predator is closing in on somebody who is up in a tree
picking fruit.
Humans still use hand and facial gestures when they speak, especially when people
meet who have no language in common.
LANGUAGE FAMILY
The most widely studied language family in the world is the Indo-European. There are

a number of reasons for this:
 Many of the most important languages of the world are Indo-European. These
languages are official or co-official in many countries and are important in academic,
technical and world organizations. Examples: English, Spanish, French, German,
Russian. Indeed, more than half the world's population speak one or more of these
languages either as a mother tongue or as a business language.
 Languages that are essential in multinational contexts or with large numbers of
speakers. Examples: Portuguese, Hindi, German, Bengali.
 Some of the great classical languages of religion, culture and philosophy were Indo-
European. Examples: Latin, Greek, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali.
 Languages that are scattered around the world as their speakers are part of diasporas.
Examples: Greek, Yiddish, Polish, Armenian, Romany, Kurdish, Italian, Punjabi,
Gujarati.
The Indo-European languages tend to be inflected (i.e. verbs and nouns have different
endings depending on their part in a sentence). Some languages (e.g. English) have lost many
of the inflections during their evolution.
The Indo-European languages stretch from the Americas through Europe to North
India; European non-Indo-European languages are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian.
The Indo-European Family is thought to have originated in the forests north of the
Black Sea (in what is now Ukraine) during the Neoloithic period (about 7000BC). These
people began to migrate between 3500BC and 2500BC, spreading west to Europe, south to
the Mediterranean, north to Scandinavia, and east to India.
The Indo-European Family is divided into twelve branches, ten of which contain
existing languages:
 The Celtic Branch;

 The Germanic Branch; it includes, inter alia, English and Frisian – the latter is the
closest to English;
 The Latin Branch;

 The Slavic Branch (including Polish);
 The Baltic Branch;
 The Hellenic Branch;
 The Illyric Branch;
 The Anatolian Branch;
 The Thracian Branch;
 The Iranian Branch;
 The Indic Branch (derived from Sanskrit);
 The Tokharian Branch;
PROTO-LANGUAGE
A proto-language is a language which was the common ancestor of related languages

that form a language family. The German term Ursprache (derived from the prefix Ur-
"primordial" and Sprache "language") is occasionally used as well.
In most cases, the ancestral proto-language is not known directly and it has to be
reconstructed by comparing different members of the language family via a technique
called the comparative method. Through this process only a part of the proto-language's
structure and vocabulary can be reconstructed; the reconstruction remains the more
fragmentary the more ancient the proto-language in question relative to the number of its
descendants. Examples of unattested but (partially) reconstructed proto-languages include
Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Bantu and Proto-Paman. Sometimes, however, the
proto-language is a language which is known from inscriptions, an example being the Proto-
Norse language attested in the Elder Futhark runic inscriptions, or very well-known, such as
Latin (ancestor of the Romance Languages).
Study questions:
1. What is meant by synchronic and diachronic analysis of language?

2. What are the possible hypotheses for the origin of language?
3. What are language families?
4. What is the comparative method of language analysis?

Wykład 9
COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS
Czas trwania: 4 godziny zajęć e-learningowych

Zakres problemów:
1. Basic assumptions of cognitive linguistics.
2. Conceptual metaphor.
3. Linguistic metaphor - major types and examples.
4. The experiential basis of metaphor.
5. ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor, LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor, TIME IS MONEY
metaphor.
In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the school of
linguistics that understands language creation, learning, and usage as best explained by
reference to human cognition in general. It is characterized by adherence to three central
positions. First, it denies that there is an autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind; second, it
understands grammar in terms of conceptualization; and third, it claims that knowledge of
language arises out of language use.
Cognitive linguists deny that the mind has any module for language-acquisition that is
unique and autonomous. This stands in contrast to the work done in the field of generative
grammar. Although cognitive linguists do not necessarily deny that part of the human
linguistic ability is innate, they deny that it is separate from the rest of cognition. Thus, they
argue that knowledge of linguistic phenomena – i.e., phonemes, morphemes, and syntax – is
essentially conceptual in nature. Moreover, they argue that the storage and retrieval of
linguistic data is not significantly different from the storage and retrieval of other knowledge,
and use of language in understanding employs similar cognitive abilities as used in other
non-linguistic tasks.
Probably the most developed idea that emerged from cognitive linguists’ efforts is that
of the cognitive grammar. The aim of cognitive grammar is to formulate a theory of meaning
and grammar which would be cognitively probable and would fulfill the following

requirements that the only structures allowed in the grammar are:
 Symbolic, semantic, or phonological structures usually occurring in linguistic

expressions (Saussurean ‘sign’);
 Schemas for such structures (acquired by exposure to multiple examples of the
pattern);
 Categorization of relationships among the above mentioned elements.
Apart from that, cognitive linguistics is interested in issues such as processes by which
and patterns in which conceptual content is arranged in language. Therefore, the structuring
of concepts like scenes and events, space and time, force and causation, together with
motion and location attract the cognitive linguists’ interest. Moreover, the ideational and
affective categories ascribed to cognitive agents such as expectation and affect, volition and
intention, as well as attention and perspective are examined.
By and large, the cognitive linguists’ intentions are to ascertain the integrated
organization of conceptual structuring in language by approaching such issues as the
semantic structure of lexical and morphological forms, together with syntactic patterns. Also
interrelationships of conceptual structures, as in the gathering of conceptual categories into
large structuring systems are investigated.
Cognitive linguists claim that man’s experience in the world is an important basis for
linguistic expression. Bodily experience (i.e. in front, behind, above, below, close, at a
distance) forms a conceptual structure (a coneptual metaphor), which, when later verbalised,
becomes a linguistic metaphor. Thus, in this approach, metaphors are
1. conceptual – mental constructs (we use capital letters to refer to conceptual

metaphors),
2. linguistic – verbalised expressions used in everyday communication.
One of the important assumptions shared by cognitive linguists is that meaning is so

central to language that it must be a primary focus of study. Linguistic structures serve the
function of expressing meanings and hence the mappings between meaning and form are a
prime subject of linguistic analysis. Linguistic forms, in this view, are closely linked to the

semantic structures they are designed to express. Semantic structures of all meaningful
linguistic units can and should be investigated.
These views were in direct opposition to the ideas developing at the time within
Chomskyan linguistics, in which meaning was 'interpretive' and peripheral to the study of
language. The central object of interest in language was syntax. The structures of language
were in this view not driven by meaning, but instead were governed by principles essentially
independent of meaning. Thus, the semantics associated with morphosyntactic structures
did not require investigation; the focus was on language-internal structural principles as
explanatory constructs.
The poetic metaphors that had been analysed in research in literature and philosophy
for many years were of minor importance for conceptual metaphor theorists. If conceptual
metaphors help people to understand abstract subjects of such central importance as life
and communication, then the metaphorical expressions that should form the focus of study
are the conventional, frequent ones. These will provide clues to the conceptual structures
that both reflect and shape the thought patterns of the community. To describe these, a
common technique is to identify the linguistic metaphors used to talk about a topic, and
from these postulate underlying conceptual metaphors which are presumed to motivate
them. The researcher can then consider which aspects of the target domain are highlighted
and hidden by the metaphor.
In many cases, linguistic metaphors (and/or metonymies) represent subconscious

choices on the part of the speaker or writer, whose choice of language is partly constrained
by the conceptual structures shared by members of his or her community. Metaphors can
also help people to talk about difficult, emotionally intense or uncommon experiences, and
thus, according to conceptual metaphor theory, to think about them. It is interesting to
notice that also seriously ill people use metaphors to talk about their experience, and drew
conclusions about their thoughts and feelings on the basis of these.
CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor refers to the understanding of one idea,

or conceptual domain in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of
directionality (e.g. "prices are rising"). A conceptual domain can be any coherent
organization of human experience. For many metaphors, the mapping between conceptual
domains correspond to neural mappings in the brain, which entails that the human
conceptual structure is tightly bound to its perceptual system.
This idea, and a detailed examination of the underlying processes, was first
extensively explored by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their work Metaphors We Live By
(Polish translation Metafory w naszym życiu (1988) by Tomasz P. Krzeszowski). Other
cognitive scientists study subjects similar to conceptual metaphor under the labels "analogy"
and "conceptual blending."
There are two main roles for the conceptual domains posited in conceptual metaphors:
 Source domain: the conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical

expressions.
 Target domain: the conceptual domain that we try to understand.
A mapping is the systematic set of correspondences that exist between constituent

elements of the source and the target domain. Many elements of target concepts come from
source domains and are not preexisting. To know a conceptual metaphor is to know the set
of mappings that applies to a given source-target pairing. The same idea of mapping between
source and target is used to describe analogical reasoning and inferences. It is very difficult to
find expressions used to talk about the subject of life which are not metaphorical in some
way. If it is true that abstract subjects are generally talked about using metaphor, and a mass
of linguistic evidence has been gathered to support this contention, a close examination of
the metaphors used can be an important key to the way people have mentally constructed
abstract domains.
Conceptual metaphor theorists claim that all metaphors both hide and highlight
aspects of the target domain. For instance, the conceptual metaphor understanding is
seizing, discussed by Lakoff and Turner (1989) suggests that an idea is a concrete object
which can be metaphorically grasped and then held. This highlights a familiar aspect of
understanding new ideas but hides the important point that sometimes understanding
comes slowly, with some effort, and that ideas are reinterpreted by each individual.

A primary tenet of this theory is that metaphors are matter of thought and not
merely of language: hence, the term conceptual metaphor. The metaphor may seem to
consist of words or other linguistic expressions that come from the terminology of the more
concrete conceptual domain, but conceptual metaphors underlie a system of related
metaphorical expressions that appear on the linguistic surface. Similarly, the mappings of a
conceptual metaphor are themselves motivated by image schemas which are pre-linguistic
schemas concerning space, time, moving, controlling, and other core elements of embodied
human experience.
Conceptual metaphors typically employ a more abstract concept as target and a more
concrete or physical concept as their source. For instance, metaphors such as 'the days [the
more abstract or target concept] ahead' or 'giving my time' rely on more concrete concepts,
thus expressing time as a path into physical space, or as a substance that can be handled and
offered as a gift. Different conceptual metaphors tend to be invoked when the speaker is
trying to make a case for a certain point of view or course of action. For instance, one might
associate "the days ahead" with leadership, whereas the phrase "giving my time" carries
stronger connotations of bargaining. Selection of such metaphors tends to be directed by a
subconscious or implicit habit in the mind of the person employing them.
The principle of unidirectionality is at the foundations of conceptual metaphor. It

states that the metaphorical process typically goes from the more concrete to the more
abstract, and not the other way around. Accordingly, abstract concepts are understood in
terms of prototype concrete processes. Abstract concepts (e.g. love, mind, memory, God) are
typically understood in terms of more concrete (e.g. container, person).
BASIC TYPES OF LINGUISTIC METAPHORS10
1. Conventional (common, familiar to speakers, easily understandable):
ARGUMENT IS WAR (e.g. I defended my argument)

LOVE IS A JOURNEY (e.g. We’ll just have to go our separete ways)
THEORIES ARE BUILDINGS (e.g. We have to construct a new theory)
10
Types and examples of metaphors are taken from Zoltan Kővecses (2002) Metaphor. A Practical Introduction.
Oxford.
IDEAS ARE FOOD (I can’t digest all these facts)
LIFE IS A JOURNEY (e.g. He had a head start in life)
2. Unconventional (less conventionalized, novel, creative):
LIFE IS A JOURNEY (e.g. Two roads diverged in a wood,

and I took the one less travelled by)
 The difference here is that while in the two examples above the conceptual
metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY is the same, in the second case it is used in an
unconventional way, that is such with which the speakers are not well
familiarised.
 The criterion to label a metaphor conventional or unconventional is here level
of conventionality
3. Structural metaphors:
TIME IS MOTION (OF AN OBJECT) (e.g. The time will come when… ,
The time has long since gone when… ,
In the weeks following next Monday…,
On the preceding day… ,
I am looking ahead to Christmas,
Thanksgiving is coming up soon. )
 The source domain here provides a relatively rich knowledge structure for the
target concept
 The cognitive function of the metaphor is to enable speakers target A by
means of the structure of source B.
4. Ontological metaphors
 Non-physical objects here may become physical objects (i.e. with four walls,
top, and bottom; a container), e.g.

LOVE IS A CONTAINER (e.g. I am in love)
MIND IS A CONTAINER (e.g. It’s in my mind, He’s out of mind)
 Human qualities are attributed to non-humans: personification, e.g.
THEORY (LIFE/INFLATION/ILLNESS/TECHNICAL DEVICES) ARE HUMAN

BEINGS
 His theory explained to me the strange behaviour of chickens
raised in factories
 Life has cheated me
 Inflation is eating our profits
 Cancer has finally caught up with him
 The computer went dead on me
 The cognitive function of such metaphor is to give an ontological status to

general categories of abstract concepts.
 Ontological metaphors allows us to conceive of our experiences in terms of
objects, substances, containers without specyfying what kind of object,
substance or container is meant.
5. Orientational metaphors
MORE IS UP; LESS IS DOWN, e.g.

 Speak up, please.
 Keep your voice down, please.
HEALTHY IS UP; SICK IS DOWN, e.g.

 Lazarus rose from the dead
 He fell ill.
CONTROL IS UP; LACK OD CONTROL IS DOWN

 Wake up!
 I am on top of the situation.
 He is under my control.
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN

 I am feeling up today
 He is really low these days
VIRTUE IS UP; LACK OF VIRTUE IS DOWN

 The discussion fell to an emotional level
 He couldn’t rise above his emotions
 The congnitive functionof orientational metaphors is to make a set of target

concepts coherent in our conceptual system
 The name ‘orientational’ derives from the fact that most metaphors that serve
this function have to do with the basic human spatial orientation, such as up-
down, center-periphery.
 Upward orientation is ususlly regarded positive, while downward with a
negative one.
THE EXPERIENTIAL BASIS OF METAPHOR
The conceptual system underlying a language contains thousands of conceptual

metaphors – conventional mappings from one domain to another, such as the Event
Structure Metaphor. The novel metaphors of a language are, except for image metaphors,
extensions of this large conventional system. Perhaps the deepest question that any theory
of metaphor must answer is this: Why do we have the conventional metaphors that we
have? Or alternatively: Is there any reason why conceptual systems contain one set of
metaphorical mappings rather than another? There do appear to be answers to these
questions for many of the mappings found so far, though they are in the realm of plausible
accounts, rather than in the realm of scientific results. Take a simple case: the MORE IS UP
metaphor, as seen in expressions like: Prices rose. His income went down. Unemployment is

up. Exports are down. The number of homeless people is very high. There are other
languages in which MORE IS UP and LESS IS DOWN, but none in which the reverse is true,
where MORE IS DOWN and LESS IS UP. Why not? The answer given in the contemporary
theory is that the MORE IS UP metaphor is grounded in experience-in the common
experiences of pouring more fluid into a container and seeing the level go up, or adding
more things to a pile and seeing the pile get higher. These are thoroughly pervasive
experiences; we experience them every day of our lives. They are experiences with a
structure-a correspondence between the conceptual domain of quantity and the conceptual
domain of verticality: MORE corresponds in such experiences to UP and LESS corresponds to
DOWN. These correspondences in real experience form the basis for the correspondence in
the metaphorical cases, which go beyond the cases in real experience: in Prices rose there is
no correspondence in real experience between quantity and verticality, but understanding
quantity in terms of verticality makes sense because of the existence of a regular
correspondence in so many other cases. Consider another case: What is the basis of the
widespread KNOWING IS SEEING metaphor, as in expressions like: I see what your saying. His
answer was clear. This paragraph is murky. He was so blinded by ambition that he never
noticed his limitations. The experiential basis, in this case, is the fact that most of what we
know comes through vision, and that in the overwhelming majority of cases, if we see
something, then we know it is true. Consider still another case: Why, in the Event Structure
Metaphor, is achieving a purpose understood as reaching a destination (in the location
subsystem) and as acquiring a desired object (in the object subsystem)? The answer again
seems to be correspondences in everyday experience. To achieve most of our everyday
purposes, we either have to move to some destination or acquire some object. If you want a
drink of water, you've got to go to the water fountain. If you want to be in the sunshine, you
have to move to where the sunshine is. And if you want to write down a note, you got to get
a pen or pencil. The correspondences between achieving purposes and either reaching
destinations or acquiring objects is so utterly common in our everyday existence, that the
resulting metaphor is completely natural. But what about the experiential basis of A
PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY? Recall that that mapping is in an inheritance hierarchy,
where life goals are special cases of purposes, which are destinations in the event structure
metaphor. Thus, A PURPOSEFUL LIFE IS A JOURNEY inherits the experiential basis of
PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS. Thus, inheritance hierarchies provide indirect experiential

bases, in that a metaphorical mapping lower in a hierarchy can inherit its experiential basis
indirectly from a mapping higher in the hierarchy. Experiential bases motivate metaphors,
they do not predict them. Thus, not every language has a MORE IS UP metaphor, though all
human beings experience a correspondence between MORE and UP in their experience.
What this experiential basis does predict is that no language will have the opposite
metaphor LESS IS UP. It also predicts that a speaker of language that does not have that
metaphor will be able to learn that metaphor much more easily than the opposite
metaphor.
A classical example 1: ARGUMENT IS WAR
To give some idea of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a
concept to structure an everyday activity, let us start with the concept ARGUMENT and the
conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in our everyday
language by a wide variety of expressions:
 Your claims are indefensible.

 He attacked every weak point in my argument.
 His criticisms were right on target.
 I demolished his argument.
 I've never won an argument with him.
 You disagree? Okay, shoot!
 If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.
 He shot down all of my arguments.
It is important to see that we do not just talk about arguments in terms of war. We
can actually win or lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent.
We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use
strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack.
Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war. Though
there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument – attack,
defense, counter-attack, etc. – reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR
metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; its structures the actions we perform in

arguing.
Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no
one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing
ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen
as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In
such a culture, people would view arguments differently, experience them differently, carry
them out differently, and talk about them differently. But we would probably not view them
as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. It would seem strange
even to call what they were doing "arguing." In perhaps the most neutral way of describing
this difference between their culture and ours would be to say that we have a discourse form
structured in terms of battle and they have one structured in terms of dance. This is an
example of what it means for a metaphorical concept, namely, ARGUMENT IS WAR, to
structure (at least in part) what we do and how we understand what we are doing when we
argue. The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms
of another.. It is not that arguments are a subspecies of war. Arguments and wars are
different kinds of things – verbal discourse and armed conflict – and the actions performed
are different kinds of actions. But ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed,
and talked about in terms of WAR. The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is
metaphorically structured, and, consequently, the language is metaphorically structured.
Moreover, this is the ordinary way of having an argument and talking about one. The
normal way for us to talk about attacking a position is to use the words "attack a position."
Our conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppose a metaphor we are hardly
ever conscious of. The metaphors not merely in the words we use – it is in our very concept
of an argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical; it is literal.
We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that way--and we act
according to the way we conceive of things.
A classical example 2: LOVE IS A JOURNEY
Imagine a love relationship described as follows: Our relationship has hit a dead-end
street. Here love is being conceptualized as a journey, with the implication that the
relationship is stalled, that the lovers cannot keep going the way they’ve been going, that
they must turn back, or abandon the relationship altogether. This is not an isolated case.
English has many everyday expressions that are based on a conceptualization of love as a
journey, and they are used not just for talking about love, but for reasoning about it as well.
Some are necessarily about love; others can be understood that way:
 Look how far we've come.

 It's been a long, bumpy road. We can't turn back now.
 We're at a crossroads.
 We may have to go our separate ways.
 The relationship isn't going anywhere.
 We're spinning our wheels.
 Our relationship is off the track.
 The marriage is on the rocks.
 We may have to bail out of this relationship.
These are ordinary, everyday English expressions. They are not poetic, nor are they
necessarily used for special rhetorical effect. Those like Look how far we've come, which
aren't necessarily about love, can readily be understood as being about love. As a linguist
and a cognitive scientist, I ask two commonplace questions:
 Is there a general principle governing how these linguistic expressions about journeys
are used to characterize love?
 Is there a general principle governing how our patterns of inference about journeys
are used to reason about love when expressions such as these are used?
The answer to both is yes. Indeed, there is a single general principle that answers
both questions. But it is a general principle that is neither part of the grammar of English, nor
the English lexicon. Rather, it is part of the conceptual system underlying English: It is a
principle for understanding the domain of love in terms of the domain of journeys. The
principle can be stated informally as a metaphorical scenario: The lovers are travelers on a
journey together, with their common life goals seen as destinations to be reached. The
relationship is their vehicle, and it allows them to pursue those common goals together. The
relationship is seen as fulfilling its purpose as long as it allows them to make progress toward

their common goals. The journey isn't easy. There are impediments, and there are places
(crossroads) where a decision has to be made about which direction to go in and whether to
keep traveling together. The metaphor involves understanding one domain of experience,
love, in terms of a very different domain of experience, journeys. More technically, the
metaphor can be understood as a mapping (in the mathematical sense) from a source
domain (in this case, journeys) to a target domain (in this case, love). The mapping is tightly
structured. There are ontological correspondences, according to which entities in the domain
of love (e.g., the lovers, their common goals, their difficulties, the love relationship, etc.)
correspond systematically to entities in the domain of a journey (the travelers, the vehicle,
des tinations, etc.). To make it easier to remember what mappings there are in the
conceptual system, Johnson and I (lakoff and Johnson, 1980) adopted a strategy for naming
such mappings, using mnemonics which suggest the mapping. Mnemonic names typically
(though not always) have the form: TARGET-DOMAIN IS SOURCE-DOMAIN, or alternatively,
TARGET-DOMAIN AS SOURCE-DOMAIN. In this case, the name of the mapping is LOVE IS A
JOURNEY. When we speak of the LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor, we can use a mnemonic for
a set of ontological correspondences that characterize a mapping, namely:
THE LOVE-AS-JOURNEY mapping:
 The lovers correspond to travelers.

 The love relationship corresponds to the vehicle.
 The lovers' common goals correspond to their common destinations on the
journey.
 Difficulties in the relationship correspond to impediments to travel.
It is a common mistake to confuse the name of the mapping, LOVE IS A JOURNEY, for
the mapping itself. The mapping is the set of correspondences. Thus, whenever I refer to a
metaphor by a mnemonic like LOVE IS A JOURNEY, I will be referring to such a set of
correspondences. If mappings are confused with names of mappings, another
misunderstanding can arise. Names of mappings commonly have a propositional form, for
example, LOVE IS A JOURNEY. But the mappings themselves are not propositions. If
mappings are confused with names for mappings, one might mistakenly think that, in this
theory, metaphors are propositional. They are, of course, anything but that: metaphors are

mappings, that is, sets of conceptual correspondences. The LOVE-AS-JOURNEY mapping is a
set of ontological correspondences that characterize epistemic correspondences by mapping
knowledge about journeys onto knowledge about love. Such correspondences permit us to
reason about love using the knowledge we use to reason about journeys. Let us take an
example. Consider the expression, We're stuck, said by one lover to another about their
relationship. How is this expression about travel to be understood as being about their
relationship? We're stuck can be used of travel, and when it is, it evokes knowledge about
travel. The exact knowledge may vary from person to person, but here is a typical example of
the kind of knowledge evoked. The capitalized expressions represent entities n the ontology
of travel, that is, in the source domain of the LOVE IS A JOURNEY mapping given above. Two
TRAVELLERS are in a VEHICLE, TRAVELING WITH COMMON DESTINATIONS. The VEHICLE
encounters some IMPEDIMENT and gets stuck, that is, makes it nonfunctional. If they do
nothing, they will not REACH THEIR DESTINATIONS. There are a limited number of
alternatives for action:
 They can try to get it moving again, either by fixing it or get ting it past the
IMPEDIMENT that stopped it.
 They can remain in the nonfunctional VEHICLE and give up on REACHING THEIR
DESTINATIONS.
 They can abandon the VEHICLE.
 The alternative of remaining in the nonfunctional VEHICLE takes the least effort, but
does not satisfy the desire to REACH THEIR DESTINATIONS.
The ontological correspondences that constitute the LOVE IS A JOURNEY metaphor

map the ontology of travel onto the ontology of love. In doing so, they map this scenario
about travel onto a corresponding love scenario in which the corresponding alternatives for
action are seen. Here is the corresponding love scenario that results from applying the
correspondences to this knowledge structure. The target domain entities that are mapped by
the correspondences are capitalized:
Two LOVERS are in a LOVE RELATIONSHIP, PURSUING COMMON LIFE GOALS. The
RELATIONSHIP encounters some DIFFICULTY, which makes it nonfunctional. If they do
nothing, they will not be able to ACHIEVE THEIR LIFE GOALS. There are limited number of

alternatives for action:
 They can try to get it moving again, either by fixing it or getting it past the DIFFICULTY.
 They can remain in the nonfunctional RELATIONSHIP, and give up on ACHIEVING
THEIR LIFE GOALS.
 They can abandon the RELATIONSHIP.
The alternative of remaining in the nonfunctional RELATIONSHIP takes the least

effort, but does not satisfy the desire to ACHIEVE LIFE GOALS. This is an example of an
inference pattern that is mapped from one domain to another. It is via such mappings that
we apply knowledge about travel to love relationships.
A classical example 3: TIME IS MONEY
The set of examples below illustrates this metaphor:
 You're wasting my time.

 This gadget will save you hours. I don't have the time to give you.
 How do you spend your time these days?
 That flat tire cost me an hour.
 I've invested a lot of time in her.
 I don't have enough time to spare for that.
 You need to budget your time.
 Put aside some time for ping pong.
 Is that worth your while?
 Do you have much time left?
 He's living on I borrowed time.
 You don't use your time, profitably.
 I lost a lot of time when I got sick.
 Thank you for your time.
Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a limited resource that we use to

accomplish our goals. Because of the way that the concept of work has developed in modern
Western culture, where work is typically associated with the time it takes and time is
precisely quantified, it has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or year. In
our culture TIME IS MONEY in many ways: telephone message units, hourly wages, hotel
room rates, yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to society by "serving
time." These practices are relatively new in the history of the human race, and by no means
do they exist in all cultures. They have arisen in modern industrialized societies and structure
our basic everyday activities in a very profound way. Corresponding to the fact that we act as
if time is a valuable commodity--a limited resource, even money--we conceive of time that
way. Thus we understand and experience time as the kind of thing that can be spent, wasted,
budgeted, invested wisely or poorly, saved, or squandered.
TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, and TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY

are all metaphorical concepts. They are metaphorical since we are using our everyday
experiences with money, limited resources, and valuable commodities to conceptualize time.
This isn't a necessary way for human beings to conceptualize time; it is tied to our culture.
There are cultures where time is none of these things.
The metaphorical concepts TIME IS MONEY, TIME IS A RESOURCE, and TIME IS A

VALUABLE COMMODITY form a single system based on sub-categorization, since in our
society money is a limited resource and limited resources are valuable commodities. These
sub categorization relationships characterize entailment relationships between the
metaphors: TIME IS MONEY entails that TIME IS A LIMITED RESOURCE, which entails that
TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY.
We are adopting the practice of using the most specific metaphorical concept, in this
case TIME IS MONEY to characterize the entire system. Of the expressions listed under the
TIME IS MONEY metaphor, some refer specifically to money (spend, invest, budget, probably
cost), others to limited resources (use, use up, have enough of, run out of), and still others to
valuable commodities (have, give, lose, thank you for). This is an example of the way in which
metaphorical entailments can characterize a coherent system of metaphorical concepts and a
corresponding coherent system of metaphorical expressions for those concepts.
The very systematicity that allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms
of another (e.g., comprehending an aspect of arguing in terms of battle) will necessarily hide
other aspects of the concept. In allowing us to focus on one aspect of a concept (e.g., the
battling aspects of arguing), metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on other
aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor. For example, in the midst of
a heated argument, when we are intent on attacking our opponent's position and defending
our own, we may lose sight of the cooperative aspects of arguing. Someone who is arguing
with you can be viewed as giving you his time, a valuable commodity, in an effort at mutual
understanding. But when we are preoccupied with the battle aspects, we often lose sight of
the cooperative aspects.
Study questions:
1. What are the assumptions of cognitive linguistics?

2. What is a conceptual metaphor in cognitive linguistics? How does a conceptual
metaphor differ from a linguistic metaphor?
3. In what ways does the linguistic view on metaphor differ from the literary view?
4. What are the 5 basic types of linguistic metaphors?
5. In what ways do linguistic metaphors refer to human experience?
6. Study the examples of ARGUMENT IS WAR, LOVE IS A JOURNEY, TIME IS MONEY
metaphors and the linguistic expressions that underlie them. What are the linguistic
expressions that may illustrate the following linguistic metaphors?
 IDEAS ARE FOOD
 SOCIAL ORGANISATIONS ARE PLANTS
 LOVE IS A NUTRIENT
 COMPLEX ABSTRACT SYSTEMS ARE PLANTS
 PEOPLE ARE ANIMALS.


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MANUAL PRZEDMIOTOWY - STUDENT

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Zagadnienia do kolokwium zaliczeniowego:

2. Properties of human language.

3. Characteristics of linguistic sign.

6. Places and manners of articulation of English sounds.

8. Tongue position for vowels articulation.

Projekt współfinansowany ze środków Unii Europejskiej

11. Principles of morphological analysis.

12. Derivation in English.

13. Inflection in English.

14. The morpheme and its types.

16. Word-formation processes: suppletion, prefixing and suffixing, backformation,

17. Semantics: scope of language analysis; notions used in lexical semantics.

18. Semantics: thematic relations.

19. The notion of the act of speech.

20. Acts of speech and their types.

21. Conversational maxims.

22. Relevance Theory.

23. Discourse: its types and characteristics.

24. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

25. Cultural determinism, cultural relativism, and cultural ethnocentrism.

26. Variations of language.

27. Language registers.

28. Language variations.

30. Pidgins and Creoles.

31. Evolution of language and historical linguistics.

32. The origin of language.

33. Language family.

35. Basic assumptions of cognitive linguistics.

36. Conceptual metaphor.

37. Linguistic metaphor - major types and examples.

38. The experiential basis of metaphor.

Projekt współfinansowany ze środków Unii Europejskiej

2. Major linguistic disciplines.

3. The nature of linguistic sign.

4. Properties of human language.

5. Roman Jakobson's model of communication.

Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a

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 Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences.

BASIC NOTIONS IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS

THE NATURE OF LINGUISTIC SIGN

PROPERTIES OF HUMAN LANGUAGE

2). Cultural transmission

Projekt współfinansowany ze środków Unii Europejskiej

 main verbs (not auxiliary verbs)

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Część elearningowa (2 godziny):

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THE STUDY OF SOUNDS

7. Tongue position, length, rounding.

8. Diphthongs and triphthongs.

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1. physiological: airflow / constriction;

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plosive fricative affricate nasal lateral approx-

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Tongue position is described using two criteria:

a) tongue is at the highest b) tongue is at the lowest

Figure 3 (tongue position)4.

Figure 45: tongue position: (a) front and (b) back.

Diagram 57 is conventionalised as the complete diagram of English vowels is: