LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS

LANGUAGE
AND
LINGUISTICS
PHAN THE HUNG
M.A. & Ph.D. in Linguistics
What is Human Language?
 Ideal language: one-to-one correspondence
between content and expression
 Content Ideal language Expression
Content A Expression A
Content B Expression B
Content C Expression C
 Content Ideal language Expression
Content A
Content B “Uh”
Content C
 Explicitness vs. efficiency
 Hearers + readers  explicitness
 Speakers + writers  efficiency
 Two Sides of a Coin or Three Faces of a
Triangle
 Two sides: content –expression
 Three Faces: content-expression-context
content expression
context
Consider:- Is there a state income tax in Iowa?
- Yes/No/ I don’t know
- Is there any salt on the table?
-Yes/No/I don’t know/ ????
 Exspressions and content put into
particular contexts
a. Expression: words/phrases/sentences
b. Content: meaning of
words/phrases/sentences
c. Context: social situations in which
words/phrases/sentences uttered
d. Grammar: code to link expression and
content
e. Grammar in use (language): system to
Language: Mental and
Social
1. Language is a vehicle of thought, transfer of
thought from one person to another
2. Language and thought : intimately
entwined, but distinct
3. Expression encompasses the way we
articulate the content; grammar is the
mental code that links the two.
4. Linguistics addresses language in two
foundational areas of human experience: the
mental and the social
5. Linguists interested in models of how
language is organized in the mind and how
the social structure of human communities
SIGNS AND SIGN SYSTEMS
1. Three basic concepts: sign,
communication, language
1.1. Sign: an indicator of something,
relationship of form and meaning 
nonarbitrary
Ex: ∞ : infinity
© : copyrighted
♥ : love “I ♥ Dalat”
-Smoke is a sign of …..?
Interpreter
1.2. Communication: the use of signs
-In communication, one presents the form of
signs to others, and so invokes their meanings
1.3. Language: a sign system
-the customary sign system of humankind
2. Signs: Three types of signs
2.1. Icon: a sign whose form has actual
characteristics of its meaning
☼ ♫
2.2. Index: a sign whose form has characteristics
which are only associated in nature with its
meaning
2.3. Symbol: a sign whose form is arbitrarily or
conventionally associated with its meaning
(symbolization).
Ex: -traffic lights/ railroad crossing/wedding rings/
-“push” “đẩy”
 Societies select any symbol to represent a
particular notion
 Human language essentially arbitrary: the form of
expression generally independent of its content

except for the meanings established by social
convention.
 The meaning of a given symbol can differ from
culture to culture different cultures  different

symbols to represent the same thing; even words
that mimic natural noises are cross-linguisticaaly
3. Linguistic signs
3.1. Morphemes:
a. Simple word: sea
b. Complex word: seashell
c. Morphemes: sea + shell = seashell
un+happy+ly = unhappily
d. written/orthographic form
spoken/phonetic form
3.2. Symbolic nature of morphemes
 No characteristic of meaning in form,
not any natural association between
form and meaning
3.3. Evidence for the symbolic nature of linguistic
signs
1. Translation equivalents: words with
approximately the same meanings in different
languages
Ex: DOG – CHIEN – CHÓ
2. Synonyms: words with same or similar
meanings within a language
Ex: sick-ill/ twelve-dozen (no similarity of form)
3. Iconically expressive meanings:
Ex: narrow-wide/ ten-twenty
4. Exceptionality of iconic and indexical
morphemes:
Mimetic words (onomatopoeic words): bow-wow/
tick-tock/meow
Language
1. Two part structure of sign systems
a. Lexicon (dictionary): inventory of signs
b. Grammar: rules for construction of signs and
for comnination into messages
Lexicon: Meanings Form
‘stop’ red light
‘go’ green light
‘caution’ yellow light
Rules: a. From top to bottom, the signs ordered
red-yellow-green
b. One color lighted at a time
c. The sequence of lights is green-yellow-
2. Three substructures of language
phonology, morphology, syntax
2.1. Phonology: the sounds of the forms of
language
( not sign languages of the deaf gestures of
hands)
-Phonological form:
a. phones: [m], [æ], [p] map
b. phonological features: [labial]: map, bad, wag
c. combination or occurrence of phonological
features
 phonological rules
2.2. Morphology: classes of morphemes and
their cooccurrence in sentences and
combinations as words.
Forms Meanings
[go] {verb, ‘go’, instransitive…}
[z] {plural suffix of nouns}
[z] {present tense suffix of verbs with
third-person
singular subject}
• Morphological rules: possible combinations

of morphemes as words
•
2.3. Syntax: combinations of words as phrases,
and phrases as sentences  sentence structure
 Parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives,…
Ex: Nouns: combined with determiners (the

story)
and adjectives (the good story)
• Syntactic rules: possible combinations of words
as phrases and as sentences of general types
(affirmative,
negative, statements, commands, questions, …)
Ex: Statement: The man was there yesterday.
Question: Was the man there yesterday?
2.4. Other types of linguistic structure:
semantics, pragmatics, discourse structure,…
Six aspects of the general nature of
language
1. Arbitrariness: symbolic arbitrarily related
to meanings
2. Displacement: meanings expressed are
displaced or romed from the concrete or
physical presence of the object or stimulus,
outside the individual, of those meanings.
3. Creativity: readily and regularly permit the
expression of new meanings
-openness: new morphemes to express
new ideas/things (lab, brunch,…)
-recursion: expanding phrases within
themselves
4. Duality: two-part/dual structure: the
meaningful whole is made up of
meaningless parts
Ex: [p], [t], [a]  meaningless
[pat] ‘pot’  meaningful
5. Grammaticality: rather strict rules about
how things may be said.
Ex: I ate two apples. *I ate two apple.
He came here. *Came he here?
6. Cultural transmission: language
difference
*innateness: (signs of nonhuman species:
Modes of linguistic
communication
 Oral commincation: use of speech and
hearing organs
* possible when visibility is hindered
 Writing: visual representation invented
about 5,000 ys.

* preserved for thousands of years
* possible to transcend space
 Signing: visual representation for hearing-
impaired and speech-impaired people

* in view of each other and facing one
another
Linguistics
 Some concepts:
1. Language
2. Linguistics
3. Phonetics-Phonology
4. Morphology
5. Syntax
6. Semantics
7. Pragmatics
8. Applied linguistics
9. Cognitive linguistics
10. Sociolinguistics
TERMINOLOGY
1. Generative Grammar (Noam Chomsky)
*a very explicit system of rules  well-formed
sentences
*” I will consider a language to be a set (finite or
infinite) of rules” (Chomsky, 1957)
 3x+2y=? (x=5; y=10/ x=2; y=1)
2. Properties of grammar
*generating all well-formed syntactic structures
*having a finite number of rules to generate an infinite
number of well-formed structures  productivity
*recursiveness: capacity to be applied more than once
in generating a structure
(This is the dog that chased the cat that killed the
THANK YOU!

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LANGUAGE

 Speakers + writers  efficiency

 Two Sides of a Coin or Three Faces of a

 Three Faces: content-expression-context

expression generally independent of its content

culture to culture different cultures  different

• Morphological rules: possible combinations

Ex: Nouns: combined with determiners (the

about 5,000 ys.

impaired and speech-impaired people

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