LINGUISTICS

1. What is it and why study it?

Studying linguistics means scientifically exploring human natural languages: structure, rules and the relationship
between language and society.
language – a structure composed of discrete elements that is rule governed
natural language – a language that is someone's mother tongue
structure of language:
1. phonology – study of the (structure of) sounds of language
2. morphology – study of the formation i.e. structure of words
3. syntax – study of the formation and the structure of sentences
4. semantics – study of the (structure of) meaning in language
- morphology and syntax belong to grammar

Structuralism is a theoretical approach to linguistics which studies language as a structured system, a system of
oppositions, where each element of the system is not explored and characterized in isolation, but rather in relation to
other elements of the system

- Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure – he turned (European) linguistics away from occupation with historical
explanations of linguistic phenomena (historicism), pointing it towards descriptions of the structure of language i.e. of
the linguistic system at a given point in time
- Saussure is the father of modern linguistics

- diachronic perspective – the historical description of linguistic phenomena

- synchronic perspective – the analysis of a linguistic system at a particular point in time as a whole
- langue – the system that enables people to produce and understand utterances
- parole – the actual utterances that speakers produce
- the signified – the concept
- the signifier – what stands for the concept, the concept represented

- syntagmatic relations in language – relations between linguistic elements which are simultaneously present in a
structure (from the phonological to the syntactic level)
> the syntactic plane – words combined in terms of grammatical rules
- paradigmatic relations in language – set of elements that can enter the structure
> the lexical plane – the choice of all the words that can be put into a linguistic structure

1.2. A language VS. The human language faculty

● differentiate between:

a) a natural language, an individual language (English, Italian, Croatian...)

b) all the properties shared by all the natural languages of the world – what all the natural languages have in common

- the human language faculty (Noam Chomsky, 1957) – hypothesis that children are born with a predisposition for
language, already knowing what human languages are and 'pre-wired' for their acquisition
- funded on the observation that we come to know the functional properties of our native tongue without any explicit
instruction relatively quickly
“By studying language we discover abstract principles that govern its structure and use, which are universal by biological
necessity”

2. Introducing homo loquens

The position of the human larynx is lower than animals’ so food is more likely to choke us.

2.1. The knowledge of language

Language as a means of encoding and transmitting simple and complex thoughts/ideas.
- words – linguistic signs that encode meaning. Interactive function of language transmits thoughts .
- words, or rather languages, serve for getting our ideas across from speaker to hearer
What is language?
Understanding all the elements and processes involved in the linkage between the sign and the meaning, both on the
production as well as on the reception side.
- linguistic competence (N. Chomsky) – the human ability to produce language i.e. the knowledge that makes the
linguistic behaviour possible

● the knowledge of language consists of:

1. the knowledge of the sound system – knowing what sounds/phonemes exist in a language and which do not
2. knowledge of words – knowing that certain sound sequences signify certain concepts or meanings
3. creativity – knowing that knowledge of language which enables us to combine sounds into morphemes, morphemes
into words, words into sentences/texts, come up with sentences/texts never spoken before and understand
sentences/texts never heard before
4. knowledge of grammar – knowing what is grammatically well formed

2.2. The origin of language

It is approximated that language came about at the earliest around 250 000 years ago (evolution of the larynx).
● Danish linguist Otto Jaspersen(1860-1943) proposed the five possible views of language emergence:

1. the surrounding sound source („the bow-wow theory“) – emergence of language as a response to sounds people
were (habitually) hearing in their surroundings (nature) -> speech arose through people imitating the 'natural sounds'
from the environment (such as animals, natural phenomena etc.)

2. the oral gesture source of language („the ding-dong theory“) – suggests that there was a strong link between a
physical gesture and orally produced sounds- > gestures would have preceded sounds as a means of communication and
gestural language became accompanied/replaced by sounds

3. the instinctive sound source („the pooh-pooh theory“) – originating from sounds produced by people in an instinctive
reaction to fear, pain, anger, surprise or other emotions -> interjections cannot really be the source of language

4. the coordinating sound source („the yo-he-ho theory“) – people tried to coordinate physical efforts -> producing
sounds to work in a group

5. the romantic source theory („the la-la theory“) - the initial stimulus behind language was the romantic side of life –
love, play, poetics, singing -> large gap between the emotional and the rational in human expression

- some scholars – the development of speech in the child sums up the evolutionary development of language – starts
with very few sounds then applied to a series of situations. Language is a divine gift.

2.3. Glossogenetics of the evolutionary story: The development of language in various spieces
- vocal apparatus specially adapted for language in humans: tongue, teeth, lips, larynx, also the shape of the skull
● dynamism of the evolution of language:

- continuity – long process, gradually evolved from some sort of gestural communication
- discontinuity – the human language faculty has little or nothing to do with the gestures and call of our hominid
ancestors
Do animals talk?
Dance preformed by bees to show where a food source is.
A chimpanzee Gua in 1930 learned 100 of words. In 1972 a gorilla Koko used 1000 gestures and could understand 2000
words (Pattterson).
2.4. Human VS Non-human communication
2.4.1. Comparing human and animal talk: The universal characteristics of language
● American linguist Charles Hockett – Six universal features of communication:

1. SEMANTICITY – Language signals are symbols that convey meaning. Meaning motivates language. Everything in
language exists with the purpose of contributing to meaning creation.
2. ARBITRARINESS – Language signals are arbitrary, which means there is no resemblance between the signal and
whatever the signal represents-
3. DISCRETENESS - Language signals are discrete. They are clearly distinct, and clearly contrast with each other, rather
than varying continuously.
4. DUALITY OF PATTERNING – „double articulation “(Martinet); the property of linguistic structure to combine several
smaller, meaningless units into many meaningful units - thanks to duality, human languages are infinite
5. PRODUCTIVITY – creativity; the human capacity to produce and understand new meanings (by recombining the 'old'
elements) is infinite and children can produce sentences they have never heard
6. DISPLACEMENT – allows users of language to refer to things and events that are physically and temporally displaced,
and about things that do not even exist (not in any animal language)

2.5. Reiterating the focal issue: What, then, is language?

● Main functions of language:

1. communication –transfer information

2. social interaction – we can fully function in society, create social networks, express emotions, understand, respect
and forward both social norms and culture
3. cognitive growth – enables us to think about reality from different perspectives, to have imaginary thoughts, to
speculate, to lie
- imaginary thought or the ability to speculate are the backbone of scientific progress

3. The buzzing all: The sounds and sound patterns of language

- phonetics – science of speech sounds examined from the point of view of their production, transmission and reception
(sound waves)
- phone (token concrete realization) – the minimal unit or rather central concept in phonetics

- phonology – explores the functions and properties of phonemes

- phonemes (type abstract) – the smallest discrete units of language that do not have meaning in itself, but can change
the meaning of a higher unit

3.1. Phonetics: The 'physics' of speech sounds

● three further sub-disciplines:

1. articulatory phonetics – the study of how speech sounds are made and articulated
2. acoustic phonetics – deals with the physical properties of speech as sound waves 'in transmission' or 'in the air'
3. auditory phonetics – deals with the perception, via the ear, of speech sounds
- forensic phonetics – deals with the identification of speaker

3.1.1. The physiology of language

Sound waves are produced through a complex interaction of egressive airstream coming from the lungs and the
modifications of this airflow at the larynx. Also, through the interaction of the tongue, mouth, teeth and pharynx, the
nose.
Because lung air is used, we talk of pulmonic sounds, and because the air is pushed out, we talk of egressive sounds.
Pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism – majority of sounds in the natural languages of the world and all sounds in
English are produced by it.
Types of speech that don’t use the pulmonic airstream: glottalic egressive and velaric ingressive

3.1.2. Voiced VS. Voiceless sounds

- the glottis – the opening between the vocal cords that can vibrate
- voiceless sounds – if, when the air goes up from the lungs, the vocal cords are apart, the airstream is not obstructed at
the glottis, and it passes freely into the supraglottal cavities (p, t, k,...)
- voiced sounds – the vocal cords are together, the airstream going up from the lungs needs to force its way through the
glottis, this causing vocal cords to vibrate (b, d, g,...)

3.1.3. Place of articulation

1. bilabials – both lips (bit)
2. labiodentals –upper teeth and lower lip (fat)
3. dentals – tongue tip behind upper front teeth (thus)
4. alveolars – front part of the tongue on the alveolar ridge (immediately behind the upper teeth) (top)
5. alveo-palatals – tongue on the front of the palate (shoot)
6. velars – back of tongue against the velum (mug)
7. glottals – in the glottis, i.e. the space between the vocal cords and the larynx (hotel)

3.1.4. Manner of articulation

1. stops – stopping of the airstream (t,p,g)
2. fricatives – air through a very narrow opening (f,v,s)
3. affricates – stopping combined with obstructed release (cheap, jeep)
4. nasals – velum is lowered and airflow goes through the nose (m,n)
5. liquids – airstream flow at the sides of the tongue as it touches the alveolar ridge (l,r)
6. glides – 'semi vowels', transition sounds, tongue glides to/from position of a neighbouring vowel sound (w,y)

3.1.5. Vowels
We get the articulation of vowels if the flow of air through the vocal track (relatively) free. The articulatory features that
distinguish different vowels determine the vowel’s quality.
● Daniel Jones (1917) developed famous cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of common features:

1. height – vertical position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw
2. backness – horizontal tongue position during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth
3. roundedness – whether the lips are rounded or not
- diphthongs – a vowel whose quality changes during pronunciation (from one vocalic position to another)

3.2. Phonology or the sound patterns of language

The most widely used system of graphic notation used to represent sounds of a spoken language is the international
phonetic alphabet (IPA) made in 1888 by the international phonetic association and based on the Latin alphabet.

3.2.1. Introducing the key notions in phonology

- distinctive feature – the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analysed in phonological theory;
distinctive feature is, in most cases binary
- phonemes – abstract, 'idealized' sounds or sound types, represented as symbols in / /
- phones – the real tokens, or physically produced sound segments, the realisations of phonemes when produced by a
speaker, in speech; in [ ]
- allophones – two phones, i.e. speech or phonetic variants of the same phoneme
- minimal pair –pair of words in language that have identical forms except at one point, i.e. consist of an identical
sequence of sounds except in one position (pet – bet)
- minimal set – an entire group of words differentiated each one from the other by only one phoneme, and always in
the same position (changing vowels: fat, feat, fit, fate, foot; changing consonants: big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig)
- suprasegmentals – features which characterise larger units of language
- prosody – related to variations in pitch, loudness, rhythm and tempo during speech, but not to conscious and free
varitaions of the voice
- phonological competence – knowing sounds and sound patterns, phonological patterns and distinctions
- phonotactics – rules of combining phonemes into words

4. Writing and reading: A daily miracle

By „writing“we refer to any of the many visual systems for representing language:
a) handwriting
b) printing
c) electronic displays of these forms
- writing – a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent and utterance in such a way that it can be
recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utterer

4.1. The history of writing

The early drawings are not considered writing because they do not make a system of signs that represent specific
linguistic forms
4.1.1. Pictograms: The forerunners of writing
- earliest graphic records are classified as drawings
- 9000 BC – Mesopotamian tokens
- high degree of iconicity – similarity between the form of the sign and its context
- in pictograms there is nonarbitrary relationship between the form and the meaning of the symbol (absence of any
natural or necessary connection between a word's meaning and its sound or form)
- pictograms depict whole ideas, known as ideograms
- writing system or script – the 'invention' of the structure of discrete units of graphic recording (graphemes) that code
segments of language

4.1.2. The classification of scripts

1. logographic scripts – one graphic sign represents one meaningful unit in a language i.e. morpheme/word
2. syllabic scripts – one graphic sign represents a syllable
3. alphabetic scripts – one graphic sign represents a phoneme

4.1.3. Logograms (logographs)

- they stand for a morpheme or a word
- each sign codes one thing – one concept
- highly stylised representations of ideas
- can represent grammatical morphemes
- Sumerian cuneiform script – the earliest known writing system
- egyptian hieroglyphs – the issue of decipherment (remain undeciphered until the 19th century)
- chinese writing symbols

4.1.4. Syllabic writing

- consists of consonant + vowel pair or a cluster (consonant + vowel + consonant)
The Assyrians borrowed the cuneiform writing and adjusted it to their own language: the symbols which stood four
whole words were adjusted to represent syllables.
Japanese and Mycenaean Greek
4.1.5. Between syllabaries and alphabets: abugida & abjad
Between syllabic an alphabetic system.
- abugida – a system in which each sign represents a consonant accompanied by a specific vowel, but unlike syllabic all
syllables starting with the same consonant are based on the same symbol and generally more than one symbol is
needed to represent a syllable (Indian and Ethiopian lan.)
- abjad – each symbol stands for a consonant, the vowel sound is implied by phonology (harakat for Arabic)

4.1.6. Alphabetic writing

- alphabet – a standardised set of graphic signs (letters) each of which (roughly) represents a phoneme of a spoken
language. The Greeks adapted the Phoenician’s system to make an alphabetic writing system. The Etruscans used it and
then the Latins took it over.
● important elements in modern writing:
1. diacritics – a small mark added to a grapheme (letter) to alter/change the phonetic value of the letter to which it is
added, or to distinguish between similar words (Č,Ć,Ž,Š)
2. punctuation – marks in languages such as commas, question marks etc.

4.2. Writing: Shallow VS. Deep orthography

1. Shallow orthography – close to almost perfect one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and letters (Croatian,
Serbian, Finnish,...)
2. Deep orthography – less direct spelling-to-sound correspondence, with the same letter often used to signify different
phonetic realisations (English) - Shaw claimed this fish can be spelled as ghoti because F (cough), I (women) and SH
(nation)

4.2.1. Why is English spelling so 'messy'?

- The Great Vowel Shift– a major change in pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of
England between 1200 and 1600 which marked the separation between Middle and Modern English
- two highest long vowels /i/ and /u/ became diphthongs which caused many changes in pronunciation, the remaining
vials underwent an increase in tank height with one of them coming to the front
- English has a lot of borrowed words and has a large vowed system (12 - 24 vowels) (y, w, r take the place of vowels)
The English spelling system is characterised by correspondences between the written symbols and the sounds of the
language and not an identity between the two.
5. Morphology – the grammar of words
- morphology – the linguistic discipline which studies all the different units of meaning (patterns and rules award
formation in languages), the study of forms, morphology is with syntax, part of grammar
- word – a unit of language which can stand on its own, which has a meaning, and which at higher levels of linguistic
structures constructs phrases (sometimes defined as the smallest unit of syntax)
- lexeme – a linguistic unit of morphological analysis, which roughly corresponds to a set of words that are different
forms of a same word
- word forms – sees each word as separate unit

5.1. The classification of morphemes

- morpheme – the smallest unit of language that has meaning
- base morpheme/root – the basis of the entire word

5.1.1. Free vs. Bound morphemes

- free morpheme – a morpheme that can stand alone
- bound morpheme – a morpheme that can stand exclusively alongside another morpheme
- affix – bound morpheme

5.1.3. Affixes: prefixes, suffixes, infixes

- prefix – a morpheme that comes before another morpheme (anti, un)
- suffix – a bound morpheme that comes after another morpheme (ed, s)
- infix – a morpheme inserted in between two other morphemes, about the morphemes have meaning without the infix
(pretrč-av-ati)

5.1.3. Free morphemes: Lexical VS. Functional

- monomorphemic words – morphemes which constitute words by themselves
- free morphemes – morphemes constituting these words
- lexical morphemes – free morphemes that can both stand on their own and have meaning. ‘Open-end' classes –
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs – open to accepting new members
- functional morphemes – generally specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another. 'Closed'
classes – conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns (cannot be freely augmented)

5.1.4. Bound morphemes: Derivational vs. Inflectional

- derivational morphemes – bound morphemes that are used to make new words in a language
● prefixes: a-, ex-, un-

● suffixes – make words of a different grammatical category: -ness, -ish, - er, -ise, -ly
- inflectional morphemes – bound morphemes that indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word
● ALL are suffixes: -ed, -s, -er

5.2. Rules of word formation

● words can be:
1. simple (e.g. monomorphemic 'boy')
2. complex (e.g. more than one morpheme 'boyish')
3. compound (e.g. more words 'boyfriend')

5.2.1. Derivational vs. Inflectional morphology

- inflectional rules – rules that relate different forms of the same lexeme
- all inflectional morphemes are suffixes; they never change the syntactic category of the word
- derivation – morphological processes whereby new lexemes are created
● derivation processes:
1. compounding – morphological compounding rules combine two or more morphemes or words to form complex
compounds ('wallpaper',' fingerprint', but also jargon items like 'fantbloodytastic'- infix)
2. blending – joining two separate words which result in a joint or mixed form (smoke + fog = smog, breakfast + lunch =
brunch)
3. clipping – a word longer than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form (advertisement – ad, airplane – plane)
4. backformation – specialised type of reduction, process of creating a new lexeme by removing affixes (edit from
editor, donate from donation)
5. conversion/category change/functional shift – a change not in the form but rather in the function (grammatical
category) or a word (butter – to butter, vacation – to vacation)
6. metaphorical extension – modification of the basic meaning of a word, word used in new additional ways (surf, web,
mouse -> from original to technological meanings)
7. borrowing – taking over words from other languages (alcohol – Arabic, boss – Dutch, croissant – French)
8. loan translation/calque – direct translation of elements forming a word in the language lending the word (sky-scraper
– gratte-ciel)
9. word coinage – invention of totally new terms mostly using brand names (aspirin, nylon, guillotine)
10. acronyms – words derived from the initials of several words (NASA, NATO, UNESCO, scuba, radar, laser)
6. Syntax – The grammar of sentences

- syntax (arregment-greek,latin) – the study of the structure of components (words) within phrases and sentences

● a study of:

a) the rules that govern the structure of sentences

b) the rules which determine their relative grammaticality (help distinguish between a well-formed and not sentences)
the difference between the two can be equated with 2 approaches: prescriptive and descriptive.

6.2. Traditional grammar

- traditional grammar – study of well-formed structures found in various languages
- it studies origin in descriptions of Latin and Greek
- classical elements were taken to describe the correct usage of numerous other languages, thus yielding 'school grammars' –
collections of rules for the proper use of language
- its used to distinguish traditional grammar from contemporary linguistics
6.2.1. Parts of speech
Every word of the lexicon belongs to a grammatical category. Words belonging to the same category share various properties.
● parts of speech/word classes:
1. noun
2. verb
3. preposition
4. conjunction (and, or, nor)
5. adjective
6. adverb
7. pronoun
8. interjection (ah! oh!)
9. article (a/an, the)
10. sometimes, due to Latin, participles

These components or units (constituents) are put together to form sentences(noun-subject, object; verb-predicate; article-
determiner…).
1. simple sentences (one clause – The cat is sleeping.)
2. complex sentences (at least two clauses – The cat sleeps and I write.)
3. compound (at least one subordinate clause – I write that the cat sleeps.)
The units are guided by word order rules and concordance or agreement rules.
6.2.2. Word order
- English – SVO language -> subject, verb, object (but there are some exceptions: Mary I invited, not Sarah. Govern thou, my song.
Fits of passion have I known. Poets vigils keep.)(OVS,VSO,OSV,SOV)
- SOV, VSO, VOS, OVS, OSV or i.e. Slavic languages – relatively free word order
- no language allows a totally random ordering of its constituents (all languages have nouns and verbs)
6.2.3. Concord (or agreement)
- concord or agreement – key traditional grammatical notion which relates to the compatibility of two elements in terms of their
grammatical markers (by virtue of inflections carried by at least one of them).
● categories of concord:
a) inflectionally marked in English:
1. number (singular, plural)
2. person (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
3. tense (past, present, future)
4. voice (active, passive)
5. gender (female, male, sexless)
b) not morphologically marked in English:
6. aspect (perfective, imperfective)
7. case (nominative, genitive, accusative)
8. mood (indicative, subjunctive, optative)
Languages with a fixed word order rely less on concord.

6.3. To say or not to say: Perspective grammar

- perspective tradition (don’t split the infinitives)– underlines school grammar instead of describing what language users to do with
language. Now linguists study grammar as the mental knowledge of speakers.

6.4. Grammatical VS. Non grammatical: Descriptive grammar

- purists- think that language should be strictly prescribed in terms of correct grammar
- descriptive approach – the core is to try and categorise the speaker's knowledge of language in terms of grammatical or well-
formed sentences VS. the ungrammatical or the ill-formed
- the aim is to characterise the human language faculty in terms of its structure, to try to explain how a language is used, rather than
describing how it should be used
- grammatical sentences need to be semantically coherent
6.4.1. Chomsky: The man and his 'revolution'
- Noam Chomsky's (father of modern linguistics) book 'Syntactic Structures' – laid down foundations of generative grammars and
the concept of an evaluation procedure as a means of justifying them
- he tried to develop a mathematically precise description of features of language
- proposes linguistics as a discipline that is aimed at discovering the mental principles underlying language
- the goal of linguistics should be to unveil the biologically determined elements that make the human language faculty
- Chomsky aimed at describing not just the product (the performance of natural language), but also the rules governing the
'production of the product' or rather of language; this latter mechanism, seen as part of the human mental endowment, Chomsky
names competence.
6.4.2. Generative grammar
- grammar generates all the sentences of the language
- the sentences of a language are all the well-formed sentences possible (infinite)
- these structures are generated by a set of explicit rules - grammar
defining properties of grammar:
1. will generate all the well formed syntactic structures of the language and fail to generate any ill formed structures
2. the grammar will have a finite number of rules but will be capable of generating and infinite number of well-formed sentences
3. recursiveness – saying that a rule is recursive means saying that a rule can be applied more than once when generating a
structure
4. the grammar needs to be capable of revealing the basis of the semantic relation that can exist between two superficially distinct
sentences, as well as distance between two superficially similar sentences
6.4.3. Individual constituents
N – noun ADJ - adjective
D – article, determiner PREP - preposition
NP – noun ph. PP – prepositional phrase
V – verb ADJP – adjectival phrase
ADV – adverb ADVP – adverbial phrase
VP – verb phrase S - sentence
PRO – pronoun
6.4.4. Growing trees
- constituent structure tree – a diagram used to represent the grammatical (syntactic) structure of a sentence. All the banching
nodes are called nodes. All the rules have recursive (can be repeated many times over and over again) properties which explains
how language is creative in how speakers with finite minds have the ability to pronounce and understand an infinite set of
sentences.

7. Semantics: The meaning of Meaning

Language is a means connecting form and meaning. The study of meaning in a language is known as semantics.
- sign – form + meaning (according to Saussure)
1. the signifier – the sound image
2. the signified – meaning
He highlighted the arbitrariness of the sign any meaning can be associated with any form and that association is fixed by convention.

7.1. What is (not) semantic meaning

Semantics has three key aims: description, explanation and prediction.
- basic meaning – meaning which is communicated using language
- lexical semantics – the branch of semantics that studies the meaning of words, aimed at answering two main challenges:
 a) representing word meaning- lexicography
b) representing interrelationships between meanings- feature analysis
7.2.1. Representing word meaning: Lexicography
Scholars hope that they can propose a general theory of how word meaning should be represented.
- definition – a kind of paraphrase the scope of which is that of making the term being defined easier to understand and use
a) simpler than the term it is used for
b) helpful, useful, clarifying
● most frequent problems with dictionary definitions:
a) obscurity – definitions contain terms that are more complex than the original term
b) circularity - paraphrase employs the same term
c) superfluous components – elements in a definition that actually do not contribute to the definition itself
d) problems of accuracy – inaccurate or too accurate definitions
e) open-endedness – definitions that end with etc., and so on, and similar
The aim of lexicography is the semantic collection and explication of all the words of a language.
7.2.2. Representing how meanings relate in language
- semantic features – semantic properties of words that speakers agree upon, which makes communication possible

● types of lexical relations:

a) synonymy – two or more lexical forms, the meanings of which are very closely related (taxi/cab); collocations – words that tend to
occur together (drop of blood)
b) antonymy – opposite meanings, can be gradable (small/big) and non-gradable (dead/alive)
c) hyponymy – the meaning of one lexical form is included in the meaning of another (dog(hyponym)/animal(superordinate term),
carrot/vegetable)
d) homophony – sound the same, spell differently (bare/bear)
e) homonymy – both written and spoken same, but have different meaning (bank – river bank/financial institution)
f) polysemy – written and spoken the same, have similar meaning (head – can be the thing on top of your body or the top of a glass
od beer or just the top (many contexts))

- semantic field – a cluster of lexical items the meanings of which are somehow related, share many semantic components
- valencies (verb subcategorisation)– a few objects verbs 'select' from the point of view of their meaning (zero- to sleep, one- to find
or two- to put(what and where))
- thematic relations or roles – relations between the agent, patient and location (The boy out the toy in the box.). Other thematic
relations are goal (where the action is directed), instrument (with what is it done) and source (where it originated)

7.3. Cognitive semantics

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the human mind.
- view language in terms of the structure of concepts, is grounded in the premises: language is part of human cognition, linguistic
structure depends on conceptualisation(interaction of cultural, communicative, psychological, functional and neuro-physical
considerations), meaning is what drives language, at the surface level of language the linguistic spectrum is differently partitioned by
different languages, grammar is motivated by semantic considerations.
7.3.1. Psycholinguistics
- psycholinguistics – study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use and understand
language
Psycholinguistics is more oriented toward using psychological methods to solve the issues, whereas cognitive linguistics is still
predominantly a theoretically based approach, which uses linguistic data and large to understand more about the structure of a
language, comparing this to what is known about the structure of the brain.
- prototype theory – the view that categories are graded sets
- fuzzy sets – the sets whose elements have degrees of membership the best example of the set, its central member is called
prototype (around which all members of the category are organised).
Slips of tongue is when we say another phonologically or semantically related sentence(bread and breakfast instead of bed and
breakfast). Tip of the tongue is phenomenon where we look forward that we feel we know but we can't retrieve it.
Meaning is an issue of usage- of what people using a language do with it.

8. Greater than words: Pragmatics

- semiotics – Charles Morris, 1938 – divided the science of signs:
1. syntax – the study of the combinatorial properties of words, or rather the study of the formal relation of signs to one another
2. semantics – the study of meaning, i.e. the relation of signs to the entities to which they are applied
3. pragmatics – the study of the relation of signs to users, i.e. the study of language usage (intended meaning)

● linguistic phenomena studied by pragmatics:

1. violation of semantic rules:
● anomaly – can be understood thanks to context- something semantically uninterpretable can be understood thanks to
some extralinguistic devices (My brother is an only child.)
● metaphor – 'interpretive stretching' of the meaning of the word (Walls have ears.)

● idiomaticity – fixed phrases consisting of more than one word the meaning of which cannot be inferred from the meanings
of individual words, they are frozen in form (We should hit the road.)
2. co(n)text dependency - understanding implied meaning is based on clues that can vote from the text and from the real world in
which the text is situated.

8.2.1. Co(n)text analysis

- context – surrounding text textual (co-text) or surrounding physical situation (context)
- deictic expressions – words that cannot be interpreted without 'access' to surrounding co(n)text, are interpreted the basis of
co-text or physical context
- presupposition – what the speaker assumes is true or known by the hearer

8.3. Speech act theory

Performatives or performative utterances are sentence is which do not describe reporters said anything and the utterance of which
is actually part of doing an act: I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth.
● levels of 'force of words':
1. locution – saying something
- all sentences that begin or can be paraphrased beginning with 'He said that...'
- locutionary act – the act of saying something i.e. uttering something
- phonetic act – uttering certain noises
2. illocution – certain force in saying something, can be paraphrased beginning with ‘He argued that…’
- phatic act – uttering of vocables of words that belong to a certain vocabulary and conform to a certain
grammar
3. perlocution – the achieving of certain effects by saying something, can be paraphrased beginning with ‘He convinced me
dsoisjiogroigsoirjgijgihgiirthat…’
- rhetic act – the act of using vocables from a certain vocabulary with a certain more-or-less definite sense
and reference

- direct speech act – command, request (Pass the salt.)

- indirect speech act – more polite (Do you know the time?)

9. Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis studies how people communicate, instead of investigating single components of language; a method 14 alesis of
connected speech (Harris)
- discourse – a linguistic unit larger than a sentence; can be written or spoken
Differences between spoken and written texts: written text can be erased and recreated, spoken cannot; written text-transactional
view of language, spoken text-interaction of language.
Language serve for communication, social interaction and cognitive growth.
- discourse (text) – a verbal record of a communicative act

- transactional function – used primarily to convey factual or propositional information (transference of information)
- interactional function – involves expressing social relations and personal attitudes

- sentence – largest unit of grammatical organization within which parts of speech and grammatical classes are put together in a
functional way
- utterance – corresponds to what is said by any one person before or after another person begins to speak

- cohesion – ties and connections which exist within the text, explicit links provided within linguistic structure that help build
structure of this course rather than text.
- coherence – something outside the text, it is a term relative to all those 'general', non strictly linguistic kinds of devices that help
build textual structure
In every conventional exchange participants are cooperating with each other.

- cooperative principle – make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which occurs, by the accepted purpose or
direction or the talk exchange in which you are engaged (Gricve)

● the principle has 4 sub principles:

1. maxim of quantity (amount of information)

2. maxim of quality (say the truth)
3. maxim of relation (be relevant)
4. maxim of manner (be perspicuous, avoid obscurity and ambiguity, be brief and orderly)

Information in this course is not randomly spread it is packaged.

- information structure – arrangement of information units within clauses, sentences and texts
- given information – that which addressor believes is known to the addressee
- new information – information that the sdressor believes is not known to the addressee
The most used ways to differentiate given a new in discourse - word order (given, new) and inclination (new is stressed)

10. Sociolinguistics
- sociolinguistics – study of language in relation to society, two key points: the function of language in establishing social relations
and the role of language in conveying information about the speaker- language and culture.
- idiolect – unique characteristics of the language of an individual speaker
- factors: age, gender, educational background, profession, regional and ethnic background
- jargon – a 'special' language, specific and different from standard in terms of terminology, which usually relates to a specific
activity, profession or group
Style- shifting/ code-switching - changing the level of formality depending on the situation.
- slang – very colloquial language, usually connected with particular social groups
- introduces new words to language by: a) recombining old words with new meanings
b) attributing new meanings to old words
c) introducing new words into the language
- dialect – a group of speakers can be differentiated from another (larger) group of speakers in terms of a series of common features
of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation which differ from standard

- accent – individual and/or dialectal differences of pronunciation

- language planning – the activity of a series of governmental bodies in a country which have the task to actively plan linguistic
policy
While within every nation people speak numerous varieties of the language specialised bodies have to decide which of the varieties
is the most appropriate in formal and educational contexts.
- standard language – the most appropriate in formal and educational contexts
- pidgin language – some sort of 'middle ground' lingua franca which developed over time for practical purposes, has no native
speakers
- creole – a language which has a jargon or a pidgin in its ancestry, spoken natively by entire speech community

11. Learning a language or two

- language acquisition – processes involved in mastering the child's first or native language
- language learning – the process involved in mastering a foreign language in adulthood, in non realistic situations

11.1. First language acquisition

● 3 months old – cooing

● 6 months old – booing, babbling

● 9 months old – intonation patterns

● 12 months old – two letter 'words'

● 12 – 18 months old – single unit utterances (holophrastic stage)

● 16 – 20 months old – two word stage

 ● 2 – 2 years – sentence building

- children are born with an innate propensity or rather ability for language acquisition – the theoretical framework based on this
innate propensity is called nativism or innateness

- The Critical Period Hypothesis – the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age

11. 2. Second language acquisition

● grammar translation method

● direct method

● audio lingual method

● the communicative approach

FINAL EXAM

1. MAIN LANGUAGE USAGE

● communication – through language we transfer information

● social interaction – we are able to fully function in society, create social networks, express emotions, understand, respect
and forward both social norms and culture
● cognitive growth – enables us to think about reality from different perspectives, to have imaginary thoughts, to speculate,
to lie

2. GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

It is a major change in pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1200 and 1600 which
marked the separation between Middle and Modern English
- two highest long vowels /i/ and /u/ became diphthongs which caused many changes in pronunciation

3. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UTTERANCE & PERFORMANCE

Language performance (language) is the ability of humans to produce and understand utterances, while utterances (parole), are the
actual sounds humans are able to produce and hear (what is said by any one person before or after another person begins to speak).

4. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEMANTICS & COGNITIVE SEMANTICS

Semantics is the study of the (structure of) meaning in language i.e. the study of the relation of signs to the entities to which they
are applied, while cognitive semantics views language in terms of the structure of concepts.

5. WHAT IS CONCORD? + EXAMPLE

Concord or agreement is a key traditional grammatical notion which relates to the compatibility of two elements in terms of their
grammatical markers (by virtue of inflections carried by at least one of them)
6. LANGUAGE COMPETENCE & PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCE
Language competence is the ability to produce speech utterances, while performance is the act of producing those utterances.