M.

Saad - yes you bet im adding my name in here

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Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of
grammar, syntax, and phonetics. It is split into two major fields, microlinguistics and
macrolinguistics.

Microlinguistics is understood as linguistics which has a narrower nature of the study. That
is, it is internal, only sees language as language. A micro-linguist studies a language’s
phonology, morphology, pragmatics, semantics, phonetics, and syntax.

Macrolinguistics is concerned with language in its broadest sense. It studies every

phenomena connected in any way with language. A macro-linguist would study
sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, neurolinguistics,
contrastive/comparative linguistics, computational linguistics etc…

Description of every field:

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Phonology: The branch of linguistics that deals with the systems of sounds (including or
excluding phonetics) of a particular language, not in general. It investigates how speech
sounds are systematically used to form words and utterances.
Phonetics: A branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of human speech, their
production, transmission, description, analysis, and their representation by written symbols.
Morphology: The study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words
in the same language, especially regarding morphemes, which are the smallest units of
language.
Syntax: Syntax is the study of sentence structure, and of how sentence structure interacts
with other dimensions of linguistic information, such as phonology, morphology, semantics,
and pragmatics.
Semantics: It studies the direct meaning of words and sentences.
Pragmatics: It studies the underlying meanings of words based on the context they’re put
in.

Behaviorism: Behaviorism is a field of psychology that linguists also found interest in, as it
studies how a person can learn a language. The theory of behaviorism claims that people
can understand through observing, imitating and repeating. It should also be noted that
repetition isn’t enough, as in the case of language learning, interaction is necessary.
Sociolinguistics: This field studies the relationship between language and society, and the
way people use language in different social situations.
Psycholinguistics: This field studies the relationship between psychology and language.
It’s concerned with the psychological processes involved in language learning, production,
comprehension and acquisition.
Applied linguistics: This field is concerned with the learning and acquisition of languages.
Neurolinguistics: This field studies the relationship between language and the structure
and functioning of the brain. While psycholinguistics is concerned with psychology,
neurolinguistics is concerned with biology.
Contrastive/Comparative linguistics: Contrastive and comparative linguistics are
concerned with showing the similarities and differences between languages.
Computational linguistics: The branch of linguistics in which the techniques of computer
science are applied to the analysis and synthesis of language and speech.

Functions of language:
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Instrumental: Language is used to express needs and to get things done.

Regulatory: It’s used to tell others what to do.
Interactional: It’s used to make contact and form relationships.
Personal: It’s used to express feelings, opinions and individual identity.
Heuristic: It’s used to gain knowledge about the environment.
Imaginative: It’s used to tell stories and jokes and create an imaginary environment.
Representational: It’s used to convey facts and information.

Properties of the human language:

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Displacement: The human language is able to overcome the limitations of space and time.
We can talk about the present, the past, the future, things that aren’t present with us and
imaginary things. Animals, in comparison, have a ‘here-and-now’ language. They can only
‘talk’ about things that are happening at that exact moment.

Arbitrariness: There is no relation between the object and the name attributed to it. Also
called the signifier and signified. There is no reason why a ‘book’ is called a ‘book.’
The exception to this is onomatopoeic sounds, where the words are attempts of replicating
the sound of the object. E.g the ticking of the clock or the boom of the explosion.
Animal signs, however, are synonymous with meaning.

Productivity: Humans are able to combine limited linguistic signs to produce an infinite
number of sentences and expressions. They can create entirely new, never-heard-before
words, utterances and sayings. Animals, however, have a fixed reference and are unable to
create new ‘words’ and ‘expressions.’

Cultural Transmission: While languages are genetically transmitted to animals and are
instinctual, the human language is not inherited from parents. Human beings acquire
language through society. Proof of this is that you could take a newborn Arab to China and
bring him back in five years just to find him speaking Chinese instead of Arabic.

Discreteness: The sounds used in the human language are unique and detached. Humans
can organize or repeat, and combine sounds to create words, which in turn allows the
creation of sentences.

Learnability: Unlike animal language, the human language can be taught and human
beings can speak multiple languages. It is both teachable and learnable. Children learn
language with competence and ease. However, language acquisition is constrained by a
critical period such that it becomes more difficult once children pass a certain age.

Prevarication: Humans can use their language to deceive and lie. Animals, however,
cannot ‘lie.’ They only speak the truth.

Duality: The human language can be both spoken and written. Even languages that do not
have an alphabet can be written down in symbols. Animal language spoken only.

Vocal-auditory-channel: The speaker uses a vocal tract, which contains most speech
organs, to produce speech sounds, and the hearer employs an auditory apparatus to receive
and process the speech sounds.

Total feedback: This means that the speaker can hear themselves speak and can monitor
their language performance as they go. If they are not satisfied with the tone or wording they
use, they could ‘hear’ themselves and change it during their speech.

Interchangeability: This means that the speaker can both receive and broadcast the same
signal. They are not limited to a specific set of signs. I can tell you that I’m funny, and you
can also tell me that you’re funny.

Reflexiveness: The human language can be used to talk about language.

Broadcast transmission and directional reception: Sounds are transmitted in all

directions, but perceived in a limited direction. The speaker hears the sound coming from a
particular direction and hears the sound facing him better. If there are many people behind
you and one of them speaks, you’ll know the direction from which the sound came.

Rapid fading (Transitoriness): The spoken human language signal does not persist over
time. Speech waveforms fade rapidly and can’t be heard after a long time unless recorded or
written. You can’t hear the ‘Hi’ I said an hour ago.

Specialization: Organs used to produce sounds are specialized for the task. Human speech
apparatus is special in the way that it is not only made for eating, but also for speaking,
unlike animals who lack necessary specialized organs.

Semanticity: Specific signals in the human language have specific meanings (Rat means
rodent, etc…). It’s a fundamental aspect of all communication systems.

Phonetics
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Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of human speech, their
production, transmission, description, analysis, and their representation by written symbols.
It is distinguished by three subfields.

-> Articulatory phonetics: Subfield that studies how humans produce speech sounds via
the interaction of different physiological structures. Speech organs are two types, passive
(Which remain static and do not move.) and active (Organs that move, such as the tongue
and lower lip etc…)
-> Acoustic phonetics: The study of soundwaves made by the vocal organs for
communication. It focuses on the analysis and description of speech in terms of its physical
properties, such as frequency, intensity and duration.
-> Auditory phonetics: Branch concerned with the hearing of speech sounds and with
speech perception concerned with how speech sounds are heard and perceived by listeners.

The phonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds. The most
common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet such as the International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which was designed by the international phonetic association to
be used to represent the sounds of all human languages in accordance with a set of
common principles. It uses letters, roman alphabet and diacritics (Stress symbols…)

-> The broad transcription is concerned with transcribing the most noticeable phonetic
features of an utterance.
-> The narrow transcription, in contrast, encodes more information about phonetic
variations of the specific allophones in utterance. Allophones are the various phonetic
realizations of a phoneme in phonetics. Look for a better explanation below.

Phonetics 2: Consonants
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In the English language, there are 21 consonants. The consonants are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K,

L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z. They are generally analyzed according to three
parameters:

-> The place of articulation

-> The manner of articulation
-> The voicing

1- The place of articulation:

Bilabial: The two lips together, the upper and bottom lip. [p], [b], and [m]
Labiodental: The lower lip and upper teeth. [f] and [v]
Dental: The tip of the tongue and the upper teeth. [θ] and [ð]
Alveolar: Front portion of the tongue and alveolar ridge to constrict the vocal tract. (Right
behind the upper teeth.) [t], [d], [n], [l], and [s]
Palatal: Tongue body and hard palate. [j] < pronounced a “y” as in “Yes.”
Palato-alveolar: Tip of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge and the main body of the
tongue near the hard palate. [dʒ], [ʒ], [tʃ], and [ʃ]
Velar: Back part of the tongue against the soft palate. [k], [g] and [ŋ]
Glottal: Vocal cords held together then released. Sounds such as the glottal stop ⟨ʔ⟩ and the
voiceless counterpart of [h]

2- The manner of articulation:

Please note that the sounds should be between brackets or slashes, e.g [p] or /p/, but
because I’m lazy I didn’t add them.

Stop/Plosive: The most common. The air in lungs is briefly blocked from flowing out and
pressure builds up behind the blockage. It is then released with a puff. Sounds like p, t, k, b,
d and g.
If they are used at the beginning of a word, they are aspirated. The diacritic ‘h’ is used.
/thick/

Fricatives: Created by constricting the vocal tract, causing friction as the air passes through
it. Sounds like v, f, ð, θ, z, s, ʒ, ʃ, and h.

Affricates/Semi-plosives: They begin as a stop, and conclude with a fricative. The sounds
are dʒ, and tʃ.

Nasal: Lowered velum and a closure in the nasal cavity so that the air flows through the
nose to produce the sounds m, n and ŋ.

Glides/Semivowels: Phonetically similar to a vowel but functions as the syllable boundary,

rather than the nucleus of the syllable. y and w.

3- Voicing:

Consonants can be voiced or voiceless. Voiced consonants require the use of vocal cords,
voiceless consonants do not. In order to know whether a consonant is voiced or not, spell it
and check if your throat vibrates.

Voiceless: p, f, t, s, ʃ, tʃ, k, θ
Voiced: b, v, d, z, dʒ, g, ʒ, ð

Phonetics 3: Vowels (Not included in the exam)

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The vowels in the English language are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. They are described
and classified according to four parameters. These parameters will not be present in the
exam, so please skip this section. Diphthongs and triphthongs are present, however.
-> Close/Half-Open/Open
-> Front/Back
-> Rounded/Unrounded
-> Long/short
I- Close/Half-Open/Open
Open vowels are pronounced with lips wide apart, and sometimes the tongue is positioned
as far as possible.
Half-open, or mid-open or low-mid vowels are pronounced with the lips half-open.
Close vowels or high vowels are vowels that are pronounced with the tongue as close as
possible to the roof of the mouth.
II- Front/Back
Front vowels are produced with the tongue near the front of the mouth.
Back vowels are produced with the tongue in the back of the mouth or from the throat.
III- Rounded/Unrounded
Roundedness refers to the amount of the rounding of the lips when a vowel is pronounced.
E.g how circular is the form of the lips.
IV- Long/Short
Long and short vowels refer to the way a vowel is pronounced - a short pronunciation or a
long one. “Pig” is a short i and “League” is a long i.

DIPHTHONGS

TRIPHTHONGS
Communicative Competence
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1- Linguistics Competence: The unconscious knowledge of grammar to allow the speaker

to use and understand a language.
2- Socio-pragmatic Competence: The the appropriate usage and selection of language in
accordance with the context and the social conventions that govern communication. E.g
using the right language and wording in the right situation to avoid miscommunication.
3- Discourse Competence: The ability to arrange words, phrases and sentences to
structure a text that is appropriate within a particular genre. E.g how to start a conversation,
how to do an interview, a report, etc…
4- Strategic Competence: The knowledge of communication strategies used by
second-language speakers when they do not fully grasp the language to compensate for
their lack of knowledge, such as paraphrasing and body-language.

Phonology
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To differentiate;

Characteristics of Phonetics: All speech sounds, studies phones, limited scope,

articulation/production, transmission, reception, description, basis for phonological analysis,
not concerned with meaning individuality, identification, production of sounds regardless of
language, phonetic transcription. []
Characteristics of Phonology: Sounds of a particular language, studies phonemes,
broader scope, selection, organization, function, distribution, basis for further work in
morphology, syntax, and orthography, semantic function of sounds, analyzes the sound
pattern of a particular language, phonemic transcription. //
Phonetic transcription is narrow, includes diacritics and allophones and is described in
brackets. Phonemic is broad, and is the one we find in dictionaries, etc. and uses slashes.

Phonology 1: Phonemes & Minimal pairs

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A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word from another in a
particular language. Like “p” in “tap,” if you substitute it with another, the meaning changes.

A contrastive distribution is when a phoneme is replaced by another in a given word and

the meaning changes. That makes the phoneme contrasting.
A non-contrastive distribution is when a phoneme is replaced by another and the meaning
doesn’t change. In this case, the phoneme isn’t contrasting and the one that replaced it is
one of its allophones.

Minimal pairs are two words that differ in one sound. Example being “”big” and “pig”
Minimal sets are a set of words that differ in one sound. “Big” “dig” “pig” “fig” “gig”
 ● In order to decide whether or not a pair of words is a minimal pair, the following
conditions must be achieved:

-> Know what sounds make up the word.

-> Ignore the spelling of the word. “night, kite”
-> The two words must have different meanings.
-> Only one sound should be different.
-> Words must have the same number of sounds.
-> The sound that is different must be in the same place in both words.

Phonology 2: Allophones
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Allophones are the one or two variants of a phoneme in a single language. They are
different ways to pronounce a specific phoneme.
[p] is a phoneme. /ph/ is an allophone.

Allophones can be in a complementary distribution or free-variation distribution.

Complementary: Allophones can be complimentary when two or more sounds don’t occur
in the same phonetic environment. Example, “pen” and “stop.” The first sound is aspirated
while the second isn’t. The environment refers to the placement, initial or at the end. If you
switch them, e.g how you pronounce them, the meaning doesn’t change, but it’ll make you
look non-native and confuse others, a non-standard usage.

Free-variation: It gives the freedom of changing the allophones without changing meaning.
You can choose the way you want to pronounce the word without causing confusion. When
two or more sounds occur in the same environment but do not change meaning, the result
becomes a self-pronunciation.
Example: In Egypt, you can say “bepsi” or “pepsi” and you’ll still be understood. And, “either”
can be pronounced “iither” or “eyther” or “ayther”

Morphology: Morphemes & Tree Diagram

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Morphology is concerned with the structure of words and how they are combined together,
and also morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. They can be free or bound.
A free morpheme can be defined as:
-> A morpheme that has meaning, stands by itself and cannot be split.
-> It can be a function morpheme or a lexical (content) morpheme.
● Function morphemes are closed-class. That means that no new morphemes can
be added to their class, and there is a precise number of them. Function morphemes
are prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, articles…)
 ● Lexical morphemes refer to everyday words that have meaning by themselves and
cannot be split. Every day, new words are added to the English language, that’s why
they are open-class. (Verbs, words, adjectives, adverbs…)

A bound morpheme can be defined as:

-> A morpheme that has no meaning by itself and cannot stand alone. It is not attached to a
word.
-> All affixes are bound morphemes (prefixes or suffixes). They only make sense if they are
accompanied by root/item. (A root is a typical lexical morpheme)
-> They can be derivational or inflectional.
● A bound morpheme is considered derivational when it is used as an affix (prefix or
suffix) in a root word to create a different word, and the newly created word must
have its meaning and/or grammatical category different from the original word.
Example: Happy (Adjective) -> Happiness (Noun)
● A bound morpheme can also be inflectional. For starters, all inflectional
morphemes are suffixes. There are eight inflectional morphemes
-> Verbs: ed (past), ing (present participle), en (past participle), and s (third person singular)
-> Nouns: s (plural), and s (possessive noun)
-> Adjectives: er (comparative) and est (superlative)

“Er” can be both inflectional and derivational sometimes.

Tall -> Taller (Inflectional, no change in meaning.)
Drive -> Driver (Derivational, change in grammatical category.)

Morphological Tree Diagram

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The tree diagram serves to split a given word into its constituent morphemes. Unreasonably
is made out of 4 morphemes: Un, reason, able, ly. You are, sometimes, also asked to reveal
whether the morphemes are bound or free, and describe them further.
Morphology 2: Allomorphs
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An allomorph is a different form of the same morpheme. They differ at the level of
pronunciation, but they are semantically identical. Examples are the regular/irregular forms
of verbs and plurals of nouns.
Example: The plural morpheme [s] has at least 3 allomorphs.
● [s] as in hats - comes after voiceless consonant sounds
● [z] as in cars - comes after voiced consonant sounds
● [iz] or [əz] as in judges - comes after sibilants.
Sibilants are /s/ /z/ /ʃ/ /tʃ/ /ʒ/ and /dʒ/
As you can see, the pronunciation of the aforementioned allomorphs is rule-governed.

I- Types of allomorphs:

1-Additive: Typically by adding a suffix, such as the past tense morphemes to a verb. An
allomorph is considered additive if it's added to a word to signify a difference in meaning.

2- Replacive: When one letter is replaced only, an example is the past tense of irregular
verbs. Wake -> Woke

3- Suppletive: A partial or complete change of a word. Again, the past tense of some
irregular verbs, or some adjectives. Think -> Thought and Good -> Better

4- Zero/Null: No change in both pronunciation and spelling, single form is also plural.
Example: Money.

Similar to the plural [-s], the regular past tense morpheme [-ed] has three phonological
realizations. /d/ /t/ and /id/
● /d/ - voiced segments other than /d/.
 ● /t/ - voiceless consonants other than /t/.
● /id/ - after the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/.

Phonological Conditioning: An allomorph is said to be conditioned when its form is

dependent on the adjacent phonemes. The allomorphs of the plural marker /-s/ (The ones
above, /s/ /z/ and /iz/) and the past tense (-ed) are phonologically conditioned because their
occurrence depends on the preceding phoneme.

Morphological Conditioning: When the conditioning factor is not determined by any

phonological feature, but is determined by the specific morph to which it is attached. In pairs
such as “Man-men” and “child-children” which seem to contain the plural morpheme, we
cannot state the variation in terms of phonetic environment. Instead, we must refer to each
morpheme separately. These words don’t follow any specific rule, each one has to be learnt
separately.

Syntax
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Syntax refers to the structure of sentences. It also deals with grammatical ambiguity and
aims to clarify it through syntactic analysis of sentences by using tree diagrams.

The given sentence is first split into its constituent phrases, which are then split into their
constituent words and their functions are revealed.
Grammatical ambiguity is when a sentence has more than one meaning. (Usually, 2
meanings). It can be lexical, when one or two words cause ambiguity, or it can be
syntactic, when it's caused by a group of words. (Usually a phrase).

Abbreviations are used in the tree diagram. I hope they are self explanatory. Tree diagrams
are usually accompanied with “Phrase structure rules.”

The children put the toy in the box

S -> NP + VP
NP -> (Det) N
VP -> V (NP) + (PP)
NP -> (Det) N
PP -> P (NP)
NP -> (Det) N
The words that aren’t between parentheses are the heads of the phrase.

Semantics & Pragmatics

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Semantics is concerned with the direct meaning of words or expressions - it is superficial.

Pragmatics, on the other hand, takes the context into consideration - it is deep.

A denotative meaning refers to the lexical meaning of a word. A connotative meaning

refers to one of the many meanings a word can have, and these meanings can differ from
one culture to another. In the dictionary, we find the denotative meaning of words.

A syntagmatic relationship between words is horizontal. Words that have a syntagmatic

relationship can occur in the same sentence. An example is “A dog lay on the couch.”
A paradigmatic relationship between words is vertical. Words that have a paradigmatic
relationship do not occur in the same sentence. They replace each other. Examples are
antonyms, and, using the previous sentence as an example, “A cat lay on the couch.”

Synonymy: Synonyms. Words that have the same, or almost the exact same meaning are
considered synonymous. Examples: Happy, joyful, blissful, ecstatic.
Antonomy: Antonymes. The opposite of synonyms. Words that have opposite meanings are
considered antonymous. Examples: Happy, sad.
● Antonyms can be complementary. Absolutes, such as dead and alive. There’s no
in-between.
● Antonyms can be gradable. They have degrees, such as tall and short.
● They can be relational. They’re opposites that have a relation, such as husband and
wife.
Homonymes: Words that have the same pronunciation and the same spelling are called
homonymes. Examples: Play (Noun) and Play (Verb)
Hyponymy: Words that can be included in others. It’s a relationship where the meaning of
one of the words includes the meaning of others. Cat and Animal are hyponymes.
● Animal is considered a subordinate. Typically, the subordinate is an abstract term - it
doesn’t physically exist. A cat does, however, and it’s called the hyponyme.
Polysemy: A word that has multiple meanings that are closely related to one another. Foot
(Foot of the stairs) and Foot (A person’s foot) are polysemous. Polysemy is somewhat
difficult to understand and there are few examples you can think of off the back of your head.
Another example is: Buy - Get - Obtain - Acquire

The Principle of Compositionality: Sentences and phrases are compositional in the sense
that their meanings are basically determined by the meaning of their elements. The
exception is idioms.
Chomsky’s famous sentence: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a sentence
composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures as an example of a
sentence that is grammatically well-formed, but semantically nonsensical.

Some important definitions, points and stuff.

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Learning a native language is much easier than learning a second language due to the
continuous exposure, natural means of learning and subconscious absorption of information.
The ‘sensitive’ period which lasts about five years (Birth to 5 years old) is the period during
which a person can attain native-level skill in the language he is exposed to. It is also
impossible to have a native-like accent after puberty.

Co-switching is switching languages during speech. People who speak multiple languages
can effortlessly switch between them during a sentence without getting confused. This
proves that all languages are situated in one part of the brain, and we don’t ‘switch off’ a
language to speak another. “Mabghitch ngolik that I don’t like you”

True cognates/friends are words from two different languages that have the same
meaning.
False cognates/friends are words from two different languages that have different
meanings. An example is sensible in French and English. Sensible in French means
Sensitive in English, but Sensible in English means Raisonnable in French.

A pidgin is a language that has simple rules and that is created by merging two languages
of two speech communities. It’s basically a simplified form of a language spoken by two
communities who do not share a common language, and usually takes place in the borders
of countries.
A creole is a native language that develops after the merging and mixing of two languages.
Basically, if a group of people speak a pidgin language and give birth to children, those
children would be speaking a creole language. It’s a pidgin language that becomes their
native language.
A lingua-franca is a language that isn’t native the native to both speakers but they
communicate in it. If an English person meets a French person and they speak Arabic, the
latter would be the lingua-franca.

The broad function of language is communication and aesthetics (Express oneself

beautifully, such as with poetry and singing…)
More about the specific functions of language down below.

Language acquisition is the subconscious attainment of a language. Babies acquire

whatever language they are exposed to during the sensitive period.
Language learning is the conscious study that is done in order to learn a second language.
It is much harder than acquisition as it involves artificial environments, and non-continuous
exposure.

Onomatopoeia is when a word’s pronunciation imitates its sound. It is a word that

phonetically imitates or resembles the sound that it describes. Such as tick-tock and boom.

Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different meanings, whether they
have different pronunciation or not. An example is Bow (Weapon for shooting arrows) and
Bow (pronounced Baw, to bend down in respect)

Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings, spelling
or origins. An example is night and knight, to, too, and two…

Minimal pairs are two words that differ only by a single sound. Such as put and pot, pet and
pat…

Allophones are the one or two variants of a phoneme in a single language. They are
different ways to pronounce a specific phoneme.
/p/ is a phoneme. /ph/ is an allophone.

Simultaneous bilingualism is having 2 languages at a native level, which can be done

either early on during a child’s life (By exposing them to two languages) or later in life.
Forced bilingualism is the learning of another language through school.