Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Course description
This course introduces the student to a general description of the study of language and
its implication for the TEFL/TESL classroom. The course introduces approaches to the
study of language, the use of language in communication, aspects of linguistics, and
other disciplines related to linguistics. This course is also designed to introduce aspects
of the English language, the patterns and development of the language, and other
‘Englishes’, esp. American English. It provides students also with insights into the
classification of languages and history of linguistics.
CONTENTS
A. Language and Linguistics
1. What language is
Language as system ◊ arbitrary ◊ vocal ◊ symbol ◊ human ◊
communication
2. Other definitions
B. Language in Communication
1. Nonlinguistic human communication
Paralanguage ◊ Kinesics ◊ Proxemics
2. The design features of human language
C. Aspects of Linguistics
1. Phonetics and phonology
2. Morphology
3. Syntax
4. Semantics
D. Linguistics and Other Disciplines
1. Psycholinguistics
Language Acquisition ◊ Speech perception ◊ Aphasia and
Neurolinguistics
2. Sociolinguistics
Social dimensions
3. Other Relationships
Anthropological linguistics ◊ Computational linguistics ◊
Mathematical linguistics
Stylistics ◊ Philosophy of language ◊ Applied linguistics
E. The English Language
1. Aspects of the Language
Vocabulary ◊ Spelling Phonemes ◊ Stress, Pitches, and Juncture ◊
Inflection
2. Development of the Language
Old English ◊ Middle English ◊ Modern English ◊ 20th-Century
English Periods
3. American/Canadian English
Patterns of American English ◊ Regional Dialects ◊ Social/Cultural
Dialects ◊ Black English ◊ Development of American English
4. Other Englishes
Australian and New Zealand English ◊ India-Pakistan ◊ African
English
F. Languages of the World
1. Language Classification
Indo-European ◊ Asian and Pacific ◊ African ◊ the Americas ◊
Pidgin and Creole
2. International Languages
G. History of linguistics
1. Earlier History
Non-Western traditions ◊ Greek and Roman antiquity ◊ The
European Middle Ages
2. The 19th Century
Development of the comparative method ◊ The role of analogy
3. The 20th Century
Structuralism ◊ Transformational grammar ◊ Tagmemic,
stratificational, and others
Foundation of Linguistics
L inguistics is the scientific study of language. The word was first used in
the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the difference between a
newer approach to the study of language that was then developing and the
more traditional approach of philology. The differences were and are largely
matters of attitude, emphasis, and purpose. The philologist is concerned
primarily with the historical development of languages as it is manifest in
written texts and in the context of the associated literature and culture. The
linguist, though he may be interested in written texts and in the development of
languages through time, tends to give priority to spoken languages and to the
problems of analyzing them as they operate at a given point in time.
The terms microlinguistics and macrolinguistics are not yet well established,
and they are, in fact, used here purely for convenience. The former refers to a
narrower and the latter to a much broader view of the scope of linguistics.
According to the microlinguistic view, languages should be analyzed for their
own sake and without reference to their social function, to the manner in which
they are acquired by children, to the psychological mechanisms that underlie
the production and reception of speech, to the literary and the aesthetic or
communicative function of language, and so on. In contrast, macrolinguistics
embraces all of these aspects of language. Various areas within
macrolinguistics have been given terminological recognition: psycholinguistics,
sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, dialectology, mathematical and
computational linguistics, and stylistics.
1. What language is
Language as system
The key term in the above definition is system. It is also the most difficult term
to discuss. We may observe that a language must be systematic, for otherwise
it could not be learned or used consistently. However, we must also ask in
what ways a language is systematic. A very basic observation is that each
language contains two systems rather than one, a system of sounds and a
system of meanings. Only certain sounds are used by speakers of any
language and only certain combinations of these sounds are poss ible. The
sound system of a language allows a small number of sounds to be used over
and over again in various combinations to form units of meaning. The meaning
system allows these units of meaning to be arranged in an infinite number of
ways to express both simple and complicated ideas.
All languages have dual system of sounds and meanings. Linguists concern
themselves not only with characteristics of the two systems but also with how
the systems relate to each other within one overall linguistic system f or a
particular language.
Language as arbitrary
The term arbitrary in the definition does not mean that everything about
language is unpredictable, for languages do not vary in every possible way. It
means that we cannot predict exactly which specific feat ures we will find in a
particular language if we unfamiliar with that language or a related language.
There will be no way of predicting what a word means just from hearing it of
knowing in advance whether or how nouns will be inflected. If languages were
completely unpredictable in their systems, we could not even talk about nouns,
verbs, vowels, etc. at all. Linguistic systems are not completely unpredictable.
The process of deletion, e.g., I could have gone and Peter could have gone
too; I could have gone and Peter could have too; I could have gone and Peter
too., will also be found in all languages, but a particular variation will depend
on the language. All languages will have devices for negation. Language is
unpredictable only in the sense that the variations of the processes that are
employed are unpredictable.
The things which are predictable about all languages are called linguistic
universals. For example, all languages seem to be characterized as systems of
rules of certain kinds. All have nouns and verbs. All have consonants and
vowels. The specifics for each language are however largely unpredictable and
therefore arbitrary.
Language as vocal
The term vocal in the definition refers to the fact that the primary medium of
language is sound, and it is sound for all languages, no matter how well
developed are their writing systems. All the evidence we have confirms the fact
that writing is based on speaking. Writing systems are attempts to capture
sounds and meanings on paper.
Writing undeniably influences speaking. An insistence on the vocal basis of
language is an insistence on the importance of the historical and
developmental primacy of speech over writing and therefore a denial of the
common misunderstanding that speech is a spoken form of writing .
Language as symbol
The term of symbol refers to the fact that there is no connection or at least in a
few cases only a minimal connection between the sounds that people use and
the objects to which these sounds refer. Language is a symbolic system, a
system in which words are associated with objects, ideas, and actions by
convention. In only a few cases is there some direct representational
connection between a word and some phenomenon in the real world.
Onomatopoeic words like bang, crash, and roar are examples from English,
although the meanings of these words would not be at all obvious to speakers
of other languages. Some writers claimed that English words beginning with sl
and sn as in slime, slut, snarl, snob are used to denote a variety of unpleasant
things. In much the same way the vowel sound in twig and bit is said to be
associated with small things and the sounds in huge and moose with large
things. However, once again we are in an area of subjectivity, as
counterexamples are not difficult to find, e.g., sleep, snug, hill, and spoon.
Language as human
The term human refers to the fact that the kind of system that interests us is
possessed only by human beings and is very different from the communication
systems that other forms of life possess. Language is uniquely human in
another aspect. People can perform acts with language just as they can with
objects of different kinds. A sentence like I pronounce you husband and wife
can all be acts (performatives) because saying something in the right
circumstances is also doing something beyond making noises.
Language as communication
2. Other definitions
Language is a system of arbitrary, vocal symbols which permits all people in a given
culture, or other people who have learned the system of that culture, to communicate or
to interact. (Finocchiaro 1974: 3)
Language is defined as the set of all possible sentences and the grammar of a
language as the rules which distinguish between sentences and non -
sentences. (Green 1972: 25)
Speech is human activity that varies without assignable limit as we pass from
social group, because it is a purely historical heritage of the group, the product
of long-continued social usage. It varies as all creative effort varies – not as
consciously, perhaps, but none the less as truly as do the religions, the beliefs,
the customs, and the arts of different peoples. Walking is an organic, and
instinctive, function (not, of course, itself an instinct); speech is a non -
instinctive, acquired, “cultural” function. (Sapir 1921:4)
Linguistics has but one proper subject -- the language system viewed in its
own light and for its own sake. (Allen and Corder, ed., 1975:148)
Linguistics is the study of human speech including the units, nature, structure,
and modification of language. (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary 1981:664)
Linguistics is the science that describes and classifies languages. The linguist
identifies and describes the units and patterns of the sound sy stem, the words
and morphemes and the phrases and sentences, that is, the structure of a
language. (Lado 1964:18)
Linguistics is the field of study the subject of which is language. Linguists
study language as man’s ability to communicate, as individual ex pression, as
the common heritage of a speech community, as spoken sound, as written text,
etc. (Hartman & Stork 1972:132)
B. Language in Communication
Paralanguage
Kinesics
In North American culture, they move their heads up and down to agree and
sideways to disagree. In the Semang people thrust the head forward expresses
agreement, and in the Ovibundu people shake a hand in front of the face with
the forefinger extended expresses negation. When the American meet people,
they greet them by nodding, shaking hands, clasping arms, kissing, or
embracing. They do not greet each other by buffeting the other’s head with a
fist like the Copper Eskimo, or with the backslapping routine of Spanish
American, or with the embracing and mutual back-rubbing of certain
Polynesian peoples.
Proxemics
Proxemics is the study of how people use the space between speakers and
listeners in the process of communication. Comfortable distances exists for
various activities and these distances must be learned. There are appropriate
distances for talking to friends, for communicating with strangers, for
addressing superiors.
The linguist and anthropologist Charles Hockett has pointed out that human
language has certain design features that no syst em of animal communication
possesses. The features are as follows:
1. Duality, the fact that it contains two subsystems, one of sounds and the
other of meanings;
2. Productivity, the fact that language provides opportunities for sending and
receiving messages that have never been sent/received before and for
understanding novel messages;
3. Arbitrariness, the fact that there is almost no predictability in many of its
characteristics and there is almost never any connection between symbol
and object;
4. Interchangeability, the fact that any human being can be both a producers
and a receiver of messages;
5. Displacement, the fact that language can be used to refer to real or
imagined matters in the past, present, or future. It can even be used to talk
about language itself;
6. Specialization, the fact that communicating organisms should not have a
total physical involvement in the act of communication. They should not
have to stop what they are doing to make a response, nor should the
response be totally determined by stimulus. Human beings can talk while
engaged in activities totally unrelated to the subject under discussion;
7. Cultural transmission, the fact that the details of linguistic system must be
learned anew by each speaker. They are not biologically transmitted from
generation to generation;
8. Discreteness, the fact that language makes use of discrete elements, e.g .,
phonemes and morphemes, not continuous waves – it is digital, not analog;
9. Reflexiveness, the fact that we can use language to talk about language –
language is its own metalanguage;
10. Semanticity, the fact that language is about something – it is not just
“sound and fury” but has a content; and
11. Prevarication, the fact that language can be used to tell falsehoods.
C. Aspects of Linguistics
here are many different ways to examine and describe individual languages
T and changes in languages. Nevertheless, each approach usually takes into
account a language's sounds (phonetics and phonology), sound sequences
(morphology, or the makeup of words), and relations among words in a
sentence (syntax). Most analyses also treat vocabulary and the semantics
(meaning) of a language.
Phonetics is the study of all speech sounds and the ways in which they are
produced. Phonology is the study and identification of the meaningful sounds
of a language.
Experimental Phonetics
This is the physical science that collects measurable data about the
articulatory, acoustic, and auditory properties of vocal sounds, using
instruments such as the kymograph, which traces curves of pressure, and the
X ray. The amount of detail in the measurement of vocal sounds is limited only
by the precision of the instrument. Differences are found in every vocal sound.
Articulatory Phonetics
This describes speech sounds genetically—that is, with respect to the ways by
which the vocal organs modify the air stream in the mouth, nose, and throat in
order to produce a sound. All the vocal activities involved in a sound need not
be described, but only a selection of them , such as the place and manner of
articulation. Phonetic symbols and their articulatory definitions are abbreviated
descriptions of these selected activities. The symbols most commonly used are
those adopted by the International Phonetic Association (IPA) and are written
in brackets.
Other modifications may also affect the quality of the sounds. For example,
nasals rather than vowels may be made the prominent part of the syllable, and
certain typical vowel formations, called semivowels, may be nonsyllabic. The
quality of certain sounds is also affected by whether the speaker keeps the
speech organs tense or lax. The vocal cords are vibrated to produce sounds
that are voiced. Vowels are voiced, and in English, lax consonants are more or
less voiced. When the speaker gives a strong puff of air after the contact, this
is called aspiration. If the hand is placed before the lips, aspiration may be
observed in the ph sound produced at the beginning of the word pie. The
accompanying charts of the International Phonetic Alphabet, using standard
transcriptions in brackets, presents a schematic descr iption of these activities
in English, although not all the modifications are included. An accurate
phonetic transcription of all would describe even regional accents.
Acoustical Phonetics
This is the study of speech waves as the output of a resonator —that is, the
vocal tract coupled to other sources. Sound waves are closer than articulations
to the essence of communication, because the same auditory impression can
be produced by a normal articulation and by an entirely different sound
apparatus, like that of parrots. A spectrograph may be used to record
significant characteristics of speech waves and to determine the effect of
articulatory activities. Parts of this record of speech waves can be cut out
experimentally and the rest played back as sound in or der to determine which
features suffice to identify the sounds of a language.
Phonology or Phonemics
Phonemes are not letters; they refer to the sound of a spoken utterance. For
example, flocks and phlox have exactly the same five phonemes. Similarly, bill
and Bill are identical phonemically, regardless of the difference in meaning.
Each language has its own inventory of phonetic differences that it treats as
phonemic—that is, as necessary to distinguish meaning. For practical
purposes, the total number of phonemes for a language is the least number of
different symbols adequate to make an unambiguous graphic representation of
its speech that any native could read if given a sound value for each symbol,
and that any foreigner could pronounce correctly if given additional rules
covering nondistinctive phonetic variations that the native makes automatically.
For convenience, each phoneme of language may be given a symbol.
2. Morphology
Morphology is concerned with the units, called morphemes, that carry meaning
in a language. These may be word roots (as the English cran-, in cranberry) or
individual words (in English, bird, ask, charm); word endings (as the English -s
for plural: birds, -ed for past tense: asked, -ing for present participle:
charming); prefixes and suffixes (e.g., English pre- , as in preadmission, or -
ness, in openness); and even internal alterations indicating such grammatical
categories as tense (English sing-sang), number (English mouse-mice), or
case.
There are many words in English that are fairly obviously analyzable into
smaller grammatical units. For example, the word "unacceptability" can be
divided into un-, accept, abil-, and -ity (abil- being a variant of -able). Of these,
at least three are minimal grammatical units, in the sense that they cannot be
analyzed into yet smaller grammatical units--un-, abil-, and ity. The status of
accept, from this point of view, is somewhat uncertain. Given the existence of
such forms as accede and accuse, on the one hand, and of except, exceed,
and excuse, on the other, one might be inclined to analyze accept into ac-
(which might subsequently be recognized as a variant of ad-) and -cept. The
question is left open. Minimal grammatical units like un-, abil-, and -ity are
what Bloomfield called morphemes; he defined them in terms of the "partial
phonetic-semantic resemblance" holding within sets of words. For example,
"unacceptable," "untrue," and "ungracious" are phonetically (or, phonologically)
similar as far as the first syllable is concerned and are similar in meaning in
that each of them is negative by contrast with a corresponding positive
adjective ("acceptable," "true," "gracious"). This " partial phonetic-semantic
resemblance" is accounted for by noting that the words in question contain the
same morpheme (namely, un-) and that this morpheme has a certain
phonological form and a certain meaning.
Morphs that are in complementary distribution and repr esent the same
morpheme are said to be allomorphs of that morpheme. For example, the
regular plurals of English nouns are formed by adding one of three morphs on
to the form of the singular: /s/, /z/, or /iz/ (in the corresponding written forms
both /s/ and /z/ are written -s and /iz/ is written -es). Their distribution is
determined by the following principle: if the morph to which they are to be
added ends in a "sibilant" sound (e.g., s, z, sh, ch), then the syllabic allomorph
/iz/ is selected (e.g., fish-es /fis-iz/, match-es /mac-iz/); otherwise the
nonsyllabic allomorphs are selected, the voiceless allomorph /s/ with morphs
ending in a voiceless consonant (e.g., cat-s /kat-s/) and the voiced allomorph
/z/ with morphs ending in a vowel or voiced consonant ( e.g., flea-s /fli-z/, dog-s
/dog-z/). These three allomorphs, it will be evident, are in complementary
distribution, and the alternation between them is determined by the
phonological structure of the preceding morph. Thus the choice is
phonologically conditioned.
Very similar is the alternation between the three principal allomorphs of the
past participle ending, /id/, /t/, and /d/, all of which correspond to the -ed of the
written forms. If the preceding morph ends with /t/ or /d/, then the syllabic
allomorph /id/ is selected (e.g., wait-ed /weit-id/). Otherwise, if the preceding
morph ends with a voiceless consonant, one of the nonsyllabic allomorphs is
selected--the voiceless allomorph /t/ when the preceding morph ends with a
voiceless consonant (e.g., pack-ed /pak-t/) and the voiced allomorph /d/ when
the preceding morph ends with a vowel or voiced consonant (e.g., row-ed /rou-
d/; tame-d /teim-d/). This is another instance of phonological conditioning.
Phonological conditioning may be contrasted with the principle that determines
the selection of yet another allomorph of the past participle morpheme. The
final /n/ of show-n or see-n (which marks them as past participles) is not
determined by the phonological structure of the morphs show and see. For
each English word that is similar to "show" and "s ee" in this respect, it must be
stated as a synchronically inexplicable fact that it selects the /n/ allomorph.
This is called grammatical conditioning. There are various kinds of grammatical
conditioning.
Alternation of the kind illustrated above for the allomorphs of the plural
morpheme and the /id/, /d/, and /t/ allomorphs of the past participle is
frequently referred to as morphophonemic. Some linguists have suggested that
it should be accounted for not by setting up three allomorphs each with a
distinct phonemic form but by setting up a single morph in an intermediate
morphophonemic representation. Thus, the regular plural morph might be said
to be composed of the morphophoneme /Z/ and the most common past -
participle morph of the morphophoneme /D/. Gen eral rules of morphophonemic
interpretation would then convert /Z/ and /D/ to their appropriate phonetic form
according to context. This treatment of the question foreshadows, on the one
hand, the stratificational treatment and, on the other, the generativ e approach,
though they differ considerably in other respects.
3. Syntax
Syntax, for Bloomfield, was the study of free forms that were composed
entirely of free forms. Central to his theory of syntax were the notions of form
classes and constituent structure. (These notions were also relevant, though
less central, in the theory of morphology.) Bloomfield defined form classes,
rather imprecisely, in terms of some common "recognizable phonetic or
grammatical feature" shared by all the members. He gave as examples the
form class consisting of "personal substantive expressions" in English (defined
as "the forms that, when spoken with exclamatory final pitch, are calls for a
person's presence or attention"--e.g., "John," "Boy," "Mr. Smith"); the form
class consisting of "infinitive expressions" (defi ned as "forms which, when
spoken with exclamatory final pitch, have the meaning of a command" --e.g.,
"run," "jump," "come here"); the form class of "nominative substantive
expressions" (e.g., "John," "the boys"); and so on. It should be clear from these
examples that form classes are similar to, though not identical with, the
traditional parts of speech and that one and the same form can belong to more
than one form class.
What Bloomfield had in mind as the criterion for form class membership (and
therefore of syntactic equivalence) may best be expressed in terms of
substitutability. Form classes are sets of forms (whether simple or complex,
free or bound), any one of which may be substituted for any other in a given
construction or set of constructions throughout the sentences of the language.
The smaller forms into which a larger form may be analyzed are its
constituents, and the larger form is a construction. For example, the phrase
"poor John" is a construction analyzable into, or composed of, the constituents
"poor" and "John." Because there is no intermediate unit of which "poor" and
"John" are constituents that is itself a constituent of the construction "poor
John," the forms "poor" and "John" may be described not only as constituents
but also as immediate constituents of "poor John." Similarly, the phrase "lost
his watch" is composed of three word forms--"lost," "his," and "watch"--all of
which may be described as constituents of the construction. Not all of them,
however, are its immediate constituents. The forms "his" and "watch" combine
to make the intermediate construction "his watch"; it is this intermediate unit
that combines with "lost" to form the larger phrase "lost his watch." The
immediate constituents of "lost his watch" are "lost" a nd "his watch"; the
immediate constituents of "his watch" are the forms "his" and "watch." By the
constituent structure of a phrase or sentence is meant the hierarchical
organization of the smallest forms of which it is composed (its ultimate
constituents) into layers of successively more inclusive units. Viewed in this
way, the sentence "Poor John lost his watch" is more than simply a sequence
of five word forms associated with a particular intonation pattern. It is
analyzable into the immediate constituents "poor John" and "lost his watch,"
and each of these phrases is analyzable into its own immediate constituents
and so on, until, at the last stage of the analysis, the ultimate constituents of
the sentence are reached. The constituent structure of the wh ole sentence is
represented by means of a tree diagram.
Any construction that belongs to the same form class as at least one of its
immediate constituents is described as endocentric; the only endocentric
construction in the model sentence above is "poor John." All the other
constructions, according to the analysis, are exocentric. This is clear from the
fact that the letters at the nodes above every phrase other than the phrase A +
B (i.e., "poor John," "old Harry," and so on) are different from any of the letters
at the ends of the lower branches connected directly to these nodes. For
example, the phrase D + E (i.e., "his watch," "the money," and so forth) has
immediately above it a node labelled B, rather than either D or E. Endocentric
constructions fall into two types: subordinating and coordinating. If attention is
confined, for simplicity, to constructions composed of no more than two
immediate constituents, it can be said that subordinating constructio ns are
those in which only one immediate constituent is of the same form class as the
whole construction, whereas coordinating constructions are those in which both
constituents are of the same form class as the whole construction. In a
subordinating construction (e.g., "poor John"), the constituent that is
syntactically equivalent to the whole construction is described as the head, and
its partner is described as the modifier: thus, in "poor John," the form "John" is
the head, and "poor" is its modifier. An example of a coordinating construction
is "men and women," in which, it may be assumed, the immediate constituents
are the word "men" and the word "women," each of which is syntactically
equivalent to "men and women." (It is here implied that the conjunction "and"
is not a constituent, properly so called, but an element that, like the relative
order of the constituents, indicates the nature of the construction involved. Not
all linguists have held this view.)
One reason for giving theoretical recognition to the notion of constituent is that
it helps to account for the ambiguity of certain constructions. A classic
example is the phrase "old men and women," which may be interpreted in two
different ways according to whether one associates "old" with "men and
women" or just with "men." Under the first of the two interpretations, the
immediate constituents are "old" and "men and women"; under the second,
they are "old men" and "women." The difference in meaning cannot be
attributed to any one of the ultimate constituents but results from a difference
in the way in which they are associated with one another. Ambiguity of this
kind is referred to as syntactic ambiguity. Not all syntactic ambiguity is
satisfactorily accounted for in terms of constituent structure.
4. Semantics
Bloomfield thought that semantics, or the study of meaning, was the weak point
in the scientific investigation of language and would necessarily remain so until
the other sciences whose task it was to describe the universe and man's place
in it had advanced beyond their present state. In his textbook Language
(1933), he had himself adopted a behaviouristic theory of meaning, defining
the meaning of a linguistic form as "the situation in which the speaker utters it
and the response which it calls forth in the hearer." Furthermore, he
subscribed, in principle at least, to a physicalist thesis, according to which all
science should be modelled upon the so-called exact sciences and all scientific
knowledge should be reducible, ultimately, to statements made about the
properties of the physical world. The reason for his pessimism concernin g the
prospects for the study of meaning was his feeling that it would be a long time
before a complete scientific description of the situations in which utterances
were produced and the responses they called forth in their hearers would be
available. At the time that Bloomfield was writing, physicalism was more widely
held than it is today, and it was perhaps reasonable for him to believe that
linguistics should eschew mentalism and concentrate upon the directly
observable. As a result, for some 30 years after the publication of Bloomfield's
textbook, the study of meaning was almost wholly neglected by his followers;
most American linguists who received their training during this period had no
knowledge of, still less any interest in, the work being done el sewhere in
semantics.
The two most important developments evident in recent work in semantics are,
first, the application of the structural approach to the study of meaning and,
second, a better appreciation of the relationship between grammar and
semantics. The second of these developments will be treated in the following
section on Transformational-generative grammar. The first, structural
semantics, goes back to the period preceding World War II and is exemplified
in a large number of publications, mainly by German scholars --Jost Trier, Leo
Weisgerber, and their collaborators.
The language of any society is an integral part of the culture of that society,
and the meanings recognized within the vocabulary of the language are
learned by the child as part of the process of acquiring the culture of the
society in which he is brought up. Many of the structural differences found in
the vocabularies of different languages are to be accounted for in terms of
cultural differences. This is especially clear in the vocabulary of kinship (to
which a considerable amount of attention has been given by anthropologists
and linguists), but it holds true of many other semantic fields also. A
consequence of the structural differences that exist between the vocabularies
of different languages is that, in many instances, it is in principle im possible to
translate a sentence "literally" from one language to another.
1. Psycholinguistics
The term psycholinguistics was coined in the 1940s and came into more
general use after the publication of Charles E. Osgood and Thomas A.
Sebeok's Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems
(1954), which reported the proceedings of a seminar sponsored in the United
States by the Social Science Research Council's Committee on Linguistics and
Psychology.
The boundary between linguistics (in the narrower sense of the term: see the
introduction of this article) and psycholinguistics is difficult, perhaps
impossible, to draw. So too is the boundary between psycholinguistics and
psychology. What characterizes psycholinguistics as it is practiced today as a
more or less distinguishable field of research is its concentration upon a
certain set of topics connected with language and its bringing to bear upon
them the findings and theoretical principles of both linguistics and psychology.
The range of topics that would be generally held to fall within th e field of
psycholinguistics nowadays is rather narrower, however, than that covered in
the survey by Osgood and Sebeok.
Language Acquisition
Speech perception
Other areas of psycholinguistics that should be briefly mentioned are the study
of aphasia and neurolinguistics. The term aphasia is used to refer to various
kinds of language disorders; recent work has sought to relate these, on the one
hand, to particular kinds of brain injury and, on the other, to psychological
theories of the storage and processing of different kinds of linguistic
information. One linguist has put forward the theory that the most basic
distinctions in language are those that are acquired first by children and are
subsequently most resistant to disruption and loss in aphasia. This, though not
disproved, is still regarded as controversial. Two kinds of aphasia are
commonly distinguished. In motor aphasia the patient manifests difficulty in the
articulation of speech or in writing and may produce utterances wi th a
simplified grammatical structure, but his comprehension is not affected. In
sensory aphasia the patient's fluency may be unaffected, but his
comprehension will be impaired and his utterances will often be incoherent.
2. Sociolinguistics
Social dimensions
As a social force, language serves both to strengthen the links that bind the
members of the same group and to differentiate the members of one group
from those of another. In many countries there are social dialects as well as
regional dialects, so that it is possible to tell from a person's speech not only
where he comes from but what class he belongs to. In some instances social
dialects can transcend regional dialects. This is notable in England, where
standard English in the so-called Received Pronunciation (RP) can be heard
from members of the upper class and upper middle class in all parts of the
country. The example of England is but an extreme manifestation of a tendency
that is found in all countries: there is less regional variation in the speech of
the higher than in that of the lower socioeconomic classes. In Britain and the
United States and in most of the other English-speaking countries, people will
almost always use the same dialect, regional or social, however formal or
informal the situation and regardless of whether their listeners speak the same
dialect or not. (Relatively minor adjustments of vocabulary may, however, be
made: an Englishman speaking to an American may employ the word "elevator"
rather than "lift" and so on.) In many communities throughout the world, it is
common for members to speak two or more different dialects and to use one
dialect rather than another in particular social situations. This is commonly
referred to as code-switching. Code-switching may operate between two
distinct languages (e.g., Spanish and English among Puerto Ricans in New
York) as well as between two dialects of the same language. The term
diglossia (rather than bilingualism) is frequently used by sociolinguists to refer
to this by no means uncommon phenomenon.
In every situation, what one says and how one says it depends upon the nature
of that situation, the social role being played at the time, one's status vis -à-vis
that of the person addressed, one's attitude towards him, and so on. Language
interacts with nonverbal behaviour in social situations and serves to clarify and
reinforce the various roles and relationships important in a particular culture.
Sociolinguistics is far from having satisfactorily analyzed or even identified all
the factors involved in the selection of one language feature rather than
another in particular situations. Among those that have been discussed in
relation to various languages are: the formality or informality of the situation;
power and solidarity relationships between the participants; differences of sex,
age, occupation, socioeconomic class, and educational background; and
personal or transactional situations. Terms such as style and register (as well
as a variety of others) are employed by many linguists to refer to the socially
relevant dimensions of phonological, grammatical, and lexical variation within
one language. So far there is very little agreement as to the precise application
of such terms.
3. Other Relationships
Anthropological linguistics
Computational linguistics
Mathematical linguistics
Algebraic linguistics derives principally from the work of Noam Chomsky in the
field of generative grammar (see above Chomsky's grammar). In his earliest
work Chomsky described three different models of grammar--finite-state
grammar, phrase-structure grammar, and transformational grammar--and
compared them in terms of their capacity to generate all and only the
sentences of natural languages and, in doing so, to refle ct in an intuitively
satisfying manner the underlying formal principles and processes. Other
models have also been investigated, and it has been shown that certain
different models are equivalent in generative power to phrase -structure
grammars. The problem is to construct a model that has all the formal
properties required to handle the processes found to be operative in languages
but that prohibits rules that are not required for linguistic description. It is an
open question whether such a model, or one that approximates more closely to
this ideal than current models do, will be a transformational grammar or a
grammar of some radically different character.
Stylistics
Philosophy of language
Applied linguistics
In the sense in which the term applied linguistics is most commonly used
nowadays it is restricted to the application of linguistics to language teaching.
Much of the recent expansion of linguistics as a subject of teaching an d
research in the universities in many countries has come about because of its
value, actual and potential, for writing better language textbooks and devising
more efficient methods of teaching languages. Linguistics is also widely held to
be relevant to the training of teachers of the deaf and speech therapists.
Outside the field of education in the narrower sense, applied linguistics (and,
more particularly, applied sociolinguistics) has an important part to play in what
is called language planning; i.e., in advising governments, especially in recent
created states, as to which language or dialect should be made the official
language of the country and how it should be standardized.
English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group within the western branch of the
Germanic languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European languages. It is related
most closely to the Frisian language, to a lesser extent to Netherlandic (Dutch -
Flemish) and the Low German (Plattdeutsch) dialects, and more distantly to
Modern High German.
Vocabulary
The English vocabulary has increased greatly in more than 1500 years of
development. The most nearly complete dictionary of the language, the Oxford
English Dictionary (13 vol., 1933), a revised edition of A New English
Dictionary on Historical Principles (10 vol., 1884-1933; supplements), contains
500,000 words. It has been estimated, however, that the present English
vocabulary consists of more than 1 million words, including slang and dialect
expressions and scientific and technical terms, many of which only came into
use after the middle of the 20th century. The English vocabulary is more
extensive than that of any other language in the world, although some other
languages—Chinese, for example—have a word-building capacity equal to that
of English.
Spelling
English is said to have one of the most difficult spelling systems in the world.
The written representation of English is not phonetically exact for two main
reasons. First, the spelling of words has changed to a lesser exten t than their
sounds; for example, the k in knife and the gh in right were formerly
pronounced (see Middle English Period below). Second, certain spelling
conventions acquired from foreign sources have been perpetuated; for
example, during the 16th century the b was inserted in doubt (formerly spelled
doute) on the authority of dubitare, the Latin source of the word. Outstanding
examples of discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation are the six
different pronunciations of ough, as in bough, cough, thorough, thought,
through, and rough; the spellings are kept from a time when the gh represented
a back fricative consonant that was pronounced in these words. Other obvious
discrepancies are the 14 different spellings of the sh sound, for example, as in
anxious, fission, fuchsia, and ocean.
Role of Phonemes
Theoretically, the spelling of phonemes, the simplest sound elements used to
distinguish one word from another, should indicate precisely the sound
characteristics of the language. For example, in English, at contains two
phonemes, mat three, and mast four. Very frequently, however, the spelling of
English words does not conform to the number of phonemes. Enough, for
example, which has four phonemes (enuf), is spelled with six letters, as is
breath, which also has four phonemes (breu) and six letters.
Inflection
Parts of Speech
Although many grammarians still cling to the Greco -Latin tradition of dividing
words into eight parts of speech, efforts have recently been made to reclassify
English words on a different basis. The American linguist Charles Carpenter
Fries, in his work The Structure of English (1952), divided most English words
into four great form classes that generally correspond to the noun, verb,
adjective, and adverb in the standard classification. He classified 154 other
words as function words, or words that connect the main words of a sentence
and show their relations to one another. In the standard classification, many of
these function words are considered pronouns, prepositions, and conjunction s;
others are considered adverbs, adjectives, or verbs.
Three main stages are usually recognized in the history of the development of
the English language. Old English, known formerly as Anglo -Saxon, dates from
AD 449 to 1066 or 1100. Middle English dates from 1066 or 1100 to 1450 or
1500. Modern English dates from about 1450 or 1500 and is subdivided into
Early Modern English, from about 1500 to 1660, and Late Modern English, from
about 1660 to the present time.
The number of Latin words, many of them derived from the Greek, that were
introduced during the Old English period has been estimated at 140. Typical of
these words are altar, mass, priest, psalm, temple, kitchen, palm, and pear. A
few were probably introduced through the Celtic; others were brought to Britain
by the Germanic invaders, who previously had come into contact with Roman
culture. By far the largest number of Latin words was introduced as a result of
the spread of Christianity. Such words inclu ded not only ecclesiastical terms
but many others of less specialized significance.
About 40 Scandinavian (Old Norse) words were introduced into Old English by
the Norsemen, or Vikings, who invaded Britain periodically from the late 8th
century on. Introduced first were words pertaining to the sea and battle, but
shortly after the initial invasions other words used in the Scandinavian social
and administrative system—for example, the word law—entered the language,
as well as the verb form are and such widely used words as take, cut, both, ill,
and ugly.
At the beginning of the Middle English period, which dates from the Norman
Conquest of 1066, the language was still inflectional; at the end of the period
the relationship between the elements of the sentence depended basically on
word order. As early as 1200 the three or four grammatical case forms of
nouns in the singular had been reduced to two, and to denote the plural the
noun ending -es had been adopted.
The declension of the noun was simplified further by dropping the final n from
five cases of the fourth, or weak, declension; by neutralizing all vowel endings
to e (sounded like the a in Modern English sofa), and by extending the
masculine, nominative, and accusative plural ending -as, later neutralized also
to -es, to other declensions and other cases. Only one example of a weak
plural ending, oxen, survives in Modern English; kine and brethren are later
formations. Several representatives of the Old English modification of the roo t
vowel in the plural, such as man, men, and foot, feet, survive also.
Midland, the dialect of Middle English derived from the Mercian dialect of Old
English, became important during the 14th century, when the counties in which
it was spoken developed into centers of university, economic, and courtly life.
East Midland, one of the subdivisions of Midland, had by that time become the
speech of the entire metropolitan area of the capital, London, and probably had
spread south of the Thames River into Kent and Surrey. The influence of East
Midland was strengthened by its use in the government off ices of London, by
its literary dissemination in the works of the 14th -century poets Geoffrey
Chaucer, John Gower, and John Lydgate, and ultimately by its adoption for
printed works by William Caxton. These and other circumstances gradually
contributed to the direct development of the East Midland dialect into the
Modern English language.
During the period of this linguistic transformation the other Middle English
dialects continued to exist, and dialects descending from them are still spoken
in the 20th century. Lowland Scottish, for example, is a development of the
Northern dialect.
The Great Vowel Shift
The transition from Middle English to Modern English was marked by a major
change in the pronunciation of vowels during the 15th and 16th centuries. This
change, termed the Great Vowel Shift by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen,
consisted of a shift in the articulation of vowels with respect to the positions
assumed by the tongue and the lips. The Great Vowel Shift changed the
pronunciation of 18 of the 20 distinctive vowels and diphthongs of Middle
English. Spelling, however, remained unchanged and was preserved from then
on as a result of the advent of printing in England about 1475, during the shift.
(In general, Middle English orthography was much more phonetic than Modern
English; all consonants, for example, were pronounced, whereas now letters
such as the l preserved in walking are silent).
All long vowels, with the exception of /ì/ (pronounced in Middle English
somewhat like ee in need) and /u/ (pronounced in Middle English like oo in
food), came to be pronounced with the jaw position one degree higher.
Pronounced previously in the highest possible position, the/ì/ became
diphthongized to “ah-ee,” and the/u/ to “ee-oo.” The Great Vowel Shift, which is
still in progress, caused the pronunciation in English of the letters a, e, i, o,
and u to differ from that used in most other languages of Western Europe. The
approximate date when words were borrowed from other languages can be
ascertained by means of these and other sound changes. Thus it is known that
the old French word dame was borrowed before the shift, since its vowel
shifted with the Middle English /a/ from a pronunciation like that of the vowel in
calm to that of the vowel in name.
In the early part of the Modern English period the vocabulary was enlarged by
the widespread use of one part of speech for another and by increased
borrowings from other languages. The revival of interest in Latin and Greek
during the Renaissance brought new words into English from those languages.
Other words were introduced by English travelers and merchants after their
return from journeys on the Continent. From Italian came cameo, stanza, and
violin; from Spanish and Portuguese, alligator, peccadillo, and sombrero.
During its development, Modern English borrowed words from more than 50
different languages.
In the late 17th century and during the 18th century, certain important
grammatical changes occurred. The formal rules of English grammar we re
established during that period. The pronoun its came into use, replacing the
genitive form his, which was the only form used by the translators of the King
James Bible (1611). The progressive tenses developed from the use of the
participle as a noun preceded by the preposition on; the preposition gradually
weakened to a and finally disappeared. Thereafter only the simple ing form of
the verb remained in use. After the 18th century this process of development
culminated in the creation of the progressive passive form, for example, “The
job is being done.”
The most important development begun during this period and continued
without interruption throughout the 19th and 20th centuries concerned
vocabulary. As a result of colonial expansion, notably in North America but
also in other areas of the world, many new words entered the English
language. From the indigenous peoples of North America, the words raccoon
and wigwam were borrowed; from Peru, llama and quinine; from the West
Indies, barbecue and cannibal; from Africa, chimpanzee and zebra; from India,
bandanna, curry, and punch; and from Australia, kangaroo and boomerang. In
addition, thousands of scientific terms were developed to denote new
concepts, discoveries, and inventions. Many of these terms, such as neutron,
penicillin, and supersonic, were formed from Greek and Latin roots; others
were borrowed from modern languages, as with blitzkrieg from German and
sputnik from Russian.
20th-Century English
Widely differing regional and local dialects are still employed in the various
counties of Great Britain. Other important regional dialects have developed
also; for example, the English language in Ireland has retained certain
individual peculiarities of pronunciation, such as the pronunciation of lave for
leave and fluther for flutter; certain syntactical peculiarities, such as the u se of
after following forms of the verb be; and certain differences in vocabulary,
including the use of archaic words such as adown (for down) and Celtic
borrowings such as banshee. The Lowland Scottish dialect, sometimes called
Lallans, first made known throughout the English-speaking world by the songs
of the 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns, contains differences in
pronunciation also, such as neebour (“neighbor”) and guid (“good”), and words
of Scandinavian origin peculiar to the dialect, such as braw and bairn. The
English spoken in Australia, with its marked diphthongization of vowels, also
makes use of special words, retained from English regional dialect usages, or
taken over from indigenous Australian terms.
Basic English
A simplified form of the English language based on 850 key words was
developed in the late 1920s by the English psychologist Charles Kay Ogden
and publicized by the English educator I. A. Richards. Known as Basic English,
it was used mainly to teach English to non-English-speaking persons and
promoted as an international language. The complexities of English spelling
and grammar, however, were major hindrances to the adoption of Basic
English as a second language.
The fundamental principle of Basic English was that any idea, h owever
complex, may be reduced to simple units of thought and expressed clearly by a
limited number of everyday words. The 850-word primary vocabulary was
composed of 600 nouns (representing things or events), 150 adjectives (for
qualities and properties), and 100 general “operational” words, mainly verbs
and prepositions. Almost all the words were in common use in English -
speaking countries; more than 60 percent were one -syllable words. The
abbreviated vocabulary was created in part by eliminating numerous synonyms
and by extending the use of 18 “basic” verbs, such as make, get, do, have, and
be. These verbs were generally combined with prepositions, such as up,
among, under, in, and forward. For example, a Basic English student would
use the expression “go up” instead of “ascend.”
Pidgin English
English also enters into a number of simplified languages that arose among
non-English-speaking peoples. Pidgin English (see Pidgin), spoken in the
Melanesian islands, New Guinea, Australia, the Philippines, and Ha waii and on
the Asian shores of the Pacific Ocean, developed as a means of
communication between Chinese and English traders. The Chinese adopted
many English words and a few indispensable non -English words and created a
means of discourse, using a simple grammatical apparatus. Bêche-de-Mer, a
pidgin spoken in the southern and western Pacific islands, is predominantly
English in structure, although it includes many Polynesian words. Chinook
Jargon, used as a lingua franca by the Native Americans, French, an d English
on the North American Pacific coast, contains English, French, and Native
American words; its grammatical structure is based on that of the Chinook
language. The use of pidgin is growing in Africa, notably in Cameroon, Sierra
Leone, and East Africa.
3. American/Canadian English
It differs from English spoken elsewhere in the world not so much in particulars
as in the total configuration. That is, the dialects of what is termed Standar d
American English share enough characteristics so that the language as a
whole can be distinguished from Received Standard (British) English or, for
example, Australian English.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the study of American English was
concerned mainly with identifying Americanisms and giving the etymologies of
Americanisms in the vocabulary: words borrowed from Native American
languages (mugwump, caucus); words retained after having been given up in
Great Britain (bug, to mean insects in general rather than bed bug specifically,
as in Great Britain); or words that developed a new significance in the New
World (corn, to designate what the British call maize, rather than grain in
general). Large numbers of American terms (elevator, truck, hood [of an
automobile], windshield, garbage collector, drugstore) were shown to differ
from their British counterparts (respectively: lift, lorry, bonnet, windscreen,
dustman, chemist's). Such lexical differences between Standard American and
British English still exist, but, as a result of modern communications, speak ers
of English everywhere have no trouble in understanding one another. More
recently, linguistic researchers have turned their attention to the study of
variation patterns in American English and to the social and historical sources
of these patterns.
Regional Dialects
Black English
Until the 19th century, most blacks throughout the country spoke a creole
similar to Gullah and West Indian English. Change in the direction of Standard
American English vocabulary and syntax, particularly in the 20t h century, has
been rapid but never complete. The Black English of the inner cities
characteristically retains such locutions as “He busy” (He is busy) as opposed
to “He be busy” (He is busy indefinitely) and “She been said that” to express
action markedly in the past (she had said that). In the 1960s Black English
became a topic of linguistic controversy in educational circles because of its
supposed deficiencies and ultimately was the subject of legislative action
under the Bilingual Education Act (1968). Nevertheless, Black English has
made contributions to American English vocabulary, especially through jazz —
from the word jazz itself to such terms as nitty-gritty and uptight.
Grammatical Formality
Regional Variations
In earlier times, the dialect of New England, with its British form of
pronunciation (ah for a in path, dance; loss of the r sound in barn, park), was
considered prestigious, but such pronunciations failed to inspire nationwide
emulation. Indeed, no single regional characteristic has ever been able to
dominate the language. (One of the reasons that some linguists define Black
English as a language rather than a dialect is that its vocabulary,
pronunciation, and syntax are similar in all parts of the country, rural and
urban.)
The uniformity of the English spoken by the British colonists until about 1780
was soon disrupted by non-English influences. First, many Native American
words were taken over directly to describe indigenous flora and fauna
(sassafras, raccoon), food (hominy), ceremonies (powwow), and, of course,
geographic names (Massachusetts, Susquehanna). Phrasal compounds,
translated or adapted from the Native American, were also added to English:
warpath, peace pipe, bury the hatchet, fire water. Other borrowings came in
time from the Dutch (boss, poppycock, spook), German (liverwurst, noodle,
cole slaw, semester), French (levee, chowder, prairie), Spanish (hoosegow,
from juzgado, “courtroom”; mesa, ranch[o]; tortilla), and Finnish (sauna).
American English vocabulary has been and still is enriched with jargon, terms
coming from trades and professions. Slang, argot, and even certain
euphemisms have also been a constant source of language enrichment,
although some terms die out before they are admitted to the standard
vocabulary. In the 19th century prudishness influenced the language: legs were
called “limbs,” and pregnant “in the family way.”
4. Other Englishes
Unlike Canada, Australia has few speakers of European languages other than
English within its borders. There are still many Aborigin al languages, though
they are spoken by only a few hundred speakers each and their continued
existence is threatened. More than 80 percent of the population is British. By
the mid-20th century, with rapid decline of its Aboriginal tongues, English was
without rivals in Australia.
During colonial times the new settlers had to find names for a fauna and flora
(e.g., banksia, iron bark, whee whee) different from anything previously known
to them: trees that shed bark instead of leaves and cherries with extern al
stones. The words brush, bush, creek, paddock, and scrub acquired wider
senses, whereas the terms brook, dale, field, forest, and meadow were seldom
used. A creek leading out of a river and entering it again downstream was
called an anastomizing branch (a term from anatomy), or an anabranch,
whereas a creek coming to a dead end was called by its native name, a
billabong. The giant kingfisher with its raucous bray was long referred to as a
laughing jackass, later as a bushman's clock, but now it is a kook aburra. Cattle
so intractable that only roping could control them were said to be ropable, a
term now used as a synonym for "angry" or "extremely annoyed."
A deadbeat was a penniless "sundowner" at the very end of his tether, and a
no-hoper was an incompetent fellow, hopeless and helpless. An offsider
(strictly, the offside driver of a bullock team) was any assistant or partner. A
rouseabout was first an odd-job man on a sheep station and then any kind of
handyman. He was, in fact, the "down-under" counterpart of the wharf labourer,
or roustabout, on the Mississippi River. Both words originated in Cornwall, and
many other terms, now exclusively Australian, came ultimately from British
dialects. "Dinkum," for instance, meaning "true, authentic, genuine," ech oed
the "fair dinkum," or fair deal, of Lincolnshire dialect. "Fossicking" about for
surface gold, and then rummaging about in general, perpetuated the term
fossick ("to elicit information, ferret out the facts") from the Cornish dialect of
English. To "barrack," or jeer noisily, recalled Irish "barrack" ("to brag, boast"),
whereas "skerrick" in the phrase "not a skerrick left" was obviously identical
with the "skerrick" meaning "small fragment, particle," still heard in English
dialects from Westmorland to Hampshire.
Some Australian English terms came from Aboriginal speech: the words
boomerang, corroboree (warlike dance and then any large and noisy
gathering), dingo (reddish-brown half-domesticated dog), galah (cockatoo),
gunyah (bush hut), kangaroo, karri (dark-red eucalyptus tree), nonda
(rosaceous tree yielding edible fruit), pokutukawa (evergreen bearing brilliant
blossom), wallaby (small marsupial), and wallaroo (large rock kangaroo).
Australian English has slower rhythms and flatter intonations than RP.
Although there is remarkably little regional variation throughout the entire
continent, there is significant social variation. The neutral vowel / / (as the a in
"sofa") is frequently used, as in London Cockney: "arches" and "archers" are
both pronounced [a:t z], and the pronunciations of RP "day" and "go" are,
respectively, [d i] and [g u].
Although New Zealand lies over 1,000 miles away, much of the English spoken
there is similar to that of Australia. The blanket term Austral English is
sometimes used to cover the language of the whole of Australasia, or Southern
Asia, but this term is far from popular with Ne w Zealanders because it makes
no reference to New Zealand and gives all the prominence, so they feel, to
Australia. Between North and South Islands there are observable differences.
For one thing, Maori, which is still a living language (related to Tahitia n,
Hawaiian, and the other Austronesian [Malayo -Polynesian] languages), has a
greater number of speakers and more influence in North Island.
African English
Africa is the most multilingual area in the world, if people are measured against
languages. Upon a large number of indigenous languages rests a slowly
changing superstructure of world languages (Arabic, English, French, and
Portuguese). The problems of language are everywhere linked with political,
social, economic, and educational factors.
The Republic of South Africa, the oldest British settlement in the continent,
resembles Canada in having two recognized European languages within its
borders: English and Afrikaans, or Cape Dutch. Both British and Dutch traders
followed in the wake of 15th-century Portuguese explorers and have lived in
widely varying war-and-peace relationships ever since. Although the Union of
South Africa, comprising Cape Province, Transvaal, Natal, and Orange Free
State, was for more than a half century (1910 -61) a member of the British
Empire and Commonwealth, its four prime ministers (Botha, Smuts, Hertzog,
and Malan) were all Dutchmen. In the early 1980s Afrikaners outn umbered
Britishers by three to two. The Afrikaans language began to diverge seriously
from European Dutch in the late 18th century and has gradually come to be
recognized as a separate language. Although the English spoken in South
Africa differs in some respects from standard British English, its speakers do
not regard the language as a separate one. They have naturally come to use
many Afrikanerisms, such as kloof, kopje, krans, veld, and vlei, to denote
features of the landscape and occasionally employ African names to designate
local animals and plants. The words trek and commando, notorious in South
African history, have acquired almost worldwide currency.
The West African states of The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria,
independent members of the Commonwealth, have English as their official
language. They are all multilingual. The official language of Liberia is also
English, although its tribal communities constitute four different linguistic
groups. Its leading citizens regard themselves as Americo -Liberians, being
descendants of those freed blacks whose first contingents arrived in West
Africa in 1822. South of the Sahara indigenous lan guages are extending their
domains and are competing healthily and vigorously with French and English.
1. Language Classification
The Sino-Tibetan language family covers not only most of China, but also
much of the Himalayas and parts of Southeast Asia. The family's major
languages are Chinese, Tibetan, and Myanmar. The Tai languages constitute
another important language family of Southeast Asia. They are spoken in
Thailand, Laos, and southern China and include the Thai language. The Miao -
Yao, or Hmong-Mien, languages are spoken in isolated areas of southern
China and northern Southeast Asia. The Austron esian languages, formerly
called Malayo-Polynesian, cover the Malay Peninsula and most islands to the
southeast of Asia and are spoken as far west as Madagascar and throughout
the Pacific islands as far east as Easter Island. The Austronesian languages
include Malay (called Bahasa Malaysia in Malaysia, and Bahasa Indonesia in
Indonesia), Javanese, Hawaiian, and Maori (the language of the aboriginal
people of New Zealand).
Although the inhabitants of some of the coastal areas and offshore islands of
New Guinea speak Austronesian languages, most of the main island's
inhabitants, as well as some inhabitants of nearby islands, speak languages
unrelated to Austronesian. Linguists collectively refer to these languages as
Papuan languages, although this is a geographical term covering about 60
different language families. The languages of the Australian Aborigines
constitute another unrelated group, and it is debatable whether all Australian
languages form a single family.
The languages of Africa may belong to as few as four families: Afro -Asiatic,
Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Khoisan, although the genetic unity of Nilo -
Saharan and Khoisan is still disputed. Afro-Asiatic languages occupy most of
North Africa and also large parts of southwestern Asia. The family consists of
several branches. The Semitic branch includes Arabic, Hebrew, and many
languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, including Amharic, the dominant language of
Ethiopia. The Chadic branch, spoken mainly in northern Nigeria and adj acent
areas, includes Hausa, one of the two most widely spoken languages of sub -
Saharan Africa (the other being Swahili). Other subfamilies of Afro -Asiatic are
Berber, Cushitic, and the single-language branch Egyptian, which contains the
now-extinct language of the ancient Egyptians.
The Niger-Congo family covers most of sub-Saharan Africa and includes such
widely spoken West African languages as Yoruba and Fulani, as well as the
Bantu languages of eastern and southern Africa, which include Swahili and
Zulu. The Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken mainly in eastern Africa, in an
area between those covered by the Afro-Asiatic and the Niger-Congo
languages. The best-known Nilo-Saharan language is Masai, spoken by the
Masai people in Kenya and Tanzania. The Khoisan languages are spoken in
the southwestern corner of Africa and include the Nama language (formerly
called Hottentot).
Some linguists group all indigenous languages of the Americas into just three
families, while most separate them into a large number of families and isolates.
Well-established families include Eskimo-Aleut. The family stretches from the
eastern edge of Siberia to the Aleutian Islands, and across Alaska and
northern Canada to Greenland, where one variety o f the Inuit (Eskimo)
language, Greenlandic, is an official language. The Na -Dené languages, the
main branch of which comprises the Athabaskan languages, occupies much of
northwestern North America. The Athabaskan languages also include,
however, a group of languages in the southwestern United States, one of which
is Navajo. Languages of the Algonquian and Iroquoian families constitute the
major indigenous languages of northeastern North America, while the Siouan
family is one of the main families of central North America.
The Uto-Aztecan family extends from the southwestern United States into
Central America and includes Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec civilization
and its modern descendants. The Mayan languages are spoken mainly in
southern Mexico and Guatemala. Major language families of South America
include Carib and Arawak in the north, and Macro -Gê and Tupian in the east.
Guaraní, recognized as a national language in Paraguay alongside the official
language, Spanish, is an important member of the Tup ian family. In the Andes
Mountains region, the dominant indigenous languages are Quechua and
Aymara; the genetic relation of these languages to each other and to other
languages remains controversial.
Individual pidgin and creole languages pose a particular problem for genetic
classification because the vocabulary and grammar of each comes from
different sources. Consequently, many linguists do not try to classify them
genetically. Pidgin and creole languages are found in many p arts of the world,
but there are particular concentrations in the Caribbean, West Africa, and the
islands of the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. English -based creoles such
as Jamaican Creole and Guyanese Creole, and French -based creoles such as
Haitian Creole, can be found in the Caribbean. English -based creoles are
widespread in West Africa. About 10 percent of the population of Sierra Leone
speaks Krio as a native language, and an additional 85 percent speaks it as a
second language. The creoles of the Indian Ocean islands, such as Mauritius,
are French-based. An English-based pidgin, Tok Pisin, is spoken by more than
2 million people in Papua New Guinea, making it the most widely spoken
auxiliary language of that country. The inhabitants of the Solomo n Islands and
Vanuatu speak similar varieties of Tok Pisin, called Pijin and Bislama,
respectively.
2. International Languages
From time to time different natural languages have been used as universal
tongues. As a result of conquest or colonialism, subjugated nations have been
forced to abandon their own languages or have gradually adopte d the language
of the conqueror; conversely, occupying forces have often gradually
assimilated the languages of the conquered, as was the case of the Normans
in England. In other cases, peoples neighboring on a commercially, culturally,
or politically preeminent nation have voluntarily, although usually only partly,
adopted the language of that nation as auxiliary to their own. By such means
the Latin language came closest of all native languages to becoming a truly
universal tongue. Similarly, French from the 18th to the 19th century and
English in the 20th century enjoyed relative universality in diplomatic,
scientific, and commercial circles.
For these reasons, many attempts have been made to construct artificial
universal languages, based on elements of natural languages with
simplifications of grammar and spelling. Volapük, devised in 1880 by the
German bishop Johann Martin Schleyer, and Esperanto, invented in 1887 by a
Polish physician, Dr. Ludwik L. Zamenhof, were both based on a combination
of Latin, the Romance languages, and the Germanic languages. Volapük
eventually proved too difficult to learn and to use; Esperanto is sti ll the most
widely spoken of the artificial languages. Interlingua, created in 1951 by the
International Auxiliary Language Association, is derived from English and the
Romance languages; it has primarily been used in international scientific and
technological journals, thus eliminating the need for costly multiple
translations.
G. History of linguistics
1. Earlier History
Non-Western traditions
Much of Greek philosophy was occupied with the distincti on between that
which exists "by nature" and that which exists "by convention." So in language
it was natural to account for words and forms as ordained by nature (by
onomatopoeia--i.e., by imitation of natural sounds) or as arrived at arbitrarily
by a social convention. This dispute regarding the origin of language and
meanings paved the way for the development of divergences between the
views of the "analogists," who looked on language as possessing an essential
regularity as a result of the symmetries that convention can provide, and the
views of the "anomalists," who pointed to language's lack of regularity as one
facet of the inescapable irregularities of nature. The situation was more
complex, however, than this statement would suggest. For example, it seems
that the anomalists among the Stoics credited the irrational quality of language
precisely to the claim that language did not exactly mirror nature. In any event,
the anomalist tradition in the hands of the Stoics brought grammar the benefit
of their work in logic and rhetoric. This led to the distinction that, in modern
theory, is made with the terms signifiant ("what signifies") and signifié ("what is
signified") or, somewhat differently and more elaborately, with "expression"
and "content"; and it laid the groundwork of modern theories of inflection,
though by no means with the exhaustiveness and fine -grained analysis
reached by the Sanskrit grammarians.
The Alexandrians, who were analogists working largely on literary criticism and
text philology, completed the development of the classical Greek grammatical
tradition. Dionysius Thrax, in the 2nd century BC, produced the first
systematic grammar of Western tradition; it dealt only with word morphology.
The study of sentence syntax was to wait for Apollonius Dyscolus, of the 2nd
century AD. Dionysius called grammar "the acquaintance with [or observation
of] what is uttered by poets and writers," using a word meaning a less general
form of knowledge than what might be called "science." His typically
Alexandrian literary goal is suggested by the headings in his work:
pronunciation, poetic figurative language, difficult words, true and inner
meanings of words, exposition of form-classes, literary criticism. Dionysius
defined a sentence as a unit of sense or thought, but i t is difficult to be sure of
his precise meaning.
The Romans, who largely took over, with mild adaptations to their highly
similar language, the total work of the Greeks, are important not as originators
but as transmitters. Aelius Donatus, of the 4th century AD, and Priscian, an
African of the 6th century, and their colleagues were slightly more systematic
than their Greek models but were essentially retrospective rather than original.
Up to this point a field that was at times called ars grammatica was a congeries
of investigations, both theoretical and practical, drawn from the work and
interests of literacy, scribeship, logic, epistemology, rhetoric, textual
philosophy, poetics, and literary criticism. Yet modern specialists in the field
still share their concerns and interests. The anomalists, who concentrated on
surface irregularity and who looked then for regularities deeper down (as the
Stoics sought them in logic) bear a resemblance to contemporary scholars of
the transformationalist school. And the philological analogists with their
regularizing surface segmentation show striking kinship of spirit with the
modern school of structural (or taxonomic or glossematic) grammatical
theorists.
The Renaissance
In the field of grammar, the Renaissance did not produce notable innovation or
advance. Generally speaking, there was a strong rejection of speculative
grammar and a relatively uncritical resumption of late Roman views (as stated
by Priscian). This was somewhat understandable in the case of Latin or Greek
grammars, since here the task was less evidently that of intel lectual inquiry
and more that of the schools, with the practical aim of gaining access to the
newly discovered ancients. But, aside from the fact that, beginning in the 15th
century, serious grammars of European vernaculars were actually written, it is
only in particular cases and for specific details (e.g., a mild alteration in the
number of parts of speech or cases of nouns) that real departures from Roman
grammar can be noted. Likewise, until the end of the 19th century, grammars
of the exotic languages, written largely by missionaries and traders, were cast
almost entirely in the Roman model, to which the Renaissance had added a
limited medieval syntactic ingredient.
Roughly from the 15th century to World War II, however, the version of
grammar available to the Western public (together with its colonial expansion)
remained basically that of Priscian with only occasional and subsidiary
modifications, and the knowledge of new languages brought only minor
adjustments to the serious study of grammar. As education has become more
broadly disseminated throughout society by the schools, attention has shifted
from theoretical or technical grammar as an intellectual preoccupati on to
prescriptive grammar suited to pedagogical purposes, which started with
Renaissance vernacular nationalism. Grammar increasingly parted company
with its older fellow disciplines within philosophy as they moved over to the
domain known as natural science, and technical academic grammatical study
has increasingly become involved with issues represented by empiricism
versus rationalism and their successor manifestations on the academic scene.
Nearly down to the present day, the grammar of the schools ha s had only
tangential connections with the studies pursued by professional linguists; for
most people prescriptive grammar has become synonymous with "grammar,"
and the prevailing view held by educated people regards grammar as an item
of folk knowledge open to speculation by all, and in nowise a formal science
requiring adequate preparation such as is assumed for chemistry.
The main impetus for the development of comparative philology cam e toward
the end of the 18th century, when it was discovered that Sanskrit bore a
number of striking resemblances to Greek and Latin. An English orientalist, Sir
William Jones, though he was not the first to observe these resemblances, is
generally given the credit for bringing them to the attention of the scholarly
world and putting forward the hypothesis, in 1786, that all t hree languages
must have "sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer
exists." By this time, a number of texts and glossaries of the older Germanic
languages (Gothic, Old High German, and Old Norse) had been published, and
Jones realized that Germanic as well as Old Persian and perhaps Celtic had
evolved from the same "common source." The next important step came in
1822, when the German scholar Jacob Grimm, following the Danish linguist
Rasmus Rask (whose work, being written in Danish, was less accessible to
most European scholars), pointed out in the second edition of his comparative
grammar of Germanic that there were a number of systematic correspondences
between the sounds of Germanic and the sounds of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit
in related words. Grimm noted, for example, that where Gothic (the oldest
surviving Germanic language) had an f, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit frequently
had a p (e.g., Gothic fotus, Latin pedis, Greek podós, Sanskrit padás, all
meaning "foot"); when Gothic had a p, the non-Germanic languages had a b;
when Gothic had a b, the non-Germanic languages had what Grimm called an
"aspirate" (Latin f, Greek ph, Sanskrit bh). In order to account for these
correspondences he postulated a cyclical "soundshift" (Lautverschiebung) in
the prehistory of Germanic, in which the original "aspirates" became voiced
unaspirated stops (bh became b, etc.), the original voiced unaspirated stops
became voiceless (b became p, etc.), and the original voiceless (unaspirated)
stops became "aspirates" (p became f ). Grimm's term, "aspirate," it will be
noted, covered such phonetically distinct categories as aspirated stops (bh,
ph), produced with an accompanying audible puff of breath, and fricatives ( f ),
produced with audible friction as a result of incomplete closure in the vocal
tract.
In the work of the next 50 years the idea of sound change was made more
precise, and, in the 1870s, a group of scholars known collectively as the
Junggrammatiker ("young grammarians," or Neogrammarians) put forward the
thesis that all changes in the sound system of a language as it developed
through time were subject to the operation of regular sound laws. Though the
thesis that sound laws were absolutely regular in their operation (unless they
were inhibited in particular instances by the influence of analogy) was at first
regarded as most controversial, by the end of the 19th century it was quite
generally accepted and had become the cornerstone of the comparative
method. Using the principle of regular sound change, scholars were able to
reconstruct "ancestral" common forms from which the later forms found in
particular languages could be derived. By convention, such reconstructed
forms are marked in the literature with an asterisk. Thus, from the
reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word for "ten," *dekm, it was possible to
derive Sanskrit dasha, Greek déka, Latin decem, and Gothic taihun by
postulating a number of different sound laws that operated independently in the
different branches of the Indo-European family.
One of the most original, if not one of the most immediately influential, linguists
of the 19th century was the learned Prussian statesman, Wilhelm von
Humboldt (died 1835). His interests, unlike those of most of his
contemporaries, were not exclusively historical. Following the German
philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744 -1803), he stressed the
connection between national languages and national character: this was but a
commonplace of romanticism. More original was Humboldt's theory of "inner"
and "outer" form in language. The outer form of language was the raw material
(the sounds) from which different languages were fashioned; the inner form
was the pattern, or structure, of grammar and meaning that was imposed upon
this raw material and differentiated one language from another. This
"structural" conception of language was to become dominant, for a time at
least, in many of the major centres of linguistics by the middle of the 20th
century. Another of Humboldt's ideas was that language was something
dynamic, rather than static, and was an activity itself rather than the product of
activity. A language was not a set of actual utterances produced by speakers
but the underlying principles or rules that made it possible for speakers to
produce such utterances and, moreover, an unlimited number of them. This
idea was taken up by a German philologist, Heymann Steinthal, and, what is
more important, by the physiologist and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, and thus
influenced late 19th- and early 20th-century theories of the psychology of
language. Its influence, like that of the distinction of inner and outer form, can
also be seen in the thought of Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist. But
its full implications were probably not perceived and made precise until the
middle of the 20th century, when the U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky re-
emphasized it and made it one of the basic notions of generative grammar.
Structuralism
The term structuralism has been used as a slogan and rallying cry by a
number of different schools of linguistics, and it is necessary to realize that it
has somewhat different implications according to the context in which it is
employed. It is convenient to draw first a broad distinction between European
and American structuralism and, then, to treat them separately.
Structural linguistics in Europe is generally said to have begun in 1916 with the
posthumous publication of the Cours de Linguistique Générale (Course in
General Linguistics) of Ferdinand de Saussure. Much of what is now
considered as Saussurean can be seen, though less clearly, in the earlier work
of Humboldt, and the general structural principles that Saussure was to
develop with respect to synchronic linguistics in the Cours had been applied
almost 40 years before (1879) by Saussure himself in a reconstruction of the
Indo-European vowel system. The full significance of the work was not
appreciated at the time. Saussure's structuralism can be summed up in two
dichotomies (which jointly cover what Humboldt referred to in terms of his own
distinction of inner and outer form): (1) langue versus parole and (2) form
versus substance. By langue, best translated in its technical Saussurean sense
as language system, is meant the totality of regularities and patterns of
formation that underlie the utterances of a language; by parole, which can be
translated as language behaviour, is meant the actual utterances themselves.
Just as two performances of a piece of music given by different orchestras on
different occasions will differ in a variety of details and yet be identifiable as
performances of the same piece, so two utterances may differ in various ways
and yet be recognized as instances, in some sense, of the same utterance.
What the two musical performances and the two utterances have in common is
an identity of form, and this form, or structure, or pattern, is in principle
independent of the substance, or "raw material," upon which it is imposed.
"Structuralism," in the European sense then, refers to the view that there is an
abstract relational structure that underlies and is to be distinguished from
actual utterances--a system underlying actual behaviour--and that this is the
primary object of study for the linguist.
Two important points arise here: first, that the structural approach is not in
principle restricted to synchronic linguistics; second, that the study of meaning,
as well as the study of phonology and grammar, can be structural in
orientation. In both cases "structuralism" is opposed to "atomism" in the
European literature. It was Saussure who drew the terminological distinction
between synchronic and diachronic linguistics in the Cours; despite the
undoubtedly structural orientation of his own early work in the historical and
comparative field, he maintained that, whereas synchronic linguistics should
deal with the structure of a language system at a given point in time,
diachronic linguistics should be concerned with the historical development of
isolated elements--it should be atomistic. Whatever the reasons that led
Saussure to take this rather paradoxical view, his teaching on this point was
not generally accepted, and scholars soon began to apply structural concepts
to the diachronic study of languages. The most important of the various
schools of structural linguistics to be found in Europe in the first half of the
20th century have included the Prague school, most notably represen ted by
Nikolay Sergeyevich Trubetskoy (died 1938) and Roman Jakobson (born
1896), both Russian émigrés, and the Copenhagen (or glossematic) school,
centred around Louis Hjelmslev (died 1965). John Rupert Firth (died 1960) and
his followers, sometimes referred to as the London school, were less
Saussurean in their approach, but, in a general sense of the term, their
approach may also be described appropriately as structural linguistics.
After Boas, the two most influential American linguists were Edward Sapir
(died 1939) and Leonard Bloomfield (died 1949). Like his teacher Boas, Sapir
was equally at home in anthropology and linguistics, the alliance of which
disciplines has endured to the present day in many American universities.
Boas and Sapir were both attracted by the Humboldtian view of the relationship
between language and thought, but it was left to one of Sapir's pupils,
Benjamin Lee Whorf, to present it in a sufficiently challenging form to attract
widespread scholarly attention. Since the republication of Whorf's more
important papers in 1956, the thesis that language determines perception and
thought has come to be known as the Whorfian hypothesis.
Sapir's work has always held an attraction for the more anthropologically
inclined American linguists. But it was Bloomfield who prepared the way for
the later phase of what is now thought of as the most distinctive manifestation
of American "structuralism." When he published his first book in 1914,
Bloomfield was strongly influenced by Wundt's psychology of language. In
1933, however, he published a drastically revised and expanded version with
the new title Language; this book dominated the field for the next 30 years. In
it Bloomfield explicitly adopted a behaviouristic approach to the study of
language, eschewing in the name of scientific objectivity all reference to
mental or conceptual categories. Of particular consequence was his adoption
of the behaviouristic theory of semantics according to which meaning is simply
the relationship between a stimulus and a verbal response. Because science
was still a long way from being able to give a comprehensive account of most
stimuli, no significant or interesting results could be expected from the study of
meaning for some considerable time, and it was preferable, as far as possible,
to avoid basing the grammatical analysis of a language on semantic
considerations. Bloomfield's followers pushed even further the attempt to
develop methods of linguistic analysis that were not based on meaning. One of
the most characteristic features of "post-Bloomfieldian" American structuralism,
then, was its almost complete neglect of semantics.
Transformational grammar
Bibliography