English Language

Introduction
● subsystems of language
○ phonology - the way in which the sounds of language are organised
■ vowels and consonants: the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is used to represent
sounds that occur in any language of the world
■ places of articulation
● bilabial - using both lips e.g. b
● labiodental - using the lower lip and the upper teeth e.g. f
● dental - using the tongue tip between the teeth or the tongue tip or blade close
behind the upper teeth e.g. th
● alveolar - using the tip or blade of the tongue and the alveolar ridge e.g. t
● alveopalatal - using the blade of the tongue and the back of the alveolar ridge
e.g. sh
● palatal - using the front of the tongue and the hard palate e.g. y (consonant)
● velar - using the back of the tongue and the soft palate (velum) e.g. k
● glottal - using the space between the vocal folds e.g. h
■ manner of articulation
● stop - a complete closure of the oral cavity e.g. pill, kill
● nasal - a complete closure in the oral cavity with the soft palate lowered so air
flows through the nose e.g. mill, nil, rang
● fricative - two speech organs come close enough together to partially block the
airflow and create friction e.g. fine, then, rash, soon
● affricate - first a complete closure is made in the oral cavity (as for a stop) and
then there is a slow release of air so that a fricative sound is made e.g. chin, gin
● lateral - a partial closure is made by the blade of the tongue against the teeth
ridge so that air can flow along the sides of the tongue and the roof of the mouth
e.g. lemon
● approximant - two speech organs come close to each other, but not close
enough that any audible turbulence is produced e.g. yes, west, rest
■ prosodic features
● timing - varying tempo to show mood or grammatical boundaries
● loudness - signals a range of feelings
 ● pitch - used especially for a questioning intonation
● stress - mainly provides a rhythm , but also differentiates between nouns and
verbs
○ morphology - how words are structured
■ a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in speech e.g. strange + ness
● content morpheme - has meaning
● function morpheme - has a grammatical purpose only
● derivational morpheme - changes the meaning of a word e.g. impure
● inflectional morpheme - does not change the meaning of the word e.g. dogs
● free morpheme - a morpheme has meaning and can stand alone as a word
● bound morpheme - a morpheme that does not make sense as a word on its own
■ prefix - a function morpheme that precedes the root e.g incomplete
■ suffix - a function morpheme that follows the root e.g. running
■ infix - a morpheme that occurs within the root e.g. fanbloodytastic
○ lexicology - the study of words and vocabulary
● nouns and noun phrases
○ nouns refer to people, physical objects, creatures, abstract ideas,
phenomena and qualities
○ there are count nouns e.g. bath, apple and mass nouns e.g. water fruit
○ nouns can have a possessive (-‘s) or plural (-s) inflection
○ they can also have the suffixes -ness, -ity, -er, -ee, -ation and -ment
○ nouns function as subjects, objects, complements of verbs and
complements of prepositions
○ nouns occur with adjectives and determiners
● verbs and verb phrases
○ verbs denote actions, processes, states or events
○ verbs are inflected to indicate tense
○ there are transitive verbs, e.g. to catch, where the action transfers across
to another entity, or intransitive verbs, e.g. to eat, where the action does
not transfer across to another entity
○ auxiliaries (helping verbs)
■ primary auxiliaries i.e. be, have, do
■ modal auxiliaries i.e. can, could, shall, should, will, would, may,
might, must
■ adjectives
 ● adjectives denote properties or states relating to shape, size, colour, evaluation
etc.
● adjectives are gradable which means they denote properties that can be
possessed in varying degrees e.g. tall - taller - tallest
● adjectives are either a modifier within noun phrases or after verbs
■ adverbs
● adverbs modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs and express things like time,
manner and place
● many adverbs are gradable, but use words like more or very as opposed to
suffixes
■ prepositions
● most prepositions express spatial relations, but they can also be an infinitive
marker, an indirect object marker, an agent marker or a possessive marker
● a few prepositions are gradable e.g. near - nearer - nearest
● prepositions function as heads in prepositional phrases but also occur in a range
of functions
■ pronouns
● a pronoun is a word that is used in place of a noun or noun phrase
■ conjunctions
● conjunctions link clauses or parts of clauses together
● coordinators link units that are of equal status e.g. for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so
● subordinators link units that don’t have the same grammatical status, and
express time, place, purpose, condition, reason or concession
■ determiners
● determiners express notions like definiteness, quantity, number and possession
● the most important of determiners are the articles a, an, the
● syntax - the way words combine to form sentences (grammar)
○ a phrase is a cluster of words that forms a grammatical unit but does not have to contain a verb
■ a phrase as a subject
● noun phrase
○ determines the subject of the verb
○ occurs before the verb except in a question
○ a basic clause must contain a subject
● a phrase as an object
○ described as the ‘patient’
○ noun phrase
 ○ when the verb is passive te object becomes the grammatical subject
○ typically follow the verb
● a phrase as an adverbial
○ usually adverb phrases or preposition phrases
○ can occur pretty much anywhere in the clause
○ typically optional and can be removed or added from a clause
■ clause types
● independent clause - a clause that can stand alone as a simple sentence
● dependent clause - a clause that cannot stand alone as a simple sentence and
starts with a subordinating conjunction
■ sentence structures
● simple sentence - one independent clause
● compound sentence - two or more independent clauses
● complex sentence - one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses
● compound-complex sentence - two or more independent clauses and one or
more dependent clauses
■ passive and active sentences
● active sentences have the agent as the subject and the patient as the object e.g.
I kicked the ball.
● passive sentences have the patient as the grammatical subject and the agent is
moved into a prepositional phrase headed by the word by e.g. The ball was
kicked by me.
■ sentence types
● declarative - make statements structure: subject - verb - object.
● imperatives - issue directives structure: (subject) - verb.
● interrogatives - pose questions structure: verb - subject?
● exclamatives - make exclamations subject - verb - object!
○ semantics - the study of meaning in language
■ denotation - the meaning that is constantly associated with a word (dictionary definition)
■ connotation - the meaning a word takes on by associations, which arises from a person’s
beliefs, experiences and prejudices, or from the context
■ etymology - the study of the history of words and of word origins
■ words can change in meaning by broadening, narrowing or shift
■ words can change in connotation by deterioration or elevation
Nature & Functions of Language
● functions of language
○ language is for communicating
■ we use language to get across ideas, facts and opinions
■ communication goes beyond the literal meaning
○ language is for relating socially
■ phatic communication (smalltalk) is used to establish social rapport during an encounter,
signal that there is no animosity and express information about an individual’s social
characteristics, relationships and values
■ language is also about facilitating social cohesion
○ language is for expressing emotions
■ emotions are usually expressed by swearing
■ swear words are usually an emotive reaction (expletive function), but it can also be used
for emphasis or just in normal speech
■ this can involve taboo words like shit! or remodelled disguises like sugar!
○ language is much more…
● modes of language
○ there are two main mediums of language: spoken and written communication, but these are not
the only ways to communicate using language
○ language can also be split into planned and unplanned discourse
○ speech/unplanned discourse
■ fast and spontaneous
■ much more informal
■ not much close analysis, organisation or planning
■ misunderstandings can occur fairly frequently
■ mistakes can be identified and repaired instantly
■ usually transient
■ has expressive devices: prosodic features e.g. intonation and paralinguistic features e.g.
facial expression
■ speech is typically a social activity
■ there is a lot of ambiguity and vagueness but missing information is supplied by context
○ writing/planned discourse
■ permanent
■ well suited to recording facts and ideas
 ■ can be too formal without expressive devices like intonation and facial expression,
although some prosodic features can be captured e.g. emphasis using capital letters
○ e-communication
■ e-communication involves written language, but also shares many of the features of
speech, and it is usually unplanned discourse
■ emojis can add an aspect of prosodic and paralinguistic features
■ messages can come across more brusquely and directly than intended
○ once writing was the visual representation of speech, but now speech is seen as the verbal
representation of writing
● language often implies rather than directly states something, and context is important when finding the
meaning of a statement
○ language is not a precise notation like logic
○ the literal meaning is often not what is meant or understood, and this can lead to
miscommunication
○ we select the suitable language that goes well with the purpose and context we find ourselves in
e.g. telephone voice
○ language will vary depending on
■ the relationship between the speaker and their audience, and anyone else who might be
within earshot
■ the subject matter
■ the situation or setting
■ the physical mode: whether it is spoken, written or signed
● structure of english
○ english has a highly organised structure
○ standard english is a dialect follows all the rules of grammar, while non-standard (or vernacular)
english consists of dialects that are not considered to be grammatically correct
○ constructions considered incorrect are often widely used and in the future they will probably be
accepted as standard
○ language changes across time and space
■ time influences language
■ as a language like english is used across the world, it shows regional and social
variation
■ there are many different dialects of english
■ different dialects of english from around the world are almost different languages with
the same history that are (usually) mutually comprehensible
● why learn linguistics?
 ○ when you are trained to examine how language works, you become more skilled in handling
your own language, especially when it comes to writing
○ in studying language you attain useful skills like grammar analysis
○ there are many applications of linguistics
■ film industry - creating artificial languages for sci-fi movies
■ writing - authors, technical writers and editors
■ foreign language learning/teaching
■ information technology - natural language processing and speech recognition technology
■ advertising and marketing
■ safety measures
■ speech therapy
■ forensics - speaker profiling, voice comparison, handwriting and stylistic analyses etc.
■ plain english - translating documents, especially legal documents, into a more accessible
form
● uniqueness of human communication
○ spontaneity and displacement - humans initiate speech, and we can talk about anything, while
animals are ‘stimulus bound’, which means they can only communicate about the present
moment and things they can see
○ arbitrariness - words are arbitrary symbols, which means that they are (mostly) not connected to
their meaning, while in animal communication, each sound has a single meaning directly related
to the sound
○ structure and creativity - human languages have a hierarchical structure and the capacity to talk
about literally anything, while animal signals can’t be broken down and rebuilt to mean
something else, and animal communication is a closed system
○ cultural transmission - human language is ‘taught’ and handed down from generation to
generation, while most animal communication is genetic
○ attempts have been made to teach chimpanzees language
■ the chimpanzees have to use sign language, as their vocal apparatus is not adapted for
speech
■ chimpanzees can deal with arbitrariness and structure, and have shown some creativity,
but they do not show spontaneity or displacement
■ the chimpanzees’ use of language is oriented toward obtaining something
■ chimpanzees can’t use language to relate socially or to express emotions
● the design of english
○ phonetics and phonology - the sounds of english
■ phonetics - the sounds of speech
 ■ phonology - the way languages organise sounds
■ the IPA is a phonetic alphabet with a unique symbol for every sound that occurs in
language
■ one letter will have many different sounds based on its position in the word and the other
sounds surrounding it
○ morphology and lexicology - the words of english
■ morphology - the rules of word formation
■ lexicology - the study of words themselves
■ morphemes - the smallest meaningful units in the structure of a language
● can be added to a root to form a more complex word - these morphemes are
prefixes, suffixes and infixes
● content morpheme - has meaning
● function morpheme - has a grammatical purpose only
● derivational morpheme - changes the meaning of a word e.g. impure
● inflectional morpheme - does not change the meaning of the word e.g. dogs
● free morpheme - a morpheme has meaning and can stand alone as a word
● bound morpheme - a morpheme that does not make sense as a word on its own
■ new words can be created by compounding: joining two free morphemes together to
form a compound
■ compounds can be written as two words or as one word, or else they can be hyphenated
○ syntax - sentences of english
■ syntax - how words relate to each other and combine to form sentences
■ sentence types
● declarative - make statements structure: subject - verb - object.
● imperatives - issue directives structure: (subject) - verb.
● interrogatives - pose questions structure: verb - subject?
● exclamatives - make exclamations subject - verb - object!
■ new sentences can be made by adding clauses
○ semantics and pragmatics - the meanings of english
■ semantics - the study of meaning in language
■ pragmatics - the study of language use; it looks at what governs people’s choice of
language during social interaction and what they meant by their utterances
■ context and the communicative intentions of people affect the meanings of their words
and sentences and are all important when it comes to successful communication
■ a lot that goes on in our linguistic exchanges is unstated, so much of the time we must
infer or conclude
 ■ typically speakers will imply more than they assert, and hearers typically infer more than
is asserted
○ discourse - texts of english
■ discourse - sequences of language that are larger than a sentence
■ sentences rarely occur in isolation, but rather as a part of connected speech or writing
● playing with language
○ when infixing, there are ‘rules’ as to how many syllables the word must have, which syllables
are stressed, where the infix is positioned within the word and whether consonant sounds are
repeated - this illustrates that as english speakers, we are all aware of how highly structured
and organised the patterns of language are
○ pig latins are another example that show that we are aware of patterns in language, even from a
young age
● transcribing conventions
○ each line represents one intonation unit
○ continuing intonation units are marked with a comma
○ final intonation units are marked with a full stop or a question mark if the intonation is rising
○ pauses are shown by three dots
○ pitch can be indicated by slashes and dashes
■ forward slash for rising pitch
■ backslash for falling pitch
■ dash for level pitch
○ laughter is indicated by the @ sign
○ volume and tempo are marked by letters in angle brackets
■ <P> soft
■ <PP> very soft
■ <F> loud
■ <FF> very loud
■ <CR> increasing volume
■ <AA> fast speech
■ <LL> slow speech
○ truncated words are marked with a hyphen
○ non-verbal sounds are marked by representing the noise in brackets with capital letters
● speech and writing - structural differences
○ vocabulary - speech uses contractions and reductions, informal vocabulary and slang
○ grammar - the structure of speech often can’t be converted into acceptable writing
 ■ speech is full of ellipsis: speakers omit parts of sentences that are reconstructable from
previous utterances or that can be inferred from content
■ speech is also filled with false starts, self-corrections, repetitions, hesitations and
hedges, which make writing clumsy and hard to understand, while in speech the
audience typically edits these out
■ in speech clauses are strung together, rather than organised in sentences, and
complicated sentence structures involving subordination are usually not used
○ discourse - spoken interaction is much more personal than writing, which is reflected in word
choice and the construction of utterances
● sign languages
○ human language involves vocal organs and hearing mechanism, but this is not a feature that
distinguishes human language from that of animals, and it is not necessary for human language
○ sign languages like Auslan (which are often not invented languages, just like english) use visual
symbols
○ sign languages have emerged in the last 300 years
○ sign languages are developed by many deaf people being together in one place
■ people use their own signs but they also learn the signs used by other people and come
up with new signs if they are needed
■ the language started as a pidgin language, but slowly it developed and grew more
sophisticated
■ as this pidgin sign language was taught to children, becoming their first language, it
became more mature, complex and dynamic
■ sign languages borrow signs from other sign languages, just like we borrow words from
other languages
○ there are at least 103 sign languages in the world
○ the grammar of sign language is based on configuration of the hand, place and movement
○ facial expressions and head and body postures function as modifying words (adjectives or
adverbs)
● language, culture and thought
○ finding a gender neutral pronoun for english
■ as the idea of masculine superiority was so popular (among men) in earlier times, the
pronoun ‘he’ was used collectively
■ now that people are becoming more aware of the sexism in our language, pronouns are
used differently to try and be more politically correct
● the use of ‘she’ collectively
● the use of ‘he/she’
 ● alternating between ‘he’ and ‘she’
■ people have tried to find a gender neutral pronoun for english
■ most often, people use the plural pronoun ‘they’, even for singular, as it is gender neutral
○ how much does language control our thinking?
■ people use a sort of double speak to try to manipulate our thoughts and options e.g.
referring to running away as ‘tactical retreat’
■ linguistic relativity is the idea that states that the way you think is influenced by the
language you speak, so people who speak different languages have different worldviews
■ Whorf’s ideas of linguistic relativity came from when he observed workers were
extremely careful around full petrol drums, but would smoke in a room full of empty
petrol drums, even though setting fire to empty petrol drums would be far more
dangerous
■ Whorf believed that the language you speak acts as a filter on reality
■ Whorf’s teacher, Sapir, compared the different ways different languages have of
expressing the same thing
■ although language does, to a certain extent, influence our thoughts, languages do not
differ as to what they can express
■ linguistic determinism, the stronger and less accurate version of linguistic relativism,
states that the language you speak limits and determines human knowledge or thought

Language Acquisition
● stages of child language acquisition
○ babbling 5-7 months
■ experimenting with sounds
■ sounds made do not depend on input language
■ discovering sounds used in native language(s)
■ eventually will only use sounds and intonation contours heard around them
■ all children babble, even if they or their parents are deaf
■ infants will ‘babble’ with their hands as well if exposed to sign language
○ one-word utterances 12-18 months
■ infants discover that sounds relate to meaning
■ start to say words consisting of consonant sound + vowel sound
■ words are usually distorted
■ produce around 50 words, and one word can mean many things (overgeneralisation)
■ single word utterances function as words, phrases or sentences
 ■ children know the differences between sounds even before they can enunciate those
differences (the fis phenomenon)
○ two-word utterances 18-24 months
■ children use only content words, not function words or morphemes
■ it is still hard to interpret the meaning of these utterances
■ already using grammatical structure
● object/person + location e.g. Dada chair
● agent + action e.g. Mama eat
● action + patient e.g. kick ball
■ children are not just mimicking, they are making combinations of words they know
○ telegraphic stage and beyond 24-30 months and beyond
■ children go straight from the two word stage to the multi-word stage
■ utterances are more sentence-like, but function words and morphemes are mainly not
used
■ sentences follow a grammatical structure
■ endings like -ing then -(e)s appear
■ location words like in and on are used
■ progression to adult pronunciation and grammar
● emerging subsystems
○ phonology - sounds
■ children can understand the difference between two objects, even if they pronounce the
words the same
■ children find it hard to pronounce:
● unvoiced stops at the beginning of a word e.g pat pronounced bat
● consonant clusters
○ e.g. blue pronounced bu - leave off one consonant
○ e.g. spill pronounced fill - resort to single consonant
○ e.g. blue pronounced belu - insert vowel between consonants
■ the perception of phonemes comes before the ability to pronounce them
○ semantics - meanings of words
■ overgeneralisation - child uses limited vocabulary by using one word to refer to many
(seemingly unrelated) objects e.g. a child may refer to both a banana and the moon as
‘mu’ but still knows the difference between them; if an adult referred to a banana as ‘mu’
or ‘moon’, the child would reject this
■ slowly word store increases so overgeneralisation is used less and less
 ■ undergeneralisation (much less common) - child uses a general word to refer to only one
specific object e.g. using the word ‘boy’ to refer only to a particular brother
■ children also learn that there are semantic fields
○ syntax and morphology - grammar
■ children learn grammar rules; they don’t memorise forms (wug test)
■ children look for patterns in their language
■ most children learn grammar in a certain order:
1. present progressive e.g sing-ing
2. prepositions in and on
3. plural inflection e.g dog-s
4. irregular past tense forms e.g went, broke
5. possessive inflection e.g. Dada’s
6. copular (linking) verb to be
7. articles a, an and the
8. past tense inflection e.g jump-ed, break-ed*
9. regular present tense inflection e.g sing-s
10. irregular present tense forms e.g. does
*when children learn irregular past tense forms (4.), they learn them as separate words,
not connected to their present form, then they learn the grammar rule for past tense (8.),
and by overgeneralisation, apply it to irregular verbs, and finally, they learn the irregular
past tense as a part of the irregular verb
● critical period for child language acquisition
○ the controversial hypothesis that there is a defined timespan within which a first language must
be acquired
○ evidence:
■ after brain damage occurs, full recovery is seldom achieved if injury occurs after puberty
■ feral children:
● Genie
○ found language-less after puberty
○ could learn vocabulary but not grammar
○ may have been due to abuse
● Isabelle
○ found aged 6½ with no verbal communication
○ after two years acquired normal language
● Chelsea
○ born deaf so never learned language
 ○ diagnosed at 31 and began speech training
○ did not acquire normal language
■ you can not learn a second language just by exposure
● theories of child language acquisition
○ behaviourism - B. F. Skinner
■ states that children acquire language through imitation, reinforcement and correction
■ however:
● children’s utterances are original: they put together words they know instead of
just repeated what they hear
● even if a child is never talked to (in some cultures people don’t speak to their
children until they can talk back), language is still learned
● this suggest that parents/caregivers do not actually ‘teach’ their children
language
● when a parent attempts to correct a child’s grammar, the child often, even
usually, fails to make the corrections
● linguistic features used regularly are acquired early, while less common features
(e.g. passives) are acquired later
○ innatism - Noam Chomsky
■ states that language learning is innate
■ children learn correct grammar even though most conversation does not consist of many
well formed English sentences (poverty of input)
■ linguists believe the human brain must be somehow predisposed toward learning
language
■ this supports the hypothesis that we are born with innate grammar or a Language
Acquisition Device
■ there is also evidence to support that there is a Universal Grammar
■ language and intelligence are independant
○ interactionism - Lev Vygotsky
■ states that behaviourism and innatism are correct to some extent
● additional language learning
■ most children are growing up bi/multilingual
■ even having a limited ability in a second language is bilingualism
■ a second language can be learned alongside a first, or later in a classroom
■ there are many different techniques of teaching/learning another language
■ prior knowledge of grammar can help when learning a second language
 ■ the nature of the additional language (its relative difficulty and similarity to native
language) affects acquisition
■ different languages are complex in areas like syntax and phonology, as well as
politeness
○ benefits of additional language learning
■ flexible thinking
● understand better how language works
● able to differentiate form from content/meaning
● basis for future cognitive development
■ bilingualism and reading-readiness
● exposure to a new language teaches about the nature of language and
languages
■ linguistic awareness
● able to judge the grammaticality of sentences
○ code-switching
■ people who know the same two or more languages will often move from one language to
another mid-speech
■ can be anything from isolated words to full clauses
■ this is not a sub-standard language usage, but rather speakers taking advantage of their
abilities in more than one language