Introduction to Linguistics

ENGL 215N
Week 1 + 2

1
Welcome to the fascinating world
of human language!

2
 What’s linguistics about?
Group work
Think of the following questions!

1- What is linguistics?
2- What are some of the questions that linguists try to answer?
3- Will you be able to speak more than one language
if you become a linguist?

3
Definition of Linguistics

The scientific or systematic study of language.

It studies the rules, systems and principles of human languages.
Linguists consequently are concerned with a number
of particular questions about the nature of language.
Stephen Krashen Noam Chomsky
 Branches or subfields in Linguistics

•Phonetics- the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects

•Phonology - the study of speech sounds in their cognitive aspects
•Morphology - the study of the formation of words
•Syntax - the study of the formation of sentences
•Semantics- the study of meaning
•Pragmatics - the study of language use
 The main purpose of Linguistics
 One is that it studies the nature of language and tries to establish a
theory of language and describes languages in the light of the
theory established.
 The other is that it examines all the forms of language in general

and seeks a scientific understanding of the ways in which it is

organized to fulfill the needs it serves and the functions it
performs in human life.
 Week 2
Chapter 2 : Animals & Human Language

Properties of Human Language:

1. Displacement
2. Arbitrariness
3. Productivity
4. Cultural Transmission
5. Duality of patterning

PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 8

Before we start, let’s watch a video..

PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 9

PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 10
Properties of Human Language:

All creatures communicate in some way. Animals

are not capable of reviewing their communicative
messages, but humans are.
This is called reflexivity.
Reflexivity or reflexiveness accounts for the fact
that we ( humans) can use language to think and
talk about language itself.

PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 11

 1. Displacement
In contrast, human language users are normally capable of producing
messages that refer to past and future.

This property of human language is called displacement:

The ability to talk about things and events that are not physically
present in the immediate environment.
.
Indeed, displacement allows us to talk about things and places (e.g.
angels, fairies, Superman, heaven, hell) whose existence we cannot
even be sure of.

ENGL210 MS. Nehad Asiri

 1. Displacement
When your pet cat comes home and stands at your feet calling meow,
you are likely to understand this message as relating to that
immediate time and place.

If you ask your cat where it has been and what it was up to, you’ll
probably get the same meow response.

Animal communication seems to be designed exclusively for this

moment, here and now. The meaning conveyed by animal language
only works in context.

ENGL210 MS. Nehad Asiri

 1. Displacement
It has been proposed that bee communication is an
exception because it may have some degree of
displacement.

For example, when a worker honeybee finds a source of

nectar
. and returns to the beehive, it can perform a complex
dance routine to communicate to the other bees the location
of this nectar depending on the type of dance.
Bee communication has a degree of displacement of a very
limited type. No range of possibilities like the human language and must be a
recent source.
ENGL210 MS. Nehad Asiri
 2. Arbitrariness

The word airplane is not an airplane itself; rather, it is a word

we have agreed means or signals for the idea of an airplane.

15
 2. Arbitrariness
This aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and objects in
the world is described as arbitrariness.
There is no ‘natural’ connection between a linguistic form and its
meaning.
However, there are some Onomatopoeic words in language that seem
to (echo) the sounds of objects or activities, hence having less
arbitrariness. Like : crash, whip, giggle, bark, buzz, tweet, quack etc..
However, these onomatopoeic words are relatively rare in human
language.
The point is that words are just an arbitrary set of symbols used to
represent various meanings
PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 16
 3. Cultural Transmission

An infant born to Korean parents in Korea, but adopted and brought

up from birth by English speakers in the United States, will have
physical characteristics inherited from her natural parents.
What language will she speak?

Humans inherit physical features from their parents, but they do not
inherit the language.

The process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to

the next is described as cultural transmission.

We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from

parental genes.
PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 17
 3. Cultural Transmission

In animal communication, creatures are born with a set of

specific signals that are produced instinctively.
There is evidence in research on birds that instinct has to
combine with learning ( exposure) in order to produce the
correct song. If birds heard nothing for 7 weeks they will
still be able to produce the calls or songs by instinct.

But,

Human infants growing in isolation ?

No instinctive language
PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 18
 4. Productivity ( creativity or open-endedness)
Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel
utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new
objects and situations. This property is described as productivity.

It is linked to the fact that the potential number of utterances in any

human language is infinite.

What about animals?

The lack of productivity in animal communication is called

fixed-reference. (relating to a particular purpose)
5. Duality / Double Articulation
Human language is organized at two levels: distinct sound &
distinct meaning. This is called duality or double articulation.

 Physical level at which we can produce individual sounds

e.g. n, b, i. None of these discrete forms has any intrinsic/basic
meaning.

 Meaning level: when we produce sounds in combination e.g.:

nib, bin

20
 5. Duality / Double Articulation
This duality of levels is, in fact, one of the most
economical features of human language. Why?

because, with a limited set of discrete sounds, we are

capable of producing a very large number of sound
combinations (e.g. words) which are distinct in
meaning.

.
Animal communicative signals appear to be fixed
Typically cannot be broken into parts-
meow is not m+e+o+w
 Talking to Animals
What about saying Whoa to horses ? Do they
understand ?
Should we treat that as evidence that non-humans
can understand human language? Probably not.
The explanation is that the animal produces a
particular behavior in response to a sound stimulus,
but does not actually understand what the noise
means.

PROF.ROSELINE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 22

Why is reflexivity considered a special
property of human language?

The END