INTRODUCTION

TO LINGUISTICS
ZABDIEL FERNÁNDEZ
TEACHER: ALONSO
GAXIOLA
CENTRAL CONCEPTS
UNIT 1
 LANGUAGE

• IT IS A SYSTEM OF COMMUNICATION, MADE OF

WORDS, SIGNS, GRUNTS AND EXPRESSIONS TO
TRY TO EXPRESS SOMETHING.
HOW DO WE LEARN LANGUAGES?

• WE LEARN ENGLISH BY:

-BOOKS.
-MUSIC.
-WATCHING MOVIES.
-PRACTICING.
-SPEAKING WITH SOMEONE.
 VIEWS OF LANGUAGE

• IN THE PAST HALF CENTURY, LANGUAGE TEACHING AND

LEARNING PRACTICES HAVE BEEN INFLUENCED BY THREE
DIFFERENT VIEWS OF LANGUAGE:
-THE STRUCTURAL VIEW.
-THE FUNCTIONAL VIEW.
-THE INTERACTIONAL VIEW.
 THE STRUCTURAL VIEW.

SEES LANGUAGE AS A LINGUISTIC

SYSTEM MADE UP OF
SUBSYSTEMS(PHONOLOGICAL,MORPHO
LOGICAL,LEXICAL.)
EACH LANGUAGE HAS A INFINITE
NUMBER OF SUCH STRUCTURAL ITEMS.
THE FUNCTIONAL VIEW

• SEES LANGUAGE AS A LINGUISTIC SYSTEM

BUT ALSO AS A MEANS FOR DOING THINGS.
MOST OF OUR DAY TO DAY LANGUAGE USE
INVOLVES FUNCTIONAL ACTIVITIES.
THEREFORE, LEARNERS LEARN A
LANGUAGE IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO DO
THINGS WITH IT.
THE INTERACTIONAL VIEW

• CONSIDERS LANGUAGE AS A
COMMUNICATIVE TOOL, WHOSE
MAIN USE IS TO BUILD UP AND
MAINTAIN SOCIAL RELACIONS
BETWEEN PEOPLE.
 HOW IS A GOOD TEACHER?

FOR BEEN AN EXCELLENT ENGLISH

TEACHER, YOU MUST BE A KIND PERSON,
YOU HAVE TO HAD A PASSION FOR TEACH
BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE THE
OPPORTUNITY TO CHANGE THE MIND OF
YOUR STUDENTS, YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT,
CREATIVE, HUMOROUS AND DISCIPLINED
 YULE´S 5
CHARACTERISTICS OF
HUMAN LANGUAGES
 DISPLACEMENT

• IS THE ABILITY TO TALK ABOUT TIMES,

PLACES AND PEOPLE OTHER THAN THE
«HERE AND NOW»

i.e my brother is in Europe right now because it is

his honey moon.
 ARBITRARINESS

• THIS MEANS THAT THERE IS GENERALLY NO NATURAL,

INHERENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SIGNS WE
PRODUCE AND THEIR MEANING, FOR THIS REASON
DIFFERENT LANGUAGE CAN USE DIFFERENT SIGNS TO
REFER TO ONE AND THE SAME THING.
 PRODUCTIVITY

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT CHARACTERISTIC OF HUMAN

LANGUAGE ALLOWING US TO CONTINUOUSLY CREATE NEW
UTTERANCES, COMBINING THE ‘BUILDING BRICKS’ OF
LANGUAGE IN EVER NEW WAYS.
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION
THIS REFERS TO HOW LANGUAGE ARE ACQUIRED BY
OUR CHILDREN. THE ASSUMPTION IS THAT THERE IS NO
GENETIC COMPONENT WICH WOULD ENABLE A CHILD
TO SIMPLY START SPEAKING.
 DUALITY

REFERS TO TWO SEPARATE LAYERS OF LANGUAGE

WORKING TOGETHER TO PROVIDE US WITH A POOL OF
SOUNDS WICH WE CAN COMBINE TO COMMUNICATE WITH
ONE ANOTHER.
 LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN

LANGUAGE IS A COGNITIVE SKILL AND ONE THEREFORE

WHOSE ROOTS ARE SITUADES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE
BRAIN.
RESEARCH MAINLY ON LANGUAGE APHASIA HAS BEEN
ENABLE TO SHOW THAT THERE ARE TWO MAJOR AREAS OF
THE BRAIN SPECIALISED IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING,
PRODUCTION AND COMPREHENSION: BROCA’S AND
WERNICKE’S AREA.
 LINGUISTICS

LINGUISTIC IS THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE,

INCLUDING THE UNIT, NATURE AND MODIFICATION OF
LANGUAGE, INVOLVES AN ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE FORM,
LANGUAGE MEANING AND LANGUAGE IN CONTEXT.
EACH HUMAN LANGUAGE IS COMPLEX OF KNOWLEDGE AN
ABILITIES. LINGUISTIC IS THE STUDY OF THIS KNOWLEDGE
SYSTEM IN ALL THEIR ASPECT.
PARTS OF THE SPEECH

• ADVERBS: Describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs.

• CONJUCTIONS: Join words, phrases or sentences.
• INTERJECTIONS: Express emotions or are fillers in sentences.
• PRONOUNS: Take the place of nouns.
• PREPOSITIONS: Indicate time, place or position.
• NOUNS: Name persons, places, things or ideas.
• VERBS: Action.
• ADJETIVES: Describe nouns and pronouns.
MORP H OLO G Y : TH E
WORDS OF
L AN G UA G E
UNIT 2
 WHAT IS A WORD? (LEXICAL ITEM)
• In lexicography, a lexical item is a single word, a part of
a word, or a chain of words (catena) that forms the basic
elements of a language's lexicon . Lexical items can be
generally understood to convey a single meaning, much
as a lexeme, but are not limited to single words. Lexical
items are like seems in that they are "natural units"
translating between languages, or in learning a new
language. In this last sense, it is sometimes said that
language consists of grammaticalized lexis, and not
lexicalized grammar. The entire store of lexical items in a
language is called its lexis.
 WORD STRUCTURE
MORPHEMES: A morpheme is the
smallest grammatical unit in a language.
AFFIXES: An affix is added to the root of
a word to change its meaning.
INFLEXION: Is the way a word changes
in order to achieve a new meaning.
 HOW A WORD IS FORMED?

In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a

new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted
with semantic change, which is a change in a single
word's meaning. The boundary between word
formation and semantic change can be difficult to
define: a new use of an old word can be seen as a
new word derived from an old one and identical to it
in form.
RULES OF WORD FORMATION: ( INFLECTION
AND DERIVATION)

Derivation is the word formation process in which a derivational affix

attaches to the base form of a word to create a new word. Affixes,
which include prefixes and suffixes, are bound morphemes.
• Inflection refers to a process of word formation in which items are
added to the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings.
While inflections take a variety of forms, they are most often prefixes
or suffixes. They are used to express different grammatical
categories.
 SINTAX

In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that

govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including
word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such
principles and processes.
 LEXIS

In generative linguistics, a lexis or lexicon is the complete set of all

possible words in a language (vocabulary). In this sense, child, children,
child's and children's are four different words in the English lexicon.
 NEOLOGISMS

a new word, meaning, usage, or phrase.

the introduction or use of new words or new senses of existing words.
a new doctrine, especially a new interpretation of sacred writings.
 CONTENT AND FUNCTION WORDS.
• Content words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and sometimes adverbs.
Those are the words that help us form a picture in our head; they give us
the contents of our story and tell our listener where to focus his or her
attention. We want our listener to be able to quickly grasp the main content
of our story, so we make the content words easier to hear by bringing
attention to them with added stress
 WHAT ARE MORPHEMES?

A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. A

morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference
between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone,
whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. The linguistics field of
study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
 TYPE OF MORPHEMES
• Free and Bound Morphemes
There are two types of morphemes-free morphemes and bound
morphemes. "Free morphemes" can stand alone with a specific
meaning, for example, eat, date, weak. "Bound morphemes" cannot
stand alone with meaning. Morphemes are comprised of two separate
classes called (a) bases (or roots) and (b) affixes.

A "base," or "root" is a morpheme in a word that gives the word its

principle meaning. An example of a "free base" morpheme is woman in
the word womanly. An example of a "bound base" morpheme is -sent
in the word dissent.
 S Y N TA X : T H E
STRUCTURE OF
SEMANTICS
UNIT 3
PHONOLOGY
AND
PHONETICS:
THE SOUNDS
OF ENGLISH
UNIT 4
SEMANTICS:
THE
MEANING OF
L ANGUAGE
UNIT 5
 LEXICAL SEMANTICS

• The branch of semantics that deals with word meaning.

• It is principal goal is to build a model for the structure of the lexicon
by categorizing the types of relationships between words.
• It is the study of how the lexicon is organized and how the meanings
of lexical items are interrelated.
 HYPONYMY

• Hyponymy or Hyponyms
• A hyponym is a subordinate, specific term whose referent is included
in the referent of a superordinate term.

• EXAMPLE:
 SYNONYMY

• Synonyms are words that are similar, or have a related meaning, to

another word. They can be lifesavers when you want to avoid
repeating the same word over and over.
• EXAMPLES:
 ANTONYMY

• It is the relationship that exists between two words with opposite

meaning.

• Adjectives, nouns, verbs and adverbs can be antonyms.

 ANTONYMY

Gradable Non-gradable
Superlative
and Also called complementary.
comparative.
 POLYSEMY AND HOMONYMY

• Polysemy and homonymy refer to similarities between meanings.

• A word is polysomic when is has more than one meaning.

• Homographs: Words with the same spelling but different meanings.

 METAPHORS

• A traditional notion of metaphor sees it as an extension in

the use of a word beyond its primary sense to describe
referents that bear similarities to the word’s primary
referent.
• People frequently create new metaphors, and once a metaphor
becomes accepted speakers tend to view the metaphorical meaning as
separate from its primary sense, as in booking a flight, seeing the
point, buying time, studying a foreign tongue.
FUNCTION WORDS AND CATEGORIES OF
MEANING

• The role of these categories is to signal grammatical relationships.

• The lexicon is not made up exclusively of content words such as

father, pigeon, stir-fry, and democracy, which refer to objects,
actions, or abstract concepts.

• It also contains function words such as the conjunctions if,

however, and or; the determiners a, the, and these; and the
auxiliaries may, should, and will.
 TENSE AND MODALITY

• Many categories of meaning are associated with function words

and function morphemes. Bound morphemes can denote several
categories of meaning in English, including number and tense.
• The meaning of a tense morpheme affects the whole sentence
because the tense of the verb determines the time reference of
the entire clause.
• Modality, or mood, is a category through which speakers can
convey their attitude towards the truth or reliability of their
assertions or express obligation, permission, or suggestion.
 REFERENCE

• Reference concerns the ability of linguistic expressions to

refer to real-world entities.

• 1. Can you recommend a good western for kids? (non

referential)
• 2. Last night I saw a good western on HBO. (referential)
 SEMANTICS: ROLES AND SENTENCE
MEANING

Sentences must carry meaning for language speakers to understand

each other at all, the meaning of sentences cannot be determined
merely by adding up the meaning of each content word of the sentence.

More than just the meaning of the individual content words must be
taken into consideration when defining what the meaning of a sentence
consists of.

• The lion licked the trainer. (Active)

• The trainer was licked by the lion. (Passive)
 SEMANTIC ROLES
• Semantic role is a way of characterizing the meaning relationship
between a noun phrase and the verb of a sentence.
• Agents and Patients:
-Agents are the initiator of an action.
-Patients are the ones that undergoes a certain change of state.
Agent = Lion
Patient = Trainer
• Experiencers can be either subjects or direct objects, depending on
the verb.
-Courtney likes blueberry pancakes.
-Courtney felt threatened by the lion.
• Instruments and Causes can be expressed as prepositional phrases or
subjects.
-The silver key opened the door to the wine cellar. (INSTRUMENT)
-The snow caved in the roof. (CAUSE)
• Recipients, Benefactives, Locatives, Temporal:
A noun phrase can be a recipient (that which receives a physical
object), a benefactive (that for which an action is performed), a
locative (the location of an action or state), or a temporal (the time at
which the action or state occurred).
• - I gave Yolanda a puppy. (RECIPIENT)
- Stefan passed the message to me for Yolanda. (BENEFACTIVE)
- The Midwest is cold in winter. (LOCATIVE)
- She left home the day before yesterday. (TEMPORAL)
 SEMANTICS ROLE AND
GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS
• There is a relationship between grammatical relations and semantic
roles. Consider the following sentences, all of which have open as a
verb:
• Michele opened the door with this key. (AGENT)
• The door opens easily. (PATIENT)
• This key will open the door. (INSTRUMENT)
• The wind opened the door. (CAUSE)
• Semantic roles are universal features of the semantic structure of all
languages, but how they interact with grammatical relations such as
subject and direct object differs from language to language. The tag
attached to the English verb like, for example, permits only
experiencers as subjects.
• I like French fries. (EXPERIENCER)
• But only patients can be the subjects of the equivalent Spanish verb
“Gustar”.
• Las papas fritas me gustan. (PATIENT)
• The French-fries to-me like
• ‘I like French fries.’ (Literally, ‘French fries to me are pleasing.’)
PRAGMATICS
UNIT 6
Pragmatics is the study of how
language is used and how the
different uses of language
determine semantics and
syntactic.

Pragmatics concentrates more

on the analysis of what people
mean by their utterances than
what the words or phrases in PRAGMATICS
those utterances might mean by
themselves.

The field pragmatics deals with

the principles of language use
that explain how extra meaning
is conveyed without being
encoded in language.
 SITUATIONAL AND LINGUISTIC
CONTEXT
• The study of context requires a consideration of how speakers
organize what they want to say in accordance with whom they are
talking to, where, when, and under what circumstances.
• LINGUISTIC CONTEXT: Discourse that precedes the phrase or
sentence to be interpreted.
• SITUATIONAL CONTEXT: It is the knowledge of the word in
which the conversation is set.
 PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE

• Pragmatic competence In linguistics, pragmatic competence is the

ability to use language effectively in a contextually appropriate
fashion. Pragmatic competence is a fundamental aspect of a more
general communicative competence.
 GRAMMATICAL COMPETENCE

• grammatical competence as the knowledge of language stored in a

person's mind.
• Is the ability to recognize and produce the distinctive grammatical
structures of a language and to use them effectively in communication
 COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

• Communicative competence: Communicative competence is a term

in linguistics which refers to a language user's grammatical knowledge
of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social
knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately.
 PROPERTIES OF PRAGMATIC
COMPETENCE

• variability: the property of communication that defines the range of

communicative possibilities, among which is formulating communicative
choices;
• negotiability: the possibility of making choices based on flexible strategies;
• adaptability; the ability to modulate and regulate communicative choices in
relation to the communicative context.
• salience: the degree of awareness reached by communicative choices;
• indeterminacy: the possibility to re-negotiate pragmatic choices as the
interaction unfolds in order to fulfill communicative intentions;
• dynamicity: development of the communicative interaction in time.
GRAMMATICAL MEANING / PRAGMATIC
MEANING

• Grammatical meaning is the meaning conveyed in a sentence by

word order and other grammatical signals. Also called
structural meaning. Linguists distinguish grammatical
meaning from lexical meaning

• Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the

ways in which context contributes
tomeaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory,
conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to
language
 FORM, MEANING AND USE OF
LANGUAGE

• Form, Meaning and Use. Language is an amazing thing, it gives us

the ability to communicate and share our ideas and experiences with
others. Understanding the connections between form,meaning and
use helps learners develop a sense of how a language works and
become more effective communicators.
 TEACHING PRAGMATICS

First in teaching pragmatics is deciding what to teach. Some obvious

areas of instruction are language appropriate for greetings, opening and
closing a conversation, and farewells
I would teach the consequences and the mistakes that we can hace if we
don’t know pragmatics.
LANGUAGE IN USE AND
L A N G U A G E V A R I AT I O N
UNIT
7
 LANGUAGE VARIATIONS

• Between the speakers of any language, there is variation in the way

that they use their language.
• This variation is demonstrated by linguistic differences in terms of
sound (phonetics) and structure (grammar).
 TYPES OF LANGUAGE

• COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE: Whether words, idiomatic phrases,

or aphorisms- is often regionally specific; for example variations on
the term “carbonated beverage”- including soda, pop and coke.
• CREOLE: Two or more parent language and used by people all ages
as a native language.
 TYPES OF LANGUAGE

• DIALECT: It is a way of speaking based on geographical or social

factors.
• JARGON: Words and phrases that apply to a specific activity or
profession.
• LINGUA FRANCA: It is common tongue to enable communication
between speakers of separate languages.
 TYPES OF LANGUAGE

• SLANG: Invented words or those whose meaning are adapted to new

sense.

• VERNACULAR: Native language or dialect.

THE ROLE OF LINGUISTICS
IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
TEACHING AND LEARNING

UNIT 8
USES OF LINGUISTICS IN TEACHING

 Linguistics is not only the study of language, but also includes the
evolution and historical context of language, speech and memory
development .

 It includes the structure and meaning of speech, and of written

languages as well as an understanding of the context in which certain
words are used
LINGUISTICS IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

• Linguistics helps students understand regional dialects and

colloqualisms. It also helps students identify the origins of sayings
and phrases that have envolved over time, but sayings that may not
have the same relevance or meaning in contemporary society.
LINGUISTICS IN LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT
• Linguistics are key for the develop of the language, the development
go through the rules of linguistics. All the syllogism and syntax are
related. for example when we create a new regional word or a
syllogism, we need to consider the fact that linguistic rules those kind
of aspects.
CONCLUTION

• The role of linguistics is for students to be able to learn the language

in all the aspects and for teachers is the skeleton of what they are
going to teach. To be more specific Language teaching is enhanced
by linguistics.
:’)