Descriptive Linguistics

 Joicelin Simangunsong (17810019)

 Imelda T.W Hura (17810024)
 Tiur Manik (1781008)
 Descriptive Linguistics

Linguistics :

 Linguistics is the study and analysis of human

language.
 Core Subfield
 Phonetics: the study of the physical properties of speech
sounds (acoustic phonetics) and how they are made
(articulatory phonetics).
 Phonology: the study of how speech sounds pattern and
how they are organized.
 Morphology: the study of the formation of words.
 Syntax: the study of the structure of sentences.
 Semantics: the study of meaning in language.
 Pragmatics: the study of how linguistic meaning depend
on context.
 What is Descriptive Linguistics?

 In the study of language, description, or descriptive

linguistics, is the work of objectively analyzing and
describing how language is spoken (or how it was spoken
in the past) by a group of people in a speech community.

 As English-linguist Larry Andrews describes it, descriptive

grammar is the linguistic approach that studies what a
language is like, as opposed to prescriptive grammar,
which declares what a language should be like.
 POINTS :
 Descriptive grammar :

describes rule that govern what people do or can say.

 Prescriptive grammar:

Prescribes rules governing what people should/shouldn't

say.
 POINTS
 All scholarly research in linguistics is descriptive; like all
other sciences, its aim is to observe the linguistic world as
it is, without the bias of preconceived ideas about how it
ought to be.
 Modern descriptive linguistics is based on a structural
approach to language, as exemplified in the work of
Leonard Bloomfield and others.
 Linguistic description is often contrasted with linguistic
prescription, which is found especially in education and in
publishing.
 POINTS
 Prescription seeks to define standard language forms and
give advice on effective language use, and can be thought
of as a presentation of the fruits of descriptive research in
a learnable form, though it also draws on more subjective
aspects of language aesthetics.

 Prescription and description are complementary, but have

different priorities and sometimes are seen to be in
conflict.
Why is Descriptive Language
important?
 It responds to our senses: taste, touch, smell,
sight, and sound.

 It helps make paragraphs come to life for the

reader.
 Example :

The house in the middle of town. It belonged

to the old man. He went to work everyday
and returned home at 6:00pm. His wife
made him dinner. He then read the paper
and went to bed
 Revised with Descriptive Language

The red trimmed three-story house sat in the middle of the town.
The old man had gray hair, with little curls at the end, owned it. He
used a self made intricate designed cane to walk to work at the
rustic. old hardware store with squeaky boards that sounded like a
rocking chair when stepped upon. When the old man returned
home at dusk, his wife made the normal juicy steak, lumpy
mashed potatoes, garden green beans with cheese, and sweet
warm apple pie. He read about the town gossip from Eleanor
Dribble in the Morgan Country paper, and then resided to his
cotton flannel sheets, with downy-feathered pillows