Current issues and trends in English linguistics

Phonetics

study of speech sounds, acoustics

Phonology

phonemes that are language specific

Morphology

study of the structure of words / morphemes. Ex: -non = negation but not a word on it’s own

Syntax

Study of structure of the phrases and sentences.

Semantics

literal meaning of phrases and sentences

Pragmatics

meaning in context of discourse

Discourse analysis

Examining language use in context, focusing on the structure of texts and conversations.

Historical linguistics

how does language change over time?

Sociolinguistics

how does language vary from situation to situation or from group to group?

Dialectology

how does language vary from place to place?

Discourse analysis

how is language used beyond the sentence?

Critical discourse analysis

how are identity and power relations constructed in the text?

Lexicology/Lexicography

how do words behave in texts, and how are they compiled into dictionaries?

Contrastive linguistics / Typology

how do languages compare with each other?

Language acquisition

how do people acquire or learn language?

Anthropological linguistics

how does language shape cultural identity (and vice versa)?

Computational linguistics

how can computer programs model natural language?

Psycholinguistics

how is language processed?

Biolinguistics

how are human linguistic capacities biologically founded?

Neurolinguistics

how does the brain understand and produce language?

Clinical linguistics

how can language disorders be characterized and treated?

Forensic linguistics

how can linguistic evidence help with legal matters?

Interdisciplinary links

Links between differents disciplines and linguistics

Theoretical linguistics

studies language and languages with a view to constructing a theory of their structure and functions

Applied linguistics

Apply the knowledge you have about language and do something concrete in everyday life

Prescriptive linguistics. vs. Descriptive linguistics

rules about how the language should be used. vs. How is language used

Diachronic linguistics. vs. Synchronic linguistics

Studies the evolution of language, how it changes over a certain period of time. vs. Snapshot of one moment in time.

Qualitative linguistics vs. Quantitative linguistics

Close observation of language data in context. vs. Objective measurement abstracted from language data

Theoretical data

Data coming from a theoretical approach to language

Intuition & introspection

Terms often used interchangeably

• Intuition: “a feeling that guides a person to act a certain way”

• Introspection: “conscious attention directed by a language user to particular aspects of language as manifest in her own cognition”

Surveys & ‘fieldwork’ (empirical)

• Surveys: cross-linguistic surveys, multiplechoice questions, grammaticality judgment tests, attitudinal questionnaires, etc.

• Fieldwork: study of a language through interactions with a community of speakers of that language

Experimentation (empirical)

Differents types of tests

Corporas (empirical)

any systematics collection of speech or writing in a language or variety of a language

Empirical data

more objective, refer to corpora, expirementation and survey, fieldworks

Concordances

all the instances of a word/phrase in context

Frequency lists

all the words occurring in a corpus ordered according to their frequency

Word clusters

recurring combinations of two or more words

Keywords/key clusters

words / word clusters that are distinctive of a corpus as compared to a reference corpus

Collocations

words that occur in the immediate environment of the search word

Cognates

languages that look like each other through certain words

Centum and Satem Languages

Two big parts of Indo-European languages families classification

Toponomy

place names

Anthroponymy

personal names

Tapestry of Bailleux

represents the battle of Hastings in 1066. Death of Edward the Confessor , accession of William the Conqueror / of Normandy. He killed king Harold to become king.

-Latin on tapestry: hic harold rex interfectus est = Here king Harold has been killed

Canterburry Tales.

First English book printed in Bruges

Renaissance (c. 1476-1650)

– Rediscovery and revitalization of classical learning in Greek and Latin

– Growing confidence in the modern vernacular languages of Europe

Reformation (c. 1530-1560)

– Translation of the Bible into English

– English became a written language that could match Latin

Restoration (c. 1660-1688)

Standardisation and codification of the English language

Doublet / triplets

words with same meaning, but different origin

Diasporas

Movement from people away from home to find a job, want a new place (ex : colonisation)

Phonetics

speech sounds

Phonolgy

phoneems

The McGurk Effect

What we see overrules what we hear.

Speech chain

All the way from speaker’s brain to hearer’s brain

psycholinguistics

Speaker’s brain: idea you want to communicate

Articulatory phonetics

Speaker’s vocal tract: movements nose, mouth, theeth

Acoustic phonetics

Transmission of sound through air: use of air vibration

auditory phonetics

Hearer’s ear: how people hear sounds and interprate them

psycholinguitics

Hearer’s brain: vibrations transformed into thoughts again

Phonemes

contrastive units of sound which can be used to change the meaning of words

• pin/bin, might/night, rot/lot, tense/sense, bin/bean (minimal pairs)

• big/pig/rig/fig/dig/wig (minimal set)

Allophones

contextual variants in pronunciation e.g. aspirated vs unaspirated ‘t’ (tea vs eat)

Phonology

study of the distinctive sounds in a given language (= phonemes)

phonetics

study of speech sounds in general (= phones + allophones)

Phonemic transcription (‘broad transcription’)

‘strewn’ /stru:n/, ‘tenth’ /tɛnθ/, ‘clean’ /kli:n/

Phonetic/allophonic transcription (‘narrow/ detailed transcription’)

‘strewn’ [stru:n]

Monophtong

the position of the tongue and lips are held steady in the production of the vowel.

Diphtongs

obvious change in the tongue or lip shape (glide from one vocalic sound to another within one syllable).

Prosody

units that are larger than individual segments (suprasegmentals)

Contrastive focus

intonation on one precise word changes the meaning.

Uptalk

inflection goes up at the end of a statement instead of down to make everything sound like a question.

Morphology

Identification, analysis and description of the structure of words

Grammatical (or inflectional) morphology

studies the different inflections of the same lexeme (e.g. the –s suffix to mark plural nouns)

Lexical morphology

studies the word formation processes that allow us to create new words (e.g. the –er suffix to derive the noun worker from the verb work)

Morphemes

Smallest meaningful unit in a language, contributing in some way to the meaning of the whole word (cf. un- = negation)

represented within curly braces {} using capital letters for lexemes (MAKE) and descriptive designations for other types of morphemes (poss, pl, etc.)

– E.g. writers: 3 morphemes: {WRITE} + {er} + {pl}

Autonomy morpheme

free vs bound morphemes

Meaning morpheme

inflectional vs derivational morphemes

Position (for bound morphemes)

prefixes vs suffixes (vs infixes)

• Prefix: affix appended before the root; can only be derivational in English, e.g. pre-date

• Suffix: affix appended after the root; can be inflectional, e.g. looked, or derivational, e.g. colonialism

• Infix: affix inserted inside the base; e.g. fanbloodytastic, absobloodylutely

Free morpheme

can stand as an independent word (e.g. write)

Meaning :

• Grammatical morphemes (or function words): have a purely grammatical meaning, do not constitute open categories; belong to the minor word classes (preposition, article, demonstrative, conjunction, auxiliary, etc)

• Lexical morphemes (or content words): denote entities in the outside world (lexical or dictionary meaning), constitute open categories, to which new members can be added (noun, verb, adjective, adverb)

Bound morpheme

always attached to another morpheme, cannot stand alone (e.g. –er in writer or –s in writes)

Meaning :

• Inflectional morphemes: convey a grammatical meaning and are not used to form new words (e.g. past tense in he looked happy, plural in cats)

• Derivational morphemes: convey a lexical meaning and their addition to an existing word forms a new word (e.g. agent in writer, buyer; negative in unpleasant, untruthfully)

Morphs

concrete realisations of a morpheme (do not always have concrete realisations, cf. {LET} + {past} = let)

Example: the morpheme {pl} (plural number) can be realised as

• morph –s (e.g. cats)

• morph –en (e.g. oxen)

• vowel alternation (e.g. teeth)

• zero morph (e.g. sheep)

Morphological analysis

words are analysed into morphs following formal divisions

– E.g. writ/er/s

Morphemic analysis

words are analysed into morphemes, recognizing the abstract units of meaning

– E.g. {WRITE}+{er}+{pl}

Morphological realisation rules

Agglutinative, Fusional, Null realisation, Zero rules

Agglutinative rule

two morphemes are realised by morphs which remain distinct and are simply ‘glued’ together

• {WRITER} + {pl} > writers

• {WORK} + {past} > worked

Fusional rule

two morphemes are realised by morphs which do not remain distinct but are fused together

• {TOOTH} + {pl} > teeth

• {WRITE} + {past} > wrote

Null realisation rule

a morpheme is never realised as a morph in any word of the relevant class

• {RADIO} + {sg} > radio

• {WORK} + {pres} > work

Zero rule

a morpheme is realised as a zero morph in particular members of a word class

• {SHEEP} + {pl} > sheep

• {PUT} + {past} > put

• {PUT} + {pstprt} > put

Allomorphs

phonetic realisations of a particular morph, variants occur in different environments

Phonologically conditioned

appearance of a particular allomorph is predictable from the phonetic environment, cf. plural morph –s:

• after a fricative or affricate: /Iz/ (roses, judges)

• after a voiceless consonant: /s/ (cats, rocks)

• after a vowel or voiced consonant: /z/ (days, dogs)

Lexico-grammatically conditioned

appearance is unpredictable phonologically but is determined by the lexico-grammar of the language, cf. certain plurals

• wife, loaf → wives, loaves

• zero morph: fish, sheep, deer

• vowel alternation: mice, lice, geese (fusional rule)

• -en: children, oxen

• foreign plurals: phenomena, bases

Contextually conditioned (in free variation)

allomorphs may be used interchangeably in a particular environment

• learned/learnt, dreamed/dreamt

Root

morpheme on which the rest of the word is built

– E.g. the root of removals is move

Base

any structure to which a derivational affix can be added

– E.g. the base of removals is remove

Stem

any base to which an inflectional affix may be added

– E.g. the stem of removals is removal

free roots

most usual (arrangement)

Bound roots

Rare (clarity)

may serve as a basis either for affixes :

(e.g. simul- in simulant, simulator, simulation)

or for bound roots :

(e.g. combination of nio- & -logy in biology)

Derivation

Word formation process by which a derivational affix is added to a base. The resulting word is called a derivative or complex word

Compounding

combination of two or more roots (plus associated affixes)

Categories of compounds

Endocentric, Exocentric, Appositional, Copulative

endocentric

A + B denotes a special kind of B (e.g. darkroom, small talk)