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UTSG

ANT253H1
FINAL EXAM
STUDY GUIDE

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Ancient Greek philosophers defined language as part of lgos

the faculty of human brain that had transformed us from an insentient brute into a
rational, sentient creature
language = potentially dangerous tool
o deception, control over others
Interest in language starts with Panini (Indian scholar) in 400s BCE
described the Sanskrit language with a set of 4000 rules
his work Astadhayayi became the basic reference grammar for later cultured writers
o many words are made up of smaller pieces
o pronunciations

What is language?
Language came from lingua (= tongue)
the use of tongue to create (forms of thought=) words or signs
Sign = anything that stands for something other than itself
All languages enable people to name/classify things that are relevant and meaningful to them
about 6000 languages spoken in the world today (excluding dialects)
5 basic things for all languages; They all have:
1. a finite set of distinctive sounds used to make words and to convey various types of
meaning
2. units that bear meanings of one kind or another (known as words)
3. grammatical structure (specific principles for making words and for putting them together
to form larger units of meaning [=sentences & texts])
4. strategies for using language in various personal and social ways (= speech)
5. resources for making new words and for using language in new ways
Most languages use 20 to 60 vocal sounds.

Difference between language and speech

Language = a sign system
Speech = the use of that system to transmit verbal messages
o can be vocal or nonvocal
one can have language without language but cant have speech without language
Vocal speech is made possible by lowering of the larynx
unique to human species
larbynx = muscle and cartilage at upper end of throat contacting the vocal cords
early infancy - its located high in the neck

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o 1st months of life, infants breath, swallow, vocalize in ways similar to other
primates
o 3rd month - human larynx starts to descend
food can easily lodge in entrance of it
drinking + breathing -> chocking
permits vocal speech by leaving a chamber above vocal folds that can
modify sound
Plato was interested in the spontaneity with which we acquire language
Poverty of Stimulus - language is an innate biological endowment
Opposing idea = mind is an empty slate; enviro writes the rules
But there seems to be an interconnection between nature and nurture

Noam Chomsky - most influential linguist in modern debate

put forward the notion of a Universal Grammar (UG)
o would explain how grammars are built thus explicate why children learn to speak
so naturally
o differences in language grammars are expellable as choices of rule types (=
parameters) from UG
linguist Stephen Pinker (support of UG theory): kids are born with a language of thought
that makes them grammarians constantly inferring the right synaptic rules for the speech
samples theyre exposed to"
o FOXP2
o but Burling doesnt think so
1 main prob with UG theory = it accounts for the development of syntax (sentence-
formation) in kids, ignoring a much more fundamental developmental force in early
infancy
o the ability to fill conceptual gaps with words/phrases in unexpected ways
o ex: referring moon as a ball if know ball but not moon
shows that kid perceives words as referring to properties in the world
Eric Lenneberg claimed childhood (before puberty) the critical period for language acquisition
those who incurred aphasias during childhood are more likely to develop language
abilities nonetheless
o incurred after puberty -> permanent impairments
o supported by Genie
Not all verbal deficits result from brain damage; some are by genetic abnormalities
Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
o difficulties with word formation and recognition

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Williams Syndrome
o affects both body and brain
o extraordinary knowledge of vocal but ability to select appropriate words is often
weak

Linguistic Science
Aristotle identified the two main parts of a sentence - subject and predicate
Dionysius Thrax showed how nouns, verbs, articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions,
adverbs and participles relate to each other in formation of sentences
adopted by Priscian - his description of Latin grammar is still used in textbooks today
the Port-Royal Circle (French scholars) broke away from Priscian model
o smaller constituent sentences are connected to each other by specific rules of
grammar to produce a sentence that means all of them
o these rules are part of an innate capacity of mind
Wilhelm von Humboldt viewed the innere Sprachform (internal structure) as conditioning how
people viewed reality
language and ones thought are inseparable
capacity for language is universal but individuality of each language is a property of
whoever speaks it
every language has its innere Sprachform which determines its outer form and reflects the
speakers mind
Birth of linguistic science - Sir William Jones suggested tat Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin
belonged to the same language family.
comparative grammar - coined by Friedrich Schlegel
o making comparisons between lanauges
o led to discovery that languages formed families
most studied = the family forming the modern Indo-European languages
descended from Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
proto- = to denote undocumented languages
ex: /p/-/f/ difference between Latin and English: /p/ was present in
PIE and /f/ was the result of a sound shift
Neogrammarian school - put forward the first theories of how languages change regularly
introduced borrowing to explain exceptions in sound changes
Toward end of 19C, scholars started to study not only how languages changed but also how they
were put together
Leading: Georg von der Kabelnetz, Jan Baudoin de Courtenay & Mikolai
Kruszewski made important observations on word structure

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Ferdinand de Saussure made the distinction b/t the historical study of sounds (which he
called diachronic) and the systematic study of language at a specific pt in time (which
he calledsynchronic)
o also proposed that the new science should focus on langue (language=system
of rules members of a speech community recognize as their language) rather than
onparole (word=ability to use rules in conversations, writing, etc.)
used analogy of chess to explain: knowledge of rules = langue; actual use
of this knowledge = parole
goal of linguistique (linguistics) = to understand the nature of langue
o basic to his plan for studying langue was the notion of difference (difference,
opposition)
structures of a language dont take on meaning and function in isolation
but in differential reaction to each other
ex: linguists determine the meaning and grammatical function of
cat by opposing it to rat"
o his approach came to known as structuralism"
adopted and elaborated by linguists e.g. Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Roman
Jakobson
Trubetzkoy perfected the technique of opposition by elaborating
the concept of minimal pair
ex: cat and rat - the initial sound keeps the words distinct
Jakobson argued that opposition theory can be used to explain
features of language development
ex: sound oppositions that occur rarely in languages are
among the last ones learned by kids
consonants are pronounced near back of throat (=
laryngeals) = relatively rare = last learned
In America, this approachs adopted in early 20C by Franz Boas
but he saw the goal of linguistics as description of how a speech
community uses language for its social and cultural purposes (not
as a description of grammar)
his approach laid the foundation for what came to known
as linguistic anthropology
language and culture are interlinked
his student Edward Sapir and Sapirs student Benjamin Lee
Whorf pursued this line; Their approach falls under the rubric
of Whorfian Hypothesis (WH) = languages predispose speakers
to attend to certain concepts as being necessary, without blocking
understanding between speakers of different languages; A
language affects how its speakers conceptualize their world.

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1930s, work of collected info on different languages and of relating such info to differential
cultural emphases
approach came to be known as descriptive [goal = describe languages to understand the
cultures that used them]
ethnographic = method used to gain insight into language
o anthropologists gather info by doing fieldwork (by living with a group and
observing them)
Major break from ethnographic tradition in 1957
Chomsky argued that understanding of language as a universal faculty of human brain
could never be developed from a piecemeal description of widely divergent languages
through fieldwork
o he argued a true theory would have to explain e.g. why all languages seem to
reveal a pattern for constructing complex sentences from more simple ones
ex: 1) John is eager to please. 2) John is easy to please
same structure on the surface but mean different things
can be paraphrased into 1) John is eager to please someone. 2) It is
easy for someone to please John.
paraphrases = different deep structure forms
he called the rules that transformed deep structures into surface
ones transformational
we can reconstruct deep structures of the two sentences since its
part of our native speaker competence (as he called it)
o claimed that as we study nature of such rules in different languages wed
eventually find a universal set of rule-making principles
but as linguists started studying rules, several things became apparent
rule-making principles dont explain the semantic richness of
languages
sentences are not the basic units of language
Ex: A: Sarah is a good person. B: Yes, Sarah is a good person. A:
But, Sarah always like to talk about Sarah.
this text is not well-formed because it lacks text-structure
use of pronoun is text-governed(it connects various parts
of conversation)
Alternative approach emerged in early 1980s = cognitive linguistics
focus on relations among language, cognition, culture
In George Lakoffs book, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, he argued that
foundations of language were figurative, not syntactic

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o examined the Australian language Dyirbal to bring out inadequacies of

Chomskyan grammar & the need to focus on associative properties of words and
their meanings
Dyirbal has 4 grammatical gender, determined by the meaning of nouns
but its rules for gender assignment are unexpected
1 of the 4 includes all nouns relating to women,
fire and dangerous things
reflect a perception of world thats different from that encoded in
gender system of European languages
Today, linguistics are divided into many subfields and branches; theres no 1 major model of
language
Chomsky ranked theories in what he called their order of power to explain linguistic
phenomena
o some are too weak, some are too powerful
o its been shown that his own theory is too powerful
perhaps best approach = incorporate theoretical models of various schools
there are now branches that are concerned with relations b/t language and the subject
matter of cognate academic disciplines e.g. sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics,
neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, etc.
in all approaches, there are certain notions and techniques that have withstood test of time
e.g. phonetics and phonology (sounds) morphology (words), syntax (relations among
words in a sentence), semantics (meaning patterns), pragmatics (variation according to
contexts in which a language is used), etc.

Origins of language
Study of how language originated = glottogenetics
became so pervasive in 19C that Linguistic Society of Paris put a ban on all discussion
related to this topic in 1866 and so did Philological Society of London in 1911

o motivated by the endless speculations, conjectures and unfounded claims
Early 20C, Otto Jespersen identified 5 main theoretical frameworks to explain language origins:
1. Bow-Wow Theory
o speech originated as a result of attempts to imitate animals sounds e.g. bow-wow,
meow, etc.
2. Pooh-Pooh Theory
o speech developed out of instinctive sounds and grunts our hominid ancestors
made in response to pain, anger, love and other affective states, e.g. Pooh, Ah,
Ouch, Yikes, Wow
3. Ding-Dong Theory

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o speech resulted from vocal imitation of objects and phenomena of reality e.g.
ding-dong, bing-bang, etc.
4. Yo-He-Ho Theory
o language arose from chants by early peoples in response to some activity e.g.
pulling/heaving
5. La-La Theory
o language emerged as a consequence of sounds our ancestors made in response to
lovemaking, play and other social activities
these theories are called echoic, since theyre based on idea that imitation is involved
Gestures may in fact be much older than vocal language
the shift of modality probably occurred b/c vocal language has a broader range of uses
vocal language is an adaptation
o early 20C, Richard Page attempted to fill the gap b/t manualism(gesture) and
vocalism(vocal speech)
his explanation = mouth gesture theory
claims that manual gestures were copied unconsciously by
positions and movements of lips and tongue
eventually led to replacement of gestures by imitative vocal
movements
led to a series of questions: What feature of brain made this transition
possible? Why has gesture survived as a communicative subsystem?
A second major finding of glottogenetics = vocal speech was probably developed at the expense
of an anatomical system intended for breathing and eating
Laitman examined fossil skulls and found the australopithecines of southern & eastern
Africa of 1.5-4 million years ago had skull-larynx configuration of a monkey/ape (larynx
high in vocal tract)
o same skull larynx pattern in Homo erectus (1.5 million-300,000/400,000 years
ago)
o not until arrival of Homo sapiens that he found evidence for lowered vocal tract
Lowering of larynx is prob a consequence of bipedalism
o upright posture -> organs lowering under force of gravity
o Lieberman: this started 100,000 years ago"
using endocranial casting, he found that in reconstructed adult skulls that
are older than 100,000yrs the anatomical and neural features for language
are lacking
present in those less than 100,000yrs old
Origins question can be found esp. in work of Morris Swadesh
notions of core vocabulary and sound symbolism

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Core vocabularies provide a database for inferring what social and kinship systems were
like in early people, their activities, values, etc.
o idea = language will have words for categories of things that are common to life
everywhere
o example on pg22 [core vocab for 11 items comparing languages within Bantu
family]
allows linguists to reconstruct source language of all these languages and
determine sound changes that occurred
provides database for comparing cultural differences among speakers of
Bantu languages
o help establish a relation between nature of sounds built into core words and the
meanings they encode; this relation = sound symbolism [examples on pg.23]
ex: the reconstructed PIE word for ox is kwou = imitative of sound an ox
might make
sound symbolism is an originating force in language
o explains why certain phonic features are built into words
ex: use of nasals to designate negation is due to nasal character of grunting
Some Latin words changed in meaning after they developed into Italian forms
ex: casa - original meaning = shack; new meaning = house
o reflects social status of early speakers
Many theories have been established to explain why languages change
1950s, Andr Martinet claimed that languages change as a result of operation of Principle
of Economy
complex language for tend words reduction, abbreviation, elimination over
time
o ex: difference b/t short and long vowels in Latin was eliminated by
speakers of Romance languages
Can primates be taught a human language?
primate language experiments started in 1950s
1 of the 1st subjects to be trained with American Sign Language (ASL) = female
chimpanzee Washoe, trained by Allan and Beatrice Gardner (1966)
o Washoe learned almost 150 ASL signs in just over 4 years, often using them
spontaneously in rudimentary sentences which resembled early speech of kids
1970s, Herbert S. Terrace trained chimp Nim Chimpsky 125 ASL signs and claimed that
Nim seemed to understand some basic notions of syntax
1978, Francine Patterson used ASL to train gorilla Koko and claimed that Koko could
even produce puns and jokes and lies

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1967, David and Ann Premark trained chimp Sarah to communicate by placing metal-
backed chips on a magnetic board
o ex: a pink square = banana; blue triangle = apple, etc.
o Sarah apparently learned to respond to and construct creative combinations of
such symbols
Duane and Sue Rumbaugh taught chimpanzees and bonobos to associate symbols with
various things, people and places
o ex: taught two chimps to engage in a conversation
1 chimp observed a traner hide food in a container; the chimp was
previously trained to press a key with food symbol on it; this action was
observed by the second chimp and was then able, on basis of 1st chimps
keyboard signal, to locate the food item
Epstein et al. were able to get the same kind of behaviour from two pigeons, Jack and Jill.
o Jack can peck a key What colour? as cue for Jill to look behind a curtain with 3
lights that Jack couldnt see; Jill then pecked 1 of 3 keys indicating the colour for
Jack; Jack then pecked Thank you whereupon Jill was given a food reward
Keith and Cathy Hayes were apparently successful in teaching chimp Viki to utter a few
words e.g. Mama, Papa
What seems to be happening in most cases is not unlike what Pavlov achieved with a dog
in 1902
o classical conditioning
o but this doesnt mean animals dont possess sophisticated communication systems
e.g. birds are born prepared to produce a certain type of coo
e.g. vervet monkeys are born with ability to use specific set of signals to
express their specific types of needs
also have developed a set of situation-based predator calls
not innate but learned through observation and by trial and
error
o primate trainers may have read much more in linguistic behaviours of their
primates than was really there
o No evidence has emerged to suggest that chimps/gorillas are capable of language
in the same way that humans are nor have ability/desire to pass on to their
offspring what theyve learned from human mentors
conditioning effects cannot be ruled out
1960, Charles Hockett proposed a typology of 13 design features that he
said would allow linguists to establish what true language behaviour was
and thus to evaluate animal experiments more judiciously [table on pg.30]
ex of applying this typology to bee dancing on pg.31
Nevertheless, primate experiments have revealed:

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human language is unique

aspects of language can be imparted to primates
primate speech behaviours are fascinating in themselves
theres a lot we dont know about ourselves and about animals

Linguistic Anthropology (LA)

Goal of LA is to study langue by gathering data directly through ethnography (how language
structure mirrors social structure and how it informs a specific culture)
started with Boas and Sapir
o Boas found the 1st major department for teaching of anthropology in 1899 at
Columbia U in NYC
Break with anthropology came when Chomsky revived Saussures notion of langue as
target of linguists, which he renamed linguistic competence
1980s, utility of anthropological mode of study was reestablished by a surge of interest in
investigating how language varies according to social situation
o ironically, this revival of interest in LA maybe have been due to fact that
transformational grammar research produced too much theorizing, making it
virtually useless as a research enterprise
Boas collected data on the Kwakiutl (native society on northwestern coast of NA)
showed how grammar and vocab of Kwakiutl language served their needs
thus focus of LA is on how language form basis of human groups cultures and societies
o ex: many words used in social interaction in Indonesian language refer to
status/rank of the person addressed
Emergence of culture on to the evolutionary scene can be traced originally to the
development within human species of an extremely large brain more than 2million yrs ago.
evidence from palaeontology suggests that cultures have ancient origins
o by about 100,000 yrs ago, communally established systems of ethics,
communication by vocal language, etc. mark the first true human societies
Cultural evolutionism = influential in shaping the early scientific theories of cultural origins
catalyst = Darwins theory of natural selection (1858)
19C, Edward B. Tylor provided a def of culture as a complex whole including knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capability/habit acquired by humans as members of
society"
fist to differentiate qualitatively b/t culture and society
20C, Boas argued that culture was so powerful that it shaped worldview
came to be known as cultural relativism
his student Sapir devoted his career to determining the extent to which language of a
culture shaped though patterns of its users

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hes left a valuable legacy for linguistics

o fieldwork is now the method that defines how research is conducted
o enduring legacy includes the relation of language structure to social meanings,
cultures, thoughts
In LA, the core concept remains the interconnection between language, thought and
culture.

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A language is the same as any other in terms of its vocabulary, and fundamental structures
Science of linguistics aims to study these structures in a systematic fashion
The sentence "Johnny is a pboy who loves pizza is problematic because /p/ and /b/ make sounds
phonetically but /pb/ does not occur in english and is a violation of phonology
Morphological violation "Johnny is an boy who loves pizza
o the indefinite article should be a, not an
o Grammatical error, the indefinite article form an is used before nouns or adjectives beginning with a vowel;
before a consonant a is used
o Morphology includes determining not only how words are distributed in the chain of speech to
make speech effortless, but also how they are formed and how units smaller than words
(morphemes) convey meaning
o Languages can be classified according to the number of morphemes they use on average for constructing
their words
o In analytic or isolating languages (i.e. Chinese), words tend to be made up of single morphemes (one
word = one morpheme)
o In Synthetic or agglutinating languages (i.e. German), words may contain several morphemes in
combination (One word = combination of separate morphemes)
Syntax
o describing how words and phrases are organized into sentences
o Some languages have less strict word orders

ie Latin John sees Caesar"

Johannes videt Caesarem // Caesarem videt Johannes is the same because the subject
ends in -es and receiver ends in -em
known as Case endings
rather than word order, Latin depends on case structure to encode meaning
English depends on word order as can be seen by the difference in meaning between John
sees Caesar and Caesar sees John
A sentence can make sense phonologically and grammatically, but still presents anomalies
o Johnny is a boy who drinks pizza

Well formed, but real-world experience tells us that pizzas are normally eaten, not drunk, although
this can be imagined
Semantic principle
o Johnny is a girl who loves Pizza

Indicating that the name Johnny has been assigned to a girl, rather than a boy
Pragmatic principle
Difference between the terms form and structure is important
o A triangle can have various forms (obtuse, acute, equilateral etc), but the structure is the same in
all cases
o In language, structures are patterns that can take on various forms
o Linguistic Anthropology aims to identify the structures that link language forms to the real world,
it depends on an accurate description of the forms and structures at the various levels

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Phonology
Phonetic inventory of sounds
o symbols used to represent sounds are found in the International Phonetic Alphabet established in
1886
o established for consistency in phonetic representation, given that the words spelling systems vary widely and
are often unreliable
o [f] is the same for fish, philosophy and enough; although spelled differently
pronounced physically as follows
1) lower lip touches upper teeth
2) airstream from the lungs are expelled from the slit formed in (1)
3) Vocal cords (in the larynx) are kept taunt (non-vibrating)
Terms in relation
1) Labiodental (made with the lips and teeth)
2) Fricative (made by friction of breath in a narrow opening)
3) Voiceless
phonetic symbol [f] stands for a voiceless labiodental fricative
Airstream expelled by the lungs can pass through the oral or nasal cavity
o only sounds produced though the latter cavity are named explicitly, otherwise they are assumed to be
oral
o In the larynx, there are two vocal cords, which can be either vibrating or taut if the cords are
close together when air passes through them, they vibrate producing voiced sounds; If they
are apart and stationary, the resulting sounds are called voiceless
the s in sip is voiceless; can be verified by putting a finger over the larynx as [s] is pronounced
the z in zip is voiced, and can be verified the same way
o sounds made when two movable organs touch [p], or those made with a movable and a stationary organ [f]
are named with words that refer to the organs
[p] of pill, which involves the lips touching
[f] of fish
these words indicate the point of articulation
because the lips are involved in the production of [p], the sound is
called Bilabial
because the lower lip and upper teeth are involved in the production of [f],
the sound is called Labiodental

Called Consonant sounds, since they are produced in some obstructed manner
o In consonant description, the tongue is not named
i.e. [t] in train, which is produced with the tongue touching the alveolar arch (ridge above
the teeth) is called simply Alveolar
o way in which the airstream is modified by the movable organs is called the Manner of Articulation

expelling airstream through oral cavity without any significant blockage or friction ([a] in Bah)

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blocking it completely and then expelling it abruptly ([p] in pill)

directing it through the nasal cavity ([n] in name)
expelling it on either side of the tongue as it makes contact with the teeth, the alveolar
arch or the palate [l] in live
expelling it as light vibrating contact is made with the tongue against he palate ([r] in rare)
expelling it through a constriction in the front of the mouth ([f] in fact)
Two basic kinds of sounds
o Vowels and consonants

Vowels are produced by allowing the airstream to pass through the mouth without
significant blockage; consonants are produced instead by means of some modifying
blockage (partial or complete) of the airstream
Vowels can be described in terms of position of the tongue on its vertical (high,mid,low)
or horizontal axis (front, central, back)
the front of the tongue is moved from low to high in pronouncing the
vowel in the word beet, and the back of the tongue is raised in
pronouncing the vowel in boot
Quality of a vowel depends on whether the lips are rounded or unrounded, the lips close
together or open, or the top of the tongue flat or curled up
In some languages, vowels can take on the quality of any nasal consonant that
surrounds them in words
Consonants can be described in terms of the point and manner of articulation involved in
their production

Point of Articulation
Bilabial
Labiodental
Dental Produced with the tongue touching the upper teeth or with
the upper and lower teeth close to each other: [t] in toy; [d] in did; [n]
in nose
Interdental Produced by putting the tongue between the teeth: [] in thing; []
in that
Alveolar produced with the tongue touching the gum ridge: [t] in train, [d] in
drain
Alveopalatal Tongue touching the hard palate [] in Shin; [] in Chin; [j] in
Jar
Velar Back of the tongue touching the soft palate: [k] in king, [g] in game
Uvular produced at or near the uvula: [x] in German Ich
Glottal produced at or near the throat: [h] in House
Manner of Articulation
Plosive Produced by means of a complete stoppage of the airstream:
[p] in pull, [b] in bull
Fricative Produced by means of a constriction of the airstream: [t] in four, [d]
in vet

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Affricate Produced by means of a combination of plosive and

fricative articulations: [ts] in cats, [dz] in fads
Flap produced by means of a flapping action of the tongue
Lateral Produced by means of a narrowing of the tongue as the
airstream escaped from the sides of the tongue:[l] in love
Nasal produced by directing the airstream through the nasal passage: [m] in
mom
o Flaps and laterals are classified together as liquids
o Some consonants can be produced with or without the vibration of the vocal cords of the larynx,
known respectively as voiced and voiceless
o Nasals, Flaps and laterals are by nature always voiced

Certain phones can take on slightly different articulation in certain positions within words
o in English the voiceless bilabial plosive [p] is aspirated, represented as [p]
If [s] is put before, the aspiration is blocked (Spit, Spat, Spunk, Spill)

o /p/ is called a phoneme; its actual pronunciations [p] and [p], are called its allophones
o Phoneme is defined as the minimal unit of sound that can distinguish the meaning of words
means that /p/ can be replaced by other consonants to make english words (i.e. /b/ for
bin, /p/ pin, /w/ win)
Pronunciation of the phoneme /p/ as either unaspirated [p] or aspirated [p] is due to the
fact that the articulation of a sound is conditioned by its position within words
the allophones of a phoneme are said to complement each other; where one occurs the other does
not
Rule that specifies the way in which allophones complement each other is called a rule
of Complementary Distribution
o Common technique used to identify the phonemes of a language is called the Commutation Test,
consisting in caring sounds in minimal pairs (two words that are made up of the same
sounds expect in one position), in order to see if a difference in meaning results
If the test produces a difference in meaning, the two sounds can be assigned phonemic status
In the commutation test, the ~ symbol is shorthand for is commuted with
i.e. showing /s/ and /r/ are: sip~rip, sat~rat, sing~ring
Sometimes two sounds, which have phonemic value in certain minimal pairs, will not be
phonemic in others
vowels /i/ and /e/ are phonemic in a pair such as beet~bet = /bit/~/bet/
Some speakers pronounce Economics with an initial [i] or initial [e], but these
two sounds are not phonemic in this case; these two sound are in Free
Variation
Linguists have devised a technique for referring to minimal sound differences known as distinctive feature analysis

o difference between the two allophones of /p/ involves the feature aspirated shown by [p] or [p]

Consonant and vowel phonemes cluster in predictable ways

o Clusters are known as syllables, defined as breath groups, because they allow the speaker to take in breath if
required
o A syllable is formed by a vowel nucleus, which is pronounced with a certain degree of stress (or accent)

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If it is the main stress in the pronunciation of a word, it is called Primary; otherwise it is

called Secondary or Tertiary
The sign used typically to indicate primary stress is [ ] placed on the vowel segment
(i.e. meter= mter)
The sound that can come before or after a nucleus are known as contours
If another unstressed vowel comes before or after, then it is called a Glide, and the
syllable is called a Diphthong
The first syllable of yesterday is a rising diphthong because the voice pitch is raised as it
moves from the glide [y] to the vowel [e]
a syllable consisting of a glide after the vowel nucleus (i.e. ay in say), which is less
tense is called a Falling diphthong
o In english statements and questions, the main stress is normally placed on the last word

Sarah is Itlian
Alex is arriving tomrrow
Whats your nme?
Where did you g?
o Simple sentences can be spoken with a different stress pattens to highlight different intentions
or meanings
Srah is Italian (Not Mary)
lex is arriving tomorrow (Not Fred)
o If words of the same kind occur in a series, then each one is stressed, showing in effect that they
have equal importance in the sentence
Srah, lex, and Dnny are Italian
Would you like cffee or ta?
o Another aspect of pronunciation is Tone
Tone Relative pitch with which a syllable, word, phrase, or sentence is pronounced
in some languages such as Mandarin , tone is a critical phonemic feature, since it is use
contrastively
the single syllable [ma] has serious meaning according to wether the
tone is high, high rising, rising or falling
In an indigenous language of Nigeria, tone marks a grammatical function
verb tense
morpheme [ima] is conjugated tonally
In English, tone is used primarily to signal differences in the intent or function of
sentences
This use of tone is known more specifically as Intonation
English statements end with a falling intonation pattern
Marie is French ()
Hes coming tomorrow ()
The same intonation patten applies to questions that start with interrogative
words
Whats your name? ()

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Where do you live? ()

English questions that require a yes or no response end with a rising intonation
pattern
Do you speak Italian? ()
Do you know her? ()
Applies as well to tag questions, which are questions with phrases and words
such as isnt he, dont you etc tagged at the end
John is Italian, isnt he? ()
You know her, dont you? ()
Raising or lowering the tone often changes the meaning of words in English as well
i.e. the word Yes uttered with a rising tone indicates Can I help you?; if uttered
with an emphatic tone, it indicates assertion and satisfaction
o 3 General points about pronunciation and language use

Actual pronunciation can vary from speaker to speaker, which may be due to geographic,
social or other factors; such differences are called Dialectal
In some societies, men and women are expected to pronounce words differently, and in
others, aristocrats and common folk are identified by how they pronounce words
Difference between emic and etic structure
Native speakers think of words in terms of phonemics, or emics; in terms of the
distinctive cues signalled by sounds in the chain of speech
non native speakers tend to hear the phonetics of words, in terms of all the
sounds that make up the chain of speech, whether or not they are distinctive
Phonology is used as a Modelling Device, as can be seen in how languages coin words
to refer to animal sounds onomatopoeically
whether the word for cat sounds is meow in english or mao mao in Chinese, one can see a
similar perception of the sound imprinted in different words with the same basic
phonemes
the sound model may be different in its detail, but it emanates from the same perceptual
source
When there is larger phonemic spread between words, such as chip in English
and Tsiou tsiou in Greek, one can still discern in both an attempt to model the
same range of sound
Unlikely that either English or Greek speakers would have used phonemes such
as /b/ or /p/, which are plosives, to describe bird sounds, since plosion does not
occur in bird communication
Grammar
Starting point for analyzing grammatical systems is morphological analysis, how words are formed and what word
constructing principles are involved in a language
One way to grasp what this means is to look at errors in word formation, such as

Error Type What was said What was intended

Symblem Symbol/Emblem
Blending
Postcarrier Postman/ Lettercarrier
Suffix Errors Groupment Grouping

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Ambigual Ambiguous

Such errors reveal that the speaker knows how words are constructed in English, but not
how specific words are formed
Knowing these principles allows speakers to form new words by the process known as derivation
o ie noun Internet to derived Verb Internetting; email to emailing; word-processor to word-
processing'
The bits and pieces that make up single words are called morphemes
o the word cats consists of two morphemes

Cat, and -s; cat meaning a feline animal, and -s meaning more than one
o If the meaning of the morpheme is lexical (Cat), then it is called a root morpheme or lexeme
o If it is grammatical (-s, anti-, -ial) it is called a Grammatical Morpheme
o the word incompletely, is made up of 3 morphemes, two of which are grammatical and one lexical

In- (Grammatical); Complete (Lexical); -ly (Grammatical)

Process of identifying morphemes is known as segmentation
o Entails breaking up a word into segments that cannot be split any further
o Free morphemes convey a single piece of meaning; other morphemes are called bound
morphemes'
i.e. illogical can be split into il-; logic; -al; where il- and -al are bound morphemes and
logic is a root morpheme
o Morphology is the study of the makeup and meaning of words

Several types of bound morphemes

o the word Learned, /-ed/ is an Inflectional Morpheme; it provides further information about the verb,
namely that the action of learning has occurred in the past
o Compared to the morpheme /-ly/ in Completely, which allows us to change an adjective into an adverb

called derivational, and is also an affix as is the /in-/ in Incompletely

/in-/ is a prefix, because it is attached before another morpheme; /-ly/ is known instead as a suffix,
because it is attached after another morpheme
o Two other types of affixes: infixes and circumflexes

o
Infix is inserted with another morpheme
adding /-um-/ infix in Bantoc adds the meaning to be to the root morpheme
fikas Strong -> fumikas to be strong'
Circumfix is an affix consisting of a prefix and a suffix that are both attached to a root morpheme
In a native american language, a root morpheme is rendered negative by
attaching the prefix /ik-/ and the suffix /-o/ to it (removing the final vowel of
the root)
lakana it is yellow -> iklakno it is not yellow"
o the form that a morpheme takes might vary

the plural suffix /-s/ in english has 3 variants

/-s/

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contains words that end with any voiceless consonant other than a
sibilant or affricate (i.e. pots, tops, kicks)
/-z/
contains words that end with a vowel or any voiced consonant other than a
voiced sibilant or affricate (dogs, loads, bras)
/-z/
morphemes that end with any sibilant or affricate (lasses, churches,
judges)
Variant forms /-s/,/-z/, /-z/ are called Allomorphs
Study of grammatical systems involves the description of sentence-
formation, known syntactic analysis
Sentence segmentation reveal that sentences are constructed in terms of the parts of
speech
allows nonsense sentences the feel of real sentences
i.e. The pluming rasinkers kirked the rampix at the minter pintically
o Syntactic competence consists in knowing

how words cluster in phrases

how they are inflected
which words are used to relate the other words in a sentence to each other
word order, or what positions certain words occupy in the structure of sentences
word orders mirrors an actor-action-goal relationship
o English grammar was organized from the perspective of those at the centre of society Men
so nouns of positions are marked with a masculine morpheme /man/ (chairman, spokesman)
In societies that are female dominant, the opposite is true
Grammar is a system that ensconces how specific peoples perceive the world and the actors in it
Semantics
Meaning Something that we intuitively understand, but which defies precise definition
o Linguists have techniques to discover meanings of linguistic forms
Technique of Comparison allows linguists to relate words in terms of sameness (big-large), opposition (big-
little), taxonomy (rose-flower); part-whole relations (handle-cup) etc
Another technique is to look at how words acquire meanings through association and extension
o word cat does not stand for the phonemes that comprise it, but for a certain feline mammal'
o Latter is known more specifically as the referent of the word what it refers to
o Two kinds of referents that words encode

Concrete Referent is something existing in reality or in real experience and is normally available
in direct perception by the senses
Abstract Referent is something that is formed in the mind that is not
normally available to direct perception by the senses (i.e. an idea)
o Diaplacement ability to refer to anything at will, even to something that is made up completely
by human fancy
o 3 types of meaning

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1) Literal meaning, and is denotative (i.e. cat meaning a feline creature)

2) known as connotative, encodes a culture-specific meaning (hes a cool cat)
3) Polysemy Many meanings
Lexical field
o consists in classifying words in terms of some shared feature or property of the referent (i.e. sofa,
chair, stool for sitting objects'
o classifying objects in a particular set of words, different from others by [ something]
(i.e. father,mother,son is different from dog,pup in [human]; and the reverse as [canine] known
as Semes
semantic systems are different to phonological systems in that one is open and one is closed (respectively)
o phonological systems consist of a finite set of elements where as semantics are open-ended and
constantly changing to meet new social needs, making it impossible to develop a core set of
features for describing them
o Useless to unravel connotative and figurative meanings
o Useless to separate purely linguistic meaning from knowledge of how linguistic forms
bear meanings in specific situations
Question asked by Linguistic Anthropologists What does Semantics research reveal about culture and
society?"
o If the vocabularies of different languages are different, how is it that speakers of different cultures
are able to talk about the same kinds of things none the less?
o Edward Sapir, along with Franz Boas explained the ability of speakers of different languages to come up
with similar meanings as result from the inferential use of the linguistic resources at their disposal, indicating
that each language has resources in it that allow people to paraphrase or translate what others intend with
their own linguistic forms
o Showed this by getting speakers of several indigenous languages of the US to render specific English
sentences in their respective languages
Results showed that despite differences between languages, each language is able to get the same
message across
Different languages go around problems by adding words to their sentences
i.e. the words clock and watch are the same in Italian, but if they need to they
would specify by saying Orologio da polso (Clock on the wrist) or Orologio da
muro (Clock on wall)
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is used to indicate the study of the meanings of linguistic forms in their contexts of use
Maxims as the basis of the study of pragmatic; Implicit maxim of relevance during conversation, by which
interlocutors assume that anything spoken is intended to be relevant
Conversations must show Quality and Quantity
o Quality: If I say "I have two grandchildren, my interlocutor would not conclude that I do not
have any grandchildren or just one grandchild, otherwise he or she would perceive my statement
as a lie
o Quantity maxim: My interlocutor would conclude that i have exactly 2 grandchildren, not 3 or 4

By speaking, a person performs an Act, where are there 3 basic kinds of speech acts
o Locutionary Acts: Things are said with a specific sense or are referred to unambiguously (Moon is a sphere)

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o Illocutionary Acts: Something is promised or ordered (Ill do it, sooner or later; Come here!)
o Perlocutionary Acts: Speaker affects someone else emotionally or conveys his/her own emotional
state (angers, consoles, persuades) (Im sorry; Dont worry)
The ability to use a language appropriately in specific interactive settings is systematic, not just adaptive
o Dell Heymes called this kind of systematic knowledge Communicative Competence

It has an effect in shaping and even changing linguistic competence

simple protocol of saying hello requires detailed knowledge of the appropriate words,
phrases and nonverbal cues that will enable a speaker to make successful social contact
with another speaker
An infringement of any of the pragmatic details of the interaction might lead to a
breakdown in communication

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