Comprehensive Notes: Language, Linguistics, Grammar, Semantics & Lexicography

SECTION I – THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE

1 LANGUAGE : CORE CONCEPTS

• No single all-embracing definition is satisfactory – linguists list properties instead.
• Seven frequently cited characteristics
– Means of communication
– Arbitrary symbol system
– System-of-systems (duality)
– Primarily vocal; writing secondary
– Human / species-specific & uniform
– Social behaviour & symbol system
– Open-ended: productivity, interchangeability
• Human language vs animal communication
– Infinite vs finite messages, discrete vs continuous signals
– Open vs closed, modifiable vs fixed
– Greater structural complexity
– Non-instinctive learning; displacement present in human language.

2 WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?

• Scientific study of language (“language” = the human faculty, not a particular tongue).
• Why science? Empirical, objective, explanatory, economical.
• Scope
1 Descriptive
2 Comparative
3 Historical (diachronic)
• Levels & Units
Phonetics/Phonology → Morphology → Syntax → Semantics → Discourse
• Branches
Psycholinguistics | Neurolinguistics | Sociolinguistics | Anthropological linguistics | Stylistics | Applied linguistics (L2 teaching, lexicography, etc.).
• Key distinction: linguist ≠ polyglot (former studies principles; latter merely speaks several languages).

3 FUNDAMENTAL DISTINCTIONS

• Langue (vs parole): social code vs individual act.
• Competence (vs performance): internalised grammar vs actual production.
• Sign = signifier + signified; relationship arbitrary → language is a system of symbolic signs.
• System (paradigmatic) vs structure (syntagmatic).
• Substance (raw sound/graph) vs form (organised value).
• Synchronic vs diachronic study.

4 MODERN LINGUISTICS : HISTORICAL SURVEY

• Ancient Indian, Greek, Roman grammars (Pāṇini, Dionysius Thrax, Priscian).
• 19th C: historical-comparative (Grimm, Humboldt, Neogrammarians).
• 20th C: Structuralism – Bloomfield & American descriptivists; Saussure in Europe; Prague School; Firth & Halliday (London).
• Post-1957: Transformational-Generative Grammar (Chomsky).

5 LANGUAGE VARIATION

Diachronic change

• Semantic shift, extension, narrowing, euphemism, sound change (loss of /r/, metathesis), spelling reforms etc.

Synchronic variation

1 Contact-based varieties (Indian English, pidgin, creole, Esperanto).
2 Dialects: regional & social; concept of isogloss & bundle.
– Sociolect, idiolect, diglossia.
3 Register (field, mode, tenor) – language according to use.
4 Stylistics: parallelism, deviation, foregrounding in literary texts; uses in criticism.

SECTION II – THE STUDY OF GRAMMAR

6 WHAT IS GRAMMAR?

• Study of how morphemes/words combine into acceptable sentences.
• Five grammatical ranks : morpheme < word < phrase < clause < sentence.
• Category vs function labels.
• Open vs closed classes; full vs empty words.

7 MORPHOLOGY & WORD FORMATION

• Morpheme = minimal meaningful unit; morph = concrete form; allomorph = variant.
• Free vs bound (affix) morphemes.
• Inflection vs derivation.
• Word types: simple, complex, compound.
• Processes: affixation, conversion, compounding, reduplication, clipping, acronyms, blends, borrowing, invention, echoism.

8 BASIC SENTENCE PATTERNS

• Intransitive patterns
I VG ( + Adjunct)
II VG + Complement
• Transitive patterns
III VG + Object
IV VG + Indirect Object + Direct Object
V VG + Object + Complement.
• Ambiguity arises from multiple structural interpretations.

9 STRUCTURAL GRAMMAR & IC ANALYSIS

• Opposed to prescriptive Latin-based tradition; emphasises description, primacy of speech, synchronic analysis.
• Immediate Constituents: binary segmentation until morpheme level; tree diagrams & PS-rules.
• Phrase Structure (sample rule set):
$S \rightarrow NP\;VP$
$NP \rightarrow (Det)(Adj^*)N(Prep\;Phr)$, etc.
• Limitations – cannot account for deep-level ambiguities, transformations, discontinuities.

10 TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

• Kernel sentences (simple, active, positive, declarative).
• Deep vs surface structure; competence vs performance.
• Major T-rules: Interrogation, Negation, Affix-hopping, Do-support, Passivisation, Wh-movement.
• Example derivation:
Kernel $\text{You}\ +\ \text{past}\ +\ \text{eat}\ +\ \text{something}?$
→ Wh-sub, Do-support, Affix-hop ⇒ ‘What did you eat?’

SECTION III – THE STUDY OF SEMANTICS

12 SEMANTICS: KEY NOTIONS

• Meaning distinctions:
– Denotative vs connotative vs social vs thematic
– Lexical vs grammatical meaning
– Sense vs reference
– Entailment, presupposition.
• Sentence vs utterance meaning.

13 THEORIES OF MEANING

• Componential (feature) analysis – binary +/– markers (e.g. MAN = +HUMAN, +ADULT, +MALE).
• Truth-conditional semantics: sentence as propositional logic; entailment, contradiction, tautology.
• Generative semantics: lexical features inserted at deep structure with selection restrictions.
• Contextual approaches: semantic fields, collocation, Firth’s ‘context of situation’.

14 PRAGMATICS & DISCOURSE

• Speech-act theory (Austin/Searle): locutionary sense vs illocutionary force.
• Grice’s Cooperative Principle & maxims (quality, quantity, relevance, manner); conversational implicature.
• Cohesion vs coherence; devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical cohesion.
• Discourse = coherent stretch beyond sentence; shaped by mode, tenor, field.

LEXICOGRAPHY

15 DICTIONARY MAKING PRINCIPLES

• Lexicology = theory; lexicography = practice.
• Descriptive not prescriptive; IPA for pronunciation; semantic/grammatical coding.
• User orientation: decide scope, size, metalanguage.
• Types: general, scholarly (OED), specialised (pronouncing, etymological), dialect, technical, bilingual.
• Key features illustrated from:
– Jones’s EPD (RP norms, weak/strong forms, variant labeling).
– Hornby’s ALD (learner focus, IPA, usage notes, appendices).
– Collins COBUILD (full-sentence definitions, grammar codes, study pages).

WHY STUDY LANGUAGE AND ITS SUBFIELDS?

• Central to all knowledge, communication, culture, technology, literature.
• Skill in linguistic analysis underpins language teaching, lexicography, AI, translation, stylistics, discourse analysis, etc.

“Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.” – Claude Lévi-Strauss