What is Linguistics?
Sharon Bruce
This past semester I was in Missouri in the master’s level course of Linguistics. This Saturday (August 22nd) I will be going to Oklahoma for the final part of the Linguistic course. For the months of September, October, and some of November I will be working with the Cherokee Indians, applying all the skills that I learned with Linguistics on their language. It is the final project of my Linguistics course with New Tribes Mission.
The technical definition of Linguistics from dictionary.com is “the science of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and historical linguistics”. To make this more understandable, I will give you a simplified outline of the steps of Linguistics that I will be doing with the Cherokee language.
In Oklahoma I will be meeting with a language helper (a Cherokee speaker) for 2 hours a day. During these sessions I will be listening and recording Cherokee words, sentences and phrases. As I listen and record with my digital voice recorder, I will be writing down what I hear using the phonetic alphabet. The phonetic alphabet is an alphabet that has a symbol for just about every sound that the human mouth can make. If I am not accurate in my records, it will be much harder to do a proper analysis. So please pray that I will hear and write the sounds correctly!
Phonemics is the process of interpreting and analyzing the sounds in a language in order to find the sounds in the language that need to be represented in an alphabet. This part reminds me of math since there are specific technical steps for this process. The steps take a lot of time and can be quiet meticulous, organizing and studying the language data. I have to pay attention to detail and be very thorough.
Orthography is the process of choosing the appropriate symbols to represent the sounds of the language after the phonemic analysis. Cherokee already has an alphabet system but it will be good practice since I might be creating an alphabet for a language in Cambodia that is not yet written. For an unwritten language in Cambodia, I would use symbols from the National Cambodian language, Khmer in the orthography.
This is the process of analyzing the grammatical structure of each level of grammar (word, phrase, clause, and sentence). I create formulas for the proper formation of each of these grammar levels. An example of a phrase formula for this English phrase, “The big blue truck” would be:
Noun Phrase = + Specifier Word (the) +/- Size Quality Word (big)
+/- Color Quality Word (blue) + Noun (truck).
These formulas can be helpful in translation to make sure the grammatical structures are right.
So this is a basic outline of what Linguistics is and how I will be using it with the Cherokee and in Cambodia. It is a lot of work! Please pray that I will remember all that I have learned and be able to apply it well. Pray also that I will be a good witness for the Cherokee language helper and Cherokee people in the area where I will be living.