TOPIC 1-U1 - WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

Introduction

Although those who study language may disagree over a precise definition because
they dispute some concepts, such as whether or not language must have a written
and/or oral component, they agree that language is a rule-based system of signs

There is a complex relationship between language and a person’s identity.

Language reflects both the individual characteristics of a person and the beliefs and
practices of his or her community. There is also a relationship between language
and communication

As languages are rule-governed systems made up of signs, for an outsider to learn

the language of a community, he or she must learn which signs are meaningful and
which are not otherwise he or she won’t be able to communicate effectively.

On the other hand, how much time do you spend thinking about the language you
speak? If you’re like most people, you probably don’t consider it much at all.

THE POWER OF LANGUAGE

A. An Amsterdam city councilor proposed a law mandating that Dutch be

spoken in Islamic mosques in his city, even though the traditional language of Islam
is Arabic.
B. Members of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) boycotted a speech given in
German by former German President Ko¨hler, insisting that German should not be
spoken in the Knesset as long as there are Holocaust survivors living.
C. The European Esperanto Union has indicated a new trend in the international
labor market: advertisements for many jobs in Europe seek only applicants whose
mother tongue is English.

For many of us, speaking is as natural as waking up each day: it’s an unconscious
action that we rarely notice we’re even doing. And as a result, we usually don’t
imagine our language as something that might wield power, fuel debate, or even
cause conflict. In truth, however, language can operate in all of these ways. The
recent news stories in the box above illustrate how language plays a significant role
in people’s lives. As these stories illustrate, language affects many facets of human
culture: religious, political, social, and economic.
Many of these situations described are provocative. The banning of certain
languages or mandating the use of one over another have produced tension and
anxiety, charges of isolationism, and even allegations of racism and discrimination.
Why do these attempts to control language produce such strong reactions?

Language and Communication

Language is foremost a means of communication, and communication almost

always takes place within some sort of social context. This is why effective
communication requires an understanding and recognition of the connections
between a language and the people who use it. These connections are complex: for
example, they tell you when to use slang with a friend or formal language with a
boss, how to judge a candidate’s campaign speeches, and whether to abbreviate an
email. All of these acts require knowledge of the language, as well as the cultural
and social forces acting on that language.

Social context is a major factor that drives our language choices. For example,
consider the language you might have used in an interview situation, perhaps with a
prospective employer or college admissions officer. If you are like many other
people, in the interview you probably were as much concerned with how you spoke
as with what you actually said. You may have even practiced sounding confident,
for instance, or intelligent, so that you would make a good impression during the
interview. We make decisions every day, or have decisions made about us by other
people, based on the language we use. We frequently evaluate a person’s
education, socioeconomic level, background, honesty, friendliness, and numerous
other qualities by how that person speaks. And when we want to make a particular
impression on someone else, we consciously choose our language, just as we
choose our hair styles or clothing.

LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE.-
THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE
Language: Externalised and internalised
A language is a linguistic code, which its speakers know and use, and which
manifests itself in its speakers’ linguistic knowledge and in the actual utterances that
its speakers make in linguistic communication. Consequently, language can be
regarded as existing in essentially two modes. On the one hand it can be looked
upon as a body of objective facts (strings of sounds or letters) produced and
perceived by its users in linguistic communication. On the other hand, it can be
regarded as the language users’ knowledge which makes linguistic communication
possible, an internal property of the human mind. One of the greatest figures in
modern linguistics, Noam Chomsky, has called these two modes of language
Externalised Language (E-language) and Internalised Language (I-language),
respectively.
The dominant kind of language study in the first half of the 20th century is
Structuralist Linguistics, concentrated on E-language. It aimed at collecting samples
of E-language, i.e. samples of the actual products of linguistic communication, as
objects independent of the mind, and then describing the regularities (patterns,
structures) found in those samples. Since then, however, the interest and emphasis
of language study has shifted to I-language, i.e. to the knowledge that native
speakers of a language possess and use when they communicate linguistically.
Generative Linguistics aims at modelling the I-language of the native speaker, i.e.
his/her linguistic knowledge or internal grammar.
Components of language
A natural language (whether we look upon it as E-language or I-language) has
several components. The central ones are phonology, morphology, syntax, and
semantics.
• Phonology includes the phonemes (basic sounds) and the discrete
suprasegmental elements (stress patterns, tones, intonation) in the language.
The phonological component also contains rules that regulate how phonemes can
be combined in morphemes and words.
• Another component is morphology. This includes the morphemes and the
rules for combining them to derive and inflect words in a particular language. (For
the time being we define morphemes as the smallest meaningful units of a
language. In English, for instance, the morpheme -ion can be added to the verb
elect (which is a vocabulary item) and the result is the noun election (which is a new
vocabulary item derived from the former one). In a similar way, the plural
morpheme -s can be added to the noun election to obtain the plural form of the
same noun: elections (which is not a new vocabulary item but the inflected variant
of an already existing one). The morphological rules of English tell us that the
sequence un-friend-li-ness is a morphologically well-formed word, while *friend-li-
un-ness is not.
• Syntax is the component of language that contains the rules for putting
together words in phrases and phrases in sentences. For example, the English
sentence He went to London. is syntactically well-formed, whereas *To he London
went. is syntactically ill-formed.
• Finally, languages also contain a system of meanings: this component is
known as semantics. The semantic rules specify which sentences are semantically
normal and which are semantically anomalous. For instance, This woman is the
mother of three girls. is semantically normal but !This woman is the father of three
oil-wells. is anomalous.1
In addition, we can also separate a special component in which all the central
components may play a role, a lexicon. This is a list of the vocabulary items of a
language and it contains all idiosyncratic information about those vocabulary items
(such as the unpredictable aspects of their phonology, morphology, syntactic
behaviour, and meaning). Words, once formed and established as vocabulary
items, are stored in the lexicon, from where they can be retrieved as wholes and do
not have to be put together again from their constituent morphemes every time they
are used by a speaker.
Native speakers of a language have linguistic knowledge: they know their language.
They possess I-language, they have an internal grammar.2 They know the
elements and the rules in the various components of their language, after all they
use those elements and obey those rules all the time and, on the basis of this
knowledge, they can tell whether a string of words in their language is grammatical
or not. But most speakers are unable to explain to their children or to their foreign
friends why one string of words is grammatical in their language and another is not.
This is because their linguistic knowledge (internal grammar) is intuitive
(subconscious), and they cannot express it explicitly (i.e. clearly and definitely).
Linguistics and its branches
If we want to obtain explicit knowledge about language, we must study language
systematically and objectively, i.e. we must deal with linguistics. Linguistics seeks
explicit knowledge about language, by submitting it to systematic and objective
study. A study that is systematic, objective, and seeks explicit knowledge is
scientific. Linguistics is the scientific study of language (i.e. E-language and/or I-
language).

1
In this book, the raised exclamation mark ! before a sentence indicates that the sentence is semantically anomalous.
2
The word grammar is used here in a broad sense to include phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. It can also be
used in a narrow sense to include only morphology and syntax.
The product of linguistics is an objective, systematic, and explicit account of (some
aspect of) language, i.e. an explicit grammar.
A linguist is a person who is professionally engaged in the scientific study of some
aspect of language (i.e. of one particular language or of several languages or of
human language in general). From this definition it follows that someone who knows
a number of languages (i.e. a polyglot) is not necessarily a linguist, and a linguist is
not necessarily someone who knows a number of languages.
Linguistics, or its product, a grammar, has branches corresponding to the central
components of language. Phonology is the study of the phonemes and their
combinations in words and morphemes, and also of the discrete suprasegmental
elements in words and sentences. Morphology is the study of word derivation and
word inflection in terms of constituent morphemes. Syntax is the study of sentence
formation. Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentences.
Lexicology is the study of the lexicon, i.e. the phonological, morphological,
syntactic, and semantic properties of vocabulary items. All these are summed up in
(1).
(1) The central branches of linguistics/grammar
phonology morphology syntax semantics

Lexicology

Moreover, all these can be studied from a synchronic point of view (how they
constitute a particular state of language at a particular point of time), or from a
diachronic (historical) point of view (how they change through time).3
In a somewhat broader concept of linguistics there are phonetic and pragmatic
components, too. Phonetics is closely related to phonology, it is the study of the
production, physical properties and perception of the actual sounds realising the
phonemes and of the suprasegmental elements of speech. Pragmatics is close to
semantics and the difference is not always quite clear. We can say that while
semantics examines what sentences and words mean in themselves, pragmatics
studies the ways in which they obtain different interpretations when uttered in
different situations. For instance, if I put the question Can you play the piano? to a
person I am interviewing in a room where there is no piano, my utterance will count
as a real yes-or-no question.
But if I say the same utterance to a person who is known to be a good pianist, and I
point towards a piano at the same time, my utterance will count as a request to play.
The scope of linguistics can be extended further. It can include sociolinguistics.
This is an interdisciplinary branch of study (relevant to both linguistics and
sociology), studying the different varieties of a language used by different
geographical and socio-cultural subsections of a community, or varieties used by
the same group of speakers in different social situations. Psycholinguistics,
another interdisciplinary subject, deals with areas such as the mental processes
that take place when we produce and receive linguistic messages, or the processes
of native language acquisition. And finally, linguistics can be put in the service of a
large number of other fields, some more practical, some more theoretical, such as
e.g. foreign-language teaching, speech therapy, successful advertising, literary
criticism, stylistics, etc. These involve various kinds of applied linguistics. For
example, when a doctor wants to cure a patient who suffers from aphasia (i.e. who
has lost – partly or
completely – the ability to use language), the doctor will have to know about the
language system. In such cases linguistics helps the doctor in his/her work.

THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH. –

Introduction
There are three main divisions in the history of English:

 Old English (450 to 1066)

 Middle English (1066 to 1500)
 Early Modern English (1500 onwards)

Periods in the Development of English

It is common to divide the history of English into three periods and old, a middle and
an early modern one. The justification for this is partly external and partly internal.
The Old English period begins in the middle of the 5th century with the coming of
Germanic tribes to settle in England. The Middle English period begins with the
conquest of England by Normans after their success in the Battle of Hastings in
1066, the end of this period is marked by the introduction of printing by William
Caxton in 1476. The early modern period begins with the 16th century and is
characterized by an expansion in vocabulary by borrowing from classical
languages, by the gradual conclusion of the Great Vowel Shift (see below) and by
the regularization of English grammar after the disappearance (death) of the
language's former inflectional morphology.

Old English (450-1066)

External history

► The coming of the Germanic tribes to England (c 450)

► The Christianisation of England (c 600)
► The Scandinavian invasions (c 800)
Structure of language
► Sound system
► Grammatical system
► Vocabulary (Latin borrowings; Scandinavian borrowings)

English has been spoken in England since around 450. To be more precise a set of
varieties of West Germanic have been spoken. After the Anglo-Saxon invasion no-
one had an awareness of England as such let alone of English. With the
establishment of the West Saxon kingdom in later centuries and with the court
which formed the pivot point of this kingdom a first inkling of the idea of English
developed. With the invasion of England by the Danes (after 800) it became more
clear that the Germanic tribes in England were separate from their fellows on the
Continent and in Scandinavia. Among the different groupings in England in the Old
English period different dialects (that is purely geographical variants) are
recognizable: Northumbrian in the north, Anglian in the middle and West-Saxon in
the south. Due to the political significance of West-Saxon in the late Old English
period (after the 9th century) the written form of this dialect developed into
something like a standard. Note that at this time it was Winchester and not London
which was the political center of the country. The term used for the West Saxon
'standard' is koiné which derives from Greek and means a common dialect, that is a
variety which was used in monasteries in parts of England outside of West Saxony
for the purpose of writing.

Dialects of Old English

It is common to divide England into four dialect areas for the Old English period.
First of all note that by England that part of mainland Britain is meant which does
not include Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. These three areas were Celtic from the
time of the arrival of the Celts some number of centuries BC and remained so well
into the Middle English period. The dialect areas of England can be traced back
quite clearly to the Germanic tribes which came and settled in Britain from the
middle of the 5th century onwards. There were basically three tribal groups among
the earlier settlers in England: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. The Angles
came from the area of Angeln (roughly the Schleswig-Holstein of today), the Saxons
from the area of east and central Lower Saxony and the Jutes from the Jutland
peninsula which forms west Denmark today.

Of these three groups the most important are the Saxons as they established
themselves as the politically dominant force in the Old English period. A number of
factors contributed to this not least the strong position of the West Saxon kings,
chief among these being Alfred (late 9th century). The West Saxon dialect was also
strongest in the scriptorias (i.e. those places where manuscripts were copied and/or
written originally) so that for written communication West Saxon was the natural
choice. A variety of documents have nonetheless been handed down in the
language of the remaining areas. Notably from Northumbria a number of documents
are extant which offer us a fairly clear picture of this dialect area. At this point one
should also note that the central and northern part of England is linguistically fairly
homogeneous in the Old English period and is termed Anglia. To differentiate
sections within this area one speaks of Mercia which is the central region and
Northumbria which is the northern part (i.e. north of the river Humber). A few
documents are available to us in the dialect of Kent (notably a set of sermons). This
offers us a brief glimpse at the characteristics of this dialect which in the Middle
English period was of considerable significance. Notable in Kentish is the fact that
Old English /y:/ was pronounced /e:/ thus giving us words like evil in Modern English
where one would expect something like ivil.

Middle English (1100-1500)

External history

► The coming of the Anglo-Normans to England (1066)

► The break with France (1204)

► The introduction of printing (1476)

Structure of language
► Sound system

► Grammatical system

► Vocabulary (Anglo-Norman and Central borrowings)

After the invasion of England by the Normans in 1066, the West Saxon 'standard',
which was waning anyway due to natural language change, was dealt a death blow.
Norman French became the language of the English court and clergy. English sank
to the level of a patois (an unwritten dialect). With the loss of England for the French
in 1204 English gradually emerged as a literary language again. For the
development of the later standard it is important to note (1) that it was London which
was now the centre of the country and (2) that printing was introduced into England
in the late 15th century (1476 by Caxton). This latter fact contributed more than any
single factor to the standardisation of English. It is obvious that for the production of
printing fonts a standard form of the language must be agreed upon. This applied
above all to spelling, an area of English which was quite chaotic in the pre-printing
days of the Middle English period.

The Dialects of Middle English

The dialectal position of Middle English is basically a continuation of that of Old

English. The most development of the Middle English dialects is that the capital of
the country was moved from Winchester (in the Old English period) to London by
William the Conqueror in his attempt to diminish the political influence of the native
English.

Northern.- This dialect is the continuation of the Northumbrian variant of Old

English. Note that by Middle English times English had spread to (Lowland)
Scotland and indeed led to a certain literary tradition developing there at the end of
the Middle English period which has been continued up to the present time.

Kentish.- This is the most direct continuation of an Old English dialect and has
more or less the same geographical distribution.

Southern.- West Saxon is the forerunner of this dialect of Middle English. Note that
the area covered in the Middle English period is greater than in the Old English
period as inroads were made into Celtic-speaking Cornwall. This area becomes
linguistically uninteresting in the Middle English period. It shares some features of
both Kentish and West Midland dialects.
West Midland.- This is the most conservative of the dialect areas in the Middle
English period and is fairly well-documented in literary works. It is the western half
of the Old English dialect area Mercia.

East Midland.- This is the dialect out of which the later standard developed. To be
precise the standard arose out of the London dialect of the late Middle English
period. Note that the London dialect naturally developed into what is called Cockney
today while the standard became less and less characteristic of a certain area and
finally (after the 19th century) became the sociolect which is termed Received
Pronunciation.

The Introduction of Printing

Printing was introduced to England in 1476 by William Caxton. This led to an
increasing regularization of orthography and morphology.

Early Modern English (1500 Onwards)

External history

► The Renaissance in England (16th century and later)

► Development of overseas colonies (17th century and later)
► Transportation of English to the Caribbean, North American
► Civil war in England and later Restoration
Structure of language
► Sound system (The Great Vowel Shift)
► Grammatical system
► Vocabulary
► Classical borrowings, Latin and Greek
► Later French loans, borrowings from other languages

The Great Vowel Shift

The major change to affect the

sound system of Middle English is
that which resulted in a re-
alignment of the system of long
vowels and diphthongs which is
traditionally known as the Great
Vowel Shift. Essentially long vowels are raised one level and the two high vowels
are diphthongized. The shift took several centuries to complete and is still
continuing in Cockney (popular London speech). The shift of short /u/ to a lower
vowel as in present-day southern English but, which began in the mid-17th century,
is not part of the vowel shift.

WRITTEN ENGLISH. –

What was the effect of the introduction of the printing press on the English
Language?

Effects on the language

The introduction of the printing press had different effects on the language because
of the communication revolution it brought into society. English received influences
from other languages. Such effect brought in new words, hence expanding the
language lexicon. With every new publication, although later in the future, different
words were penned or different senses and meanings were attributed to them,
which, in other words, caused the nature of the language to become enhanced and
revitalized. This is possible how people developed more complex concepts for
actual happenings.

The introduction of the printing press caused the English to develop in ways never
before conceived. However, while the language was fully utilized in a spoken form,
not everyone was able to understand the written form of English in its massive
availability. In other words, the presence of the printing press caused illiteracy to
become evident, hence opening the door to a new social dilemma.

As a standardized meaning needed to be conveyed for everyone to understand the

language, the English language underwent a homogenization process that had a
fulminant effect on spelling, vocabulary, grammar and regional varieties of the
language. This same process would eventually unify understandings of the
language that resulted in the acceptance and recognition of different dialects.

Consequences

English could not escape from the influence of Literature. This revival of learning
produced a new breed of scholar-writers who wanted to create a new writing style,
providing English with new words. As a result of this movement, the language had
to accommodate these changes because new concepts needed new descriptions,
hence justifying the creation of new words or combination of words. In fact,
borrowings from languages such as Latin, Greek, French and Spanish added both
complexity and richness to the English language, providing it with different
dimensions to address ideas and designate new meanings.

As English spread, the need to learn to read and write became a must. This new
necessity provoked acceleration in the education of the rising middle class. People
were then acquiring knowledge that enabled them to find out about new
conceptions of the world as well as different ideas and notions on what is possible
for one to learn. Similarly, this realization caused people to start questioning
change; to consider different ways of expressing their thoughts; to contemplate
what to do with the knowledge they were acquiring; and to document the new
understandings they were formulating.