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DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS
Arranged by:
Novi Fitri Puspitasari
S200130048
DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS
Novi Fitri Puspitasari
S200130048
Graduate Program of Language Study, Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta, 2015, Surakarta
novifitripuspitasari0808@gmail.com
Abstract
Language is one of the most important and characteristic forms of human behavior. Language
cannot be separated from humans live because it is used to connect society. One approach has,
however, received little attention until very recently: descriptive linguistics. Descriptive
linguistics provides analyses of the grammars of languages. In defining classes and assigning
rules in language based on a structural analysis of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and
semantic of a language, it proceeds objectively, showing how important features of language
in relation to each other. The aim of this paper is to understand more about the descriptive
linguistics and about how phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantic become the key to
know how language works. Because of it, the writer has an eager to know why the descriptive
linguistics is crucial in human behavior as it used to connect in the society.
Keywords: descriptive linguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic
A. Introduction
Language cannot be separated from humans live because it is used to connect society.
People can also describe their ideas, feelings, and desire to other people using the
language. Siahaan (2008:3) states that language is a unique human inheritance that plays
the very important role in humans live, such as in thinking, communicating ideas, and
negotiating with the others. One approach has, however, received little attention until very
recently: descriptive linguistics.
In writing this paper, the writer sees that descriptive linguistics is one of the important
aspects in the linguistics field. Descriptive linguistics itself is a discipline in which the
principles of linguistics, or the scientific study of language, are presented through
description of one language. It is a required course for many disciplines, in that it
combines understanding of the technical materials of language (phonemes, morphemes,
syntax, semantic, etc.) with critical thinking skills that are universally appreciated.
Descriptive linguistics aims to provide an understanding of language by analyzing it in
its various uses. Descriptive linguists deal with one language at a time, such as
contemporary English, Chinese, or Japanese (Lehmann, 1976:15).
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The aim of this paper is to understand more about the descriptive linguistics and about
how phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantic become the key to know how language
works. Because of it, the writer has an eager to know why the descriptive linguistics is
crucial in human behavior as it used to connect in the society.
B. Descriptive Linguistics
Descriptive linguistics is one of the branches of micro linguistics that study on how to
describe the language as it is at a certain time. Descriptive linguistics provides analyses of
the grammars of languages. It also means by the study of how language is constructed. For
example, the writer wants to go to China and people there instead of English, Chinese
people usually speak Mandarin, so the writer needs to know about Mandarin so that the
writer can understand what the Chinese people are talking about. According to Gleason
(1961:11),
Using the phoneme and the morpheme as their basic units, linguists have been able
to build a comprehensive theory of the expression side of language, and to make
detailed and comprehensive statements about the expression systems of specific
languages. This is what is ordinarily called descriptive linguistics.
Descriptive linguistics can be divided into four parts; phonetic and phonology,
morphology, syntax, and semantic.
1. Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics and phonology are related, dependent fields for studying aspects of
language. Phonetics is the study of sound in speech; phonology is the study (and use)
of sound patterns to create meaning. Phonetics focuses on how speech is physically
created and received, including study of the human vocal and auditory tracts,
acoustics, and neurology. Phonology relies on phonetic information for its practice, but
focuses on how patterns in both speech and non-verbal communication create
meaning, and how such patterns are interpreted. Phonology includes comparative
linguistic studies of how cognates, sounds, and meaning are transmitted among and
between human communities and languages.
According to Hayes (2007:2), phonetics studies speech sounds in ways that are
close to speech stream, focusing on production, acoustics, and perception. Phonetics is
the study of actual sounds of human languages, their production and their perception.
According to Weda (2012:23), one of things that everybody knows about language is
that they have different accents. Languages have different accents: they are
speech sound or sign which distinguish the words of a language. Phonetics, on the
other hand, concerns itself with the production, transmission, and perception of the
physical phenomena which are abstracted in the mind to constitute these speech
sounds or signs.
1.1. IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In principle this alphabet is designed to
give an accurate written transcription of sounds, one that is uniform for all
languages. Since the IPA is an international standard, it is vital that one
understands how it works (and can read or write using it). The complete set of
symbols is rather complex, but luckily one does not have to know all of it
(Kracht, 2003:13-14).
Figure 1. The International Phonetic Alphabet (Consonant)
Figure 3.
IPA
consonant
row labels
Vowels:
A speech sound created by the relatively free passage of breath through the
larynx and oral cavity, usually forming the most prominent and central sound of a
syllable. Vowels are distinguished on the basis of Height and Backness. The
IPA diagram resembles the place of articulation of the vowels.
Figure 4. The International Phonetic Alphabet (Vowel)
Figure 5.
column
on its own. However, stick it in front of the letters 'oes' and you have the word
'shoes.'
The phoneme paradigm constituting the phonological system of a given
language makes part of the native speaker's competence. It makes it possible for
him to expect certain types of constructions and recognize certain physical
differences of sounds (Sajavaara, 2001:243).
1.3. Phones and allophones
According to Yule (2006:45), phones are phonetic units and appear in
square brackets. According to Radford (2009:77) said that the two variants [p ph]
of the phoneme /p/ are allophones of the phoneme. In other words a phoneme
may be realised by more than one speech sound and the selection of each variant
is usually conditioned by the phonetic environment of the phoneme. The term
allophone is based on Greek expression meaning different sound.
For example:
/ (e.g. /t/
functional morphemes are: and, but, when, because, in, near, above, in, the, that,
it, them. So functional morphemes is a set consists largely of the functional
words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns
(Yule, 2006:64).
2.4. Derivation and inflectional morphemes
Lehmann (1976:125) stated that,
In some languages parts of words belonging to one class, such as nouns or
verbs, may be modified consistently according to sets. In English, for
example, verbs may be modified by the addition of a suffix in the third
singular present, for example, sees; by a change in the stem in the past, for
example, saw; or by the addition of a suffix in the past participle, for
example, seen, and in the gerund, for example, seeing. In this way English
verb consists of sets of five forms, often called the infinitive; the third
singular present, the past, the past participle, and the gerund.
Besides free morphemes, bound morphemes can also be divided into two
types; derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes. According to
Yule (2006:64), derivational morphemes are to make new words or to make
words of a different grammatical category from the stem. For example, the
addition of the derivational morpheme ness changes the adjective good to the
noun goodness. And inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words
in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a
word (Yule, 2006:64). For example,
Jims two sisters are really different.
One likes to have fun and is always laughing.
The other liked to read as a child and has always taken things seriously.
One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quitter than a mouse.
For example above, the writer can see that two of the inflections, -s (possessive)
and s (plural), are attached to nouns. There are four inflection attached to verbs,
-s (3rd person singular), -ing (present participle), -ed (past tense) and en (past
participle). There are two inflections attached to adjectives:-est (superlative) and
er (comparative). In English, all the inflectional morphemes are suffixes (Yule,
2006:65).
2.5. Morphological description
The writer can now take most sentences of English apart and list all the
elements. For example, in sentence The childs wildness shocked the teachers,
the writer can identify eleven morphemes.
The
child
-s
wild
-ness
10
Functional
shock
lexical
-s
Inflectional
lexical
-ed
inflectional
inflectional
the
functional
lexical
teach
lexical
derivational
-er
derivational
Structural
ambiguity (2)
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3.5. Recursion
Rules can be applied more than once in generating sentence. E.g. repeat
prepositional phrase more than once. The gun was on the table near the window
in the bedroom in the pink house. And put sentences inside sentences. This is the
cat that ate the rat that ate the cheese that was sold by the man that lived in the
city that was on the river .. No end to recursion-produce longer complex
sentences.
3.6. Phrase structure rules
According to Yule (2006:91), phrase structure rules is the structure of
phrase of a specific type will consist of one or more constituents in a particular
order. Some words seem to belong together. For example, {The crazy man} {is
jumping off the bridge}. Groups of words that belong together are called
constituents. The component that determines the properties of the constituent is
the head, and the constituent can be referred ro as a phrase (e.g. noun phrase).
Yule (2006:92) said that,
The first rule in the following simple phrase structure rules stated that a
sentence rewrites a noun phrase and a verb phrase. The second rules stated
that a noun phrase rewrites as an article, an optional adjective and a noun or a
pronoun or a proper noun.
S
NP VP
NP {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
VP V NP (PP) (Adv)
PP Prep NP
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People can rely on these rules to generate the grammatical sentences 1-7
below, but not the ungrammatical sentences 8-10.
As a way of visualizing how the phrase structure rules form the basis of
these sentences, can be draw the tree diagram for sentence 7.
3.8.
Complement phrases
The word that as used in this example John believed that Catchy knew that
Mary helped George, is called a complementizer (C). The role of that as a
complementizer is to introduce a complement phrase (CP) (Yule, 2006:93). For
example in the sentence Catchy knew that Mary helped George, the writer can
identify one CP which contains that plus Mary helped George. It is obviously
that Mary helped George is a sentence (S). So, the writer now in a position to
define a CP in the following way: a complement phrase rewrites as a
complementizer and a sentence, or
the same sentence that the complement phrase (CP) comes after a verb (V) knew.
This means that it is using the CP as part of a verb phrase (VP), as in knew that
Mary helped George. So, there must be another rule that says: a verb phrase
rewrites as a verb and complement phrase, or VPV CP (Yule, 2006:94).
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3.9.
Transformational rules
Phrase structure rules represent deep structure- always generates structures
with fixed word order.
Mary saw George recently
Recently Mary saw George
Transformational rules means take a specific part and attach it in another
place.
You will help Cathy
Will you help Cathy?
4.
Semantic
Semantics
(as the
study
of
meaning)
is
central to the study of communication. Semantics is also at the centre of the study of
the human mind. Semantic is the study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
Semantics as one branch of linguistics parallels to and interact with syntax and
phonology. If syntax and phonology study the structure of expressive possibilities in
language, semantics studies the meanings that can be expressed. So, semantics is a
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4.2.
Semantic
Words
roles
are
described according to the roles they fulfill with the situation described in a
sentence.
The boy kicked the ball
Verb indicates action
Boy performs the action= agent
Ball undergoes the action= theme
The NPs describe the role of entities (people or things) involved in the action, i.e.
they have certain semantic (or thematic) roles.
Agent= the entity that performs the action
Theme= the entity that undergoes the action
Experiencer= one who perceives something
Instrument= an entity used to perform an action
Location= the place where the action happens
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meaning
Antonymy: words that are opposites in meaning, e.g. hot & cold.
Hyponymy: Words whose meanings are specific instances of a more general
word, i.e. one thing is included (kind of) in another thing. E.g. cats and dogs
C. Conclusion
Descriptive linguistics is the study how language is constructed. Descriptive linguistics
can be divided into four parts; phonetic and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic, and
pragmatic.
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Phonetics focuses on how speech is physically created and received, including study of
the human vocal and auditory tracts, acoustics, and neurology. Phonology is the study of
how the sounds in a language are used. A phoneme is a sound or set sounds that makes a
difference in the meaning of a language. Morphology is study of how sound sequences
have meaning. With this, a morph is the smallest unit of sound that has meaning. Syntax is
the way in which are arranged to form sentences and phrases. The last is semantic.
Semantic is the study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
References
Gleason, Henry Allan. 1961. An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics. Toronto: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Siahaan, Sanggam. 2008. Issues in Lingusitics. Graha Ilmu, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Weda, Sukardi. 2012. Stress Shifts of English Utterances Made by Indonesian Speakers of
English (ISE).
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijel/article/view/18221/12086
Accessed at 12.21 a.m. March, 22th 2015
Roach, Peter. 1987. English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Sajavaara, Kari. 2001. Finnish-English Phonetics and Phonology. IJES, vol. I, 2001, pp.
241-256. http://revistas.um.es/ijes/article/download/47781/45771. Accessed at
5.26 p.m. March, 22th, 2015
Morley, G. David. 2000. Syntax in Functional Grammar: An introduction to
lexicogrammar in systemic linguistics. Continuum, London
Poole, Stuart C. 1999. An Introduction to Linguistics. Palgrave Publisher Ltd., New York
Lehmann, Winfred Philipp. 1976. Descriptive Linguistics. Random House Inc., Canada,
Toronto
Yule, George. 2006. The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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