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ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

T
here are several theories and interpretations concerning the origins of

human language and its beginnings. The most famous of those theories

are grouped by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen:

I. THE DIVINE SOURCE:

In most religions, there appears to be a divine source that provides humans

with language. Following a Hindu tradition, language came from the goddess

Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe.

In an attempt to rediscover this original, divine language, a few experiments

have been carried out, with rather conflicting results. The basic hypothesis seems to

have been that, if infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then

they would spontaneously begin using the original God-given language.

An Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus tried the experiment with two

newborn infants around 600 BC. After two years in the company of goats and a mute

shepherd, the children were reported to have spontaneously uttered, not an Egyptian

word, but something reported to be the Phrygian word Bekos, meaning 'bread'. The

pharaoh concluded that Phrygian must be the original language. That seems unlikely.

The children may not have picked up this word from any human source, but, as

several commentators have pointed out, they must have heard what goats were saying.

(Remove the –Kos ending; can you hear the goats?)

James IV of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around AD 1500 and

the children were reported to have started speaking Hebrew. It is unfortunate that all

other cases of children who have been discovered living in isolation, without coming

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into contact with human speech, tend not to confirm the results of either of these

'divine-source' experiments. Children living without access to human speech in their

early years grow up with no language at all.

II. THE NATURAL-SOUND SOURCE:

A quite different view of the beginnings of human speech is based on the

concept of 'natural sounds'. The suggestion is that primitive words could have been

imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them.

1. THE POOH-POOH THEORY: this theory is delivered from Darwin’s view

and suggests that speech appeared first by a way through which people were

making instinctive cries to express feelings such as oh! for surprise and ouch!

for pain…

2. THE DING-DONG THEORY: this view suggests the idea that the first form

of language arose as people made responses to external stimuli, and thus

building up a system – like which assured to meet communicating needs.

3. THE YO-HEAVE-HO THEORY: it suggests that first sort of language was a

serial or rhythmic sounds produced by people working together and doing a

physical effort. Those sounds were later on developed into codes.

4. THE BOW-WOW THEORY: this theory suggests that early attempts to

produce language began as imitations of natural sounds like: moo, chow-

chow, crash, clang, buzz, bang, meow...

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III. THE ORAL-GESTURE SOURCE:

This theory goes further back in time when people used physical gestures to

communicate their ideas. It is thought that over time they started to use not only their

hands, but also movement of the mouth, lips and tongue which subsequently

developed into speech as we know it.

IV. RECENT THEORIES:

Most modern theories concerning human language origins converge towards a

central point stating that the interest of linguistics today as it was once, finding the

first language but rather the co-existence of language and other disciplines with the

same society. Linguistics now devotes much more time to investigate the intrinsic

inter-relations between language and mind to understand the function and the nature

of this latter.

NB:

Onomatopoeia (onomatopoeic)(Bow-wow theory)

The naming of a thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with it;

or the echoing natural sounds (such as buzz or hiss). Onomatopoeia may also refer to

the use of words whose sound suggests the sense. This occurs frequently in poetry,

where a line of verse can express a characteristic of the thing being portrayed. In the

following lines from Sylvia Plath's poem “Daddy,” the rhythm of the words suggests

the movement of a locomotive:

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

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WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

T
hrough the answer of the question: what is language ? we are going to

know whether all languages have something in common not shared by

other systems of communication, human or none human, or not ? To

know this requires from us an investigation on the different characteristics specific to

language.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE:

The characteristics are best highlighted (mentioned) in the definitions of

language made by well-known linguists of the 20th century:

I. EDWARD SAPIR 1921 (Language P.5):

“Language is a purely human and non instinctive method of communicating

ideas, emotions, and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.”

The main characteristics of human language according to this quotation are:

1. language is unique to humans (no animal language)

2. language is produced voluntarily (non instinctively).

3. language is made of symbols.

4. there is the notion of sender, receiver, and a code.

II. BLOCK AND TRAGER 1942 (Outline of linguistic analysis):

“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social

group co-operates.”

We may say, according to this statement that:

1. language is structured i.e. it is made up of rules which concern its

pronunciation, grammar, and meaning.

2. language is limited only to its spoken form.

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3. there is here a clear notion to the fact that language is used as social

product not only to fulfil the function of communication but also the

notion of co-operation.

4. this definition brings in the property of arbitrariness.

III. HALL 1968 ( Essay on language):

“Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with

each others by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols.”

Through this statement we may say that:

1. language use requires more than one user.

2. language involves the sender and the receiver of spoken form of

language.

3. language is a social arbitrary product.

4. language enables interaction (not only communication of ideas,

emotions, and desires…).

IV. ROBINS 1979:

He did not define language, he rightly pointed out that such definitions "tend

to be trivial and uninformative, unless they presuppose … some general theory

of language and of linguistic analysis". But he only listed and discussed

certain salient characteristics of the language that " must be taken into account

in any seriously intended theory of language". Most important of them are:

1. Extensibility: it is a property of language which enables language users to

add other words to their linguistic resources. The language is extensible in a

way that we may call for new expressions to fit our communicative needs. eed.

The new words introduced in the language may come from other languages or

from simple invention.

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2. Modifiability: language has an impact on its users, sometimes we feel the

need to adapt ourselves as the language requires; for example, when hearing a bad

news makes us showing a state of neglect, sorry, …

In other cases, it is the language we use and the way we use it which are modified

and adapted because of our state and the message we want to transmit.

V. CHOMSKY 1957 (syntactic structures p 13):

“From now on, I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite) of

sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”

According to Chomsky, all natural languages, in either their spoken or their

written form, are languages in the sense of his definition since:

a) Each natural language has a finite number of sounds in it (and a finite

number of letters in its alphabet – on the assumption that it has an

alphabetic writing system).

b) Although there may be infinitely many distinct sentences in the

language, each sentence can be represented as a finite sequence of these

sounds (or letters).

We know also that Chomsky did not mention whether language is used for

communication or for other reasons. His purpose is to focus attention upon the

purely structural properties of languages.

The term “infinite” implies, according to Chomsky, the existence of a capacity

which he believes is innate to generate sentences from other sentences, differing

in the surface structure (word order) and keeping the same deep structure

(meaning), a view which opposes the one held by the behaviourists concerning

language learning and development.

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PROPERTIES OF HUMAN LANGUAGE:

H
uman language differentiated from all other forms of signalling by a set

of properties which make it a unique type of communication system.

Those properties are:

1. DISPLACEMENT: It is the ability to use language to talk about things and

events not present in the immediate environment (such as past and future

time reference). It enables us to describe things and places which we are not

even so sure of their existence. The meaning of animal signals, by contrast,

is restricted to the setting in which they are used; a hunger cry, for example,

means that hunger is present ‘now’, not yesterday or tomorrow.

2. ARBITRARINESS: There is no natural or iconic relation between a

linguistic form and its meaning. There is nothing in the way the word ‘table’

is pronounced or written which physically resembles the thing ‘table’. In

language, only few words have sounds which echo with the sounds made by

the object or the activity to which those words refer (onomatopoeic). These

words are rare and the vast majority of linguistic expressions are in fact

arbitrary.

3. PRODUCTIVITY: The capacity of language users to produce and

understand an indefinitely large number of sentences; also referred to as

creativity. New utterances are continually being created, and the language

users manipulate their linguistic resources to produce novel expressions and

sentences. A child, for instance, learning a language is active in forming and

producing utterances which she or he has never heard before.

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4. CULTURAL TRANSMISSION: Language is passed from one generation to

another not genetically or biologically but through a process of teaching and

learning, for example, a Chinese child born in England is likely to inherit

some physical characteristics from his parents genetically but develops not

necessarily the Chinese language. This child will learn and use the English

language which he acquires part of his culture.

5. DISCRETENESS: The sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct.

Each sound is treated as a discrete unit, and the occurrence of one sound

instead of the other leads to a misuse of language. For example, /p/ and /b/

sounds in a sentence like: “can I park here” the use of the sound /b/ instead

of /p/ is a wrong use of language.

6. DUALITY OF STRUCTURE (DOUBLE ARTICULATION): Language is

structurally organized into two abstract levels. The discrete forms combined

in different ways give different meaningful units. That is, at one level, we

have distinct sounds and at the other level we have distinct meanings. For

example, the sounds /a/, /e/, /t/ none of these discrete forms has any intrinsic

meaning. When we produce those sounds in different combinations, as in

ate, eat, tea we have different meaningful units.

These six properties may be taken as the core features of human language.

Human language does of course have many other properties, but these are not

uniquely human characteristics.

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VOCAL-AUDITORY CHANNEL: is certainly a feature of human speech.

Human linguistic communication is typically generated via the vocal

organs and perceived via the ears. Linguistic communication, however,

can also be transmitted without sound, via writing or via the sign

languages of the deaf. Moreover, many other species (e.g. dolphins)

use the vocal-auditory channel. Thus, this property is not a defining

feature of human language.

RECIPROCITY: any speaker/sender of a linguistic signal can also be a

listener/receiver.

SPECIALIZATION: linguistic signals do not normally serve any other

type of purpose, such as breathing or feeding.

NON-DIRECTIONALITY: linguistic signals can be picked up by anyone

within hearing, even unseen.

RAPID FADE: linguistic signals are produced and disappear quickly.

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SOME FUNCTIONS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE:

I
n order to communicate any idea or transmit any message we make use of

either one form of language. One function of language is communication which

consists of sending and receiving pieces of language to make others know

about ourselves or know about other selves. However, there are cases in which

language is not used to fulfil that specific function but used for other reasons. Those

reasons may be:

1. EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION (EMOTIVE LANGUAGE): Sometimes we

use language to get rid of our nervous when we are under stress or frustrated

state; the clearest case is the use of swearing or obscenity as a means of

getting rid of nervous energy when people are under stress. Other emotive

utterances include involuntary responses to beautiful art or scenery,

expressions of fear or affection, and the outpourings found in a great deal of

poetry. We may also use positive kinds of emotive language in cases when

we react automatically to beautiful sight.

2. SOCIAL INTERACTION (RELATIONSHIP): when more than one person

are engaged in using language, the function of language is not necessarily

communicating ideas. One other function of language (in a social gathering)

is the intention to maintain good relationships among persons. For example

in English when someone sneezes we use the expression “bless you” and the

common reply is “thank you”. In this case, no ideas are communicated rather

it is a purpose of maintaining a good rapport between people. Silence instead

of the expression “bless you” would mean a sense of distance (alienation) or

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even dislike (hate). These kinds of expressions are automatically produced,

stereotyped in most of the cases and they differ from one language to

another as cultures vary.

3. THE POWER OF SOUNDS: meaningless expressions are often uttered in

different situations. For instance, those repetitive rhythmical sounds

produced by children to control a game, or those voices of individuals

singing at kitchen, bathroom … Phrases like these can be explained only by

the desire to exploit the sonic potential of language.

4. THE INSTRUMENT OF THOUGHT: people, specially when writing, feel

the need to speak out their thoughts aloud saying that this helps them

concentrating more. This can be the example of an author who reads to

check whether what has been written corresponds to what he has in mind.

An example of students performing mathematical calculation where the

mental act (thinking) is accompanied with a verbal commentary. Here also

no idea is communicated.

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LANGUAGE FAMILIES:

T
o say that two or more languages belong to the same family is to say that
they are variants of the same common ancestral grandfather language, or the
original form (proto) of a language. The first attempt to discover the history
of the languages of the world began at the end of the eighteenth century, scholars
(linguists) at that time began to compare groups of languages in a systematic and
detailed way to see whether there were correspondences between them especially in
terms of sound systems and grammatical structure.
If this could be demonstrated (finding similarities) it would be assumed that

these groups of languages belong to the same original language or proto language;

however, there is no direct and complete knowledge of the proto language from which

the members of a particular family are descendants. In Europe for example, there

were groups of languages like French, Spanish, and Italian which are descendants of a

common origin (Latin). Another hypothesis supports the idea that there was once a

language form which many languages of EURASIA have been descendants, this

language is called the Proto-Indo-European language.

Proto-Indo-European

Balto-Slavic Indo-Iranian

Germanic Celtic Italic Hellenic Baltic Slavic Indic Iranian

(Latin) (Ancient Greek) (Sanskrit)

German Gaelic Italian Greek Latvian Russian Hindi Persian

English Irish Spanish Lithuanian Polish Bengali
Dutch Welsh French Czech etc.
Danish etc. Portuguese Bulgarian
Swedish Romanian etc.
Norwegian etc.

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WHO WERE THE INDO-EUROPEANS ?

History showed that there existed a semi-nomadic population living in

southern Russia around 4000 BC. They began to spread into the Danube area of

Europe from around 3500 BC, those people were known as the Kurgans.

The Kurgan culture and language seem to have arrived in the Adriatic region

before 2000 BC. The ancestors of the Kurgans are not known although there are

similarities between their language and the Uralic family of languages spoken in the

East.

THE DISCOVERY OF PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE:

It was not possible to deduce the existence of this family of languages until

scholars become aware of the systematic resemblance which can be found between

European languages and Sanskrit which is the oldest language of the Indian continent.

When these similarities were first found, many people thought that Sanskrit was a part

of the European languages, but towards the end of the eighteenth century, systematic

studies showed that this was not the case and many studies proved that Sanskrit was a

system to European languages.

Sanskrit Latin Greek

pitar pater pater (father)
bhratar frater phrater (brother)
NB:

THE COGNATES:

A cognate of a word in one language is a word in another language which

has a similar form and is, or was, used with a similar meaning.

English mother father friend

German mutter vater freund

Spanish madre padre amigo

Italian madre padre amico

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WHAT IS LINGUISTICS:

L
inguistics is the scientific study of language, it aims at providing

explanations about the complexities which are often found in language

and its different aspects. Different types of linguistics can be

distinguished according to the aim set in each investigation:

1. GENERAL (THEORETICAL) LINGUISTICS: it studies language in

general and builds up theories and categorisations about language, in order

to establish the universal characteristics of human language. (it is concerned

with frameworks for describing individual languages and theories about

universal aspects of language).

2. APPLIED LINGUISTICS: is using linguistic theory to address real-world

problems, (applies those theories to other fields).

3. MACRO (CONTEXTUAL) LINGUISTICS: is concerned with all what affects

language. It deals with:

- How languages are acquired and stored in the mind.

- The psychological and neurological mechanisms involved in language behaviour.

- Language and society, language and culture, language and biology.

The linguist is interested in such fields so as to enable himself understand other

fields of knowledge such as:

a)Language acquisition: how do human develop language, which hemisphere is

concerned with the task of perceiving and developing language.

b) Aphasia: the loss of control over language caused by brain damage.

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4. MICRO (AUTONOMOUS) LINGUISTICS: is a narrow study of linguistics

which deals with the language itself and for itself. It is concerned with

mainly the structure of language with no reference to the way languages are

acquired and stored in the mind, without regard to the interdependence of

language and culture, without regard to the physiological and psychological

mechanisms that are involved in language behaviour; in short, without

regard to anything other than the language system. It looks into different

aspects of language in order to understand language (its function and

structure).

5. DIACHRONIC (HISTORICAL) LINGUISTICS: is concerned with the

development of language through time and gives historical explanation of

language changes through history.

6. SYNCHRONIC LINGUISTICS: studies a particular language in a given

period in time of its history. For example, English language can be studied

synchronically in case we deal with that language during the Shakespearian

period.

7. COMPARATIVE (TYPOLOGICAL) LINGUISTICS: is concerned with

comparing a language at different phases (steps, periods) of its development.

8. CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS: its purpose is to focus on the differences

between languages, especially in a language-teaching context.

9. DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS: is the work of analysing and describing

how language is actually spoken now (or how it was actually spoken in the

past) by any group of people. (it deals with a particular language and studies

its different aspects: phonology, syntax, semantics)

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SCIENTIFICNESS OF LANGUAGE STUDY:

W
hen sitting for language study, the linguist has to follow some

rules:

1. SYSTEMATICNESS: the linguist has to set and organize a framework on

the material to be studied. He has to choose between micro and macro

linguistics, then he has to define the area of his study regardless of other

fields.

If the choice; for example, had been on one particular language (English);

using descriptive linguistics, the aspect of the study should be identified: if

the aspect is phonology, the linguist will define clearly the subject

(phonetics or phonemics).

2. OBJECTIVITY: the linguist has to carry out the study away from

personal feeling intervention. The data should be presented in the way they

are, not in the way they should be in the linguist point of view.

3. EXPLICITNESS: the results obtained from the study, and the theories

built up should be presented in such a way that they can be discussed and

publicly checked. In addition, those findings are not to be kept in

linguistics domain only; they should be useful for other fields of

knowledge like psychology, sociology…

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In linguistics, different branches may be distinguished according to the linguist

focus and interest. A major distinction introduced by F. De Saussure was that one

between diachronic and synchronic linguistics; the first refers to the study of language

changes and language in general, the second refers to the study of a state of language

at any given point in time.

a. When the attempt is to establish general principles for the study of all

languages and to determine the characteristics of human language as a

phenomenon, it is called general linguistics.

b. When the study concentrates on establishing the facts of a particular

language system, it is called descriptive linguistics.

c. When its purpose is to focus on the differences between languages, it is

called contrastive linguistics.

d. When the intention is to emphasize certain characteristics of a

particular language through its different phases of development, the

study is called comparative linguistics.

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THE DOMAINS OF LINGUISTICS:

M
ost recent linguistic theories divided language into three aspects:

phonology, grammar, and semantics. The scientific study of

language requires describing language phonologically,

grammatically, and semantically.

I. PHONOLOGY:

It studies the sound system of human language; it includes both phonetics and

phonemics.

A. PHONETICS: it is the study of vocal sounds, describing them as they are

made. Phonetics as the study of sounds stems from a religious stimulus; the

old Indians were the first who thought of a framework which describes correct

pronunciation. According to them the written aspect of the language remains

unaffected; whereas the spoken one can be subject to mispronunciation, and

this would affect the pronunciation of their holly texts. During the 19th

century, Melville Bell invented a writing system that he called "Visible

Speech”, he was a teacher of the deaf, and he intended his writing system to be

a teaching and learning tool for helping deaf students learn spoken language.

He contributed a lot to the establishment and development of a unified

international pronunciation system, known today as the I.P.A (International

Phonetic Alphabet) in 1886 in Paris. Phonetics is concerned with the

production of sounds with no reference to any language in particular. It

includes:

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1. ARTICULATORY PHONETICS: it investigates the different organs of

speech which are involved in the production of sounds (place of

articulation). It also describes how the organs of speech contribute in

the production of sounds (manner of articulation).

2. ACOUSTIC PHONETICS: it studies the medium through which the

sound goes from the mouth to the ear.

3. AUDITORY PHONETICS: it investigates how sounds are received by the

ear and analysed by the brain, it describes the mechanisms involved

in transmitting the sound from the outer ear to the appropriate part in

the brain to be decoded (to be understood).

4. FORENSIC PHONETICS: has applications in legal cases involving

speaker identification and the analysis of recoded utterances.

B. PHONEMICS: the study or description of the distinctive sound units

(Phonemes) of a language and their relationship to one another.

1.PHONEME: the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish

two words.

Eg: pan & ban differ only in their initial sound:

a. pan begins with /p/ and ban with /b/

b. ban and bin differ only in their vowels: /æ/ and /i/.

Therefore, /p/, /b/, /æ/, and /i/ are phonemes of English.

The number of phonemes varies from one language to another.

English is often considered to have 44 phonemes:

24 consonants, and 20 vowels.

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2. ALLOPHONES "other sounds":

when a phoneme has two different pronunciations in different

phonetic environments, we say it has different allophones,

for example: the phoneme /L/ has two different

pronunciations in different words; it is sometimes dark like

in (milk) [ĺ] and sometimes clear like in (sleep) [l].

3. PHONE: the smallest sound as it is produced (individual sounds as they

occur in speech).

Eg: the different ways of pronouncing the vowel in the word can,

Long [æ:], shorter [æ], with nasalization [æ], are all phones of the

phoneme /æ/.

* When we speak, the vocal tract works without stop giving a stream for a

flow of sounds, one sound merges into the other and we get words, phrases, sentences,

or language sequences. When we produce these segments, we make use of the wide

range of changes (voice high or low, quick or slow ) which may change the meaning

of what we say, this is what provides the data of supra-segmental analysis which is

derived into four parts:

1. Assimilation: it is the change of a speech sound because of the influence of an

other sound following or preceding it; we have three types of assimilation:

a. Progressive assimilation: a sound is pronounced differently because of the

influence of the preceding sound, eg: dogs, horses.

b. Regressive assimilation: a sound is pronounced differently because of the

influence of the following sound, eg: the old man.

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c. Reciprocal assimilation: two sounds influence each other and result in a

new one, eg: this year, could you.

2. Pitch: it is the rapidity of vibration of the vocal cords, which results in different

tones of voices, the faster the vocal cords vibrate, the higher the pitch.

3. Juncture: a short pause between words, or between sentences in longer discourses,

it is easy to see it in written because it is a spaces, but in speech it is not easy to make

this separation (a nice house/an ice house), (I scream/ice cream).

4. Stress: it is a term used to refer the degree of force used in producing a syllable.

II. GRAMMAR:

ANCIENT BEGINNINGS:

One early example is the grammatical tradition of ancient India, with its most

famous figure, Panini (520 BC - 460 BC). The Indian Grammarians were

concerned with preserving Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism, in its

Classical form, in order to ensure that it would be used properly in ritual. To

do this they described every side of the language in small detail. Panini's

Grammar was a huge work detailing the step-by-step derivation of Sanskrit

sentences, all the more impressive because it was not written down, but

memorized in verse.

DEFINITION:

A sentence may be defined as the target structure unit in terms of which the

grammar of the language is organized.

Grammar is the study of words formation and words arrangement in the

language, so grammar includes Syntax; that is the different rules which govern

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the order and arrangement of words in a sentence, and morphology; that is the

study of words formation or morphemes formation.

A. SYNTAX: is concerned with the different rules that govern the sentence, it

is based on:

 The patterns that underline the structure of the sentence and its constituents.

 And the syntactic devices which are concerned with the linking of those

constituents together. Each sentence is constructed out of a set of

constituents which may be reduced to a basic sentence type (S+V+O) or

(S+V), to reduce the complex sentence into its basic type we may proceed

until the resulting sentence can not be reduced.

eg: - Mad dogs savagely bite innocent strangers.

- Dogs bite innocent strangers.

- Dogs bite strangers.

- Dogs bite. ( it can’t be reduced)

The sentence is the upper unit which expresses the complete meaning through

a given way of arranging elements. The same meaning can be expressed by the same

elements arranged in different ways, the language user knows the different rules

which govern the sentence structure and this knowledge of rules helps him decide

whether the sentence is meaningful or not. This knowledge concerns all the

information about language structure and language function and this is called

Competence.

To be competent in language means to possess enough information about the rules of

phonology, grammar, and syntax.

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Eg: - He eats an apple (correct)

- An apple is eaten by him (correct)

- Is an eaten apple him by (wrong)

It is our competence which makes us understand that sentence 3 is wrong, though it is

made of the same elements which make sentence 1 & 2 meaningful. So, sentence 3 is

meaningless.

Our competence can be seen as whether or not we are able to judge sentences

correctness, or also as the act of producing correct sentences. To produce a correct

sentence is to make in practice our theoretical knowledge, so we manifest our

competence.

Our competence also makes us interpret that a sentence may have two different

meanings.

Eg: 1. John and Valery are married.

2. They called him Doctor Smith.

In sentence 1: one meaning is that both John and Valery are married to other persons,

or another meaning which is John is the husband of Valery or John and Valery are a

couple.

In sentence 2: one meaning is that they call him Dr Smith and it is not his name, and

the other meaning is that he is ill and they called him a doctor whom name is Smith.

Note: the act of putting competence into practice is called performance.

Performance presupposes (needs) competence. We can not perform in a language

unless we are competent.

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B. MORPHOLOGY: it studies the structure of words or morphemes.

Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit in a language. There are two types of

morphemes:

1. Free morphemes (base root): are those words which carry meaning in

themselves. E.g.: open, book, car, …

2. Bound morphemes: are those words which carry no lexical meaning, but

only a grammatical function. These words are to be attached to the base to

express a meaning.

Bound morphemes are called “affixes” and are divided into three types:

a. Infixes: they are bound morphemes inserted inside another word.

e.g.: Tagalog (language of the Philippines): -um- shows that a verb

is in the past tense: sulat (to write) – sumulat (wrote). In English,

the word (absogoddamlutely).

b. Prefixes: they are bound morphemes attached to the beginning of

the base. E.g.: unemployment.

c. Suffixes: are divided into two categories:

1. derivational suffixes: modify the word lexically

according to its dictionary meaning.

E.g.: child (noun) childish (adjective)childishly (adverb)

2. inflectional suffixes: they modify the word

grammatically. Eg: book books, walk walked

Note:

* inflectional suffixes are always final and do not allow further affixation.

* the allomorphs are variants of the same inflectional morpheme; just like allophones,

which are variants of the same phoneme.

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Eg: the plural (s) has got five allomorphs:

-Pronounced /z/ after a voiceness stop (t, p, k) or a voiceless stop (d, g).

-Pronounced /iz/ after a voiced or voiceless sound.

-Irregular form, like: axed, ox

d. The zero-plural (zero morpheme): a morpheme involved in null affixation.

Eg: the plural of fish is fish, which can be analysed as the

noun fish plus the null variant of the plural morpheme.

The division of morphemes into free and bound has the idea of division of

language into three parts according to their morphemic similarities:

1. agglutinative language: a language in which various affixes may be

added to the stem of a word to add to its meaning or to show its

grammatical function.

Eg: in Swahili, wametulipa (they have paid us) consists of:

Wa me tu lipa

They + perfective marker + us + pay

(completed action)

2. analytic language (isolating language): a language in which word

forms do not change, and in which grammatical functions are

shown by word order and the use of function words.

Eg: in Chinese, * jŭzi wŏ chī le

Orange I eat function word
Showing completion

“I ate the orange”

* wŏ chī le jŭzi le
I eat function orange function
word word

“ I have eaten an orange”

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3. synthetic language (inflecting language): a language in which the

form of a word changes to show a change in meaning or

grammatical function.

Eg: mouse mice

Come came

III. SEMANTICS:

Is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. Meaning is

divided into two kinds:

a. Conceptual meaning (denotative): covers those basic, essential

components of meaning which are conveyed by the literal use of the

word.

eg: the word needle, some of the basic components of this word might

include: thin, sharp, steel instrument. These components would be part

of the conceptual meaning of needle.

b. Associative meaning (stylistic): it is the meaning of the speaker’s

intention, this kind of meaning can not be studied in micro-linguistics;

because here the linguist has to do with other elements than the language

itself.

Eg: you may have associations attached to a word like needle which lead

you to think of painful whenever you encounter the word.

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Semantic relationships (lexical relations):

Words exist in language not in isolation, but in relation with each other. Through this

relation we may know the meaning of a word, and sometimes a word can be defined

through its related word. The types of relationships the words have are:

1. Synonymy: two words are synonyms when they express sameness in

meaning; however, total sameness is never conveyed between words, so there

are no complete synonyms.

eg: to listen expresses to a high extent the same concept idea that to hear does.

But to hear can’t replace to listen.

2. Antonymy: certain words express oppositeness in their meanings, these are

antonyms. We have:

a. Non gradable antonyms (complementary pairs) : comparative

constructions are not normally used (the expression deader or more

dead sound strange) and the negative of one member does imply the

other. For example, that person is not dead (does indeed mean that he

is alive).

b. Gradable antonyms: such as the pair big-small, can be used in

comparative constructions like bigger than, smaller than. Also the

negative of one member of the gradable pair does not necessarily

imply the other. For example, if you say that dog is not old you do

not have to mean that dog is young.

3. Hyponymy: when the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of

another, the relationship is described as hyponymy, and some typical example

pairs are: daffodil-flower, dog-animal, poodle-dog, carrot-vegetable, banyan-

tree. The concept of inclusion involved here is the idea that if any object is a

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daffodil, then it is necessarily a flower, so the meaning of flower, is included

in the meaning of daffodil. Or daffodil is a hyponym of flower. The relation

here is considered as a kind of hierarchical relationship.

4. Homophony: when two or more different written forms have the same

pronunciation, they are described as homophones. For example, meat-meet,

did-deed, flour-flower, right-write.

5. Homonymy: when the same form (written & spoken) has two or more

unrelated meanings. For example, bank (of the river) – bank (for money)

Bat (animal) – bat (used in sport), Race (sport) – race (ethnic group)

Pupil (at school) – pupil (in the eye).

6. Polysemy: is one form (written & spoken) having multiple meanings which

are related by extension. For example, the word head used to refer to the

object on top of your body, on top of the company, or on top of a department.

The word foot of a person, of bed, of mountain. Or run: person does, water

does, colours do.

The distinction between homonymy and Polysemy is not always clear in cut;

however, one indication of the distinction can be found in the typical dictionary

entry for words, homonyms have got separated entries and treated as independent

lexical units. Whereas polesymes have one single entry, with a numbered list of

meanings.

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STRUCTURALISM: (INTRODUCTION)

T
he most important contribution to the understanding of language as an

abstract phenomenon came in 1916 with the publication of Ferdinand De

Saussure lecture notes. De Saussure gave lectures at the university of

Geneva in which he exposed new theoretical concepts to evaluate the old school

(traditional grammar) and developed a new movement of language analysis. De

Saussure did not leave a book behind, his students gathered his observations from the

lectures notes they took, and published them as « Cours De Linguistique Générale ».

Thirty years after this publication his views were largely explored.

De Saussure was the first to distinguish the synchronic study of the language

from the diachronic one, and to provide insights into the nature of the language that

we use. According to him the essence of the language is not in its external aspects but

in its internal system.

He believes that the language study has to concentrate on the abstract

linguistic system which he called “La langue” rather than the actual speech which he

called “La parole”.

Saussure's conception of language as an abstract system underlying the various

speech forms of its users, was developed by his followers from the Geneva school, the

Copenhagen school, the Prague school, and also the London school.

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