Introduction

to Linguistics
Francis B. Tatel
MA English Studies: Language
 What Is Linguistics?
• Linguistics is the scientific study of human language.
• The study can be either theoretical or practical, and the
person who studies language scientifically is called a
linguist.
• Linguists apply scientific methods to conduct formal
analyses of the world’s 6000+ languages: making
observations, testing hypotheses, and developing
theories.
 What Linguists Do…
They are concerned with three main aspects of language:
structure, meaning, and use.
• Structure involves studying the sequence of linguistic units
that have a relationship to one another.
• Meaning involves studying the ideas that the linguistic units
express.
• Use involves studying the context in which the linguistic units
are employed.
 Modern Linguists…
• Modern linguists are interested in how language is
organized in the mind and in the cognitive processes
involved in its comprehension and production.
• They aim to describe how the language faculty of the mind
works.
• They observe patterns within a language and try to find
out what principles are responsible for their
comprehension and production.
 Essential Components of
Linguistics
• Phonetics seeks to figure out how speech sounds are
produced in a language.
• Phonology seeks to figure out how speech sounds work in a
language. Whereas phonetics deals with the physical
properties of sounds, phonology deals with their functional
ones.
• Morphology seeks to figure out how word formation works;
how prefixes, suffixes, and infixes are added to derive words.
 Essential Components of
Linguistics cont’d.
• Syntax seeks to figure out how words combine to make sentences.
Whereas morphology examines how morphemes are combined to
form words, syntax examines how words combine to form
sentences.
• Semantics seeks to figure out how meaning is encoded in
language.
• Pragmatics seeks to figure out how context contributes to
meaning. Whereas semantics focuses on the literal meanings of
linguistic expressions, pragmatics focuses on their non-literal ones.
 Theoretical vs Practical
Linguistics

As the scientific study of language,

linguistics can be theoretical or practical.
Both encompass a number of disciplines.
 Disciplinary vs Interdisciplinary
Theoretical Linguistics
• Theoretical linguistics can be classified into disciplinary
and interdisciplinary
studies.
• Disciplinary studies involve one academic discipline and
can include theoretical paradigms and grammatical
models.
 Grammatical Models
• Prescriptive grammar clarifies how language should be used by speakers.
• Descriptive grammar discloses how language is used by speakers.
• Structural grammar describes language as a self-contained system whose
structures are related one to another.
• Generative grammar defines a set of rules which generates grammatical
sentences in a language.
• Functional grammar ascribes the use of grammatical structures to the
functions
that they play in communication.
• Cognitive grammar attributes the use of grammatical structures to
general cognitive principles.
 Comparison of Theoretical Linguistics
(TL)
and
1. TL is about Practical
setting up theories Linguistics (PL)
1. PL is about applying theoretical
about language that are based on knowledge to language-related
an idealized view of language. It problems. It helps to tackle various
helps to show why one assumption linguistic phenomena.
works where another fails.
2. TL is concerned with discovering 2. PL involves utilizing the findings of
generalities both within particular theoretical approaches in the analysis
languages and among languages. It of language in various areas.
endeavors to account for the
properties of all possible languages. 3. Practical linguistics, in contrast,
3. TL studies language in the investigates language in context,
abstract. It offers particular laying the emphasis on everyday
analyses of specific languages based language use.
on standard scientific methodology,
starting with observation of
language use in normal discourse.
 Ferdinand de Saussure and
Linguistics
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) is quite rightly considered to
be the founder of structural linguistics, and his posthumously
published work, Course in General Linguistics (1983), formulated
the general principles for the scientific study of language.
• His goal was to establish the scientific credentials for the
study of language so that linguistics would no longer be judged
as ‘speculative’, and instead acquire a certain degree of prestige
as a discipline.
 Ferdinand de Saussure and
Linguistics cont’d.
• In general, it could be said that Saussure revolutionized
linguistics by proposing a new method for the study of language.
• This method focused on explaining the way language as a system
functions to generate meanings that are subsequently
communicated; it was the system used for communication – rather
than the actual things communicated – that was prioritized.
• This insight into the workings of language led to the further
realization that the model of language could also be used to
understand the way non-linguistic systems function.
 Saussurean Dichotomies
Important pairs from de Saussure’s book Course in
General Linguistics
 1. Langue versus Parole
• Saussure says there are two sides to language: langue and
parole. (While the French terms are generally used in English,
they are sometimes translated as ‘language’ and ‘speech’
respectively, though not without some danger of ambiguity.)
• Langue is that part of language which ‘is not complete in any
individual, but exists only in the collectivity’ (Saussure 1969
[1916]: 30).
• Parole is observable in the behaviour of the individual.
According to Saussure, it is not homogeneous.
 1. Langue versus parole
cont’d.
• Saussure believes that linguistics is fundamentally the study of
langue,
although some later scholars have suggested that there might also be
a linguistics of parole.
• Had corpus linguistics* been a concept with which Saussure was
familiar, he would no doubt have dismissed it as dealing with parole
rather than with langue.
*Corpus linguistics investigates language structure through the
analysis of large databases of real-language examples stored on
computer.
 Competence versus
Performance
• The langue/parole distinction has been overtaken by other,
similar distinctions.
• Chomsky (1965: 4) introduces the distinction between
competence and performance.
• Performance is very like Saussure’s parole. It is prone to
error, to memory lapse and the like.
• Competence, however, is unlike Saussure’s langue in that
it has no social side to it; it is a mental construct in the
individual.
 Langue versus Competence
• Although Saussure concedes that ‘It [langue] is something
which exists in each individual’, he also adds ‘yet is common
to all of them’ (Saussure 1969 [1916]: 38).
• Chomsky (1965: 4) also points out that for Saussure langue is
‘a system of signs’ (Saussure 1969 [1916]: 32), while for
Chomsky competence is a generative system.
• This is an accurate description of langue, but does not seem to
be fundamental to the notion of it in the way that its social
aspect is.
 I-language versus E-language
• In more recent work (Chomsky 1986), competence and
performance have given way to a third distinction, that
between I-language and E-language (where I and E are to be
interpreted as ‘internalized’ and ‘externalized’).
• For Saussure, linguistics deals with langue; for Chomsky
linguistics deals with I-language.
• Thus, for Saussure, linguistics involves studying the language
of the community, while for Chomsky it involves studying the
language potential of the individual.
 Langue versus I-Language
• Yet both agree that if we use an analogy with a game of
chess, the particular moves made in any given game are
not what is to be studied; rather it is the rules of the game
which allow for an infinite number of different actual
games.
• For Saussure the rules correspond to langue; for Chomsky
they correspond to I-language (Saussure 1969 [1916]: 43;
Chomsky 1986: 31).
 2. Synchrony versus Diachrony
• We can study a given language in two ways, Saussure
maintains.
• The first is that we can look at the language as it is (or was) at
any particular point in time. Thus we might study the syntax of
Philippine English in the early twenty-first century, or the
phonology of seventeenth-century French or the patterns of
compounding in Taglish.
• These are all synchronic studies (syn- ‘alike’, chronos ‘time’).
 2. Synchrony versus Diachrony
cont’d.
• The alternative is to look at the way in which a language
develops or changes
over time.
• In this way we might consider the development of the English
verb system, or changes in Arabic phonology from the classical
period until today.
• These are diachronic studies (dia- ‘through’, chronos ‘time’).
 2. Synchrony versus Diachrony
cont’d.
• Saussure was reacting to an environment in which the only linguistic
study
that was seen as being scientific was the study of the development of
languages.
• By putting the synchronic side of language studies back on the
linguistic map, he expanded the scope of linguistics.
• Yet by the late twentieth century, there were some linguists
complaining that this strict distinction between synchronic and
diachronic linguistics had become a major problem in dealing with
language.
 2. Synchrony versus
Diachrony cont’d.
• All living languages are in a continuous state of change.
• Despite such observation, the distinction between
synchronic and diachronic
studies is generally maintained today.
 3. Paradigmatic versus
syntagmatic
• Paradigmatic relation: any relation between two or more linguistic
items or forms which are competing possibilities, in that exactly one
of them may be selected to fill some particular position in a structure.
• In the sentence The cow walked over the bridge, the word cow may
be substituted by dog, cat, girl, etc., and is said to have a
paradigmatic relation to each of these elements.
• Similarly, in English the sounds [p] and [t] have a paradigmatic
relation, since they can be substituted in sequences like p-i-n and t-i-
n.
 3. Paradigmatic versus
syntagmatic cont’d.
• Syntagmatic relation: a relation between two or more linguistic
elements which
are simultaneously present in a single structure: for example, between
the phonemes making up a word, or between a verb and its object.
• In phonology the elements s-t-r have a syntagmatic relationship since
they form a linear sequence in a word like strong. However, p-t-r do not
have such a relationship.
• In syntax, in a sentence like The pelican saw a sailor, there is a
syntagmatic relationship between a and sailor; the and pelican; saw and
a, etc.
• While elements which are related syntagmatically are all
present, elements which are related paradigmatically are
mostly absent: they are relationships of potential.
• In Saussure’s theory of language such syntagmatic
relations, along with paradigmatic relations, specified the
`value' of each linguistic element in the language system.
 4. Value and signification
• While the value of a sign is determined by its place within the
linguistic system, ‘signification’ does not refer to the functioning
of the linguistic system, but to the way it connects to the world.
• The difference between value and signification is derived from
the distinction between langue and parole: values are the
elements that acquire an identity within langue, while
signification describes the relationship between the utterance
and the world.
• In the case of signification, it is the ‘extra’ linguistic element that
comes into play.
 4. Value and signification
cont’d.
• Saussure explains the difference between meaning and value when he
describes the difference between the English sentence I saw a sheep and
the French sentence J’ai vu un mouton.
• The two sentences are the same in terms of their signification, in the way
that they both refer to a particular animal in the world.
• Signification describes the speaker’s relation to a state of affairs in the
world.
• But the value of the terms sheep and mouton differs within the English and
French languages: in the case of English, when sheep are eaten the meat
is called mutton, while in the case of French, mouton means two things –
the meat itself and the animal (1983: 114).
 5. Signifier (signifiant) and
signified (signifié)
• Saussure insisted that the linguistic sign has two aspects to it: a
sound side and a meaning side.
• The two are tightly linked within a speech community, and can
be seen as being the two sides of a coin.
• The concept of a pig may be carried by the sounds /pIg/, but that
concept is not to be equated with that series of sounds.
• The sign unites the physical set of sounds (the signifier, or
signifiant) with a particular mental image (the signified or
signifié).
 5. Signifier and signified
cont’d.
• Note that real-world pigs do not feature here.
• The sign links our mental image of a pig with a particular
set of sounds, not a real pig.
• The real pig has a very indirect relationship with the
sound sequence /pIg/.
• The same argument could be repeated for the series of
hand-shapes and gestures in sign-languages and their link
to a particular meaning.
5. Signifier and signified cont’d.
• Saussure makes a number of other points about linguistic signs which
have become accepted, although they had not always been seen as
obvious prior to Saussure.
• Perhaps the most important of these is the fact that the linguistic sign is
arbitrary.
• There is no natural link between the sound sequence /pIg/ and
particular animals.
• If there were, how could the same or very similar animals be easily
associated with the word pig in English, cochon in French, gris in
Danish, Schwein in German, and so on?
 Hockett’s (1960) Design Features
of Language
(1) Vocal auditory channel – Signal modality involves vocalization and sound
perception.
(2) Broadcast transmission – Everyone in earshot can hear what is said.
(3) Rapid fading – Signals fade quickly, and do not “clog the airwaves.”
(4) Interchangeability – Any speaker can also be a listener, and vice versa.
(5) Total feedback – Speakers can hear everything that they say.
(6) Specialization (speech as “trigger”) – Linguistic signals accomplish their
results not via raw energy like pushing or biting) but by their fit to the
receiver’s perceptual and cognitive systems.
(7) Semanticity – Some linguistic units have specific meanings (words, or
morphemes).
 Hockett’s (1960) Design Features
of Language
(8) Arbitrariness – Meanings are generally arbitrarily related to signals, rather than
iconic.
(9) Discreteness – Each utterance differs from all others discretely (by at least a
distinctive feature).
(10) Displacement – Meanings about past, future, or distant referents can be
encoded and understood.
(11) Productivity/Openness – New utterances can be readily coined and understood.
(12) Duality of patterning – Meaningless units (phonemes) are combined into
meaningful ones (morphemes), which can then be combined into larger meaningful
units (sentences).
(13) Traditional (Cultural) transmission – Languages are learned, not genetically
encoded.
 Hockett (1963/1966): additional
design features
Hockett (1963) (republished in a second edition in 1966)
adds a few additional features:
(14) Prevarication – It is possible to lie.
(15) Reflexivity – It is possible to use language to talk about
language.
(16) Learnability – It is possible for a speaker of one
language to learn additional languages.