2. The definition of a language as a structure of structures
2.1. Phonetics and phonology
Relevance for studying language in its natural or primary medium: oral sounds rather than written symbols.
Phonic medium: the range of sounds produced by the speech organs insofar as the play a role in language
Speech sounds: Individual sounds within that range
Phonetics is the study of the phonic medium:
The study of the production, transmission, and reception of human sound-making used in speech.
e.g. classification of sounds as voiced vs voiceless:
/b/ vs /p/
Phonology is the study of the phonic medium not in itself but in relation with language.
e.g. application of voice to the explanation of differences within the system of language:
housen vs housev
usen vs usev
2.1.1. Phonetics
It is usually divided into three branches which study the phonic medium from three points of view:
Articulatory phonetics: speech sounds according to the way in which they are produced by the
speech organs.
Acoustic phonetics: speech sounds according to the physical properties of their sound-waves.
Auditory phonetics: speech sounds according to their perception and identification.
Articulatory phonetics has the longest tradition, and its progress in the 19th century contributed a standardize
and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription: the origins of the International Phonetic Alphabet
used today and relying on sound symbols and diacritics.
It studies production in relation with the vocal tract, i.e., organs such as:
lungs
trachea or windpipe, containing: larynx
vocal folds
glottis
pharyngeal cavity
nose
mouth, containing fixed organs:
teeth and teeth ridge
hard palate
pharyngeal wall
mobile organs:
lips
tongue
soft palate
jaw
According to their function and participation, sounds may take several features:
Voice: voiced vs voiceless sounds, according to the participation of the vocal folds
e.g.
/b, d, g, z, v/ vs
/p, t, k, s, f/
Nasality: nasal vs oral sounds, according to the participation of the velum or soft palate
e.g.
/n/ vs /s/
…
Acoustic phonetics examines the physical nature of sounds according to variables like:
sound quality
pitch
loudness
length
Auditory phonetics studies the perception of sounds by hearers based on two mechanisms:
physiological,
psychological
A complete description of a sound should include information concerning all three stages/fields: production
transmission
reception
Speech sounds are classified as:
Consonants or consonantal-type: their articulation requires a closure or narrowing
They can be classified internally according to:
Place of articulation: bilabial
/p, b, m/
labio-dental
/f, v/
dental
/θ, δ/
alveolar
/t, d, l, n, s, z/
retroflex
/r/
palatal
/j/
velar
/k, g, ŋ/
…
Manner of articulation: complete closure
plosive
/p, b, t, d, k, g/
affricate
/t∫/
nasal
/m, n, ŋ /
intermitent closure
roll
/r/
partial closure
lateral
/l/
narrowing
fricative
/f, v, θ, δ, s, z, ∫/
Vowels or vowel-type: their articulation is not accompanied by closure or narrowing
They can be classified internally according to:
Position of soft palate (raised vs lowered)
Opening formed by the lips (rounded vs unrounded)
Part of the tongue raised (front, centre or back) and degree of raising (close, close-mid, openmid, open):
Other vowel-type sounds are:
diphthongs
towards I:
towards u:
thriphthongs towards I:
towards u:
semi-vowels
/a I/
/e I/
/o I/
/a u/
/o u/
/∂ u/
/a I ∂/
/e I ∂/
/o I ∂/
/a u ∂/
/o u ∂/
/∂ u ∂/
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
e.g.
why
play
point
house
low
no
why
play
point
house
low
no
/w, j/
Suprasegmental (prosodic) features: they affect not just a segment, but long stretches of utterances:
stress position
rhythm
intonation
2.1.2. Phonology
Phoneme: the smallest linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning.
Allophone (or phonemic alternant): a variant form of a phoneme where the variation does not alter the unit’s
basic identity.
Language may differ phonologically in respect of:
The number of phonological elements and their inventories,
The syntagmatic relations that determine the phonological well-formedness of possible combinations.
Phonemic analysis studies
sequences longer than phonemes (syllables)
alterations and processes of phonemes in connected speech:
assimilation: progressive
regressive
elision
juncture
…
within a word
at word boundaries
2.2. Morphology
Traditional approach: the form of language based on the notion WORD
A revision:
different types of words:
lexical word
grammatical word
orthographical word
phonological word
a common term difficult to use in technical language
Two concepts arise from this revision:
word-forms: the various forms that a lexeme may take once inflected
e.g.
sing, sings, sang, sung
lexemes: the smallest distinctive units in the lexicon of a language
SING, as in a dictionary entry
e.g.
On these grounds, morphology is then approached as
the study of inflection and derivation in a language
the study of the morphemes of a language
morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language
e.g.
plural number
morph is the actual realization of a morpheme
e.g.
-s for plural number
allomorph (or morphemic alternant) is a variant form of a morpheme where the
variation does not alter the morpheme’s basic identity
e.g.
-s (/s/), -s (/z/), -ee-, …
The realization of morphemes can be bound or free (according to whether they are dependent or independent,
respectively).
The combination of morphemes does not always take place linearly, that is, morphs do not always occur one
after the other, so formal alterations may occur in various degrees:
i) Attachment (with or without morphological change):
Inflectional morphology
go
>
goes
Derivational morphology
touch
>
touchy
Attachment may entail duplication of a final element in the base:
Inflectional morphology
Derivational morphology
stop
>
stopped
cut
>
cutter
iii) Phonological and/or orthograhical change as a result of attachment:
Inflectional morphology
Derivational morphology
bite /bait/
>
bit /bit/
happy /’hæpi/ > happily /’hæpili/
ii) Deletion (with or without phonological change):
Inflectional morphology
bleed
>
bled
Derivational morphology
tragedy
>
tragic
iii) Partial suppletion:
Inflectional morphology
woman
>
women
Derivational morphology
sing
>
song
iv) Complete suppletion (portmanteau morph):
Inflectional morphology
go
>
went
Derivational morphology
good
>
well
v) No morphological (sometimes phonological) change at all (zero morph):
Inflectional morphology
Derivational morphology
set (non-remote)>
set (remote)
goV
>
goN
Morphology is a gradient or scale with the following two extreme fields:
Inflectional morphology
It studies inflections, i.e., affixes whose function is to signal various grammatical relationships of the
same lexeme.
Inflections are usually specific for each word-class, actually word-classes are often defined in
languages using inflectional morphemes as their distinctive criterion:
Nouns inflect for number and case
Verbs inflect for tense, aspect, …
Adjectives and adverbs inflect for degree
Pronouns inflect for case, number, person…
Derivational morphology
It studies derivation, that is, the formation of new lexemes.
Two basic types of lexemes can be considered:
Simple: units with only one constituent and not formed by any word-formation process
Complex: units with more than one constituent and affected by a word-formation process
The major word-formation processes are:
Affixation:
prefixation: an affix precedes the base
e.g.
replace
suffixation: an affix follows the base
e.g.
placement
infixation: an infix sets inside the base (usually in compounds)
e.g.
syntactico-semantic
Conversion: the base is reclassified as a new word-class without formal alteration
e.g.
busv
catchn
Voicing and stress shift may accompany conversion:
e.g.
believe
contrastv
Compounding: one base is added to another to form a new one e.g.
sunrise
(from sun + rise)
Exocentric (bahuvrihi): internal-centred
e.g.
gasworks
Endocentric (dvandva): external-centred
e.g.
gasbag
Blending:
parts of two bases form a new lexeme
e.g.
electrocute
(from electricity and execute)
Back-formation:
a suffix-like ending is deleted from the base
e.g.
edit (from editor)
Shortening: clipping: a part of the base is deleted
e.g.
exam
(from examination)
acronymization: a lexeme is formed with initials:
e.g.
UK
(from United Kingdom)
Acronyms can be pronounced as words (NATO) or as initials (UFO).
…
2.3. Syntax
Syntax is globally concerned with the grammaticality of word-strings: it establishes whether sequences of
words (phrases, clauses, sentences) are built in accordance with the grammar of a language system:
e.g.
*morning this vs
this morning
Syntax studies word-strings, which can be classified as:
Phrase: a sequence of words
typically containing more than one unit
lacking a subject+predicator structure
There are
built around ahead or centre.
noun phrases (NPs)
verb phrases (VPs)
adjective phrases (AdjPs)
adverb phrases (AdvPs)
prepositional phrases (PrepPs)
Clause: a sequence of words
There are
intermediate between a phrase and a sentence
containing a subject+predicator structure
which may be subordinate or not
main clauses (MCls.)
coordinate clauses (CoordCls.)
subordinate clauses (SubCls.)
Sentence: a sequence of words which is the largest structural unit at this level
Which cannot be subordinate
Sentences are thus not linear sequences, but multi-layered sequences. This structure is
brought out by techniques like the Immediate Constituents (ICs) analysis, and its bracketinglabelling.
2.4. Semantics
Semantics as the study of meaning and difficulties in the definition of meaning:
prevailing wrong concepts
previous non-linguistic approaches
hardly any agreement..
A starting point can be that meanings are ideas or concepts which can be transferred from the mind of the
speaker to the mind of the hearer by embodying them, as it were, in the forms of one language or another.
Lexical vs sentence meaning
Lexical meaning
Lexicology (the study of lexicon) and lexicography (the application of the former study to dictionary-making) for
the study of meaning.
The structure of meaning based on the notion of
lexical field
sememe
seme
resulting in a network of meaning features and related concepts.
Syntagmatic relations between lexemes:
Collocations (collocability): recurring, lexically-determined co-occurrence of lexemes
e.g.
make a mistake
do a favour
Idioms: sequences of lexemes whose sum mean differently from the sum of its members
e.g.
to kick the bucket
to spill the beans
Paradigmatic relations between lexemes:
Synonymy
Two lexemes with two different forms and one meaning
Antonymy
Polysemy
Homonymy
Hyponymy
Meronymy
e.g.
different – dissimilar
Two lexemes with two different forms and opposite meanings
e.g.
different – equal
One lexeme with several senses of one meaning
e.g.
old – not new
– not young
Two lexemes with one form and two unrelated meanings
e.g.
bank – bank
Total homonymy involves orthographical and phonological form as above.
Partial homonymy can be
homography (same orthographical form)
e.g.
lead - lead
homophony (same phonological form)
e.g.
air – heir
Two lexemes with two forms and related meanings such that
one (hyponym) is general
e.g.
animal
the other (hypernym) is specific
e.g.
dog
Two lexemes with two forms such that
one (holonym) denotes a whole element
e.g.
computer
the other (meronym) denotes a part of it
e.g.
screen
Sentence meaning
It takes the study of meaning beyond the traditional sphere of just lexemes: the meaning of a sentence
depends on the meaning of the lexemes and of the grammatical elements which operate on those lexemes:
e.g.
The dog bit the post man
vs
The postman bit the dog
Sentence meaning = Lexical meaning + Grammatical meaning
2.5. Pragmatics
Pragmatics studies the function or action that language performs in the domains of social interaction
Speech acts: communicative activities defined with reference to the intentions of a speaker
the effects achieved on the listener
As we study speech acts and their contexts, we move away from the meaning or grammar of sentences and
approach the meaning of text and discourse, namely the domains of pragmatics.
Grammar
Declarative sentence
Interrogative sentence
Imperative sentence
Exclamative sentence
Pragmatics
Statement
Question
Directive
Exclamation
So pragmatics is the study of the principles governing the communicative use of language
from the point of the users (their choices and constraints)
from the point of view of the effects achieved
Speech acts can be divided into:
Locutionary act:
The act of saying something
e.g.
I’ll kill you!
Illocutionary act:
Perlocutionary act:
The act performed in saying something
e.g.
It is a threat
The act performed by or as a result of saying something
e.g.
It obtains apologies from the threatened person
The basic unit of study is the utterance, defined as the stretch of speech typically followed and preceded by a
silence, or any stretch of speech about which no assumptions have been made in terms of linguistic theory.