univerzita karlova v praze introduction to language · - suprasegmental - what is above the word...

Univerzita Karlova v Praze

Introduction to

Language Lecturer: PhDr. Klára Matuchová

Winter term 2007

From: http://lingvistkalidus.webovastranka.cz/

1. ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE ...................................................................................................................................... 1

2. ORIGINS OF ENGLISH .......................................................................................................................................... 3

3. SPEECH SOUNDS ................................................................................................................................................. 6

4. WRITTEN SIGNS ................................................................................................................................................. 10

5. SYLLABLES & WORDS ........................................................................................................................................ 14

6. VOCABULARY .................................................................................................................................................... 18

7. MEANING .......................................................................................................................................................... 23

8. WORD & SENTENCE GRAMMAR ....................................................................................................................... 27

9. TEXTS ................................................................................................................................................................. 30

10. DISCOURSE ...................................................................................................................................................... 34

11. LANGUAGE AND BRAIN .................................................................................................................................. 38

12. SOCIOLINGUISTICS .......................................................................................................................................... 42


Lecture 01

1

1. ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE Origins of speech

≈ 30.000 yrs ago

- Lascaux cave paintings, light-weight tools, control of fire, first communication – Language

system

≈ Neanderthal man displaced by Homo sapiens

- first hominid that could choke on food

- Trachea and the gullet are not clearly divided

≈ Evolutionary change

- Upright posture – walk on two, head forward, Larynx pushed deeper and lower into the

throat – contact between air passages and gullet – cannot breathe and swallow

simultaneously, but can speak

≈ Homo Sapiens Sapiens

- 2 different tubes – food and air – in throat – articulated sounds (animals can breath and

speak at the same time – cannot articulate, different larynx system)

- breathing & swallowing (to app. 4mths baby can do both at the same time)

Origins of language

≈ Origin theories

- 1. Tower of Babel – Divine source theory (God’s gift to humans), the Bible – Old Testament;

- 2. Onomatopoeia– humans imitate sound of nature (Bow-wow theory);

- 3. Physiological theory – upright posture of human body and position of larynx, shape of

teeth and lips, mouth is smaller (x apes), brain (left hemisphere) – our language capacity (x

animals)

Functions of language

- 1. Interaction – communication (attitudes, opinions, feelings), building or breaking

relationships with a language

- 2. Transaction – exchanging information (info, facts, knowledge) – development of writing –

people were not able to keep everything in their memory

Language properties

- Human language is unique, capacity is inborn

≈ 6 unique features of human communication

- 1. Displacement – events removed in time & space, future – past (animal – it is not able to

tell you what happened last night, we can easily descried events removed in time and space),

Bee dance – how far is the source of food (only horizontally, not vertically – are not discrete)

- 2. Arbitrariness (“Nahodilost”) – no logical (direct) connection between linguistic form &

reality, object it describes – agreement (why we call table “table”?)


Lecture 01

2

- 3. Productivity – the possibility of creating new words is unlimited – finite number of units –

unlimited capacity of language (limited signs, but unlimited combination)

- 4. Cultural transmission – communication signals learned not instinctive/inherited (language

has to be learnt – but animals are born with communicative skills), when we are born, we

cannot speak – ability to learn language from parents (generational transmission), language

is not an instinctive matter like for animals

- 5. Discreteness – we can combine them, element that is separated from its surroundings –

word are discrete units, thanks to it we can combine them, from finite number of letters we

create infinite number of words, words are discrete

- 6. Duality – double articulation (2 levels – discrete sounds units without meaning +

sequences of units with meaning), there are units that can exist either in an expression or

alone)


Lecture 02

3

2. ORIGINS OF ENGLISH Classification of languages

- Majority of languages does not have a written form (between 2,500 and 5,000)

≈ Language family – group – subgroup (over 30 families = over 5,000 subgroups)

- Problem of language without written form – it’s impossible to count all languages (the

majority – 70% - does not have written form)

≈ Criteria – extra-linguistics & intra-linguistics

- Extra-linguistics – external factors which influenced language - geographical position of

community, sociolinguistics factor (usage by native & nonnative speakers) …

- Intra-linguistics – internal factors – structure of language, based on morphological study of

each language

≈ 6 major Macro-areas

- Europe, Middle East & India

- Caucasian, Basque, Dravidian, Indo-European (6 big language families)

- North-Eastern Europe; Central, Northern & North-Eastern Asia

- Uralic, Altaic, Korean, Japanese

- South-Eastern Asia & Oceania

- Chinese, Thai, Tibeto-Burmese, Austro-Asian, Austronesian,

- Australia

- Papuan

- Middle East & Africa

- Semito-Hamitic, Sudanese, Saharan, Senegalese, Bantu

- The Americas

- Eskimo-Aluet, Algonquin, Guarani

≈ Indo-European languages

- Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Dacian, Germani, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Italic,

Phrygian, Slavic, Thracian, Tocharian

Indo-European Languages

- 11 branches (2 are dead)

- The area, where all those languages came from

≈ 1786 – Sir William Jones – common ancestor

- British, who worked in India (judge of high court, knew Latin and Greek in legal terms) –

discovered that Sanskrit bore a striking resemblance (similarity) to two other ancient

languages (Latin & Greek)

- One big family of languages – no written form, only hypothetical

- Common ancestor –one language, from which all the other language came from

≈ 19th

century – Historical Linguistics

- Studies development of languages

≈ Proto-Indo-European

- Hypothetical, reconstructed language, which suppose to be common ancestor, Indo-

European language came from it

- “Proto” – original form

- “Indo” – source of languages in India

- “European” – source of languages of Europe

≈ Examples of relations in languages, e.g. kinship terms (relationships in the family), low numerals

- English: father, brother

- Sanskrit: pirar, bhratar

- Latin: pater, frater

- Greek: pater, phrater


Lecture 02

4

- Seven (English): Sibun (Gothic- dead language), Sieben (Hoch Deutsch), Syv (Danish), Septyni

(Lithuanian), Septem (Latin), Sapta (Sanskrit)

- Phonological changes – vowel and consonantal

Cognates

= a cognate of a word in one language is word in another language with similar (not identical!) form

and meaning

- Helps linguists describe relationships in Indo-European languages

= word in2 different languages with origin in 1 language

- False cognates – “aktuální” X “actual”

- Real cognates – “perspektiva” X “perspective”

≈ Comparative reconstruction

- Reconstruction of IE languages

- Linguistics compared 2 existing languages to reconstruct one extinct

- It helps linguists to decide what is relevant

- 2 principles:

a) Majority principle

– A rule that if in a cognate set 3 words begin with B and one with P – ancestor had B

b) Development principle

- AE us as little letters as possible

– Certain changes (just in one direction) – very likely X very unlikable

– Consonant at the end voiceless

– Vowels became fricatives

≈ Cognate set (horse, sing, chain, dear)

- Italian: cavallo, cantare, catena, caro

- Spanish: caballo, cantar, cadena, caro

- French: cheval, chanter, chaine, cher (begins with CH, some changes)

- Latin: caballus, cantare, catena, carus (ancestor!)

≈ Language change – development of English – 3 major periods

a) Old English

- 450 – 1066

- Similar to modern German more than English

- Basic words about Christianity (angel, devil, bible, pope)

- Place names

- Scandinavian words

b) Middle English

- 1200 – 1500

- moved to something we know today

- lost inflections, genders

- regular and irregular verbs left

- Anglo-Saxon words are usually shorter (one syllabus)

c) Early Modern English

- 1500 – 1800

- Henry VIII.

- invention of bookprint (1476), books printed in English – gain prestige

- spelling became stabilized

d) Modern English

- 1800 – now

- English became global language (colonization, English was spread)

- 1-2% of vocabulary are words from Old English, word such as wife, child - 50% of speech


Lecture 02

5

Social and historical background

≈ About 450 A.D. – Angles, Saxons, Jutes

- Moved to British isles

- Celtic origin, totally different language

≈ 597 A.D. – St. Augustine

- Sent by Pope

- Turned Anglo-Saxons to Christianity (were pagan), they started to use an alphabet, read and

write – major changes

- English became individual language

≈ 886 A.D. – The Danelaw

- Divided England into southern and northern – S was Anglo-Saxons

- Northern English is different from southern until today

≈ 1066 A.D. – The Norman Conquest

- Battle of Hastings

- William the Conqueror became English king

- He brought Norman-French – 3,000 years spoken French (military terms) – English had no

prestige

- Official language was Norman-French

Diachrony & Synchrony

≈ Genealogical classification = Diachronic

- Language families, geography, I-E languages are based on diachrony; external development

≈ Typological classification = Synchronic

- Based on Morphology and the types represented by individual morphemes, phonemes,

words

- Internal development, in a particular time (e.g. 20th century)

- Similar/different principles in structure (without historical relationship)

- Comparing with other languages at the same moment)

≈ PLC – Prague Linguistic Circle

- Mathesius, Trubeckoj, Jakobson, Skalička

- Synchronic & Diachronic methods

≈ Typology

- Analytic (Isolating) – English, no inflections

- Synthetic – Czech (synthesize a lot of information in one word by endings)

- Inflectional - Czech yes, English no – but: Good, better, the best – inflection

- Agglutinating – Finish, Turkish …

≈ Vocalic & Consonantal languages

- 50 : 50 does not exist

- Vocalic – more melodic, nicer to listen, must have more than 30% of vowels

- French 42%, English 27%, Czech 29%, Polish 17%, Russian 12% (harder to listen)

- Percentage shows appearance of vowels in text, the higher number, the “nicer” language

≈ Nothing is 100% truth – English is analytic, but 3rd

person singular is inflection


Lecture 03

6

3. SPEECH SOUNDS Speech sounds

- Sound in English don't match with written letters – not in Czech

- Phonetics analphabet – how signs are represented in sounds

≈ Phonetics

- Alphabet, study of characteristic of speech sound

- Branches:

1. Articulatory – deals with forming speech sound, process of articulation, sound qualities

2. Acoustic – sound waves, how it travels in space, how are produced

3. Auditory – perceiving of sounds, decoding (perception) in ears

- Consonants, vowels, diphthongs

≈ Consonants

- Noises, vowels, tones

- voiced (closed) – feel the vibration when you say a word, vocal codes very close to each other

- voiceless (open) – air is coming quite freely

- In Czech all endings of are voiceless, but not in English

- Phonetics - more practical, production of sounds

- Phonology - what is in mind, mental aspect

Place of articulation

≈ Respiration

- Lungs – bronchi – trachea – larynx → producing speech sounds → articulated speech sounds

– articulation

≈ Consonants depend on

- a) Place of articulation – end of phonation process

- b) Manner of articulation - how open or closed your vocal codes are

o consonants – stops, fricatives, affricatives, nasals, liquids, glides


Lecture 03

7

o vowels – tongue position in articulation, produced with relatively free air

(“heat” – high, front; “hot” – low, back)

- “A” opens mouth as much as possible (doctor asks)

Manner of articulation

≈ Shape of glottis

- Stops - [p, b, t, d, k, g + glottal stop]

- Fricatives - [f, v, θ, δ, s, z, š, ž]

- Affricates - [č, ξ]

- Nasals - [m, n, μ]

- Liquids - [l, r]

- Glides - [w, y]

≈ Vowels

- tongue position in

articulation

- ‘heat’ = high, front

- ‘hot’ = low, back


Lecture 03

8

≈ Diphthongs

- combined vowel sounds

≈ Phonology

- systems and patterns / abstract,

- description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language

- mental aspect of sound

≈ Phonetics

- physical aspect

≈ Phoneme

- smallest meaning-distinguishing linguistic unit with contrastive property

≈ Minimal pair

- 2 words identical except for 1 phoneme

- “pat” - “bat” – when we change “p” for “b” it changes the meaning – 2 different phonemes

≈ Minimal Set

- Group of words with 1 phoneme different

- “feat” – “fit” – “fat” – “fate” – “foot” – changing of the phoneme in the centre of the word

≈ Phonotactics

- possible sound unit sequences

- Phone - realization of phoneme

- Allophone - phonetic variant of phoneme

o For 3rd

plural 3 ways of pronunciation, but at 1 moment we choose only one –

allophone

o “foném je abstraktní, alofon je realizace”

Phonological principles

≈ Nikolai Trubeckoy (1890 – 1938)

- Phonological Opposition

- “Caught” – “Cot” in American and Canadian English

≈ Roman Jakobson (1896 – 1982)

- Phonological Acquisition

- Czech fricative trill “ř”

≈ 2 aspects of Phonology

- Description of sounds and rules in particular language

- General theory of human language and universal properties

Segmental and SUPRAsegmental Elements

- Segment is single phoneme

- SupraSegmental - what is above the word (stress, intonation), only occur in larger subjects

(whole word or more)

- “Good morning” – single phonemes(7 phonemes, 3x O – one phoneme, 2x G – one phoneme)

+ intonation (level, fall, fall-rise)

≈ Functions of intonation

- a) attitudinal – express feelings, attitudes, emotions

- b) grammatical – distinguishing between sentence types

- c) discourse – emphasize where in sentence is the new information, the important part,

stress what is important


Lecture 03

9

≈ Word/Sentence Stress

- Distinguish word classes – lexical function

- Isochronicity – Stress time – intervals in time, in which syllables are produced and separated

by unstressed syllables

Langue and Parole

≈ Saussure

- Langue – abstract system of rules, language as a social phenomenon, every native speaker

has in their heads, it’s now way we say it, just know it (you are Czech, you don’t have to be a

good Czech teacher, despite knowing the rules), describes how you should use language

correctly

- Parole – concrete manifestation, individual phenomenon, describes how we use the langue

- Language – universal human ability to use, understand and produce language

≈ Prescriptive (Langue) X Descriptive (Parole)

≈ Noam Chomsky

- Competence – ability to speak, inborn capacity, ability you’re born with

- Performance – production utilization of competence , how you use it


Lecture 04

10

4. WRITTEN SIGNS

Development of writing

≈ 20,000 – 10,000 yrs ago

- cave drawings, clay tokens (money, evidence of debts)

≈ 6,000yrs ago

- written messages – Near East (Egypt)

≈ Systematic writing system:

o 1. Pictographic

- iconic, one symbol = one thing

- an image of object or situation

o 2. Ideographic

- symbolic, one symbol = more things (abstraction)

- pictograms – represented ideas (sun = heat, foot = go)

- Small pictures which were imitating the objects from reality (like Bow Wow theory in

speaking)

- Need for economical writing → start of using sound symbols (abstraction away from real

entities)

- Hieroglyphic – Hieratic – Demotic

- Pictographs → Iconic – not arbitrary, direct connection between pictograms and reality

- Ideographs → Symbolic – symbolize more than one thing

- difference between them is in the degree of abstraction

≈ Sound symbolism

- Oombooloo X Tikiriki (“o” is pronounced soft, “r” is harder, rush)

≈ Syllabic (Japanese, Chinese) X Alphabetic (Eng, Cze, Fr, G) writing

- Cherokee & Devangari – syllabic

o Symbol for each vowel + consonant combinations

o Symbol for each consonant + diacritics indicating vowels

- Consonant signs → each phoneme 1 sign (= alphabet) → during occupation Italy by Greeks

- Tunisia symbolism represent syllables → consonants only (Arabic) → vowel sounds (close to

current Czech, English…)

≈ Phoenician – Semitic – Greek – Roman – Slavonic writing systems

- Cyrillic analphabet (C. + M., to translate the Bible)


Lecture 04

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≈ Spoken X Written message

- Spoken – temporary (we can forget)

- Written – retrievable (long lasting record of spoken message; we can read it again)

≈ Alphabet

- system of sounds used for transforming of sounds that are perceived acoustically

Graphemics & Orthography

≈ Grapheme

- It has written form (is material, apart from phoneme)

- Basic unit, abstract unit represents certain sound

- Has to be recorded on some king of material – dual aspect

- Grapheme = dual unit → signifiant (signifying, pointing something to the reality, “black

thing”) – Graphone + signifié (signified, what is symbolized “piano”) - phoneme (sound) /

sememe (meaning)

≈ Properties of Grapheme:

- Material – perceivable optically

- Arbitrary – no direct connection between reality and how it looks like

- Conventional

≈ Allograph

- grapheme (abstract, only in our minds, our mental picture of letter) variant – concrete

realization of graphemes, written down, everybody writes them in a different way

≈ 2 types of Graphemes

- A) autonomous (self-naming)

o If written down, we know what does it mean (“A”)

o Carries meaning

o Represent individual phonemes

- B) non-autonomous

o If written down = nonsense (“!”)

o Cannot stand alone and without autonomous graphemes - nonsense

o Diacritic marks punctuation (“háček nic víc neznamená, pokud není s písmenkem”)

≈ Graphic

- graphic record of phonological units

- 1. Simple (English, French, easy on the level of graphics, one grapheme corresponds to 1 or 2

phonemes )

- 2. Diacritic (“š” – Czech)

- 3. Compound (“sz”, “sch” – Polish, Hungarian , two, three graphemes – one phomene)

≈ Orthography (“pravopis”)

- Rules for graphic record of higher level segments (words, sentences)

- 3 principles:

o 1. phonematic

� specific phoneme for specific grapheme, not in ENG, in CZ exists - I say "S"

and also write "S"), one phoneme = one grapheme

o 2. morphematic

� lexical morpheme, typical for CZ, “dub-dubový” – slight change in a

morpheme

o 3. historical

� ENG, Fr, developed years ago, writing system is old, spelling is developing

Spelling and irregularity

- Analphabet has origin in Near East, came from pictographs

≈ Analphabetic X Picto-Ideographic (Japanese, Chinese – 50.000 sounds)


Lecture 04

12

≈ Mispelling

- Spuercede, conceed, procede, concensus, rhythym, anamoly, grafitti

- It makes it difficult, but not always understandable

Sources of irregularity

≈ 6th

century

- Literacy (“Gramotnost”) for Anglo-Saxons

- Queen X Cwene

≈ By 1650

- Standardization (after invention of book print)

≈ Problem of spelling reform

- There is no institution for English

- Gurl, gel, gull, gill, gairull = GIRL (various types of English)

Free variation

- The phenomenon of 2 or more sound are forms appearing in the same environment without

a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers

- e.g.: Glottalization of voiceless steps in word-final position

o stop [stop] unaspirated “p”, or [stop’] glottalized “p”

o some adjectives have 2 forms (more stupid, stupider)

≈ Phonemes in free variations

- e.g.: 2 pronunciations of “tomato” in US and UK

- most important characteristic feature in regional accents

o “r” – in Scottish or English

o “l” or “r” – in Japanese we can use either “r” and “l” – no difference

Complementary distribution (taken form Wikipedia)

- Two elements: Position and combination of phonemes

- The relationship between two elements, where one element is found in a particular

environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment

- It often indicates that 2 superficially different elements are in fact the same linguistic unit at

a deeper level (like 2 sides of a coin, of 6 faces of a die)

- Phones in contemporary distribution are usually allophones of the same phoneme

- “p” and “ph“ are allophones of phoneme “p”

- “ph“ occurs when is the syllable onset and followed by a stressed vowel (“pin”)

- “P” occurs in other situations (“spin”)

- “výslovnost fonému je závislá na pozici ve slově, závazné pro každého”


Seminar 04

13

Phoneme 2 allophones

English – softer R

Scottish – Stronger R, like in Czech

≈ Position is a complementary factor

Br.E. clear [l] – lake – 1 allophone

dark [l] – will/people - 1 allophone

“R“


Lecture 05

14

5. SYLLABLES & WORDS

Morphology

- Deals with internal structure of words

- Morphemes = structural units of words, compounded parts

- Word formation – generate new naming units (new word, new meaning = lexicology!)

somewhere between morphology and lexicology

≈ Internal Word structure

≈ Inflection (“skloňování”)

- Change made in a form of a word to express its relation to other words

- Declension (nouns, adjectives, pronouns) + conjugation (verbs)

- Paradigms – form Greek, practical rules of inflection in a particular language (“město – moře

– kuře – stavení” in Czech)

- English almost none

≈ Morpheme

- minimum unit of a form and meaning which can be a whole word, an affix (Quirk)

- smallest part of a word that has its own meaning (Mathesius)

- Smallest linguistic bilateral unit

- Bilateral – it has meaning and form

- Sememe – meaning of a word, definite unit of meaning, don’t depend on user

- Formeme – “how we call the morpheme”, it has NOT meaning

≈ Morph – Allomorph

- Concretization of morpheme

- Regular plural ending (-s, -z, -əz)

≈ Allomorph occurrence

1. Identical meaning

2. Complementary distribution – occur in mutually excluding context, 2 allomorphs cannot

realize at the same time

3. Parallel construction - certain degree of allomorph

≈ Allomorph X Diamorph

- Allomorph – one speaker’s differences

- Diamorph – practically an allomorph, difference of pronunciation between 2 people,

compare 2 different speakers (British and American pronunciation of the word “schedule”,

usually between nations)

Delimitation and Identification of Morpheme

≈ Morpheme non-segmentable

- The smallest unit

- Residual elements – “Monday” Day = morpheme, “Mon” – residual element

- Pocket X pock + et (cannot be segmented, no meaning)

≈ 2 basic properties

- A. Carrier of meaning (Bloomfield)

o Free X Bound forms

� Bound has meaning only in connection with free morphemes

� Linguistic form that is never used in isolation

� Free can stand alone, can be use in isolation

� Teacher – “Teach” – free, “er” – bound (suffix – lexical meaning)


Lecture 05

15

- B. Formal unit

o Unit which bears no partial phonetics, semantic resemblance to any other form

o Simple X Complex

� Simple – “Play” = infinitive form

� Complex – “Play-ing”

≈ Lexicon X Grammar

- Lexicon = total stock of words, full list of all existing morphemes in a particular language

- Grammar = rules, how the word are organized, all meaningful arrangement of morphemes

Derivation and Inflection

- Derivation

o Create new naming (meaning??) units

o Not obligatory

o Change syntactic definition of morphemes

o Change linguistic behaviour – “Teacher” – er – new word

o Usually changes the word class

- Inflection

o Comparatives and superlatives, 3rd

person singular

o Not very frequent in English

o Morpheme reaction to the sentence structure

o Is obligatory

o Don’t chance linguistic behaviour (big – bigger),don’t change the meaning

≈ Functions

- Large – Larger = its derivation and inflection together – doesn’t create new units, doesn’t

change syntactic characterization of morphemes

≈ Inflectional morphemes

- 3rd

person singular present

≈ Derivational morphemes

- Added and created new meaning and forms

- Affixes = prefix, infix, suffix (suffix- teach + er = teacher; infix – messenger)

- Teachers = er – derivation, s – inflection

≈ Distinctions

- Big +’er’ → bigger = inflectional

- Teach + ‘er’→ teacher = derivational

≈ Obligatoriness X Arbitrariness→ hierarchy of choice

Grammatical categories

≈ Category (by Aristotle)

- Predication- from ancient Greece

- Aspect, case, gender, mood, number, person, tense, voice

≈ Word class

- Syntactic, morphological (tense, gender, voice…), semantic properties

≈ Open X Closed word classes

- Open – we can create new words (nouns, adjectives...)

- Closed – prepositions

≈ English Noun

- Syntactic – morphological – semantic characteristics

- Definiteness, gender, number, case


Lecture 05

16

Morphemes

Free morphemes Bound morphemes

Content words Function words Affixes Bound Contracted

(open classes) (closed classes) bases forms

Nouns Conjunctions (and, or) cran- ‘ll

Verbs Articles (the, a) ‘d

Adjectives Demonstratives (this, that) Prefixes Suffixes ‘ve

Adverbs Comparatives (more, less)

Re- -s

Un- - ize


Seminar 05

17

Language Typology

- Arrangement of morphemes is easy in English (it makes it easier than Czech)

Isolating → Ta gei wo mai le yi ben shu

Analytic

isolating

Agglutinating → Talo i ssa ni = taloissani

vs.

Inflective

Introflective Similar to inflection, but the

Synthetic inflection is inside the word

inflective

Polysynthetic Hanwaya swilsswalhi

“čím je jazyk vice polysitetický, tím má méně slov, ale jsou delší, u isolating naopak”

≈ “The happy hippopotamus swam in a river” (7 morphemes) – synthetic

- “a”, “in”, “hippopotamus” = all are morphemes

“Ta gei wo mai le yi ben shu” 8 morphemes – Chinese (isolating – one morpheme = one

meaning – e.g. “le” – express past tense)

“She bought me a book” 5 morphemes – English (isolating – fixed word order, cannot mix

words – no grammatical endings)

“Koupila mi knihu” 3 morphemes – Czech (Inflective – koupiLA – 3 grammatical

information in one morpheme)

“koupila to” – Koupila – 3 grammatic information form one morpheme (singular, female, past)

≈ Bought me

- To be (am I, are you..) – it doesn’t change, because it’s too frequent

≈ Agglutinating

- Hungarian, Turkish

- Connect lots of morphemes into one – strict order

≈ Inflective

- Czech (Slavonic, Celtic, Baltic (cumulating) – Albanian)

≈ Introflective

- Semitohamitic

≈ Polysynthetic

- Native Indian, Eskimos, one word has meaning like one sentence


Lecture 06

18

6. VOCABULARY

Development of lexis

- Connected with historical development of the UK

≈ Influences

1. Foreign influence

o Celtic – minimal, names of the places, rives (named before A-S) “Avon”, “Thames”,

“Winchester”

o Latin – language of higher lever (humanism), Christianity, short words, first period,

when Latin influenced English – Continental influence (St. Augustine, spread of

Christianity)

o Scandinavian – places in the West England (Vikings), “ski”- Norwegian, “Yorkshire

dale”, 3rd

person singular

o French – administration, politics, navy, war terminology, cuisine, arts, fashion,

parliament – Norman Conquest

o Greco-Latin – Greek word came into English through Latin (Greek influence on

English by Latin)

o Dutch – fine arts “landscape”, “iceberg”, navy

o Italian – music “piano”, food “salami”, “pasta”, “pizza”

o Spanish – military words “armada”; “potato”, “tomato”, “tobacco”

o Arabic – science (algebra), “sofa”, “harem”

o German – “kindergarten”

2. External factors

o Mediator form which a language can influence the other languages (British

colonization – India → English)

Lexicology

- Study the structure that occurs in the language

≈ Lexicon

- System of vocabulary

- Total stock of words – lexemes

- Structure, which occurs in vocabulary, what is typical and how they differ

≈ Lexeme

- Smallest bilateral unit of meaning (“bilateral” = meaning + form, “meaning” = lexical, not

grammatical X morpheme, phoneme)

- Gives all the possible variants:

o Give → gives, gave, given = 1 lexeme, 3 different morphemes, “gives” is a lexeme of

lexeme “give”, not different unit

o Blackboard, white paper, give up = 1 lexeme, “give” and “up” has both meaning, but

when we put it together “give up” meaning is one, so, it’s one lexeme)

- Doesn’t have to be 1 word

- Abstract unit (all forms), not what we use when we speak

≈ Lexeme ↔ Word-Form

- Lexeme = langue

- Word-form = parole (realization)

- Signifiant – Signifié (Saussure)

- Signifiant = Signifying – acoustic form we have in mind, signifying part

- Signifié = Signified – concept, idea refer to the subject in reality, signified part

- Semiotic Triangle (by Ogden & Richardson – Charles Ogden = author of the first dictionaries)


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Thought or Reference (concept)

- Relationship between the world and the object in reality

- Describes “the meaning of the meaning”

- Linguistic sign never in isolation (relationship with object, other signs and perceiver)

≈ Semantic triangle

CONCEPT (picture in my mind)

S

I Symbolizes Refers to D

G E

N S

I MEANING I

F G

I N

C A

A no direct connection T

T SYMBOL (‘word’) REFERENT (‘thing’) I

I O

O N

N Denotation

≈ Relationships

- Designation – reality designates

- Denotation

- Signification

- Pragmatic – between sign and user, words and language users

- Paradigmatic/Syntagmatic

≈ Extra-linguistic ↔ Linguistic = Continuum ↔ Discreteness

- Extra-linguistic – time X tense

- Linguistic – all the signs we say are discrete

- Continuum – extra-linguistic is not discrete

- Discreteness – linguistic reality

≈ Lexical – Grammatical morphemes

- deals with morphemes

- grammatical (inflectional) + lexical (derivational) = inflection (“teach” + “es” = “teaches”)

- lexical + lexical = word-formation (“teach” + “er” = ”teacher”)

- nature of language and of reality is different

- using language helps us to understand reality (linguistic reality), naming things

- table – abstraction – imagine thing (or vice versa)

Word & its definition

≈ Word X Lexeme – word clusters

- Word – abstract unit, in the terms of lexicology it is word-form

≈ Word

- Lexico-grammatical unit, sequence of sounds/signs expressing an idea & communicating

meaning

- Consists of at least one morpheme


Lecture 06

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Word formation & its processes

≈ Patterns of new lexical units forms → lexical morphemes + higher segments

- ‘do-er’ X ‘do’

≈ Syntagmatic processes → determinANT – determinATUM

≈ Major word-formation processes

1. Compounding

o Based on at least 2 separate lexemes, perceived as 1 single lexeme

o Name one single object, concept, idea of linguistic reality

o Idiom – one lexeme “to kick the bucket” – “natáhnout bačkory”

o Head-ache – “head” = determinant, “ache” – determinantum

o Blackboard (lexical phrase “tabule” – can be white) X black board (syntactic phrase,

any board of black color)

o Paper-basket (used for paper) X Paper basket (made of paper)

2. Affixation

a. Suffixation → bound morphemes (don’t have lexical meaning, can’t exist on their

own), “kindness” “Hopeless”, add one bound morpheme to the end of the word

b. Prefixation → bound morphemes, “disobey”, to the beginning

c. Infixation → “messenger” → “message”

3. Conversion

o The most important

o Functional shift → syntax

o From one word class to another without losing meaning:

a. Full – take all grammatical categories

b. Partial – old → the old, enters new class X take all categories

o “play” – verb → noun

o Very prod. in English (isolating language)

4. Borrowing

o From different languages

o “robot” = from Czech

≈ Minor-word formation processes

1. Back-formation

o Suffix deletion – deleting the last morpheme

o “air-conditioning” → “to air condition”

o “computer” → “to compute”

o “babysitting” → “to babysit”

2. Blending

o Merging of independent word, usually also shortening

o “smog” = smoke + fog

o “brunch” = breakfast + lunch

3. Shortening

a. Abbreviation = “na určitém čase, místě, vytvořeno pro účel, vlastní zkratka, např. v

zápisu přednášky”, no rules-depends on the user “ppl” → “people”, “knw” →

“know”, “Matu”

b. Acronym – “NATO”

c. Clipping – “van” → “caravan”, “flu” → “influenza”

4. Reduplication

o Informal

o Repeating sounds, “walkie-talkie”, “tic-tac”, “flip-flop”, “oukey dokey”


Lecture 06

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≈ Lexicology

- studies the process, how we name the reality

≈ Lexeme

- the summary of variants (do, did, does = 1 lexeme)

≈ Syntagma

- constitution – the order of words


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Lexicography

Dialect

Jargon Vulgarisms

Periphery

Colloquial Argot

Literary

Centre

Foreignisms

Archaisms Neologisms

Terms Poetisms

≈ Argot

- connected with underworld

- “účelem je, aby většina lidí nerozuměla, používá normální slova, v jiných významech”

≈ Jargon

- “dude”

- Jargon X Slang – Jargon – according to ideology (hippie), occupation (IT); slang – according to

age (teenage slang)

≈ Dialect

≈ Vulgarism

- “sh*t”

≈ Foreignism

- “chateau“, “cliché”

≈ Archaism

- “thy”

≈ Term

- “connotation”

≈ Poetism

- “morning drew”

≈ Neologism

- “brunch”

Neutral,

standard


Lecture 07

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7. MEANING

Lexemes & their structural relations

≈ Paradigmatic & Syntagmatic

- He - can - go - tomorrow

- Syntagma – linia ordering the linguistic elements, horizontal level

- Paradigma – contrast, vertical level (He – She; go – come –leave; tomorrow – today..)

≈ Lexical semantics → paradigmatic relations

- 5 types

a. Homonymy

b. Polysemy

c. Synonymy

d. Antonymy

e. Hyponymy/hyperonymy

≈ Conceptions

1. Mentalistic

o Lexical unit and mental unit are in the same level, meaning of the word is equal to

same level as mental picture

o Theory of meaning “How we mentally conceive our words”

2. Behaviouristic

o What reaction the word causes

o Language is stimulant, we study reaction

3. Field Theories

o Words that are somehow connected – lexical fields

o Linear – e.g. colors

o Hierarchy – e.g. words connected with cooking

4. Compatibility

o Based on collocations (words, that go together), idioms, set expressions

o How certain lexemes are compatible “large success” – cannot say, “big success”

5. Theory of Use

o Based on native speaker’s intentions, how they mean when using language

≈ Sememe (content) → seme (element)

- Sememe = abstract unit, describes content of a lexeme; “chair” – if you find in the dictionary,

all entries are sememes – all meanings of e.g. “go”

- Seme = concrete realizations, sub-unit; “wooden, plastic, metal”

- Sememe of a lexeme “chair” = all possible chair we are able to imagine

- Seme = what we use when we speak

≈ Motivation X Arbitrariness

- Motivation = connection between reality and the word it describes; “waterfall”,

“paperbasket” – easy to explain

- Opaque

- Transparency

Types of Relations

≈ Homonymy – signifiant +, signifié -

- Signifiant – graphic + sound = identical , grapheme is identical

- Signifié (meaning) – words have same form, don’t express one thing, object is not identical

- Homophones = see – cell

- Homograph= lead – lead (pronounce differently, write the same)

- Homonym proper = spelling and pronunciation is the same “file” – “složka”, “pilník”


Lecture 07

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≈ Polysemy – signifiant +, signifié +/-

- Signifiant – identical, word form is the same

- Signifié – partly identical, but same origin, very similar

- Meanings are always somehow related

- Sememes have to have at least one seme in common

- Different meanings of one lexeme

- “bulb” (electric, of a plant = both sources of energy), “football”

≈ Synonymy – signifiant - , signifié +/-

- Signifiant – different word form

- Signifié – almost identical

- Absolute synonymy – only theoretical, doesn’t exist, because it’s useless

- 2 lexemes are synonymy if 2 sentences have the same meaning

- “refuse” – “reject”

≈ Antonymy – signifiant -, signifié -

- Contrast, oppositeness in meaning

a. Complementarity

� One item denies the other (man – woman)

b. Antonymy proper

� Negation of one doesn’t imply the other

� Are always gradable

� “good” – “bad” = if you are not bad, you don’t have to be good, there is third

possibility

c. Converseness

� “wife” – “husband” - if there is a wife, there must be a husband

� “teacher” – “student”

≈ Paronymy

- Close to false cognates

- Easily confusing words, very similar in form and meaning

- “affect” – “effect”

≈ Binary – Non-binary oppositions

- Binary – made of 2 items, directional opposites (“up” – “down”, “come” – “go”,

consequence: “learn” – “know”, “get” – “have”, anti poles – “North” – “South”)

- Non-binary – ranks (“major” – “captain” = there aren’t only 2 ranks)

≈ Hypo-/Hyperonymy

- Hyponymy – sub-ordinate (“podřazený”)

- Hyperonymy – super-ordinate (“nadřazený”)

Flower (hyperonym)

Tulip ........................... Violet ......................... Rose (co-)hyponyms

- Hyponyms create lexical field – name of the fields is hyperonymy

→ Lexical Fields – linear X Hierarchical

- Linear – animals, colors

- Hierarchal – cooking (subtypes of acts)

Modes of meaning

≈ Semiotic triangle

a. Referential

� Denotative – in the dictionary, neutral description

b. Attitudinal

� Connotative – an emotional description


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c. Cognitive

� All possible meanings of a word

d. Contextual

� How word means in particular situation

� Situational, functional

Semantic change

- According to progress – reality changes

- Development of society, generation differences, losing an original meaning

- Mouse = animal, computer

≈ Direction → specialization X generalization + Semantic Transfer

- Specialization

o Inward

o Extention and idention (narrow) → meat - all kinds of food

- Semantic transfer – metaphors, metonymy, synekdochy

≈ Componential Analysis – L. Hjelmslev

- Method

Adult Male Human

Woman + - +


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≈ Register

- a functional speech variety in a specific social situation

- It includes syntax, morphology, vocabulary, phonology

- “česká lingvistika častěji používá termín funkční styl nebo funkční jazyk”

- The choice of register should be adequate to the speech situation (including the participants)

- E.g. University lecture, informal conversation, talking to children

≈ Style

- An individual choice of lexicogrammatical means of expression

- Tell me…

- Could you tell me...

- Would you mind telling me…

- Could you be silent please? X Shut up!

- 3 factors

o Relationship to the listener

o Communicative intention

o Situation context

Formality is the level in appropriate situation


Lecure 08

27

8. WORD & SENTENCE GRAMMAR Syntax

≈ Syntax (Greek) = arrangement, organization

- Grammar = also relationship in the internal structure of words, morphology + syntax

- Syntax look at the structure of sentences, doesn’t study text, relations between sentences

≈ Syntax means

- Word order, inflection, auxiliaries

≈ Sentence elements

- Centre – have to be present in every sentence; subject, predicate, object

- Periphery – you can choose to use them or not, up to the speaker, optional; modifiers

- Immediate constituents analysis

o “Poor John run away” - the lower level are single words (don’t divide into

morphemes) = ultimate constituents (“poor” – final indivisible element)– can’t be

analyzed further

≈ Surface X Deep structure = Chomsky

- Transformative grammar→ Generative transformative grammar→ Universal for all languages

– “Universal Grammar”

- Surface = what you can see (Bloomfield)

- Deep Structure = underline sentences, give meaning to the words

≈ Transformative rules – obligatory X optional

The man opened the door. - no transformation

The man did not open the door. - negative (Obligatory)

Did the man open the door? - interrogative (Obligatory)

The door was opened by the man. - passive (Optional – we keep the

meaning

Wasn’t the door opened by someone? - pass., neg., interr.

Syntactic units

≈ Sentence = largest unit of grammatical description

- Highest – final ultimate unit

- We have no GRAMMATICAL rules for paragraphs, sentence is the highest unit

≈ Sentence types – Function & Structure

- Function

o Paradigmatic level

o Making statement

o Asking, explaining

o Declarative + Interrogative + Exclamatory + Imperative (secondary function = Can

function as declarative or polite request “Would you please leave the door?”)

- Structure

o Syntagmatic level

o Depends on the structure

o Simple and multiple (compound, complex)

o Clause = Subordinate (nominal “Whatever he did was wonderful”, adverbial “I’ll be

there when I’m ready” restrict the referential area of the word or use as

comparisons “He is not tall as I am”; adjectival “Whose people, who have not seen it

won’t believe it”), Main

- Question (it’s function) X Interrogative sentence (“Would you please leave the door?” – I’m

not asking a question; it’s type)

- Clause(“vedlejší věta”) – nominal, adjectival, adverbial


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- Concord (“shoda”) & Government (regimen - “rekce”)

o Concord= Relation between 2 or more words in different word classes that agree

(“He works”)

o Government = relationship between verb and pronoun (“I don’t understand him”

NOT “I don’t understand he”)

Sentence semantic

≈ Syntax – Semantics – Pragmatics

- Syntax = the study of the rules that govern the structure of sentences

- Semantics = meaning (noun – subject – agent), refers to aspects of meaning, as expressed in

language or other systems of signs.

- Pragmatics = what I want to say, relationship between language user and language

≈ Language system X Language use

- System = represented by syntax as such formal relationship

- Use = how I use language, if you use the sentence you make it utterance

≈ Linguistic meaning – Cognitive content → Ambiguity X Indistinctness

- Linguist meaning = linguistic role at element in a sentence (e.g. subject)

- Cognitive content – without emotions (“poznávací obsah”)

- Ambiguity – structural (“mnohoznačnost”), you need the sentence (context) to understand

the meaning

- Indistinctness – weakness of meaning (you need the context of the situation to interpret it

correctly (now – I can be interval of few weeks “I’m listening to Elvis” – you see that I don’t

have headphones – it’s not right know. If she writes “I’m listening to Elvis” you don’t know if

it’s now, or recently

≈ Sentence X Utterance

- Sentence – formally analyzing sentence – “věta”,

- Utterance – “výpověď, v kontextu, význam daný mluvčím”, concrete parole unit


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Functional sentence perspective

- FSP is further than semantics

- Syntax focuses only on a form

- Psychological suspect of a syntactic structure

- Dealing with utterance

Theme (2) Rheme (1)

Given information newest info

Transition (3)

- Where (2) is (3) John (1) ?

- John (1) went (3) home (1). → grammatical subject isn’t the psychological subject here

- “čím vice vpravo, tím větší důležitost”

- The righter you go, the more important info you get

Theme Rheme

John (th) has not been (th) sleeping well (rh)

- “Not” – “gramatické pravidlo, důležité “not” zůstává v méně důležité části”

FSP

1. Theme – grammatical subject

2. Rheme – psychological subject

3. CD – communicative dynamism (=degree of info value every sentence element carries)

CD is low CD is higher

W h e r e i s J o h n ?

Transition – between Theme and Rheme, usually a verb

Where is John?

He went home.

Transition


Lecture 09

30

9. TEXTS Text linguistics

≈ 1970’s – T. van Dijk, W. Dressler, František Daneš

- Dijk – Dutch linguist, applied rules from sentence structure to higher level

- Daneš – analysis of paragraphs

≈ Theory of text – Context → Text linguistics X Discourse analysis

- Text – piece of spoken or written language

- Context – anything that comes before and after and help us understand the meaning,

express utterance, language and situational context

- Text linguistics

o Language which has been produced as a result of written communication

o Grammatical, semantic + social, psychological factors – hard, you must know the

context

- Discourse analysis

o Spoken language

≈ Functions of language – M. K. Halliday

- Warning, lecture

- Ideational

o Language is a mediator between brain and world around us, helps us organize our

experience of reality

o Enables humans to understand reality (I and the world), language helps us to

understand the world

- Interpersonal

o Relation between speaker and the recipient

o How I talk to you (respect, disrespect, friendship)

- Textual

o Internal coherence

o Property of language to create a meaningful function

o Offers certain means that in result I create meaningful text

≈ Coherence X Cohesion

- Coherence

o Logical link, based on shared knowledge

o Understandable, semantic connection

o Links between separate utterances

o Doesn’t have to be in words (shared knowledge)

o Language that is understandable must be coherentive

o “I woke up at 5!” – we know it’s early

o “Could you give me a lift home?” – “Sorry, I’m visiting my sister.” → both know she

lives away, it’s impossible

- Cohesion

o Grammatical, lexical, formal links in text

o How coherence in text is expressed by formal aspects

o “Is Jane at home?” – “Yes, she is” → we know, that “she” means Jane

≈ Texteme = textual pattern

- Abstract, langue part, shelters all that characterizes the text

- Texteme of lecture is different to a friendly conversation

Texture → cohesive ties

- Texture – elementary quality of each coherent text


Lecture 09

31

- Presented by Halliday

- Links between 2 elements of utterance

- How text means (we don’t care about content, just semantic content)

- Text is langue (product) or parole (process) unit – depend on the point of view

- Parole – how is text produced, created

- Reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical cohesion

≈ Reference – semantic relation

- Link between 2 words, that need each other for their own interpretation

- Make reference to something else (Jane → she → signals that its point is in different

sentence

- Can be easily interpreted

- Always contain indefinite article

- “Do you want the blue or red ball?” “I want the red one” → we know, I’m talking about balls

- “I have mentioned SHE before” – We have to know, who SHE is

a. Comparative – through personal , “I know it well. But she know it better.”

b. Demonstrative – through category of indefinite, definite articles

c. Personal - personal pronouns

≈ Substitution – Grammatical relation

- Formal grammatical relationship

- It must be identical grammatical class

- “Do you want the blue or red ball?” “I want the red one” → “one” is substitute to “ball”,

singular nouns

- “Will we get there on time?” – “I think so.”

a. Nominal (one)

b. Verbal (do)

c. Clausal (so) – substitutes whole clause

≈ Ellipsis – substituted by zero

- Drop the whole sentence

- Very easily retrievable from context (not necessary to repeat it)

- A piece of structure is omitted and can be recovered only form the preceding discourse

- “Do you have your homework?” – “Yes, I have (homework).”

- “John bought some book and Emma (bought) some oranges.”

≈ Conjunction – indirectly cohesive

- Links different sentences

- What is about to be said is explicitly related to what has been said before, though such

notions as contrast results, and time

- “therefore”, “however”, “anyway”

- “I left early. However, Mark stayed till the end.”

- “Lastly, this is the question of cost.”

≈ Lexical cohesion – reiteration

- Semantic relationship

- Repeating the same element more than once, different lexemes (prison, jail), synonyms


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≈ Cohesion – non-structural X structural

- not WHAT but HOW text means, and what patterns are

≈ Texts – patterns > rules

- Study language – find patterns – make rules (other may round in previous disciplines)

- Descriptive NOT prescriptive

- Every language is coherent, cohesion is not necessary

- Coherence

o Links between meaning (content) of utterances

o WHAT

- Cohesion

o Formal relationship, grammatical

o What form we use

o HOW

- Anaphoric

o Look BACKWARD

o “Several people approached. They seemed angry”

- Cataphoric

o Look FORWARD


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Cohesive Ties

≈ Exophora X Endophora

- Exophora = reference to situation context

- Endophora = reference to preceding of following text

o Cataphora

o Anaphora

1. Reference

- “Take 6 cooking apples.”

anaphora

- “Peel them and put them in a bowl.”

- Reference expressed by pronouns

2. Substitution & Ellipsis

- Substitution

o “Do you want the blue or the red coat?”

o “The blue one.”

- Ellipsis

o “Do you want the blue or the red coat?”

o “The blue.”

3. Conjunction

- “I agree with your proposal. Nevertheless, I would like to add some comments.”

4. Lexical cohesion

- Less grammatical, more lexical

- “I love animals.”

Verbal ellipsis Nominal ellipsis; reiteration

- “Me too, but mainly the felines.”


Lecture 10

34

10. DISCOURSE Theories of discourse

≈ Sentences & Discourse

- Analyzing the way sentences work in sequence to produce coherent stretches of language

- Sentences – diff. in length

- Discourse – usually longer (more sentences), relation between sentences is important

≈ Discourse analysis → discourse + coherence

- Structure of naturally spoken language like conversations, interviews, commentaries

- Coherence – how it happens that text is meaningful

- How we create coherent and meaningful discourse

≈ Grammar rules X Patterns of use

- To be good at grammar doesn’t mean to be good at communication

≈ Discourse = unified & meaningful

- Grammar rules + errors

- Shared knowledge, asses correctly what your listener knows

- Grammatical rules are not the priority of discourse

≈ 2 approaches to language

1. Sentence linguistic (morp., pho., syntax) 2. Discourse analysis

- Prescriptive - Descriptive

- Understanding to each other is more

important than grammatical

correctness

- Isolated sentences - Any unified stretch of language

(coherent)

- Grammatically well-formed - Achieving meaning (mistakes aren’t

analyzed, looks at the user

- Without context - In context

- invented/idealised - Observed (what sb. has already used)

- Discourse = usually spoken X written (but can be both)

≈ Zelling Harris → 1952: “Discourse analysis”

- First use of this term

- Teacher of Noam Chomsky

- linguistics and non-linguistic aspects of larger unit

- Pragmatic interpretation → function & form

o Looking at relationship of discourse and user, what user means

o Form – what I say (pronounce)

- “Oh, Jane has a new haircut!” = not only new info, but also irony and criticism (she looks

terrible) → study what is behind the sentence

Discourse structure

≈ Pragmatics – Discourse

- Pragmatics

o takes a look at language and psychological, physical and social context

o Language X Outside world

- Discourse

o Totality of all language elements interacting, situational, linguistic context

o Body language


Lecture 10

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≈ Discourse as PRODUCT or as PROCESS

- Product – look at the situation (institutional dialogs - communication between doctor and

patient, customer and shop assistant) – using given structure, institutionalized form

- Process – not a particular expectation

≈ Degree of Reciprocity

- Who are the participants

- Monologue – low level of reciprocity

- Dialogue – high level of reciprocity

Knowledge structure in discourse

- What producer know and decides to say, sharing knowledge

≈ Receiver knowledge – Sender assessment

- Knowledge + Language = Discourse

≈ Schemata

= mental representation of typical situations used in discourse processing → key words

-

- How reality is represented in brain

- Key words activate schema in your brain

- “I got up” – activate knowledge in my brain and I’m able to know context

≈ Witness in a court case:

1. I woke up at seven forty. I made some toast and a cup of tea. I left for work at about 8’30.

- Everybody knows I put on my clothes, not come in my pyjamas

2. I woke up at seven forty. I was in bed. I was wearing pyjamas. After lying still for a few

minutes, I threw back the duvet, got out of bed, walked to the window…

� ‘Getting-up Schema’

� Evidence: 1. unmentioned details

2. associative anaphora

3. expectation driven understanding (“pochopení založené na očekávání”)

- interpret something based on sb’s expectations (“v souvislosti s očekáváním

mám v hlavě interpretaci a ta se buď potvrdí, nebo ne”)

Suggest a continuation for the following:

‘She’s one of those dumb, pretty Marilyn Monroe type blondes. She spends hours looking after her

nails. She polishes them every day and keeps them …’

‘…all neatly arranged in little jam jars in the cellar, graded according to length, on the shelf above the

hammers and the electric drills.’


Seminar 10

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≈ Linguistic pragmatics (1977)

- Originally discussed between wars by Ch. W. Morris

- Influences

o Ethnography of communication

o Sociolinguistic – looks at language in the context with society, how society influences

the way you speak

o Conversational analysis – modelled on “teacher-student” talk (it’s institutionalized,

quite easy, teacher asks – student answers – teacher gets feedback)

- Triad:

o Syntax – the study of the rules that govern the structure of sentences

o Semantics – refers to aspects of meaning, as expressed in language

o Pragmatics – relation between language user and language, how the user mean what

he says

- “ I got bitten by dog”

o Syntax – “jedna věta, podmět, přísudek..”

o Semantics – suffer (“I”), doer (“dog”)

o Pragmatics – Why am I saying it, what is in context, I expect regrets

= studies relation between language signs and interpreter

- John Searle (US)

- John Austin (UK)

o 1962 – book How to do thing by act = speaking is a kind of behaviour, achieving goals

by various speakers

o “speech act theory” – we do things by using language

- Paul Grice (1979) – anytime we communicate we expect the other participant to cooperate

- Cooperative principle – developed by Geoffrey Leech (1983) → principles of pragmatics,

continued Grice’s work

- Wierzbicka – woman, Polish, politeness strategies in language (in Japanese)

- Cooperative Principle

- Politeness Principle

- Pragmatics = the study of meaning as communicated by speaker and interpreted by the

reader (how I understand intentional human action), what we mean than what we say, how

much more is being communicated than is being said (“Oh, I love you so much!” – in certain

context can mean the opposite)

- Study of meaning as spoken by speaker and interpreted by listener

- Analyzing gap between what is meant and what is said

→ implicitness (“nevyřčenost”)

o presupposition (“předpoklad”), “Paul’s son is (not) lazy” – do not change in negation

(Paul has a song, don’t matter if lazy or not lazy one), oriented toward to the

speaker, comes before the utterance

o entailment - utterance oriented, what logically follows what you say, comes after

utterance

→logical implication (“dohra”)

→ explicitness (“řečeno naplno”)

- “I’ve never been to Bristol.”

→ presupposition: Bristol exists, it has to be a place, partner knows the city

→entailment: reaction of partner, I want to go!, I’m not interested


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- “What do you want? I’m warm and affectionate.” → somebody wants something, there’s

wife and husband

- “So are dogs…” → “to jsou psi taky a nikdo si je nebere”

- Warm and affectionate

o Presupposition – It’s wife and husband, there has to be a relationship, somebody

wants something, express anger, “reproach (“výčitka”) - what do you want more..”

o Implementation – Leave me alone!, you won’t get more

- Dogs

o Implementation – irony, woman do not marry dogs – I want your qualities!

- “I hope you brought the bread and cheese.”

- “Oh, I brought the bred.”

o Presupposition – I expect you went shopping, some kind of arrangement, it’s not

expressing HOPE, it rather certainty (you know, he always forgers)

o Implementation – I forgot the cheese, keep the negative meaning behind, wants to

state that he brought the cheese

≈ Co-operative principles (Grice)

- How people should interact

1. Maxim of Quality – be truthful (say what you believe is truth)

2. Maxim of Quantity – be informative (say only necessary information)

3. Maxim of Relevance – be relevant (contr. should relate to the purpose)

4. Maxim of Manner – be clear (speak orderly, briefly, avoid obscurity and ambiguity)

≈ Politeness principles

1. Minimize (other thing be equal) the expression of impolite beliefs

2. Maximize (other thing be equal) the expression of polite beliefs

- What is polite to Co-operative principles will be impolite to Politeness principles and vice

versa

- J. Kant – first used maxims (“pravidla”, “v souvislosti s kategorickým genitivem”)

o Maxim of tact

o Maxim of generosity

o Maxim of approbation

o Maxim of modesty

o Maxim of sympathy

o Maxim of agreement

≈ Zadie Smith – “On Beauty”

- “My legs weigh more that that women. What have you made me look like in front of

everybody in this town?

You married a big black bitch and you run off with a fucking leprechaun?”

- “I didn’t.”

- “What?”


Lecture 11

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11. LANGUAGE AND BRAIN Psychology of language

- Tool to communication and thinking

- Analysing of fluent speaker

≈ Language Knowledge + its representation – Utilisation - Acquisition

- Utilisation = how knowledge is utilised in language production and understanding, how

speech is acquired in childhood, we consider native speakers

- Acquisition = we do not learn language, we acquire it (mother tongues)

≈ Chomsky 1977: Competence, Performance, Acquisition

- Chomsky – major figure in psycholinguistic, studied how people use language

- Competence – inborn capacity, limited wit age to learn language – expires in the age of 10-12

(same to everybody → depend on adaptation)

- Performance – how we utilize or competence, how we use language (well, bad)

- Acquisition – between competence and performance

≈ 3 basic fields

Sounds → competence model → linguistic meaning

o How we understand the meaning, how sounds that create words connect to our

language knowledge and linguistic meaning, how we relate sounds to linguistic

meaning

Communicative intention → performance model ↔ sounds

o Communicative intention → creating sounds, how we create sounds in our

communicative intention

Language experience → acquisition model → performance model

o How much we acquired or learned and are able to perform

o Performing can be productive or perceptive

o How we grow old, acquire language, how that influences our performance

≈ 2 key processes →Speech production & comprehension

- Speech production – Production/Performance = cognitive background (set of your believes,

social context of the communicative situation) + pragmatics intentions (what you know +

what you want to say - achieve by it)

- Pragmatic intentions:

o referential intent – you refer to something

o communicative intent - you have reasons why you speak, you want to speak

o elocutionary – analyzing what the other person say – second functions of sentences

o Levels of production: message source (idea...) →articulatory system (stimulated from

outside of brain, idea, semantic = think about context)

o Syntactic levels

o Sound level

o Message to articulatory systems

- Comprehension (receiving)= signal → understanding

o Auditory organs (perceiving sound wave) → analysed by brain →sentence structure

→ semantic meaning →not only content, but also pragmatically

o Levels of comprehension: signal → recognition

o Syntactic capacity – analyzes the words, identifies words, sentences, phrases

o “could you open the window” – sounds like question; brain, syntactic level; pragmatic

level – I understand it is not a question

≈ Cognitive Architecture = perceptual systems + central processes

- abstract model how cognition works in our brain

- Cognitive architecture = complex, with strict rules, how we analyze info, put it together


Lecture 11

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- Perceptual systems = parts of body connecting outside with brain (eyes, ears...), all of us have

them, intelligence is not important, it’s fast, don’t give reliable information

- Central processes = in brain (electric impulses and communication of hemispheres, no

necessarily fast, reasoning

- Muller-Lyer illusion

o Perceptual are faster than central

o I know they are the same, but think and you “see” that second is longer

Language & brain

≈ Neurolinguistics → where + how + if?

- Neurolinguistics – very limited in research, study of language defects

- Where – when in brain are language and speech located

- How – How language is decoded and encoded

- If – components of language, if we damage a part of the brain, out learning ability will be

damaged, different cells (“buňky”) responsible for different parts of language

≈ Paul Broca, 1861 → Broca’s area

- Left hemisphere, frontal part

- Problems with speech muscles (production)

- If damaged, you have problems with speech production, bud you can understand

≈ Carl Wernicke, 1874 → Wernicke’s area

- Left hemisphere, close to ears

- Speech comprehension

- When damaged, causes speech comprehension problems

≈ CNS – hierarchy: cortex – corpus callosum

- In left hemisphere, close to left ear

- Mainly left hemisphere is important for language

- Corpus callosum – transfer between hemispheres (electric impulses)


Lecture 11

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≈ Speech = cortex + sub-cortical fibre tracts + grey matter areas

≈ Left X right hemisphere

- One is dominant, according to what task are you dealing with

- Right is the centre of left visual field

- Left hemisphere

o Speech

o Writing

o Reading

o Language

o Analytical thinking

o Reasonable

- Right hemisphere

o Non-verbal thinking

o Memories (of melodies mainly)

o Visual skills

o Art

o Understanding metaphors

o Emotional


Lecture 11

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Psycholinguistics

≈ Charles Osgood, 1954

- First mentioned psycholinguistics, structural linguist, behaviourist, theory of information)

≈ Communication model: producer → message → recipient

- (en)coding → code → decoding

- Producer – channel – message – channel – recipient

- Approaches:

o Behaviouristic – relation between stimulus and response

o Generativist – Chomsky (generative grammar), creativity of language

o Contextual – social and physical context, social conditioning (how your social

environment influences your linguistic behaviour)

o Cognitive – IQ test, performance , mental dispositions (IQ, language capacity,

language capability)

≈ Intention → comprehension

- Intention – of the producer, more pragmatic

- Comprehension – of the recipient

≈ Key terms

- Speech production and reception, mental structures, competence and performance,

language and thought, language acquisition, non-verbal communication, speech pathology

- Language acquisition – capacity which is inborn to learn some language which depends on

surroundings) X 2nd

language learning (“po pubertě se už bez úsilí druhý jazyk nenaučíme na

100%”)

≈ Language Acquisition

- We don’t say “learn”, child doesn’t have to study mother tongue, (nevyvíjí snahu)

- Children imitate language – it’s faster

- It is probable, it you start talking earlier than other children you have bigger language

capacity

- Critical period – 2 years before puberty – child is able to learn new language perfectly, later is

not


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12. SOCIOLINGUISTICS

- Relationship between society and language + methods you use

- Society cannot be without language, but language can exist without society

- How every member of a particular society uses language (students of English, Cockney,

Scottish language)

- Studies language as a function of a social background, how language forms the community,

takes into consideration background, all context

- Established after WW II.

- US linguists:

o Joshua Fisherman

� 2 phenomenon – diaglossia, bilingualism

o William Labov

� He was revolutionary – used mathematical and statistic methods

� He was analyzing language very precisely

� “Language stratification in New York City department stores” – stratification

of the letter “R”; stores have its own goods and prices for a particular group

of people (white roses – for rich), 3 shops: very expensive, normal, cheap

- British linguists:

o Michael Halliday

o Basil Berstein

� “restricted and elaborated code” – if you grow up in a family, where your

parent have never read a book, you will have a different vocabulary,

grammar structure, than a child from an “academic family”

Main Issues

≈ Standard language

- Linguistic – all languages of the world are equal

- No linguistic reason for saying that one language is the best, all varieties are equal

- Standard English is not a language, it is not an accent or style, neither is a set of rules, IT’S A

SOCIAL DIALECT

≈ Bilingualism

- Knowledge of 2 languages

≈ Diaglossia

- Occurrence of high and low code in speech

- Social phenomenon in some languages

- A situation in which 2 different varieties of a language co-unit (office – you start with formal

language, than switch into slight informal, if the officer is friendly)

≈ Language change

≈ Language variation

≈ Language policy and planning

- Politically motivated (When the British colonized India, they spread English)

- German x Czech – “Dobrovský – když vzali češtinu, tak použili tu před NO, byla norma

Spisovného jazyka českého – hlídá ji akademie věd)

- Decision what is, and what is not formal

≈ Code → Code Switching

- You do CS when you are in diaglossical environment (formal x informal Czech)

- Situational CD = diaglossia


Lecture 12

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≈ Dialect

- “smaller” than a language (language contains some dialects)

- Contains less linguistic items that code

- Spelling, syntax, pronunciation, morphological structure....

≈ Accent

- Only pronunciation, R.P.

≈ Diaglossia →multilingualism

- Multilingualism – 500.000 – 600.000 languages; multilingual countries (official language +

language of majority); English is not a official language in the USA, it’s a state of immigrants

- Monolingual – used to be in Greek (all that was not Greek was barbarian), today no

monolingual countries

- Monolingual societies are very hard to find, world is so connected, that country with only one

language is rare

≈ Bilingualism

≈ Received Pronunciation & General American

- R.P. – very aristocratic in GB, Queen uses it, BBC used to use it too

- G.A. – in the USA, differences in spelling, in GA is spelling getting more simplified

≈ London Prosaic School

- John Firth

- In USA there is no official language – country of immigrants

univerzita karlova v praze introduction to language · - suprasegmental - what is above the word...

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