Student: David Peralta Ortiz.

Teacher: Jesus Garces

Class: English.

Level: Teachers 2
 INDEX

1.- Linguistic elements and concepts.

5.- Early history.

7.- Language and communication.

9.- Structuralism.

11.- Ferdinand de Saussure.

13.- Diachrony and Sinchrony.

16.- Samuel Johnson.

18.- The 18th century traditional grammar.

20.- Descriptive linguistics and the American tradition.

22.- Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar.

24.- Child language acquisition.

26.- Second language acquisition.

30.- Sociolinguistics.

32.- Variationist sociolinguistics.

34.- Stylistic variations.

36.- Multilingualism.

38.- Language and culture.

40.- What is NLP?

42.- Representational Systems.

44.- Language and experiences.

47.- The metamodel.

49.- Charles Sanders Peirce.

52.- Claude Levi-Strauss.

54.- Roland Barthes.

55.- Jacques Locan.

56.-Aristotle – 3 part semiotics model.

57.- Extra notes and topics.

58.- Lexeme – Based morphology.

59.- Observations about portfolio.

60.- Evidences.
1 Linguistic elements and basic concepts

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, specifically language form,

language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the description of
language have been attributed to the 4th century BCE Indian grammarian Pāṇini, who was
an early student of linguistics and wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in
his Aṣṭādhyāyī.Linguistics analyses human language as a system for relating sounds (or
signs in signed languages) and meaning. Phonetics studies acoustic and articulatory
properties of the production and perception of speech sounds and non-speech sounds.
The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how languages encode
relations between entities, properties, and other aspects of the world to convey, process,
and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity. While the study
of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, pragmatics deals with how
context influences meanings.

Grammar is a system of rules which govern the form of the utterances in a given language.
It encompasses both sound and meaning, and includes phonology (how sounds or
gestures function together), morphology (the formation and composition of words),
and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences from words).

 Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of speech sound production and
perception.
 Phonology, the study of sounds as abstract elements in the speaker's mind that
distinguish meaning (phonemes).
 Morphology, the study of morphemes, or the internal structures of words and how
they can be modified.
 Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical phrases and 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.
 Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used in communicative acts, and the role
played by context and non-linguistic knowledge in the transmission of meaning.
 Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or signed).
 Stylistics, the study of linguistic factors (rhetoric, diction, stress) that place a
discourse in context.
 Semiotics, the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation,
likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.

2
 3 NOTES

Linguistics: * Study

*Science

*Structure

*Relationships

Microlinguistics: Macrolinguistics:

 Phonetics  Sociolinguistics
 Morphology  Psicolinguistics
 Syntax  Neurolinguistics
 Semantics  Language acquisition
 Pragmatics
 4 Levels of analysis

Structural categories: Component of gramar:

 Sentence
 Phrase
 Syntax
 Words
 Morphology
 Phoneme
 Phonology
 Morpheme

Semantics: Is the study of the meanings of words and sentences.

Pragmatics: The use of language in social contexts and the ways in which people
produce and comprehend meanings.
5 Early history of linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, specifically language form, language

meaning and, language in context

1786 is the year many people regard as the birthdate of linguistics with the presentation of
Sanskrit’s likenesses to many other languages (Greek, Latin and Celtic) by Sir William
Jones (Anglo-Welsh Philologist and Linguist) to the Royal Asiatic society in Calcutta, India.
It was the beginning of linguistics as an autonomic science, with its own methods and
object of study. But previously, there already existed studies of languages (Study of
grammar and structure of languages). All this grammatical terminology was no more than
an ensemble of reasonable ideas; therefore, there was not a proper scientific method to
establish the properties of languages. This stage was called “The pre-scientific phase of
linguistics”.

During the pre-scientific phase there were frequent the Idiosyncratic and philosophical
issues about nature of languages, their superiority or perfection, or their origins. Examples
of these questionings were addressed by Plato and Aristotle, who made major
contributions to the study of language. Plato is said to have been the first person to
distinguish between nouns and verbs, for instance.

The earliest activities in the description of language have been attributed to the 5 th century
BCE Indian grammarian Panini, who was an early student of linguistics and wrote a formal
description of the Sanskrit language. Panini’s systematic classification of the sounds of
Sanskrit into consonants and vowels, and word classes, such as nouns and verbs, was the
first known instance of its kind. His most notable work was the “Aṣṭādhyāyī” or “Eight
books”.

Greek culture was the one that inaugurated the western linguistic tradition. It is considered
that the beginning of linguistics reflection was produced within the pale of pre-Socratic
thought. With Heraclitus and Democritus there started a controversy between the idea of
divine and conventional origin of language. Plato and Aristotle are regarded as the major
expositors of this polemic and parallel to it, the discussion between analogic and
anomalous relation amid language and nature. Grammatical Greek studies were the ones
which found the grammatical categories and classification of words as they are and how
we know them nowadays.

Although already established by the Greeks, traditional grammatical theory was studied,
by the Roman scholars. They formalized and structured the study of Latin grammar.
Likenesses between these languages were so many that some started to think that Latin
descended directly from Greek, a wrong idea since Greek and Latin never established
common origin between them. Marcus Terentius Varro is distinguished by his multiple
original contributions. He made an extensive scrutinize about Latin language.
6 Notes

In my opinion, this was a very interesting topic. We could know and review the multiple
cultures that influenced the linguistics as we know it nowadays. It was incredible to
discover that Indian culture was the first in begins what some called “Pre-scientific phase”.
Also, Greek philosophers were great part of this field and they made enormous
contributions (Like being the first in divide the multiple parts of speech and differentiate
these in specific groups) and I personally didn’t know that philosophers like Aristotle
contributed to linguistics. And last but not least, Romans improved the Greek theories to
build what we know as “Grammar”. That is important to remark.

I think that know the history of what we are learning is always important. Some say that
know our history get us away from repeat our mistakes and so do I.
7 Language and communication

Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly
the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The
scientific study of language is called linguistics.

Questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent
experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such
as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others
like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century
philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language.
Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky.

Human language has the properties of productivity, recursivity, and displacement, and
relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a much
wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is
thought to have originated when early hominins started gradually changing their primate
communication systems, acquiring the ability to form a theory of other minds and a
shared intentionality. This development is sometimes thought to have coincided with an
increase in brain volume, and many linguists see the structures of language as having
evolved to serve specific communicative and social functions. Language is processed in
many different locations in the human brain, but especially in Broca's and Wernicke's
areas. Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood, and
children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of
language is deeply entrenched in human culture. Therefore, in addition to its strictly
communicative uses, language also has many social and cultural uses, such as signifying
group identity, social stratification, as well as social grooming and entertainment.

By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral
language. By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express,
written thoughts. These unique abilities of communicating through a native language
clearly separate humans from all animals. Organic evolution has proven unable to
elucidate the origin of language and communication. Knowing how beneficial this ability is
to humans, one would wonder why this skill has not evolved in other species. Materialistic
science is insufficient at explaining not only how speech came about, but also why we
have so many different languages. Linguistic research, combined with neurological
studies, has determined that human speech is highly dependent on a neuronal network
located in specific sites within the brain. This intricate arrangement of neurons, and the
anatomical components necessary for speech, cannot be reduced in such a way that one
could produce a “transitional” form of communication.

Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can
be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral
languages must have had in order for the later developmental stages to occur. Academic
consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the
21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100.
8 NOTES

TOPIC NOT
GIVEN YET
9 Structuralism

Structuralism is a 20th Century intellectual movement and approach to the human

sciences (it has had a profound effect on linguistics, sociology, anthropology and other
fields in addition to philosophy) that attempts to analyze a specific field as a complex
system of interrelated parts. Broadly speaking, Structuralism holds that all human
activity and its products, even perception and thought itself, are constructed and
not natural, and in particular that everything has meaning because of the language
system in which we operate. It is closely related to Semiotics, the study of signs, symbols
and communication, and how meaning is constructed and understood.

There are four main common ideas underlying Structuralism as a general movement:
firstly, every system has a structure; secondly, the structure is what determines
the position of each element of a whole; thirdly, "structural laws" deal with
coexistence rather than changes; and fourthly, structures are the "real things" that lie
beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning.

Structuralism is widely regarded to have its origins in the work of the Swiss linguistic
theorist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) in the early 20th Century, but it soon came
to be applied to many other fields, including philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis,
sociology, literary theory and even mathematics. In the early 20th Century, Saussure
developed a science of signs based on linguistics (semiotics or semiology). He held that
any language is just a complex system of signs that express ideas, with rules which
govern their usage. He called the underlying abstract structure of a language, "langue",
and the concrete manifestations or embodiments, "parole". He concluded that any
individual sign is essentially arbitrary and that there is no natural relationship between a
signifier (e.g. the word dog") and the signified (e.g. the mental concept of the actual
animal). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when structural linguistics was facing serious
challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance, an array of
scholars in the humanities borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields
of study. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar,
sparking a widespread interest in structuralism.
It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think,
perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn,
structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through
their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the
surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract culture".

Unlike the Romantic or Humanist models, which hold that the author is the starting
point or progenitor of any text, Structuralism argues that any piece of writing (or any
"signifying system") has no origin, and that authors merely inhabit pre-existing
structures ("langue") that enable them to make any particular sentence or story ("parole"),
hence the idea that" language speaks us", rather than that we speak language.
Structuralism was also to some extent a reaction against Phenomenology in that it argued
that the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not
themselves experiential.

By the 1960s, it had become a major force within the overall Continental
Philosophy movement in Europe, and came to take Existentialism’s pedestal in 1960s
France.
 10 NOTES

A system in which each element in a group can be understood by its relation to other
elements as a part of a longer structure.

 Atomistic: Parts are more important.

 Organic: Parts are related to each other and as a whole.

Before Saussure.

Language was Generally seen as a way to name things

Saussure:

Language is made of signs. By putting together signs it is possible to make complex

things.

Signifier:

The psychological imprint of the sound. The impression it makes on our senses.

Signified:

The concept or essence of something.

Signified and signifier:

Are inseparable

Work together to create meaning.

The nature of signs:

Arbitrary – There is no natural connection between signifier and signified

They must be agreed by a group of people.

E.G. Interjections Dog: *Bark, bark.

11 Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of
the significant developments in linguistics in the twentieth century. He is widely considered
the "father" of twentieth-century linguistics, and his work laid the foundation for the
approach known as structuralism in the broader field of the social sciences. Although his
work established the essential framework of future studies, his ideas contained many
limitations and fundamental weaknesses as later scholars recognized that underlying
structure and rules, while informative, cannot be the sole determinant of meaning and
value in any social system.

Living in Geneva, teaching Sanskrit and historical linguistics, he married there and had two
sons. Saussure continued to lecture at the university for the remainder of his life. However,
it was not until 1906 that Saussure began teaching the course of "General Linguistics" that
would consume the greater part of his attention until his death in 1913.

Saussure's influence on linguists was far-reaching, first through his direct influence on his
students at the University of Geneva, who practically worshipped him, and then through
his ideas as collected and disseminated after his death by two of his students, Charles
Bally and Albert Sechaye These students, who became well-known linguistic researchers
in their own right

Saussure's conception of linguistic science is one that encounters certain problems on its
own theoretical terrain. With Saussure this difficulty arises chiefly from the conflict in his
thinking between a realist conviction that linguistic science has to do with a well-defined
object of study that should somehow - ideally - be set apart from all 'external
considerations like those of history, cultural influence, political events, conquest,
colonization, etc., and on the other hand his equally firm insistence that such an object is
constituted in and by the very act of theoretical abstraction that brings it into being.

Saussure's fresh ideas were consonant with those of his influental compatriot Claude Levi-
Strauss, and also those of Emile Durkheim, pioneer of the new field of sociology.
Saussure's influence spread all through the new social sciences in the early and mid-
twentieth century, and ultimately, for better or worse, to literary theory and modern cultural
studies. They still exert a very strong intellectual force in all these disciplines (probably
most in Linguistics and the disciplines most influenced by literary theory; less so now in
traditional Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology).

In Linguistics, Saussure's focus on the synchronic dimension and on language as an

interrelated system of elements was maintained through the American Structuralist period
(Bloomfield, Hockett), and also in the Generative period (Chomsky, Bresnan). His view of
the essential nature of the form-meaning pairing, without the intermediate and essentiallly
meaningless syntactic layer posited by Chomsky, Perlmutter, and other generative theory-
builders, has re-emerged in theories like Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Sag
and Pollard) and Construction Grammar.
12 Notes

The sign

Sign = Signifier + Signified = Tree (Form)

1. The arbitrary nature of the sign

2. The linear nature of the sign
3. Immutability of the sign
4. Mutability of the sign
5.
13 Diachrony and synchrony

Synchrony and diachrony are two different and complementary viewpoints

in linguistic analysis:

 a diachronic approach considers the development and evolution of a language through

history. The word is built on the Ancient Greek words δια "through" and χρόνος
"time".Historical linguistics is typically a diachronic study.
 a synchronic approach considers a language without taking its history into account.
The word is built on the Ancient Greek words συν "with" and χρόνος "time". Synchronic
linguistics aims at describing language rules at a specific point of time, even though
they may have been different at an earlier stage of the language. School grammar
typically uses a synchronic (as well as prescriptive) approach.
The concepts were theorized by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, professor of
general linguistics in Geneva from 1896 to 1911, and appeared in writing in his
posthumous Course in General Linguistics published in 1916. In contrast with most of his
predecessors, who focused on historical evolution of languages, Saussure emphasized
the primacy of synchronic analysis to understand their inner functioning.
This dualistic opposition has been carried over into philosophy and sociology, for instance
by Roland Barthes and Jean-Paul Sartre. Jacques Lacan also used it for psychoanalysis.
Swiss linguist and semiotician. Ferdinand de Saussure theorized the terms “Synchrony
and Diachrony” and the theoric construction of their opposition.

Synchrony and diachrony are two different and complementary viewpoints

in linguistic analysis:

a diachronic approach considers the development and evolution of a language through

history. The word is built on the Ancient Greek words δια "through" and χρόνος "time".
Historical linguistics is typically a diachronic study.

a synchronic approach considers a language without taking its history into account. The
word is built on the Ancient Greek words συν "with" and χρόνος "time". Synchronic
linguistics aims at describing language rules at a specific point of time, even though they
may have been different at an earlier stage of the language. School grammar typically
uses a synchronic (as well as prescriptive) approach.
15 NOTES

Diachronic: Historical linguistics, Study of language since century XV to XVII

Diachronic = Dia = Through

Khronos = Time

Synchronic = Syn = With

Khronos = Time

Magic words: Diachronic = History

Synchronic: Current time

16 Samuel Johnson

The ever witty Samuel Johnson often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English
writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist,
moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a
devout Anglican and committed Tory, and is described by the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biographyas "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English
history".He is also the subject of perhaps the most famous biography in English
literature, namely The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell. Also, he was an
essayist and literary historian who was a prominent figure in 18th century England.

Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, on September 18, 1709, Samuel Johnson

came from modest means to become one of the greatest literary figures of his day.
He was known for his essay collections, biographies and a comprehensive
dictionary as well as the fable adaptation The History of Rasselas, Prince of
Abissinia. Revered for his enduring witticisms,

In 1737, Johnson moved to London where he struggled to support himself through

journalism, writing on a huge variety of subjects. He gradually acquired a literary
reputation and in 1747 a syndicate of printers commissioned him to compile his
'Dictionary of the English Language'. The task took eight years, and Johnson
employed six assistants, all of them working in his house off Fleet Street.

The dictionary was published on 15 April 1755. It was not the first such dictionary,
but was certainly the most important at that time. In Johnson's lifetime five further
editions were published, and a sixth came out when he died.

Johnson's wife had died in 1752 and shortly afterwards Francis Barber, a former
slave from Jamaica, joined Johnson's household as a servant. He lived with
Johnson for more than 30 years, as did his wife and children, and became
Johnson's heir.

In 1763, he met James Boswell, a young Scottish lawyer, whose 'Life of Johnson'
(published in 1791) did much to spread Johnson's name. In 1773, Johnson and
Boswell set out on a three-month tour of the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides.
Both wrote accounts of their travels. Johnson spent considerable time in Edinburgh
in the 1770s.

Johnson was by now the leader of the London literary world, and a friend of
notable artists and writers such as Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Oliver
Goldsmith and David Garrick. Another important friendship for Johnson was with
Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and member of parliament, and his wife Hester.
Johnson became part of their family, treating their London houses as second
homes. Johnson died on December 13, 1784.
17 Notes

Essayist, poet and English playwright born in Lichfield in 1709 and died in London
in 1784. He’s considered as one of the men of letters more brilliant of his time.

Son of a bookseller of Litchfield, studied in the school of his native town, and in the
Pambroke college of Oxford, without graduating. In 1737 he moved to London,
where wrote works of commissioned and collaborated in different publications.
18 The 18th century traditional grammar

A traditional grammar is a framework for the description of the structure of a language.

Traditional grammars are commonly used in language education. They may be contrasted
with theories of grammar in theoretical linguistics, which grew out of traditional descriptions
of grammar. While grammar frameworks in contemporary linguistics often seek to explain
the nature of language knowledge and ability, traditional grammars seek to describe how
particular languages are used, or to teach people to speak or read them.

The formal study of grammar, based on the work of classical Greek and Latin philologists,
became popular during the Renaissance. The use of traditional grammars has gone in and
out of fashion in language teaching over the ensuing centuries.

Traditional grammars generally classify words into parts of speech. They describe the
patterns for word inflection, and the rules of syntax by which those words are combined
into sentences

The earliest descriptions of other European languages were modeled on grammars of

Latin. The primacy of Latin in traditional grammar persisted until the beginning of the 20th
century.

The use of grammar descriptions in the teaching of language, including foreign

language teaching and the study of language arts, has gone in and out of fashion. As
education increasingly took place in vernacular languages at the close of the Renaissance,
grammars of these languages were produced for teaching. Between 1801 and 1900 there
were more than 850 grammars of English published specifically for use in schools.
Mastering grammar rules like those derived from the study of Latin has at times been a
specific goal of English-language education. This approach to teaching has, however, long
competed with approaches that downplay the importance of grammar instruction. Similarly
in foreign or second language teaching, the grammar-translation method based on
traditional Latin teaching, in which the grammar of the language to be learned is described
in the student's native language, has competed with approaches such as the direct
method or the communicative approach, in which grammar instruction is minimized.

Traditional grammar still is basically a Latinate grammar rather than an English grammar.
It is not descriptive of a Teutonic based language. English relies on word order. ft is not as
highly inflectional. Take the popular Latin sentence for”I love you.” It can be “Amo te” or
“Te amo.” Word order makes no difference in the Latin grammar. The parts of the Latin
sentence are so highly inflected with endings chat one determines the function by these
endings.

The English language has lost almost its inflectional endings: therefore, the English
sentence relies upon word order. One may say “I love von, but never “You love,” except in
poetry. In traditional grammar the definitions are not particularly satisfactory.
19 Notes

Joseph Priestly’s:

“The rudiments of English Grammar”.

Robert Lowth:

“A short introduction to English Grammar”.

*Not ending a sentence with a preposition.

-The woman he shared a room with.

-What did you ask for?

Dictionary:

To abandon over. V.a To give up; To refign. Dryd

ABA’NDONED part. Ad.

1. Given up.
2. Forsaken, corrupted in the highest degree.
20 Descriptive linguistics and the American tradition

Descriptive linguistics is a discipline in which the principles of linguistics, or the scientific

study of language, are presented through description of one language. Through this
process, scholars seek to identify the general linguistic principles that also characterize
other languages. It is a required course for many disciplines, in that it combines
understanding of the technical materials of language (phonemes, morphemes, syntax,
pragmatics, etc.) with critical thinking skills that are universally appreciated. Problem-
solving and analysis are keys to discovering the linguistic units that all humans use in their
languages. As language is a uniquely human phenomenon that many consider to be
species-specific and uniform, its study can help us better understand who we are as
members of the species.

In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is also the work

of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used
in the past) by a group of people in a speech community.
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. 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.
Descriptivism is the belief that description is more significant or important to teach, study,
and practice than prescription.
As English-linguist Larry Andrews describes it, descriptive grammar is the linguistic
approach that studies what a language is like, as opposed to prescriptive, which declares
what a language should be like. In other words, descriptive grammarians focus analysis on
how all sorts of people in all sorts of environments, usually in more casual, everyday
settings, communicate, while prescriptive grammarians focus on the grammatical rules and
structures predetermined by linguistic registers and figures of power for those who are
under the control of said authorities to use. An example Andrews uses in his book is fewer
than vs less than.
A descriptive grammarian would state that both statements are correct, as long as the
receiver of the message can understand the meaning behind the statement. A prescriptive
grammarian, on the other hand, would analyze the rules and conventions behind the
statements made and determine which statement is correct according to those rules.
21 NOTES

The American linguists L. Boomfield and E. Sapir were the founders of descriptive
linguistics.

*Diverge in the nature of their research interests and theorical aims.

*Similar in the area of methods of linguistics research.

In the study of language descriptive linguistics the whole objective is describing

whole words to the people.
22 Noam Chomsky’s Generative grammar

Linguists who work within the framework of generative grammar strive to develop a
general theory that reveals the rules and laws that govern the structure of particular
languages, and the general laws and principles governing all natural languages. The basic
areas of study include phonology (the study of the sound patterns of
language), morphology (the study of the structure and meaning of words), syntax (the
study of the structure of sentences), and semantics (the study of linguistic meaning).

A signature feature of generative grammar is the view that humans have an innate
"language faculty" and that the universal principles of human language reflect intrinsic
properties of this language faculty. In learning their native languages, children acquire
specific rules that determine the sound and meaning of utterances in the language.

Generative grammar is also a linguistic theory that considers grammar to be a system of

rules that is intended to generate exactly those combinations of words which
form grammatical sentences in a given language. The term was originally used in relation
to thetheories of grammar developed by Noam Chomsky, beginning in the late 1950s.
Linguists who follow the generative approach, originated by Chomsky, have been
called generativists. The generative school has focused on the study of syntax, but has
also addressed other aspects of a language's structure,
including morphology and phonology.
Early versions of Chomsky's theory were called transformational grammar, and this is still
used as a general term that includes his subsequent theories. The most recent is
the Minimalist Program, from which Chomsky and other generativists have argued that
many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from a universal grammar which is
innate to the human brain, rather than being learned from the environment (see
the poverty of the stimulus argument).
There are a number of competing versions of generative grammar currently practiced
within linguistics. A contrasting approach is that of constraint-based grammars. Where a
generative grammar attempts to list all the rules that result in all well-formed sentences,
constraint-based grammars allow anything that is not otherwise constrained. Constraint-
based grammars that have been proposed include certain versions of dependency
grammar, head-driven phrase structure grammar, lexical functional grammar, categorial
grammar, relational grammar, link grammar, and tree-adjoining grammar. In stochastic
grammar, grammatical correctness is taken as a probabilistic variable, rather than a
discrete (yes vs. no) property.
Generative grammar, a precisely formulated set of rules whose output is all (and only)
the sentences of a language—i.e., of the language that it generates. There are many
different kinds of generative grammar, including transformational grammar as developed
by Noam Chomsky from the mid-1950s. Linguists have disagreed as to which, if any, of
these different kinds of generative grammar serves as the best model for the description of
natural languages.
23 NOTES

Noam Chomsky is one of the most renowned thinkers today. His work is extensive
and multifunctional. He has developed theories, studies and knowledge deep both
in the linguistics, the psychology of the development, the philosophy and political
analysis.

Generative grammar is a precisely formulated set of rules whose output is all (and
only) the sentences of a language.

A significant break in linguistics tradition came in 1957, the year American Noam
chomsky’s syntactic structures appeared and presented the concept of a
generative grammar is essentially one that projects one or more given sets of
sentences that make up language.
24 Child language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive
and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to
communicate. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits, because
non-humans do not communicate by using language.

Acquire a language requires a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax,

semantics and an extensive vocabulary. Language development begins since the very
first day after birth (Although some scholars of the topic think that it begins since we are in
our mother’s uterus). By the age of 5, the child knows most of the system of language and
it continues even after this age. Studies have demonstrated that when a child reaches the
age of 7, it starts a natural decline in capability of acquire a language.

There are three main theories about how children learn languages:

1.- Behavioral approach: Believes that children learn to speak by copying the language he
hear around and receiving positive reinforcement towards parents’ objectives. Children
slowly learn some phrases and Grammar techniques and begin to acquire a proper
language. Skinner was the major expositor of this theory. He suggested that a successful
use of a word or “sign” would reinforce the learning of the child as a stimulus. He also
thought of “rewards” as the clue to help children to associate that a specific combination of
sounds stands for a specific thing, reinforcing the idea by repeated successful associations
made between the two.

2.- Innate Approach: Considers that when a child is exposed to language, parts of the
brain click in and instantly make sense of utterances because that is what the brain is
programmed to do. Innate approach believes that some sort of language is hardwired to
be heard by the child and positive reinforcement or training has no effect because
everything is in the brain. Noam Chomsky was the strongest defender of this theory. He
even attacked the Skinner’s theory calling it “large mythology” and “serious delusion”.
Nomsky exposed that children often ignore language corrections from adults. Instead,
children typically follow a pattern of using an irregular form of a word correctly, making
errors later on, and eventually returning to the proper use of the Word. It is difficult to
attribute this to Skinner´s idea of how environment influences the infant’s language
acquisition. Chomsky argued that if language were solely acquired through behavioral
conditioning, children would not likely learn the proper use of a word and suddenly use the
word incorrectly. Chomsky also rejected the term “learning”, used by Skinner. Instead, he
argued for a mathematical approach to language acquisition, based on a study of syntax.
25

3.- Interactionist approach: Nearly a mix of behavioral and innate approaches, it states that
although the brain plays a part in a way the child acquire language, it also needs to be
exploited in social and linguistic environments. It is based largely on the socio-cultural
theories of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Unlike other approaches; His theory
emphasizes the role of feedback and reinforcement in language acquisition and
furthermore, he asserted a theoretical construct denoting the set of tasks a child is capable
of performing with guidance, but not alone. As applied to language, it describes the set of
linguistic tasks (proper syntax, suitable vocabulary usage, etc.) a child cannot carry out on
their own at a given time, but can learn to carry out if assisted by an able adult.
26 NOTES

This topic was utterly interesting to me. Me, and each one of my partners,learned
the way every of us acquired the language we use in our lives. Even I understood
the whole theories and how they modify our behavior or the problems they carry if
they aren’t developed correctly. Also, I felt sensitive when I watched the videos of
examples of stages. I remembered the ages of my little daughter.
27 Second language acquisition

Second-language acquisition is the process by which people learn a second

language .This is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that
process. The field of second-language acquisition is a subdiscipline of applied
linguistics, but also receives research attention from a variety of other
disciplines, such as psychology and education.

A central theme in SLA research is that of interlanguage, the idea that the
language that learners use is not simply the result of differences between the
languages that they already know and the language that they are lea rning, but
that it is a complete language system in its own right, with its own systematic
rules. This interlanguage gradually develops as learners are exposed to the
targeted language. The order in which learners acquire features of their new
language stays remarkably constant, even for learners with different native
languages, and regardless of whether they have had language instruction.
However, languages that learners already know can have a significant
influence on the process of learning a new one. Th is influence is known
as language transfer.

Haynes divided the process of second-language acquisition into five stages:

preproduction, early production, speech emergenc e, intermediate fluency, and
advanced fluency.

The primary factor driving SLA appears to be the language input that learners
receive. Learners become more advanced the longer they are immersed in the
language they are learning, and the more time they spend doing free voluntary
reading. The input hypothesis developed by linguist Stephen Krashen makes a
distinction between language acquisition and language learning (acqu isition–
learning distinction), claiming that acquisition is a subconscious process,
whereas learning is a conscious one. According to this hypothesis, the
acquisition process in L2 is the same as L1 (Language 1) acquisition. The
learning process is consciously learning and inputting the language being
learned.

Focus is directed toward providing proof of whether basic linguistic skills are
innate (nature), acquired (nurture), or a combination of the two attributes. A
commonly discussed topic regarding age in SLA is the critical period
hypothesis, which suggests that individuals lose the ability to fully learn a
language after a particular age in childhood . Another topic of interest in SLA is
the differences between adult and child learners. Learning strategies are
commonly categorized as learning or communicative strategies, and are
developed to improve their respective acquisition skills. Affective factor s are
emotional factors that influence an individual's ability to learn a new language.
Common affective factors that influence acquisition are anxiety, personality,
social attitudes, and motivation.
28

Individuals may also lose a language through a proces s called second-

language attrition. This is often caused by lack of use or exposure to a
language over time. The severity of attrition depends on a variety of factors
including level of proficiency, age, social factors, and motivation at the time of
acquisition. Finally, classroom research deals with the effec t that language
instruction has on acquisition.

The academic discipline of second-language acquisition is a subdiscipline

of applied linguistics. It is broad-based and relatively new. As well as the
various branches of linguistics, second-language acquisition is also closely
related to psychology, cognitive psychology, and education. To separate the
academic discipline from the learning process itself, the terms second-
language acquisition research, second-language studies, and second-
language acquisition studies are also used.

SLA research began as an interdisciplinary field, and because of this it is

difficult to identify a precise starting date. However, two papers in particular
are seen as instrumental to the development of the modern study of SLA: Pi t
Corder's 1967 essay The Significance of Learners' Errors, and Larry Selinker's
1972 article Interlanguage. The field saw a great deal of development in the
following decades. Since the 1980s, SLA has been studied from a variety of
disciplinary perspectives, and theoretical perspectives. In the early 2000s,
some research suggested an equivalence between the acquisition of human
languages and that of computer languages (e.g. Java) by children in the 5 to
11 year age window, though this has not been widely a ccepted among
educators.

There has been much debate about exactly how language is learned, and
many issues are still unresolved. There are many theories of second -language
acquisition, but none are accepted as a complete explanation by all SLA
researchers. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field of SLA, this is not
expected to happen in the foreseeable future.
29 NOTES

Direct English is a good way to exemplify the way persons acquire a second
language. It is also called Natural English.

Some important points of the stages of SLA are:

1. Students have very few oral skills and may respond by pointing or gesturing
2. Start to listen with greater understanding.
3. Common pronunciation mistakes
4. Express thoughts and feelings
5. Varied grammatical rules.
30 Sociolinguistics

Language is one of the most powerful emblems of social behavior. In the normal
transfer of information through language, we use language to send vital social
messages about who we are, where we come from, and who we associate with. It
is often shocking to realize how extensively we may judge a person's background,
character, and intentions based simply upon the person's language, dialect, or, in
some instances, even the choice of a single word.
Given the social role of language, it stands to reason that one strand of language
study should concentrate on the role of language in society.
Sociolinguistics has become an increasingly important and popular field of study,
as certain cultures around the world expand their communication base and
intergroup and interpersonal relations take on escalating significance.
The basic notion underlying sociolinguistics is quite simple: Language use
symbolically represents fundamental dimensions of social behavior and human
interaction. The notion is simple, but the ways in which language reflects behavior
can often be complex and subtle. Furthermore, the relationship between language
and society affects a wide range of encounters--from broadly based international
relations to narrowly defined interpersonal relationships.
For example, sociolinguists might investigate language attitudes among large
populations on a national level, such as those exhibited in the US with respect to
the English-only amendment--the legislative proposal to make English the 'official'
language of the US. Similarly, we might study the status of French and English in
Canada or the status of national and vernacular languages in the developing
nations of the world as symbols of fundamental social relations among cultures and
nationalities. In considering language as a social institution, sociolinguists often
use sociological techniques involving data from questionnaires and summary
statistical data, along with information from direct observation.
Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociology of
language is the effect of language on the society, while sociolinguistics focuses on
the society's effect on language. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree
with pragmatics. It is historically closely related to linguistic anthropology and the
distinction between the two fields has even been questioned recently.

The first attested use of the term sociolinguistics was by Thomas Callan Hodson in
the title of his 1939 article "Sociolinguistics in India" published in Man in India.
Sociolinguistics in the West first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by
linguists such as William Labov in the US.
31 NOTES

Sociolinguistics: The study of how language and social factors are related.

Language variation:

1. Standar and Non standard.

2. Dialect and accent
3. Jargon and Slang
4. Code Switching.
32 Variationist sociolinguistics

The central ideas of variationist sociolinguistics are that an understanding of language

requires an understanding of variable as well as categorical processes, and that the
variation witnessed at all levels of language is not random. Rather, linguistic variation is
characterized by orderly or “structured heterogeneity.” In addition, synchronic variation is
often a reflection of diachronic change. This chapter reviews representative studies and
outlines the main assumptions underlying the variationist approach. It presents an
example of variationist analysis, using the well-known case of variation between Spanish
null and overt subject personal pronouns. Then, the chapter considers a number of
relatively recent developments in variationist sociolinguistics including the expansion of the
variationist paradigm into new areas such as second-language acquisition and sign
linguistics, as well as recent work that combines ethnographic observation and quantitative
analysis.

Studies in the field of sociolinguistics typically take a sample population and interview
them, assessing the realisation of certain sociolinguistic variables. Labov specifies the
ideal sociolinguistic variable to

 be high in frequency,
 have a certain immunity from conscious suppression,
 be an integral part of larger structures, and
 be easily quantified on a linear scale.
Phonetic variables tend to meet these criteria and are often used, as are morphosyntactic
variables, morphophonological variables, and, more rarely, lexical variables. Examples for
phonetic variables are: the frequency of the glottal stop, the height or backness of
a vowel or the realisation of word-endings. An example of a morphosyntactic variable is
the frequency of negative concord (known colloquially as a double negative). Two well-
known and frequently studied morphophonological variables are T/D deletion, the optional
deletion of the sound /t/ or /d/ at the end of a word, as in "I kep' walking" and the ING
variable, the optional pronunciation of -ing at the end of a word as -in', as in "I kept walkin'"
Analyzing sociolinguistic variation often involves the use of statistical programs to handle
its multi-variable nature. One essential part of the methodology is to count up the number
of tokens of a particular variant and compare it to the number of times the variant could
have occurred. This is called the "Principle of Accountability" in Tagliamonte (2012).
Comparing the tokens to the total number of words in a corpus or comparing one corpus to
another leads to erroneous results. This count of the possible occurrences can be difficult
at times because some variants alternate with zero (such as relative pronouns that, who,
and zero).
A commonly studied source of variation is regional dialects. Dialectology studies variations
in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features.
Sociolinguists concerned with grammatical and phonological features that correspond to
regional areas are often called dialectologists.
33 NOTES

In the 1960´s Labov became interested in actual language use and how it varied.

Aim: Show that this language use was actually highly structured and not random. Show
how languages change.

William Labov: The sociolinguistic variable.

*Interviewed people.
34 Stylistic variations

Stylistics is a branch of Applied Linguistics. It is the study and interpretation of texts in

regard to their linguistic and tonal style. As a discipline, it links literary
criticism to linguistics. It does not function as an autonomous domain on its own, and can
be applied to an understanding of literature and journalism as well as linguistics. Sources
of study in stylistics may range from canonical works of writing to popular texts, and
from advertising copy to news, non-fiction, and popular culture, as well as
to political and religious discourse. Indeed, as recent work in Critical Stylistics, Multimodal
Stylistics and Mediated Stylistics has made clear, non-literary texts may be of just as much
interest to stylisticians as literary ones. Literariness, in other words, is here conceived as 'a
point on a cline rather than as an absolute'.

Roughly speaking, stylistic variation involves variation in the speech of individual speakers
(INTRA-SPEAKER VARIATION) rather than across groups of speakers (INTER-
SPEAKER VARIATION). Intra-speaker variation encompasses a number of different types
of variation, including shifts in usage levels for features associated with particular groups
of speakers–i.e. DIALECTS–or with particular situations of use–i.e. REGISTERS (e.g.
Crystal 1991 : 295, Halliday 1978 ). As an example of register-based variation, a speaker
may show higher usage levels for pronunciation features considered to be “formal” (e.g.
[in] rather than [an] in words like walking and swimming ) when talking with a colleague
about work-related matters than when talking with a friend about entertainment or family.
With regard to dialect variation, a speaker may show higher usage levels for a feature like
r -lessness (e.g. [fa:m] “farm”), associated with traditional Southern American speech,
when talking with an older Southerner who uses this feature than when talking with a
speaker who does not. In addition, intra-speaker variation can involve shifts into and out of
language varieties, whether dialects, registers, or GENRES (i.e. highly ritualized,
routinized varieties, often associated with performance or artistic display of some kind).

Stylistics as a conceptual discipline may attempt to establish principles capable of

explaining particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of
language, such as in the literary production and reception of genre, the study of folk art, in
the study of spoken dialects and registers, and can be applied to areas such as discourse
analysis as well as literary criticism.
Common features of style include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and
individual dialects (or ideolects), the use of grammar, such as the observation of active
voice and passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular
language registers, and so on. In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used
to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of
language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is 'going on' within the language; what the
linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals.
The analysis of literary style goes back to the study of classical rhetoric, though modern
stylistics has its roots in Russian Formalism and the related Prague School of the early
twentieth century.
In 1909, Charles Bally's Traité de stylistique française had proposed stylistics as a distinct
academic discipline to complement Saussurean linguistics.
35 NOTES

Stylistics is the description and analysis of the variability of linguistics forms in actual
languages.

*Phonological variation.

*Morphological variation.

*Syntactic variation.

Bundle of Isoglasses

Stylistic variations.

1.-Group variations

Region, Gender, Social class, Ethnic group.

2.- Social situations.

Style shifting.

LITTLE, WEE, WE COUNTRY.

MAY= MUST

YOU= YOUS

THON = THAT

KEEP IT REAL = TO BE HONEST.

36 Multilinguilism

Contrary to what is often believed, most of the world's population is bilingual or

multilingual. Monolingualism is characteristic only of a minority of the world's peoples.
According to figures cited in Stavenhagen (1990) for example, five to eight thousand
different ethnic groups reside in approximately 160 nation states. Moreover, scholars
estimate that there are over 5000 distinct languages spoken in that same small number of
nation states. What is evident from these figures is that few nations are either monolingual
or mono-ethnic. Each of the world's nations has groups of individuals living within its
borders who use other languages in addition to the national language to function in their
everyday lives.

When people hear the term bilingual many imagine an individual who speaks two
languages perfectly. For them someone who is 'truly' bilingual is two native speakers in
one. They imagine that such a person can speak, understand, read, and write in two
languages at the highest levels. For others, the term bilingual means something quite
different. When newly arrived immigrant children entering U.S. schools, for example, are
described as 'bilingual children,' the term is often used as a euphemism for 'poor' and
'uneducated'. In this case, newly arrived immigrant children do not yet function in two
languages. They are monolingual speakers of their first language and not bilingual at all.
The term bilingual here is used to convey a very different set of meanings from what
linguists intend.

The question of how to define bilingualism or multilingualism has engaged researchers for
a very long time. Some researchers have favored a narrow definition of bilingualism and
argued that only those individuals who are very close to two monolinguals in one should
be considered bilingual.

More recently, however, researchers who study bilingual and multilingual communities
around the world have argued for a broad definition that views bilingualism as a common
human condition that makes it possible for an individual to function, at some level, in more
than one language. The key to this very broad and inclusive definition of bilingualism is
'more than one'.

From the perspective of this framework, a bilingual individual is not necessarily an

ambilingual (an individual with native competency in two languages) but a bilingual of a
specific type who, along with other bilinguals of many different types, can be classified
along a continuum. Some bilinguals possess very high levels of proficiency in both
languages in the written and the oral modes. Others display varying proficiencies in
comprehension and/or speaking skills depending on the immediate area of experience in
which they are called upon to use their two languages.
According to this perspective, one admits into the company of bilinguals individuals who
can, to whatever degree, comprehend or produce written or spoken utterances in more
than one language.
37 NOTES

Multilinguilism.

*Individual: Characterless people who are capable of making themselves

understood in more than one language..

*Social: Languages share function in a society.

*Territorial: Describes political areas divided into monolinguial language.

*Institutional: Institutions, organizations offer services in languages.

38 Language and culture

It is generally agreed that language and culture are closely related. Language can be
viewed as a verbal expression of culture. It is used to maintain and convey culture and
cultural ties. Language provides us with many of the categories we use for expression of
our thoughts, so it is therefore natural to assume that our thinking is influenced by the
language which we use. The values and customs in the country we grow up in shape the
way in which we think to a certain extent.

Cultures hiding in languages, examines the link between Japanese language and culture.
An Insight into Korean Culture through the Korean Language discusses how Korean
culture influences the language.

Languages spoken in Ireland, focuses on the status of the Irish language nowadays and
how it has changed over time. In our big world every minute is a lesson looks at
intercultural communication and examines how it can affect interactions between people
from countries and backgrounds.

Language is more than just a means of communication. It influences our culture and even
our thought processes. During the first four decades of the 20th century, language was
viewed by American linguists and anthropologists as being more important than it actually
is in shaping our perception of reality. This was mostly due to Edward Sapir and his
student Benjamin Whorf who said that language predetermines what we see in the world
around us. In other words, language acts like a polarizing lens on a camera in filtering
reality--we see the real world only in the categories of our language.

Cross cultural comparisons of such things as color terms were used by Sapir and
Whorf as evidence of this hypothesis. When we perceive color with our eyes, we
are sensing that portion of electromagnetic radiation that is visible light. In fact, the
spectrum of visible light is a continuum of light waves with frequencies that
increase at a continuous rate from one end to the other. In other words, there are
no distinct colors like red and green in nature. Our culture, through language,
guides us in seeing the spectrum in terms of the arbitrarily established categories
that we call colors. Different cultures may divide up the spectrum in different
ways. This can be seen in the comparison of some English language colors with
their counterparts in the Tiv language of Nigeria.

It is now clear that the terminology used by a culture primarily reflects that culture's
interests and concerns and the cultural environment that people grow up in can
have surprising effects on how they interpret the world around them.
39 NOTES

Language and culture:

 Speech is essential for thought.

 Language is essential for thought.
 Language determines or shapes our perception of nature.
 Language determines or shapes our world view.

Culture: Attitudes, conventions, beliefs, education level and socioeconomic class.

40 WHAT IS NLP?
NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a name that encompasses the
three most influential components involved in producing human
experience: neurology, language and programming. The neurological system
regulates how our bodies function, language determines how we interface and
communicate with other people and our programming determines the kinds of
models of the world we create. Neuro-Linguistic Programming describes the
fundamental dynamics between mind (neuro) and language (linguistic) and how
heir interplay affects our body and behavior (programming).

NLP is an approach to communication, personal development,

and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California,
United States in the 1970s. NLP has since been overwhelmingly discredited
scientifically, but continues to be marketed by some hypnotherapists and by some
companies that organize seminars and workshops on management training for
businesses

NLP is a pragmatic school of thought - an 'epistemology' - that addresses the many

levels involved in being human. NLP is a multi-dimensional process that involves
the development of behavioral competence and flexibility, but also involves
strategic thinking and an understanding of the mental and cognitive processes
behind behavior.

NLP's creators claim there is a connection between neurological processes

(neuro), language (linguistic) and behavioral patterns learned through experience
(programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in
life. Bandler and Grinder also claim that NLP methodology can "model" the skills of
exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire those skills. They claim as well
that, often in a single session, NLP can treat problems such as phobias,
depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness, allergy,
common cold, and learning disorders.
There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates and
it has been discredited as a pseudoscience by experts. Scientific reviews state
that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of how the brain works that are
inconsistent with current neurological theory and contain numerous factual errors
Reviews also found that all of the supportive research on NLP contained significant
methodological flaws and that there were three times as many studies of a much
higher quality that failed to reproduce the "extraordinary claims" made by Bandler,
Grinder, and other NLP practitioners. Even so, NLP has been adopted by some
hypnotherapists and also by companies that run seminars marketed as leadership
training to businesses and government agencies.
Subjectivity, consciousness and learning are the main components of NLP.
41 NOTES

 Programming: Behavior
 Neuro: Your thinking process
 Linguistic: Your words

Critical thinking: Solving ability, define effective outcomes.

Control your emotions: Confidence, motivation and relaxation.

Creativity: Unlock your potential. Undo limiting bad beliefs.

Accelerated learning: Improve memory, powerful learning.

Communication and persuasion: Remove blocks to understanding. Create

compelling. WIN = OUTCOMES.
42 Representational systems

Representational systems (also known as sensory modalities and abbreviated

to VAKOG or known as the 4-tuple) is a postulated model from neuro-linguistic
programming, a pseudoscientific collection of theories, regarding how the
human mindsupposedly processes and stores information. The central idea of this
model is that experience is represented in the mind in sensorial terms, i.e. in terms
of the putative five senses.
According to Bandler and Grinder our chosen words, phrases and sentences are
indicative of our referencing of each of the representational systems. [4] So for
example the words "black", "clear", "spiral" and "image" reference
the visual representation system; similarly the words "tinkling", "silent", "squeal"
and "blast" reference the auditory representation system. Bandler and Grinder also
propose that ostensibly metaphorical or figurative language indicates a reference
to a representational system such that it is actually literal. For example, the
comment "I see what you're saying" is taken to indicate a visual representation. [5]
Further, Bandler and Grinder claim that each person has a "most highly valued"
(now commonly termed preferred) representational system in which they are more
able to vividly create an experience (in their mind) in terms of that representational
system, tend to use that representational system more often than the others, and
have more distinctions available in that representation system than the others. [6] So
for example a person that most highly values their visual representation system is
able to easily and vividly visualise things and has a tendency to do so in preference
to creating or recreating an experience in terms of the other representational
system.
Representational systems are one of the foundational ideas of NLP and form the
basis of many NLP techniques and methods.

You use words to describe your thoughts. If your thoughts (internal

representations) are mainly pictures, then you will tend to use more visual words
when describing your thoughts. If your thoughts are based on logic or making
sense of something, you may tend to use words that reflect the logic of your
thinking. Likewise, for auditory and kinesthetic. The words you use reflect your
internal thought processes. This is a very important point as you are revealing your
internal thoughts and thought structures to others through the words you choose to
use or not use - more about this in later articles. In NLP terms, visual, auditory,
kinesthetic and auditory digital words are called predicates. The predicates that a
person uses will provide you with an indication of the person's preferred
representational system.

You use visual, auditory, kinesthetic and auditory digital predicates all of the time.
Some contexts imply the use of one type of predicate, for example if I asked you to
describe a picture on your television, you would most likely use visual predicates.
And if there is a choice, you will tend to use the predicates from your preferred
representational system.
43 NOTES

 Visual: Be organized, neat and well groomed.

Use visualization for memory and decision making.

Be more imaginative

Speak faster

Prefer person interactions

Talk about disjointed topics

“Big pictures”

 Auditory: Aware of subtle change in the tone of your voice

Remember directions easily

Learn by listening and asking questions

Talk through problems

Need to be heard.

 Kinesthetic: Speak slower

Be more sensitive

Learn by doing, moving or touching

 Digital: Figure things out

Learn by working things out

Think things through

Talk to themselves.
44 Language and experiences

The language experience approach (LEA) is a whole language approach that

promotes reading and writing through the use of personal experiences and oral
language. It can be used in tutorial or classroom settings with homogeneous or
heterogeneous groups of learners. Beginning literacy learners relate their
experiences to a teacher or aide, who transcribes them. These transcriptions are
then used as the basis for other reading and writing activities.

The LEA is also a method for teaching literacy based on a child's existing
experience of language.
Some of the components of the LEA were used in the 1920s, and this approach to
initial literacy has been more widely used for the past thirty years. Especially in the
context of open learning, teachers use the students' existing language and prior
experiences to develop reading, writing and listening skills.
Roach Van Allen, first described his approach in the 1960s; he indicated how this
strategy could create a natural bridge between spoken language and written
language by stating:
What I can say, I can write
What I can write, I can read
I can read what I write and what other people can write for me to read.

It often is suggested that the teacher should provide some type of common
experience that will inspire students to express their thoughts utilizing any prior
experience they might have had relating to the particular topic of choice. Examples
of these experiences could include a trip to the beach, planting seeds, the
necessity to prepare for a class party or even a visit to the dentist or doctor. One of
the main functions of teachers is to motivate and inspire their students.
The language experience strategy can be used to teach reading and
comprehension to older struggling readers, and students with special needs. LEA
can be used with a small group of students or individual students. It is important
that when using this strategy, the teacher records exactly what the student
contributes without correcting grammar; however, the spelling should be correct
and not written in the student's dialect.
The student dictates to the teacher his/her understanding of a particular topic
selected by the teacher. The teacher then records the student's narration exactly
as the student dictates it; after the teacher records the student's contribution, the
teacher then reads it orally in its entirety.
The following sections describe the steps of a Language Experience Approach
lesson.
45

STEP #1: A Shared Experience

the LEA process begins with something the class does together, such as a field
trip, an experiment, or some other hands-on activity. If this is not possible, a
sequence of pictures (that tell a story) can be used, as can a student describing a
sequence of events from real life.

STEP #2: Creating the Text

next, the teacher and students, as a group, verbally recreate the shared
experience. Students take turns volunteering information, as in a large-group
discussion. The teacher transcribes the student’s words on the board in an
organized way to create the text.

STEP #3: Read & Revise

The class reads the story aloud and discusses it. The teacher asks if the students
want to make any corrections or additions to the story. Then she marks the
changes t3hey suggest and makes further suggestions, if needed.

STEP #4: Read and Re-read

the final story can be read in a choral or echo style, or both. Students can also read
in small groups or pairs, and then individually.1

STEP #5: Extension3

this text can be used for a variety of literacy activities like illustrations or creating
comprehension questions.
46 NOTES

Presentation
was the same of
NLP.
47 The metamodel
The Meta Model, NLP's first formal model, was published in 1975 by Richard Bandler and
John Grinder in their ground breaking book, The Structure of Magic, Vol. 1. It extended
features of general semantics (Korzybski) and transformational grammar (Chomsky), and
developed via modeling the successful therapeutic language interventions of psychiatrists
Fritz Perls and Milton Erickson, and family therapist Virginia Satir.

The Meta Model formalized these developments into a richly defined set of linguistic
patterns that can either facilitate change or create obstacles in a person's mental maps of
himself and the world.

"The meta model represents, as far as we (Bostic and Grinder) have been able to
determine, the first complete syntactically based language model for an express purpose
ever created. The thirteen (or so -- it depends on how you count them) verbal patterns that
constitute the Meta model are a highly effective verbal model for use in the specific context
of therapeutic change.

They are designed for the express purpose of challenging the limitations in the mental
maps carried by persons who seek professional assistance in changing themselves
through the processes of therapy. Under the impact of the systematic use of the meta
model patterns, clients... expand and/or revise the mental maps that contain the traps,
flaws and limitations that prevent them from shifting to more effective and congruent
behavior .

Study skill with the Meta Model is like having a stethoscope for the mind – it enables us to
recognise the thoughts and feelings which lie beneath what a person is saying.

For example, if a friend or colleague asks for your NLP assistance in sorting out a problem
you can get a pretty clear idea of how the problem is working by listening to their
description. And by then asking some of the NLP clarifying questions

Example: The Rules category

Let’s say John says to Mary: We must tidy the kitchen right away

His statement provides clues that John is likely to be

1. Thinking in Rules (which is one of the Meta Model categories)

2. Driven by his belief that tidying the kitchen is a Rule which must be followed

3. Believing that Mary must also obey this Rule

4. Unquestioningly following this Rule i.e. has never questioned its importance nor its
relevance to the current situation
48 NOTES

This topic haven’t

been given yet
49 Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an
American philosopher, logician ( As he considered himself), mathematician,
and scientist who is known as the father of pragmatism and modern semiotics.

An innovator in mathematics, statistics, philosophy, research methodology, and various

sciences, he developed some of the best ideas and methods to these fields. One of his
main contributions to science was the idea that logical operations could be carried out by
electrical switching circuits; the same idea was used decades later to produce digital
computers. He made major contributions to logic (Which is better known as Epistemology
nowadays). He saw logic as the formal branch of semiotics, being founder of this last one.
Some scholars and thinkers consider him one of most outstanding scientists of the history.
In 1934, the philosopher Paul Weiss called Peirce "the most original and versatile of
American philosophers and America's greatest logician". Webster's Biographical
Dictionary said in 1943 that Peirce was "now regarded as the most original thinker and
greatest logician of his time." Keith Devlin similarly referred to Peirce as one of the
greatest philosophers ever.

Related to semiotics, when Ferdinand de Saussure was formulating his two part ‘dyadic’
model of the sign, consisting of a ‘signifier, or the form that a sign takes, and the ‘signified,’
or concept it represents, Peirce was theorizing his own model of semiotics and signs.

In contrast to Saussure’s model, Peirce formulated a three-part triadic model consisting of

an interpretant, representamen, and an object.

Having an interpretant as part of his semiotic model was Peirce’s new and distinctive
addition to understanding and defining signs.

Peirce did not believe that signification was a straightforward relationship between a sign
and an object, and he viewed this innovative part of his triad as how we perceive or
understand a sign and its relationship to the object it is referring to.

A critical point in Peirce’s theory is that the meaning of a sign is created by the
interpretation it stimulates in those using it. He reiterates this in his comment that “a sign
… addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or
perhaps a more developed sign.”

So an interpretant is the sense we make out of the sign, similar in meaning to Saussure’s
‘signified’ except that it is a sign in the mind of the interpreter. The element of
interpretation in Peirce’s theories also emphasized his claims that semiosis is a process,
whereas Saussure’s emphasis was always on structure.

The representamen in Peirce’s theory is the form the sign takes, which is not necessarily a
material or concrete object.
50 Peirce was interested in the signifying element of a sign and emphasized that not all
the elements of a sign are necessary or carry the same weight in its interpretation. Thus, in
his view, it is not the sign as a whole that signifies an object but those elements most
crucial to its functioning as a signifier.

For example, a “stop” sign may have a white border – but that part of the sign is not crucial
to the message “stop here now.” We would be able to interpret the sign if that border were
absent or if a black border were used instead. The representamen is similar in meaning to
Saussure’s idea of signifier.

An “object” is the referent to which the sign refers to also known as the “sign vehicle.” It is
important to understand that this does not have to be a material object.

As with the sign or representem, not every feature of the object is relevant to signification.
Only specific elements of an object enable a sign to signify it.

For Peirce, the relationship between the object of a sign and the sign that represents it is
one of determination – it is the object, entity, or socially agreed concept that determines its
sign and its successful signification; the idea being that the object imposes definite
constraints that a sign must adhere to if it is to represent that object and form the correct
interpretation in our minds.

Peirce called the relationship and interaction between the representamen, the
interpretant and object, “semiosis.”

For example, in Peirce’s model, the stop sign, the representamen, consists of a red
octagonal board mounted on a pole containing the word “stop” in white lettering.

The sign would be facing traffic at an intersection and the idea, the “interpretant,” or the
way this sign would be understood to drivers and pedestrians is that traffic must stop at
this junction.

The referent that the sign refers to is the action – stop. The act of drivers stopping their
vehicles is in this case is the “object” of this sign.

Peirce, known for his pragmatics, theorized that we interpret symbols according to a rule, a
habitual connection. ‘The symbol is connected with its object because the symbol-user
and a sign exists mainly due to the fact that it is used and understood. Consider this, the
next time you pull up at an intersection.

Deepen into signs classification, Peirce reach the conclusion that these can be classified
by the relation they keep between them, in three kinds:

*ICON. *INDEX

*SYMBOL.
51 NOTES
52 Claude Levi- Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) is one of France’s foremost thinkers of the 20th century.
The celebrated philosopher and anthropologist is one of the key figures of structuralism
and is along with Franz Boas and James George Frazer often referred to as the “father of
modern anthropology” as he dramatically changed the Western perception of culture and
civilisation.

Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind
and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated
in his famous book Tristes Tropiques that established his position as one of the central
figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into
many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "the
search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity.

Lévi-Strauss sought to apply the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure to

anthropology. At the time, the family was traditionally considered the fundamental object
of analysis, but was seen primarily as a self-contained unit consisting of a husband, a wife,
and their children. Nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all were treated as
secondary. Lévi-Strauss argued that, however, akin to Saussure's notion of linguistic
value, families acquire determinate identities only through relations with one another. Thus
he inverted the classical view of anthropology, putting the secondary family members first
and insisting on analyzing the relations between units instead of the units themselves.

Similarly, Lévi-Strauss identified myths as a type of speech through which a language

could be discovered. His work is a structuralist theory of mythology which attempted to
explain how seemingly fantastical and arbitrary tales, could be so similar across cultures.
Because he believed there was not one "authentic" version of a myth, rather that they
were all manifestations of the same language, he sought to find the fundamental units of
myth, namely, the mytheme. Lévi-Strauss broke each of the versions of a myth down into
a series of sentences, consisting of a relation between a function and a subject. Sentences
with the same function were given the same number and bundled together. These are
mythemes.

Lévi-Strauss sees a basic paradox in the study of myth. On one hand, mythical stories are
fantastic and unpredictable: the content of myth seems completely arbitrary. On the other
hand, the myths of different cultures are surprisingly similar:
On the one hand it would seem that in the course of a myth anything is likely to happen.
[…] But on the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding similarity
between myths collected in widely different regions. Therefore the problem: If the content
of myth is contingent [i.e., arbitrary], how are we to explain the fact that myths throughout
the world are so similar?
Lévi-Strauss proposed that universal laws must govern mythical thought and resolve this
seeming paradox, producing similar myths in different cultures. Claude Levi-Strauss was
appointed the member of the Académie Française in 2008, and one year later, the Dean of
the Académie in 2009. He died on October 30, 2009. Levi-Strauss was 100 years old. He
was buried in the village of Lignerolles, France.
53 NOTES

Levi Strauss was a structuralist whose ideas about narrative amount to the fact that
he believed all stories operated to certain clear.

Binary opposites: Such as good vs evil, rich vs poor, etc. The importance of these
ideas is that essentially a complicated word can be reduced to simplicity with an
structure: Things are either right or wrong, there is no inbetween.

Protagonist: White, bright colours.

Antagonist: Black, Dark colours.

54 Roland Barthes

Roland Gérard Barthes (12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary
theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse
range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory
including structuralism, semiotics, social theory, design theory, anthropology and post-
structuralism.

is one of the leading theorists of semiotics, the study of signs. He is often considered a
structuralist, following the approach of Saussure, but sometimes as a poststructuralist.

A sign, in this context, refers to something which conveys meaning – for example, a written
or spoken word, a symbol or a myth. As with many semioticists, one of Barthes’s main
themes was the importance of avoiding the confusion of culture with nature, or the
naturalisation of social phenomena. Another important theme is the importance in being
careful how we use words and other signs.

One characteristic of Barthes’s style is that he frequently uses a lot of words to explain a
few. He provides detailed analyses of short texts, passages and single images so as to
explore how they work.

Another trait of his work is his constant systematisation. He draws up schemes for
categorising the signs and codes with which he works, which can be applied to divide a
text, a narrative or a myth into different parts with different functions. He draws up
something like a blueprint of the areas of discourse he studies, showing how the different
parts hold together.

In Saussurean analysis, which Barthes largely uses, the distinction

between signifier and signified is crucial. The signifier is the image used to stand for
something else, while the signified is what it stands for (a real thing or, in a stricter reading,
a sense-impression).

The signified sometimes has an existence outside language and social construction, but
the signifier does not. Further, the relationship between the two is ultimately arbitrary.
There are many different ways a particular signified could be expressed in language, or
different objects divided-up. None of these ways is ultimately superior to the others.

Barthes is an anti-essentialist. He is strongly opposed to the view that there is anything

contained in a particular signifier which makes it naturally correspond to a particular
signified. There’s no essence of particular groups of people (humanity, Britishness) or
objects (chairness, appleness) which unifies them into a category or separates them from
others.

For instance, there is no such thing as human nature. (This might be taken to mean that
everything ultimately exists in an imminent, extensive plane of being). On 25 February
1980, Roland Barthes was knocked down by a laundry van while walking home.
55 Jacques Locan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981), known simply
as Jacques Lacan, was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called "the
most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953
to 1981, Lacan influenced many leading French intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s,
especially those associated with post-structuralism. His ideas had a significant impact on
post-structuralism, critical theory, linguistics,20th-century French philosophy, film
theory and clinical psychoanalysis.

He was a major figure in Parisian intellectual life for much of the twentieth century.
Sometimes referred to as “the French Freud,” he is an important figure in the history of
psychoanalysis. His teachings and writings explore the significance of Freud's discovery of
the unconscious both within the theory and practice of analysis itself as well as in
connection with a wide range of other disciplines. Particularly for those interested in the
philosophical dimensions of Freudian thought, Lacan's oeuvre is invaluable. Over the
course of the past fifty-plus years, Lacanian ideas have become central to the various
receptions of things psychoanalytic in Continental philosophical circles especially.

Medically trained as a psychiatrist, Lacan's first texts started appearing in the late 1920s
(during the course of his psychiatric studies), with his publishing activity really taking off in
the subsequent decade. He made three important statements about the psychoanalisis:
The imaginary, the symbol and the real.

The Imaginary is the field of images and imagination, and deception. The main illusions of
this order are synthesis, autonomy, duality, and similarity. Lacan thought that the
relationship created within the mirror stage between the Ego and the reflected image
means that the Ego and the Imaginary order itself are places of radical alienation:
"alienation is constitutive of the Imaginary order." This relationship is also narcissistic.

The Lacanian Symbolic initially is theorized on the basis of resources provided by

structuralism. Tied to natural languages as characterized by Saussure and specific post-
Saussurians, this register also refers to the customs, institutions, laws, mores, norms,
practices, rituals, rules, traditions, and so on of cultures and societies (with these things
being entwined in various ways with language).

Lacan's concept of the Real dates back to 1936 and his doctoral thesis on psychosis. It
was a term that was popular at the time, particularly with Émile Meyerson, who referred to
it as "an ontological absolute, a true being-in-itself". Lacan returned to the theme of the
Real in 1953 and continued to develop it until his death.

Lacan's failing health made it difficult for him to meet the demands of the year-long
Seminars he had been delivering since the fifties, The Overture to the Caracas Encounter
was to be Lacan's final public address. His last texts from the spring of 1981 are brief
institutional documents pertaining to the newly formed Freudian Field Institute.
Lacan died on 9 September 1981.
56 NOTES

Aristotle – 3 part model semiotics

The triangle of reference (also known as the triangle of meaning and the semiotic triangle) is a
model of how linguistic symbols are related to the objects they represent. The triangle was
published in The Meaning of Meaning (1923) by Ogden and Richards. While often referred to
as the "Ogden/Richards triangle" the idea is also expressed in 1810, by Bernard Bolzano, in
his Beiträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. However, the triangle can be
traced back to the 4th century BC, in Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias (often referred to in its Latin
translation De Interpretatione, second book of his Organon). The Triangle relates to
the problem of universals, a philosophical debate which split ancient and medieval
philosophers (mainly realists and nominalists).
The triangle describes a simplified form of relationship between the speaker as subject, a
concept as object or referent, and its designation (sign, signans). For more elaborated
research see Semiotics.

Such a triangle represents ONE person, whereas communication takes place between
TWO (objects, not necessarily persons). So imagine another triangle and consider that for
the two to understand each other, the content that the "triangles" represent must fit or be
aligned. Clearly, this calls for synchronization and an interface as well as scale among
other things. Notice also, that we perceive the world mostly through our eyes and in
alternative phases of seeing and not seeing with change in the environment as the most
important information to look for. Our eyes are lenses and we see a surface (2D) in ONE
direction (focusing) if we are stationary and the object is not moving either. This is why you
may position yourself in one corner of the triangle and by replicating (mirroring) it, you will
be able to see the whole picture, your cognitive epistemological and the ontological
existential or physical model of life, the universe, existence, etc. combined..
It’s all about what reality you create with those words and that’s what a copywriter does.
That’s what we at Worlds behind Worlds do. We help you create your reality from your
ideas.
 57 Extra notes

Inflection and word formation

Given the information and notion of a lexeme, it’s possible to distinguish the kinds of
morphological rules. Some morphological rules relate to different forms of the same
lexeme while other rules relate to different lexeme. Rules of the first kind are called
inflectional morpheme, while those of the second kind are called word formation.

Inflectional rule Word formation

Dog – Dogs English + book = Englishbook

Cat – Cats Fire + fighter = Firefighter

Base - Bases Tooth + brush =Toothbrush

Two kinds of morphological words formation compounding is a process of a word

formation that includes combining.

Derivation involves affixing bound (non-independent) forms to existing lexemes, whereby

the addition of the affix derives a new lexeme.

E.G. Independent Is derived from the word “Dependent”

For example, let’s remember the affixes:

NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE ADVERB

SADNESS SADDEN SAD SADLY

Allomorphy: Is the phenomenon that in which a single morpheme has different realizations
in sounds, alternative forms depending on the phonological or morphological context in
which it appears. In other type of allomorphy the realization, of a morpheme is conditioned
by the presence of another morpheme.

E.G. /S/ Cats /Kats/

/Z/ Dogs /Dogz/

/Iz/ Horses /Horsiz/

 58 Lexeme – Based morphology

 Inflectional rule – Cat (Singular) – Cats (Plural)

 Derivational rule – Sadness – Comes from sad
 Compounding rule – Noun + Noun = Compound nouns

Fish + Noun = Fishtank

Noun phrase N.P. N.P.

The Boy The boy eats in the garden.

Noun phrase

Determiner Noun

LAURA

Sentence tree

Verb phrase

Preposition phrase

Noun phrase

The boy eats in the garden

Coordinate phrases: When we have two nouns joined by the conjunction “and”.
N.P. C.P./N.P. N.P. V.P. N.P.

Laura and Angie cleaned their bedroom

Noun Conjunction Noun Verb Determ. Noun

59 Observations about the portfolio

1.- Language experiences and What is NLP? Topics were given as the same
topic by the expositor.

2.- Language and idiolect topic was changed for Samuel Johnson topic

3.- Language and communication, International sociolinguistics and

Metamodel haven’t been given yet.
60