Metalanguage

Unit 1.1- The nature and functions of language 

Context:

• Can be best interpreted as the circumstances theat occur with a text

• In linguistics, we have to consider context as central to meaning making and communicating

• If we don’t know the context, the meaning of the language can shift

• As such, we have situational context (who, what, where, when and how) and cultural context (experiences, beliefs, identity, etc) 

Situational Context:

Mode, Setting, Field, Tenor, Text Type

MS FiTT

Mode: is the channel of communication. We look at 2 modes: Spoken (speech, slang, plays/shows. Tv shows)  and written (pen and paper : persuasive paper, essays, typing, newspapers, internet slang) 

Setting: location: where the speaker or writer is speaking ot writing

Domain (field): is the content or subject matter. It is the category of words and their meaning in a text. It relates to semantics and you are able to determine the topic of conversation based of the domain.

Tenor: the relationship between participants in a language activity and relates especially to social distance. Also involves the level of formality between participants (formal, colloquial etc). Tenor will be affected by how well people know each other and their purpose for participation. Refers to the roles we take up (student, parent, customer etc) and our relationship with others in any particular situation. It will be affected by matters such as status, levels of expertise, age, ethnic background, gender or participants.

When considering tenor, there are 3 P’s: 

• Proximity: close or great depending on how psychologically close participants are

• Power: is there a power imbalance?

• Position: what is their identity?

Describing tenor:

• Close: warm, inviting, friendly, intimate

• Great; hostile, differential, respectful, professional, polite

Text Type: refers to the various forms of a basic style of writing or speaking. There are conventions and consistencies to the text type that support the delivery of a function or purpose. Convention of text types are considered as there will be different language features expected of these types. 

Cultural Context:

Values: cultural australian values vs national values

Identity: you build your identity

Attitude: prescriptivist- language has rules which should be honoured

Descriptivist: language is used to communicate and changes based off need

VIBA 

Functions:

• Refers to the different roles of language within a text 

• Texts will often contain many different functions

• When attempting to identify the functions of a text, ask:

  • What is the language doing in this part of the text?

  • How does this support the writers purpose?

1. Metalinguistic: talks about language itself e.g, “what does phatic mean”, definitions, to clarify terms, synonyms, 

2. Referential: conveys information e.g, “The train leaves at 6:00am”

3. Phatic: establishes a social connection e.g, greetings like “how are you”

4. Emotive: interprets feelings, desires, e.g, interjunctions like “Yuck”

5. Poetic: brings the aesthetic dimension e,.g, embellishing a message with quotations

6. Conative: engages the addressee e.g, commands 

MR PEP C: MR PEPSI

 Purpose and Intent

 Why does a text exist? What is it trying to achieve?

The purpose and intent is from the author.

Functions are the words.

Text-Nooky speech Triple J: “We will not sit in silence”

1st Purpose: Nooky is sharing the feelings of disapointment and shame, opening up about his pain and suffering. 

2nd Purpose: his emotions shift from hurt and disapointment to words of resilience, confidence and power, to emphasise that the behaviour and attitudes towards Indigenous people will change one day.

Audience: First Nation’s people, who are disappointed in the results of the referendum 

Purposes: first purpose was to convey his disapointment, emotional weight and critisie the large-scale racism of Australia. Second purpose was to upbring the community and show hipe and strength. Emphasising resilience, pride and confidence. 

Tenor: understanding, solidarity 

Functions: 

Register:

Sit. Context: 

Cult. Context: reconciliation, democracy, hurt and disapointment, First Nation’s Individuals. 

Text Annotation Strategy:

APT FRSC

Audience

Purposes

Tenor

Functions

Register

Situational Context

Cultural Context

4/02/2025

Subsystems of Language:

• Discourse and pragmatics (context of language)

• Semantics ( meaning of words and sentences)

• Syntax ( Phrases and sentences 

• Lexicology (words)

• Morphology (parts of words)

• N

Lexicology:

• Study of words, or lexemes

  • A lexeme is the smalles meaningful unit of the lexicon of a language that can stand on its own

• Lexemes underly a set of words that are related through inflextion. E.g, run, runs, running

1. Open class words

• Content words, can accept new words

• Examples:

  • Nouns: I got a new iPad

  • Verbs: I googled the information

  • Adjectives: he was a geek guy

  • Adverbs: he acted geekishly

2. Closed-class words

• Structural or function words

• Determine sentence structure

• Fairly fixed in number

• Examples:

  • Articles: a/an, the

  • Prepositions: of, an with from

  • Conjunctions: with, 

Nouns:

Concrete Nouns: Common nouns and proper nouns

Abstract nouns: Intangible items, eg, love freedom, wealth, honour, anticipation

Collective nouns: Refers to groups of people, animals, or things eg, school, colony, parliament, punnet, murder

Count/ mass nouns: able to be counted;have a plural form e.g dogs, shops. Mass nouns cannot be counted e.g love. 

Noun Test:

Can you put an article (a/an/the) in front of it

Can you pluralise it?

Can you put an adjective directly in front?

Does not need all

Analysing Nouns:

Some ways you may analayse nouns:

• Show the topic of a text or specify the filed of communication. E.g, filed specific jargon, nouns, slang

• Allow for clarity in communication

• May reveal group membership or identity of the user e.g, the colloquial noun ‘u-ey’ shows Australian identity the noun ‘babe’ has friendly conotations when used among women

• Shoe expertise and knowledge of a field or context e.g scientific jargon, Mac.Rob speak, EngLang speak

• Show social standing of both user and recipient e.g formal honourific nouns e.g Prime Minister, Honour, Aunty, Professor etc.

Structure used to Answer Questions:

Point = point out a linguistic feature using metalanguage

Quote = quote an example of that feature

Comment = comment on how it supports an element of APT FRSC (Audience, purpose, tenor, function, register, situational context, cultural context)

Explain how the use of nouns fulfils the intentions fo the author

Laver uses the proper noun Australian Open (x) within his congratulatory tweet. This, paired with the noun phrase “singles title” (x) allows him to specify the field of communication, being tennis, to allow for specifity regarding that topic.

Adjectives:

• Describe qualities and attributes of nouns and pronouns

• Specify the nouns field of reference (narrow range of meaning of the noun)

Adjective Test:

1. Can you put it between the a/an and the noun?

2. Can you put very in front of it?

Adjectives can go in two positions

Attributive Adjectives (modifiers): Usually before the noun. It modifies the noun. Examples: the tall man. The old, ivy coloured limestone wall.

Predicative Adjectives (complements): Usually occurs after copula verbs (linking verbs) such as ‘to become’ or ‘is/are’. Examples: The man is tall. Those ducks are fluffy

Adjectives with suffixes can become the:

Comparative:

• Will have suffix - er, OR

• Will have ‘more’ before the adjective

• Examples: ‘the taller man’, ‘the more fluffy duck”

Superlative:

• Will have the suffix -est, OR

• Will have ‘most before the adjective

• Examples: ‘the tallest man’, the most fluffy duck”

Some adjectives don’t follow the set guidelines: good-better-best, bad-worse-worst

Refresher Questions:

1. What is a concrete noun

Things you can touch, objects

2. What is the linguistic term for word

Lexeme 

3. What are the two adjective positions?

Attribute and predicative 

4. What is one test you can apply to figure out wheter a leceme is an adjective

Can you add a verb?

Preferred language:

• Don’t use lexeme in analysis, provide word class 

• ‘Lexical features’ is used as an umbrella term

• VCAA does not require you to specify the types of nouns or adjectives. You may just use the basic label

• Be specific with verbs

• Start with connotations of the lexeme

Analysing Adjectives:

Some ways to analyse adjectives:

• Through analysing the connotations of the adjectives, you can understand the feelings or opinions od the user towards a subject

  • Negatively connotated adjectives highlights feelings of disagreement, anger, frustration, sadness etc

  • Positively connotated adjectives highlights feelings of support, excitement, happiness etc

• Allows for specificity which allows you tu understand what is most important in s text

• May be associated with different groups to show membership of different social groups, community

Explain how the use of adjectives fulfils a function of the text.

The use of the adjective ‘appalled’(x)  by the Prime Minister in his uniting tweet regarding the attack in New Orleans, condemns the conflict and fulfils an emotive function. Through the use of the adjective

Verbs:

Stative Verbs: 

• Expresses states of being or processes in which there is no obvious action

• Thought, feelings, opinions, love, imagine, wonder etc

• Test: Is it describing a state of being? E.g, the room smells like candy

Dynamic Verbs

• Expresses actions (can see them)

• Read, jump, run

• Test: is it describing an action: I can smell the candy

Lexical (main) verbs: 

• Primary verb in a sentence that shows the action or state of being of the subject. 

• E.g run, eat, laugh, jump

Auxiliary verb: 

• Verbs that support (help) main verbs. 

• Often enables tense. 

• Does it help create tense? Does it have another verb after it?

•  Primary auxiliary verbs: had/has, is/was, etc. 

• Modal Verbs: indicate likelihood if a verb happening.

Copula (linking) verbs

• Connects the subject of the sentence to a noun or adjective.

• Links distinct elements in a sentence together

• Is it linking parts of the sentence together?

• The sky became cloudy. She seems tired

We(pronoun) shall(modal) heal (main verb) our (pronoun) wounds(common and count noun), collect (lexical verb) our(pronoun) dead(main noun) and (conjunction) continue (main verb) fighting (noun)

She seems tired today.

• She: Subject

• Seems: copula

• Tired: Adjective

• Today: Adverb

Transitive, Intransitive and Ditrtansitive Verbs:

Transitive: 

• Must be followed by a direct object and make sense (recipient of the verb/action). 

• The direct object will be a noun phrase

• Example: Riza ate the cookies

•  What is the action (verb)? Ate

• Who is receiving the action? The cookies

Intransitive:

• Do NOT need a direct object (noun phrase) to complete their meaning. Unlike other types of verbs, intransitives can end sentences (but don’t always)

• Examples:

  • Gary slept  in his bed

  • Rithika is laughing.

  • Kai is walking to school

  • A howl rose from the wolf

Direct and indirect Objects

Direct Objects:

• A noun or pronoun that receives the action of the verb. 

• Answers the question of who or what

• Example: Alice (subject) caught (verb) the baseball (direct object)

• What is the action verb? Caught

• Who is receiving the action? The baseball

• What us receiving the action?

Indirect Objects:

• The indirect object is a noun or pronoun that receives the direct objet. Answers the question of to who, for whom, or for what

• Examples:

  • Max (subject) pitched (verb) Alice (indirect object) the baseball (direct object)

  • What is the direct object? The basebal

  • To whom was it pitched? Alice

Adverbs:

Types of adverbs include:

• Circumstance adverbs (mannrt, time, place, frequency)

• Interrogative adverbs

• Negative adverbs

• Degree adverbs

• Conjuncts

• Disjuncts

Circumstance Adverbs

They modify verbs, gioving details of circumstances such as: 

• how, (quietly, peacefully etc), 

• where (above, abroad, far ahead), 

• when (now, yesterday, soon , later), 

• how often? (always, sometimes, often, frequently)

Interrogative Adverbs:

Introduce a sentence that asks a question, usually regarding where, when , why and how

Examples:
When will you return?

How is the trunk being sent 

Negative and Affirmative Adverbs:

Negative adverbs deny or contradict statements, including: No, not, never, only, scarcely, and hardly.

Affirmative adverbs do the opposite 

Examples:

I will never go there

I do not understand

Degree Adverbs

Modify/intensify adjectives or adverbs

Examples:

Lots, barely, little, extremely, thoroughly, 

Pronouns

Personal pronouns:

Subjective case: I, we, you, they, he she, It

Possessive adjective: Described ownership of something. Will come before a noun or noun phrase e.g, give me your pen 

Possessive pronouns: replace a noun or proper noun and become the/a subject of a sentence. E.g, that is not yours 

First Person pronouns: I, me, mine,  myself, we, us, our/s, ourselves 

Second Person pronouns: you, yours, yourself,

Third person pronouns:  He, him, himself, she, her, herself, they, them, their, theirs, themselves

PLURAL PRONOUNS 

Pronouns as determiners

My apple = the apple

Prepositions:

 A word that shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun and some other word or element in the rest of the sentence. 

Examples: with, between, on. Hop on a table, look inside your pencil case, go near the door.

Determiners:

A word that we place before noun to provide information such as quantity, ownership and specificity.

Examples: A dog owns nothing, yet is seldom dissatisfied (articles). You can’t control this dog (demonstratives). Host your guest and also his dog (possessives) 

PRACTICE:

1. She went to the park

Pronoun, verb, preposition, article, noun

2. Ice-cream is a wonderful thing.

Noun, copular verb, article, adjectve, noun

3. I wondered whether it would rain again

Pronoun, verb, conjunction, pronoun, modal verb, noun

4. This articles might help you to understand

Determiner, noun, modal verb, verb, second person pronoun, preposition, verb

5. The students waited for the lights before they crossed the street

Article, nouns, main verb, preposition, article, nouns, preposition, pronoun, main verb, article, noun. 

Morphology:

What is Morphology?

• The study of the structure of word and the rules of word formation

• Helps us take words apart, looking at their most basic components 

Morphemes:

The smalles part of a word to carry meaning

Types of Morphemes 

Bound versus free

• Bound morphemes only carry their meaning or grammatical information when attached to another morpheme 

• Free morphemes can stand alone and carry the same meaning whether attached to another morpheme or not

Sentences and Clauses:

Clause: A group of words that contains a subject and a predicate

Sentence: A group of words that contains at least one main clause. It can contain any number of clauses.

Examples: 

I ate the pear.

The big red fire engine ran over the man.

John is a good boy.

He who pulls out the sword should be king. 

Subject Compement:

• Look similar to an object, except its different 

• Does not introduce a new entity into the sentence

• Adds an attribute, quality,  or another name of the subject

• uses a copular verb to connect the subject complement to the subject

Adverbial (part of a clause)

• Gives additional information about place, time etc.

• Falls outside of the predicate

• Can be removed completely from a sentence without affecting the syntactic integrity. 

Subject, subject complement, predicate, predicator, adverbial

Examples:

The crazy old man from the moon is laughing.

Sally ate the pies yesterday.

Thanh gave the flower to Cindy.

Tomorrow Gertrude will become a fire-fighter.

Public Transport Victoria used the adverbial “if they believe an offence has occurred” (1). This function works to provide further information regarding the possible punishments transport users can receive if there has been a breach in procedure. 

Phrase Types:

• Noun phrases (NP)

• Verb phrases (VP)

• Adjective phrases (AP or AdjP)

• Adverb Phrase (AdvP)

• Prepositional phrases (PP) 

 Phrases:

• One word or group of words

• Single structural unit creates meaning

• Always have a head word- word they are named after

• Can contain modifiers- other words that modify/specify the head in more detail

• They can’t exist as a grammatical sentence

Noun Phrase:

• Usually begins with a determiner (this, the, that, a, my)

• Usually has a pronoun as the head word

• Plays role of subject (modified by predicate), object (receiver of action), or can be complement (to modify a subject or object) in a clause

• Use substitution test to identify noun phrase- replace the whole phrase with something you know to be a noun or pronoun

Example: the beautiful sky (subject noun phrase; head word “sky’) rose above the glimmering sea of green (object noun phrase: head word ‘sea’)

The old are often neglected (subject noun phrase: head word ‘old’)

Verb Phrases:

• The part of the sentence that contains the main verb, other verbs, and their dependents (direct and/or indirect objects)

• The head word is the main verb of the clause

• Plays the role of the predicator and sometimes the whole predicate

• Only one verb phrase can exist per clause

• Can be identified with sub test- replace the whole phrase with something you know to be a verb. 

Adjective Phrases:

•  Group of words headed by an adjective that describes a noun or pronoun

• Can be used either before or after a noun (predicatve or attributive adjectives)

• Plays the role of the predicate complement (sometimes referred to as either the subject or object complement.

• Multiple adjective phrasescan be found in a single sentence

• Includes pre-modifier (words that come before the head word and modify it in some way)

Examples: I was very glad to meet him on that cold winters day

I- subject, noun

Was- auxiliary verb

Very: pre-modifier (words that come before the head word and modify it)

Glad: head word, adjective 

Adverb Phrases:

• Head word is an adverb

• Plays the role of the adverbial in a sentence, giving info about place, time frequency, manner or degree

• Do not include the subject and verb as part of adverb phrase

• Multiple adverbs can be found in each clause or sentence

• Adverbs can be removed and the sentence will still make sense

Examples: The mouse ran quickly towards its hole. 

Prepositional Phrases:

• Must start with a preposition

• Made up of preposition and noun phrases

• Can play the role of adverbials, adjectival, or objective

• Can identify a prepositional phrase by finding the preposition followed by a noun phrase

Example: Giselle walked towards the door.

Clause and Sentence Structure:

Main or independent clause (: A class that can stand alone as a sentence. E.g I like cake.

Subordinate or Dependent clause: A clause that cannot stand alone as a sentence. It is dependent on a main clause to make sense (missing element). E,g, Before I ate the cake…. List: since, when, if, while, because, who, that, which, as, although, whether, until, unless, in case, even though

Simple Sentences: 

• Sentences that contain one clause ( amd therefore one predicate)

• E.g, They danced all day long

• Often used in recipes, government websites etc

Compound Sentences:

• Sentences that contain two or more main clauses

• Clauses are joined with a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS): for, and, nor, but, or, yet

• E,g, the horse is black and it runs very quickly

• Used to connect pieces of info that are equivalent 

Complex Sentences:

• Contains one independent/ main clause and one or more dependent clauses

• Clauses are typically connected by a subordinating conjunction

• E.h, Johnny goes shopping, he buys lots of corn

• Subordinate clauses provide extra info about main clause

Compound - Complex sentences

• Contains two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses

• Will be at least 3 clauses

• Should contain at least one coordinating conjunction and at least one subordinating conjunction

• E,g, When Johnny goes shopping, he buys a lot of corn but he doesn’t buy meat because he’s vegetarian. 

Independent clauses can have an implied subject. If it has an implied subject, it must be in the clause before. There must be a coordinating conjunction in between.

Sentence Fragments:

• An incomomplete sentence; partial sentence thats missing another necessary part to make it complete

• A clause that falls short of a complete sentence because its missing one of either a subject, verb, and a complete thought. 

What is the function of each sentence type?
Simple and compound:

• Provides info with clarity: the need for this will depend on the context

• Expected in informal discourse, however can still be seen in formal discourse

Complex and compound-complex sentences:

• Provides precise and detailed information

• Often seen in informal text where it becomes important to convey info very precisely.

Checklist:

Implied subject: (compound predicative)

Sometimes independent clauses in a compound sentence will have a implied subject. That is because the subject is often the first main clause is considered to be implied in the second, this is a process called ellipsis where you remove elements to avoid repetition. 

Semantics

• The relationship between a sign and its meaning is totally arbitrary 

• there is no relationship between the word and its meaning

• the relationship is simply one convention

Semantic Properties: 

• Every lexeme has extra information attached to it

• For example: Cat

  • Fur

  • Claws

  • Sharp teeth

  • Purr mammal

• Not standardies

Examples:

• English:

  • Reading

  • Writing

  • Grammar

• Pencil: 

  • Writing

  • Pencil case

  • Drawing

• Duckling:

  • Fluffy

  • Small

  • Beak

• Hedgehog:

  • Spiky

  • Small

  • Mammal 

Semantic Field (domain):

• Refers to a set of lexemes that are semantically related. 

• A lexical set of words that are grouped by meaning and share a common semantic property 

• Dogs (semantic domain) ===> corgi, collie, terrier (semantic properties) 

Denotation:

• Refers to the general meaning of a word. For example, the denotation of mother  female parent 

• Denotations are the most universally used known definition of a word, are relatively stable

• Codified: its meaning is been recorded, usually in a dictionary 

• Standardised: language that has been accepted in meaning and use by the wider Australian collective

Connotation:

• Refers to the social meaning or emotional associations triggered by a word (i.e, what is evoked in a person)

• Can be both positive, negative or neutral in meaning, but once a negative connotation is associated, it is hard to remove.

• Unlike denotations; which have objective, codified meanings, connotations are related to sociocultural values (and so can change

• For example, rats

  • Denotation = small rodent

  • Connotation = sneaky person

• Snakes:

  • Denotation: slithery reptile

  • Connotation: vicious person

• Fire:

  • Denotation: flames 

  • Connotation: very cook

• Brat: 

  • Denotation: spoiled child that behaves badly

  • Connotation: confident woman, related to Charli XCX

• Snowflake:

  • Denotation: particle of snow

  • Connotation: flaky, easily sensitive, fragile 

Inference:

• A conclusion that you reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning 

• Language receiver will use prior knowledge to understand the meaning of what is said

• Linked to situational context (function, field, mode, setting, relationship)

• Linked to cultural context (unspoken rules and background knowledge)

Discourse:

• The written and spoken modes of language, covering a wide range of text types

Code- Switching

• Switching between different linguistic codes

• Linguistic repoirtpire: the different ways of communicating (codes) a person has access to. 

• Each code has particular language features associated with it

  • E.g, jargon, slang, acronyms, phrases, elevated language

• Code examples:

  • Multiple languages, codes within languages, register (formality) , sociolects (codes associated with social groups, age, gender, occupation, sexuality, interest based), ethonolects (codes associated with different ethnic groups)

Why code-switch?

• To fulfill a linguistic need: a speaker who may not be able to express themselves in one language might switch to another

• To express solidarity: code-switiching is a strong marker of identity and cultural belonging; speakers demonstrate affinity wth groups

• To highlight speech: certain items may be more appropriate in one language than another, and the switch can highlight these items. 

Paralinguistic Features:

• The aspects of spoken communication that do not involve words

• These may add emphasis or shades of meaning to what people say.

• Involves aspects of non-verbal communication such as gestures, stance, and gaze. 

• Also, vocal effects such as laughter, sighs, and creakiness. 

Semantic and Discource Questions: how to approach them

1. Paralinguistics: spoken communication with aspects of non-verbal communications such as gestures, clapping, pointing, eye contact and facial expressions.. Also includes verbal aspects such as laughter, sighing, whispers. Code switching (languages, registers, etholects, sociolects). Consider meaning of what is said before, during, or after. demonstrates/strengthens/attempts to group membership (group= ethnic, cultural, social). Demonstrates belonging

2. PROSODICS IS NOT A DISCOURSE FEATURE, IT IS A SPOKEN FEATURE. 

3. Prosodics: must quote prosodic feature in quotation (such as an emphasis or /)

4. Prosodic features: tempo, pitch, stress, 

5. Semantic field/domain

6.  Inference

7. denotation/connotation

Unit 1 AOS 2: Language Acquisition

Stages in Acquisition 

• Pre-linguistic 

• Babbling

• One-word stage (holophrastic)

• Two-word stage

• Telegraphic stage

• Multi-word stage

Pre-Linguistic

• A child discriminates speech from other sounds

• Start to discover phenomes

• After a month, babies start crying to producing sounds in order to convery information such as a hunger cry, angry cry, pain cry and cooing in response to pleasure

Babbling:

• Approximately 6 months

• Universal

• Not linguistic chaos

• The 12 most frequent consonants in the worlds languages make up 95% of the consonants uses when infants babble

• Early babbling consists of repeated

• Early babbling consists of repeated consonant-vowel sequences such as mamma, dada, gaga

Holophrastic or One - word stage

• Typically around 1 year old

• Holophrastic: meaning using a single lexeme to form a sentence

• Children talk about whats going on around them

• Realise that sounds are related to meaning. Relationship between signifier (word) and signified (what is being referred to)

First Words:

• People

• Body parts

• Animals

• Toys

• Routines

• Food

• Clothing

• Vehicles

• Household objects

• Activities/states

• Use single words plus relevant gestures

• Suggests that children have a more complex mental representation that their language enables them to express.

• What do we count as a word?

  • Proto words: 

    • not accepted words or standard English, but have actual meaning

    • Consistent relationship between forming and meaning

  • True words:

    • Consistent relation between forming and meaning

    • And some phonetic relationship to some adult words

• Often combines with gestures

Two word stage

• Around 1.5-2 years old

• Child uses minimal words to convey meaning of a whole sentence

• Lack of function words, highly abbreviated with a lack of grammatical words and endings

• As they develop through this stage, children benign to stat to acquire some rules of syntax

• Demonstrating semantic relations with two words

Telegraphic Stage:

• Around 24-30 months

• Start to combine content with function words to create basic grammatical sentences

• Example: i go park

Multi-word stage

• Typically around 30 months of age

• By this point, children are developing at a rapid rate

• Learn up to 14 words a day for the first 6 years of their lives

• 5000 words per year on average

Phonetics and Phonology:

Phonetics: Study of speech sounds:

• Concerned with how sounds are produced, transmitted and received

• Focusus on the ways sounds are produced by particular speaking

• Not related to one particular language

Phonology: study of sound systems and language

• Interested in sound patterns and patterns of sound production in speakers across different cultures

• Can focus on one particular language

Sound vs Spelling:

Orthopraghry regeres to the system of writing conventions in a language

• There are 44 sounds in Australian english but only 26 letters in the alphabet

• Letter combinations are required to represent a sound

• English spelling lacks the phonetic consistency of some other languages such as Arabic and Turkish. The same letters and letter combinations can represent different sounds in different words

Place of Articulation

• The location of the constriction in airflow is called the place of articulation

• This is the point at which a sound is produced

• When this occurs, the articulator (the tongue) moves to the location of a fixed structure in the oral activity to obstruct airflow. 

Manner of Articulation:

• How airflow is obstructed in the vocal tract

• There are 6 manners of articulation

  • Stop/plosive

  • Nasal (or nasal stop)

  • Fricative

  • Affricate

  • Approximant

  • Lateral approximant 

Acquistion of Phonectics:

General order of acquisition:

1. Nasals (/m/ or /n/):

2. Glides (/w/):

3. Stops (/p/ or /b/):

4. Approximants (/j/ or /r/):

5. Fricatives (/f/ or /ʃ/):

6. Affricates (/ʧ/):

Learning Sounds:
First year: learning the phonemic inventory 

Second year: learning how sounds are used (phonolgy)

Elision:
Children will simplify pronunciation by deleting certain sounds

• Final consonant deletion: final consonants may be omitted such as the ‘t’ sound in ‘hat’

• Weak syllable deletion: unstressed syllables are often deleted such as banana becomes nana

• Cluster reduction: consonant clusters are reduced such as snake becomes nake, sleep becomes seep, steal becomes teal.

Children often have difficulty sounding multiple consonants together-known as consonant clusters. They may elide phonemes with the consonant cluster

Substitution:

• This phonological process occurs when children substitute difficult phonemes for ones that have already been acquired

  • /r/ as in rock or story becomes /w/

Assimilation:

• Occurs when a consonant phoneme is replaced with another phoneme already in the world

• Such as ‘gog’ for dog

Reduplication:

• Morphological (as well as phonological) process 

• The root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even change the whole word is repeated exactly exactly or with a slight change

• Makes sound easier to pronounce as they involve fewere phonemes 

• Water = wawa

Metathesis:

• Occurs when children switches the order of phonemes in a word

• Such as aks for ask 

Acquisiton of Morphology:

Morphemes: inflectional, derivational, root word, suffixes,  prefixes and infix, bound and free morphemes. 

Morphological Development:

• Morphological learning requires the child

  • To segment words into morphemes

  • To categorise words into semantic and morpho-syntactic classes (morphemes that have both a syntactic as well as morphological function)

• Children tend to make errors during this process

Undersegmenting:

• Child fails to segment a word into ints morphological components 

• E.g, I like jumprope-ing

Oversegmenting:

• Child creates a morpheme or word breaks where there are none.

• E.g, you are interring upt me 

Morphological overgerneralisation:

• Children learn a morphological rule such as using “-s” for plurals

• They overapply the new rule in situations where it isn’t needed such as teeths 

Miscategorising:

• Child associates a word with the wrong category (word class) and applies inappropriate morphology 

• Such as he runs fastly (adjective as adverb)

Acquisition of past tense:

• children tend to learn verbs with irregular past tense first (due to high frequency) such as (came, went, broke, ran, gave, bought)

• They are not usually learnt early and as unanalysed forms 

• These forms are not necessarily understood as past version of other verbs

• Only later children learn verbs with regular past tense

• After acquiring the rule for the regular past tense children start to produce incorrect version of the irregular verbs

Acquisition of plural:

• English plural

  • Normally: noun stem plus “-s”/-s,-z-z/

• This rule cannot be applied to everything 

• There are many irregularities which children must acquire through their acquisition. 

Acquisition of Semantics:
Meaning of words: 

• During development of semantics, children can struggle to understand that a label such as cat can be applied to many different cats

• The child must work out the relevant characteristics that define this particular label in the order to extend their learning and differentiate from others.

Overextension:

• Children categorise objects, animals or things a the same referent  e.g

  • All round objects are moons (cake/circles/the letter o)

• Why does this occur?

  • Possibility 1: child has incomplete definition 

  • Possibility 2: child is compensating for vocabulary 

Underextemsiom:

• Children attribute a name to something they own or are exposed to, for example, only the family cat is called kitty’ other cats can’t share that name

• Possibility : child has trouble separating the essential features from the accidental 

• Possibility 2: child attempts to be conservative.
  
  

Whole object assumption:

• If a speaker uses a word and points to an object, the child will assume that it refers to the entire object, not just a part

  • For example: a child cannot rrecognise a wheel on a car as being a separate part

  • Their definition of ‘car’ is very broad. 

Acquisition of Syntax:

• When a child is in the holophrastic stage, adults listening often feel that their child is attempting to convey a moe complex message

• Children as early as 17 month can understand the difference between sentences such as ‘Ernie is tickling Bert’ and ‘Bert is tickling Ernie’

• Because these sentences have all the same words, the child cannot rely on the same words alone to make sense of the sentence

What the child must learn:

• Children must learn and understand word-order rules and how they determine the relationship between ubject and object

• By 2 years of age, children begin to put words together. They start to form actual two-word sentences with syntactic and semantic relations

Subject vs Object

Subject: the noun or pronoun  performing the action or verb of the sentence. Ask who or what does gthe verb to find the subject

Object: the noun or pronoun receiving the action performed by the subject (done to). Ask who or what is acted upon to find the object

Semantic and Syntactic relationship:

• Noun + noun sentences such as mummy sock express a subject + object relation, assuming that the mother is putting the sock on the child.

• Two nouns can also be used to show a subject-location relation, sweater chair  , the sweater is on the chair

• Or to show attribution, as in dirty sock

1. Identify two sentence types and explain their purpose in the text (4 marks) Muddy dog there! Dirt puddle (the dirt is in the puddle)

The child used a declarative sentence in the statement “muddy dog there”, as they has made a statement about the condition or location of the dog.

The child has used an exclamative sentence, by stating “wow” to express their strong feelings about the dog 

2. Explain how the child is using nouns or adjectives to express a syntactic or semantic relationship:

The child used the nouns “dirt puddle” to express a subject and object relationship between dirt and the puddle. 

Mean length of Utterance (MLU)

• Due to children maturing at different rates and the age at which children start to produce words and put them together, chronological age is not a good measurement of a childs development 

• Instead, we use the child MLU to compare progress

• It is the average length of the utterance the child is producing at any particular point

• It can be measured in terms of morphemes such as girl/s , dance/d and cry/ing, each having a value of 2

Register:

• Our choice of language to suit our situation

• Referred to as use-related  variation

• Includes our level of formality

• Can also be informed by the field or topic of our communication such as a legal register

• Each type of register has expectations about language use