Melrose Joyce B.

Ochia
EDE2B - EL102: Language Its Structure and Use Finegan

CHAPTER 1: LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS

Language as a System:
Language is a structured system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication. It involves arbitrary signs,
linking meaning and expression.

Three Faces of Language:

1. Expression:
The physical production of sounds or written symbols.

2. Meaning:
The concepts or ideas that language expresses.

3. Context:
The situation in which language is used to convey meaning.

Properties of Language:
Arbitrariness:
No inherent connection between a word's form and its meaning.

Discreteness:
Language is made up of smaller, distinguishable units (e.g., sounds, morphemes).

Productivity:
Language users can generate an infinite number of new sentences.

Duality of Patterning:
Language operates on two levels: meaningful units (words) and meaningless units (sounds) that combine to form words.

Displacement:
The ability to talk about things that are not physically present (e.g., past events, future plans).

Linguistic Competence vs. Performance:

Competence:
A speaker's internal knowledge of language rules.

Performance:
The actual use of language in concrete situations, which may be affected by errors or hesitations.

CHAPTER 2: WORDS AND THEIR PARTS (LEXICON AND MORPHOLOGY)

Lexicon:
A speaker's mental dictionary, containing information about words and morphemes.

Morphemes:
The smallest units of meaning in a language. They can be:

Free Morphemes:
Can stand alone as words (e.g., “book”).

Bound Morphemes:
Must attach to other morphemes (e.g., “un-” in “undo”).

Inflectional Morphemes:
Modify a word's tense, number, aspect, or case but don’t change its core meaning (e.g., “talks,” “walking”).

Derivational Morphemes:
Change the grammatical category or meaning of a word (e.g., “happy” to “happiness”).

Allomorphs:
Variants of a morpheme that occur in different phonetic environments but retain the same meaning (e.g., the plural "s"
pronounced differently in "cats" [s] and "dogs" [z]).

Compounding:
Combining two free morphemes to form a new word (e.g., "sunlight," "notebook").

Isolating, Agglutinating, and Inflectional Languages:

Isolating:
Minimal use of affixes, each word is a separate morpheme (e.g., Chinese).

Agglutinating:
Affixes are added linearly, and each affix has one grammatical meaning (e.g., Turkish).

Inflectional:
Affixes are fused to convey multiple grammatical meanings (e.g., Latin, Russian).
CHAPTER 3: THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGES (PHONETICS)
Phonetics:
The study of the physical production and perception of speech sounds.

Vocal Tract:
Consists of the lungs, vocal cords, and articulators like the tongue, lips, and teeth that shape speech sounds.

Consonants: Classified based on:

Place of Articulation:
Where in the vocal tract the airflow is restricted (e.g., bilabial, alveolar, velar).

Manner of Articulation:
How the airflow is restricted (e.g., stops, fricatives, nasals).

Voicing:
Whether the vocal cords vibrate or not (voiced vs. voiceless).

Vowels:
Classified based on tongue position (height and frontness) and lip rounding.

Monophthongs:
Single, pure vowel sounds.

Diphthongs:
Vowels that involve a transition between two positions (e.g., the "ow" in "cow").

Suprasegmentals:
Features like stress, intonation, and tone that go beyond individual sounds and affect the entire utterance.

CHAPTER 4: SOUND SYSTEMS OF LANGUAGE (PHONOLOGY)

Phonology:
The study of how sounds function and pattern within a language.

Phonemes vs. Allophones:

Phonemes:
The smallest sound units that distinguish meaning (e.g., /p/ and /b/).

Allophones:
Variations of a phoneme that do not change word meaning (e.g., different /t/ sounds in "tap" vs. "stop").

Minimal Pairs:
Words that differ by only one phoneme (e.g., "bat" vs. "pat"), used to demonstrate phonemic contrast.

Phonological Rules:
Patterns dictating how sounds are pronounced based on their environment.

Assimilation:
A sound becomes similar to a neighboring sound (e.g., “input” pronounced as "imput").

Deletion:
Sounds are omitted in certain contexts (e.g., "family" pronounced as "famly").

Insertion:
Extra sounds are added (e.g., "athlete" pronounced as "ath-uh-lete").

Syllable Structure:
Consists of an onset (optional), nucleus (vowel), and coda (optional).

Stress and Intonation:

Stress can change the meaning of a word (e.g., "record" (noun) vs. "record" (verb)).

CHAPTER 5: THE STRUCTURE OF PHRASES AND SENTENCES (SYNTAX)

Syntax:
The set of rules that governs sentence structure and word order.

Phrase Structure:
Sentences are made up of constituents, which are groups of words that function together as a unit.

Noun Phrase (NP):

Includes a noun and its modifiers (e.g., "the tall boy").

Verb Phrase (VP):

Includes a verb and its arguments (e.g., "ran quickly").

Tree Diagrams:
Visual representations of sentence structure, showing hierarchical relationships between constituents.

Phrase Structure Rules:

Rules that define how phrases are formed and ordered (e.g., S → NP VP).

Underlying Structures:
The deep structure or the abstract level of sentence structure that represents basic sentence meaning.

Surface Structures:
The actual sentence form that is spoken or written after syntactic operations like movement or deletion.

Transformations:
Syntactic rules that convert underlying structures to surface structures (e.g., converting a declarative sentence to a
question: “She is going” → “Is she going?”).

Syntactic Movement:
The reordering of sentence elements, often seen in questions and passives (e.g., "John hit the ball" → "The ball was hit
by John").

Recursion:
The ability of syntactic rules to apply repeatedly, allowing sentences to be infinitely long (e.g., "The boy who saw the girl
who was walking...").

SEMANTICS:
The study of how meaning is derived from words and sentences.

Semantic Roles:
The relationship between the action and the participants in a sentence.
Example: In "John kicked the ball," John is the Agent (the doer), and the ball is the Patient (the receiver of
the action).

Meaning:
The significance or concept that a word or sentence conveys.

Examples of Meaning Issues:

1. Synonymy:
Words with similar meanings (e.g., "big" and "large").

2. Implication:
When a sentence suggests something beyond what is explicitly stated.
Example: "She finished the race" implies that she started it, though this is not stated directly.

Contradiction:
When two sentences cannot both be true.
Example: "The sun is shining" contradicts "It is raining."

Anomaly:
When a sentence is grammatically correct but semantically nonsensical.
Example: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

Truth Dependence:
The meaning of a sentence depends on whether it describes something true in the world.
Example: "The Eiffel Tower is in Paris" is true, while "The Eiffel Tower is in London" is false.

Ambiguity and Vagueness:

Ambiguity:
A sentence or word with more than one meaning.
Example: "The bank is by the river." (bank could mean a financial institution or the side of the river)

Vagueness:
When the meaning is not clear or precise.
Example: "She is tall." (What height qualifies as tall?)

Types of Meaning:
1. Linguistic Meaning:
The meaning derived from the structure of the language itself.
Referential Meaning:
Word or sentence refers to an actual person, object, idea, or event.
Example: "Barack Obama" refers to a specific individual.

Sense:
The meaning of words or expressions that may not refer to anything in the real world but still have
meaning.
Example: "Unicorn" has meaning even though unicorns don't exist.

SOCIAL AND AFFECTIVE MEANING:

Social Meaning:
The meaning that conveys information about the social identity or relationship between speakers.
Example: Using "sir" or "ma'am" can show respect or politeness.

Social Meaning Examples:

1. Use of Honorifics:
Titles like Ms., Mr., Dr. are used to show respect or social standing.

2. Use of Slang or Informal Language:

Words like cool, lit, or dope reflect social context, often signaling informality or in-group membership.

Affective Meaning:
The emotional meaning a word or sentence conveys.
Example: The sentence "I can't believe you did that!" can convey surprise, anger, or disappointment,
depending on the tone or context.

WORDS, SENTENCES, AND UTTERANCE MEANING:

Word:
The smallest unit of meaning in a language.

Content Word:
Words that have meaning by themselves (nouns, verbs, adjectives).
Example: "House," "run," "blue."

Function Word:
Has grammatical purposes to connect words together.
Example: Prepositions like "in," articles like "the."

Sentence:
A group of words that expresses a complete thought.
Example: "She loves reading books."

Semantic Role:
Indicates the parts played by participants in a state of affair or situation.
Example: In "John gave Mary the book," John is the Agent, Mary is the Recipient, and the book is the
Theme.

Utterance:
Refers to the semantic content plus any pragmatic meaning created by the specific way in which the
sentence gets used.
Example: The sentence "Can you pass the salt?" in context is understood as a polite request, not a
question about ability.

Agent:
The doer of an action.
Example: In "The cat chased the mouse," the cat is the Agent.

Patient:
The receiver of the action.
Example: In "The cat chased the mouse," the mouse is the Patient.

PART/WHOLE RELATIONSHIP:
Also known as meronymy.
Example: "Finger" is a part of "hand."

Colonomy:
Likely a typographical error for a term like Holonymy (the opposite of meronymy).
Example: "Hand" is a holonym of "finger."

Synonymy:
Words with similar meanings.
Example: "Big" and "large."

Antonymy:
Words with opposite meanings.
Example: "Hot" and "cold."

CONVERSENESS:
Characterizes reciprocal semantic relationships between pairs of words.
Example: "Teacher" and "student."

Examples of Converse Pairs:

1. Kinship Relationship:
"Parent" and "child."

2. Professional Relationship:
"Employer" and "employee."

3. Relative Position in Space or Time:

"Above" and "below."

Polysemy:
A word that has multiple related meanings.
Example: "Light" can mean "not heavy" or "illumination."

Homonymy:
Words that sound alike but have different meanings.
Example: "Bat" (animal) and "bat" (sports equipment).

Homographs:
Words that have the same spelling but different meanings and pronunciation.
Example: "Lead" (to guide) and "lead" (a metal).

METAPHORS:
A figure of speech for rhetorical effect that refers to one thing by mentioning another.
Example: "He dredges up old grudges from his youth."

Hyponymy:
A hierarchical relationship where a more specific word (hyponym) falls under a broader category (hypernym).
Example: "Rose" is a hyponym of "flower."

Lexical Semantics:
Focuses on word meaning and the relationships between words.
Example: Studying how words like "run" can have multiple meanings based on context (physical action, competition,
function of machines).

Lexicon:
A mental dictionary of language.
Example: Knowing the meanings of words in your native language is part of your lexicon.

Semantic Field:
A set of words related in meaning.
Example: "Furniture" includes "chair," "table," and "sofa."
Hypo:
Means "below" or "lower."
Example: "Hypodermic" means "below the skin."

Superordinate:
A broader term that encompasses hyponyms.
Example: "Color" is a superordinate term for "blue," "orange," and "yellow."

Compositional Semantics:
How meanings of words combine to form sentence meanings.
Example: The sentence "The cat sat on the mat" derives its meaning from how the individual words relate to one another.

Theme:
The entity affected by the action.
Example: In "Mary kicked the ball," the ball is the Theme.

Deixis:
Words whose meaning relies on context.
Example: Words like "here," "you," and "now" change meaning based on who says them and when they are said.

CHAPTER 7: LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS AND TYPOLOGY

Language Universals:
Characteristics common to all human languages.

Phonological Universals:
Most languages have vowels and consonants, and many prefer SVO or SOV word order.

Morphological Universals:
Many languages use affixes to express grammatical relations (e.g., tense, case, agreement).

Word Order Typology:

Classifies languages based on their basic sentence structure.

SVO:
Subject-Verb-Object (e.g., English, Spanish).

SOV (Subject-Object-Verb):
Common in languages like Japanese, Korean, and Turkish, where the object comes before the verb (e.g., "I the book
read").

Other Word Orders:

1. VSO (Verb-Subject-Object):
Found in languages like Arabic and Irish (e.g., “Read I the book”).

2. VOS, OSV, OVS:

Less common word orders, used in languages like Malagasy (VOS).

Implicational Universals:
Certain features of a language imply the presence of others. For example, if a language has voiced stops, it usually has
voiceless stops as well.

Language Typology:
Classifies languages based on their structural features, such as word order, morphology, and phonology.

Isolating Languages:
Use few or no affixes, and each word tends to be one morpheme (e.g., Chinese).

Agglutinating Languages:
Use multiple affixes, with each affix representing a specific grammatical function (e.g., Turkish, Swahili).

Fusional Languages:
Affixes may combine multiple grammatical meanings, as seen in languages like Spanish and Russian.

Polysynthetic Languages:
Use highly complex words made of many morphemes, often combining what would be several words in other languages
into a single word (e.g., Inuktitut).

CHAPTER 8: INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND PRAGMATICS

Pragmatics:
The study of how context influences meaning. Unlike semantics, which focuses on literal meanings, pragmatics looks at
implied meaning and the effects of context.

Speech Acts:
When saying something performs an action (e.g., promising, requesting).
Locutionary Act:
The literal act of producing a sentence.

Illocutionary Act:
The intended meaning or function of the sentence (e.g., a promise or order).

Perlocutionary Act:
The effect the utterance has on the listener (e.g., persuading, frightening).

Information Structure:
How speakers organize information in discourse.

Given Information:
Information that is already known or assumed to be known by the listener.

New Information:
Information that is being introduced for the first time.

Topic and Focus:

Topic:
The subject of the sentence, usually what is being talked about.

Focus:
The most important or emphasized part of the sentence, often containing new information.

Cooperative Principle:
Proposed by philosopher H.P. Grice, suggesting that conversational participants typically work together to make
communication efficient. It involves four maxims:

Maxim of Quantity:
Give the right amount of information—neither too little nor too much.

Maxim of Quality:
Be truthful and avoid giving false or unsupported information.

Maxim of Relation:
Be relevant, contribute information that is related to the topic at hand.

Maxim of Manner:
Be clear and orderly in how you present your message, avoiding ambiguity or obscurity.

CHAPTER 9: SPEECH ACTS AND CONVERSATION

Speech Acts:
Utterances that serve as actions. Examples include:

Declarative Speech Acts:

Statements that convey information (e.g., “It’s raining”).

Interrogative Speech Acts:

Questions that request information (e.g., “Is it raining?”).

Imperative Speech Acts:

Commands or requests (e.g., “Close the window”).

Turn-Taking:
The way speakers manage conversation, typically by taking turns. Pauses, intonation, and body language often signal
when a turn is ending or when someone is expected to respond.

Adjacency Pairs:
Pairs of utterances that are often found together in conversation (e.g., a greeting followed by a greeting, or a question
followed by an answer).

Backchanneling:
Verbal and non-verbal cues given by listeners to show they are paying attention (e.g., nodding, saying “uh-huh” or “I see”).

Politeness Strategies:
Techniques used to maintain social harmony, such as:

Positive Politeness:
Strategies that show friendliness or solidarity (e.g., compliments, terms of endearment).

Negative Politeness:
Strategies used to avoid imposing on others (e.g., indirect requests, apologies).
CHAPTER 10: LANGUAGE VARIATION (REGISTERS AND STYLES)

Register:
Language variation depending on context, formality, and audience. People speak differently in formal and informal
settings.

Formal Register:
Used in professional, academic, or official contexts.

Informal Register:
Used with friends and family, characterized by casual language and sometimes slang.

Frozen Register:
Language that remains fixed and unchanged, often seen in legal documents, oaths, and religious texts.

Dialect:
A variety of a language specific to a region, group, or social class.

Regional Dialects:
Variations based on geographic regions (e.g., British English vs. American English).

Social Dialects:
Variations based on social factors like class, ethnicity, or profession.

Code-Switching:
The practice of switching between different languages or dialects in conversation, often depending on the social context.

Diglossia:
A situation in which two varieties of a language are used under different conditions, often with one variety being
considered more prestigious (e.g., Classical Arabic vs. colloquial Arabic).

CHAPTER 11: LANGUAGE VARIATION AMONG SOCIAL GROUPS (DIALECTS)

Social Dialects:
Varieties of language spoken by different social groups.

Ethnic Dialects:
Dialects associated with specific ethnic groups (e.g., African American Vernacular English).

Sociolects:
Language variations influenced by social class (e.g., upper-class vs. working-class speech patterns).

Gender and Language:

Language can vary based on gender, with men and women often exhibiting different conversational styles. Studies have
shown that women may use more politeness strategies and hedging, while men may interrupt more and use more
assertive speech.

Linguistic Identity:
How individuals use language to express their social identity. Dialects, accents, and language choices can signal
membership in particular social groups.

Labov’s Sociolinguistic Studies:

William Labov’s studies on language variation demonstrated that pronunciation differences correlate with social class,
especially in terms of dropping or retaining certain consonants (e.g., “r-dropping” in New York).

CHAPTER 12: WRITING

Writing Systems:
The methods of visually representing language.

Logographic Systems:
Symbols represent entire words or morphemes (e.g., Chinese characters).

Syllabic Systems:
Symbols represent syllables (e.g., Japanese kana).

Alphabetic Systems:
Symbols represent individual sounds (e.g., English).

Orthography:
The set of conventions for writing a language, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

Historical Development of Writing:

Writing began as pictographs and evolved into logographic and alphabetic systems.
Cuneiform:
One of the earliest writing systems, developed in ancient Mesopotamia.

Hieroglyphs:
Ancient Egyptian writing system using pictorial symbols.

The Alphabet:
Evolved from Phoenician script and gave rise to many modern writing systems.

CHAPTER 13: LANGUAGE CHANGE OVER TIME (HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS)

Language Change:
Languages naturally evolve over time in their phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon.

Sound Change:
The gradual alteration of sounds within a language (e.g., the Great Vowel Shift in English).

Grammatical Change:
Changes in syntax or morphology (e.g., the loss of case markings in English).

Lexical Change:
The introduction of new words or the loss of old ones.

Language Families:
Groups of related languages that descended from a common ancestor.

Indo-European:
One of the largest language families, including languages like English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian.

Proto-Languages:
Hypothetical reconstructed languages that are the common ancestors of modern languages (e.g., Proto-Indo-European).

Language Divergence and Convergence:

Divergence:
When languages split and evolve separately over time (e.g., Latin evolving into French, Spanish, and Italian).

Convergence:
When languages or dialects become more similar due to contact between speakers (e.g., the development of creoles).

CHAPTER 14: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH

Old English:
Spoken from around 700 to 1100 AD. It had a complex system of inflections and was heavily influenced by Anglo-Saxon
and Old Norse.

Middle English:
Spoken from around 1100 to 1500 AD. The Norman Conquest of 1066 introduced many French words into English, and
the inflectional system began to simplify.

Modern English:
Began around the late 15th century after the Great Vowel Shift, which significantly changed the pronunciation of English
vowels. Modern English vocabulary expanded greatly due to colonial expansion, scientific advancements, and cultural
exchanges.

The Great Vowel Shift:

A major phonological change in the pronunciation of long vowels that occurred between 1400 and 1700, affecting all
dialects of English.

Influence of Latin, Greek, and French:

As English developed, it borrowed extensively from Latin and Greek, especially in scientific, medical, and technical
terminology, and from French in legal and administrative terms.

Standardization of English:
The rise of the printing press in the 15th century led to the standardization of spelling and grammar. William Caxton’s
printing of the first English book helped unify English spelling.

Shakespeare and the Renaissance:

William Shakespeare and other writers of the Renaissance period contributed significantly to the expansion of English
vocabulary and expressions.

Global Spread of English:

English spread globally during the British Empire’s expansion, evolving into many different dialects and varieties around
the world (e.g., American English, Australian English).

Emergence of World Englishes:

With the spread of English globally, it has developed into different varieties known as World Englishes (e.g., Indian
English, Nigerian English). These varieties reflect local influences, such as loanwords and pronunciation differences.