Linguistics is the systematic study of human language that lies at the crossroads of the humanities and social sciences. It combines intuition and scientific approaches to analyze language. Linguistics includes the study of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. It examines the sound systems of languages, word and sentence formation, meaning, and how context impacts language use. The goal is to describe and explain patterns in language.

1. Linguistics
• is systematic study of human language
• lies at the crossroads of the humanities
Introduction to Linguistics and the social sciences
• combines intuition and scientific
Down, dirty, quick approaches to analyze language
Linguists Branches of Linguistics
• are not polyglots—do not study various • Phonetics (production of sounds)
languages in order to speak them • Phonology (the use of sounds)
• Morphology (word formation)
• are not translators
• Syntax (sentence and phrase formation)
• are interested in areas including cognitive • Semantics (meaning)
psychology, philosophy, logic, literature, • Pragmatics (effect of situation)
computer science, and anthropology • Other
• describe and explain language and are not – Theoretical Linguistics, Historical Linguistics,
Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics, Applied
concerned with the prescriptive rules of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics,
the language (i.e., do not split infinitives) Neurolinguistics, Anthropological Linguistics…
Linguistics Circle Phonetics
• study of the production and perception of
speech sounds
• concerned w/sounds of language, how these
sounds are articulated and how the hearer
perceives them.
• three sub-disciplines of phonetics:
– Articulatory Phonetics: the production of speech
sounds
– Acousitc Phonetics: the study of the physical
production and transmission of speech sounds
– Auditory Phonetics: the study of the perception of
speech sounds
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2. Phonology Lynn isn’t in love with phonology. . .
• study of the sound patterns of language
• concerned with how sounds are organized in a
language
• examines
– what occurs to speech sounds when they are
combined to form a word
– how these speech sounds interact with each other
• endeavors to explain what these phonological
processes are in terms of formal rules.
Where/Why does [ ] rise across
. . .but some of it is important to AmE
the country?
• Not all varieties of a language have the
same phonemic inventory:
– Mary, merry, marry
– cot, caught; tot, taught
• or, if they do have the same phonemic
inventory, they don’t have the same
allophonic alternations
Simple Vowels
Sounds into writing rules. . . IPA Chart
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3. It gets worse. . . .
. . .see what I mean?
simple English vowels
Morphology Morphology
• studies word formation and structure • dog, dogs, bulldog
• Studies
– how words are put together from their smaller parts
– rules governing this process • walk, walks, walked, walking, moonwalk
• elements that are combining to form words are
called morphemes
• morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning you • red, reddish, redden, reddens, redder
can have in a language
– cats, for example, contains the morphemes cat and
the plural -s
Morphemes …or looked at another way
• Dog 1 morpheme
• Dogs 2 morphemes dog + -s [pl]
• Bulldog 2 morphemes bull + dog
• Walk 1 morpheme walk
• Walks 2 morphemes walk + -s [3rd per sing.]
• Walked 2 morphemes walk = -ed [past tense]
• Red 1 morpheme red
• Reddish 2 morphemes red + -ish [deriv. adj]
• Redder 2 morphemes red + -er [comparative]
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4. Morphemes: base, root, free,
Phonology vs. Morphology
bound, inflectional, derivational. . .
• Derivational • Inflectional
Phonemes Morphemes – change the meaning of – do not change the
a morpheme meaning
/b/ + /e/ (2 phonemes) /be/ = bay (1 morpheme) – Change the part of – Do not change the
speech of a part of speech of a
morpheme morpheme
/pat/ + /s/ = pots (2
/p/ + /a/ + /t/ + /s/ (4 phonemes) – can be prefixes or – strictly provide
morphemes)
suffixes grammatical
/e/ (1 phoneme) /e/ = a (1 morpheme) • Prefix: un-, in- – Always suffixes
• Suffix: -ly, -ness
/t/ + /i/ + /ch/ + /U/ + /r/ (5 /tich/ + /Ur/ = teacher (2
phonemes) morphemes)
Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with verbs:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense]
Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with verbs: • Go with verbs:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks – -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks
– -ed [past tense]
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5. Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with verbs: • Go with verbs:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks – -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks
– -ed [past tense] drank – -ed [past tense] drank
– -ing [progressive]
Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with verbs: • Go with verbs:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks – -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks
– -ed [past tense] drank – -ed [past tense] drank
– -ing [progressive] [is] drinking – -ing [progressive] [is] drinking
– -en [perfective participle]
Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with verbs: • Go with verbs:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks – -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks
– -ed [past tense] drank – -ed [past tense] drank
– -ing [progressive] [is] drinking – -ing [progressive] [is] drinking
– -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk – -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk
• Go with adjectives:
– -er [comparative]
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6. Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with verbs: • Go with verbs:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks – -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks
– -ed [past tense] drank – -ed [past tense] drank
– -ing [progressive] [is] drinking – -ing [progressive] [is] drinking
– -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk – -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk
• Go with adjectives: • Go with adjectives:
– -er [comparative] bloodier – -er [comparative] bloodier
– -est [superlative]
Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with verbs: • Go with nouns:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks – -s [plural]
– -ed [past tense] drank
– -ing [progressive] [is] drinking
– -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk
• Go with adjectives:
– -er [comparative] bloodier
– -est [superlative] bloodiest
Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with nouns: • Go with nouns:
– -s [plural] vampires – -s [plural] vampires
– -’(s) [possessive]
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7. Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with nouns: • Go with nouns:
– -s [plural] vampires – -s [plural] vampires
– -’(s) [possessive] vampire’s – -’(s) [possessive] vampire’s
– ‘s’ [plural possessive]
Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9
inflectional morphemes inflectional morphemes
• Go with nouns: • Go with verbs:
– -s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks
– -s [plural] vampires – -ed [past tense] drank
– -ing [progressive] [is] drinking
– -’(s) [possessive] vampire’s
– -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk
– -s’ [plural possessive] vampires’ • Go with adjectives:
– -er [comparative] bloodier
– -est [superlative] bloodiest
• Go with nouns:
– -s [plural] vampires
– -’(s) [possessive] vampire’s
– ‘s’ [plural possessive] vampires’
Put another way: Mod AmE Verbs Derivational? Too many to list…
• Change meaning • Change part of speech:
– Re- – picture (N) + esque =
Verbs • reorganize, restate, picturesque (ADJ)
remark, reconvene, – sing (V) + er = singer (N)
Regular Irregular repaint, retry, return. . .
– quiet (ADJ) + ly = quietly
– -ness (ADV)
Add regular endings: Add some endings, • creativeness, laziness,
– vaccine (N) + ate =
-s present, 3rd person singular Change vowels expressiveness,
courtliness…
vaccinate (V)
-ed past tens Stay regular
– Un- – tall (ADJ) + ness = tallness
(N)
love be • undo, unpaid,
laugh sing unadverturous, – migrate (V) + ory =
smile write unadvisedly,unaerated, migratory (ADJ)
unaffected…
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8. Put this much together and you
Phonology vs. Morphology have….syllable and word!
Phonemes Morphemes
• Syllable: organized sequence of sounds
/b/ + /e/ (2 phonemes) /be/ = bay (1 morpheme)
• Word: [hard one!] unit of language, mostly
/pat/ + /s/ = pots (2 w/meaning and morphemes
/p/ + /a/ + /t/ + /s/ (4 phonemes)
morphemes)
/e/ (1 phoneme) /e/ = a (1 morpheme)
/t/ + /i/ + /ch/ + /U/ + /r/ (5 /tich/ + /Ur/ = teacher (2
phonemes) morphemes)
Word Formation Word Formation
fan (fanatic) NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency)
TESOL (Teachers of English as a Second
lab (laboratory) Language)
fax (facsimile) AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome)
ASAP
phone (telephone)
Acronyms: creating a word from initials
Clipping: reducing a word to one of its
parts
Word Formation Word Formation
edit editor Xerox
Kleenex
peddle peddler
Band-aid
enthuse enthusiasm Sandwich
shevelled dishevelled (Bill Bryson’s word)
Back Formation: new form from Eponyms: derived from proper name of a
removing prefixes/suffixes person or place
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9. Word Formation Word Formation
motel = motor + hotel petite, genre (from French)
smog = smoke + fog karaoke (from Japanese)
brunch = breakfast + lunch tea, tofu (from Chinese)
camcorder = camera + recorder salsa (from. . .guess where?)
Blending: formed from parts of other words Borrowing: aka: we don’t have the word so
squished together we’ll just steal it
Syntax (Lynn likes this area) Underlying? Transformational?
• study of sentence structure • underlying structure of English for example
• attempts to describe what is grammatical would have a subject-verb-object sentence
order
in a particular language in term of rules
– S V [O]
• rules detail an underlying structure and a – John hit the ball
transformational process • transformational process would allow an
alteration of the word order
– could have something like The ball was hit by
John
Sentence: The students attended
Syntax gets interesting when
class
• Start using it for practical purposes such as
natural language generation
• Attribute-Value Grammar tree for Mary chased
John.
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10. Put this much together and you
have….clause and phrase!
Semantics
• Clause: unit of language w/subject and • study of meaning (loaded statement!)
verb marked for tense • concerned with describing
• Phrase: unit of language similar to clause – how we represent the meaning of a word in
but lacking either subject, verb, or tense our mind
marker – how we use this representation in
constructing sentences
• based largely on the study of logic in
philosophy
Pragmatics & Speech Acts Lynn really likes pragmatics…
• study of the ability of natural language • Pragmatics depends on
speakers to communicate more than that – the speaker
which is explicitly stated – the addressee
– other features of the context of utterance,
• includes social uses of language:
such as the following:
– eye contact, turn taking in conversation, use • effect that the following have on the speaker’s
of appropriate words in social conversation, choice of expression and the addressee’s
taking the perspective of the listener, interpretation of an utterance:
– Context of utterance
understanding and appropriately using body – Generally observed principles of communication
language and expressions – The goals of the speaker
Pragmatics depends on implicature H. P. Grice & Cooperative Principle
• refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even • quot;Make your contribution such as it is
though not expressed nor strictly implied (that is,
entailed) by the utterance.
required, at the stage at which it occurs,
– quot;Mary had a baby and got married“ by the accepted purpose or direction of the
– strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the talk exchange in which you are engaged.quot;
wedding
– …but would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby
after she got married. • cooperative principle describes—doesn’t
– Further, if we add the qualification quot;— not necessarily
in that orderquot; to the original sentence, then the
prescribe—how people interact with one
implicature is cancelled even though the meaning of another
the original sentence is not altered.
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11. H. P. Grice & Maxims Pragmatics rather like Rhetoric
• Maxim of Quality—Truth • Language • Language used to
– Do not say what you believe to be false.
– Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. intentionally used persuade people
• Maxim of Quantity—Information • Concerned w/spoken • Classically concerned
– Make your contribution as informative as is required for the
current purposes of the exchange. language w/spoken language
– Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
• Concerned w/speech • Concerned w/
• Maxim of Relation—Relevance
– Be relevant. acts: – Invention, delivery,
• Maxim of Manner—Clarity – convince, judge, arrangement, style,
– Avoid obscurity of expression. (quot;Eschew obfuscationquot;) defend. . . memory
– Avoid ambiguity. (quot;Espouse elucidationquot;)
– Be brief. (quot;Avoid unnecessary prolixityquot;) • Descriptive • Prescriptive
– Be orderly.
Another quickie comparison
• Pragmatics • Rhetoric
– Boast, celebrate, – Ethos: purpose is to
praise make the hearer trust
speaker
– argue, motivate, – Logos: purpose is to
exemplify use argument to
persuade
– disparage, belittle, – Pathos: purpose is to
praise, accuse, annoy stir emotions
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