Linguistic Notes

Human Languages

Creativity of linguistic knowledge is that we can produce and understand completely new utterances and express and understand entirely new concepts.

It is called productivity that human languages enable theri speakers to produce and infinite number of sentences.

The fact that human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously is called duality.

The process a language is passed from one generation to the next is called  cultural transmission.

Animal communication entails communicationof a number of stimuli, but lacks certain aspects of human language. Aniaml language does not involve reflecting or analysing their own communication, a property of human language known as reflexivity.

-Prperties of human languages include productivity, reflexivity, displacement, arbitrariness, recursion duality and cultural transmission.-

Animals do not communicateawhat happened to them last year by the boutique on the corner of X Street, but about here and now. However, human can talk abour distant places or events, even gossip. This ability is called displacement.

Lack of a direct relationship between signs and the objects they refer to shows that human language is arbitrary and it is called arbitrariness.

Small units combine to form larger ones. I.e. sounds form morphemes, morphemes combine to make words and words make sentences. It is called discreetness.

All human Languages have nouns and verbs. The linguistic rules that are shared by all human languages are called language universals.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is our mental ability that we are born with to be coded with language specific data.

-The LAD ide, proposed by Chomskey, is also called innateness hypothesis.-

Linguistic competence and lisnguistic performance

The language knowledge speakers of a language have is called linguistic competence. Linguistic competence is the sum of all the language knowledge. It means and includes the knowlledge of sound systems, meanings Word formation and syntactic structures that speakers of a language have. Linguistic performence, on the other hand, is the actual use of this knowledgeat a specific instance.

Descriptive Grammar and Prescriptive Grammar Performance

Prescriptive Grammar is the approach that Languages should follow a set of rules for ‘corect’ use of that language. Prescriptive approach advocates for certain rules and uses of a language and regars any other use improper. Descriptive approach, on the other hand, aims to describe how a languages Works in order to Express different meanings.

I ain’t buying nothing à Acoording to prescriptive approach, this is an ungrammatical use of English  as it does not follow the rule on double negation although it is commonly used among some English speakers and follows rules of its own.

You was late last night à Descriptive grammer explains how and to what purpose this structure is used.

Evolution of Language

The Divine Source Theory is that it’s God’s gift to humans.
Bow-wow Theory is that early humans developed language by imitating sounds they hear in the nature, onomatopoeic sounds like meow.
Pooh-pooh Theory is that early humans produced sounds when they were experiencing strong emotions like pain.
Yo-he-yo Theory is that it is formed when they needed to interact with each other in order to collectively work.

Artificial Languages

Some Languages have been created by humans without an actual speech community. The creator of an artifical language propose an entire grammer, with phones morphemes, syntax and lexicon. Esperanto is the most famous example of artifical languages. Esperanto did not have any speakers that shaped and changed the language, but was devised by one person.

Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of speech sound. Phonetics has three branches; articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics. Articulatory phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced while auditory phonetics studies how they are perceived and acoustic phonetics studies the sound waves upon being produced by speech organs.

Bilabials: are the sounds that are produced using both lips.[p] , [b] , [m] , [w]
Labiodentals: are those sounds produced using upper teeth and lower lip. [f] , [v]
Dentals: are those produced by placing the tongue either between upper and lower teeth or by placing the tip of tongue at the back of the upper teeth. [θ] , [ð]
Alveolars: are produced by touching the alveolar ridge with the front of the tongue.These sounds are
[t] , [d] , [s] , [z] , [n] , [l] , [r]
Palatals: are produced with tongue and hard palate are called palatals ans these sounds are [tʃ] , [ʃ] , [ʒ] , [dʒ] , [j]
Velars: are produced with the back of the tongue and vellum, soft palate. These are [k] , [g] , [ŋ]
Glottals: are produced through the use of tongue when the space between the vocal cords, glotts, is open. These are [h]  and stop with [?]
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English Sounds According to manner of articulation

Stops: are produced by stopping the air and then releasing it suddenly. These are [p] , [b] , [t] , [d] , [k] , [g].
Fricatives: are produced by hindering the air and letting air go through friction. These are [f] , [v] , [s] , [z] , [3] ,[θ] , [ð] , [ʃ]
Affiricates: are produced by stopping the air initially then letting air go through friction. These are
Nasals: are produced by raising the velum thereby stopping the air from going through the nasal cavity. These are [m] , [n] , [ ŋ]
Liquids: are produced by letting the air flow through the sides of the tongue. These are [l] , [r].
Glides: are produced with the tongue moving in the process of production of these sounds. They are [w] , [j].
Vowels : All vowels are typically voiced. Producing vowels, glottis is open and tongue position influences the sound to be produced.

Phonology

Phonology is the study of sound patterns in a language.
One concept that we need to know studying sound patterns is phonemes. Phonemes are individual sounds which would change the meaning of a Word when replaced.
Phonemes are the broader category of these sounds while phones are actual productions in speech. In other words, while /i/ is a phoneme, [i] in seed and seen are are two phones as they are slightly different from each other.

Allophones à /si:d/ about nazalization.

The vowel in a syllable is called a nucleus, while the preceding consonant is called onset and the following consonant is called coda.

Assimilation: When the two sounds are produced in sequence and one becomes more like or th same as the other one. I.e. good boy à gubboi
Elision: is omitting a sound in speech to make speaking more efficient. I.e.
You and me à juenmi
Linking: when two words are combined.(Türkçe’deki ulama) I.e. That’s enough à

Semantics 

Semantics is the study of meaning.
Componential Analysis: Mother is an adult female human, so are aunt and woman. What is it that makes their meaning different can be seen by looking at their semantic features throgh componentinal analysis. As an example, mother is a mamber of parent but aunt is not.
Homonyms or Homophones : The words pronounced the same but have different meanings. I.e. flour and flower.
Homographs: thw words spelled the same with different meanings. I.e. bear (animal) ,
bear (to carry)
Polysemy: book à actual meaning is boddy of written work to be read by a large auidence.
Metonomy: Turkish Government as Ankara.
Reversive: like x unlike
Hyponymy: pepper is a subgroup of the group vegetable.This relationship between a group and its subgroups. Pepper, courgette and leek are hyponyms of vegetable, while vegetable is the superordinate of papers. Subgroups of a superordinate are called cohyponyms.

Semantic Roles

In a sentence, the noun phrase that does the action is called the agent. The entity that is affected by the action is called the theme. Other semantic roles include location, source, goal and instrument.

If, instead of an action, there is a perception or state, the noun phrase that does the ‘doing’ is an experiencer instead of an agent.

Morphology

Study of the morphemes is defined as a Morphology.  A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.For example, Unladylike ; consists of three morphemes and four syllables. à un- 'not', lady '(well behaved) female adult human', -like 'having the characteristics of'.
Morphemes that  are words themselves are called free morpheme.(lady, like ..) Bound morphemes, on the other hand, can be attached to the end of a free morpheme. These are called suffixes (like). Bound morphemes can precede other morphemes (un) and are called prefixes.
Reduplication: is repeating one morpheme and attaching the duplicate as a prefix, suffix or an infix. (ex. yepyengi)
Portmanteu: mixing two morphemes to form another. ‘Smog’ from smoke and fog.

A stem is the root or roots of a word, together with any derivational affixes, to which inflectional affixes are added. The verbs tie and untie are both stems.

There are two different types of morphemes:
1)Derivational Morphemes: are those that change the meaning or the grammatical category of the stem. (teach—teacher)
2) Inflectional Morphemes: are those that tell us about the grammatical function of a word.

Back Formation: Escalate, for example is created by removing -or from the Escelator. This is called.
Clipping: The element of reduction that is noticeable in blending is even more apperent in the process described as clipping. (gasoline – gas)

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Paul Grice suggested cooperative principle, that in a conversation we are expected to fulfill four maxims: Maxim of Quantity: the speaker’s contribution in a  conversation should be” as informative as required”. In other words, contribution should not include more information than required or less.

 Maxim of  Quality: the speaker should say only things that he believes to be true. By the help of this maxim , the hearers trust the speaker. Maxim of Relevance: the speaker should be relevant.
 Maxim of Manner: the speaker should be clear,brief and olderly. As an example,Q: How was your day?A:oh, it was… Look the bus is late as usual, I don’t know it was Ok.Neither Clear , Nor orderly.

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Convergence: When a speaker changes the style he uses to decrease social distance.
Divergence: When the stlye is changed to increase the social distance.

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