5Module 01 Intro to Basics
① Module 1 Part I - Intro to Linguistics
What is Language:
- Linguistics is the study of how a Language is used, not the study of different Languages itself.
- Language is viewed as a Symbolic communications
The beginning of Language:
- No exact answer to when, where and how language was formed.
- Ritual artefacts and art objects around such time give off hints of the language and suggest cognitive advancements.
- Development of the FOXP2 gene is responsible for language development
- Mutations on the FOXP2 gene are linked to hereditary speech disorders.
Language Evolves:
1. Original group divides
2. Small changes made to the language in each group
3. Small changes add up to create new dialects -> no longer mutually intelligible == separate language
Causes of the evolution in Language
- Learning a new language isn’t just by memorizing it
- Learner creates their own model of grammar (pronunciation, build/combine words. How they interpret) ‘difference
between citation and paraphrase’
- Each person has their own unique mental grammar
Summary of Mod01-2
- All languages change all the time
- All aspects of a language change (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics)
- Language change cannot be prevented or stopped
- Language change is not a deterioration
- Language change is not due to sloppiness or laziness
- There is no original pure state of the language to which we should return
② Module 1 Part II - Evolution of Language
- There is no precise number of how many languages that exist in the world. Some are non active languages due to
the fact there are no speakers.
Dialects:
- Language has various dialects
- ‘Spoken’
- Has cultural variation
- Mutually intelligible
Languages:
- Language provides Group Identity
- Languages are essentially the dialects of the same language that diverged into different forms
, - There are various languages in this form
- Has written rules for each language
- Has similarities with other languages
- Non mutually intelligible
Dialects on a Continuum:
- Mutual intelligibility sometimes happens on a continuum (where does one begin and one end?)
Language Continuum: set of neighbouring languages where direct neighbours are mutually intelligible but
languages further out from each other are no longer mutually intelligible.
Languages we aren’t aware of: remote areas are more likely to have developed their own language thus we cannot count
every number of languages that exist.
Sleeping Languages: languages can be endangered in the sense that there are very few speakers.
- Older generation knows the language, the younger generation learns another language instead (various reasons
exist)
- Younger generation may be: prohibited from learning, another language is taught in school, mass media is
only available in another language,another language is the prestige variety used in trade.
Summary of Mod01-3
- First human language was spoken around 60,000 BCE
- Different mutually unintelligible languages have developed (about 7000 today)
- Exact number of language is difficult to determine because linguistics and political factors play a role
- Every language changes all the time because of how we learn languages building grammars rather than copying
sentences
③ Module 01 Part III - Why some dialects are chosen over others for the standard form of language
Dialects and Prestige Varieties:
- Every speaker of a language speaks a particular dialect of that language.
- Over time a certain dialect may become the standard or prestige variety
Step 1: the rich and powerful happen to use a particular dialect
Step 2: others copy this dialect to appear powerful
Step 3: the dialect becomes the prestige variety
- Often speakers of the standard variety think they have no accent
Descriptivism vs. Prescriptivism:
Descriptivism: describing what we see
- Linguists are interested in describing the way language is used
- Linguists are not interested in telling people what is correct
- Linguists understand that language is changing and there is no pure/better/earlier form that needs to be
preserved
- Linguists understand that different dialects of a language may have different rules
- Linguistics is an empirical science based on observing language use
Prescriptive:
- ‘Prescribing’ or ‘preserving’ the language
- Telling people what is right about a language
,Module 02: Linguistic Terminology
① Basic English Grammar Terminology
Grammar Terminology: Be able to identify the following in a given English text:
○ Subject: person or thing performing the action. ‘Doers of the action’, ‘syntactic objects’ that control the
verb. They tell the verb if it needs to be singular or plural. Ex) “Mary sleeps”. “Mary and Tim sleep_”
○ Object (Indirect or Direct): thing/person that the action is done to
○ Indirect: answers the question "for what" and accompanies a direct object.
○ Direct: directly receives the action or effect of the verb
○ Infinitive: form of verb that allow the word or a group of words to be used as a noun, adjective “To” +
“verb”
○ Compound noun: noun that is made up of two or more different words
○ Ex) Cake shop
○ Preposition: a word or group of words used before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction,
time, place, location, spatial relationships, or to introduce an object. Ex) "in," "at," "on," "of," and "to"
○ Embedded Clause: adds more information to a sentence
○ Relative Clause: connects ideas by using pronouns that relate to something previously mentioned and
allows the writer to combine two independent clauses into one.
○ *Matrix Clause: main clause . . ., but it need not be: it can itself be a subordinate clause
○ Comparative or Superlative form
○ Comparative: adjective to express how two people or things are different
○ Superlative: adjective to show how one person or thing is different to all the others of its kind
○ Modal expression: express certain hypothetical conditions, such as advisability, capability, or requests Ex)
“can” and “could”, “must” and “have to”
○ Appositive: noun phrase that comes after another noun phrase Ex) My wife, Dorothy, enjoys musical theater
Problem 1:
A child saw a cat. The cat, which seemed friendly, was sleeping on its back. It was bigger than
(Subject) (Direct Object) (Embedded Clause) (Comparative)
any other cat the child had ever seen. The child could see that the cat had carefully selected a
(Appositive) (Modal Verb) (Infinitive)
sleeping spot so the sunshine would shine on its belly.
(Compound) (Preposition)
② Linguistic Basics
Basic Linguistic Terminology
● Phonetics: The sounds involved and how to produce them.
● Phonology: Any rules on how to combine sounds.
● Morphology: Rules for how to make words from individual units of meaning.
○ Example: Dog(stem word) + s (inflectional suffix) → Dogs
● Syntax: Rules for how to make sentences from words.
● Semantics and Pragmatics: How to interpret the meaning of a sentence. → meaning of words and sentences
, Language independent vs. Language-specific
● Some things can be independent of individual languages (meaning they’re same for all language)
○ Example: which muscles to work to produce an alveolar fricative(s).
● Many things are Language-specific.
○ They differ between languages due to the language-specific rules.
○ Example: consonant clusters. English allows [pr] as in professional, however disallows [ps] as in psychology is
[s] not [ps].
- Parts of a sentence are used when you are describing a word’s role in the sentence
- On its own you use its category to describe it.
○ Cat, toy, mouses are all nouns
○ Example: The cat saw the toy. The cat is the subject of the sentence.
Morphemes: units of meaning
● Morpheme: The smallest units of meaning. We combine units of meaning to change the meaning of words.
Example:
House = 1 morpheme
House-s = 2 morphemes → s creates a plural
House-ing = 2 morphemes → ing creates a more abstract meaning
House-d = 2 morphemes → d creates an adjective
Un-house-d = 3 morphemes → un negates the meaning
Markers:
● Marker: the visible manifestation of some abstract concept
○ Languages use markers for all kinds of things: plural, singular, tense, gender, case…
● Plural Marker: house - houses
○ English has an abstract morpheme plural, where we assume that it is the same morpheme independent of
the shape it takes (plural meaning itself is abstract). It can take different shapes, depending on what nouns it
combines with.
■ Example: house - houses
■ Example: goose - geese
■ Child - children
● Tense Marker: walk - walked
● Gender Marker: actor - actress
○ Feminine or Masculine form can be assigned to the person being talked about, and also grammatical gender
to inanimate objects.
■ Example: La lune (F) in French. Der Mond (M) in German.
Agreement:
● Many languages expect certain markers to match across a sentence.
○ Number marking
○ Gender and number marking
● Some languages require no agreement between any parts of the sentence.
● Some languages require number agreement between subject and verb.
● Some languages require agreement between the verb and both the subject and object.
① Module 1 Part I - Intro to Linguistics
What is Language:
- Linguistics is the study of how a Language is used, not the study of different Languages itself.
- Language is viewed as a Symbolic communications
The beginning of Language:
- No exact answer to when, where and how language was formed.
- Ritual artefacts and art objects around such time give off hints of the language and suggest cognitive advancements.
- Development of the FOXP2 gene is responsible for language development
- Mutations on the FOXP2 gene are linked to hereditary speech disorders.
Language Evolves:
1. Original group divides
2. Small changes made to the language in each group
3. Small changes add up to create new dialects -> no longer mutually intelligible == separate language
Causes of the evolution in Language
- Learning a new language isn’t just by memorizing it
- Learner creates their own model of grammar (pronunciation, build/combine words. How they interpret) ‘difference
between citation and paraphrase’
- Each person has their own unique mental grammar
Summary of Mod01-2
- All languages change all the time
- All aspects of a language change (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics)
- Language change cannot be prevented or stopped
- Language change is not a deterioration
- Language change is not due to sloppiness or laziness
- There is no original pure state of the language to which we should return
② Module 1 Part II - Evolution of Language
- There is no precise number of how many languages that exist in the world. Some are non active languages due to
the fact there are no speakers.
Dialects:
- Language has various dialects
- ‘Spoken’
- Has cultural variation
- Mutually intelligible
Languages:
- Language provides Group Identity
- Languages are essentially the dialects of the same language that diverged into different forms
, - There are various languages in this form
- Has written rules for each language
- Has similarities with other languages
- Non mutually intelligible
Dialects on a Continuum:
- Mutual intelligibility sometimes happens on a continuum (where does one begin and one end?)
Language Continuum: set of neighbouring languages where direct neighbours are mutually intelligible but
languages further out from each other are no longer mutually intelligible.
Languages we aren’t aware of: remote areas are more likely to have developed their own language thus we cannot count
every number of languages that exist.
Sleeping Languages: languages can be endangered in the sense that there are very few speakers.
- Older generation knows the language, the younger generation learns another language instead (various reasons
exist)
- Younger generation may be: prohibited from learning, another language is taught in school, mass media is
only available in another language,another language is the prestige variety used in trade.
Summary of Mod01-3
- First human language was spoken around 60,000 BCE
- Different mutually unintelligible languages have developed (about 7000 today)
- Exact number of language is difficult to determine because linguistics and political factors play a role
- Every language changes all the time because of how we learn languages building grammars rather than copying
sentences
③ Module 01 Part III - Why some dialects are chosen over others for the standard form of language
Dialects and Prestige Varieties:
- Every speaker of a language speaks a particular dialect of that language.
- Over time a certain dialect may become the standard or prestige variety
Step 1: the rich and powerful happen to use a particular dialect
Step 2: others copy this dialect to appear powerful
Step 3: the dialect becomes the prestige variety
- Often speakers of the standard variety think they have no accent
Descriptivism vs. Prescriptivism:
Descriptivism: describing what we see
- Linguists are interested in describing the way language is used
- Linguists are not interested in telling people what is correct
- Linguists understand that language is changing and there is no pure/better/earlier form that needs to be
preserved
- Linguists understand that different dialects of a language may have different rules
- Linguistics is an empirical science based on observing language use
Prescriptive:
- ‘Prescribing’ or ‘preserving’ the language
- Telling people what is right about a language
,Module 02: Linguistic Terminology
① Basic English Grammar Terminology
Grammar Terminology: Be able to identify the following in a given English text:
○ Subject: person or thing performing the action. ‘Doers of the action’, ‘syntactic objects’ that control the
verb. They tell the verb if it needs to be singular or plural. Ex) “Mary sleeps”. “Mary and Tim sleep_”
○ Object (Indirect or Direct): thing/person that the action is done to
○ Indirect: answers the question "for what" and accompanies a direct object.
○ Direct: directly receives the action or effect of the verb
○ Infinitive: form of verb that allow the word or a group of words to be used as a noun, adjective “To” +
“verb”
○ Compound noun: noun that is made up of two or more different words
○ Ex) Cake shop
○ Preposition: a word or group of words used before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction,
time, place, location, spatial relationships, or to introduce an object. Ex) "in," "at," "on," "of," and "to"
○ Embedded Clause: adds more information to a sentence
○ Relative Clause: connects ideas by using pronouns that relate to something previously mentioned and
allows the writer to combine two independent clauses into one.
○ *Matrix Clause: main clause . . ., but it need not be: it can itself be a subordinate clause
○ Comparative or Superlative form
○ Comparative: adjective to express how two people or things are different
○ Superlative: adjective to show how one person or thing is different to all the others of its kind
○ Modal expression: express certain hypothetical conditions, such as advisability, capability, or requests Ex)
“can” and “could”, “must” and “have to”
○ Appositive: noun phrase that comes after another noun phrase Ex) My wife, Dorothy, enjoys musical theater
Problem 1:
A child saw a cat. The cat, which seemed friendly, was sleeping on its back. It was bigger than
(Subject) (Direct Object) (Embedded Clause) (Comparative)
any other cat the child had ever seen. The child could see that the cat had carefully selected a
(Appositive) (Modal Verb) (Infinitive)
sleeping spot so the sunshine would shine on its belly.
(Compound) (Preposition)
② Linguistic Basics
Basic Linguistic Terminology
● Phonetics: The sounds involved and how to produce them.
● Phonology: Any rules on how to combine sounds.
● Morphology: Rules for how to make words from individual units of meaning.
○ Example: Dog(stem word) + s (inflectional suffix) → Dogs
● Syntax: Rules for how to make sentences from words.
● Semantics and Pragmatics: How to interpret the meaning of a sentence. → meaning of words and sentences
, Language independent vs. Language-specific
● Some things can be independent of individual languages (meaning they’re same for all language)
○ Example: which muscles to work to produce an alveolar fricative(s).
● Many things are Language-specific.
○ They differ between languages due to the language-specific rules.
○ Example: consonant clusters. English allows [pr] as in professional, however disallows [ps] as in psychology is
[s] not [ps].
- Parts of a sentence are used when you are describing a word’s role in the sentence
- On its own you use its category to describe it.
○ Cat, toy, mouses are all nouns
○ Example: The cat saw the toy. The cat is the subject of the sentence.
Morphemes: units of meaning
● Morpheme: The smallest units of meaning. We combine units of meaning to change the meaning of words.
Example:
House = 1 morpheme
House-s = 2 morphemes → s creates a plural
House-ing = 2 morphemes → ing creates a more abstract meaning
House-d = 2 morphemes → d creates an adjective
Un-house-d = 3 morphemes → un negates the meaning
Markers:
● Marker: the visible manifestation of some abstract concept
○ Languages use markers for all kinds of things: plural, singular, tense, gender, case…
● Plural Marker: house - houses
○ English has an abstract morpheme plural, where we assume that it is the same morpheme independent of
the shape it takes (plural meaning itself is abstract). It can take different shapes, depending on what nouns it
combines with.
■ Example: house - houses
■ Example: goose - geese
■ Child - children
● Tense Marker: walk - walked
● Gender Marker: actor - actress
○ Feminine or Masculine form can be assigned to the person being talked about, and also grammatical gender
to inanimate objects.
■ Example: La lune (F) in French. Der Mond (M) in German.
Agreement:
● Many languages expect certain markers to match across a sentence.
○ Number marking
○ Gender and number marking
● Some languages require no agreement between any parts of the sentence.
● Some languages require number agreement between subject and verb.
● Some languages require agreement between the verb and both the subject and object.
