Vietnam National University

University of Languages and International Studies

APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Presentation – Topic 2
Language & Linguistics and foreign language teaching

Class: PG38
Phạm Ngọc Việt Anh
Đỗ Anh Phượng
Trần Thị Tú Xang

TOPIC 2. LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

1. Definition of language and linguistics
- Definition of language:
+ Wikipedia: “A language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its
grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means of
communication of humans, and can be conveyed through speech (spoken language), sign, or
writing.”
+ Henry Sweet: "Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words.
Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering that of ideas into thoughts."
+ Samuel Johnson, in the preface to his dictionary, asserts that language is "the instrument of science
[knowledge]" and words are the signs of ideas."
+ Rodric: “Language is a form of communication that allows intercourse between multiple people that
is arbitrary (in words individually), generative (in word placement), and constantly evolving.”
- Definition of linguistics: linguistics is the scientific study of language
+ Western Michigan University: “Linguistics is often called "the science of language," the study of the
human capacity to communicate and organize thought using different tools (the vocal tract for
spoken languages, hands for sign languages, etc.) and involving different abstract and tactile
components.”
+ Linguistics is concerned with human language as a universal and recognizable part of human
behavior and of human abilities. Raja T. Nasr (1984).
+ Linguistics is competence as being a person's potential to speak a language and his or her linguistics
performance as the realization of that potential. Monica Crabtree & Joyce Powers (1994).

2. Phonetics and phonology

a. Phonetics
- Definition: the study of the sounds of language
- Types:
+ Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of sounds.
+ Auditory Phonetics is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds.
+ Articulatory Phonetics is the study of how the vocal tracts produce sounds.
- Modality (Essentials of Linguistics, 2nd edition)
An act of communication between two people typically begins with one person constructing
some intended message in their mind (step ❶ in Figure 3.1). This person can then give that message
physical reality through various movements and configurations of their body parts, called articulation
(step ❷). The physical linguistic signal (step ❸) can come in various forms, such as sound waves
(for spoken languages) or light waves (for signed languages). The linguistic signal is then received,
sensed, and processed by another person’s perception (step ❹), allowing them to reconstruct the
intended message (step ❺). The entire chain of physical reality, from articulation to perception, is
called the modality of the language.

- A consonant is a speech sound that is produced when the airstream is constricted or stopped (and
then released) at some place along its path before it escapes from the body. Consonants are classified
according to voicing, aspiration, nasal/oral sounds, places of articulation and manners of articulation.
 + Voicing is whether the vocal folds vibrate or not. The sound /s/ is called voiceless because
there is no vibration, and the sound /z/ is called voiced because the vocal folds do vibrate
(you can feel on your neck if there is vibration.)
+ Only three sounds in English have aspiration, the sounds /b/, /p/ and /t/. An extra puff of air is
pushed out when these sounds begin a word or stressed syllable. Hold a piece of paper close
to your mouth when saying the words pin and spin. You should notice extra air when you say
pin.
+ Nasal sounds are produced when the velum (the soft palate located in the back of the roof of
the mouth) is lowered and air is passed through the nose and mouth. Oral sounds are
produced when the velum is raised and air passes only through the mouth.
- Vowels are produced by a continuous airstream and all are voiced. They are classified according to
height of the tongue, part of tongue involved, and position of the lips. The tongue can be high, mid,
or low; and the part of the tongue used can be front, central, or back.
b. Phonology
- Definition: Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concerned with the production, audition,
and perception of speech sounds (called phones), phonology describes the way sounds function
within a given language and operates at the level of sound systems and abstract sound units
(phoneme). In English, all distinctive sounds are classified as phonemes.
- Example: the sound patterns /sɪn/ (sin) and /sɪŋ/ (sing) are two separate words that are distinguished
by the substitution of one phoneme, /n/, for another phoneme, /ŋ/. Two words like this that differ in
meaning through the contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair.

3. Morphology
a. What is morphology?
- According to Bauer (2012:7), “Morphology is about the structure of words, how word such as dislike are
made up of smaller meaningful elements such as dis and like”. As can be seen in this definition by Baeur,
this branch of linguistics is studying about the structure of words. Besides defining the structure of words,
morphology also studies elements that make meaning in certain words.
- According to Lieber (2009:2), “Morphology is the study of word formation, including the ways new words
are coined in the language of the world, and the way forms of words are varied depending on how they are
used in sentences”. It means that Morphology is the science that studies the word, a word that has innovation
when used in sentences.
- An expert in Linguistics named Hasplemath (2002:2), “Morphology is the study of systematic covariation
in the form and meaning of words”. By this meaning, it can be inferred that words have a system. This
system is connected to another system, or in the other words, each word is connected to another word. The
words are connected to other words and Morphology studies these connections.
b. Basic concepts
- Lexemes and word-forms
The most basic concept of morphology is the concept “word”. Basically, it is the smallest separable unit in
language, and that means it can stand on its own in an utterance. There are 3 different notions of “word”.
+ When a word is used in some text or in speech, that occurrence of the word is sometimes referred to as a
word token.
+ The other two senses of the term “word” are not defined in reference to particular texts; they correspond to
the “dictionary word” and the “concrete word”.
● A lexeme is a word in an abstract sense that has no phonological form of its own. In most languages,
dictionaries are organized according to lexemes, so it is usually reasonable to think of a lexeme as a
“dictionary word”. For instance, “live” is a verb lexeme. It represents the core meaning shared by
forms such as live, lives, lived and living.
● A word-form is a word in a concrete sense. It is a sequence of sounds that expresses the combination
of lexeme and a set of grammatical meanings appropriate to that lexeme. For example, the lexeme
“live” together with the grammatical meanings “third person, singular, present tense” yields the
word-form “lives”
- Morpheme
Morphology does not analyze words in terms of syllables but in terms of morphemes. It is the smallest
meaningful unit in a language. It can be divided into two types:
+ A free morpheme is one that can occur as a word on its own.
● Lexical morphemes: set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that carry the ‘content' of the
message we convey. This is an ‘open' class of morphemes because we can add new words to the
language easily
● Functional morphemes: consist of functional words in the language such as conjunctions,
prepositions, articles, and pronouns. This is a ‘closed' class of morphemes because we almost never
add new functional words to the language.
+ A bound morpheme can only occur in words if it’s accompanied by one or more other morphemes
● Derivational morphemes: make new words of a different grammatical category from a stem (the
combination of free morpheme and bound morpheme). For example, the noun “care” can be
changed to adjectives: careful, careless or adverb: carelessly
● Inflectional morphemes: indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word. There are 8
inflectional morphemes in English. They are all suffixes. Two inflectional morphemes can be
attached to nouns, -‘s (possessive case), -(e)s (plural). Four inflections can be attached to verbs, -(e)d
(past tense), -ing (present participle), -en (past participle), -s (3rd person singular). Two inflections
can be attached to adjectives, -er (comparative), -est (superlative).
- Affixes: they have to attach to the base (the morphemes -s, inter-, -al…). For example, consider the word
“librarian.” This word is formed by attaching the affix -ian to the base library. They can be characterized by
their position within the word. There are 4 types: prefix, suffix, circumfix, infix

● Prefix: attaches before its base, like inter- in “international”

● Suffix: follows its base, like -s in “cats”
● Circumfix: attaches around its base
● Infix: attaches inside its base
- Root: the smallest possible base, which cannot be divided, what we might think of as the core of a word.
“Library” in the previous example is a root.
c. Branches of morphology
- Inflection: the relationship between word-forms of a lexeme
+ Paradigm: the set of word-forms that belong to a lexeme
+ Inflectional morphology: expresses grammatical information appropriate to a word’s category
+ Inflection is defined by grammatical categories such as number (e.g., plural); tense (e.g., past); case
(accusative - the form of a noun, pronoun, or adjective that is used in some languages to show that the word
is the direct object of a verb); person (1st vs 2nd vs 3rd) and aspect
- Word-formation: the relationship between lexemes of a word family (a set of related lexemes)
+ Derivation: a lexeme can derive from another lexeme (the lexeme reader is derived from the lexeme read)
+ Compounding: some morphologically complex words belong to two or more word families
simultaneously (the lexeme firewood belongs both in the word family of fire and in the word family of
wood)

4. Syntax
a. Definition
The word “syntax” comes from the Ancient Greek for “coordination” or “ordering together”. In linguistics,
“syntax” refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses and
sentences. According to Miller (2002), syntax has to do with how words are put together to build phrases,
with how phrases are put together to build clauses or bigger phrases, and with how clauses are put together
to build sentences.
b. The role of syntax
Syntax skills help us understand how sentences work—the meanings behind word order, structure, and
punctuation
c. Essential rules of syntax in the English Language
- A complete sentence requires a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought.
- A separate ideas generally require separate sentences
- English word order follows the subject-verb-object sequence
- A dependent clause contains a subject and a verb
d. Syntactic patterns
- Subject - verb: The dog barked
This is the standard syntactic pattern, including the minimum requirements of just a subject and verb. The
subject always comes first.
- Subject - verb - direct object: The dog carried the ball
- Subject - verb - subject complement: The dog is playful
- Subject - verb - adverbial complement: The dog ate hungrily
- Subject - verb - indirect object - direct object: The dog gave me the ball
- Subject - verb - direct object - object complement: The dog made the ball dirty
- Subject - verb - direct object - adverbial complement: The dog perked its ears up
e. Sentence structures
- Simple: Includes the minimum requirements for a sentence, with just a single independent clause.
- Complex: An independent clause combined with one or more subordinate clauses.
- Compound: Two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon.
- Compound-complex: Two independent clauses combined with one or more subordinate clauses.
5. Semantics & pragmatics:
● Semantics:
- Semantics is the study of meaning within language → apply semantics to singular
words, phrases, sentences, or larger chunks of discourse.
- Semantics examines the relationship between words and how different people can draw different
meanings from those words.
For example, the word 'crash' can mean an accident, a drop in the stock market, or attending a party
without an invitation. How we derive meaning from the word is all in semantics!
- Two important terms that we associate with semantics: connotation and denotation. + Connotation
refers to all the possible meanings we associate with a word beyond the dictionary definition.
+ Denotation refers to the literal meaning of the word.
For example, the word 'blue' is a color (denotation) but can also be associated with feelings
of sadness (connotation).
- Two main categories of semantics: Lexical semantics and Phrasal semantics
+ Lexical semantics: The study of the individual meaning of words.
+ Phrasal semantics: Examines how smaller parts of discourse, i.e. words, combine to form the
meaning of larger linguistic expressions, i.e. sentences.
- Semantic Structure or internal meaning relationship:
+ Hyponymy: refers to the way language classifies its words on the principle of inclusiveness
e.g: male-female-baby; dog-bitch-puppy
+ Synonymy: refers to similarity or ‘sameness of meaning’
e.g: liberty-freedom; attempt-effort
+ Antonymy: implies oppositeness of meaning
e.g: big-small; old-young; wide-narrow
● Pragmatics:
- Pragmatics is the study of the meaning of language in social context.
Some Definition of Pragmatics:
Morris, 1938. Pragmatics concerns the relation of signs to their interpreters.
Thomas, 1995. Pragmatics is meaning in use or meaning in context.
Yule, 1996. The study of meaning as communicated by a speaker and interpreted by a listener.
- Pragmatics helps us look beyond the literal meaning of words and utterances and focuses on how
meaning is constructed in specific contexts.
- Pragmatics is rooted in philosophy, sociology, and anthropology.
- Pragmatics considers the construction of meaning through the use of context and signs such as body
language and tone of voice.
For example: You and your friend are sitting in your bedroom studying, and she says, “It's hot in
here. Can you crack open a window? "
If we take this literally, your friend is asking you to crack the window - to damage it. However, taken
in context, we can infer that they are actually asking for the window to be opened a little.
- The scope of pragmatics in linguistics:
Within the scope of pragmatics, the major terms that can be described are as follows: The Utterance
is described as the physical and clear unit of meaning that gives information in the contribution
through;
a) Words that are used,
b) Structure of the sentence,
c) Setting of the conversation within location where it is used,
d) Senses of the start in a particular context,
e) To use the gesture in order to convey the meaning

SPEECH ACTS: The use and the view of social interactionist about any language can be stated as;
linguistic phenomenon that is used within terms of speech acts. Speech acts that deals with the social
action, whenever the speaker has to say something to someone
3 types:
 1) Locutionary Acts: This type of speech act usually deals with the speaker when a certain reference
and sense is expressed by him
An Illocutionary Act: Here the speaker uses some per-formative verb to express the intentions within
the sentence. Example: I baptize his ship
3) Perlocutionary Acts: This type of act deals with the effect of an action that is from linguistic point
of view

POLITENESS: Politeness is a general aspect of the social behavior to a speaker towards different
wishes of the addressee in different concerns
+ Positive Face and Negative Face:
Positive face shows the wishes of the individual and it can be appreciated as well as respected by
others.
Negative face shows the wish that is not restricted in the set of choices to speakers
about social behavior.
+ Deixis: concerns the various types of pointing which is possible with language

● The key differences between semantics and pragmatics.

Semantics Pragmatics

The study of words and their meanings The study of words and their meanings
within language. within language placed within context.

Look at the literal meanings of words. Look at the intended meaning of words.

Limited to the relationship between Covers the relationships between words,

words. interlocutors (people engaged in the
conversation), and contexts.

6. The relationships between linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT)

● How linguistics guide language teaching or language pedagogy:
- A group of linguists including Bloomfield (1942) undertook to use the knowledge of linguistics to
analyze the language to be taught and the result proved to be satisfactory.
- Structural linguistics stressed the importance of language as a system and investigates the place that
linguistic units such as sounds, words,
● Contribution of linguistics to FLT:
- Different disciplines of Linguistics have influenced FL teaching in one way or another.
 - Concern about developing models of linguistic knowledge.
Search for linguistic properties.

● The influence of language teaching on linguistics:

- Language teaching has its feedback to linguistics and promotes the development of linguistics to
some extent.
In the 1970s, faced with the great ideological rifts between structuralism and transformational-
generative grammar, many language teachers and observers began to question the role of linguistics
in language pedagogy.
+ the demands of language teaching may run ahead of linguistic theories.
+ practical needs might stimulate the development of new linguistic theories.
- Language teaching to some extent puts linguistic theories forward.
- Linguistics and language teaching are interacting with each other, but this does not mean that they
are like acting force and reaction force in physics. Their mutual effects upon each other are not
equal. Rather, the effects of linguistics on language teaching are much heavier.

REFERENCE
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10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language