You are on page 1of 68

LINGUISTICS

AND LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION
Indoeuropean language family .......................................16
INDEX Classification ..............................................................17
Hocketts’s Design Features of Language ................... 18
INDEX ............................................................................... 2 Communicative and informative signals.........................18
Vocal-auditory channel ..............................................18
LINGUISTICS ..................................................................... 5
Broadcast transmission and directional reception ....18
THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS .................................................. 5 Transitoriness ............................................................19
Early History ................................................................ 5 Interchangeability ......................................................19
The Greeks ....................................................................... 5 Total feedback ...........................................................19
The Romans...................................................................... 5 Specialization .............................................................19
The Indians ....................................................................... 6 Semanticity ................................................................19
Discreteness...............................................................19
The Middle Ages .......................................................... 6
Displacement .............................................................19
The Renaissance .......................................................... 6
Arbitrariness ..............................................................20
Early Twentieth-Century Linguistics ............................ 7 Productivity................................................................20
Europe and America ......................................................... 7 Cultural transmission .................................................20
European Approach..................................................... 7 Duality........................................................................20
Saussurean Principles ............................................. 7 Prevarication..............................................................20
American Approach ..................................................... 7 Reflexiveness .............................................................21
Later Twentieth-Century Linguistics – Schools of Learnability ................................................................21
Tought ......................................................................... 7 Animal Systems of Communication ........................... 21
 Functional sentence perspective ............................ 7 Talking to animals ...........................................................21
 Dependency grammar (1950s) ............................... 7 Chimpanzees and language ............................................21
 Tagmemics (1950s) ................................................. 8 Design features in animal communication .....................21
 Stratificational grammar (1960s): ........................... 8 Ants ............................................................................22
 Systemic linguistics (1960s) .................................... 8 Birds ...........................................................................22
Chomsky ...................................................................... 8 Honeybees .................................................................22
The Computer Age ....................................................... 8 Sing Language ........................................................... 22
Modern Linguistics ...................................................... 8 Writing systems ......................................................... 23
LANGUAGE .......................................................................... 9 Writing ............................................................................23
The origins of language ............................................... 9 Pictograms and ideograms ........................................24
Scientific theories ............................................................. 9 Logograms .................................................................24
The Natural Sound Source ........................................... 9 Rebus writing .............................................................24
The physical adaptation source ................................. 10 Syllabic writing ...........................................................25
The genetic source .................................................... 11 What did the first ever written document said? ............25
Problems of reliability and deception ....................... 11 Task: Explaining a Writing System – Hierogliphics ..........25
The 'mother tongues' hypothesis (2004) by Fitch ..... 11 THE STUDY OF SPEECH SOUNDS ..................................... 26
The 'obligatory reciprocal altruism' hypothesis by
Ulbaek ....................................................................... 11 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY ............... 26
The gossip and grooming hypothesis ........................ 12 Speech Apparatus ...................................................... 26
Ritual/speech coevolution – Rappaport et al ............ 12 Consonants and Vowels..................................................26
Chomsky's single step theory .................................... 12 DESCRIPTION OF SPEECH SOUND ........................................... 27
The gestural theory ................................................... 12 English Vowels ........................................................... 27
Mirror neurons and language origins ........................ 13 English Consonants .................................................... 29
Putting the baby down theory .................................. 13 Manner of Articulation ...................................................29
Grammaticalization Theory ....................................... 13 Affricate .....................................................................29
Evolution-Progression Model .................................... 13 Approximant ..............................................................29
Self-domesticated ape theory ................................... 13
Fricative .....................................................................29
Classification of Languages ....................................... 13 Lateral ........................................................................29
Typological classification of Languages .......................... 14 Nasal ..........................................................................29
Phonological types .................................................... 14 Plosive ........................................................................29
Iambic languages .................................................. 14 Place of Articulation .......................................................29
Troaic languages ................................................... 14 Alveolar ......................................................................29
Morphological types.................................................. 14 Bilabial .......................................................................29
August Wilhelm Classificatory Types: ................... 14 Dental ........................................................................29
Humboldt Clasificatory System............................. 15 Glotal .........................................................................29
Sapir fundamental types ...................................... 15 Labio-dental ...............................................................29
Syntactic types .......................................................... 15 Palatal ........................................................................29
Basic sentence structure ...................................... 15 Palato-alveolar ...........................................................29
Case-marking/verb-agreement ............................ 15 Velar...........................................................................29
Word-order typology by Hawkins ......................... 16 ALLOPHONIC AND PHONEMIC CONTRASTS ................................ 29
2
VOWEL ALTERATIONS .......................................................... 30 CLAUSE............................................................................. 44
Nasalization............................................................... 30 Elements of a clause .................................................. 44
Rhoticization.............................................................. 30 Major clause types .................................................... 44
Lenghthening............................................................. 30 Types of clauses ......................................................... 45
Shortening ................................................................. 31 Independent Clause (Main clause) .................................45
CONSONANT VARIATIONS ..................................................... 31 Dependent/subordinate clause ......................................45
Devoicing .................................................................. 31 Types of Dependent/Subordinate Clause ..................45
Finite and non-finite clause...................................45
Aspiration .................................................................. 31
Nominal Clause or Noun Clause ............................46
Syllabicity .................................................................. 31
Relative Clause or Adjective Clause ......................51
MORPHOLOGY ................................................................32 Sentential Relative Clause .....................................52
The Adverbial Clause .................................................53
MORPHEMES ..................................................................... 32 Types of adverbial clauses ...................................53
Free and bound morphemes ..................................... 32 Syntactic functions ...............................................55
Lexical and functional morphemes ............................ 33 Comparative Clauses .................................................56
Derivational and inflectional morphemes ................. 33 Types of comparative Clauses ...............................56
MORPHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION ............................................. 34 Appositive clause .......................................................56
Morphological sentence analysis .............................. 34 What is apposition? ..............................................56
Noun clauses as appositives..................................57
Problems in morphological description ..................... 34
Appositive Clause vs Relative Clause ....................57
Morphs and allomorphs ............................................ 34
Punctuation of appositives ...................................57
WORD FORMATION PROCESSES ............................................. 34
SENTENCE ......................................................................... 58
Etymology.................................................................. 34
Classification.............................................................. 58
Coinage ..................................................................... 35
 Simple sentence: ............................................... 58
Borrowing .................................................................. 35  Multiple Sentence .................................................58
Compounding ............................................................ 35 - Compound........................................................58
Blending .................................................................... 35 - Complex ...........................................................58
Clipping...................................................................... 35  Minor ....................................................................58
Backformation ........................................................... 36
SEMANTICS ..................................................................... 58
Conversion ................................................................. 36
Acronyms ................................................................... 36 MEANING ......................................................................... 58
Derivation .................................................................. 36 Conceptual meaning:................................................. 58
Prefixes and suffixes....................................................... 36 Associative meaning .................................................. 59
Infixes ............................................................................. 37 SEMANTIC FEATURES ........................................................... 59
Multiple processes ..................................................... 37 SEMANTIC ROLES ................................................................ 59
GRAMMAR ......................................................................37 Agent ......................................................................... 59
Theme ........................................................................ 60
WORDS ............................................................................ 37 Instrument ................................................................. 60
Verbs ......................................................................... 37 Experiencer ................................................................ 60
Intransitive verbs ........................................................... 37 Location source and goal........................................... 60
Transitive Verbs ............................................................. 37
LEXICAL RELATION .............................................................. 61
Monotransitive verbs ................................................ 37
Synonymy .................................................................. 61
Distransitive verbs ..................................................... 37
Copulative ...................................................................... 37 Antonymy .................................................................. 61
 Gradable ...............................................................61
Conjunctions .............................................................. 38
Types of conjunctions: ................................................... 38  Non-gradable ........................................................61
 Subordinate conjunctions (Subordinators) ...... 38  Reversives .............................................................61
Types of subordinate conjunctions (Subordinators) Hyponymy.................................................................. 61
.............................................................................. 38 Prototypes ................................................................. 61
Subordinating Conjunctions vs. Relative Pronouns Homophones ............................................................. 61
.............................................................................. 40 Homonyms ................................................................ 61
 Coordinating conjunction (Coordinators) ........ 40 Polysemy.................................................................... 61
Using Commas with Coordinating Conjunctions .. 40 Word play .................................................................. 62
Syntactic features of Coordinators ....................... 41 Metonomy ................................................................. 62
 Correlative conjunctions .................................. 42
Collocation ................................................................. 62
PHRASE ............................................................................ 42
Headedness ............................................................... 42 NEUROLINGUISTICS ........................................................ 62
Types of Phrase ......................................................... 43 CONCEPT .......................................................................... 62
 The Participle Phrase ............................................ 43
HISTORY ........................................................................... 62
 Absolute Phrase.................................................... 43
3
PARTS OF THE BRAIN ........................................................... 62
SPEECH AREAS ................................................................... 63
Broca’s area............................................................... 63
Wernicke’s area ......................................................... 63
The motor cortex ....................................................... 63
The arcuate fasciculus ............................................... 63
THE LOCALIZATION VIEW ...................................................... 63
LATERALIZATION ................................................................. 64
PROBLEMS OR MALFUNCTIONS .............................................. 64
Tip of the tongue phenomenon ................................. 64
Slips of the tongue ..................................................... 64
Slips of the ear ........................................................... 65
APHASIA ........................................................................... 65
Types of aphasia ........................................................ 65
Broca’s aphasia .............................................................. 65
Wernicke’s aphasia ........................................................ 65
Conduction aphasia ........................................................ 65
DICHOTIC LISTENING TEST..................................................... 66
CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS ................................................ 66
INTERLANGUAGE FOSSILIZATION ............................................ 66
Adults' learning style ................................................. 67
Acceptance ................................................................ 67

4
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, as a science it uses the scientific method, it observes regularities in
language and produces general rules about it.
Linguistics can be roughly divided into two broad branches:
 General Linguistics: it studies the general properties of language, and it includes, grammar, phonetics,
phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics and pragmatics.
 Applied Linguistics: where Linguistics is an auxiliary science with other areas of knowledge, including
Sociolinguistics, Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics.

The History of Linguistics1


Early History
The Greeks
The earliest surviving linguistic debate is found in the pages of Plato (c. 427-347 BC). In a dialogue about the origins of
language and the nature of meaning. Two views are discussed, one is that language originated as a product of
convention, so that the relationship between words and things is arbitrary. The other holds the opposite position, that
language came into being naturally, and therefore an intrinsic relationship exists between words and things. In his essay
“On interpretation” Aristotle supported the former view.
These first ideas developed into two schools of philosophical thought, which have since been labelled conventionalist,
and naturalistic. Modern linguists have pointed out that, in their extreme forms, neither view is valid
In the 3rd century BC, the Stoics established more formally the basic grammatical notions that have since, via Latin,
become traditional in western thought. They grouped words into parts of speech, organized their variant forms into
paradigms, and devised names for them (e.g. the cases of the noun). Dionysius Thrax (c. 100 BC) wrote the first formal
grammar of Greek- a work that became a standard for over 1.000 years. The focus throughout the period was entirely
on the written language. The word grammar (Greek: grammatike) in fact originally meant 'the art of writing'.
A doctrine of correctness and stylistic excellence emerged: linguistic standards were set by comparison with the
language of the ancient writers (e.g. Homer). And as spoken Greek (the koine) increasingly diverged from the literary
standard, we also find the first arguments about the undesirable nature of linguistic change (§ 1): the language had to be
preserved from corruption.

The Romans
Roman writers largely followed Greek precedents and introduced a speculative approach to language. On the whole, in
their descriptive work on Latin, they used Greek categories and terminology with little change.
They introduced the (remarkably modern) view that language is first and foremost a social phenomenon with a
communicative purpose; only secondarily is it a tool for logical and philosophical enquiry.
The main result of the Roman period was a model of grammatical description that was handed down through many
writers in Europe, and that ultimately became the basis of language teaching in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In

1
From Language and Linguistics by David Crystal: The history of Linguistics.
5
due course, this model became the 'traditional' approach to grammar, which continues to exercise its influence on the
teaching of English and other modern languages.

The Indians
The Hindu priests realized that their language had diverged from that of their oldest sacred texts, in both pronunciation
and grammar. An important part of their belief was that certain religious ceremonies, to be successful, needed to
reproduce accurately the original form of these texts. Change was not corruption, as in Greece, but profanation.
Their solution to avoid profanation was to establish the facts of the old language clearly and systematically and thus to
produce an authoritative text (Between the 5th and 7th century).
A major descriptive tradition has since been established. The work is remarkable for its detailed phonetic descriptions:
for example, places of articulation are clearly described, the concept of voicing is introduced, and the influence of
sounds on each other in connected speech is recognized. Several concepts of modern linguistics derive from this
tradition.

The Middle Ages


Very little is known about the development of linguistic ideas in Europe during the 'Dark Ages'. Latin, as the language of
education, provided a continuity of tradition between classical and medieval periods. Medieval learning was founded on
seven 'arts', of which three - grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric - formed one division, known as the trivium. Grammar was
seen as the foundation for the whole of learning. A tradition of 'speculative' grammars developed in the 13th and 14th
centuries, in which grammatical notions were reinterpreted within the framework of scholastic philosophy. The authors
looked to philosophy for the ultimate explanation of the rules of grammar.
The differences between languages were thought to be superficial, hiding the existence of a universal grammar. The
Middle Ages also saw the development of western lexicography and progress in the field of translation, as Christian
missionary activity increased.

The Renaissance
The rediscovery of the Classical world that came with the 'revival of learning', as well as the discoveries of the New
World, transformed the field of language study. Missionary work produced a large quantity of linguistic material.
In the 16th century, several grammars of exotic languages came to be written (e.g. Quechua in 1560). There was a more
systematic study of European languages, especially of the Romance family. The first grammars of Italian and Spanish
date from the 15th century. Major dictionary projects were launched in many languages. Academies came into being.
The availability of printing led to the rapid disseminatiom of ideas and materials.
The 18th century is characterized by the arguments between 'rationalists' and 'empiricists' over the role of innate ideas in
the development of thought and language.
Latin was replaced by modern languages as a universal medium of communication.
'General' grammars, based on universal principles developed.

6
Early Twentieth-Century Linguistics
Europe and America
Two main approaches to language study, one European, one American, unite to form the modern subject of linguistics.

European Approach

It aroused out of the aims and methods of 19th-century comparative philology, with its focus on written records, and its
interest in historical analysis and interpretation. An important author in this approach was Saussure whose his
theoretical ideas were the foundation of the modern subject.

Saussurean Principles

 Diachrony vs synchrony: He sharply distinguished historical ('diachronic') and non-historicaI ('synchronic')


approaches to language study. The former sees language as a continually changing medium; the latter sees it as
a living whole, existing as a 'state 1 at a particular moment in time.
 Langage vs langue vs Parole: The many senses of the word 'language, prompted Saussure to introduce a
threefold set of terms, the last two of which were central to his thinking. Langage is the faculty of speech
present in all normal human beings due to heredity - our ability to talk to each other. This faculty is composed of
two aspects: langue (the language system) and parole (the act of speaking). The former is the totality of a
language, which we could in theory discover by examining the memories of all the language users: 1the sum of
word-images stored in the minds of individuals'. Parole is the actual, concrete act of speaking on the part of a
person - a dynamic, social activity in a particular time and place.
 Signifiant vs signifie: Saussure recognized two sides to the study of meaning, but emphasized that the
relationship between the two is arbitrary (p. 408). His labels for the two sides are signifiant (1the thing that
signifies', or 1sound image') and signifie ('the thing signified', or 'concept').

American Approach
The second approach arose from the interests and preoccupations of American anthropologists, who were concerned to
establish good descriptions of the American Indian languages and cultures before they disappeared. Here, there were no
written records to rely on, hence historical analysis was ruled out. Also, these languages presented very different kinds
ofstructure from those encountered in the European tradition. The approach was therefore to provide a careful account
of the speech patterns of the living languages.

Later Twentieth-Century Linguistics – Schools of Tought


Many different approaches to linguistics emerged in the middle decades of this century, some of which have attracted a
great deal of support.
 Functional sentence perspective: It analyzed utterances in terms of their information content. The semantic
contribution of each major element in a sentence is rated with respect to the 'dynamic' role it plays in
communication.
 Dependency grammar (1950s): A type of formal grammar that explains grammatical relationships by setting up
dependencies between the elements of a construction.

7
 Tagmemics (1950s): It focuses particularly on the need to relate Iinguistic forms and 'functions'. A centraI
notion is the contrast between the “emic” units, which are functionally contrastive in a language (such as
phoneme and morpheme)/ and the “etic” units that give them physical shape.
 Stratificational grammar (1960s): It viewed language as a system of related layers of structure.
 Systemic linguistics (1960s): Grammar is seen as a network of 'systems' of interrelated contrasts; particular
attention is paid to the semantic and pragmatic aspects of analysis and also to the way ,intonation is used in the
expression of meaning.

Chomsky
He made a turning point in 20th-century linguistics developing the conception of a generative grammar. Earlier analyses
of sentences were shown to be inadequate in various respects, mainly because they failed to take into account the
difference between 'surface' and 'deep' levels of grammatical structure. At a surface level, such sentences as John is
eager to please and John is easy to please can be analyzed in an identical way; but from the point of view of their
underlying meaning, the two sentences diverge: in the first, John wants to please someone else; in the second, someone
else is involved in pleasing John: A major aim of generative grammar was to provide a means of analyzing sentences that
took account of this underlying level of structure.
To achieve this aim, Chomsky drew a fundamental distinction (similar to Saussure's langue and parole) between a
person's knowledge of the rules of a language and the actual use of that language in real situations. The first he referred
to as competence; the second as performance. Linguistics, he argued, should be concerned with the study of
competence, and not restrict itself to performance.
He studied individual languages by the nature of human language as a whole (by discovering 'linguistic universals').

The Computer Age


The use of the computer to foster corpus analysis is but one of many ways in which the study of language is changing in
response to the availability of computational techniques.
Some of the tasks computers are used to are: speech recognition and synthesis, machine translation, and language
learning .
Since the 1980s, the chief focus of computational linguistic research has been in the area known as natural language
processing(NLP). Here, the aim is to devise techniques which will automatically analyse large quantities of spoken
(transcribed) or written text in ways broadly parallel to what happens when humans carry out this task. NLP deals with
the computational processing of text - both its understanding and its generation - in natural human languages. It thus
forms a major part of the domain of computational linguistics.

Modern Linguistics
The development of linguistics, the science of language, has been particularly marked in recent decades. There has been
an increased popular interest in the role of language in relation to human beliefs and behavior, and an accompanying
awareness of the need for a separate academic discipline to deal adequately with the range and complexity of linguistic
phenomena.

8
Language
'The systematic, conventional use of sounds, signs or written symbols in a human society for communication and self-
expression.' David Crystal

Watch What country has the most languages spoken...?

The origins of language2


We simply don’t know how language originated. We suspect that some type of spoken language developed between
100,000 and 50,000 years ago, well before written language (about 5,000 years ago).

Considering genetic, archaeological, palaeontological and much other evidence indicates that language probably
emerged somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Stone Age, roughly contemporaneous with the speciation
of Homo sapiens.

Atkinson suggests that the firs language appeared in Arica. Since that the further away a particular language is from
Africa, the fewer phonemes it contains. By way of evidence, Atkinson claims that today's African languages tend to have
relatively large numbers of phonemes, whereas languages from areas in Oceania (the last place to which humans
migrated), have relatively few.

Scientific theories
One can sub-divide approaches to the origin of language according to some underlying assumptions3:

 "Continuity theories" build on the idea that language exhibits so much complexity that one cannot imagine it
simply appearing from nothing in its final form; therefore it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic
systems among our primate ancestors.
 "Discontinuity theories" take the opposite approach—that language, as a unique trait which cannot be
compared to anything found among non-humans, must have appeared fairly suddenly during the course of
human evolution.
 Some theories see language mostly as an innate faculty—largely genetically encoded.
 Other theories regard language as a mainly cultural system—learned through social interaction

The Natural Sound Source


In 1861, historical linguist Max Müller published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language:

 Bow-Wow/Cuckoo Theory: The suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural
sounds which early men and women heard around them. The fact that all modern languages have some words
with pronunciations that seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In
English, in addition to cuckoo, we have splash, bang, boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech, and forms such as bow-
wow. While it is true that a number of words in any language are onomatopoeic (echoing natural sounds), it is
hard to see how most of the soundless as well as abstract things in our world could have been referred to in a
language that simply echoed natural sounds.

2
¨The study of Language¨ Chapter 1: The origins of language - by George Yule
3
Origins of Language - Wikipedia
9
 Pooh-Pooh Theory: It has also been suggested that the original sounds of language may have come from natural
cries of emotion such as pain, anger and joy (Like Ah!, Ooh!, Wow! or Yuck!). But those reactions contain sounds
that are not otherwise used in speech production.
 ‘Yo-he-ho’ theory: the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language,
especially when that physical effort involved several people and had to be coordinated. So, a group of early
humans might develop a set of grunts, groans and curses that were used when they were lifting and carrying
large bits of trees or lifeless hairy mammoths. The appeal of this theory is that it places the development of
human language in some social context. However it does not, however, answer our question regarding the
origins of the sounds produced.
 Ta-ta Theory: humans made the earliest words by tongue movements that mimicked manual gestures,
rendering them audible

The physical adaptation source


Instead of looking at types of sounds as the source of human speech, we can look at the types of physical features
humans possess, especially those that are distinct from other creatures, which may have been able to support speech
production.

At some early stage, our ancestors made a very significant transition to an upright posture, with bi-pedal (on two feet)
locomotion, and a revised role for the front limbs. The reconstructed vocal tract of a Neanderthal suggests that some
consonant like sound distinctions would have been possible. In the study of evolutionary development, there are certain
physical features, best thought of as partial adaptations, which appear to be relevant for speech. By themselves, such
features would not necessarily lead to speech production, but they are good clues that a creature possessing such
features probably has the capacity for speech.

 Teeth: they are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes, and they are roughly even in height. Such
characteristics are not very useful for ripping or tearing food and seem better adapted for grinding and chewing.
They are also very helpful in making sounds such as for v.
 Mouth: The lips have much more intricate muscle interlacing than is found in other primates and their resulting
flexibility helps in making sounds like p or b. The human mouth is relatively small compared to other primates,
can be opened and closed rapidly, and contains a smaller, thicker and more muscular tongue which can be used
to shape a wide variety of sounds inside the oral cavity. The overall effect of these small differences taken
together is a face with more intricate muscle interlacing in the lips and mouth, capable of a wider range of
shapes and a more rapid delivery of sounds produced through these different shapes.
 Larynx: or ‘voice box’ (containing the vocal cords) differs significantly in position from the larynx of other
primates such as monkeys. In the course of human physical development, the assumption of an upright posture
moved the head more directly above the spinal column and the larynx dropped to a lower position. This created
a longer cavity called the pharynx, above the vocal cords, which acts as a resonator for increased range and
clarity of the sounds produced via the larynx. One unfortunate consequence of this development is that the
lower position of the human larynx makes it much more possible for the human to choke on pieces of food.
 Brain: It is unusually large relative to human body size. The human brain is lateralized, that is, it has specialized
functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those functions that control motor movements involved in things like
speaking and object manipulation (making or using tools) are largely confined to the left hemisphere of the brain
for most humans. It may be that there is an evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-using
abilities of humans and that both are involved in the development of the speaking brain. Most of the other
approaches to the origins of speech have humans producing single noises to indicate objects in their
environment. This activity may indeed have been a crucial stage in the development of language, but what it
lacks is any structural organization. All languages, including sign language, require the organizing and combining
10
of sounds or signs in specific arrangements. We seem to have developed a part of our brain that specializes in
making these arrangements.

The genetic source


Innateness hypothesis: At birth, the baby’s brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight and the larynx is much higher in
the throat, allowing babies, like chimpanzees, to breathe and drink at the same time. In a relatively short period of time,
the larynx descends, the brain develops, the child assumes an upright posture and starts walking and talking.

Even children who are born deaf (and do not develop speech) become fluent sign language users. This seems to indicate
that human offspring are born with a special capacity for language. It is innate, no other creature seems to have it, and it
isn’t tied to a specific variety of language.

Problems of reliability and deception4


From the perspective of modern science, the main obstacle to the evolution of language-like communication in nature is
not a mechanistic one. Rather, it is the fact that symbols—arbitrary associations of sounds or other perceptible forms
with corresponding meanings—are unreliable and may well be false. In contrast, animal vocal signals are, for the most
part, intrinsically reliable because they are hard to fake.

Monkeys and apes often attempt to deceive each other, while at the same time remaining constantly on guard against
falling victim to deception themselves. Paradoxically, it is theorized that primates' resistance to deception is what blocks
the evolution of their signalling systems along language-like lines. Language is ruled out because the best way to guard
against being deceived is to ignore all signals except those that are instantly verifiable.

Language presupposes relatively high levels of mutual trust in order to become established over time as an
evolutionarily stable strategy. This stability is born of a longstanding mutual trust and is what grants language its
authority. A theory of the origins of language must therefore explain why humans could begin trusting cheap signals in
ways that other animals apparently cannot.

The 'mother tongues' hypothesis (2004) by Fitch


Suggests that languages were originally 'mother tongues'. If language evolved initially for communication between
mothers and their own biological offspring, extending later to include adult relatives as well, the interests of speakers
and listeners would have tended to coincide. Fitch argues that shared genetic interests would have led to sufficient trust
and cooperation for intrinsically unreliable signals—words—to become accepted as trustworthy and so begin evolving
for the first time.

The 'obligatory reciprocal altruism' hypothesis by Ulbaek


'Reciprocal altruism' can be expressed as the principle that if you speak truthfully to me, I'll speak truthfully to you. It
refers to th relationship established between frequently interacting individuals. For language to prevail across an entire
community, however, the necessary reciprocity would have needed to be enforced universally instead of being left to
individual choice.

4
Origins of Language - Wikipedia
11
The gossip and grooming hypothesis
As humans began living in increasingly larger social groups, the task of manually grooming all one's friends and
acquaintances became so time-consuming as to be unaffordable. In response to this problem, humans developed 'a
cheap and ultra-efficient form of grooming'—vocal grooming. Vocal grooming then evolved gradually into vocal
language—initially in the form of 'gossip'.

Ritual/speech coevolution – Rappaport et al


It is a school of thought that believes there can be no such thing as a 'theory of the origins of language', because
language is not a separate adaptation but an internal aspect of something much wider—namely, human symbolic
culture as a whole. They point out that words are unreliable unlike the primate vocalizations that are emotionally
expressive, intrinsically meaningful and reliable because they are relatively costly and hard to fake. Language works only
if you can build up a reputation for trustworthiness within a certain kind of society—namely, one where symbolic
cultural facts can be established and maintained through collective social validation. The basic mechanism for
establishing trust in symbolic cultural facts is collective ritual. They address the evolutionary emergence of human
symbolic culture as a whole, with language an important but subsidiary component.

Chomsky's single step theory


It suggest that language appeared rather suddenly within the history of human evolution in the course of around
130,000 years between the arrival of the first anatomically modern humans in southern Africa, and the last exodus from
Africa, respectively.

The gestural theory


It states that human language developed from gestures that were used for simple communication.

Two types of evidence support this theory.

 Gestural language and vocal language depend on similar neural systems. The regions on the cortex that are
responsible for mouth and hand movements border each other.
 Nonhuman primates can use gestures or symbols for at least primitive communication, and some of their
gestures resemble those of humans.

The important question for gestural theories is why there was a shift to vocalization. Various explanations have been
proposed:

 Our ancestors started to use more and more tools, meaning that their hands were occupied and could no longer
be used for gesturing.
 Manual gesturing requires that speakers and listeners be visible to one another. In many situations, they might
need to communicate, even without visual contact—for example after nightfall or when foliage obstructs
visibility

The Tool-use sound hypothesis: suggests that the production and perception of sound, also contributed substantially,
particularly incidental sound of locomotion (ISOL) and tool-use sound (TUS). Since the human brain proficiently extracts
information about objects and events from the sounds they produce, TUS, and mimicry of TUS, might have achieved an
iconic function. The prevalence of sound symbolism in many extant languages supports this idea.

12
Mirror neurons and language origins
They provide a mechanism for action-understanding, imitation learning, and the simulation of other people's behavior.
They are present in monkey’s brains but not in human’s but there are homologous areas. Rates of vocabulary expansion
link to the ability of children to vocally mirror non-words and so to acquire the new word pronunciations.

Further evidence for this link comes from a recent study in which two participants were gesturing words to each other
using hand gestures with a game of charade and the analysis of the data revealed that the mirror-neuron system of the
observer indeed reflects the pattern of activity in the motor system of the sender.

Putting the baby down theory


The basic idea is that evolving human mothers, unlike their counterparts in other primates, couldn't move around and
forage with their infants clinging onto their backs. Loss of fur in the human case left infants with no means of clinging on.
Frequently, therefore, mothers had to put their babies down. As a result, these babies needed to be reassured that they
were not being abandoned. Mothers responded by developing 'motherese'. Language somehow developed out of all
this.

Grammaticalization Theory
Grammaticalization is a continuous historical process in which free-standing words develop into grammatical
appendages, while these in turn become ever more specialized and grammatical. Grammaticalization theorists picture
early language as simple, perhaps consisting only of nouns. People might have used their nouns as verbs or their verbs
as nouns as occasion demanded. Grammaticalization is essentially based on metaphor. A metaphor is, literally, a false
statement. Human listeners are not (or not usually) on factual accuracy. They want to know what the speaker has in
mind. Grammar evolved thanks to metaphors and possibility they give of expressing abstract thought.

Evolution-Progression Model
The early human environment accommodated the development of interaction, self-expression, and tool-making. The
increasing brain size bipedalism and hand versatility allowed the development of human language especially thanks to
the appearance of self consciousness.

Self-domesticated ape theory


One way to think about human evolution is that we are self-domesticated apes our cultural domestication have relaxed
selection on many of our primate behavioral traits, allowing old pathways to degenerate and reconfigure. This
reconfiguration of brain pathways might have contributed to the functional complexity that characterizes human
language. These are changes that can occur in very rapid time-frames.

Classification of Languages
There are two kinds of classification of languages practiced in linguistics:

 Genetic (or genealogical): With a diachronic approach, it considers the development and evolution of a
language through history.

13
 Typological: with a synchronic approach studies and classifies languages according to their structural and
functional features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the
world's languages at a moment in time without taking its history into account.

Typological classification of Languages

This is the broadest linguistic classification of languages, in which languages are classified into different types according
to their structures by using cross-linguistic comparison they find linguistic patterns of all languages.

Those patterns can also be called “universals” which include features existing in all languages and dependencies
between these features.

Phonological types5

According to Gil’s you can distinguish between Iambic and troaich languages

Features Iambic languages Troaic languages


Syllables More Less
Syllable structures Simpler Complex
Time Stress-timed Syllable-timed
Segments More obstruants More sonorant
Intonation contours More level More variable
Tonal Non-tonal

English is closer to the trochaic ideal,

Morphological types4

August Wilhelm Classificatory Types:


 Languages without any grammatical structure: roots are in general not modified by affixation or internal change
and words therefore appear to lack any ‘grammatical’ structure.
 Languages which employ affixes: They permit their roots to undergo modification, the technique of modification
consists simply of affixation of elements to an invariant root.
 Languages with inflection: They permit their roots to undergo modification; the technique of modification
consists in the root itself being internally modified. contains both the classical Indo-European languages such as
Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, and modern Indo-European languages such as the languages of the Romance group.
o Analytic languages: An analytic language like French would use a combination of words like sur la terre
‘on the ground’ to express what in a synthetic language like Latin might be said in a single word, humi.
o Synthetic languages

5
An Encyclopedia of Language by N.E. Collinge pp 174
14
Humboldt Clasificatory System

 Isolating languages: They present its roots in isolation, without any grammatical modification.
 Agglutinating languages: (the term derives from Latin gluten ‘glue’) would glue any number of invariant endings,
each with its own meaning, on to an invariant root.
 Flectional languages: They permit the roots themselves to undergo modification.
 Incorporating languages: They show a verbal morphology so complex that one word could stand for a whole
sentence, even incorporating concepts which in other languages would be expressed by separate objects and
adverbial modifiers.

Sapir fundamental types

They are based on the types of concept a language uses:

 Group I: these are basic concepts normally expressed by independent words or lexical roots.
 Group II: derivational concepts which enable the formation of new concepts of Group I from other concepts of
Group I, e.g. the formation of the concept depth from the concept deep in English.
 Group III: concrete relational concepts like number, tense and definiteness.
 Group IV: these are pure-relational concepts which indicate the relation of the basic concepts in the proposition
to each other, such as subject-object relations.

Types of Languages:

 Simple Pure-relational: They have ways of expressing conceps of Group I and IV


 Complex Pure-relational: They express concepts of Groups I, II and IV
 Simple Mixed-relational: They express concepts of Groups I, III and IV
 Complex Mixed-relational: They express concepts of all groups.

Syntactic types4

Basic sentence structure


 Subject-prominent languages: languages in which the relation subject-predicate plays a major role. EG: English.
 Topic-prominent’ languages: languages in which the relation topic-comment plays a major role.

Case-marking/verb-agreement

Considers the ways in which S, A, and O are marked

 Nominative-accusative principle,
 Ergative absolutive principle

15
 Active principle

Word-order typology by Hawkins6

It is the most successful ideal syntactic typology. It is based on the Greenbergian implicational universals of word-order.
This set of types reflects the basic order of subject, verb, and direct object in sentences.

Some languages allow varying degrees of freedom in their constituent order, posing a problem for their classification
within the subject–verb–object schema. On the other hand, when there is no clear preference under the described
conditions, the language is considered to have "flexible constituent order" (a type unto itself). Additionally, freedom of
word order may vary within the same language—for example, formal, literary, or archaizing varieties may have different,
stricter, or more lenient constituent-order structures than an informal spoken variety of the same language.

 Object–subject–verb
 Object–verb–subject
 Subject–verb–object
 Subject–object–verb
 Verb–subject–object
 Verb–object–subject

These labels usually appear abbreviated as "SVO" and so forth, and may be called "typologies" of the languages to which
they apply. The most commonly attested word orders are SOV and SVO while the least common orders are those that
are object initial with OVS being the least common with only four attested instances[2]

Indoeuropean language family7

The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects.

There are about 445 living Indo-European languages. The most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native
speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Portuguese, Bengali, Punjabi, Russian, each with over 100 million
speakers, with German, French, and Persian also having significant numbers. Today, about 46% of the human population
speaks an Indo-European language as a first language, by far the highest of any language family.

The Indo-European family includes most of the modern languages of Europe.

All Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European,
spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Although no written records remain, aspects of the culture and religion of the

6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_typology#Typological_systems
7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
16
Proto-Indo-European people can also be reconstructed from the related cultures of ancient and modern Indo-European
speakers who continue to live in areas to where the Proto-Indo-Europeans migrated from their original homeland.

Membership of languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by genealogical relationships, meaning
that all members are presumed descendants of a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. Membership in the various
branches, groups and subgroups of Indo-European is also genealogical, but here the defining factors are shared
innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups.
For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that much of their structure and
phonology can be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of their common features are presumed innovations
that took place in Proto-Germanic, the source of all the Germanic languages.

Classification

The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches, listed below in alphabetical
order

 Albanian, attested from the 13th century AD;[13] Proto-Albanian has evolved from an ancient Paleo-Balkan
language, traditionally thought to be Illyrian,[14] however, the evidence supporting this is still insufficient.[15]
 Anatolian, extinct by Late Antiquity, spoken in Asia Minor, attested in isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite
mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650
BC.[16][17]
 Armenian, attested from the early 5th century AD.
 Balto-Slavic, believed by most Indo-Europeanists[18] to form a phylogenetic unit, while a minority ascribes
similarities to prolonged language-contact.
 Slavic (from Proto-Slavic), attested from the 9th century AD (possibly earlier), earliest texts in Old Church
Slavonic. Slavic languages include Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Montenegrin, Macedonian, Bosnian,
Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn.
 Baltic, attested from the 14th century AD; for languages first attested that recently, they retain unusually many
archaic features attributed to Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Living examples are Lithuanian and Latvian.
 Celtic (from Proto-Celtic), attested since the 6th century BC; Lepontic inscriptions date as early as the 6th
century BC; Celtiberian from the 2nd century BC; Primitive Irish Ogham inscriptions from the 4th or 5th century
AD, earliest inscriptions in Old Welsh from the 7th century AD. Modern Celtic languages include Welsh, Cornish,
Breton, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic and Manx.
 Germanic (from Proto-Germanic), earliest attestations in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century AD,
earliest coherent texts in Gothic, 4th century AD. Old English manuscript tradition from about the 8th century
AD. Includes English, Frisian, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Low German,
Icelandic and Faroese.
 Hellenic and Greek (from Proto-Greek, see also History of Greek); fragmentary records in Mycenaean Greek
from between 1450 and 1350 BC have been found.[19] Homeric texts date to the 8th century BC.
 Indo-Iranian, attested circa 1400 BC, descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian (dated to the late 3rd millennium BC).
 Indo-Aryan (including Dardic), attested from around 1400 BC in Hittite texts from Asia Minor, showing traces of
Indo-Aryan words.[20][21] Epigraphically from the 3rd century BC in the form of Prakrit (Edicts of Ashoka). The
Rigveda is assumed to preserve intact records via oral tradition dating from about the mid-second millennium
17
BC in the form of Vedic Sanskrit. Includes a wide range of modern languages from Northern India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh including Hindustani, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Marathi, Odia and Nepali as
well as Sinhalese of Sri Lanka.
 Iranian or Iranic, attested from roughly 1000 BC in the form of Avestan. Epigraphically from 520 BC in the form
of Old Persian (Behistun inscription). Includes Persian, Ossetian and Kurdish
 Nuristani
 Italic (from Proto-Italic), attested from the 7th century BC. Includes the ancient Osco-Umbrian languages,
Faliscan, as well as Latin and its descendants (the Romance languages).
 Tocharian, with proposed links to the Afanasevo culture of Southern Siberia.[22] Extant in two dialects
(Turfanian and Kuchean, or Tocharian A and B), attested from roughly the 6th to the 9th century AD.
Marginalized by the Old Turkic Uyghur Khaganate and probably extinct by the 10th century.

Hocketts’s Design Features of Language8


In the 1960s, linguistic anthropologist Charles F. Hockett defined a set of features that characterize human language and
set it apart from animal communication. He called these characteristics the design features of language. Hockett
originally believed there to be 13 design features. While primate communication utilizes the first 9 features, the final 4
features (displacement, productivity, cultural transmission, and duality) are reserved for humans. Hockett later added
prevarication, reflexiveness, and learnability to the list as uniquely human characteristics. He asserted that even the
most basic human languages possess these 16 features.

Communicative and informative signals


 Informative signals: Someone listening to you may become informed about you through a number of signals
that you have not intentionally sent. She may note that you have a cold (you sneezed), that you are disorganized
(non-matching socks).
 Communicative signals: However, when you use language to tell this person, I’d like to apply for the vacant
position of senior brain surgeon at the hospital, you are normally considered to be intentionally communicating
something. Animals use this type of signals.

Vocal-auditory channel
Refers to the idea that speaking/hearing is the mode humans use for language. When Hockett first defined this feature,
it did not take sign language into account, which reflects the ideology of orality that was prevalent during the time. This
feature has since been modified to include other channels of language, such as tactilevisual or chemical-olfactory.

Broadcast transmission and directional reception


When humans speak, sounds are transmitted in all directions; however, listeners perceive the direction from which the
sounds are coming. Similarly, signers broadcast to potentially anyone within the line of sight, while those watching see
who is signing. This is characteristic of most forms of human and animal communication.

8
The Study of Language by George Yule – Chapter 2
18
Transitoriness
Also called rapid fading, transitoriness refers to the idea of temporary quality of language. Language sounds exist for
only a brief period of time, after which they are no longer perceived. Sound waves quickly disappear once a speaker
stops speaking. This is also true of signs. In contrast, other forms of communication such as writing and Inka khipus
(knot-tying) are more permanent.

Interchangeability
Refers to the idea that humans can give and receive identical linguistic signals; humans are not limited in the types of
messages they can say/hear. One can say "I am a boy" even if one is a girl. This is not to be confused with lying
(prevarication). The importance is that a speaker can physically create any and all messages regardless of their truth or
relation to the speaker. In other words, anything that one can hear, one can also say. Not all species possess this feature.
For example, in order to communicate their status, queen ants produce chemical scents that no other ants can produce
(see animal communication below).

Total feedback
Speakers of a language can hear their own speech and can control and modify what they are saying as they say it.
Similarly, signers see, feel, and control their signing.

Specialization
The purpose of linguistic signals is communication and not some other biological function. When humans speak or sign,
it is generally intentional. An example of non-specialized communication is dog panting. When a dog pants, it often
communicates to its owner that it is hot or thirsty; however, the dog pants in order to cool itself off. This is a biological
function, and the communication is a secondary matter.

Semanticity
Specific sound signals are directly tied to certain meanings.

Discreteness
Linguistic representations can be broken down into small discrete units which combine with each other in rule-governed
ways. They are perceived categorically, not continuously. For example, English marks number with the plural morpheme
/s/, which can be added to the end of any noun. The plural morpheme is perceived categorically, not continuously: we
cannot express smaller or larger quantities by varying how loudly we pronounce the /s/.

Displacement
It allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment. Indeed,
displacement allows us to talk about things and places (e.g. angels, fairies, Santa Claus, Superman, heaven, hell) whose
existence we cannot even be sure of. Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property.

It has been proposed that bee communication may have the property of displacement. For example, when a worker bee
finds a source of nectar and returns to the beehive, it can perform a complex dance routine to communicate to the
other bees the location of this nectar. However bee communication has displacement in an extremely limited form.
19
Arbitrariness
It is generally the case that there is no ‘natural’ connection between a linguistic form and its meaning.

There are some words in language with sounds that seem to ‘echo’ the sounds of objects or activities and hence seem to
have a less arbitrary connection. However onomatopoeic words are relatively rare in human language.

For the majority of animal signals, there does appear to be a clear connection between the conveyed message and the
signal used to convey it. This may be closely connected to the fact that, for any animal, the set of signals used in
communication is finite.

Productivity
Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to
describe new objects and situations.

This property is described as productivity (or ‘creativity’ or ‘open-endedness’) and it is linked to the fact that the
potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.

It doesn’t seem possible for creatures to produce new signals to communicate novel experiences or events. This limiting
feature of animal communication is described in terms of fixed reference. Each signal in the system is fixed as relating to
a particular object or occasion.

Cultural transmission
While we may inherit physical features such as brown eyes and dark hair from our parents, we do not inherit their
language. We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes.

It is clear that humans are born with some kind of predisposition to acquire language in a general sense. However, we
are not born with the ability to produce utterances in a specific language such as English. We acquire our first language
as children in a culture.

The general pattern in animal communication is that creatures are born with a set of specific signals that are produced
instinctively.

Human infants, growing up in isolation, produce no ‘instinctive’ language.

Duality
So, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meanings. This duality of levels is, in
fact, one of the most economical features of human language because, with a limited set of discrete sounds, we are
capable of producing a very large number of sound combinations (e.g. words) which are distinct in meaning.

Among other creatures, each communicative signal appears to be a single fixed form that cannot be broken down into
separate parts.

Prevarication
Prevarication is the ability to lie or deceive. When using language, humans can make false or meaningless statements.

20
Reflexiveness
Humans can use language to talk about language.

Learnability
Language is teachable and learnable. In the same way as a speaker learns their first language, the speaker is able to
learn other languages. It is worth noting that young children learn language with competence and ease; however,
language acquisition is constrained by a critical period such that it becomes more difficult once children pass a certain
age.

Animal Systems of Communication9

Talking to animals7
There is a lot of spoken language directed by humans to animals, apparently under the impression that the animal
follows what is being said.

However, the truth is that the animal produces a particular behavior in response to a particular sound-stimulus or
‘noise’, but does not actually ‘understand’ what the words in the noise mean.

Chimpanzees and language7


 Apes and gorillas can, like chimpanzees, communicate with a wide range of vocal calls, but they just can’t make
human speech sounds.
 Important lessons have been learned from attempts to teach chimpanzees how to use forms of language. We
have answered some questions.
 Chimpanzees are capable of taking part in interaction by using a symbol system chosen by humans and not
chimpanzees
 Chimpanzees cannot perform linguistically on a level comparable to a human child of the same age
 In addition, one of the most important lessons for those who study the nature of language is the realization that,
although we can describe some key properties of language, we clearly do not have a totally objective and non-
controversial definition of what counts as ‘using language’. We assume that when young human children make
language-like noises we are witnessing language development, but when young chimpanzees produce language-
like signs in interaction with humans, many scientists are very unwilling to classify this as language-use. Yet, the
criteria we use in each case do not seem to be the same.

Design features in animal communication


Hockett distinguished language from communication. While almost all animals communicate in some way, a
communication system is only considered language if it possesses all of the above characteristics. Some animal
communication systems are impressively sophisticated.

9
Watch videos about animal systems of communication: Can vervet monkeys talk, Honeybees waggle dance

21
Ants
Ants make use of the chemical-olfactory channel of communication. Ants produce chemicals called pheromones, which
are released through body glands and received by the tips of the antenna. Ants can produce up to twenty different
pheromone scents, each a unique signal used to communicate things such as the location of food and danger, or even
the need to defend or relocate the colony. When an ant is killed, it releases a pheromone that alerts others of potential
danger. Pheromones also help ants distinguish family members from strangers. The queen ant has special pheromones
which she uses to signal her status, orchestrate work, and let the colony know when they need to raise princesses or
drones. Ants will even engage in warfare to protect the colony or a food source. This warfare involves tactics that
resemble human warfare. Marauder ants will capture and hold down an enemy while another ant crushes it. Ants are
loyal to their colony to the death; however, the queen will kill her own in order to be the last one standing. This level of
"planning" among an animal species requires an intricate communication.

Birds
Bird communication demonstrates many features, including the vocal-auditory channel, broadcast
transmission/directional reception, rapid fading, semanticity, and arbitrariness. Bird communication is divided into songs
and calls. Songs are used primarily to attract mates, while calls are used to alert of food and danger and coordinate
movement with the flock. Calls are acoustically simple, while songs are longer and more complex. Bird communication is
both discrete and non-discrete. Birds use syntax to arrange their songs, where musical notes act as phonemes. The order
of the notes is important to the meaning of the song, thus indicating that discreteness exists. Bird communication is also
continuous in the sense that it utilizes duration and frequency. However, the fact that birds have "phonemes" does not
necessarily mean that they can combine them in an infinite way. Birds have a limited number of songs that they can
produce. The male indigo bunting only has one song, while the brown thrasher can sing over 2000 songs. Birds even
have unique dialects, depending on where they are from.

Honeybees
Honeybee communication is distinct from other forms of animal communication. Rather than vocal-auditory, bees use
the space-movement channel to communicate. Honeybees use two kinds of dances to communicate—the round dance
and the waggle dance. They use the round dance to communicate that food is 50–75 meters from the hive. They use the
waggle dance when it is farther than this. To do the waggle dance, a bee moves in a zigzag line and then does a loop
back to the beginning of the line, forming a figure-eight. The direction of the line points to the food. The speed of the
dance indicates the distance to the. In this way, bee dancing is also continuous, rather than discrete. Their
communication is also not arbitrary. They move in a direction and pattern that physically points out where food is
located. Honeybee dancing also demonstrates displacement, which is generally considered a human characteristic. Most
animals will only give a food-found call in the physical presence of food, yet bees can talk about food that is over 100
meters away.

Sing Language
It is a language that uses manual communication to convey meaning. This can include simultaneously employing hand
gestures, movement, orientation of the fingers, arms or body, and facial expressions to convey a speaker's ideas. Sign
languages often share significant similarities with their respective spoken language (such as ASL and American English).
Grammar and sentence structure, however, may vary to encourage efficiency and fluidity in speaking.[1][2] Linguists

22
consider both spoken and signed communication to be types of natural language, meaning that both emerged through
an abstract, protracted aging process and evolved over time without meticulous planning.

Signing is used primarily by the deaf and hard of hearing, it is also used by hearing individuals, such as those unable to
physically speak, or those who have trouble with spoken language due to a disability or condition.

It is unclear how many sign languages currently exist worldwide (Around 130). A common misconception is that all sign
languages are the same worldwide or that sign language is international. Aside from Pidgin International Sign, each
country generally has its own, native sign language, and some have more than one.

Is ¨sign language¨ (the language of deaf people) actually language?

Body language vs Sign Language


Body language is a form of non-verbal communication. Body language is about using behaviour to communicate. Both
people and animals use this form of communication. Part of this behaviour is done subconsciously. It is therefore
different from communicating using sign language, for example. Communication using sign language is intentional, body
language is not.

The forms of behaviour used in body language include body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements.

Body language may provide clues as to the attitude or state of mind of a person. For example, it may indicate
aggression, attentiveness, boredom, a relaxed state, pleasure, amusement, and intoxication.

Writing systems10

Writing11
We can define writing as the symbolic representation of language through the use of graphic signs. Unlike speech, it is a
system that is not simply acquired, but has to be learned through sustained conscious effort. Not all languages have a
written form and, even among people whose language has a well-established writing system, there are large numbers of
individuals who cannot use the system.

In terms of human development, writing is a relatively recent phenomenon. We may be able to trace human attempts to
represent information visually back to cave drawings made at least 20,000 years ago, or to clay tokens from about
10,000 years ago, which appear to have been an early attempt at bookkeeping, but these artifacts are best described as
ancient precursors of writing. The earliest writing for which we have clear evidence is known as “cuneiform,” marked on
clay tablets about 5,000 years ago.

10
For more info watch the videos an Animated History of Writing, and The evolution of language, Writing systems

11
The Study Of Language by Yule (4th Edition) – Chapter 16
23
Pictograms and ideograms
Cave drawings may serve to record some event (e.g. Humans 3, Buffaloes 1), but they are not usually thought of as any
type of specifically linguistic message. They are usually treated as part of a tradition of pictorial art. When some of the
“pictures” came to represent particular images in a consistent way, we can begin to describe the product as a form of
picture-writing, or pictograms.

An essential part of this use of a representative symbol is that everyone should use a similar form to convey a roughly
similar meaning.

In time, this picture might develop into a more fixed symbolic form, moving from something visible to something
conceptual (and no longer a picture). This type of symbol is then considered to be part of a system of idea-writing, or
ideograms. The distinction between pictograms and ideograms is essentially a difference in the relationship between the
symbol and the entity it represents. The more “picture-like” forms are pictograms and the more abstract derived forms
are ideograms.

A key property of both pictograms and ideograms is that they do not represent words or sounds in a particular language.

Logograms
An early example of logographic writing is the system used by the Sumerians, in the southern part of modern Iraq,
around 5,000 years ago. Because of the particular shapes used in their symbols, these inscriptions are more generally
described as cuneiform writing. The term cuneiform means “wedge-shaped” and the inscriptions used by the Sumerians
were produced by pressing a wedge-shaped implement into soft clay tablets.

The relationship between the written form and the object it represents has become arbitrary and we have a clear
example of word-writing or a logogram.

Contemporary logograms in English are forms such as $, @, 9, &, where each symbol represents one word. A more
elaborate writing system that is based, to a certain extent, on the use of logograms can be found in China. Many Chinese
written symbols, or characters, are used as representations of the meaning of words, or parts of words, and not of the
sounds of spoken language. One of the advantages of such a system is that two speakers of very different dialects of
Chinese, who might have great difficulty understanding each other’s spoken forms, can both read the same written text.

One major disadvantage is that quite a large number of different written symbols are required within this type of writing
system.

The history of most other writing systems illustrates a development away from logographic writing.

To accomplish this, some principled method is needed to go from symbols representing words (i.e. a logographic
system) to a set of symbols that represent sounds (i.e. a phonographic system).

Rebus writing
One way of using existing symbols to represent the sounds of language is through a process known as rebus writing. In
this process, the symbol for one entity is taken over as the symbol for the sound of the spoken word used to refer to the
entity. That symbol then comes to be used whenever that sound occurs in any words.

A similar process is taking place in contemporary English texting where the symbol “2” is used, not only as a number, but
as the sound of other words or parts of words, in messages such as “nd2spk2u2nite” (“(I) need to speak to you tonight”).
In this message, the letter “u” also illustrates the process of rebus writing, having become the symbol for the sound of
the spoken word “you.”
24
What this process accomplishes is a sizeable reduction in the number of symbols needed in a writing system

Syllabic writing
When a writing system employs a set of symbols each one representing the pronunciation of a syllable, it is described as
syllabic writing

Japanese has a (partially) syllabic writing system, or a syllabary.

What did the first ever written document said?12


Old civilizations believed that writing came from the gods. Even as a gift or stolen.

Archeologist were always intrigued by the reasons antique civilizations developed writing.

In 1929 an archeologist called Julius Jordan found a large collections of potter tokens dated in 5000 years.

These tokens were found in present day Irak and belonged to a city called Uruk, one of the first cities in the world with
only about thousands of inhabitants.

Its ruins were full of little pottery objects that resembled daily goods as bread and animals.

These little pieces were used to count and they were even useful for doing additions and subtractions.

The marks in the tokens resembled these little pieces so archeologists deduced that these tokens were used as
registries of the pieces and therefore of the real daily goods they represented. The first token were made with
impressions of the little pieces over fresh potter tokens but then the Uruks realized it would be easier to draw them on
the tokens instead in a type of cuneiform writing system.

So these tokens weren’t used to write poetry or send messages instead they were used to register debts and later to
write the first contracts.

Eventually Ururks replaced individual impressions by inventing numbers using an abstract symbol instead. It was
powerful enough to express large amounts from hundreds to thousands. But these numbers were only used to refer to
the amount of something.

Task: Explaining a Writing System – Hierogliphics


Lorem ipsum

Investigate what is an ¨adjad¨? Look for it.

12
Newspaper article issued by La Nación, ¿Qué decía el primer documento escrito que conocemos?
25
The study of Speech Sounds

Differences between Phonetics and Phonology13


Phonetics differs from phonology in that it focuses on the mechanics of sound production and transmission, irrespective
of how the sounds may operate as part of a language system; phonology focuses on the ‘function,’ or ‘organization,’ or
‘patterning’ of the sounds.

Phonetics Phonology

Actual speech sounds, real, concrete (Allophones) Abstract units of speech analysis (Phonemes)

Studies the physical realization of sounds commonly used Studies the organization of sounds into patterns and
in all languages. systems

Actual realization of sound The way sounds are organized in different languages

Higher number of allophones Infinite number of phonemes

Speech Apparatus
In general, speech sounds in English are produced by the interaction of
the respiratory mechanism, the laryngeal mechanism and the oral and
nasal mechanisms – the exceptions are the so-called glottalic and velaric
airstream mechanisms

For most sounds in English, an air-stream, generated by the lungs,


passes up the trachea where it may be modified by the action of the
vocal and ventricular folds (see below) before passing into the pharynx.
Depending on the position of the soft palate, which may be raised
against the posterior wall of the pharynx to create a relatively air-tight
seal, or lowered by varying degrees away from the posterior wall, air
will flow either into the nasal cavities or continue into the mouth.

Consonants and Vowels


The actions of the tongue and/or the lips in relation to different parts of the roof of the mouth modify the air-stream
such that a large variety of different sounds are produced: all can be classified into one of two categories, consonant and
vowel.

These terms do not necessarily coincide with the same expressions as used in any discussion of alphabetic letters. A
phonetic vowel is a sound in which there is no obstruction to the air-stream – for example the sound of the word <ah>.

13
The Handbook of English Linguistics by Bas Aarts and April McMahon Chapter 16
26
A phonetic consonant is a sound in which there is an obstruction of some sort to the air-stream – for example the first
and last sounds in the word <mat>.

Vowels and consonants are often referred to as segments of speech: even so, they are not the only aspects of speech
which come within the province of phonetics. A series of phonetic activities accompany the production of the segments.
Known variously as suprasegmentals, suprasegmental features, non-segmental features, and prosodic features (see ch.
19, this volume, ‘Intonation’) they include the emphasis given to particular parts of words by additional respiratory
activity (stress) and the action of the vocal folds (intonation), and the tempo and rhythm of speech. A speaker’s
combination of the segmental and suprasegmental features used in his/her speech creates a particular vocal profile.

Description of Speech Sound14


Language is basically speech, so sounds are its fundamental building blocks. But we learn the sounds of our language at
such an early age that we are unaware of them without special study. Moreover, the alphabet we use has always been
inadequate to represent the sounds of the English language, and that is especially true of Modern English since one
letter can represent many different sounds.

Phoneticians, who study the sounds used in language, have therefore invented a phonetic alphabet in which the same
symbols consistently represent the same sounds, thus making it possible to write sounds unambiguously. The phonetic
alphabet uses the familiar Roman letters, but assigns to each a single sound value. Then, because there are more sounds
than twenty-six, some letters have been borrowed from other alphabets, and other letters have been invented, so that
finally the phonetic alphabet has one letter for each sound.

Phoneticians describe and classify sounds according to the way they are made. So to understand the phonetic alphabet
and the sounds it represents, you must know something about how sounds are produced.

English Vowels

The diagram is a representation of the 'vowel space' in the centre


of the mouth where vowel sounds are articulated.

• 'Close', 'Mid' and 'Open' refer to the distance between the


tongue and the roof of the mouth.

• 'Front', 'Centre' and 'Back' and their corresponding 'vertical' lines


refer to the part of the tongue.

• The position of each phoneme represents the height of the


tongue, and also the part of the tongue which is (however
relatively) raised.

The basic lip position used in describing the articulation of vowel sounds:

14
The Origins and Development of the English Language by John Algeo – Chapter 2: The sounds of current English
27
 Rounded: The lips are pushed forward into the shape of a circle.
 Spread: The corners of the lips are moved away from each other
as when smiling.
 Neutral: The lips are not noticeably rounded or spread.

/i:/ This close front vowel is produced when the front of the tongue is the highest part and is near
the roof of the mouth. Lips are spread. The tongue is tense, and the sides of the tongue touch the
upper molars.
/ɪ/ This close front vowel is produced when the part of the tongue slightly nearer the centre is
raised to just above the half-close position. The lips are spread loosely, and the tongue is more
relaxed. The sides of the tongue may just touch the upper molars.
/ʊ/ This close back vowel is produced when the part of the tongue just behind the centre is
raised, just above the half-close position. The lips are rounded, but loosely so. The tongue is
relatively relaxed.
/u:/ This close back vowel is produced when the back of the tongue is the highest part, and is
near to the roof of the mouth, raised just below the close position. Lips are rounded. The tongue
is tense.
/e/ This mid front vowel is produced when the front of the tongue is between the half-open and
half-close positions. Lips are loosely spread. The tongue is tense. The sides of the tongue may
touch the upper molars
/ə/ This Mid centring vowel is produced when the centre of the tongue is between the half.close
and half-open positions. Lips are relaxed,and neutrally spread
/ɜ:/ This Mid centring vowel is produced when the centre of the tongue is between the half-close
and half-open positions. Lips are relaxed and neutrally spread.
/ɔ:/ This Mid back vowel is produced when the back of the tongue is raised to between the halfopen and half-
close positions. Lips are loosely rounded
/æ/ This open front vowel is produced when the front of the tongue is raised to just below the
half-open position, but the tongue itself is low in the mouth. Lips are spread.
/ʌ/ This open centring vowel is produced when the centre of the tongue is raised to just above
the fully open position. Lips are neutrally open.
/ɑ:/ This open back vowel is produced when the tongue between the centre and the back, is in
the fully open position. Lips are neutrally open.
/ɒ/ This open back vowel is produced when the back of of the tongue tongue is in fully open
position, but the tongue itself is low in the mouth. Lips are lightly rounded.

28
English Consonants

Manner of Articulation
Affricate
Approximant
Fricative
Lateral
Nasal
Plosive

Place of Articulation
Alveolar
Bilabial
Dental
Glotal
Labio-dental
Palatal
Palato-alveolar
Velar

Allophonic and phonemic contrasts


Allophones Phonemes

29
Predictable surface elements Abstract underlying units of phonological analysis

Physical realization of phonemes Simbolic representation which allows us to relate a


specific speech to each other, recognizing their
Concrete speech sounds
phonological sameness despite their phonetics
They will dpend on the phonetic context and personal differences
choice/style
Smallest contrastive phonological units (Changing one
Complementary distribution phoneme we contrast different lexical meaning thus they
can occur in place of another)
Neutrally Exclusive
Contrastive Distribution
Free variation: They don’t change lexical meaning

Vowel alterations
Nasalization15
When a vowel sound is followed by a nasal sound within the word or at word boundary, it becomes nasalized.

The vowel sound is articulated in the oral cavity and the velum is lowered for the production of the nasal, so the airflow
is released nasally.

Eg: ten, I say no

Rhoticization
In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is
articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex
articulation) or the back of the tongue being bunched.

R-colored vowels are rare, occurring in less than one percent of the languages of the world.[1] However, they occur in
two of the most widely spoken languages: North American English and Mandarin Chinese. In North American English,
they are found in words such as butter, nurse and, for some speakers, start.

Lenghthening16
Long pure vowel sounds and diphthongs undergo different degrees of lengthening depending on the phonetic
environment.

When followed by a sonorant vowel lengthening is not affected

Fully long

15
Apuntes meme pp21
16
Apunte meme pp21
30
 When they are in an open syllable (No consonant in coda postion)
 When the vowel sounds are stressed in syllable closed by a voiced obstruent

Half long

 When they occur in an unstressed syllable


 When they occur in a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one
 When they occur in a syllable closed by a voiceless obstruent

Shortening

Consonant variations
Devoicing 17
Voiced obstruents (Plosives, fricatives and affricates) become devoiced (i.e they lose part or all their voice) when:

1. They occur before or after pauses


2. They occur before or after voiceless obstruents
3. Voiced obstruents are fully voiced when they occur in between voiced sounds (Voiced obstruents, vowels,
sonorants).

Aspiration18
Is an interval of voicelessness between the release stage of a voiceless plosive and the voicing of the following sound.

Full aspiration: Onset position followed by a vowel in a stressed syllable

Weak aspiration: Onset position followed by a vowel sound in an unstressed syllable. Is left unmarked.

Unaspiration: Consonant cluster preceded by /s/. Is left unmarked

Syllabicity

Watch ALL the videos from the University of Marburg we have been watching, plus some others we couldn't watch in
class:

 Phonology - The North American Vowel System


 Phonology - English in North America II (Sound Changes)
 Phonology - English in North America I (Overview)
 Phonology - The Sound System of RP
 Phonetics - Basic Segments of Speech (Consonants)

17
Apuntes meme pp9
18
Apuntes mem pp5
31
 Basic Segments of Speech- Vowels II
 Phonetics - Basic Segments of Speech (Vowels I)
 Phonology - Phonetic Transcription II
 Phonology - Phonetic Transcription I
 RP English Sound Chart

Morphology
In linguistics, morphology /mɔːˈfɒlədʒi/ is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of a given
language's morphemes and other linguistic units, such as root words, affixes, parts of speech, intonations and stresses,
or implied context.
The purpose of morphological analysis is to determine the minimal units of meaning in a language or morphemes.

Morphemes19
A better way of looking at linguistic forms in different languages would be to use the notion of “elements” in the
message, rather than depend on identifying only “words.”

We can recognize that English word forms such as talks, talker, talked and talking must consist of one element talk, and
a number of other elements such as -s, -er, -ed and -ing. All these elements are described as morphemes. The definition
of a morpheme is “a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.” Units of grammatical function include forms
used to indicate past tense or plural, for example.

Free and bound morphemes


 Free morphemes: morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words, for example, open and tour. The
free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns,
adjectives, verbs, etc. When they are used with bound morphemes attached, the basic word forms are
technically known as stems. For example:
 Bound morphemes: those forms that cannot normally stand alone and are typically attached to another form,
exemplified as re-, -ist, -ed, -s. All affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English are bound morphemes.

un dress ed

Prefix Stem Suffix

(bound (Free) (bound)

There are a number of English words in which the element treated as the stem is not, in fact, a free morpheme. In words
such as receive, reduce and repeat, we can identify the bound morpheme re- at the beginning, but the elements -ceive, -

19
The Study Of Language (4th Edition( Chapter 6
32
duce and -peat are not separate word forms and hence cannot be free morphemes. These types of forms are sometimes
described as “bound stems” to keep them distinct from “free stems” such as dress and care.

Lexical and functional morphemes


What we have described as free morphemes fall into two categories. The first category is that set of ordinary nouns,
adjectives and verbs that we think of as the words that carry the “content” of the messages we convey. These free
morphemes are called lexical morphemes and some examples are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere,
open, look, follow, break. We can add new lexical morphemes to the language rather easily, so they are treated as an
“open” class of words.

Other types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes. Examples are and, but, when, because, on, near,
above, in, the, that, it, them. This set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions,
prepositions, articles and pronouns. Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language, they are
described as a “closed” class of words.

Derivational and inflectional morphemes


The set of affixes that make up the category of bound morphemes can also be divided into two types.

These are the derivational morphemes. We use these bound morphemes to make new words or to make words of a
different grammatical category from the stem. For example, the addition of the derivational morpheme -ness changes
the adjective good to the noun goodness. The noun care can become the adjectives careful or careless by the addition of
the derivational morphemes -ful or -less. A list of derivational morphemes will include suffixes such as the -ish in foolish,
-ly in quickly, and the -ment in payment. The list will also include prefixes such as re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un and many
more.

Inflectional morphemes: These are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of the
grammatical function of a word. Inflectional morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense
or not, and if it is a comparative or possessive form. In English, all the inflectional morphemes are suffixes. English has
only eight inflectional morphemes (or “inflections”).

-’s – To mark possession Eg: Jim’s wife

-s – To mark plurals Eg: Dogs

-s - 3rd person singular She likes..

-ing - present participle Eg: Watching

-ed - past tense Eg: Watched

-en - past participle Eg Taken

-er – comparative Eg: Prettier

-est – superlative Eg: Prettiest

33
Morphological description
The difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes is worth emphasizing. An inflectional morpheme never
changes the grammatical category of a word. For example, both old and older are adjectives. The -er inflection here
(from Old English -ra) simply creates a different version of the adjective. However, a derivational morpheme can change
the grammatical category of a word. The verb teach becomes the noun teacher if we add the derivational morpheme –
er.

Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the same word, they always appear in that
order. First the derivational (-er) is attached to teach, then the inflectional (-s) is added to produce teachers.

Morphological sentence analysis


The child ‘s wild -ness shock -ed the teach er s
Functional Lexical Inflectional Lexical Derivational Lexical Inflectional Functional Lexical Derivational inflectional

Problems in morphological description


Relationship between some words are the reflection of the historical influence of different languages on English word
forms. Consequently, there is no derivational relationship between, for example, the noun law (From old English) and
the adjective legal (From Latin) in modern English.

Consequently, a full description of English morphology will have to take account of both historical influences and the
effect of borrowed elements.

Morphs and allomorphs


Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes. For example, the form cats consists of two morphs, cat +-s,
realizing a lexical morpheme and an inflectional morpheme (“plural”). The form buses also consists of two morphs (bus +
-es), realizing a lexical morpheme and an inflectional morpheme (“plural”). So there are at least two different morphs (-s
and -es, actually /s/ and /əz/) used to realize the inflectional morpheme “plural.”

Allomorphs they are groups of different morphs, all versions of one morpheme.

The actual forms of the morphs that result from the morpheme “plural” are different. Yet they are all allomorphs of the
one morpheme. So, in addition to /s/ and /əz /, another allomorph of “plural” in English seems to be a zero-morph
because the plural form of sheep is actually “sheep + ø.” When we look at “man + plural,” we have a vowel change in the
word (æ → ɛ) as the morph that produces the “irregular” plural form men.

Word formation processes


Basic processes by which new words are created.

Etymology: The study of the origin and history of a word. It comes from Greek (e´tymon “original form” + logia “study
of”). There are many different ways in which new words can enter the language. We should keep in mind that these

34
processes have been at work in the language for some time and a lot of words in daily use today were, at one time,
considered barbaric misuses of the language. Rather than act as if the language is being debased, we might prefer to
view the constant evolution of new words and new uses of old words as a reassuring sign of vitality and creativeness in
the way a language is shaped by the needs of its users.

Coinage: One of the least common processes of word formation in English is coinage, that is, the invention of totally
new terms. The most typical sources are invented trade names for commercial products that become general terms
(usually without capital letters) Eg: Google, “I will google that”.

New words based on the name of a person or a place are called eponyms. Eg: sandwich (from the eighteenth-century
Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on having his bread and meat together while gambling).

Borrowing
One of the most common sources of new words in English is the process simply labeled borrowing, that is, the taking
over of words from other languages.

A special type of borrowing is described as loan-translation or calque (/kælk/). In this process, there is a direct
translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language. The English word superman is thought to be a loan-
translation of the German U ¨ bermensch.

Compounding
When there is a joining of two separate words to produce a single form.

Common English compounds are bookcase, doorknob, fingerprint, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket and
waterbed. All these examples are nouns, but we can also create compound adjectives (good-looking, low-paid) and
compounds of adjective (fast) plus noun (food) as in a fast-food restaurant or a full-time job.

Blending
The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also present in the process called blending. To
talk about the combined effects of smoke and fog, we can use the word smog. Another example is Spanglish
(Spanish/English).

Clipping
This occurs when a word of more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form, usually beginning in casual speech. The
term gasoline is still used, but most people talk about gas, using the clipped form.

A particular type of reduction, favored in Australian and British English, produces forms technically known as
hypocorisms. In this process, a longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then -y or -ie is added to the end. This is the
process that results in movie (“moving pictures”) and telly (“television”). It has also produced Aussie (“Australian”).

35
Backformation
Typically, a word of one type (usually a noun) is reduced to form a word of another type (usually a verb). A good
example of backformation is the process whereby the noun television first came into use and then the verb televise was
created from it. Other examples of words created by this process are: donate (from “donation”), and babysit (from
“babysitter”).

Conversion
Also known as category change or functional shift. It is a change in the function of a word, as for example when a noun
comes to be used as a verb (without any reduction).

 Bottle – Bottled (Noun to Verb)


 Vacation – Vacationing (Noun to Verb)
 Guess – Sources of a guess (Verb to Noun)
 To spy – A spy (Verb to Noun)
 To take over – A takeover (Phrasel verbs to nouns)
 Want to Be – Wannabe (Complex verb combination to noun)

Acronyms
Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. These can be forms such as CD
(“compact disk”) or VCR (“video cassette recorder”) where the pronunciation consists of saying each separate letter.
More typically, acronyms are pronounced as new single words, as in NATO, NASA or UNESCO.

Other examples: laser (“light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”), radar (“radio detecting and ranging”).

Derivation
Is the most common word formation process to be found in the production of new English words. This process is called
derivation and it is accomplished by means of a large number of small “bits” of the English language which are not
usually given separate listings in dictionaries. These small “bits” are generally described as affixes. Some familiar
examples are the elements un-, mis-, pre-, -ful, -less, -ish, -ism and -ness which appear in words like unhappy,
misrepresent, prejudge, joyful, careless, boyish, terrorism and sadness.

Prefixes and suffixes


Looking more closely at the preceding group of words, we can see that some affixes have to be added to the beginning
of the word (e.g. un-, mis-). These are called prefixes. Other affixes have to be added to the end of the word (e.g. -less, -
ish) and are called suffixes. All English words formed by this derivational process have either prefixes or suffixes, or both.
Thus, mislead has a prefix, disrespectful has both a prefix and a suffix, and foolishness has two suffixes. Infixes There

36
Infixes
There is a third type of affix, not normally used in English, but found in some other languages. This is called an infix and,
as the term suggests, it is an affix that is incorporated inside another word. Eg: Unfuckinbelievable!.

Multiple processes
Although we have concentrated on each of these word-formation processes in isolation, it is possible to trace the
operation of more than one process at work in the creation of a particular word. For example, the term deli seems to
have become a common American English expression via a process of first borrowing delicatessen (from German) and
then clipping that borrowed form.

An acronym that never seems to have had capital letters comes from “young urban professional”, plus the -ie suffix, as
in hypocorism, to produce the word yuppie (first recorded in 1984). The formation of this new word, however, was
helped by a quite different process, known simply as analogy, whereby new words are formed to be similar in some way
to existing words. Yuppie was made possible as a new word by analogy with the earlier word hippie and another short-
lived analogy yippie.

Grammar
Read Alexander Grammar book from 1st year, find and define these items

Words
Consist of one or more morphemes. The smallest unit of a language. It’s a particular importance because it relates the
grammar of a language to its lexicon.

Verbs
Intransitive verbs The verb Yawn is intransitive
because it does not permit an
Sue yawed (SV)
object. It would not be
grammatical.
Transitive Monotransitive verbs Sue likes cookies (SVOd) A direct object is required
Verbs Distransitive verbs Sue gave John a pie (SVOiOd) The verb requires two objects

Copulative
A copular verb is a special kind of verb used to join an adjective or noun complement to a subject. It is used to express
either that the subject and its complement denote the same thing or that the subject has the property denoted by its
complement.

For example in the sentence ‘Peter is my boyfriend’ the copular verb is asserts that Peter and my boyfriend are the same
person whereas in the sentence ‘Peter is British’ the copular verb is assigns the quality of Britishness to Peter.

Common examples are: be (is, am, are, was, were), appear, seem, look, sound, smell, taste, feel, become and get. Others
include remain, keep, stay, get, go, come, grow, prove, turn, turn out, end up and wind up.

37
Conjunctions
Also known as a connector or joiner is a word used to join words, phrases or clauses together to show their relationship
in a sentence.

Types of conjunctions:
 Subordinate conjunctions (Subordinators)20
The subordinate conjunction has two jobs. First, it provides a necessary transition between the two ideas in the
sentence. This transition will indicate a time, place, or cause and effect relationship. Here are some examples:

- Louisa will wash the sink full of her dirty dishes once her roommate Shane cleans his stubble and globs of
shaving cream from the bathroom sink.
- We looked on top of the refrigerator, where Jenny will often hide a bag of chocolate chip cookies.
- Because her teeth were chattering in fear, Lynda clenched her jaw muscle while waiting for her turn to audition.

The second job of the subordinate conjunction is to reduce the importance of one clause so that a reader understands
which of the two ideas is more important. The more important idea belongs in the main clause, the less important in the
clause introduced by the subordinate conjunction. Read these examples:

- As Samson blew out the birthday candles atop the cake, he burned the tip of his nose on a stubborn flame.
(Burning his nose > blowing out candles)
- Ronnie begins to sneeze violently whenever he opens the door to greet a fresh spring day. (Sneezing violently >
opening the door)
- Even though Dana persevered at the calculus exam, she was only adding another F beside her name in Dr.
Armour's grade book. (Adding another F > persevering at the exam)

Types of subordinate conjunctions (Subordinators)


Simple subordinators
After, although, as, because, before, directly, if, immediately, like, lest, once, since, that, though, till, unless, until, when,
whenever, where, whereas, wherever, while, why, whereupon.

Complex subordinators
 Ending with that: But that, in that, in order that, insofar that, in the event that, save that, such that, except that, for all
that, now that, so that.
 Ending with optional that: Assuming that, considering that, excepting that, given that, granted that, granting that,
provided that, providing that, seeing that, supposing that.
 Ending with as: According as, as far as, as long as, as soon as, forasmuch as, inasmuch as, insofar as, insomuch as.
 Others: As is, as thought, in case

Correlative subordinators:

Proportional correlative
As …so As the strength of the defenses failed, so the courage of the attackers grew

Comparative correlatives
As …as I was angrier than I’ve ever been

20
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/subordinateconjunction.htm
38
So
Such
So
…that
Such
Less
…than
More
No sooner …Than/when
Barely
Hardly …when/than
Scarcely

Proportional correlative
The …the The harder they worked, the hungrier they became

Option correlative
Whether They didn’t tell me whether I should talk to the manager or not.
…or
If

Subordinator + optional conjunct


Tough the workers were unhappy with some aspects of the new contract,
Although
nevertheless they voted in favour of it
Yet,
Even if
nevertheless
(Even) though
While
If
Once Then, in that
Since case
Unless
Because
Therefore
Seeing that

Marginal subordinators
Subordinator + adverb
Even if
If only

NP functioning as temporal adverb


The moment
(that)
Every time

Prepositional phrase ending in “the fact that”


Because of
Due to
An account of
the fact that
In (the) light of
In spite of
Regardless of

39
Participle forms
Supposing
(that)
Provided

Subordinating Conjunctions vs. Relative Pronouns21


There is another group of words that sometimes introduce dependent clauses. These are called relative pronouns, and
although they look and act very similar to coordinating conjunctions, they are different. True relative pronouns are
“that,” “who” and “which,” and they differ from subordinating conjunctions in that they act as the subject of a
dependent clause whereas subordinating conjunctions do not. Subordinating conjunctions are followed by the subject of
their clause. Consider a few examples:
- John is the guy who came over for dinner last week. - Here, we have two clauses. “John is the guy” is the main
clause, and “who came over for dinner last week” gives us more information about John. The word “who” acts
as the subject of the dependent clause.
- We talked about music and movies while we ate. - Again, we have two clauses. “We talked about music and
movies” is the main clause, and “while we ate” gives us more information. However, in this example, both
clauses have the subject “we.” The word “while” does not act as the subject of the dependent clause.

 Coordinating conjunction (Coordinators)


They can join together words, phrases and independent clauses22. Coordinating conjunctions are used when you want to
give equal emphasis to two main clauses. There are 7 in English and it’s easier to remember them using the acronyms
FANBOYS.

For - Explains reason or purpose. Eg: I go to the park every Sunday, for I love to watch the ducks on the lake.
And - Adds one thing to another. Eg: I go to the park every Sunday to watch the ducks on the lake and the shirtless men
playing soccer.
Nor - Used to present an alternative negative idea to an already stated negative idea. Eg: I don’t go for the fresh air nor
really for the ducks. Honestly, I just like the soccer.
But - Shows contrast. Eg: The soccer in the park is entertaining in the winter, but it’s better in the heat of summer.
Or - Presents an alternative or a choice. Eg. The men play on teams: shirts or skins.
Yet - Introduces a contrasting idea that follows the preceding idea logically. Eg: I always take a book to read, yet I never
seem to turn a single page.
So - Indicates effect, result or consequence. Eg: I’ve started dating one of the soccer players, so now I have an excuse to
watch the game each week.

Using Commas with Coordinating Conjunctions


1. Connecting two independent clauses: The use of a comma is obligatory. Example: The soccer in the park is
entertaining in the winter (independent clause) + it’s better in the heat of summer (independent clause) –
Because these are two independent clauses, they must be joined together by a comma and a coordinating
conjunction.
2. Connecting a phrase with two independent clauses: the two independent clauses should be separated with the
coordinating conjunction "and." If a phrase is added to a short independent clause it does not need a comma.

21
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/conjunctions/subordinating-conjunctions.html#HqposUs3ZbAy8zpL.99

22
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/conjunctions/coordinating-conjunctions.html#g5uHdUH7ChjuOg1l.99
40
Example: I go to the park every Sunday (independent clause), and I watch the ducks on the lake (independent
clause) and the shirtless men playing soccer (phrase).
3. Connecting a list of three or more items or phrases: The use of comma is optional (Usually to clear up any
possible confusion). The only coordinating conjunction that doesn’t seem to be able to connect sentence
fragments (words and phrases) is “for.” When “for” comes between words or short phrases, it is typically acting
not as a coordinating conjunction, but as a preposition.

Syntactic features of Coordinators


Constraints
 Clause coordinators are restricted to clause initial position

And, or & but are restricted to initial position in the clause

 John Plays the guitar, and his sister plays the piano
 John plays the guitar, his sister and plays the piano

 Coordinated clauses are sequentially fixed

Clause beginning with and, or & but are sequentially fixed in relation to the previous clause and therefore
cannot be transposed.

 They are living in America, or they are spending a vacation there


 Or they are spending a vacation there, they are living in America.

 Coordinators are not preceded by conjunctions


- And, or, but & so that cannot be preceded by conjunctions
- Subordinators and conjuncts can be preceded by conjunctions: He was unhappy about it, and yet he did
as he was told.
- But. For & so that cannot be preceded by and: He was unhappy about it, and but he did as he was told.
 Not all coordinator can link clause constituents
- AND & OR may link constituents smaller than a clause (Eg: Predicates, phrases, subjects):
 I may see you tomorrow or I may phone later
 I may see you tomorrow or may phone later
- For and so that cannot link constituents smaller than a clause
 He dind’t want it, for was obstinate
- A subordinator does not allow ellipsis of the subject even when a clause is linked by a coordinator
 She didn’t say anything about it because he was new and because looked unwell
 If the second subordinator is omitted, ellipsis in possible: She didn’t say anything about it because he was
new and looked unwell

 Coordinators can link subordinate clauses


- As well as linking two main clauses, AND & OR can link subordinate clauses

He asked to be transferred, because he was unhappy, he saw no prospect of promotion and conditions
were for the better at the other office.

Usually, the 2nd and any subsequent subordinators may be omitted. Such linking is not possible with
conjuncts or for the other conjunctions except BUT.

41
- BUT is restricted to link a maximum of two clauses:

She said that John would take them by car but (that) they might be late.

 However BUT can only link certain kind of subordinate clauses.


a. That clauses: The second subordinator can be omitted.
b. ?????: I spoke to him AFTER the conference was over, but before he started work.
c. Clauses introduced by the same conjunctions (In order that, so that, because and wh-words):
The first part of the sentence must be negative: She didn’t see who met the embassador, but
who took him away. He didn’t save in order to go to school, but in order to buy a car.
 But cannot link most of subordinate clauses because such clauses normally lie outside the
scope of negation and so cannot contrast the first conjoin. EG: They won’t help you if you pay
them, but if you promise to help them in return.

 Correlative conjunctions
They are the easiest to identify as they always come in pairs. They are generally coordinating conjunctions linked to an
adjective or an adverb and they are used to link sentence elements that are equally important and relevant.

 Either/or: I want either the cheesecake or the frozen hot chocolate.


 Both/and: I’ll have both the cheesecake and the frozen hot chocolate.
 Whether/or: I didn’t know whether you’d want the cheesecake or the frozen hot chocolate, so I got you both.
 Neither/nor: Oh, you want neither the cheesecake nor the frozen hot chocolate? No problem.
 Not only/but: I’ll eat them both - not only the cheesecake but also the frozen hot chocolate.
 Not for/but: I see you’re in the mood not for dessert but appetizers. I’ll help you with those too.
 As/as - Bowling isn’t as fun as skeet shooting.
 Such/that - Such was the nature of their relationship that they never would have made it even if they’d wanted
to.
 Scarcely/when - I had scarcely walked in the door when I got the call and had to run right back out again.
 As many/as - There are as many curtains as there are windows.
 No sooner/than - I’d no sooner lie to you than strangle a puppy.
 Rather/than - She’d rather play the drums than sing.

Phrase
Two or more words that serve a particular function in a sentence. A phrase doesn’t have a subject and a verb but it can
be subject of a sentence. A phrase can be part of a clause but a clause cannot be part of a phrase.

Headedness
The head of the phrase is the element that gives a phrase it’s name, Vern Phrase, Noun Phrase, Adverbial Phrase.

42
Types of Phrase
 The Participle Phrase23
It is a word group consisting of a present participle (also known as an -ing form) or past participle (also known as an -ed
form), plus any modifiers, objects, and complements.

A participle phrase will begin with a present or past participle. If the participle is present, it will dependably end in ing.
Likewise, a regular past participle will end in a consistent ed. Irregular past participles, unfortunately, conclude in all
kinds of ways.

Since all phrases require two or more words, a participle phrase will often include objects and/or modifiers that
complete the thought. Here are some examples:

 Crunching caramel corn for the entire movie


 Washed with soap and water
 Stuck in the back of the closet behind the obsolete computer

Function: as adjectives, adding description to the sentence.

 The horse trotting up to the fence hopes that you have an apple or carrot. (Trotting up to the fence modifies the
noun horse.)
 The water drained slowly in the pipe clogged with dog hair. (Clogged with dog hair modifies the noun pipe)
 Eaten by mosquitoes, we wished that we had made hotel, not campsite, reservations. (Eaten by mosquitoes
modifies the pronoun we)

 Absolute Phrase
An absolute phrase combines a noun and a participle with any accompanying modifiers or objects. The pattern looks like
this:

Noun + Participle + Optional Modifier(s) and/or Object(s)

Here are some examples:

 Legs quivering - Legs = noun; quivering = participle.


 Her arms folded across her chest - Arms = noun; folded = participle; her, across her chest = modifiers.
 Our fingers scraping the leftover frosting off the plates - Fingers = noun; scraping = participle; frosting = direct
object; our, the, leftover, off the plates = modifiers.

Rather than modifying a specific word, an absolute phrase will describe the whole clause:

 Legs quivering, our old dog Gizmo dreamed of chasing squirrels.


 Her arms folded across her chest, Professor Hill warned the class about the penalties of plagiarism.

23
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/participlephrase.htm

43
 We devoured Aunt Lenora's carrot cake, our fingers scraping the leftover frosting off the plates.

Clause
It is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb. It can constitute a sentence itself or be part of one. They consist
of one or more than one phrase (Quirk). It is possible to use the terms clause and sentence synonymously when dealing
with simple sentences:

Eg: John likes pizza.

John likes pizza because it tastes awesome.

Elements of a clause

Subject (S)
Verb (V)
Object (O) Direct object (Od)
Indirect object (Oi)
Complement (C) Subject complement (Cs)
Object complement (Co)
Adverbial (A) Subject related (As)
Object related (Ao)

Major clause types

Type Subject Verb Object(s) Complement Adverbial


SV The sun is shining (Intransitive)
SVO The lecture bored (monotransitive) me
SVC Your dinner seems ready
(Copular) (Subject complement)
SVA My office is in the next building
(Copular) (Subject related adv)
SVOO I must send my parents (Oi)
(distransitive) an anniversary card (Od)
SVOC Most students have found her reasonably helpful
(Complex transitive) (Od) (object complement)
SVOA You can put the dish on the table
(Complex transitive) (Od) (object related adv.)

44
Types of clauses
Independent Clause (Main clause)
Clauses that can stand by themselves and express a complete thought. To be independent it must contain a subject and
a verb and it must not begging with a subordinating conjunction.

EG: “He is in a low cholesterol diet”

When there are no dependent clauses in the same sentence with the independent clause, the independent
clause is referred to as a simple sentence.
- Multiple independent clauses joined produce compound sentences.

Dependent/subordinate clause
A dependent clause (or subordinate clause) is one that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence, because it does not
express a complete thought that is why they always need of an independent clause. Like all clauses, a dependent clause
has a subject and verb.

Here are some examples of dependent clauses (highlighted). Notice how the shaded clauses could not stand alone as
sentences. This is how a dependent clause differs from an independent clause.

- The crew could see the whale, which had surfaced only 50m behind them.
- Do you know the butcher who went to court on Saturday?
- I am not tidying the dishes unless Peter helps.
- The excellence of a gift lies in how appropriate it is rather than how valuable it is.

Dependant/subordinate clauses can be introduced by:

 Subordinate conjunction: After, although, as, because, before, even if, even though, if, in order that, once,
provided that, rather than, since, so that, than, that, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where, whereas,
wherever, whether, while, why.
 Relative pronoun: That, which, whichever, who, whoever, whom, whose, whosever, whomever.

If you put a subordinate conjunction or a relative pronoun in front of a clause you get an incomplete sentence:
- Even though the man smiled.
- Whenever the man smiled.

You may need an independent clause to make sense of the whole thing:
- I walked away even though the man smiled.

Types of Dependent/Subordinate Clause


Dependent clauses can act as adjectives, adverbs, or nouns.

Finite and non-finite clause

Finite Non finite

45
Head: Finite verb Head: Non-finite verb (i.e an infinite or participle)
Eg: I know everyone sent their friends birthday cards Eg: Everyone promised to send their friends birthday
this year. cards this year.

This important difference is always signaled by the first verb in the verb chain.
This difference also affects the ways in which these clauses can be used:
Complete sentences Part of a larger clause
This is because the use of a non-finite verb such as “To send” is
one of the main signals that a clause is a subordinate clause
Verbs show inflectional agreement with the Subject Verbs show no inflectional agreement with the
subject

Verb inflection: English has three basics varieties of Non-inflected verbal:

 Participles: They act similar to adjectives. Eg. Started at the empty box, John took a deep breath.
 Gerunds: They act similar to nouns. Eg: Arguing will not help.
 To infinitives: They can fill subject and object roles (i.e behave like nouns), or modify existing subjects or objects:
- As subject. To study is the smartest thing to do before an exam.
- As object: John was asked to leave.
- As adverb: He started to talk.

Nominal Clause or Noun Clause

It modifies (Or tell us more about) a noun. They follow a relative pronoun (That, which, whichever, who, whoever,
whom, whose, whosever, whomever)

Here is an example of a dependent clause acting as a noun:

“Whoever turned the ovens off is keeping quiet” (The dependent clause “Whoever turned the ovens off” is the subject
of this sentence. It is a noun clause.)

Syntactic functions of Nominal clauses:


Noun clauses like nouns, pronouns and NP, can act as

- Subject: “Whoever ate my lunch is in big trouble” (SOMEONE is in big trouble)


- Subject complement: “The truth was that the moving company lost all your furniture” (The truth was
SOMETHING)
- Direct object: I know when the train will arrive. (I know SOMETHING)
- Object complement: “Her grandfather considers his biggest mistake that he did not finish college” (Her
grandfather considers his biggest mistake SOMETHING)
- Indirect object: “The judge will give what you said some deliberation during her decision” (The judge will give
SOMETHING some deliberation during her decision)
- Object of the preposition: “Some people believe in whatever organized religion tells them” (Some people believe
in SOMETHING)

46
- Adjective complement: “I am pleased that you are studying noun clauses”
- Appositive: “That man, whoever he is, tried to steal some library books”

Types of Nominal Clauses

That-clauses
Can function as:

 Subject: That the invading troops have been withdrawn has not affected our government's trade sanctions. .
 Direct object: I noticed that he spoke English with an Australian accent.
 Subject complement: My assumption is that interest rates will soon fall.
 Appositive: Your criticism, that no account has been taken of psychological factors, is fully justified.
 Adjectival complementation: We are glad that you are able to join us on our wedding anniversary.

That clauses don´t function as object complement or as prepositional complement.


When the that-clause is direct object or complement, the conjunction that is frequently omitted except in formal use,
leaving a zero that-clause:
I know it's late.

It is similarly omitted frequently when a subject That-Clause (with anticipatory it) is extraposed:
It's a pity you don't know Russian.24

Subject that-clauses are usually extraposed. Extraposition is particularly preferred when the superordinate clause is
interrogative or passive:
Is it possible that they can't afford to rent that apartment?
It was thought that the cease-fire still held.

If the superordinate clause is exclamatory, extraposition is obligatory:


How strange it is that the children are so quiet!

Object that-clauses are normally extraposed when they occur with an object complement:
Their daughter's success makes it very likely that she will return to California.
Wh-interrogative clauses
They may function as:

 Subject:
Wh- Interrogative Clause
S V Prepositional Complement
How the book will sell depends on the reviewers

 Direct object:
Interrogative clause functioning as an Object
S V Od

24
But otherwise that cannot be omitted in a subject clause, since without the subordinate marker the clause would be initially
misinterpreted as a main clause. EG: “You don't know Russian is a pity”.

47
I can´t imagine what they want with your address

 Subject complement:
S V Cs
The problem is who will water my plants when I am away

 Appositive25: Your original question, why he did not report it to the police earlier, has not yet been answered.
 Adjectival complementation26: I'm not sure which she prefers.
 Prepositional complement5: They did not consult us on whose names should be put forward.

These subordinate clauses resemble wh-questions semantically in that they leave a gap of unknown information,
represented by the wh element.

Contrast the known information expressed in the that-clause with the unknown information in the wh-clause:

- I know (that) Caroline will be there.


- Do you know who will be there?
- I'm sure (that) Ted has paid.
- I'm not sure who has paid.

Yes-no and alternative interrogative clauses


The yes-no clause is introduced by the subordinators whether or if:

- Do you know whether the banks are open?


- I wonder if you can help me.

The alternative clauses are formed with the correlatives “whether ... or” or “if ... or”

I can't find out whether/if the flight has been delayed or whether/if it has been cancelled.

 The second unit of this sentence is a full clause, so the subordinator is repeated.

It is not repeated in [2-4], where the second unit is an abbreviated form:


- They didn't say whether it will rain or be sunny.
- I asked them if they wanted meat or fish.
- I don't care if they join us or not.

Repetition is optional with to-infinitive clauses:


He didn't tell us whether to wait for him or (whether) to go on without him.

But the subordinator is not repeated if the second clause is abbreviated by the omission of the infinitival to:
He didn't tell us whether to wait/or him or go on without him.

25
An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that renames another noun right beside it. The appositive can be a short or long
combination of words. It is always separated from the rest of the sentence with comma(s).
26
Hay que observar que elementos hay antes de la subordinada.
48
Whether-clauses pose alternatives more obviously than if-clauses, which can be ambiguous between this construction
and that of conditional clauses.
Whether-clauses, unlike if-clauses, may be used where there is little resemblance to an indirect question:
- It is irrelevant whether/if she is under sixteen
- You have to justify whether/if your journey is really necessary
- If is more frequent than whether but also more informal.

On the other hand, if is more restricted syntactically than whether. It must occur as complementation of verbs and
adjectives, in consequence of which it is excluded from certain contexts:
1) If cannot introduce a subject clause unless the clause is extraposed27:
Whether she likes the present / if she like the present is not clear to me
It's not clear to me whether/if she likes the present.

2) If cannot introduce a subject complement clause:


My main problem right now is whether I should ask for another loan.
My main problem right now is if I should ask for another loan.

3) The if-Clause cannot be the complement of a preposition:


It all depends on whether they will support us.
It all depends on if they will support us.

4) The if-clause cannot be an appositive:


You have yet to answer my question, whether I can count on your vote.
You have yet to answer my question, if I can count on your vote.

5) If cannot introduce a to-infinitive clause:


I don't know whether to see my doctor today.
'I don't know if to see my doctor today.

6) If cannot' be followed directly by or not:


He didn't say whether or not he'll be staying here.
He didn't say if or not he'll be staying here.
 But or not can be, postposed: He didn't say if he'll be staying here or not.
Exclamative clauses
Subordinate exclamative clauses generally function as:
 Extraposed subject: It’s incredible how fast she can run. (It is incredible that she she can run so fast)
 Direct object: I remember what a good time I had at your party. (I remember that I had such a good time at your
party)
 Prepositional complement: I read an account of what an important impression you had made.

Nominal relative clauses


Nominal relative clauses resemble wh-interrogative clauses in that they are also introduced by a wh.-element-
Whoever did that should admit it frankly

27
An Extraposed Clause is a clause that can be replaced by a pronoun
49
They can function as:
 Subject: what I want is a cup of hot cocoa.
 Direct object: you should see whoever deals with complaints.
 Indirect object: he gave whoever asked for it a copy of his last paper.
 Subject complement: April is when the trees bloom.
 Object complement: you can call me whatever you like.
 Appositive: I´ll pay you the whole debt. What I originally borrowed and what I owe you interest.
 Prepositional complement: you should vote for whoever candidate you think best.

To infinitive clauses can be nominal relative clauses only as:


 Subject complement: That’s where to go for your next vacation (The place to go).
 Prepositional complement: The book is on how to use a computer (the way to use).

Wh element may express:


 Specific meaning: I took what was on the kitchen table (that which was on the kitchen table).
 Non specific meaning: Whoever breaks this law deserves a fine (anyone who breaks the law).

To infinitive clauses
They often indicate possibility or proposal: It’s natural form them to be together.

They can function as:

 Subject: To be neutral in this conflict is out of the question.


 Direct Object: He likes to relax.
 Subject Complement: The best excuse is to say that you have an exam tomorrow morning.
 Appositive: Your ambition, to become a farmer, requires the energy and perseverance that you so obviously
have.
 Adjectival complementation: I’m very eager to meet her.

Extraposition is usual with subject clauses: It Is out of the question to be neutral in this conflict.

ING clauses

It usually refers to a fact or an action.

They may function as:

 Subject: Watching TV keeps them out of mischief.


 Direct object: He enjoys playing practical jokes.
 Subject complement: Her first job had been selling computers.
 Appositive: His current research, investigating attitudes to racial stereotypes, takes up most of his time.
 Adjectival complementation: They are busy preparing a barbecue.

Bare infinitive clauses


It can function as:

50
- Subject: Turn off the tap was all I did.
- Subject complement: What the plan does is ensure a fair pension for all.
- Object complement: They made her pay for the damage

Verbless clause
It is a clause in which the verb (usually a form of to be) and sometimes other elements have been deleted. Consider, for
example:

John believes the prisoner innocent. In this sentence the italicized sequence is a verbless clause, which we assume is a
reduced version of the to-infinitive clause: John believes the prisoner to be innocent.

More examples:

- He considered the girl a good student.


- Whenever in trouble, Bill rang his girl-friend.
- He married her when a student at Harvard.

Relative Clause or Adjective Clause


Also known as adjectival clause they give us more information about a noun and function as an adjective. It answer the
questions “What kind?”, “How many?”, “Which one?”. They are the only ones that can be preceded by a Noun Phrase.

Here is an example of a dependent clause acting as an adjective:

“The car which your wife sold me last week has broken down” (The dependent clause “which your wife sold me last
week” describes the car. It is an adjective clause.)

A relative clause will meet three requirements

 It will contain a subject and verb.


 It will begin with a relative pronoun [who, whom, whose, that, or which] or a relative adverb [when, where, or
why].
 It will function as an adjective, answering the questions What kind? How many? or Which one?

Relative pronouns and relative adverbs act as subordinating words, they signal a subordinate clause

“The dog that Joe bought barks all night and keep us awake”

The relative clause will follow one of these two patterns:

 Relative Pronoun or Adverb + Subject + Verb


 Relative Pronoun as Subject + Verb

51
Relative clauses may be:

 Restrictive: are not set off with commas. They provide information that identifies the noun they modify. Note
that restrictive clauses, like other restrictive modifiers, imply the existence of others that are similar to but that
don't fit the category designated by the clause.
EG: “The tickets had all been sold to the fans who arrived before noon” (This sentence implies the existence of
other fans who arrived after noon and couldn't buy tickets)
 Non- Restrictive: are set off with commas.
EG: “The Titanic, which sank in April 1912, is the subject of a recent movie” (Here, the punctuation can ONLY be
non-restrictive, because Titanic is a proper noun, and it can't, therefore, be identified as opposed to something
else)

Forming relative clauses

Relative/adjective clauses are the result of combining a main clause and an adjective clause which contain a repeated
subject:

Main Clause Adjective Clause


The teacher has a new car It is yellow
N Adj
Modifies car

You have to delete the subject they both have in common and replace it with a relative pronoun, the Relative/adjective
clause should be placed after the subject:

The teacher has a new car which is yellow

Reduction of relative clauses

Relative clauses can often be reduce to phrases. The relative pronoun must be the subject of the verb in the relative
clause.

This reduction can be done in two ways depending on the verb:

 Relative pronoun + Be + Object:


o People who are living in glass houses should not throw stones = People living in glass houses should not
throw stones
o Mary applied for a job that was advertised in the paper = Mary applied for a job advertised in the paper
 Relative pronoun + Other Verb = Other verb + ing
o People who live in glass houses should not throw stones = People living in glass houses should not
throw stones
o Students who sit in front row usually participate more = Student sitting in the front row usually
participate more

Sentential Relative Clause


A sentential (also called connective) relative clause does not refer to a preceding noun; it rather comments on the whole
preceding clause or sentence:
52
The streets were empty, which was unusual for this time of day. (The fact that the streets were empty was unusual.)

In conversation, a sentential relative clause may also be interjected by another speaker:

"Then he goes on to say how much he appreciates all the effort we've put into it." "Which is strange because he never
seemed to care much about what we do."

The Adverbial Clause


An adverb clause will meet three requirements:
- It will contain a subject and verb.
- You will also find a subordinate conjunction that keeps the clause from expressing a complete thought.
- The clause answers one of these four adverb questions: How? When? Where? or Why?

Examples
“Tommy scrubbed the bathroom tile until his arms ached” (How did Tommy scrub? Until his arms ached, an adverb
clause)
“Josephine's three cats bolted from the driveway once they saw her car turn the corner” (When did the cats bolt?
Once they saw her car turn the corner, an adverb clause)
“The missing eyeglasses are in the refrigerator, where Damien absentmindedly set them down while eating his
roommate's leftover fried rice” (Where are the missing eyeglasses? Where Damien absentmindedly set them down,
an adverb clause)
“After her appointment at the orthodontist, Danielle cooked eggs for dinner because she could easily chew an omelet”
(Why did Danielle cook eggs? Because she could easily chew an omelet, an adverb clause)

Types of adverbial clauses


Subordinator Example
Finite adverbial clauses After, as, once, since, until, when, Buy your ticket as soon as
while you reach the station

Ing clauses Once, till, until, when. Whenever, Once having made a
while promise, you should keep it

Time Ed and Verbless clauses As soon as, once, till, until, when, The dog stayed at the
whenever, while entrance until told to come
in (Ed Cl.)
Complete your work as soon
as possible (Verbless Cl.)
To infinitive clause Without a subordinator or a I rushed to the door, only to
subject may have temporal discover that it was locked
and barred
function
Place Type Subordinator Example
Specific Where Where the fire had been, we
saw nothing but blackened
ruins
Non-Specific Wherever They went wherever they
could find work

53
Reason Definition Subordinators Examples
It expresses relation of cause and As, because, since, for, seeing that He is thin because, he hasn’t
effect, reason and consequence, eaten enough
motivation and result, circumstance I lent him the money,
and consequence because he need it
Similarity and Subordinators Examples
Comparison As, as if, as tough, than, like Please do it (exactly) as I said
These subordinator could be premodified by “Just” and She looks as if she’s getting better
“Exactly” Fill the application form as instructed
Type Explanation Example
Cause and effect These sentences are statements of When it is cold, people get
universal truth or general validity. blue
Subordinators: When, whenever Whenever I make a promise
I keep it
Open They are neutral, they leave unresolved If you lost it, I will kill you
the question of the fulfillment or not Unless you study you will
Condition28 fulfillment of the condition. never pass that test
Subordinators. If, unless
Past: Conveys the speaker’s belief that the If I knew how it worked [I
condition was not fulfilled actually don’t know!], I’d
tell you how to use it.
Hypothetical Present: Conveys the speaker’s belief that
the condition is not be fulfilled
Future: Conveys the speaker’s belief that If he changed his opinions,
the condition will not be fulfilled he would be a more likeable
person
Negative Subordinator: If… not, unless
Exception Subordinators Examples
But that, except that, only, excepting that, I would pay now, except that I have no money on
save, save that me
Explanation Subordinators Examples
They contain a fact or idea that Although, as long as, even if, even Although he had just
Contrast and seems to oppose the info in the tough, tough, whereas, while joined, he was treated
Concession rest of the sentence exactly like the others

Alternative Explanation Subordinator Examples


conditional They give a choice between two Whether…or Whether martin pays for the broken
concessive clauses possible conditions vase or (whether) he replace it with a
new vase, I am not inviting him again.
Universal Explanation Subordinator Examples
conditional The indicate free choice from any Wh words that end with Whatever I say to them, I can’t keep
concessive clauses number of condition the suffix –ever them quiet.
Purpose Subordinators Examples
To, in order to, so that, so as to, by so, in order that Students should tke notes so as to make revision
easier
The school closes earlier so that the children can
get home before dark
Result Subordinastors Examples
So, so…. that, such… that We paid him immediately, so that he left contented

28
Conditional sentences are not the conditional tense (would + to-less infinitive). Conditional sentences are made up of two clauses,
one with a conjunction, often if. E.g.: If you like it, you can keep it. These two clauses can be reversed: You can keep it if you like it.
Notice the use of the comma. The Conditional tense is formed with “would” + bare infinitive.
Remember: hubiera o hubiese = had; habría = would have.
(http://www.talkingpeople.net/tp/func_gram/gramwebs/clauses4_conditional.html)
54
Proportion Explanation Subordinators Examples
They express a proportionality, or As, so As the lane got narrower, (so) the
equivalence, tendency, degrees between overhanging branches made it more
two situations. difficult for us to keep sight of our
quarry
Preference Subordinator Examples
Rather than, sooner than Rather than go there by air, I'd take the slowest train.
They'll fight to the finish sooner than surrender.
Comment

Syntactic functions
Adjuncts
They denote circumstances of the situation in the matrix clause, and modify an entire clause by providing additional
information about time, place, manner, condition, purpose, reason, result, and concession.
They generally answer the questions when, where, how and why.
Also they form an integral part of the clause they occur in.

Examples:
- She passed the course because she worked hard.
- You will be late for work unless you hurry.
- He could buy some new clothes if he made the effort to save some money.

Conjuncts
They link ideas or themes from the previous sentence with those of their own, but they cannot grammatically join
two sentences to form one.

It is wrong to write “Sheila was very hostile towards him, therefore she refused to speak to him.” We must separate
the two clauses with a full stop and a capital letter for “Therefore”.

Examples:

- The candidate is a fine teacher, a broadcaster of some experience, and a respected drama critic. All the same,
there is a feeling on the committee that someone younger should be appointed.
- We paid him a large sum. So he kept quiet about what he saw.

Conjunct adverbs vs coordination: Although conjunct adverbs may resemble coordinators the main difference is that
if we invert the order of the clauses, the relationship between the two clauses.

Disjucts
They neither form an integral part of the clause they occur in nor help join their own clause to another clause else-
where, but instead express a parenthetical opinion of the speaker.

Examples:
- He brought me a cup of coffee although I had asked for tea.
- William has poor eyesight, whereas Sharon has poor hearing.
- You can return to a normal diet now that you have lost enough weight.

55
Subjuncts
Subjuncts modify the sentence as a whole, whereas adjuncts directly modify verbs or adjectives. They have a
subordinate and parenthetical role in the sentence.

So in the sentence:

"The weather here is too hot." -> too much hot! - "too" is an adjunct, whereas in:

"The weather here is hot, too" -> not only there but also here - "too" is a subjunct.

Examples
- Jill was not injured in the attack, but psychologically it had a terrible effect on her.”
- Will you kindly refrain from smoking in this room?
- Reluctantly Jill agreed to meet Tom and talk things over.
- As far as Jill knows, Harry has not yet spoken to his lawyer.
- At the party only Dick was friendly to Jill.

Comparative Clauses i
They resemble adjectives and adverbs in their modifying function. It expresses a comparison.

Examples

- She has more patience than you have


- He’s not as clever a man as I thought
- I love you more deeply than I can say

Types of comparative Clauses


Equivalence: Their son is as bright as their daughter

Non-equivalence: Their son is brighter than their daughter.

Sufficiency: He is strong enough to lift that suitcase.

Excess: He was too bright not to know the answer.

Appositive clause
What is apposition?
You have an apposition when two elements, like noun phrases, are used alongside one another, with the idea being that
one modifies the other.

Example: My buddy Dave owns a car shop.

"My buddy" and "Dave" are in apposition; they are a noun phrase and a noun, with the noun modifying the noun phrase.
It tells us more about the speaker's friend. And since it narrows the friend down to specifically Dave, it is a restrictive
apposition.

A non-restrictive apposition is similar, but only gives us additional information rather than narrow it down to someone
specific.
56
Example: My buddy, a professional mechanic, owns a car shop.

An appositive can come in the form of a clause, but it is not strictly by definition a clause.

Noun clauses as appositives


Although nouns and noun phrases most often perform the appositive function, noun clauses also perform the
grammatical function of appositive. Examples of noun clauses as appositives include the following:

- The problem, that you did not pick up the packages, delays the entire production schedule.
- I think the solution, that he hired a replacement, was the best course of action at the time.
- The answer from the company, that we buy a new table, angers me.
- My decision, for you to leave the day after us, stands.
- His choice, for her to bring the kids the week after, seems logical.
- Your idea, for Olive to make more pickles, appears ill-conceived.

Appositive Clause vs Relative Clause


The appositive clause resembles the relative clause in being capable of introduction by that, and in distinguishing
between restrictive and non-restrictive.

Differences

 The particle THAT, is not an element in the clause structure (Ie it does not function as a subject, object, etc), as it
must be in a relative clause, instead, it function as a conjunction.
 The head of the noun phrase must be a factive abstract noun, such as proposition, reply, remark, answer, fact,
idea, news, suggestion etc.
 In appositive clauses the pronoun that cannot be replaced by a wh pronoun-
 In appositive clauses the Noun to which the clause is attached is not included in the internal structure of the
clause.

Relative Clause Appositive Clause


The problem that now arises seems to be quite The problem that economics is getting worse seems
serious. to be quite serious.
John didn’t like Mary’s suggestion, even her final
one, that he should abandon his plans.

Punctuation of appositives
In some cases the noun being explained is too general without the appositive so the information is essential to the
meaning of the sentence. In this case, do not place commas around the appositive. Eg: “The popular US president John
Kennedy was known for his eloquent and inspirational speeches”.

But if the appositive would be clear and complete without the appositive, then commas are necessary. Eg: “John
Kennedy, the popular US President, was known for his eloquent and inspirational speeches.

57
Sentence
Is a group of words that usually contains a subject and a verb and expresses a complete idea.

Classification
 Simple sentence: Consist of a single independent clause, they are traditionally divided into two major parts:
- Subject: Constituent defining the topic of the sentence (What the sentence is about).
- Predicate: Is that which is asserted about the subject.

EG: “My house is big”.

 Multiple Sentence: Sentences that contains more than one clause, either through subordination or through
coordination. The can be either:
- Compound: The immediate constituents are two or more coordinate independent clauses.
EG:
Independent Clause Coordinator Independent Clause
S V Co S V Co
“My house is big and it is old-fashioned”

- Complex: One or more of its elements such as direct object or adverbial are realized by a subordinate clause.
Independent Clause + Dependent Clause.
EG:
Independant Clause Subordinator Dependant Clause
S V Cs S V Adv
“My house is old-fashioned because it was built many decades ago”

 Minor: It is a sentence without a verb. EG: America, of all places!

Semantics
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt
to focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what an individual speaker might want them to mean
on a particular occasion. This approach is concerned with objective or general meaning and avoids trying to account for
subjective or local meaning.

Meaning
Conceptual meaning: covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of
a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe. Some of the basic components of a word like
needle in English might include “thin, sharp, steel instrument.” These components would be part of the conceptual
meaning of needle.

58
Associative meaning: Different people might have different associations or connotations attached to a word like
needle. They might associate it with “pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or “drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to
find” (especially in a haystack), and these associations may differ from one person to the next. These types of
associations are not treated as part of the word’s conceptual meaning.

Semantic features
On way to study basic conceptual meaning is considering the oddness of we experience when reading sentences that are
syntactically good and well formed.
Each words has different features that prevent us for using them in any part of a sentence. To know where we can use
word we have the procedure for analyzing meaning in terms of semantic features. Features such as “animate, human,
female, adult” for example, can be treated as the basic elements involved in differentiating the meaning of each word in
a language from every other word.
For example in the sentence “The hamburger ate the boy”
Thus well-constructed we can say that it is odd. This is because the word hamburger does not fulfill the basic the
features of meaning that a noun must have in order to be used as the subject of the verb ate.
We can describe part of the meaning of words as either having (+) or not having (−) a particular feature. So, the feature
that the noun boy has is “+animate” (= denotes an animate being) and the feature that the noun hamburger has is
“−animate” (= does not denote an animate being).
We can also characterize the feature that is crucially required in a noun in order for it to appear as the subject of a
particular verb.
The N (+human) is reading the newspaper
This approach would give us the ability to predict which nouns make this sentence semantically odd. Some examples
would be table, horse and hamburger, because none of them have the required feature [+human].

Semantic roles
A problem with the semantic features approach is that we cannot describe certain words in terms of features. This is
because this approach sees words as containers that carry meaning components. But meaning is made up not only of
features but also it depends on the roles a word fulfills within the sentence. These semantics roles are:

Agent
 It is the entity that performs the action in a sentence. Like The boy in “The boy ate the apple”.
 Agents are typically human (The boy), they can also be non-human entities that cause actions, as in noun
phrases denoting a natural force (The wind), a machine (A car), or a creature (The dog), all of which affect the
ball as theme.

59
Theme
 The entity that is involved in or affected by the action. Like the apple in “The boy ate the apple”.
 The theme can also be an entity (The ball) that is simply being described (i.e. not performing an action), as in The
ball was red.
 The theme is typically non-human, but can be human (the boy), as in The dog chased the boy.

The same physical entity can appear in two different semantic roles in a sentence, as in The boy cut himself. Here The
boy is agent and himself is theme.

Instrument
If an agent uses another entity in order to perform an acti on, that other entity fills the role of instrument. In the
sentence The boy cut the rope with an old razor and the noun phrase an old razor is being used in the semantic role of
instrument.

Experiencer
When a noun phrase is used to designate an entity as the person who has a feeling, perception or state, it fills the
semantic role of experiencer. If we see, know or enjoy something, we’re not really performing an action (hence we are
not agents). We are in the role of experiencer. In the sentence The boy feels sad, the experiencer (The boy) is the only
semantic role.

Location source and goal


A number of other semantic roles designate where an entity is in the description of an event. Where an entity is (on the
table, in the room) fills the role of location. Where the entity moves from is the source (from Chicago) and where it
moves to is the goal (to New Orleans), as in We drove from Chicago to New Orleans.

60
Lexical Relation
Not only can words be treated as “containers” of meaning, or as fulfilling “roles” in events, they can also have
“relationships” with each other.

Synonymy: Two or more words with very closely related meanings are called synonyms. They can often, though not
always, be substituted for each other in sentences.

Antonymy: Two forms with opposite meanings they can be:


 Gradable: opposites along a scale. such as the pair big/ small, can be used in comparative constructions like I’m
bigger than you and A pony is smaller than a horse. Also, the negative of one member of a gradable pair does
not necessarily imply the other. For example, the sentence My car isn’t old, doesn’t necessarily mean My car is
new.
 Non-gradable: direct opposites. Comparative constructions are not normally used. We don’t typically describe
someone as deader or more dead than another. Also, the negative of one member of a non-gradable pair does
imply the other member. That is, My grandparents aren’t alive does indeed mean My grandparents are dead.
 Reversives: While undress can be treated as the opposite of dress, it doesn’t mean “not dress.” It actually means
“do the reverse of dress.” Other common examples are enter/exit, pack/unpack, lengthen/shorten, raise/lower,
tie/untie.

Hyponymy: When the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another. Eg: A dog is a the same time an
animal.

Prototypes: words considered to be good examples of a category. Given the category label furniture, we are quick to
recognize chair as a better example than bench or stool. Given clothing, people recognize shirts quicker than shoes, and
given vegetable, they accept carrot before potato or tomato.

Homophones: When two or more different (written ) forms have the same pronunciation. Common examples are
bare/bear, meat/meet, flour/flower.

Homonyms: when one form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meanings, as in these examples: bank (of
a river) – bank (financial institution) bat (flying creature) – bat (used in sports) mole (on skin) – mole (small animal) pupil
(at school) – pupil (in the eye) race (contest of speed) – race (ethnic group)

Polysemy: one form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings that are all related by extension. Examples are the
word head, used to refer to the object on top of your body, froth on top of a glass of beer, person at the top of a
company or department, and many other things.

61
Word play: These last three lexical relations are the basis of a lot of word play, usually for humorous effect. If you are
asked the following question: Why is 6 afraid of 7?, you can understand why the answer is funny (Because 789) by
identifying the homophones.

Metonomy: The relatedness of meaning foundhere is based on a container–contents relation (bottle/water,


can/juice), a whole–part relation (car/wheels, house/roof) or a representative–symbol relationship (king/crown, the
President/the White House). Using one of these words to refer to the other is an example of metonymy. It is our
familiarity with metonymy that makes it possible for us to understand He drank the whole bottle, although it sounds
absurd literally (i.e. he drank the liquid, not the glass object).

Collocation: One way we seem to organize our knowledge of words is simply on the basis of collocation, or frequently
occurring together. Our understanding of what words and phrases mean is tied to the contexts in which they are
typically used.

Neurolinguistics

Concept
It is the study of the relationship between language and the brain.

History
It is a relatively recent term, the field of study dates back to the nineteenth century.
In September 1848, a construction foreman called Phineas P. Gage was in charge of a construction crew blasting away
rocks to lay a new stretch of railway line. During an accident a huge metal rod had gone through the front part of Mr.
Gage’s brain, but his language abilities were unaffected. It was then that scientists discovered that language may be
located in the brain, it clearly is not situated right at the front.
We now know that the most important parts are in areas above the left ear. This was discovered through the
examination, in autopsies, of the brains of people who, in life, were known to have specific language disabilities. That is,
we have tried to determine where language abilities for normal users must be by finding areas with specific damage in
the brains of people who had identifiable language disabilities.

Parts of the brain

62
Speech areas
Broca’s area
The part shown as (1) in the illustration is technically
described as the “anterior speech cortex” or, more
usually, as Broca’s area. Paul Broca, a French surgeon,
reported in the 1860s that damage to this specific part of
the brain was related to extreme difficulty in producing
speech. Thus indicating that Broca’s area is crucially
involved in the production of speech.

Wernicke’s area
The part shown as (2) in the illustration is the “posterior
speech cortex,” or Wernicke’s area. Carl Wernicke was a
German doctor who, in the 1870s, reported that damage
to this part of the brain was found among patients who
had speech comprehension difficulties. This finding
confirmed the left hemisphere location of language ability
and led to the view that Wernicke’s area is part of the
brain crucially involved in the understanding of speech.

The motor cortex


The part shown as (3) in the illustration is the motor cortex, an area that generally controls movement of the muscles
(for moving hands, feet, arms, etc.). Close to Broca’s area is the part of the motor cortex that controls the articulatory
muscles of the face, jaw, tongue and larynx. Evidence that this area is involved in the physical articulation of speech
comes from work reported in the 1950s by two neurosurgeons, Penfield and Roberts (1959). These researchers found
that, by applying small amounts of electrical current to specific areas of the brain, they could identify those areas where
the electrical stimulation would interfere with normal speech production.

The arcuate fasciculus


The part shown as (4) in the illustration is a bundle of nerve fibers called the arcuate fasciculus. This was also one of
Wernicke’s discoveries and is now known to form a crucial connection between Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas.

The localization view


Having identified these four components, it is tempting to conclude that specific aspects of language ability can be
accorded specific locations in the brain. This is called the localization view and it has been used to suggest that the brain
activity involved in hearing a word, understanding it, then saying it, would follow a definite pattern. The word is heard
and comprehended via Wernicke’s area. This signal is then transferred via the arcuate fasciculus to Broca’s area where
preparations are made to produce it. A signal is then sent to part of the motor cortex to physically articulate the word.
This is certainly an oversimplified version of what may actually take place, but it is consistent with much of what we
understand about simple language processing in the brain. It is probably best to think of any proposal concerning
63
processing pathways in the brain as some form of metaphor that may turn out to be inadequate once we learn more
about how the brain functions.
In a sense, we are forced to use metaphors mainly because we cannot obtain direct physical evidence of linguistic
processes in the brain. Because we have no direct access, we generally have to rely on what we can discover through
indirect methods.

Lateralization29
Specialization between the two hemispheres (halves) of the brain. By a quirk of evolution, the left side of the brain
controls the right side of the body and vice versa. But there are also notable differences in the responsibilities of the two
hemispheres: the left side is chiefly responsible for analysis (breaking complex things up into smaller parts), and it
handles things like doing arithmetic, solving equations and determining chronological sequences. The right hemisphere,
in great contrast, is responsible for synthesis (combining pieces into integrated wholes), and hence it handles things like
recognition and association, and also the enjoyment of music (though trained musicians learn to use their left
hemispheres for this purpose as well). In the vast majority of people, the language areas of the brain are in the left
hemisphere, though a few people have them on the right or, rarely, even on both sides.

Problems or malfunctions
Tip of the tongue phenomenon
When we feel that some word is just eluding us, that we know the word, but it just won’t come to the surface. Studies of
this phenomenon have shown that speakers generally have an accurate phonological outline of the word, can get the
initial sound correct and mostly know the number of syllables in the word. This experience also mainly occurs with
uncommon words and names. It suggests that our “word-storage” system may be partially organized on the basis of
some phonological information and that some words in the store are more easily retrieved than others.
Mistakes of this type are sometimes referred to as malapropisms after a character called Mrs. Malaprop (in a play by
Sheridan) who consistently produced “near-misses” for words, with great comic effect.

Slips of the tongue


 Interchange of two initial sounds: You have hissed all my mystery lectures.
 A sound being carried over from one word to the next, as in black bloxes (for “black boxes”)
 A sound used in one word in anticipation of its occurrence in the next word, as in noman numeral (for “roman
numeral”).
 Reversal type of slip, as in beel fetter
It has been argued that slips of this type are never random, that they never produce a phonologically unacceptable
sequence, and that they indicate the existence of different stages in the articulation of linguistic expressions. Although
the slips are mostly treated as errors of articulation, it has been suggested that they may result from “slips of the brain”
as it tries to organize linguistic messages.

29
Language and Linguistics - Key Concepts by RL Trask pp 148
64
Slips of the ear
One other type of slip may provide some clues to how the brain tries to make sense of the auditory signal it receives.
These have been called slips of the ear and can result, for example, in our hearing great ape and wondering why
someone should be looking for one in his office. (The speaker actually said “gray tape.”).

Aphasia
It is an impairment of language function due to localized brain damage that leads to difficulty in understanding and/or
producing linguistic forms.
The most common cause of aphasia is a stroke (when a blood vessel in the brain is blocked or bursts), though traumatic
head injuries from violence or an accident may have similar effects. Those effects can range from mild to severe
reduction in the ability to use language. Someone who is aphasic often has interrelated language disorders, in that
difficulties in understanding can lead to difficulties in production, for example.

Types of aphasia

Broca’s aphasia
Also called “motor aphasia” it is characterized by a substantially reduced amount of speech, distorted articulation and
slow, often effortful speech. What is said often consists almost entirely of lexical morphemes (e.g. nouns, verbs). The
frequent omission of functional morphemes (e.g. articles, prepositions) and inflections (e.g. plural -s, past tense -ed) has
led to the characterization of this type of aphasic speech as “agrammatic.” In Broca’s aphasia, comprehension is typically
much better than production.

Wernicke’s aphasia
The type of language disorder that results in difficulties in auditory comprehension is sometimes called “sensory
aphasia.” Someone suffering from this disorder can actually produce very fluent speech which is, however, often difficult
to make sense of. Difficulty in finding the correct word, sometimes referred to as anomia, also happens in Wernicke’s
aphasia. To overcome their word-finding difficulties, speakers use different strategies such as trying to describe objects
or talking about their purpose, as in the thing to put cigarettes in (for “ashtray”).

Conduction aphasia
One other, much less common, type of aphasia has been associated with damage to the arcuate fasciculus and is called
conduction aphasia. Individuals suffering from this disorder sometimes mispronounce words, but typically do not have
articulation problems. They are fluent, but may have disrupted rhythm because of pauses and hesitations.
Comprehension of spoken words is normally good. However, the task of repeating a word or phrase (spoken by
someone else) creates major difficulty.

65
Dichotic listening test
An experimental technique that has demonstrated a left hemisphere dominance for syllable and word processing is
called the dichotic listening test. This technique uses the generally established fact that anything experienced on the
right-hand side of the body is processed in the left hemisphere, and anything on the left side is processed in the right
hemisphere.
With this information, an experiment is possible in which a subject sits with a set of earphones on and is given two
different sound signals simultaneously, one through each earphone. For example, through one earphone comes the
syllable ga or the word dog, and through the other earphone at exactly the same time comes da or cat. When asked to
say what was heard, the subject more often correctly identifies the sound that came via the right ear. This is known as
the right ear advantage for linguistic sounds.
In this process, the language signal received through the left ear is first sent to the right hemisphere and then has to be
sent to the left hemisphere (language center) for processing. This non-direct route takes longer than a linguistic signal
received through the right ear and going directly to the left hemisphere.

The right hemisphere appears to have primary responsibility for processing a lot of other incoming signals that are non-
linguistic. In the dichotic listening test, it can be shown that non-verbal sounds (e.g. music, coughs, traffic noises, birds
singing) are recognized more often via the left ear, meaning they are processed faster via the right hemisphere. So,
among the specializations of the human brain, the right hemisphere is first choice for non-language sounds (among
other things) and the left hemisphere specializes in language sounds (among other things too).

Critical period hypothesis

The apparent specialization of the left hemisphere for language is usually described in terms of lateral dominance or
lateralization (one-sidedness). Since the human child does not emerge from the womb as a fully articulate language-
user, it is generally thought that the lateralization process begins in early childhood. It coincides with the period during
which language acquisition takes place. During childhood, there is a period when the human brain is most ready to
receive input and learn a particular language. This is sometimes called the “sensitive period” for language acquisition,
but is more generally known as the critical period. Though some think it may start earlier, the general view is that the
critical period for first language acquisition lasts from birth until puberty. If a child does not acquire language during this
period, for any one of a number of reasons, then he or she will find it almost impossible to learn language later on.

Interlanguage Fossilization30
Fossilization means a condition where nothing can be changed. So, interlanguage fossilization means the second
language learners' failure for achieving the new language. Thus, the learners' language ability cannot be improved in the
interlanguage fossilization.

30
Wikipedia jeje
66
There are two reasons why the interlanguage fossilization happens.

Adults' learning style


Interlanguage fossilization occurs in adults learning a new language. In language learning, unlike the child, adults can't
ignore about language rules and grammar. When adults study a new language, they always check the language rules or
grammar. This can make learning a language much harder. In addition, adults are more likely to be influenced by their
native language. In other words, the native language interferences hold adults back from improving language
proficiency. Therefore, there are many adults language learners who experience the interlanguage fossilization.

Acceptance
"Acceptance" of a new culture can also cause interlanguage fossilization. If the learners are in new country, then they
have to learn a new language. When the learners are in new cultures, they try to make it suitable themselves to new
circumstances. At first, they feel nervous because there are big cultural differences. Therefore, the learners study hard.
However, after time goes by, people stop studying a new language because they cannot feel nervous anymore. The
learner think that they are fully adapted in the new culture and they are confident with their new language proficiency.
Then, interlanguage fossilization happens.

67
i
Why comparative clauses are considered a separated clause type?

The problem is in the nature itself of comparative clauses, for they are not at all times dependent or subordinate clauses. The most common
comparative sentences are, in fact, ellipted forms that structurally speaking consist of only a single clause, as in the following sentences:

Ellipted, single-clause comparatives:

1. “You are taller than me.” (This is the ellipted form of the comparative sentence “You are taller than I am tall,” which consists of the main clause
“You are taller” and subordinate clause “I am tall” linked by the comparative “than.” However, in the ellipted form, “You are taller than me,” the
compound sentence has become a single-clause sentence where “than” functions as a preposition and “me” as the object of the preposition.)

2. “That guy is as annoying as she.” (This is the ellipted form of the comparative sentence “That guy is as annoying as she is annoying.” which
consists of the main clause “That guy is (as) annoying” and subordinate clause “(as) she is annoying” linked by the comparative “as…as.” However,
in the ellipted form, “That guy is as annoying as she,” the compound sentence has become a single-clause sentence where “as…as” functions as a
comparative and “she” as the subject of the comparative.)

Comparatives as coordinators, not subordinators:

It’s also very common for comparatives to function as a coordinating conjunction rather than as a subordinating conjunction, as in the following
sentences:

1. “More women than men visited our website last year.” (The comparative “more…than” in that ellipted sentence clearly functions as a coordinate
conjunction, not as a subordinate conjunction because structurally, there’s evidently no subordinate clause to speak off. When unellipted, of
course, that sentence takes this scrupulously grammatical but terribly repetitive and unwieldy form, “There were more women who visited our
website last year than men who visited our website last year.” In that form, there are clearly two coordinate clauses linked by “than” as a
coordinate conjunction.)

2. “Fewer serious mistakes were committed by the team this year than last year.” (The comparative “fewer…than” in that ellipted sentence clearly
functions as a coordinate conjunction, not as a subordinate conjunction because structurally, there’s evidently no subordinate clause to speak off.
When unellipted, of course, that sentence takes this scrupulously grammatical but terribly repetitive and unwieldy form, “There were fewer serious
mistakes committed by the team this year than the serious mistakes committed by the team last year.” In that form, there are clearly two
coordinate clauses linked by “than” as a coordinate conjunction.)

Comparatives as subordinators

In practice, there are decidedly fewer instances when a comparative actually functions as a subordinator in complex sentences, as in the following
examples:

1. “More guests attended the wedding reception than we had issued invitations for.” (The comparative “than” is definitely a subordinating
conjunction in this ellipted sentence, linking the main cause “more guests attended the wedding reception” and the dependent or subordinate
clause “(the number of guests) we had issued invitations for.”)

2. “A better lawyer is representing them than we have.” (The comparative “than” is definitely a subordinating conjunction in this ellipted sentence,
linking the main cause “a better lawyer is representing them” and the dependent or subordinate clause “(the lawyer) that we have.”)

I trust that the kinds of comparatives and the examples I presented above have sufficiently demonstrated that it’s probably not very advisable to
classify comparatives as a fourth type of dependent clause. I think the most we can say is that comparative clauses are indeed a special type of
clause, capable of being a single-clause comparative, a coordinate clause in a compound sentence, or a subordinate clause in a complex sentence.

---------
CORRECTION: In the 3rd and 4th paragraphs of the discussion above (Items 1 and 2), the term "subordinate clause" in the phrase "...and the
subordinate clause 'I am tall'" and in the phrase "...and subordinate clause '(as) she is annoying," respectively, should read "coordinate clause"
instead. This is in keeping with my preliminary appreciation of the sentences involved as compound sentences, which I argued become simple
sentences when ellipted. My apologies for the wrong terms. (February 7, 2015)

68

You might also like