Introduction to Linguistics
Masoud Jasbi
LIN001
Week 1
What are you going to learn
in this course?
What is linguistics?
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language.
The subject matter is language.
The methods used to gather information and verify knowledge is scientific.
Similarly, physics is the scientific study of matter.
Or biology as the scientific study of life.
The subject matter is …
The methods for …
Science
Language
Cognition
What is Science?
What is Science?
Science is an enterprise that systematically acquires and organizes knowledge.
What are the properties that differentiate it from other such systems?
Some Properties of Science
Truthful
Evidence- based
Skeptical
Falsifiable
Reliable
Selfless
Universal
Open
Some Properties of Science
Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Statements
Descriptive Statements:
They describe how the world is.
The earth is round, dogs bark, Bob is tall, every triangle has three angles
Descriptions need to be adequately supported by empirical evidence.
Prescriptive (normative) Statements:
They prescribe how the world should be.
Dogs should not bark at people, you should be tall to join the team, you should not swear
A good prescription depends on the goals/values and the facts that bear on them.
No prescription without adequate description
You can’t prescribe well if you haven’t described well
To achieve a goal you need to know the facts relevant to the goal
Think of prescribing a drug not knowing:
how the body works
what the disease is
what causes it
or how the drug works!
That would be irresponsible!
And the same would be true for linguistic prescriptions.
What is language?
What is NOT language?
Prescriptive Grammar ≠ Language
Prescriptive Grammar: stuff your English literature or language teachers said you should do or not do.
You should not end a sentence with a preposition.
You should not split infinitives.
You should not use double negatives.
Where do prescriptive rules come from?
Confused notions about language:
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Latin was the language of the educated class so some thought Latin was the perfect language and all languages must conform to the rules of Latin.
Some people thought language should conform to the rules of classical logic therefore two negatives in a sentence should be positive.
There is no reason for either language or logic to conform to that rule!
Negative-concord (double negative) is an obligatory rule of many world languages.
Where do prescriptive rules come from?
Dictating personal preferences and tastes:
People vary on how they speak.
Some people decide their way of speaking is the “correct one”.
This “my-way-is-the-right-way” attitude exists in many areas of human behavior
You should not wear a suit with sneakers!
Writing ≠ Language
Writing is the representation of spoken or signed language in physical form.
Writing typically omits crucial pieces of linguistic information:
Lead, Bass, Bow
Intonation: ok
ok 😊
ok 😒
ok 😔
ok 😬
Writing ≠ Language
Writing must be formally taught.
Language is naturally acquired.
Writing is not available for many languages.
About half of the world languages (3535/7100) have a written form.
Writing is a recent invention of human (~6000 years) while language may have existed for hundreds of thousands of years.
Language as a Democratic System
Fortunately language is by nature democratic.
You don’t get to decide what is correct or incorrect.
What people should do or not do.
You only get one vote: what you chose to do for yourself.
And you get to invite others to follow your linguistic preferences.
It is up to them whether they like to join or not.
What is language?
Definition 1: The set of world languages
English, French, Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese, etc.
How many languages are there in the world?
How do we count them?
What counts as a language?
The ISO 639-3 basic criteria for defining a language (www.ethnologue.com):
These criteria make it clear that the identification of “a language” is not based on linguistic criteria alone.
How many languages are there?
There are at least 7,102 languages in the world! (according to ethnologue)
Sample of 200 languages from the World Atlas of Language Structures
Problems with definition 1
What if we discover a new language? How do we decide if that’s a language or not?
Definition 2: A system of communication
What kind of system is language?
How does it differ with other systems of communication?
Let’s first take a look at some animal communication systems.
Honeybee
Bees communicate the direction and the distance of the food from the hive.
Karl von Frisch, Ethologist
1886-1982
(Nobel Prize 1973)
Vervet Monkeys
Robert Seyfarth
Psychologist, Upenn
What properties differentiate human language?
In 60s and 70s, Linguist Charles Hockett proposed 16 defining characteristics for communication systems.
He argued that only human language has all 16 features.
Charles Hockett
1916-2000
1. Vocal-Auditory Channel:
Language is composed of spoken sounds that are transmitted to the ears and auditory channels.
2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception:
Speech sounds radiate in all directions so that they can be perceived by any listener. However, the listener can determine the direction from which the sound comes (and thus can determine the identity of the speaker).
3. Rapid fading:
Speech sounds are transitory; they do not last very long.
4. Interchangeability:
Any human can reproduce any aspect of language they hear, regardless of age and gender. This is quite unusual in nature (e.g. female birds do not reproduce the mating calls of male birds).
5. Complete feedback:
Speakers can monitor their own speech at every level, allowing them to make minute adjustments to ensure clarity and to catch and correct speech errors.
6. Specialisation:
The organs used for producing speech are specially adapted for language (lips, tongue, vocal tract) and the ear and auditory tract are especially sensitive to speech sounds.
7. Semanticity:
Language carries meaning. In particular, words carry a particular fixed meaning that is shared among communities. For example, the word salt means salt and only salt. It cannot be used to refer to sugar or pepper.
8. Arbitrariness:
Although words carry fixed meaning, there is no intrinsic reason why any word is linked to a particular meaning. Although some words sound like their meanings (crack, hiss), most words do not. This is why different languages can use different words to refer to the same object (e.g. dog/chien/Hund).
9. Discreteness:
Language is made up of a string of discrete sounds chained together. Each of these sounds varies only minimally from others, but we perceive them as very different.
10. Displacement:
We can talk about things that are remote in time and space (e.g. the past, the future, things that are not physically present).
11. Productivity:
We can create and understand words and sentences that have never before been uttered. We create new sentences by combining words in new ways and we create novel uses for familiar words (e.g. text was originally a noun but is now used as a verb, e.g. text me).
12. Traditional transmission:
Language is transmitted from one generation to the next in the traditional way, by learning and teaching.
13. Duality of patterning:
Language exists on two levels. On one level are words, which carry meaning. On the other level, these words are made up of speech sounds (phonemes) which carry no meaning.
14. Prevarication:
Language can convey imaginary information (e.g. lies, stories, hypothetical entities).
15. Reflexiveness:
Language can be used to talk about language itself (metalinguistic ability).
16. Learnability:
Humans, at least when they are young, have the ability to learn any new languages, not just the language of their biological parents.
Definition 3: A formal (symbolic) system
Form
Meaning
Phonetics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Lexical Semantics
Compositional Semantics
Pragmatics
Social Meaning
Historical
Linguistics
Acquisition
Psycholinguistics
Competence vs. Performance
Competence is the tacit knowledge in a cognitive system like the human brain.
Ability to create and understand sentences, melodies, …
Performance is the outward manifestation of competence.
Speaking in front of a class.
Playing the piano.
…
Testing Linguistic Competence
Which one is an English word?
Dax
Krtna
If I have a toma, and you have a toma, then we have two … ?
If dax is a type of creature, then the study of dax should be called … ?
If “the toma was parimonied by the kortip”,
who did the action?
Who was acted on?
Modality
Human languages can use at least three modalities:
Auditory-Vocal
Visual-Gestural
Tactile-Gestural
Regardless of modality, human languages show similar levels of systematicity.
They are also processed by similar regions of the brain dedicated to language.
Linguistic Myths
Learning Language vs. Learning Writing
Myth: we learn language in school.
Reality: you learn how to write and expand your linguistic abilities in school.
By the time you were 5-6 years-old, you knew most fundamental aspects of your native language(s).
This is why you can have an easy conversation with a five/six-year-old.
This is also why schooling starts around that age!
Spelling Errors and Language
Myth: bad spelling ruins language.
Reality: spelling is not language. It’s writing.
Spelling mistakes are often just discrepancies between spoken language and writing.
It’s vs. its
their vs. there
Spelling Errors and Language
Myth: incorrect grammar ruins language.
Reality: “incorrect grammar” is just another grammar and at most can create language change.
If people start saying “eated” and “runned” instead of “ate” and “ran”, that would be a new rule of English grammar and things will be fine!
That is how languages change and get updated.
Languages get “ruined” when people stop using them.
Learning Language vs. Learning Writing
Myth: some languages are more primitive/perfect than others for expressing ideas.
Reality: there is no scientific metric for such a ranking.
Languages develop and change to satisfy the communicative needs of speakers.
Languages can create new words and phrases or borrow them from each other to add to their expressivity.
Language vs. Logic
Myth: some languages are more logical than others.
Reality: we understand the logic behind some languages better than others.
Logic is a system in which certain conclusions follow from premises.
So a language can’t be more or less logical.
What people mean probably is “more/less easy to notice rules”..
Sign Language vs. Codes
Myth: Sign languages are just manual versions of spoken languages.
Reality: Sign languages are independent from spoken languages.
Code: A system that is artificially constructed as a different representational version a natural language.
Morse code, alphabetic writing systems, abjad writing systems, …
Natural languages, signed or spoken, are acquired naturally by children.
Sign Language vs. Pantomime
Myth: Sign languages are like the game of charades.
Reality: Sign languages have conventional word and grammars like spoken languages.
In charades you are trying to guess a word or concept using the visual cues provided.
In sign languages you are signing the words with conventionally known meanings and constructing sentences.
You can’t guess your way into a sign language. You gotta learn it like spoken ones!
Sign Language Universality
Myth: There is one universally understood sign language.
Reality: There are more than 200 sign languages.
Someone speaking Japanese Sign Language and another speaking American Sign Language will not understand each other.
Less vs. Fewer
Myth: “less” can only be used with non-count nouns. You can’t use them with count nouns.
Reality: “less” has always been sometimes used with count nouns in English.
Old English: King Alfred ~ 9th century
C888 K. ÆLFRED Boeth. xxxv. §5 [6] Swa mid læs worda swa mid ma, swæðer we hit ȝereccan maȝon. ("whether we may prove it with less words or with more")
Modern English: Alexander Pope’s Translation of the Illiad ~ 18th century
… He loses in less than eight Days the best of his Army…
Take a look at this Language Log post talking about it.