LINGUISTICS

LINGUISTICS-Graduation -----------o0o----------- PART 1: NATURAL OF HUMAN LANGUAGE 1-What is a language? _P12 Language is defined as any particular system of human communication 2-What is the language function? _P20 There are 2 different types of language function: -A biological function is the contribution of a part to the maintenance of the whole organism -The mathematical function is often related to functional variety of language 3-What is linguistics? _P33 Linguistics is the study of language as a system of human communication. It is also considered as the scientific study of language 4-What are the branches of linguistics? _P35 -Phonology is the study and identification of the meaningful sounds of a language -Phonetics is the study of all speech sounds and the ways in which they are produced -Morphology is concered with the units, called morphemes, that carry meaning in a language -Syntax refers to the relations among word elements in a sentence PART 2: GRAMMTICAL ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE I-PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY 1-What is phonetics? _P43 Phonetics can be defined as the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted and perceived 2-What is the difference between the two terms of phonetics and phonology? _P45 -Phonetics is the study of all speech sounds and the ways in which they are produced -Phonology is the study and identification of the distinctive units of sound in language: the phonemes 3-How many stages are there in the speech chain? _P45 There are three stages in the speech chain: -The first stage may be said to be psychological -The second stage may be said articulatory and physiological -The third stage may be physical and acoustic 4-Present the four stages of the vocal cords? _P47 -Wide apart: the vocal cords are wide apart for normal breathing and usaully during voiceless consonants 1 -Narrow glottis: if air is passed through the glottis when it is narrowed, the result is a fricative sound for which the symbol is h. The sound is not very different from a whispered vowel. It is called a voiceless glottal fricative -Position for vocal cord vibration: when the edges of the vocal cords are touching or nearly touching, air passing through the glottis will usually cause vibration which results in voiced sound -Vocal cords tightly closed: the vocal cords can be firmly pressed so that air cannot pass between them. When this happen in speech we call it a glottalstop or glottal plosive 5-What are the differences between vowels and consonants? _P49 Major differences between vowels and consonants Vowels Consonants Are produced with relatively little obstruction in the vocal tract Are produced with a narrow or complete closure in the vocal tract Are more sonorous Are less sonorous Are voiced Are either voiced or voiceless Are syllabic Are generally not syllabic 6-What is a vowel? _P49 How can we classify the vowels in English language? _P49-51 A vowel is a sound in the production of which the air passed through the mouth is free In the English language vowels can be classified into pure vowels and diphthongs: -A pure vowel (monophthong) is an unchanging sound in the pronunciation of which the organs of speech do not perceptibly change the position throughout the duration of the vowel -A dipthong is a combination of two vowels pronounced within one syllable *Classification of vowels and diphthongs VOWELS DIPHTHONGS centring closing ending in ending in I ending in u Position of tongue Height of tongue FRONT CENTRAL BACK CLOSED (high) /i:/ /I/ /u:/ /u/ Mid Open (mid) /e/ /3/ / / /^ / /^/ OPEN (low) / / /o:/ /o/ /a/ 7-What is a consonant? _P51 -What are the types of consonants? _P53 2 A consonant is a sound in the production of which an obstruction is formed in the mouth by the active organs of speech The types of consonants: -According to the organs of articulation we can distinguish seven main classes of consonants: +Labial or lip sound, which may be divided into: *Bi-labial, namely sounds articulated by the two lips, and *Labio-dental, namely sounds articulated by the lower lip against the open teeth +Dental, namely sounds articulated by the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth +Alveolar, namely sounds articulated by the tip or blade of the tongue against the teeth ridge +Palato alveolar, namely sounds which have alveolar articulation together with a simultaneous raising of the main body of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth +Palatal, namely sounds articulated by the tongue against the hard palate +Velar (soft palate), namely sounds articulated by the back of the tongue against the soft palate +Glotal, namely sounds articulated in the glottis (the opening between the vocal cords is known as glottis) -According to the manner in which the organs articulate them, we distinguish seven main classes: +Plosive (stop sounds / explosive sounds), the air stream is completely stopped for a moment, after which it is followed to rush out of the mouth with an explosive sound +Affricative is a combiantion of a plosive consonant with an immediately following fricative sound +Nasal is the sound in the production of which all the air from the lungs escapes down the nose and not through the mouth at all +Lateral is the sound formed by the tip of the tongue firmly pressed against the teeth ridge or the teeth so that the air can escape at one or both sides of the tongue +Rolled is the sound in the production of which the tip of the tongue vibrates in the stream of air +Fricative is the sound formed by a narrowing of the air passage at some point so that the air in escaping makes a kind of hissing or buzzing +Semi-vowel is a gliding sound in which the speech organs start at or near a “close” vowel and immediately move away to some other vowels 3 *The English of consonants Labial Dental Alveolar Palato- alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Bilabial Abial- dental Plosive p b t d k g Affricative Nasal m n Lateral l Rolled r Fricative f v s z h Semivowel w j 8-What is a phoneme? _P59 A phoneme is defined as the smallest distinctive unit of sound in a language 9-What are the units larger than the phoneme? _P63 The units are larger than the phoneme include: -syllable; -word; -stress-group; -foot; -tone-group 10-What is an allophone? _P60 When the difference between two similar sounds is completely predictable from the phonetic contexts in which they occur are called allophones 11-How is the syllable defined? _P72 The syllable may be defined as one or more speech sounds forming a word or part of a word, containing one vowel sound, with or without a consonant or consonants, and uttered at a single effort 12-What syllable is called phonetically open syllable? Closed syllable? _P73 -An open syllable is a syllable which ends in a vowel -A closed syllable is a syllable which ends in a consonant 13-What is the difference between weak and strong syllables? _P74 -A strong syllable will have as its center one of the vowel phonemes, but not /ô/ -A weak syllable can have four types of center: the vowel /ô/, a close unrounded vowel i: and I, a close back rounded vowel /u:/ and /u/, a syllabic consonant 14-How is word-stress defined? _P75 Word-stress is defined as the prominence given to certain syllable(s) in a word by the use of greater breath force 15-What is sentence stress? _P81 Sentence stress is a prominence with which one or more words in a sentence are pronounced (as compared with the other words of the same sentence) 4 16-How do you understand the term intonation? _P88 -What is a tone language? _P88 -What is an intonation language? _P88 -Intonation can be said to be the combination of speech melody, sentence stress, tempo and timbre -Tone language: Languages that use the pitch of individual syllables to contrast meanings are called tone languages -Intonation language: Languages that use pitch syntacticallyor in which the changing pitch of a whole sentence otherwise important to the meaning are called intonation languages 17-What are the uses of the five basic tones in English? _P89-90 The uses of the five basic tones in English are: -The fall is used in simple statements of fact, special questions, commands, exclamations, offers or suggestions to do something -The rise is used in general questions, requests, greetings, a series of special questions in a questionnaries, question tags, incomplete parts of the sentence -The fall-rise can be used for “limited agreement and response with reservations, the fall-rise also expresses politeness, apology, concern, uncertainty, disagreement… -The rise-fall might be used to express attitudes both pleasantand unpleasant, ranging from irony to sarcasm, from being pleasantly impressed to admiration 18-What is a tone unit? _P90 A tone unit may be a word, a phrase, a clause or a simple sentence 19-What are the functions of the English intonation? _P92 The intonation performs the following functions: emotional, grammatical, information structure, textual, psychological and indexical II-GRAMMAR 1-What is grammar? _P97 Grammar is composed of morphology and syntax 2-What are the types of the grammar you have learned? _P97 There are many types of grammar: -The first types is called traditional grammar. This kind of grammar was often notional and prescriptive in their approach -The second type is prescriptive grammar. The aims of the prescriptive grammars were to reduce the English language to rules and set tup a standard of correct usage -The third type is descriptive / structural grammar – an approach that describes the grammatical instructions that are uesed in a language, without making any evaluative judgements about their standing in society 5 -The fourth type is generative transformational grammar. It is a grammar that generates all acceptable sentences of a language uses rules called transformation, to transform or change, the underlying elements into what a person actually says -The fifth type is functional grammar based on the functional framework rather than a formal one -The sixth type is the thoeretical grammar. It is concerned with building language models or thoeries to describe languages or to explain their structures -The other types are pedagogical grammar, reference grammar, mental grammar and so on 3-How is morphology defined? _P99 Morphology could also be defined as the study of morphemes and their different forms (allomorphs) and the way they combine in word formation 4-What is a morpheme? _P99 The morpheme could be diefined as the smallest meaningful unit in a language 5-What are the types of morpheme? _P104 The two types of morphemes are free and bound -Free morphemes can be used as minimal free forms. They do not need to be attached to the other morphemes. They can be used as words -Bound morphemes must be jointed to other morphemes. They are always parts of words and never words by themselves +Bound morphemes can be classified as derivational and inflectional *Derivational morphemes may be preffixes or suffixes, have a lexical function. They create new words out of existing words or morphemes by their addition *Inflectional morphemes are bound grammatical morphemes that are for the most part purely grammatical markers, representing such concepts as “tense”, “number”, “gender”, “case” and so forth 6-What is a morph? _P111 Words can be divided into indivisible meaningful parts called morphs 7-What is an allomorph? _P103 An allomorph could be defined as any of the different forms of a morpheme 8-What is a word? _P113 Word is the smallest of the linguistic units which can occur on its own in speech or writing. A word is a minimal free form 6 9-What are simple words, complex words and compound words? _P113 -Simple words are those made up of only roots -Complex words are those made up of roots + inflectional / derivational morphemes -Compound words are words composed from the combination of two or more free morphemes 10-What are the five tests of word identification? _P113-114 There are five tests of word indentification: a-Potential pause: If we say a sentence out loud and ask someone to repeat it very slowly with pauses, the pauses will tend to fall between words, and not within words b-Indivisibility: Say a sentence out loud, and ask someone to “add extra words” to it. The extra items will be added between the words and not within them c-Minimal free forms: “Minimal free forms” is the smallest units of speech that can meaningfully stand on their own d-Phonetic boundaries: It is sometimes possible to tell from the sound of a word where its begins or ends e-Semantic units: In a sentence each unit of meaning corresponds to a word 11-What are the different types of word formation? _P115-119 Types of word formation are: a-Affixation is the addition of an affix to a base, with or without a change of word-class forming a new derivational word or inflectional word b-Backformation is a process whereby a word whose form is similar to that of derived form undergoes a process of deaffixation c-Compounding: A compound is a word or an expression that has a single meaning but is made up of two or more words d-Conversion creates a new word without the use of affixation e-Clipping / Abbreviation: Clipping is a process whereby a new word is created by shortening a polysyllabic word f-Acronyms are words formed from the initial sounds or letters (or larger parts) of words g-Blending: Blends are words that are created from parts of two already existing lexical items h-Reduplicatives are either identical or only slightly different i-Common words from propper names are new words may be coined from names of actual people j-Onomatopoeic words are the words created to sound like the thing to which they refer 7 12-What is syntax? _P119 –What can syntactic rules do? _P120 -Syntax can be understood as the linguistic knowledge which concerns the structure of sentences -The syntactic rules in a grammar must account for: the grammaticality of sentences, the odering of words and morphemes, our knowledge of strutural ambiguity, our knowledge that sentences may be paraphrases of each other, our knowledge of the grammatical function of each part of a sentence of the grammatical relations, and speakers’ ability to produce and understand an infinite set of possible sentences 13-What is a word class? _P120 –How can the words in English language be classified? _P120 -A word class is a group of words which are similar in function -English words could be divided into open word classes and closed word classes +The open classes are nouns, verbs, adjs and advs +The closed classes are articles, pronouns, prepositions, auxilaries and conjunctions 14-What is a grammatical category? _P124 Grammatical category is the unity between grammatical meaning and its grammatical forms 15-What is a word group? _P129 A word-group is a combination of two or more words within one of the following syntactic relations: subject - predicate, co-ordination and subordination 16-What is a phrase? _P129 –How can we classify the phrases? _P130-133 -Phrase is any group of words which is grammatically equivalent to a single word and which does not have its own subject and predicate -Phrase can be classified into: +Noun phrase has three parts: Pre-modification……head……post-modification +Verb phrase contains one lexical verbs as head and may have up to four auxilary verbs, besides the negative word not, as modifiers +Adjective phrase may consist of: Pre-modification……head……post-modification +Adverb phrases have as their heads adverbs +Prepositional phrase is composed of a preposition and a noun phrase 17-What is a clause? _P134 –How many elements are there in the clause? _P134-135 -A clause is a group of words which forms a grammatical unit and which contains a subject and a predicate -Elements in the clause are Subject, Verb, Object, Complement, Adverbial 18-What are the clause types? _P138 The clause types are: SV, SVA, SVC, SVO, SVOA, SVOC, SVOO 8 19-What is a sentence? _P151 Four principle types of definition of the sentence are known: logical, psychological, phonetic and structural definitions 20-What are the characteristics of the sentence? _P151-152 Here are the characteristics of the sentence: a-A sentence may consist of one word or of groups of words with its own subject and predicate b-A sentence is an expression of a complete thought, an idea, a feeling, an emotion, a greeting, a phatic expression, a call… by means of a word or words used in such form and manner as to convey the meaning intended c-A sentence is marked off by a certain utterance-final intonation pattern of 4 types: state /./, yes-no question /?/, wh-question /S/ and exclamation /!/ d-A sentence is as much of the uniterrupted utterance of a single speaker as is included either between the beginning of the utterance and the pause which ends a sentence-final contour or between two such pauses e-A sentence stands between an initial capital letter and a mark of end punctuation f-A sentence is a single free form utterance, minimum or expanded. It is not included in any larger structure by means of any grammatical device 21-What is text syntax concerned with? _P172 Text syntax is concerned with the means of connection between sentences, usually between a sentence and what precedes, but also sometimes between a sentence and what follows 22-What are the types of cohensive? _P173 There are five types of cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion III-SEMANTICS 1-What is semantics? _P178 Semantics is the study of meaning in language 2-What are the different theories of meaning? _P179 The different theories of meaning are: -The first family of theories of meaning may be labeled “referential” or “denotational” -The second family of theories of meaning might be labeled “psychologistic” or “mentalistic” -The third family of theories of meaning might be labeled “social” or “pragmatic” 3-What are the two important meanings of the word “to mean”? _P180 Two important meanings of the words to mean and meaning have been much used in the study of semantics: to be equipvalent to and to intend to say 9 4-What are the different conceptions of meaning? _P181 The different conceptions of meaning are: -The Direct View: Words  Things It is believed that language might be thought of as communication system with on the one hand the signifier, on the other the signified -The Indirect View: Words  concepts  things The views we have just been criticizing relate words and things directly 5-What is the difference between denotative and connotative meaning? _P184-185 -Denotative meaning can also be defined as to be organized largely in terms of semantic features, or in another word can be thought of as to be composed by a set of semantic features which serve to identify a particular concept or entity referred to by that word -Connotive meaning can be considered as the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content 6-What is semantic feature? _P184 Semantic feature may be defined as the smallest units of meaning in a word 7-How do you understand the term reference? _P190 -Reference is the relationship between a word or an expression and the object it is used to refer to (referent) 8-What is a referring expression? _P191 –What kinds of word can be referring expression? _P191 -A referring expression is any expression used in an utterance to refer to something or someone -Types of words can be used as referring expression: propper nouns, definite noun phrases, indefinite noun phrases, pronouns, descriptive noun phrase 9-How do you understand the term deixis? _P192 Deixis is clearly a form of referring expression that is tied to the speaker’s context, with the most basic distinction between deitic expressions being near speaker or away from the speaker 10-How can the term “sense” be understood? _P194 Sense can be understood in two ways: +Sense is distinguished from meaning. Sense is like connotation and meaning is like denotation +The sense of a word or phrase can be defined as its indispensable hard core of meaning 11-What is synonymy? _P195 -Synonyms are words of the same part of speech having the same or nearly the same meaning 10 . function is often related to functional variety of language 3-What is linguistics? _P33 Linguistics is the study of language as a system of human communication LINGUISTICS- Graduation -----------o0o----------- PART 1: NATURAL OF HUMAN LANGUAGE