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Nature of Language
Every creature strives to communicate with its own kind. One of the ways in which this need is
fulfilled is by expressing thoughts in the medium of language. Language is the bridge between
individuals that tells them they are needed, that they are not alone. Language thus gives us self-
expression and by extension, identity. Language is a systematic and conventional means of
human communication by way to vocal sounds. Language is a system governed by rules. All
languages have common set of systems, like the principles, rules, features and processes that are
universal. The scientific study of language is called Linguistics.
All languages, including of course, English, are systems, or, more precisely, series of inter
related systems governed by rules. In other words, languages are highly structured; they consist
of patterns that recur in various combinations and rules that apply to produce these patterns.
The inter-related systems of a language include Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Lexicon, and
Semantics.
Languages that have a written representation (and not all languages do) also have a system of
graphics. All languages have the same set of systems (with the possible exception of graphics)
but the components of the systems and the inter relationship among the system differ from
language to language.
Morphology Is the arrangement and relationship of the smallest meaningful units in a language
these minimum units of meaning are called morphemes. It is often useful to distinguish between
free and bound morphemes
Free morphemes can be used alone as independent words for example, take, for, each etc
Bound morphemes form words only when attached to at least one other morphemes; re, dis ,un, -
ing, –ful and –tion are all bound morphemes.
The most familiar bound morphemes are affixes (that is, prefixes and suffixes) but even bases
(Forms to which affixes are attached) can be bound. An example of a bound base is the –cept of
words as except, accept, deceptive, and reception; although -cept derives from an independent
Latin verb capere ‘to take’, it appears only as a bound morpheme in English.
Syntax is the arrangement of words in to phrases, clauses, and sentences, loosely speaking, it is
word order. A simple example like the difference between I had stolen my car and I had my car
stolen illustrates how crucial syntax is in English. English speakers have more option with
respect to syntax than they do with respect to phonology or morphology. But we have the option
of saying either I like dogs. Or dogs I like. This freedom is limited, however; they cannot say
like dogs I. Or Like I dogs.
The Lexicon of a language is the list of all the Morphemes in the language. In linguistic
terminology, a lexicon differs from vocabulary or a dictionary of a language in that it includes
not only independent words but also morphemes that do not appear as independent words,
including affixes such as-ed, -s, mis, and poly- and bound forms like the –clude of include,
exclude, and preclude, which appear only as part of words and never as independent words. One
of the most remarkable features of English today is the great size and diversity of origin of its
Lexicon.
Semantics is the study of meanings or all the meanings expressed by a language. It is the
relationship between language and the real world, between the sounds we make and what we are
talking about like all other aspects of language, meanings change overtime.
Functions of language:
Gives self-expression and identity. It tells our listeners or readers about ourselves – in particular
about our regional origins, social background, and level of education, age, sex, and personality.
It gives shape to thoughts and emotions, and communicates these to intended audience.
It is the basic element with which the history of the world has been recorded.
it is a time capsule that allows us to view and re-view any moment in the past of literate
man.(refer to people, events etc in the world)
It is a repository of information.
To express judgments, opinions, assertion etc. it is used to say if a statement is true or false.
To maintain social rapport between people; to build and maintain relationship.
A communication model:
Communication happens when the decoder receives, decodes and understands the message of the
encoder. The encoder and the decoder are called interlocuters.
Language is not only a human phenomenon. Animals cry, hoot, bleat, coo, dance, sing…. to
communicate their message.
Sounds are the basic units of language. But not sounds in themselves or in a jumble. Sounds have
to be meaningful. They acquire meaning when they organize themselves in an intelligible
combinations and forms.
Sounds >> forms >> meaning gives us an intelligible, sensible structure to understand the world
around us.
These three components, in fact, represent the three fundamental dimensions of the organization
as well as the three levels of analysis of language: phonological, syntactic, and semantic.
i. Phonological level: sounds and their organization.
ii. Syntactic level: forms and their organization.
iii. Semantic level: meaning as manifested in the phonological and syntactic levels.
Language Acquisition:
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and
comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.
Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits, because non-humans do not
communicate by using language. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language
acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from
second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of
additional languages.
The capacity to successfully use language requires one to acquire a range of tools including
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be
vocalized as in speech or manual as in sign. The human language capacity is represented in the
brain. Even though the human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite
number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests
that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately.
These three mechanisms are: relativization, complementation and coordination.
The capacity to acquire and use language is a key aspect that distinguishes humans from other
beings. Although it is difficult to pin down what aspects of language are uniquely human, there
are a few design features that can be found in all known forms of human language, but that are
missing from forms of animal communication. For example, many animals are able to
communicate with each other by signaling to the things around them, but this kind of
communication lacks the arbitrariness of human vernaculars (in that there is nothing about the
sound of the word "dog" that would hint at its meaning). Other forms of animal communication
may utilize arbitrary sounds, but are unable to combine those sounds in different ways to create
completely novel messages that can then be automatically understood by another. Charles F.
Hockett called this design feature of human language "productivity". It is crucial to the
understanding of human language acquisition that we are not limited to a finite set of words, but,
rather, must be able to understand and utilize a complex system that allows for an infinite
number of possible messages. So, while many forms of animal communication exist, they differ
from human languages in that they have a limited range of vocabulary tokens, and the
vocabulary items are not combined syntactically to create phrases.
A major debate in understanding language acquisition is how these capacities are picked up by
infants from the linguistic input. Input in the linguistic context is defined as "All words, contexts,
and other forms of language to which a learner is exposed, relative to acquired proficiency in
first or second languages". Nativists such as Noam Chomsky have focused on the hugely
complex nature of human grammars, the finiteness and ambiguity of the input that children
receive, and the relatively limited cognitive abilities of an infant. From these characteristics they
conclude that the process of language acquisition in infants must be tightly constrained and
guided by the biologically given characteristics of the human brain. Otherwise, they argue, it is
extremely difficult to explain how children, within the first five years of life, routinely master the
complex, largely tacit grammatical rules of their native language.
Other scholars, however, have resisted the possibility that infants' routine success at acquiring
the grammar of their native language requires anything more than the forms of learning seen
with other cognitive skills, including such mundane motor skills as learning to ride a bike. In
particular, there has been resistance to the possibility that human biology includes any form of
specialization for language. This conflict is often referred to as the "Nature vs. Nurture" debate.
Of course, most scholars acknowledge that certain aspects of language acquisition must result
from the specific ways in which the human brain is "wired" (a "nature" component, which
accounts for the failure of non-human species to acquire human languages) and that certain
others are shaped by the particular language environment in which a person is raised (a "nurture"
component, which accounts for the fact that humans raised in different societies acquire different
languages). The as-yet unresolved question is the extent to which the specific cognitive
capacities in the "nature" component are also used outside of language.
The Behaviorist Theory: behaviorist believes that children learn to speak by imitation and
parents then reinforce or correct their speech constantly. They believe that the child is born with
an empty slate and language items are written on that mental slate as the child grows and
experiences the world to which it is exposed.
The Rationalist Theory: Rationalist argues that language learning is a much more complex
process. The child is born with all the facilities to learn the language. The linguistic ability is
inherent in the mind of the child. All that the child does is discover and test.
The Cognitive Theory: According to this theory, children can only use certain linguistic
structures when they understand fully the concepts surrounding them. Jean Piaget linked
language acquisition to a child’s maturation. To use linguistic structures they must understand
the concept. A child use comparison of size if the child does not understand the concept of size.
Why Should We Care About Word Histories?
If a word's etymology is not the same as its definition, why should we care at all about word
histories? Well, for one thing, understanding how words have developed can teach us a great
deal about our cultural history. In addition, studying the histories of familiar words can help us to
deduce the meanings of unfamiliar words, thereby enriching our vocabularies. Finally, word
stories are often both entertaining and thought provoking. As any youngster can tell you, words
are fun.
History of Etymology:
The search for meaningful origins for familiar or strange words is far older than the modern
understanding of linguistic evolution and the relationships of languages, which began no earlier
than the 18th century. From Antiquity through the 17th century, from Pāṇini to Pindar to Sir
Thomas Browne, etymology had been a form of witty wordplay, in which the supposed origins
of words were changed to satisfy contemporary requirements.
The Greek poet Pindar (born in approximately 522 BCE) employed creative etymologies to
flatter his patrons. Plutarch employed etymologies insecurely based on fancied resemblances
insounds. Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae was an encyclopedic tracing of "first things" that
remained uncritically in use in Europe until the sixteenth century. Etymologicum genuinum is
agrammatical encyclopedia edited at Constantinople in the ninth century, one of several similar
Byzantine works. The fourteenth-century Legenda Aurea begins each vita of a saint with a
fancifulexcursus in the form of an etymology.[citation needed]
Modern era:
Etymology in the modern sense emerged in the late 18th century European academia, within the
context of the wider "Age of Enlightenment," although preceded by 17th century pioneers such
asMarcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Vossius, Stephen Skinner, Elisha Coles, and William Wotton.
The first known systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis
of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made in 1770 by the Hungarian, János Sajnovics, when
he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian (work that was later
extended to the whole Finno-Ugric language family in 1799 by his fellow countryman, Samuel
Gyarmathi).[3] The origin of modern historical linguistics is often traced back to Sir William
Jones, an English philologist living in India, who in 1782 observed the genetic relationship
between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. Jones published his The Sanskrit Language in 1786, laying
the foundation for the field of Indo-European linguistics.
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing
actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined
byJames Murray in 1889. (OED online first definition of 'back formation' is from the definition
of to burgle, which was first published in 1889.)
Etymology Definition:
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning
have changed over time. By an extension, the term "the etymology of [a word]" means the origin
of the particular word.
The etymology of a word refers to its origin and historical development: that is, its earliest
known use, its transmission from one language to another, and its changes in form and meaning.
Etymology is also the term for the branch of linguistics that studies word histories.
For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and
texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods
of their history and when they entered the languages in question. Etymologists also apply the
methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old
for any direct information to be available.
By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can
make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots
have been found that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-
European language family.
Even though etymological research originally grew from the philological tradition, currently
much etymological research is done on language families where little or no early documentation
is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian.
The word etymology is derived from the Greek etymon, meaning "true sense" and the suffix -
logia, denoting "the study of". Etymon is also used in English to refer to the source word of a
given word. For example, Latin candidus, which means "white", is the etymon of English candid.
Methods:
Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are:
• Philological research. Changes in the form and meaning of the word can be traced with
the aid of older texts, if such are available.
• Making use of dialectological data. The form or meaning of the word might show
variations between dialects, which may yield clues about its earlier history.
• The comparative method. By a systematic comparison of related languages, etymologists
may often be able to detect which words derive from their common ancestor language and which
were instead later borrowed from another language.
• The study of semantic change. Etymologists must often make hypotheses about changes
in the meaning of particular words. Such hypotheses are tested against the general knowledge of
semantic shifts. For example, the assumption of a particular change of meaning may be
substantiated by showing that the same type of change has occurred in other languages as well.
Semantic change, also known as semantic shift or semantic progression describes the evolution
of word usage — usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the
original usage. In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the
meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations which can be added,
removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that cognates across space and time have very
different meanings. The study of semantic change can be seen as part of
etymology,onomasiology, semasiology, and semantics.
The combination of sound change and semantic change often creates etymological
connections that are impossible to detect by merely looking at the modern word-forms. For
instance, English lord comes from Old English hlāf-weard, meaning literally “bread guard”. The
components of this compound, in turn, yielded modern English loaf and ward.
5 Shift in Denotation
A shift in denotation occurs when the real world reference of a word changes. For example, OE
clud meant “rock, hill” but its PDE descendant is cloud
A number of classification schemes have been suggested for semantic change. The most widely
accepted scheme in the English-speaking academic world is from Bloomfield (1933):
Narrowing: Change from superordinate level to subordinate level. For example, skyline
used to refer to any horizon, but now it has narrowed to a horizon decorated by skyscrapers.
Widening: Change from subordinate level to superordinate level. There are many
examples of specific brand names being used for the general product, such as with Kleenex.
Such uses are known as generonyms.
Metaphor: Change based on similarity of thing. For example, broadcast originally meant
"to cast seeds out"; with the advent of radio and television, the word was extended to indicate the
transmission of audio and video signals. Outside of agricultural circles, very few people use
broadcast in the earlier sense.
Metonymy: Change based on nearness in space or time, e.g., jaw "cheek" → "mandible".
Synecdoche: Change based on whole-part relation. The convention of using capital cities
to represent countries or their governments is an example of this.
Meiosis: Change from weaker to stronger meaning, e.g., kill "torment" → "slaughter"
Hyperbole: Change from stronger to weaker meaning, e.g., astound "strike with thunder"
→ "surprise strongly".
Degeneration: e.g., knave "boy" → "servant" → "deceitful or despicable man".
Elevation: e.g., knight "boy" → "nobleman".
However, the categorization of Blank (1998) has gained increasing acceptance:
Metaphor: Change based on similarity between concepts, e.g., mouse "rodent" →
"computer device".
Metonymy: Change based on contiguity between concepts, e.g., horn "animal horn" →
"musical instrument".
Synecdoche: Same as above.
Specialization of meaning: Downward shift in a taxonomy, e.g., corn "grain" → "wheat"
(UK), → "maize" (US).
Generalization of meaning: Upward shift in a taxonomy, e.g., hoover "Hoover vacuum
cleaner" → "any type of vacuum cleaner".
Cohyponymic transfer: Horizontal shift in a taxonomy, e.g., the confusion of mouse and
rat in some dialects.
Antiphrasis: Change based on a contrastive aspect of the concepts, e.g., perfect lady in the
sense of "prostitute".
Auto-antonymy: Change of a word's sense and concept to the complementary opposite,
e.g., bad in the slang sense of "good".
Auto-converse: Lexical expression of a relationship by the two extremes of the respective
relationship, e.g., take in the dialectal use as "give".
Ellipsis: Semantic change based on the contiguity of names, e.g., car "cart" →
"automobile", due to the invention of the (motor) car.
Folk-etymology: Semantic change based on the similarity of names, e.g., French
contredanse, orig. English country dance.
Blank considers it problematic, though, to include amelioration and pejoration of meaning as
well as strengthening and weakening of meaning. According to Blank, these are not objectively
classifiable phenomena; moreover, Blank has shown that all of the examples listed under these
headings can be grouped into the other phenomena.
Back-formation is different from clipping – back-formation may change the part of speech
or the word's meaning, whereas clipping creates shortened words from longer words, but does
not change the part of speech or the meaning of the word.
For example, the noun resurrection was borrowed from Latin, and the verb resurrect was then
backformed hundreds of years later from it by removing the ion suffix. This segmentation
ofresurrection into resurrect + ion was possible because English had examples of Latinate words
in the form of verb and verb+-ion pairs, such as opine/opinion. These became the pattern for
many more such pairs, where a verb derived from a Latin supine stem and a noun ending in ion
entered the language together, such as insert/insertion, project/projection, etc.
Back-formation may be similar to the reanalyses of folk etymologies when it rests on an
erroneous understanding of the morphology of the longer word. For example, the singular noun
asset is a back-formation from the plural assets. However, assets is originally not a plural; it is a
loan-word from Anglo-Norman asetz (modern French assez). The -s was reanalyzed as a plural
suffix.
Back-formation in the English language:
Many words came into English by this route: Pease was once a mass noun but was reinterpreted
as a plural, leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statistic was likewise a back-formation
from the field of study statistics. In Britain, the verb burgle came into use in the 19th century as a
back-formation from burglar (which can be compared to the North American verb burglarize
formed by suffixation).
Methods Of Etymology:
Etymology is the study of the history of words — when they entered a language, from what
source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.
Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic
mechanisms, the most important of which are the following:
· Borrowing, i.e. the adoption of loanwords from other languages.
· Word formation such as derivation and compounding.
· Onomatopoeia and sound symbolism, i.e. the creation of imitative words.
While the origin of newly emerged words is often more or less transparent, it tends to become
obscured through time due to:
· Sound change: for example, it is not obvious at first sight that English set is related to sit
(the former is originally a causative formation of the latter), and even less so that bless is related
to blood (the former was originally a derivative with the meaning “to mark with blood”, or the
like).
· Semantic change: English bead originally meant “prayer”, and acquired its modern sense
through the practice of counting prayers with beads.
Most often combinations of etymological mechanisms apply. For example, the German word
bitte (please) the German word beten (to pray) and the Dutch word bidden (to pray) are related
through sound and meaning to the English word bead.
The combination of sound change and semantic change often creates etymological connections
that are impossible to detect by merely looking at the modern word-forms. For instance, English
lord comes from Old English hlāf-weard, meaning literally “bread guard”. The components of
this compound, in turn, yielded modern English loaf and ward.
Synchronic analysis:
In linguistics, a synchronic analysis is one that views linguistic phenomena only at one point in
time, usually the present, though a synchronic analysis of a historical language form is also
possible. In linguistics, a synchronic analysis is one that views linguistic phenomena only at a
given time, usually the present, though a synchronic analysis of a historical language form is also
possible. This may be distinguished from diachronic, which regards a phenomenon in terms of
developments through time. Diachronic analysis is the main concern of historical linguistics;
most other branches of linguistics are concerned with some form of synchronic analysis.
Synchronic and diachronic approaches can reach quite different conclusions. For example,
a Germanic strong verb like English sing - sang - sung is irregular when viewed synchronically:
the native speaker's brain processes these as learned forms, whereas the derived forms of regular
verbs are processed quite differently, by the application of productive rules (for example,
adding -ed to the basic form of a verb as in walk - walked). This is an insight
of psycholinguistics, relevant also for language didactics, both of which are synchronic
disciplines. However a diachronic analysis will show that the strong verb is the remnant of a
fully regular system of internal vowel changes; historical linguistics seldom uses the category
"irregular verb".
Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) has been defined by Nordquist as "one
of the two main temporal dimensions of language study introduced by Swiss linguist Ferdinand
de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics (1916)". The central focus of historical
linguistics is the study of language at different periods in history and as it changes between
different periods of history. Historical linguistics is directly compared and distinguished
from synchronic analysis which studies language at a single historical period of time. Five of the
principal concerns of historical linguistics are: (a) to describe and account for observed changes
in particular languages, (b) to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their
relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics), (c) to develop
general theories about how and why language changes, (d) to describe the history of speech
communities, and (e) to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages
by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent
from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyses the
internal development of a single language over time. Ordinarily both methods are used together
to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages, to fill in gaps in the historical record of a
language, to discover the development of phonological, morphological, and other linguistic
systems, and to confirm or refute hypothesized relationships between languages.
The comparative method was developed over the 19th century. Key contributions were made by
the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask and Karl Verner and the German scholar Jacob Grimm. The
first linguist to offerreconstructed forms from a proto-language was August Schleicher, in
his Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen, originally
published in 1861. Here is Schleicher’s explanation of why he offered reconstructed forms:
In the present work an attempt is made to set forth the inferred Indo-European original language
side by side with its really existent derived languages. Besides the advantages offered by such a
plan, in setting immediately before the eyes of the student the final results of the investigation in
a more concrete form, and thereby rendering easier his insight into the nature of particular Indo-
European languages, there is, I think, another of no less importance gained by it, namely that it
shows the baselessness of the assumption that the non-Indian Indo-European languages were
derived from Old-Indian (Sanskrit).
English language:
English derives from Old English (sometimes referred to as Anglo-Saxon), a West Germanic
variety, although its current vocabulary includes words from many languages.
The Old English roots may be seen in the similarity of numbers in English and
German, particularly seven/sieben, eight/acht, nine/neun, and ten/zehn. Pronouns are also
cognate: I/mine/me ich/mein/mich;thou/thine/thee and du/dein/dich; we/wir us/uns; she/sie.
However, language change has eroded many grammatical elements, such as the noun case
system, which is greatly simplified in modern English, and certain elements of vocabulary, some
of which are borrowed from French. Although many of the words in the English lexicon come
from Romance languages, most of the common words used in English are of Germanic origin.
When the Normans conquered England in 1066 (see Norman Conquest), they brought their
Norman language with them. During the Anglo-Norman period, which united insular and
continental territories, the ruling class spoke Anglo-Norman, while the peasants spoke the
vernacular English of the time. Anglo-Norman was the conduit for the introduction of French
into England, aided by the circulation of Langue d'oïl literature from France. This led to many
paired words of French and English origin. For example, beef is related, through borrowing, to
modern French bœuf, veal toveau, pork to porc, and poultry to poulet. All these words, French
and English, refer to the meat rather than to the animal. Words that refer to farm animals, on the
other hand, tend to be cognates of words in other Germanic languages.
For example swine/Schwein, cow/Kuh, calf/Kalb, and sheep/Schaf. The variant usage has been
explained by the proposition that it was the Norman rulers who mostly ate meat (an expensive
commodity) and the Anglo-Saxons who farmed the animals. This explanation has passed into
common folklore but has been disputed.
English has proven accommodating to words from many languages, as described in the following
examples. Scientific terminology relies heavily on words of Latin and Greek origin. Spanish has
contributed many words, particularly in the southwestern United States. Examples include
buckaroo from vaquero or "cowboy"; alligator from el lagarto or "lizard"; rodeo and savvy;
states' names such as Colorado and Florida. Cuddle, eerie, and greed come from Scots; albino,
palaver, lingo, verandah, and coconut from Portuguese; diva, prima donna, pasta, pizza,
paparazzi, and umbrellafrom Italian; adobe, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, apricot, assassin, caliber,
cotton, hazard, jacket, jar, julep, mosque, Muslim, orange, safari, sofa, and zero from Arabic;
honcho, sushi, andtsunami from Japanese; dim sum, gung ho, kowtow, kumquat, ketchup, and
typhoon from Cantonese; behemoth, hallelujah, Satan, jubilee, and rabbi from Hebrew; taiga,
sable, and sputnik fromRussian; galore, whiskey, phoney, trousers, and Tory from Irish;
brahman, guru, karma, and pandit from Sanskrit; kampong and amok from Malay; smorgasbord
and ombudsman from Swedish, Danish, Norwegian; sauna from Finnish; and boondocks from
the Tagalog word, bundok. (See also "loanword.")
Is the Etymology of a Word Its True Definition?
Not at all, though people sometimes try to make this argument. The word etymology is derived
from the Greek word etymon, which means "the true sense of a word." But in fact the original
meaning of a word is often different from its contemporary definition.
The meanings of many words have changed over time, and older senses of a word may grow
uncommon or disappear entirely from everyday use. Disaster, for instance, no longer means the
"evil influence of a star or planet," just as consider no longer means "to observe the stars."
Let's look at another example. Our English word salary is defined by The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language as "fixed compensation for services, paid to a person on a
regular basis." Its etymology can be traced back 2,000 years to sal, the Latin word for salt. So
what's the connection between salt and salary?
The Roman historian Pliny the Elder tells us that "in Rome, a soldier was paid in salt," which
back then was widely used as a food preservative. Eventually, this salarium came to signify a
stipend paid in any form, usually money. Even today the expression "worth your salt" indicates
that you're working hard and earning your salary. However, this doesn't mean that salt is the true
definition of salary.
Phonetics:
The branch of linguistics that studies word components of the phonetic system of the language.
Concerned with human noises by which the thought is actualized or given audible shape +
nature, fs, relation to the meaning of these noises
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. Although language is obviously composed of
sound, speech sounds came to be the main focus of linguistic investigation only in the 20th
century. 19th century linguists were more interested in written rather than spoken language. Only
with the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in the early 20th century did linguists
recognize the primacy of sound in human language and the secondary, superficial nature of
writing.
Acoustic phonetics: is the study of the physical properties of sounds, the air wave
frequencies of which sounds consist. The frequency of vibrations measured in hertz; volume of
sound measured in decibels. Instruments used to measure and record speech sounds include the
sound spectrograph, which produces readouts called sound spectrograms.
Auditory phonetics: is the study of how sounds are perceived by the human ear or
recognized by the brain. (Mention Oronyms, Mondegreens.)
Articulatory phonetics: is the study of how sounds are produced by the vocal
apparatus/how speech sounds are made or articulated.
The phoneme
Basic concept of phonetics.
Smallest unit of language, existing as such speech sound which is capable of differentiating one
word from another, or one grammatical form from another.
Speech sound that makes a difference in meaning
A class or family of sounds regarded as a single sound and represented in transcription by the
same symbol
Abstractional and generalized in character exists in our minds as an abstraction and at the same
time is generalized in speech in the form of its allophones
Phoneme may be pronounced differently in different ws but still remain the same phoneme pleat-
play-wale.
2 main classes of phonemes: vowels and consonants
Pairs of words that demonstrate a phonemic contrast – minimal pairs (discovered by method of
commutation)
Phonemics: Study of the sound system / phoneme of a given language. It is also the classification
and analysis of its phoneme.
Morpheme: Smallest meaningful unit into which a word can be divided. Free Morpheme can be
used alone as individual words.
Eg: Take, Slighly.
Bound morpheme form words only when attached to one morpheme. Bound morpheme are
prefixes and suffixes.
UN-SLIGHT-LY (Bound – free –bound morpheme)
Affixes: Prefixes and suffixes.
Inflectional affix – Shows a grammatical feature.
Derivational affixes are either prefixes or suffixes, which changes the meaning of the word to
which they are attached.
Syntax is the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences. It is words arranged into phrases
and phrase arranged into sentences. Words put in order.
Eg. I had stolen the car / I had the car stolen / Stolen the car I.
Morphology Is the arrangement and relationship of the smallest meaningful units in a language
these minimum units of meaning are called morphemes. It is often useful to distinguish between
free and bound morphemes
Free morphemes can be used alone as independent words for example, take, for, each etc
Bound morphemes form words only when attached to at least one other morphemes; re, dis ,un, -
ing, –ful and –tion are all bound morphemes.
The most familiar bound morphemes are affixes (that is, prefixes and suffixes) but even bases
(Forms to which affixes are attached) can be bound. An example of a bound base is the –cept of
words as except, accept, deceptive, and reception; although -cept derives from an independent
Latin verb capere ‘to take’, it appears only as a bound morpheme in English.
Syntax is the arrangement of words in to phrases, clauses, and sentences, loosely speaking, it is
word order. A simple example like the difference between I had stolen my car and I had my car
stolen illustrates how crucial syntax is in English. English speakers have more option with
respect to syntax than they do with respect to phonology or morphology. But we have the option
of saying either I like dogs. Or dogs I like. This freedom is limited, however; they cannot say
like dogs I. Or Like I dogs.
The Lexicon of a language is the list of all the Morphemes in the language. In linguistic
terminology, a lexicon differs from vocabulary or a dictionary of a language in that it includes
not only independent words but also morphemes that do not appear as independent words,
including affixes such as-ed, -s, mis, and poly- and bound forms like the –clude of include,
exclude, and preclude, which appear only as part of words and never as independent words. One
of the most remarkable features of English today is the great size and diversity of origin of its
Lexicon.
Semantics is the study of meanings or all the meanings expressed by a language. It is the
relationship between language and the real world, between the sounds we make and what we are
talking about like all other aspects of language, meanings change overtime
There are a number of possible ways of classifying types of semantic change. None of them are
totally satisfactory:
Diphthong: If the tongue moves significantly during the production of a vowel phone, the result
is a diphthong. A diphthong sounds like a rapid, blended sequence of two separate vowels. An
example in English is the vowel sound in the word kite, which is like a rapid combination of a
kind of 'a sound' and a kind of 'i sound'. In the IPA a diphthong is represented by two vowel
symbols. It is important to note that the two symbols represent a SINGLE phone.
Ellipsis: A technical term for leaving out words in sentences. For example, in Brian ate the ice-
cream and Judy the peaches, there is ellipsis, since the word ate is omitted after Judy.
Inflection: A grammatical change in the form of a word (more accurately of a lexeme), which
leaves the 'base meaning' and the grammatical category of the word unchanged. In English,
inflections are restricted to the endings of words (i.e. suffixes). Other languages may show
changes elsewhere. As an example, the suffix s is the usual written plural inflection in English.
Inflections in nouns may show changes of number, gender, case, etc.; in verbs, of number,
person, tense, aspect, etc. See also morphology.
Intonation: Intonation refers to changes in the tone or frequency of sounds during speech. For
example, in English the tone usually falls at the end of a statement and rises at the end of a
question, so that You want some coffee. and You want some coffee? can be distinguished by
tone alone. In some languages (e.g. Chinese, Thai), sequences containing the same phones but
with different intonation patterns correspond to different words.
IPA: The International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA is a set of symbols which can be used to
represent the phones and phonemes of natural languages. A subset which can be used to
represent 'Standard English English' (roughly the dialect of middle-class people from the south
east of England) is given in a separate table.
Morphology: The structure of words and the study of this structure. For example, a
morphological analysis of the English word unknowingly might yield four components, called
morphemes. These are the root know and three affixes, the prefix un indicating negation, and two
suffixes ing and ly. Note that both spelling and pronunciation changes can take place when
morphemes are combined. Thus the root happy plus the affix ly yields happily not *happyly.
Many English words appear to contain morphemes, but resist neat division. For example, the
suffix ish often indicates that the word refers to a language (e.g. English, Spanish, Danish,
Swedish), but removing the suffix does not always leave a clear root morpheme (e.g. Spanish =
?Span(e) + ish). In other cases, it may be that a word was in the past created from distinct
morphemes, but that this is not obvious to a contemporary speaker as the morphemes are no
longer used in forming new words.
When an affix morpheme is an inflection, the word can be said to show inflectional morphology.
Thus the word chased (= chase + ed) shows inflectional morphology. In many languages,
including English, inflectional morphology is relatively predictable, and can be handled by rules.
In other cases, the word can be said to show derivational morphology. Thus the word output =
out + put shows derivational morphology: adding the prefix out to the verb put creates a noun
with the approximate meaning "that which was put out". In many languages, including English,
derivational morphology is unpredictable, and so cannot easily be handled by rules. Thus there's
no noun *outgo meaning "that which went out" (although there is a noun, most often used in the
plural, outgoings = out + go + ing + s).
NL = Natural Language.
Phonetics: Phonetics is the study of the sounds of speech (i.e. the study of phones). It can be
distinguished from phonology which is more concerned with the underlying theory (i.e. the
phonemes which underlie phones and the rules which govern the conversion of phonemes to
phones and vice versa).
Prefix: A prefix is a morpheme which is added before a root morpheme in the formation of a
word. See morphology.
Referential semantics: A system where the meaning of a word just is the thing it refers to.
Suffix: A suffix is a morpheme which is added after a root morpheme in the formation of a
word. See morphology.
Syntax: The syntax of a language comprises, roughly speaking, the patterns into which its
words can be validly arranged to form sentences. The combination of morphology and syntax is
sometimes called the grammar of a language.
Nonverbal communication:
When you are talking to someone stay out of their “intimate space” they want to talk to you
but just do not want to have you all over them. “ Most animals have a certain air space around
their bodies that they claim as their personal space…1-18 in being the intimate zone, 18-48 in
being the personal zone, 4-12 ft. being the social zone and the public zone at over 12 ft.”
Proxemics is the study of how people use and perceive the physical space around them. The
space between the sender and the receiver of a message influences the way the message is
interpreted. In addition, the perception and use of space varies significantly across cultures[10]
and different settings within cultures. Space in nonverbal communication may be divided into
four main categories: intimate, social, personal, and public space.
Chronemics is the study of the use of time in nonverbal communication. The way we perceive
time, structure our time and react to time is a powerful communication tool and helps set the
stage for communication. Time perceptions include punctuality and the willingness to wait, plus
the speed of speech and how long people are willing to listen. The timing and frequency of an
action as well as the tempo and rhythm of communications within an interaction contributes to
the interpretation of nonverbal messages. Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey (1988) identified two
dominant time patterns: monochronic time and polychronic time.
Monochronic Time:
A monochronic time system means that things are done one at a time and time is segmented
into precise, small units. Under this system time is scheduled, arranged and managed.
The United States is considered a monochronic society. This perception of time is learned and
rooted in the Industrial Revolution, where "factory life required the labor force to be on hand
and in place at an appointed hour" (Guerrero, DeVito & Hecht, 1999, p. 238). For Americans,
time is a precious resource not to be wasted or taken lightly. "We buy time, save time, spend
time and make time. Our time can be broken down into years, months, days, hours, minutes,
seconds and even milliseconds. We use time to structure both our daily lives and events that
we are planning for the future. We have schedules that we must follow: appointments that we
must go to at a certain time, classes that start and end at certain times, work schedules that
start and end at certain times, and even our favorite TV shows, that start and end at a certain
time.”
As communication scholar Edward T. Hall wrote regarding the American viewpoint of time in
the business world, “the schedule is sacred.” Hall says that for monochronic cultures, “time is
tangible” and viewed as a commodity where “time is money” or “time is wasted.” The result of
this perspective is that Americans and other monochronic cultures, such as the German and
Swiss, place a paramount value on schedules, tasks and “getting the job done.” These cultures
are committed to regimented schedules and may view those who do not subscribe to the same
perception of time as disrespectful.
Monochronic cultures include Germany, Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and
Scandinavia.
Polychronic Time:
A polychronic time system is a system where several things can be done at once, and a more
fluid approach is taken to scheduling time. Unlike Americans and most northern and western
European cultures, Native American, Latin American, Arab and African cultures use the
polychronic system of time.
These cultures are much less focused on the preciseness of accounting for each and every
moment. As Raymond Cohen notes, polychronic cultures are deeply steeped in tradition rather
than in tasks—a clear difference from their monochronic counterparts. Cohen notes that
"Traditional societies have all the time in the world. The arbitrary divisions of the clock face
have little saliency in cultures grounded in the cycle of the seasons, the invariant pattern of
rural life, and the calendar of religious festivities" (Cohen, 1997, p. 34).
Instead, their culture is more focused on relationships, rather than watching the clock. They
have no problem being “late” for an event if they are with family or friends, because the
relationship is what really matters. As a result, polychronic cultures have a much less formal
perception of time. They are not ruled by precise calendars and schedules. Rather, “cultures
that use the polychronic time system often schedule multiple appointments simultaneously so
keeping on schedule is an impossibility.”
Polychronic cultures include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Mexico, the Philippines, India, and many in
Africa.
Kinesics:
The term "kinesics" was first used (in 1952) by Ray Birdwhistell, an anthropologist who wished
to study how people communicate through posture, gesture, stance, and movement. Part of
Birdwhistell's work involved making films of people in social situations and analyzing them to
show different levels of communication not clearly seen otherwise. Several other
anthropologists, including Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, also studied kinesics.
Touches among humans that can be defined as communication include handshakes, holding
hands, kissing (cheek, lips, hand), back slapping, high fives, a pat on the shoulder, and brushing
an arm. Touching of oneself may include licking, picking, holding, and scratching. These
behaviors are referred to as "adapters" or "tells" and may send messages that reveal the
intentions or feelings of a communicator. The meaning conveyed from touch is highly
dependent upon the culture, the context of the situation, the relationship between
communicators, and the manner of touch.
Touch is an extremely important sense for humans; as well as providing information about
surfaces and textures it is a component of nonverbal communication in interpersonal
relationships, and vital in conveying physical intimacy. It can be both sexual (such as kissing)
and platonic (such as hugging or tickling).
Touch is the earliest sense to develop in the fetus. The development of an infant's haptic senses
and how it relates to the development of the other senses such as vision have been the target
of much research. Human babies have been observed to have enormous difficulty surviving if
they do not possess a sense of touch, even if they retain sight and hearing. Babies who can
perceive through touch, even without sight and hearing, tend to fare much better. Touch can
be thought of as a basic sense in that most life forms have a response to being touched, while
only a subset have sight and hearing.
In chimpanzees the sense of touch is highly developed. As newborns they see and hear poorly
but cling strongly to their mothers. Harry Harlow conducted a controversial study involving
rhesus monkeys and observed that monkeys reared with a "terry cloth mother," a wire feeding
apparatus wrapped in soft terry cloth that provided a level of tactile stimulation and comfort,
were considerably more emotionally stable as adults than those with a mere wire
mother.(Harlow,1958)
Touching is treated differently from one country to another and socially acceptable levels of
touching vary from one culture to another (Remland, 2009). In Thai culture, for example,
touching someone's head may be thought rude. Remland and Jones (1995) studied groups of
people communicating and found that touching was rare among the English (8%), the French
(5%) and the Dutch (4%) compared to Italians (14%) and Greeks (12.5%).
Striking, pushing, pulling, pinching, kicking, strangling and hand-to-hand fighting are forms of
touch in the context of physical abuse. In a sentence like "I never touched him/her" or "Don't
you dare touch him/her," the term touch may be meant as a euphemism for either physical
abuse or sexual touching.
Stoeltje (2003) wrote about how Americans are "losing touch" with this important
communication skill. During a study conducted by University of Miami School of Medicine,
Touch Research Institutes, American children were said to be more aggressive than their French
counterparts while playing at a playground. It was noted that French women touched their
children more.
Argyle (1970) put forward the hypothesis that whereas spoken language is normally used for
communicating information about events external to the speakers, non-verbal codes are used
to establish and maintain interpersonal relationships. It is considered more polite or nicer to
communicate attitudes towards others non-verbally rather than verbally, for instance in order
to avoid embarrassing situations.
Argyle (1988) concluded there are five primary functions of nonverbal bodily behavior in human
communication:
Express emotions
Rituals (greetings)
In regards to expressing interpersonal attitudes, humans communicate interpersonal closeness
through a series of nonverbal actions known as immediacy behaviors. Examples of immediacy
behaviors are smiling, touching, open body positions, and eye contact. Cultures that display
these immediacy behaviors are considered high-contact cultures.
When communicating, nonverbal messages can interact with verbal messages in six ways:
repeating, conflicting, complementing, substituting, regulating and accenting/moderating.
Conflicting Verbal and nonverbal messages within the same interaction can sometimes send
opposing or conflicting messages. A person verbally expressing a statement of truth while
simultaneously fidgeting or avoiding eye contact may convey a mixed message to the receiver
in the interaction. Conflicting messages may occur for a variety of reasons often stemming from
feelings of uncertainty, ambivalence, or frustration. When mixed messages occur, nonverbal
communication becomes the primary tool people use to attain additional information to clarify
the situation; great attention is placed on bodily movements and positioning when people
perceive mixed messages during interactions
Complementing:
Substituting:
Nonverbal behavior is sometimes used as the sole channel for communication of a message.
People learn to identify facial expressions, body movements, and body positioning as
corresponding with specific feelings and intentions. Nonverbal signals can be used without
verbal communication to convey messages; when nonverbal behavior does not effectively
communicate a message; verbal methods are used to enhance understanding.
Nonverbal communication is the process of sending and receiving messages from another
person. These messages can be conveyed through gestures, engagement, posture, and even
clothing and hygiene. Nonverbal communication can convey a very different message than a
verbal conversation. This can tell someone whether they are liked, interesting or hated.
Nonverbal communication can have meanings in objects as well. Certain articles in a person’s
life can say a lot about them and can sometimes even talk for them. A person’s handwriting can
also tell a lot about the way they can communicate with others. Nonverbal communication can
be easiest practiced when the two communicators are face to face. The nonverbal aspect of
communication is easiest when the environment is right for all communicators involved, such
as, when the environment is right or the moment is right. Nonverbal communication is an
important aspect in any conversation skill people are practicing. Nonverbal communication will
inhibit someone to be able to tell other person how they are really feeling without having to
voice any opinions. People can interpret body signals better than they can talk most of the
time.
In sum for all natural languages, change is both inevitable and constant; only dead languages
(languages with no native speakers) do not change because change is constant and has always
been so, there is no such thing as a “pure” or “decadent” language or dialect. There are only
different languages and dialects, which arose in the first place only because all languages
change.The history of the English language, this, is the record of how its patterns and rules have
changed over the centuries. The history of English is not the political history of its speakers,
although their political history has affected their language, sometimes dramatically, as was the
case with the Norman invasion of
England in 1066. Nor is the history of the English language , same as the history of English
literature, even though the language is the raw material of the literature. Indeed, the nature of
any language influences its literature and imposes certain limitation on it. For example,
quantitative verse is impossible in English today because English does not distinguish long and
short syllables. Compared to other languages. English is difficult to rhyme in because of its
stress patterns and great variety of syllable endings. On the other hand, English, unlike French,
lends itself easily to alliteration .Any language with a literary tradition and extensive. Literacy
will be affected by that literature. Grammatical structures originating in writing are transferred
to the spoken language. Vocabulary items and phrases introduced in literature enter the
spoken language. The written tradition tends to give rise to concepts of correctness and to act
as a conservative influence on the spoken language
The principle of least effort is an adequate explanation for many isolated changes, such as the
reduction of God be with you to good-bye, and it probably plays an important role in most
systematic changes, such as the loss of inflection in English.
Another explanation for language change is analogy. Under analogical change, two things or
rules that were once different become identical or at least more alike. The principle analogy is
closely related to the principle of least effort. Analogy is one way of achieving least effort. By
analogy, a speaker reasons, usually unconsciously, that if A is like B in several respects, then it
must be like B in other respects. If beans is plural noun naming a kind of vegetable and has the
singular form bean, then peas, which also names a kink of vegetable, must also be a plural and
must have the singular form pea.(Historically, peas or Pease, was an uncountable singular noun;
if analogy can operate at all levels of a language. On the semantic level, many people use the
word livid to mean “bright”, especially bright red, as in anger. Though historically livid means
“pale”, its sound association with vivid has led to analogical semantic change. Even spelling may
be affected by analogy. The word delight historically contained no- -g h – but acquired these
letters by analogy with such rhyming words as light, fright, sight, and might
In general, the more common a word or construction, the less susceptible it is to change by
analogy. Less frequently used words or constructions are more likely to be altered to fit the
patterns of more common ones. Thus the verb to be remains wildly irregular in English because
it is learned so early and used so often. But the relatively uncommon verb thrive, once
conjugated as thrive, throve, thriven, is well on its way to becoming a weak (regular) verb. Still
another explanation frequently affected for language changes is that children learn their native
language imperfectly from their elders. Imperfect learning is surely one factor, but it cannot
explain all changes. For permanent linguistic change to occur, all children of a given speech
Community would, all children of a given speech community would have to make exactly the
same mistakes. This intuitively seems unlikely. Further, there is ample evidence that linguistic
change occurs beyond the years of childhood. Many adults, consciously or unconsciously alter
their speech in various ways, changing even their phonology.
Among external pressures for language change, foreign contacts are the most obvious. They
may be instigated by outright military invasion, by commercial relations, by immigration, or by
the social prestige of a foreign language. The Viking invasion of England during the ninth and
tenth centuries added, not surprisingly, many new lexical items to English. Less obviously, they
contributed to (though were not the sole cause of) the loss of inflection in English because,
although Norse and English were similar in many ways, their inflectional endings were quite
different one way of facilitating communication between speakers of the two languages would
have been to drop the inflectional endings entirely
DEMARCATING THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Although linguistic change is a slow but unceasing process, like a slow-motion movie. It is
impracticable to try to describe the changes in this way; instead, we must present them as a
series of still photographs, noting what has changed in the interval between one photograph
and the next. This procedure fails to capture the real dynamism of linguistic change, but it does
have the advantage of allowing us to examine particular aspects in detail and at a leisurely pace
before they disappear. The history of the English language is normally presented in four such
still photographs -Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Present-Day English.
The dividing lines between one period 0f English and the next are not sharp and dramatic: The
English people did not go to bed on December 31, 1099, speaking old English and wake up on
January 1, 1100, speaking Middle English, Nevertheless, the changes that had accumulated by
the year 1100 were sufficiently great to justify a different designation for the language after
that date.
Old English (OE) is that stage of the language used between AD 450 and 1100. The period from
1100 to 1500 is Middle English (ME), the period between 1500 and 1800 is Early Modern
English (EMnE), and the period since 1800 is present-Day English (PDE) for those familiar with
English history, these dates may look suspiciously close to dates of important political and social
events in England. The beginning of ME is just a few years after the Norman Conquest, the
beginning of EMnE parallels the English Renaissance and the introduction of printing in to
England, and the starting date for present-day English is on the heels.