Introduction to Linguistics (ENG502) VU

Lesson-21
GRAMMAR II

Topic- 117: The Prescriptive Approach

It is one thing to adopt the grammatical labels (e.g., ‘noun,’ ‘verb’) to categorize words in English
sentences It is quite another thing to go on to claim that the structure of English sentences should be like
the structure of sentences in Latin. This was an approach taken by a number of influential grammarians,
mainly in eighteenth-century England, who set out rules for the ‘proper’ use of English. This view of
grammar as a set of rules for the ‘proper’ use of a language is still to be found today and may be best
characterized as the prescriptive approach.
 You must not split an infinitive.
 You need to immediately see him. Incorrect
 You need to see him immediately. Correct
 You must not end a sentence with a preposition.
 Who did you go with? Incorrect
 With whom did you go? Correct

The case of pronoun after comparative should be the nominative case for example,
 And Mary runs faster than me. Incorrect
 Mary runs faster than I. Correct
 Me and my family…. Incorrect
 My family and I…. Correct

In addition, in proper English writing, one should never begin a sentence with and! Similarly one cannot
split an infinite like the following is considered incorrect.
To boldly go

This is so because it follows the Latin rules imposed on English, whereas in Latin ire (‘to go’) is
one word, and ‘audacter’ (‘boldly’) is another. Besides, the Latin word for infinite ‘ire’ is single word and
cannot be split. English structures are different from those of Latin.

Topic- 118: The Descriptive Approach

Using a well-established grammatical description of Latin is a useful guide for some European
languages (e.g., Italian or Spanish), but is less useful for others (e.g., English). This last point became
clear to those linguists who were trying to describe the structure of the native languages of North America
toward the end of the nineteenth century. The categories and rules that were appropriate for Latin
grammar just did not seem to fit these languages. In twentieth century, a rather different approach was
adopted. The linguists took the samples of the language they were interested in and attempted to describe
the regular structures of the language. This is called the descriptive approach. A descriptive grammarian
would say that a sentence is ‘grammatical’ if a native speaker of the language would produce that

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sentence in speaking. So, all prescriptive or normative rules of Latin grammar were considered to be
applicable to English.

Topic- 119: Structural Analysis

One type of descriptive approach is called structural analysis and its main concern is to
investigate the distribution of forms in a language. The method involves the use of ‘test-frames’ that can
be sentences with empty slots in them. All the forms that fit in the same test-frame are the examples of the
same grammatical category. We can fill in the words like boy, girl or horse but not a pronoun like he, she,
it, in the following slot:
The ------------- drinks water.
---------- drinks water.

We can see that the pronouns fit in this second set of test-frames, and not in the first set (*The it
makes a lot of noise). In the older analysis, under the influence of Latin, pronouns were described as
‘words used in place of nouns’. We can now see that it is more accurate to say that pronouns are used in
place of noun phrases (not just nouns). By developing a set of test-frames of this type and discovering
which forms fit the slots in the test-frames, we can produce a description of aspects of the sentence
structures of a language.

Topic- 120: Constituent Analysis

Constituent analysis is an approach to describe language. It is designed to show how small

constituents (or components) in sentences go together to form larger constituents. One basic step is
determining how words go together to form phrases.

At word level
An old man brought a shotgun to the wedding.
How do they go together to form constituent at phrase level?
(An old) ( man brought) (brought a) ( shotgun to)( to the)
The phrase-like constituents here are combinations of the following types:
 an old man
 a shotgun
 the wedding

Topic- 121: Labeled and Bracketed Sentences

An alternative type of diagram is designed to show how the constituents in sentence structure can
be marked off by using labeled brackets.
Sentence are shown at the word level
[the] or [dog],
at the phrase level
[the dog] or [loved the girl],
and at the sentence level

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[The dog loved the girl].

We can then label each constituent using these abbreviated grammatical terms:
Art (= article) V (= verb) N (= noun) VP (= verb phrase) NP (= noun phrase) S (= sentence)
Constituent analysis is not only useful for describing the structure of English sentences, it helps us
understand each constituent at different levels.

Topic- 122: A Gaelic Sentence

Gaelic sentence is organised with the following structure:

V NP NP
It is different from English that has the following structure:
NP V NP
It may help us understand why a Spanish learner of English produces phrases like
*the book good
So, different languages have different structures.

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Lesson-22
SYNTAX I
Topic- 123: Introduction

The word ‘syntax’ comes originally from Greek and literally means ‘a putting together’ or
arrangement. There was an attempt to produce an accurate description of the sequence or ordering
‘arrangement’ of elements in the linear structure of the sentence. In the more recent attempts to analyze
syntactic structure, there has been a greater focus on the underlying rule system that we used to produce
or ‘generate’ sentences.

A prepositional phrase in English consists of a preposition followed by a noun phrase and a noun
phrase consists of an article and a noun. For example, ‘near London’ is a correct prepositional phrase as
London is a proper noun and does not need an article; on the other hand, ‘with dog’ is not a correct
prepositional phrase as ‘dog’ should have article ‘a’ with it. So, the correct prepositional phrase is ‘a dog’.

Another Goal of Syntactic Analysis

A small and finite (i.e., limited) set of rules that will be capable of producing a large and
potentially infinite (i.e., unlimited) number of well-formed structures. The small and finite set of rules is
sometimes described as a ‘generative grammar’ because it can be used to ‘generate’ or produce sentence
structures and not just describe them.

This type of grammar should also be capable of revealing the basis of two other phenomena:
How some superficially different sentences are closely related?
How some superficially similar sentences are in fact different?

Topic- 124: Generative Grammar

Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that regards grammar as a system of rules that
generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. The
generative school has focused on the study of syntax, but has also addressed other aspects of a language's
structure, including morphology and phonology. Early versions of Chomsky's theory were called
transformational grammar, which is still used as a general term that includes his subsequent theories.
Generativists have argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from a universal
grammar that is innate to the human brain, rather than being learned from the environment. Noam
Chomsky opposed the earlier theories of structuralism by rejecting the idea that each language is different
from the other.

The basic concept sets forth the rules to recognize grammatical sentences in a language. These
rules differentiate the correct structures from improper sequences of words or ungrammatical sentences in
the same language. The sentence is represented as a tree having branches denoting the subordinate and
superordinate elements rather than just a sequence of words. Generative grammar attempts to formalize
the implicit rules that a person uses while speaking his native language. The rules of generative grammar
may appear to be useful only in language studies.

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Topic- 125: Properties of Generative Grammar

Noam Chomsky has argued that many of the properties of a generative grammar arise from an
‘innate’ universal grammar, which is common to all languages. The grammar must generate all the well-
formed syntactic structures (i.e., sentences) of the language and fails to generate any ill-formed structures.
The grammar will have a finite (i.e., limited) number of rules but will be capable of generating an infinite
number of well-formed structures. The productivity of language would be captured within the grammar.
Rules of this grammar also need the crucial property of recursion. The grammar will have to capture the
fact that a sentence can have another sentence inside it. Grammar should also be capable of revealing the
basis of two other phenomena:
1. How some superficially distinct sentences are closely related?
Charlie broke the window.
The window was broken by Charlie.
2. How some superficially similar sentences are in fact distinct?
The king is easy to please.
The king is eager to please.

Topic- 126: Well-Formed Syntactic Structures

Well-formedness is the quality of a clause, word, or other linguistic element that conforms to the
grammar of the language of which it is a part. Well-formed words or phrases are grammatical, meaning
they obey all relevant rules of grammar. A form that violates some grammar rule is ill-formed and does
not constitute part of the language. A word may be phonologically well-formed. A word, phrase, clause,
or utterance may be grammatically well-formed. A semantically well-formed utterance or sentence is one
that is meaningful. Grammatical well-formedness and semantic well-formedness do not always coincide,
e.g., colorless green ideas sleep furiously. This sentence is grammatically correct but semantically
incorrect. Sometimes, native speakers of a language do not agree whether a particular word, phrase, or
clause is well-formed. The problem of well-formedness is a problem for generative linguistics.
Grammatic generator follows some universal patterns that should not vary among speakers.

Topic- 127: Finite Number of Rules

‘A small set of rules operating on a large but finite set of words generates an infinite number of
sentences.’ The problem with this definition is that it assumes a very bound and discrete view of all
elements: rules, lexical items, and sentences. Language is not organized in sentences and the difference
between words and rules is likely to be an artifact of dictionary making and grammar writing. Similarly,
there is no guarantee, that the actual number of possible sentences is infinite rather than just unimaginably
and practically inexhaustibly large (as was argued by Pullum and Scholtz in 2010). As a matter of
practical fact, the set of possible expressions in a given language may or may not be infinite; the actual set
of all expressions ever uttered is going to be finite.

The set of expressions actually produced by humans (or even machines) is going to be too large
to enumerate practically by current (and possibly any) technology but it is going to be finite. Therefore, it
really does not matter whether language is infinite or not. The thing that matters is that any language is

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going to allow a set of expressions that is sufficiently large for any purpose a human language can be put
toward.

Topic- 128: Recursion

The Crucial Property of Recursion

Recursive (‘repeatable any number of times’) rules have the capacity to be applied more than
once in generating a structure. For example,
The gun was on the table.
The above sentence has one prepositional phrase describing location i.e., ‘on the table’.
We can also add ‘near the window’ and ‘in the bedroom’ in this sentence. Then it will be
The gun was on the table near the window in the bedroom.
Sentences are put inside other sentences e.g., ‘Mary helped George.’ can become ‘Cathy knew
that Mary helped George.’ In addition, two sentences can be generated inside another sentence such as:
John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George.

Principally, there is no end to recursion. Grammar will have to capture the facts that:
 A sentence can have another sentence inside it.
 A phrase can be repeated as often as required.
 Recursion is a feature of grammar.
 It is an essential part of a theory of cosmic structure.

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Lesson-23
SYNTAX II

Topic- 129: Surface Structure

In transformational and generative grammar, surface structure is the outward form of a sentence.
Surface structures are derived from deep structures by a series of transformations. Deep and surface
structures are often used as terms in a simple binary opposition, with the deep structure representing
meaning, and the surface structure being the actual sentence we see. The final stage in the syntactic
representation of a sentence provides the input to the phonological component of grammar. It corresponds
to the structure of the sentence we articulate and hear.
 Charlie broke the window.
 The window was broken by Charlie.
The distinction between them is a difference in their surface structure. The grammar must be capable of
showing how a single underlying abstract representation can become different surface structures.

Topic- 130: Deep Structure

 Charlie broke the window.

 The window was broken by Charlie.

The distinction between them is a difference in their surface structure. This superficial difference
in form disguises the fact that the two sentences are very closely related, even identical, at some less
superficial level. The ‘underlying’ level, where the basic components (Noun Phrase +Verb +Noun Phrase)
shared by the two sentences can be represented, is called their ‘deep structure’. The deep structure is an
abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining structural interpretation are
represented. That same deep structure can be the source of many other surface structures such as:

It was Charlie who broke the window.

The grammar must be capable of showing how a single underlying abstract representation can become
different surface structures.

Topic- 131: Structural Ambiguity

Observe the following two distinct deep structures:

 ‘Annie had an umbrella and she bumped into a man with it.’
 ‘Annie bumped into a man and the man happened to be carrying an umbrella.’
These two different versions of events can actually be expressed in the same surface structure form:
Annie bumped into a man with an umbrella. This sentence provides an example of structural ambiguity.
It has two distinct underlying interpretations that have to be represented differently in deep structure.

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Phrases can also be structurally ambiguous.

 ‘small boys and girls’
can be
 ‘small boys and (small) girls’
 ‘small boys and (all) girls.’
Our syntactic analysis will have to be capable of showing the structural distinction between these
underlying representations.

Topic- 132: Symbols Used in Syntactic Description

While describing syntactical categories some symbols are used as abbreviations for syntactic categories.
 ‘S’ (= sentence),
 ‘NP’ (= noun phrase), ‘N’ (= noun),
 ‘Art’ (= article),
 ‘V’ (= verb) and
 ‘VP’ (= verb phrase)
 ‘PP’ (= prepositional phrase),
Three more symbols that are commonly used in syntactic description are the following:
First: an arrow → typically used in the following type of rule:
NP → Art N The dog (→) an article (Art) the and a noun (N) dog
Second: a pair of round brackets ()
‘the dog’ and ‘the small dog’ (NP)
NP → Art (Adj) N

The above shorthand notation expresses the idea that a noun phrase rewrites as (→) an article (Art) and a
noun (N), with the option of including an adjective (Adj.) in a specific position between them.
Third:
Curly brackets {}

These indicate that only one of the elements enclosed within the curly brackets must be selected.
The list of common symbols and abbreviations is summarized here.
 S sentence
 NP noun phrase
 PN proper noun
 N noun
 VP verb phrase
 Adv. adverb
 V verb
 Adj. adjective
 Prep preposition
 Art article
 Pro pronoun
 PP prepositional phrase

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 ungrammatical sentence
 → consists of / rewrites as
 () optional constituent
 {} one and only one of these constituents must be selected.

Topic- 133: Labelled Tree Diagrams

The most common way to create a visual representation of syntactic structures is through tree
diagrams. We can use the symbols introduced (Art=article, N = noun, NP = noun phrase) to label parts of
the tree as we try to capture the hierarchical organization of those parts in the underlying structure of
phrases and sentences. At the top of the tree diagram, we begin with a sentence (S), and divide it into two
constituents (NP and VP). In turn, the NP constituent is divided into two other constituents (Art and N)
and VP into V and NP.

At the top of the tree diagram, we begin with a sentence (S) and divide it into two constituents
(NP and VP). In turn, the NP constituent is divided into two other constituents (Art and N).

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Lesson-24
SYNTAX III (RULES OF SYNTACTIC DESCRIPTION)

Topic- 134: Phrase Structure Rules

These are the rules that form phrases of different types e.g., noun phrase, verb phrase, and
adjective phrase etc. A tree diagram can have two different ways: simply as a static representation of the
structure of the sentence shown at the bottom of the tree diagram. Every single sentence can have a tree
diagram. The other one is the dynamic format which is a way of generating not only that particular
sentence, but a very large number of other sentences with similar structures. This second approach is very
appealing because it would enable us to generate a very large number of sentences with what looks like a
very small number of rules. These rules are called phrase structure rules.

These rules state that the structure of a phrase of a specific type will consist of one or more
constituents in a particular order. Phrase structure rules present the information of the tree diagram in
another format.
 S → NP VP
 NP → {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
 VP → V NP (PP) (Adv)
 PP → Prep NP

Topic- 135: Lexical Rules

Phrase structure rules generate structures. To turn those structures into recognizable English, we
also need lexical rules. They specify which words can we rewrite constituents such as N. The first rule in
the following set states that ‘a proper noun rewrites as Mary or George’.
 PN → {Mary, George}
 N → {girl, dog, boy}
 Art → {a, the}
 Pro → {it, you}
 V → {followed, helped, saw}

These rules generate the grammatical sentences:

1) A dog followed the boy.

2) Mary helped George.
3) George saw the dog
4) The boy helped you
5) It followed Mary.
6) You saw it.

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But the ungrammatical sentences lack the rules like:

Dog followed boy.
The helped you boy.
George Mary dog.
Helped George the dog.
You it saw.
Mary George helped.

As a way of visualizing how the phrase structure rules form the basis of these sentences, we can draw the
tree diagrams for sentences (1) and (6).

The same PS rules can be shown on tree diagram.

Topic- 136: Back to Recursion

The simple phrase structure rules listed earlier have no recursive elements. Each time we start to
create an S, we only create a single S (sentence structure). We actually need to be able to include sentence
structures within other sentence structures. In traditional grammar, these ‘sentence structures’ were
described as ‘clauses’.
 Mary helped George.
 Cathy knew that [Mary helped George].
Being tediously recursive, there are repeatable elements in these sentences:
 John believed that [Cathy knew that [Mary helped George]].
Two new proper nouns and two new verbs have been used.
 PN → {John, Cathy}
 V → {believed, knew}.
The word ‘that’ introduces a complement phrase as;
 Mary helped George.
 Cathy knew that Mary helped George.
 John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped George.

Topic- 137: Transformational Rules

Transformational rules (T-Rules) relate the spoken form of the sentence (surface structure) to their
underlying meaning (deep structure), for example,

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 Linguists often use large words.

 Large words are often used by linguists.

These set contain s synonymous sentence. As the forms are different their phrase marker would
be different. Surface structure refers to the actual utterance that can be broken down by traditional
analysis. Different surface structure may have the same deep structure or vice versa.
Some Types of Transformations

Deletion: A sentence that undergoes the transformation must have the same meaning as the sentence from
which it was derived.

Imperative transformation: Transformation never changes meaning. The meaning remains same, e.g.,
You come home
Come home.

Insertion transformation

He knew she was here.

He knew that she was here.
He won the race is history.
That he won the race is history.

Substitution transformation

Pronoun substitution
Pronominalization Transformation
Tony thought that Tony was the best.
Tony thought that he was the best.

Topic- 138: Particle Movement

Particle movement takes place in a construction which is made up of a verb and a particle (e.g.,
‘look up the number’). The relocation of the particle to the right of the noun phrase that serves as the
object (e.g., ‘look the number up’) is an example of particle movement. .
The boy passed out the candy.
The boy passed the candy out.
Linguists often use large words.
Large words are often used by linguists.

However, movement is not always possible.

Please go over your homework tonight.
pl go your homework over tonight.

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Particle movement is optional in Subject-verb-direct object

Mary put out the fire.
However, in certain structures it is obligatory movement when the direct object is a personal pronoun.
*Mary put out it.
Mary put it out.

Demonstrative Pronoun

Pick that out.

Throw this out.

Obligatory Movement with Reflexes as Objects

 Jane let herself out.

 The thief turned himself over to the police.
 I dried myself off.
 Mary put the fire out.
 ‘Out’ does not indicate lactation.
 Tom /turned off/ the ignition.
 Tom turned the ignition off.
 Tom/ turned/ off the road.

Adverb of Manner

Mother hung up the clothes quickly.

*Mother hung quickly up the clothes.
Particles in S-V-O are the particles with which particle movement may occur.

Topic- 139: IC analysis

Immediate constituent analysis or IC analysis is a method of sentence analysis that was first
mentioned by Leonard Bloomfield and developed further by Rulon Wells. The principle of IC analysis is
to cut a sentence into two and then to cut those parts into two and to continue with the segmentation until
the smallest indivisible unit, the morphemes are reached. As a general principle the division is binary.

The young man followed a girl.

The young man +followed a girl.
Followed + a girl
a+ girl
The young man = the +young man
Young+ man
Follow+ed
The   young   man  follow   ed  a  girl .
((The (((young) ( man))) (( followed) (( a) (girl))).

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How do we know where to make a cut? The answer is in expansion.

Expansion: Expansion is a technical term, the substitution of one sequence of elements for another. A
sequence of element said to be the expansion of another.
 Children
 American children
 Three American children
 Three American children with a dog
 Those three American children with a dog
However, it is not always easy to have a binary cut as in some case it is difficult to justified
 Egyptian cotton shirt
 Egyptian + cotton shirt
 Egyptian cotton + shirt

IC analyses have certain flaws. Firstly, it does not indicate what kind of elements those
constituent parts are; it does not even identify except implication. Secondly, it does not show clearly that
noun phrases are built on nouns, verb phrases on verbs, etc. Thirdly, IC analysis does not tell us how to
form new sentences, i.e., to produce sentences that have not already been attested in some corpus of data.

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Lesson-25
SEMANTICS I
Topic- 140: Definition

The word semantics comes from Greece word sema (noun) which means ‘symbol’ or ‘sign’. The
verb is Semaino which means ‘signify’. The symbol of the synonymy of sema is a linguistic sign.
Saussure (1996) states that linguistic sign consists of the signifier, component, in sort of sounds and the
signified, the referent outside of language. Semantics is a term which is used in linguistics, which studies
the relation between linguistic sign and signified thing. In other words, semantics is a branch of
linguistics, which studies about the meaning.

Halliday (1985) states that the term “semantics” does not simply refers to the meaning of words;
it is the entire system of meanings of a language, expressed by grammar as well as by vocabulary.
Semantics brings in symbols use in the language and outside the language, but its primary concern is
human language. In semantics, one is trying to make explicit meanings, i.e., in which manner words and
sentences of various grammatical constructions are used and understood by native speakers of that
language.

Topic- 141: Types of Meaning

 Semantics is the study of meaning in language. There is more interest in certain aspects of
meaning than in others. There are different types of meanings. We can have the following types
of meaning:
 Lexical meaning refers to the meaning of words that belong to one of the four lexical word
classes. It is the aspect of meaning usually given in a dictionary.
 Grammatical meaning includes the meaning of grammatical items (e.g., function words and
inflectional affixes), grammatical functions (e.g., subject and object), and different sentence-types
(e.g., declarative and interrogative).
 Taking into account certain non-linguistic aspects of meaning, Geoffrey Leech (1981) lists seven
different types of meaning.
 Referential meaning (also called denotative meaning, descriptive meaning, conceptual meaning,
or sense) refers to the logical, cognitive, or denotative content of an expression.
 Connotative meaning (associative meaning) denotes the associations and secondary meanings
the expression evokes.
 Social meaning (stylistic meaning) is the information that the linguistic expression conveys about
certain social characteristics.
 Emotive or affective component of the expression is referred to as its affective meaning. Social
meaning and affective meaning together are sometimes called connotation.
 Reflected meaning refers to certain associations with another sense of the same expression,
whereas collocative meaning (collocation) is conveyed by characteristic word combinations.
 Thematic meaning denotes the organization of a message in terms of information structure.

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Topic- 142: Conceptual or Denotative Meaning

Conceptual meaning or denotative meaning covers those basic, essential components of meaning
that are conveyed by the literal use of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to
describe. Some of the basic components of a word like ‘needle’ in English might include “thin, sharp,
steel instrument.” These components would be part of the conceptual meaning of needle. However,
different people might have different associations or connotations attached to a word like needle. They
might associate it with “pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or “drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to
find” (especially in a haystack), and these associations may differ from one person to the next. These
types of associations are not treated as part of the word’s conceptual meaning. In a similar way, some
people may associate the expression low-calorie, when used to describe a product, with “healthy,” but this
is not part of the basic conceptual meaning of the expression (i.e., “producing a small amount of heat or
energy”). Poets, song-writers, novelists, literary critics, advertisers and lovers may all be interested in
how words can evoke certain aspects of associative meaning, but in linguistic semantics we’re more
concerned with trying to analyze the conceptual meaning.

Topic- 143: Associative or Connotative Meaning

Connotative meaning is what people think about two words and find whether it is possible or
impossible for the word to have two different meanings from its denotative meaning. Based on it, the
meaning depends on personal interpretation. Sometimes, people have the same or different thought.
Sometimes when a word has both positive and negative sense value, the word is called a connotative
meaning word. It is also pointed out that connotation meaning is subjective, in notion that there is a shift
from common meaning because it has been added by sense and certain value, for example, bookworm is
used for a person who always read books, with a negative sense.

Connotative meaning is the communicative value that an expression has, by virtue of what it
refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. It can vary from age to age, from society to
society, and from individual to individual.

Topic- 144: Prepositional Meaning

Propositional meaning is the type of meaning that comes from the context within which the
sentence is used. Another distinction that has been made is called 'linguistic meaning' which is different
from a proposition, and does not carry truth-value. E.g., Mary loves Carl’ means the same as ‘Mary ama
Carl.’

The Spanish speaker then fully understands the linguistic meaning of ‘Mary loves Carl’ but
without needing to know any proposition, any truth or falsehood, which the English sentence has ever
expressed. The linguistic meaning of a declarative sentence is distinct from the proposition expressed by
the sentence on some occasion of the sentence’s use.

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Propositions are statements about the world which can be true or false. They form the basis of
human reasoning and determine our views, selfhood, and actions. In linguistic behaviour, propositions
emerge in complete sentences (or clauses). It is the full sentence, in a context, that forms a proposition.
“A jeep crashed into a barrier” establishes a topic/subject (“a jeep”) and makes a conceptually verifiable
statement about it. Sarah realizes that a jeep crashed into a barrier.” “Sarah thinks that a jeep crashed into
a barrier.”

Each of these sentences contains an embedded clause, e.g., “[Sarah realizes [that a jeep crashed
into a barrier]]” The embedded content is dependent on the verb in the superordinate clause. Mental state
verbs can be categorized as factive (e.g., ‘realize’, ‘regret’, and ‘know’) or non-factive (e.g., ‘believe’,
‘think’, and ‘assume’). For a factive sentence such as ‘Sarah realizes that a jeep crashed into a barrier’ to
be true, the jeep must have crashed into a barrier and Sarah must be certain about it. For the non-factive
sentence, ‘Sarah thinks that a jeep crashed into the barrier’ to be true, It does not actually matter whether
the accident happened. Only Sarah’s representation of the world is important. Propositional meaning is
the type of meaning that comes from the context within which the sentence is used independent of the
context.

Topic- 145: The Prosodic Meaning

Prosody is the study of the tune and rhythm of speech, and the way these features contribute to
meaning. Prosody features apply to a level above that of the individual phoneme and very often to
sequences of words. Speech contains various levels of information that can be described as;
 Linguistic - direct expression of meaning
 Paralinguistic - may indicate attitude or membership of a speech community
 Non-linguistic - may indicate something about a speaker's vocal physiology, state of health or
emotional state.

In linguistics, prosody is concerned with properties of syllables and larger units of speech. These
contribute to linguistic functions such as intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm. Prosody may reflect various
features of the speaker or the utterance: The emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance
(statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus or
other elements of language that may not be encoded by grammar or by the choice of vocabulary.

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Lesson-26
SEMANTICS II (SEMANTIC FEATURES and SEMANTIC ROLES)

Topic- 146: Semantic Features

One way in which the study of basic conceptual meaning might be helpful would be as a means
of accounting for the ‘oddness’ we experience when we read sentences such as the following:
 The hamburger ate the boy.
 The table listens to the radio.
 The horse is reading the newspaper.

The oddness is not due to syntactic structure

The hamburger ate the boy.
NP VP NP
The boy ate the hamburger

The components of the conceptual meaning of the noun hamburger must be significantly different
from those of the noun boy. The kind of noun that can be the subject of the verb ate must denote an entity
that is capable of ‘eating’. The noun hamburger does not have this property and the noun boy does. The
crucial element or feature of meaning that any noun must have in order to be used as the subject of the
verb ate. Such an element may be as general as ‘animate being’.

Particular feature
Having (+) or not having (−)
The noun boy has is ‘+animate’ (= denotes an animate being) and the feature that the noun hamburger has
is ‘−animate’ (= does not denote an animate being).

The N [+human] is reading the newspaper.

This approach would give us the ability to predict which nouns make this sentence semantically
odd. Part of the problem seems to be that the approach involves a view of words in a language as some
sort of ‘containers’ that carry meaning components. There is clearly more to the meaning of words than
these basic types of features.

Topic- 147: Semantic Roles

A semantic role is the underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a
clause. Semantic role is the actual role a participant plays in some real or imagined situation, apart from
the linguistic encoding of those situations. Semantic roles are used to indicate the role played by each
entity in a sentence and are ranging from very specific to very general. If the situation is a simple event,
as in ‘The boy kicked the ball’, then the verb describes an action (kick). The noun phrases in the sentence
describe the roles of entities, such as people and things, involved in the action. We can identify a small

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number of semantic roles (also called ‘thematic roles’) for these noun phrases. The major drawbacks of
the semantic role approach are; there is no agreement about which and how many roles are needed.

Topic- 148: Agent

Agent is the semantic role of a person or thing who is the doer of an event. An agent is usually the
grammatical subject of the verb in an active clause. A prototypical agent is conscious, acts with volition
(on purpose), and performs an action that has a physical, visible effect.
 The boy ran down the street.
 He was chased by the dog.

Although we have changed an active clause into a passive one, and the boy is now the subject,
nothing has changed in the real world. Although agents are typically human (The boy), they can also be
non-human entities that cause actions, as in noun phrases denoting a natural force
(The wind), a machine (A car), or a creature (The dog), all of which affect the ball as theme.
 The boy kicked the ball.
 The wind blew the ball away.
 A car ran over the ball.
 The dog caught the ball.
Semantic roles indicate the parts played by participants in ‘a state of affairs’ or ‘a situation’.

Topic- 149: Theme

Another role is taken by the ball as ‘the entity that is involved in or affected by the action’, which
is called the theme (or sometimes the ‘patient’). The theme can also be an entity (The ball) that is simply
being described (i.e., not performing an action), as in
 The ball was red.
The theme is typically non-human, but can be human (the boy), as in the dog chased the boy.
 The boy kicked the ball.
 The wind blew the ball away.
 A car ran over the ball.
The same physical entity can appear in two different semantic roles in a sentence, as in
The boy cut himself. The boy is agent and himself is theme. The theme may also be called ‘patient’ or
‘undergoer’.

Topic- 150: Instrument

If an agent uses another entity in order to perform an action, that other entity fills the role of
instrument.
 The boy cut the rope with an old razor.
 He drew the picture with a crayon.
In these examples with an old razor and with a crayon are ‘instrument’ with which the agent performed
the action.

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Topic- 151: Experiencer, Location, Source and Goal

Experiencer
Experiencer is the semantic role of an entity (or referent) which receives, accepts, experiences, or
undergoes the effect of an action.
We see something.
We know something.
We enjoy something.
No action is being performed by agents.
The boy feels sad.
The experiencer (The boy) is the only semantic role.
Did you hear that noise?
The experiencer is you and the theme is that noise.

Location: A number of other semantic roles designate where an entity is in the description of an event
where an entity is (on the table, in the room) fills the role of location.

Source: Where the entity moves from is the source (from Chicago)

Goal: Where it moves to, is the goal (to New Lahore),

 We drove from Chicago to New Lahore.
 We transfer money from savings to checking.
The source is savings. The goal is checking.

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Lesson-27
SEMANTICS III (LEXICAL RELATIONS)

Topic- 152: Synonymy

 What was his answer?

 What was his reply?

Two or more words with very closely related meanings are called synonyms. They can often, though not
always, be substituted for each other in sentences. Other common examples of synonyms are the pairs:
 almost/nearly, big/large,
 broad/wide, buy/purchase,
 cab/taxi, car/automobile, couch/sofa,
 freedom/ liberty.

The idea of ‘sameness’ of meaning used in discussing synonymy is not necessarily ‘total sameness’.
 Sandy had only one answer correct on the test.
Here the word reply would sound odd. Synonymous forms may also differ in terms of formal versus
informal uses.
 My father purchased a large automobile.
 My dad bought a big car.
The second version sounds much more casual or informal than the first.

Topic- 153: Antonymy

Antonymy refers to the pair-wise relation of lexical items in context that are understood to be
semantically opposite (as discussed below).
 Alive/dead
 Big/small
 Fast/slow
 Happy/sad
 Hot/cold
 Long/short
 Male/ female
 Married/single
 Old/new,
 Rich/poor
Two forms with opposite meanings are called antonyms.
 Two main types, ‘Gradable’ (opposites along a scale)
 ‘Non-gradable’ (direct opposites).
Gradable antonyms are like the following pair:
big/ small,

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They can be used in comparative constructions like:

 I’m bigger than you.
 A pony is smaller than a horse.
The negative of one member of a gradable pair does not necessarily imply the other.
For example, the sentence ‘My car is not old’ does not necessarily mean ‘My car is new’.

Non-gradable antonyms (also called “complementary pairs”), in these comparative constructions are not
normally used.
 Someone as deader
 More dead than another.
The negative of one member of a non-gradable pair does imply the other member.
 My grandparents are not alive.
 My grandparents are dead.
Other non-gradable antonyms in the earlier list are the pairs: male/female, married/single and true/false.

We usually avoid describing one member of an antonymous pair as the negative of the other.
They are reversives. Undress can be treated as the opposite of dress; it doesn’t mean ‘not dress’. It
actually means ‘the reverse of dress’. Other common examples are enter/exit, pack/unpack,
lengthen/shorten, raise/lower, tie/untie etc.

Topic- 154: Hyponymy

 Animal/dog
 Dog/poodle
 Vegetable/ carrot
 flower/rose
 Tree/banyan
The meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another, the relationship is hyponymy.
 rose is a hyponym of flower

In hyponymous connections, we are essentially looking at the meaning of words in some type of
hierarchical relationship.
Superordinate (= higher-level)

Two or more words that share the same superordinate term are co-hyponyms. Co-hyponymy
captures the concept of ‘is a kind of’, as ‘an asp is a kind of snake’.It is not only words for “things” that
are hyponyms. Words such as; punch shoot and stab, describing ‘actions’, can all be treated as co-
hyponyms of the superordinate term injure.

Topic- 155: Prototypes

 Canary, cormorant,
 Dove, duck
 Flamingo, parrot

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 Pelican, robin
All birds are equally co-hyponyms of the superordinate bird. The most characteristic instance of
the category ‘bird’ is robin. The idea of ‘the characteristic instance’ of a category is known as the
prototype. The concept of a prototype helps explain the meaning of certain words, like bird, not in terms
of component features (e.g., ‘has feathers’, ‘has wings’), but in terms of resemblance to the clearest
example. Ostrich or penguin should be hyponyms of bird (technically they are), but have no trouble
deciding about sparrow or pigeon.

Category labels

Furniture: chair is a better example than bench or stool.

Clothing: people recognize shirts quicker than shoes.
Vegetable: they accept carrot before potato or tomato.

There is some general pattern to the categorization process involved in prototypes and that it determines
our interpretation of word meaning. Individual experience can lead to substantial variation in
interpretation:
Avocado or tomato as fruit or vegetable.
They may be co-hyponyms of both fruit and vegetable in different contexts.

Topic- 156: Homophony, Homonymy and Polysemy

Two or more different (written) forms have the same pronunciation, are described as homophones:
 bare/bear,
 meat/meet,
 flour/ flower,
 pail/pale,
 right/write,
 sew/so
 to/too/two.

Homonyms

One form (written or spoken) has two or more unrelated meanings. They have separate histories and
meanings. But they have exactly the same form.
 bank (of a river)
 bank (financial institution)
 bat (flying creature) bat (used in sports)
 mole (on skin)
 mole (small animal)
 pupil (at school)
 pupil (in the eye)
 race (contest of speed) race (ethnic group)

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Polysemy: Polysemy is an interesting phenomenon that concerns cases in which a word or phrase enjoys
multiple, related meanings.
 head the object on top of body,
 froth on top of a glass of beer,
 person at the top of a company or department
 foot (of person, of bed, of mountain)
 run (person does, water does, colors do)

Homonymy or Polysemy?

Polysemy is the phenomenon whereby a single word form is associated with two or several
related senses: face, foot, get, head and run are some examples of polysemy
Homonymy is characterized as the phenomenon where a single word form is associated with two or
several unrelated meanings, for examples, bank, mail, mole and sole, etc.

Two forms may be distinguished via homonymy and for one of the forms also to have various uses via
polysemy.The words date (a thing we can eat) and dates (a point in time) are homonyms. The ‘point in
time’ kind of date is polysemous in terms of a particular day and month (on a letter), an arranged meeting
time (an appointment), a social meeting (with someone we like), and even a person (that person we like).

Topic- 157: Metonymy

Metonymy is another type of relationship between words based simply on a close connection in everyday
experience.
 A container–contents relation (bottle/water, can/juice)
 A whole–part relation (car/wheels, house/roof).
 A representative–symbol relationship (king/crow.
 The President/the White House).

Using one of these words to refer to the other is metonymy.

 He had the whole can.
 We also accept the White House has announced …
 Downing Street protested...
 Filling up the car,
 Answering the door,
 Boiling a kettle,
 Giving someone a hand,
 Needing some wheels

Metonymy meanings are highly conventionalized and easy to interpret. However, making sense
of such expressions often depends on context, background knowledge and inference.
The strings are too quiet (music etc.).
I prefer cable (regarding TV channels).

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Lesson-28
PRAGMATICS I

Topic- 158: Definition

Introduction

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context. This branch of linguistics is concerned with the
relationship of sentences to the environment in which they occur is categorized. The communication
depends on not only recognizing the meaning of the words in an utterance, but also to interpret what
speakers mean to say. The study of what speakers mean is called pragmatics.

Topic- 159: Invisible Meaning

Pragmatics is the study of “invisible” meaning, or how we recognize what is meant even when it
isn’t actually said or written. A lot of shared assumptions and expectations exist when people try to
communicate.
HEAT
ED
ATTEN
DANT
PARKI
NG

We can park a car in this place, that it’s a heated area, and that there will be an attendant to look
after the car. Our interpretation of the ‘meaning’ of the sign is not based solely on the words, but on what
we think the writer intended to communicate. We are actively involved in creating an interpretation of
what we read and hear.

Topic- 160: No Text Without Context

There are some very common words in our language that cannot be interpreted at all if we do not
know the context, especially the physical context of the speaker. These are words such as here and there,
this or that, now and then, yesterday, today or tomorrow, as well as pronouns such as you, me, her, him,
it, and them. Some sentences of English are virtually impossible to understand if we do not know who is
speaking, about whom, where and when. Look at the following sentence:
You’ll have to bring it back tomorrow because she isn’t here today.

It contains a large number of expressions (you, it, tomorrow, she, here, today) that rely on
knowledge of the immediate physical context for their interpretation (i.e., that the delivery driver will
have to return on February 15 to 660 College Drive with the long box labeled ‘flowers, handle with care’
addressed to Ms. Ruby). Expressions such as tomorrow and here are obvious examples of bits of language
that we can only understand in terms of the speaker’s intended meaning.

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Topic- 161: Linguistic Context

There are different kinds of context. One kind is described as linguistic context, also known as
co-text. The co-text of a word is the set of other words used in the same phrase or sentence. The
surrounding co-text has a strong effect on what we think the word probably means. We identified the
word ‘bank’ as a homonym, a single form with more than one meaning; how do we usually know which
meaning is intended in a particular sentence?

We normally interpret on the basis of linguistic context. If the word bank is used in a sentence
together with words like steep or overgrown, we have no problem deciding which type of bank is meant.
Or, if we hear someone say that she has to get to the bank to withdraw some cash, we know from this
linguistic context which type of bank is intended.

Topic- 162: Physical Context

The physical context is the location of the given word, the situation in which it is used, as well as
timing, all of which aid proper understanding of the word. (E.g., furniture and how it is arranged, size of
the room, colors, temperature, time of day, etc.) If we see the word ‘BANK’ on the wall of a building in a
city, the physical contexts will influence our interpretation. We should keep in mind that it is not the
actual physical situation ‘out there’ that constitutes the communication events rather the relevant context
in our mental representation of those aspects help to arrive us at an interpretation of the given word.

Topic- 163: Social Cultural Context

Socio-cultural context refers to the idea that language is closely linked to the culture and society
in which it is used. This means when language is learnt, the socio-cultural context in which it is used
needs to be taken into consideration as well. Social-Cultural context still includes factors such as illiteracy
rate, population geographic distribution, educational level and the populations’ ethnic composition. All of
these factors can influence the organization’s performance, affecting its productivity level and product’s
quality patterns.

Social context
 Particular social background
 Social status

Cultural context
 cultural setting
 cultural backgrounds
 Style, subject matter, and attitudes

Activities that can raise awareness of socio-cultural context include using stories, analyzing
newspaper headlines, and looking at slang and idiomatic language.

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Lesson-29
PRAGMATICS II

Topic- 164: Deixis/Deictic Expressions

A deictic expression (or deixis) is a word or phrase (such as this, that, these, those, now, then)
that points to the time, place, or situation in which a speaker is speaking. The bits of language that we can
only understand in terms of the speaker’s intended meaning. They are technically known as deictic
(/daɪktɪk/) expressions, from the Greek word deixis, which means “pointing” via language.

Person deixis: To point to things (it, this, these boxes) and people (him, them, those idiots).
Spatial deixis: To point to a location (here, there, near that)
Temporal deixis:To a time (now, then, last week)

All these deictic expressions have to be interpreted in terms of which person; place or time the
speaker has in mind. We make a broad distinction between what is marked as close to the speaker (this,
here, now) and what is distant (that, there, then). Movement is away from the speaker’s location (go) or
toward the speaker’s location (come).
 Here she comes!
 There she goes!
People can actually use deixis to have some fun.
 Free drink tomorrow

Topic- 165: Person Deixis

Deixis is the phenomena of requiring contextual information to create the meaning of a phrase.
The term of ‘deixis’ is used from the Greek word which means ‘to show’ or ‘to indicate’, used to denote
the elements in a language which refer directly to the situation. It stipulates what a deictic reference to the
participant role of a referent is such as: -
 The Speaker: The utterer of a message. Deictic center of his/her own deictic references
 The addressee: The listener of a message
 The Referents: Neither speaker nor the addressee, might present there but not addresses directly

The deictic center is a reference point in relation to which a deictic expression is to be interpreted.
The deictic center is also most typically the present time, location, participant role and so forth of speaker.
So, the speaker, the actual location and actual time of the utterance are respectively, the deictic center for
the interpretation of ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’, e.g.,‘I am here now’.

What is a participant role? This highlights the relation that people have to each other with regards
to their involvement in a speech event, e.g.,What is an addressee? What is an audience? What is a
speaker? What is a target? etc. Person Deixis concerns with encoding of the role of participants in the
speech event in which the utterance in question is delivered.

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Basic three-part divisions are:

 First person
 Second person
 Third person

A deictic reference indicates a referent not identified as the speaker or the addressee and usually
implies the gender that the utterance refers to. The term “deixis” becomes more and more metaphoric,
ambiguous and vague since it is used for many semantically different situations. Pragmatic meaning is
determined by the context; in this case deictic reference, the crucial contextual element is the point of
origin of the utterance. In an exchange of dialogue like:
A- When will you be back?
B- I should be back by eight but you know what buses are like.
These uses of language pick out a person, a place and a time which can only be determined by the context
in which it took place.

Topic- 166: Place Deixis

Place deixis are also known as space deixis, concerns itself with the spatial locations relevant to
an utterance. Similarly to person deixis, the locations may be either those of the speaker and addressee or
those of persons or objects being referred to. Similarly to person deixis, the locations may be either those
of the speaker and addressee or those of persons or objects being referred to. The most salient English
examples are the adverbs ‘here’ and ‘there’, and the demonstratives ‘this’ and ‘that’ - although those are
far from being the only deictic words. Some examples:
 I enjoy living in this city.
 Here we will place the statue.
 She was sitting over there.
Place deictic terms are generally understood to be relative to the location of the speaker, as in: ‘The shop
is across the street.’ Where ‘across the street’ is understood to mean ‘across the street from where I am
right now’.

It is interesting to note that although ‘here’ and ‘there’ are often used to refer to locations near to
and far from the speaker, respectively, ‘there’ can also refer to the location of the addressee, if they are
not in the same location as the speaker.
Here is a good spot; it is too sunny over there. It exemplifies the former usage,
How is the weather there? It is an example of the latter.

Deictic Projection:

In some contexts, spatial deixis is used metaphorically rather than physically, i.e., the speaker is
not speaking as the deictic centre. For example:
I am coming home now.

The above utterance would generally be considered as the speaker's expression of his/her going
home, yet it appears to be perfectly normal for one to project his physical presence to his home rather than

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away from home. Two-way referential distinction in their deictic system: proximal, i.e., near or closer to
the speaker; and distal, i.e., far from the speaker and/or closer to the addressee.
This and that, here and there, etc. as place deixis are the expression used to show the location relative to
the location of a participant in the speech event.

Topic- 167: Time Deixis

Time, or temporal, deixis concerns itself with the various times involved in and referred to in an
utterance. This includes time adverbs like ‘now’, ‘then’, ‘soon’, and so forth, and also different tenses.
The ‘tomorrow’ of a day last year was a different day from the ‘tomorrow’ of a day next week. Time
adverbs can be relative to the time when an utterance is made the ‘encoding time’ or ET or when the
utterance is heard ‘decoding time’, or DT.

Although these are frequently the same time, they can differ, as in the case of prerecorded broadcasts or
correspondence. For example, if one were to write:
 It is raining now, but I hope when you read this it will be sunny.
Tenses are generally separated into absolute (deictic) and relative tenses.
 He went.
 He had gone.
The basic time of temporal deixis in English language is in the choice of verb tense.
English has only two basic forms, the present and the past:
 I live here now.
 I lived there then.
 This/last/next Monday/week/month/year.
 Now, then, ago, later, soon, before.
 Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
Time deixis is an expression in relation to the certain point of time when the utterance is produced by the
speaker.

Topic- 168: Reference

Words are used to refer to people, places and times. Reference is an act by which a speaker (or
writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader) to identify something. To perform an act of
reference, we can use proper nouns, other nouns in phrases or pronouns. We sometimes assume that these
words identify someone or something uniquely, but it is more accurate to say that, for each word or
phrase, there is a ‘range of reference’. The words Jennifer or friend or she can be used to refer to many
entities in the world. Reference depends on who is using it. We can also refer to things when we are not
sure what to call them. We can use expressions such as the ‘blue thing’ and ‘that sticky stuff’ and we can
even invent names. A brand name for a motorcycle may be used to refer to a person who rides it.

Topic- 169: Inference

A successful act of reference depends more on the listener’s ability to recognize what we mean
than on the listener’s ‘dictionary’ knowledge of a word we use.

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 Where is the spinach salad sitting?

 He is sitting by the door.
 Can I look at your Chomsky?
 Sure, it is on the shelf over there.

It is clear that names associated with things (salad) may refer to people, and names of people
(Chomsky) to refer to things. The key process here is called inference. An inference is additional
information used by the listener to create a connection between what is said and what must be meant. The
listener has to operate with the inference:
‘If X is the name of the writer of a book, then X can be used to identify a copy of a book by that
writer’.
Similar types of inferences are necessary to understand someone who says that Picasso is in the museum
or we saw Shakespeare in London or Jennifer is wearing Calvin Klein.

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Lesson-30
PRAGMATICS III

Topic- 170: Anaphora

The use of a word referring back to a word used earlier in a text or conversation, to avoid
repetition, for example, the pronouns he, she, it, and they and the verb do.
 I like it, and so do they.
 We saw a funny home video about a boy washing a puppy in a small bath. The puppy started
struggling and shaking and the boy got really wet. When he let go, it jumped out of the bath and
ran away.
Referential relationship, the second (or subsequent) referring expression is an example of anaphora
(‘referring back’). The first mention is called the antecedent.
A boy, a puppy and a small bath are antecedents
The puppy, the boy, he, it and the bath are ‘anaphoric expressions’.

Anaphora can be defined as subsequent reference to an already introduced entity. The connection
between an antecedent and an anaphoric expression is created by the use of a pronoun (it), or a phrase
with ‘the’ plus the antecedent noun (the puppy) or another noun that is related to the antecedent in some
way (The little dog ran out of the room). The connection between antecedents and anaphoric expressions
is often based on inference.
 We found a house to rent, but the kitchen was very small.
 I caught a bus and asked the driver if it went near the downtown area.
 If X is a house, then X has a kitchen.

Topic- 171: Presupposition

What a speaker (or writer) assumes is true or known by a listener (or reader) can be described as a
presupposition. A presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating
to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:
When did you stop smoking?
Presuppositions: You used to smoke. You no longer do so.
Built-in presuppositions are very useful devices for interrogators or trial lawyers.
Okay, Mr. Buckingham, how fast were you going when you ran the red light?
 Did you eat the cheese?
 Presupposition: There was some cheese.
 Your brother is waiting outside.
 Presupposition: You have a brother.
Presupposition concerns inferences related to the use of linguistic expressions but also affected by the
context in which they are used.

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Topic- 172: Constancy under Negation Test

One of the tests used to check for the presuppositions underlying sentences involves negating a
sentence with a particular presupposition and checking if the presupposition remains true.
 My car is a wreck. (or the negative version)
 My car is not a wreck.
The underlying presupposition (I have a car.) remains true despite the fact that the two sentences have
opposite meanings. This is called the ‘constancy under negation’ test for identifying a presupposition.
 Your dog is lovely.
 Your dog is not lovely.
 Presupposition: You have a dog.
 John does not regret having failed the exams.
 John regrets having failed the exams.
 Presupposition: John failed the exams.
 I used to regret marrying her, but I do not regret marrying her now.
The presupposition (I married her) remains constant even though the verb regret changes from affirmative
to negative.

Topic- 173: Speech Acts

A speech act is an utterance that has performative function in language and communication.
"Almost any speech act is really the performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different
aspects of the speaker's intention. This is the act of saying something; what one is saying it, such as
requesting or promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience". The term speech act is used to
describe actions such as ‘requesting’, ‘commanding’, ‘questioning’ or ‘informing’. We can define a
speech act as the action performed by a speaker with an utterance.
I’ll be there at six.
You are not just speaking; you seem to be performing the speech act of ‘promising’. Speech acts
can be analyzed on three levels:
A locutionary act: The performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its ostensible meaning,
comprising phonetic, phatic and rhetic acts corresponding to the verbal, syntactic and semantic aspects of
any meaningful utterance.
An illocutionary act: The pragmatic 'illocutionary force' of the utterance, thus its intended significance
as a socially valid verbal action.
Perlocutionary act: Its actual effect, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or
otherwise getting someone to do or realize something, whether intended or not.

Topic- 174: Direct Speech Acts

A direct relationship between the structure and the communicative function of the utterance is called
direct speech act.
We do not know something.
We ask someone to provide the information.
Can you ride a bicycle?

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Topic- 175: Indirect Speech Acts

It means that there is an indirect relationship between the form and the function of the utterance.
‘Can you pass the salt’? This structure is not really asking a question about someone’s ability. It is used to
make a request. An indirect speech act is a syntactic structure associated with the function of a question,
but in this case with the function of a request. Whenever one of the structures in the example above is
used to perform a function other than the one listed beside it on the same line, the result is an indirect
speech act. The sentence ‘You left the door open’ is a request for closing the door. Failing to recognize
another person’s indirect speech act can create confusion:
Visitor: excuse me. Do you know where the ambassador hotel is?
Passer-by: oh sure, I know where it is. (and walks away)

Indirect speech acts are based on some complex social assumptions. They were actually used as
requests for directions. Indirect speech acts seem to be that actions such as requests, presented in an
indirect way are generally considered to be gentler or more polite in our society than direct speech acts:

Could you open that door for me?

Open that door for me!

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Lesson-31
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS I

Topic- 176: Definition

The big favour and the small favour:

‘ Do me a favour’. is an instance of small favour so there is a small pause.
Can you do me a favour, hand me that pencil’. No pause at all.

Big favors are,

‘Could you do me a favour’ …
‘Yeah ? What? Well’ .

The longer it takes them to get to it, the bigger the pain it is going to be. Some of the most
interesting observations are made, not in terms of the components of language, but in terms of the way
language is used, even how pauses are used. We were, in effect, asking how it is that language-users
successfully interpret what other language-users intend to convey. When we carry this investigation
further and ask the following:
 How we make sense of what we read?
 How we can recognize well-constructed texts as opposed to those that are jumbled or incoherent?
 How we understand speakers who communicate more than they say?
 And how we successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation?

We are undertaking what is known as discourse analysis. Discourse analysts not only study
language use ‘beyond the sentence boundary’ but also prefer to analyze naturally occurring language use,
not invented examples.

Topic- 177: The Origins of Discourse Analysis

The term discourse analysis was first employed by Zelling Harris as the name for ‘a method for
the analysis of the connected speech or writing for continuing descriptive linguistics beyond the limit of a
single sentence at a time and for correlating culture and language’ (Harris, 1952). The word ‘discourse’ is
usually defined as ‘language beyond the sentence’ and so the analysis of discourse is typically concerned
with the study of language in texts and conversation.

As language-users, we are capable of more than simply recognizing correct versus incorrect
forms and structures. We can cope with fragments in newspaper headlines such as: Trains collide; two
die, and know that what happened in the first part was the cause of what happened in the second part.

We have the ability to create complex discourse interpretations of fragmentary linguistic

messages. Discourse analysis is the study of how stretches of language used in communication assume
meaning, purpose, and unity for their users.

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Topic- 178: Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing
written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias. It
examines how these discursive sources are maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and
historical contexts. Fairclough (1993) defines CDA as discourse analysis, which aims to explore often
opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and
(b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes.

Critical Discourse Analysis aims to help reveal some of the hidden and ‘out of sight’ values,
positions, and perspectives positions, and perspectives. CDA explores the connection between the use of
language and the social and political of language contexts in which it occurs. Some principles for CDA:
a. Social and political issues are constructed and reflected in discourse
b. Power relations are negotiated and performed through discourse.
c. Discourse both reflects and reproduces social relations
d. Ideologies are produced and reflected in in the use of discourse.

Topic- 179: Interpreting Discourse

Discourse Analysis—what speakers do in conversation-- is the analysis of language 'beyond the

sentence'. But taking them together as a single discourse makes you go back and revise your interpretation
of the first sentence after you've read the second. Even coping with texts, written in English, breaking a
lot of the rules of the English language is possible to interpret. Rather than simply reject the text as
ungrammatical, we try to make sense of it. Look at the example:
‘My natal was in a small town, very close to Riyadh capital of Saudi Arabia. The distance
between my town and Riyadh is seven miles exactly. Its name is Al masani that means in English
Factories. It takes this name from the people’s carrier. In my childhood I remember the people live there
were very simple. Most of the people were farmer.’

The key elements investigated in the study of discourse are: the effort to interpret (or to be
interpreted) and how we accomplish it. We certainly rely on what we know about linguistic form and
structure. As language-users, we have more knowledge than that.

Topic- 180: Cohesion

Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that holds a text together
and gives it meaning. It is related to the broader concept of coherence. The structure depends on factors
quite different from those required in the structure of a single sentence. Some of those factors are
described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connections within the texts.

‘My father once bought a Lincoln convertible. He did it by saving every penny he could. That car
would be worth a fortune nowadays. However, he sold it to help pay for my college education. Sometimes
I think I would rather have the convertible.’

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 Connections to maintain reference to the same people and things throughout: father – he – he –
he; my – my – I; Lincoln – it
 Connections between phrases such as: a Lincoln convertible – that car – the convertible.
 More general connections created by a number of terms that share a common element of
meaning,such as ‘money’ (bought–saving–penny–worth a fortune–sold– pay)
 ‘Time’ (once – nowadays – sometimes).
 A connector (However) that marks the relationship of what follows to what went before.

The verb tenses in the first four sentences are all in the past. A different time is indicated by the
present tense of the final sentence. An appropriate number of cohesive ties may be a crucial factor in our
judgments on whether something is well written or not. Cohesive structure differs from one language to
the next. Cohesion alone is not sufficient to enable connectedness. There must be some other factors that
lead us to distinguish connected texts that make sense from those that do not.

Topic- 181: Coherence

Coherence is the key to the concept ‘everything fitting together well’. It is beyond the text that
exists in people, not in words or structures. It is people who ‘make sense’ of what they read and hear.
People arrive at an interpretation that is in line with their experiences, the way the world is. Coherence is
the own understanding of something based on personal experiences. It is a way to incorporate all the
disparate elements into a single coherent interpretation, and a process of filling the gaps that exist in the
conversation or in the texts. Coherence creates meaningful connections not actually expressed by the
words. The process not restricted to trying to understand “odd” texts. In conversational interactions a
great deal of what is meant is not actually present in what is said.

HER: That’s the telephone.

HIM: I’m in the bath.
HER: O.K.
She makes a request of him to perform action.
He states reason why he cannot comply with request.
She undertakes to perform action.

To understand the conversation one requires a reasonable analysis of what took place in the
conversation, then it is clear that language-users must have a lot of knowledge of how conversation works
that is not simply “linguistic” knowledge.

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Lesson-32
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS II

Topic- 182: Discourse Typology: Spoken and Written, Formal and Informal

Language teaching divide discourse into two major categories:

 Spoken
 Written
They are further divided into the following:
 Speaking and Listening
 Reading and writing

Spoken discourse is less planned and orderly in a conversation. It is more open to intervention by
the receivers. Some kinds of spoken discourses are lesson, lectures, interviews, court trials etc. These
spoken discourses are planned to some extent by the person who initiates the conversation, and the
possibility of subordinate participants can be limited.

In reading novel, one cannot influence its development. At times readers may affect the written
discourse, e.g., a person is writing something and the response of the market can influence his writing. A
teacher as a reader sends the essays back to the students to be rewritten. In the same way the editors ask
writers to edit something from written material. The traditional division of spoken and writing is based on
a difference in production. Fundamental distinction as far as discourse structure is concerned.
 Formal discourse
 Informal discourse
 Formal discourse is planned discourse. It may be spoken and written.
 Less formal
 It is unplanned discourse either spoken or written. However, it is usually spoken. Informal spoken
especially by foreign language learner is informal and unpredictable.

Topic- 183: Discourse and the Sentence

There are two different kinds of languages as potential objects of the study: One abstracted to
teach a language or literacy or to study how the rules of language work, the other has been used to
communicate something and is felt to be coherent. The later kind of language for communication is called
discourse. The search for what gives discourse coherence is discourse analysis. Look at the following
stretches of language
 John considers the analyst a lunatic.
 Which of you people is a fish?
 Please don’t throw me on the floor!
 Cross since 1846.
Sentence are used or invented.

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The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Discourse may be composed of well-formed sentences
but it can have grammatical mistakes in it.
We thought it was right to come to a decision when I next met them last night.

Discourse treats the rules of grammar as a source, conforming to them when it needs to, but
departing from them when it does not. Discourse can be anything from a grunt or a single expletive up to
‘War and Peace’. The conformity to rules does not matter, but the fact that it communicates and is
recognized by its receivers as coherent text values much. There is a degree of subjectivity in identifying a
stretch of language as discourse.

Topic- 184: Discourse as Process

Observe the conversation of a native speaker (N) and a foreigner (F).

N: anyway …* well anyway… * I’m going* goodbye

F: but you have not finished your sentence.
N: what sentence
F: you have said ‘anyway …’
N: yes
F: anyway * and what

Conversation is a discourse constructed and negotiated between the participants, following pre-
established patterns, and marking the direction in particular ways; with pauses, laughters, intonations,
filler words, and established formulae. These conventions enable the participant to orientate to what is
happening and to make sense of the interaction. Discourse analyst is accounting for sequences of
utterance. Language teacher considers powerful clues concerning the causes of sensation of floundering in
conversation. Culture-specific rules and procedures of turn-taking provide ample breeding ground for
misunderstanding just like entering and leaving conversation, bidding for a longer turn, refusing without
being rude, changing the topic etc. Such things are all difficult for foreign learners. Language class
hardly prepares students for the real life situations.

Topic- 185: Discourse as Dialogue

Developmentally, dialogue comes first, both for the human species, and for the human individual.
There is no hard evidence of the origins of language in prehistoric communities to assume that speech
preceded writing and dialogue preceded monologue. The earliest written texts of Western European
culture, the Socratic dialogues, present as conversation that modern writers would present as monologue.
Perhaps some of this preference remains in modern practices which favour face-to-face interaction:
lectures, job interviews, and news interviews. Turn-taking and interaction are among the first
communicative skills. Parents hold ‘conversations’, even with very young babies, as the following
‘dialogue’ between a mother and her two-month-old daughter clearly shows:
M: Whatcha gonna tell me?
B:(Gurgling noise)
M: Come on whatcha gonna tell me?

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B: (Two gurgling noise. Squeak. Blows air through lips)

M: That’s a nice story. What else are you gonna tell me? Come on.
B: (Gurgling and dribbling noise)
M: Let’s hear some more.

Topic- 186: Information Structure in Discourse

The prerequisite of the information is to divide a sentence into two. The clause has a bi-partite
structure. The choice is to which part of which information depends on differing degrees of prominence.
The ordering of information is determined by the sender’s hypotheses about what the receiver does and
does not know.

Two Labels of Information

 Given information
 New information

Any unit of information may change its status as the discourse proceeds. Communication might
be defined as the conversation of new information into given information. A communicator assesses the
knowledge of his/her interlocutor. The ordering of Given and New is not always straightforward.

Topic- 187: Knowledge in Discourse: Schemata

The role of knowledge in discourse production and comprehension has been a result of findings
in the field of artificial intelligence in order to program computers for producing and understanding
discourse. These programs need more than the language being used; it involves pre-existent knowledge of
the world. Artificial Intelligence tries to understand how this knowledge and language interact and to
reproduce the process in computers. For discourse analysis, the most important idea to come out of the
field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ‘knowledge schemata’.

Mental representations of typical situation used in discourse processing to predict the content of
the particular situation, which the discourse describes. Mind stimulated by key words or phrases in the
text, or by the context, activates a knowledge schema and uses it to make sense of the discourse. To
program a computer AI needs to reproduce the process and to give computers both the necessary language
knowledge and necessary schemata. This is difficult for the existing computers. How mental schemata
operate in discourse production and comprehension. When a sender judges his receiver’s schema to
correspond to a significant degree with his own, he only needs features which are not contained in it.
Other features need to be present by default.

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Lesson-33
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS III

Topic- 188: Conversation as Discourse Type

What is conversation? It is a less formal talk. Discourse analysis can be either vague or any kind
of talk as per discourse analysts’ definition of conversation. Talk may be defined as conversation when:
1. It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task.
2. Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended.
3. The number of participants is small.
4. Turns are quite short.
5. Talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside audience.

Imprecise Definition: The boundary between conversation and other discourse types is fuzzy one. We
cannot precisely draw a line between formal and informal talk. There are certain intermediate possibilities
in between formal spoken discourse and informal conversation that is a ‘seminar’. Talk at conversation
end of the cline is difficult to mould to any overall structure. A part of the definition of conversation
might be its unpredictability and lack of structure.

Topic- 189: Conversation Analysis

Conversation analysis (CA) is a branch of study which sets out to discover what order there might
be in this apparent chaos. CA associated with ethno-methodologist, people who looks for a method when
people enter to discussion and make sense of it. They have tried to discover what methods people use to
participate in and make sense of interaction (Levinson, 1983, p.286).

A conversation is always based on turn taking. The ethno-methodologist tried to see how people
handle a conversation at local level, how they judge when to speak and when to be silent. They further
started to analyze with the bottom-up approach, i.e., study from word to sentence. They tried to
understand how it unfolds in time. They viewed discourse as a developing process rather than a finished
product, having planned beginning, middle and ending.

Topic- 190: Turn-taking

Conversation Involves Turn-taking

In conversation analysis, turn-taking is a term for the manner in which orderly conversation normally
takes place. Once a topic is chosen and a conversation initiated, then matters of conversational ‘turn-
taking’ arise. Knowing when it is acceptable or obligatory to take a turn in conversation is essential to the
cooperative development of discourse. This knowledge involves such factors as knowing how to
recognize appropriate turn-exchange points and knowing how long the pauses between turns should be.

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Overlap of Turn-taking

Speakers somehow know exactly when and where to enter.

 Signal of turn ending
 Overlaps have significance
 Signaling annoyance, urgency or a desire to correct what is said
Pauses between turns also have very particular meaning.

Conversation analysis tries to describe how people make turns, and under what circumstances the
turns overlap. Turn-taking mechanisms vary between cultures and between languages. Efficient turn-
taking also involves certain non-linguistic factors. Eye contact, body position and movement, gaze,
intonation and volume the relative status of the speakers, or the role of speaker are also important. In
formal situations, the roles can give people special rights clearly. In conversation, where according to our
definition, unequal power is suspended. Students fall silent when the professor speaks - in the bar as well
as in the seminar.

Topic- 191: Conversational Principles: Cooperative

According to Paul Grice (1975) we interpret language on the assumption that its sender is obeying four
maxims. We assume he or she is intending to:
 be true (the maxim if quality)
 be brief (the maxim of quantity)
 be relevant (the maxim of relevance)
 be clear ( the maxim of manner)

Combined with the general knowledge of the world, the receiver can reason from the literal,
semantic meaning of what is said to the pragmatic meaning , and induce what the sender is intending to
do so with his or her words. For example, I hear my neighbour saying:
There's a cat stuck under the gate at number 67.
The above sentence has all four maxims. We have no doubt about its truthfulness.
People do not consciously and explicitly formulate the co-operative principle. Co-operative principle does
not fit in all situations. For example,
Did you like Algeria?
The question may be relevant but it does not have all four maxims.
Legal and scientific discourses often sacrifice the maxim of quantity to the maxim of quality. To be clear
one sometimes needs to be long-winded.

Topic- 192: Flouting the Cooperative Principle

I have got millions of books in my college library. Or my car breaks down every five minutes.
Neither is true. They are perceived as figures of speech, hyperbole, and a way of making the point more
forceful rather than it lies. These are deliberate violation or floating, as Grice calls them, of the
cooperative principle.
 Metaphor , irony, sarcasm

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 ‘Queen Victoria was made of iron’

 ‘I love it when you sing out of key all the time’
The assumption that they will be interpreted as deliberate flouting of the charge to ‘Be true’ rather
than as untruths intended to deceive. Children and foreign language learners sometimes take figures of
speech literally. Like quality maxim other three can also be flouted.
 Quantity maxim
 Crating prolixity or terseness
 Maxim of relevance
 To signal embarrassment or a desire to change the subject
 Maxim of manner
 As in the case of puns etc.

Topic- 193: Conversational Principles: Politeness

A: Excuse me. Are you busy?

B: No, not all
A: I wondered if I could have a word with you.

Politeness principle, like co-operative principle, may be formulated as a series of maxim, which
people assume are being followed in the utterances of others. Any flouting of these maxims will take on
meaning, provided it is perceived for what it is. Robin Lakoff (1973) formulated the following maxims:
Don’t impose
Give option
Make your receiver feels good
These maxims explain many of those utterances with no new information
I'm sorry. I saw you were home.
In English requests or pleas are made in the form of elaborate question.
‘Could you possible ’
‘May I ask you to ’
‘I am sorry to bother you’
‘You know much more about cars than I do’
Clearly, the cooperative and politeness principles are in conflict with each other whereas politeness and
truth are mutually incompatible with each other.
‘How is my new hairstyle’?
These conflicting demands of the two principles are something which people are aware of, for example, ‘a
white lie’.

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Lesson-34
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Topic- 194: Introduction

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a problem-oriented and trans-disciplinary set of theories and
methods widely used in educational research. Many areas of commensurability exist between educational
research and critical discourse analysis. First, educational practices are considered communicative events;
discourse studies (DS) is useful to analyze the ways in which the texts, talk, and other semiotic
interactions that learning comprises are constructed across time and contexts.

Second, discourse studies provide a particular way of conceptualizing interactions that is

compatible with sociocultural perspectives in educational research (Gutiérrez, 2008; Lewis, Enciso &
Moje, 2007). A shared assumption is that discourse can be understood as a multimodal social practice.
Discourse reflects and constructs the social world through many different sign systems. Systems of
meaning are caught up in political, social, racial, economic, religious, and cultural formations which are
linked to socially defined practices that carry more or less privilege and value in society.

A third area of commensurability is that discourse studies and educational research are both
socially committed paradigms that address problems through a range of theoretical perspectives. Critical
approaches to discourse analysis recognize that inquiry into meaning making is always an exploration into
power. Many of the problems that are addressed, particularly in a globalized world system, have to do
with power and inequality. CDA provides the tools for addressing the complexity of movement across
educational sites, practices, and systems in a world where inequalities are global in scope. The reflexive
tendencies of critical discourse studies are rooted in the constitutive relationship between discourse and
the social world. The field continues to grow and change, responding to problems with different ways of
looking, understanding and, as its practitioners hope, acting.

Topic- 195: A Brief History of the ‘CDA Group’

The CDA as a network of scholars emerged in the early 1990s, following a small symposium in
Amsterdam, in January 1991 by scholars such as Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Gunther and others. The
meeting made it possible to confront with the distinct and different approaches, which have, of course,
changed significantly since 1991 but remained relevant, in many respects.

In this process of group formation, the differences and sameness were laid out; differences with
regard to other theories and methodologies, and sameness in a programmatic way, both of which frame
the range of theoretical approaches (Wodak, 2004). Some of the scholars previously aligned with CDA
have chosen other theoretical frameworks. Many approaches were created and integrated with the more
traditional theories. CDA as a school or paradigm is characterized by a number of principles, for example,
all approaches are problem-oriented, and thus necessarily interdisciplinary and eclectic. CDA is
characterized by the common interests in de-mystifying ideologies and power through the systematic
investigation of semiotic data (written, spoken or visual). New journals have been created, multiple
overviews have been written, and nowadays CDA is an established paradigm in linguistics.

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Topic- 196: Considering ‘Critical’ in Critical Discourse Analysis

Power is a central concept in critical discourse studies. It tends to be defined in terms of negative
uses of power, articulated through and within discourses and resulting in domination and oppression.
Blommeart writes, “the deepest impact of power everywhere is inequality, as power differentiates and
selects, includes and excludes”. “Power is not a bad thing—those who are in power will confirm it”. This
suggests that critical discourse studies should offer an analysis of the effects of power, the outcomes of
power, of what power does to people/groups/ societies and how this impact comes about.’

Critical Social Theory (CST) provides a theoretical foundation for critical approaches to
discourse analysis. CST is a trans-disciplinary knowledge base structured by the dual agendas of
critiquing and resisting domination and creating a society free of oppression (Anyon, 1997).
 Critical social theory and research rests on the rejection of naturalism (that social practices,
labels, and programs represent reality),
 Rationality (the assumption that truth is a result of science and logic)
 Neutrality (the assumption that truth does not reflect any particular interests), and individualism
 CST’s intellectual heritage draws on philosophy, literature, legal scholarship, cultural studies,
critical race scholarship, political economy studies, ethnic studies, and feminist studies, and has
been influenced by schools such as the Frankfurt School and the British Cultural Studies.

Critical social theory assumes that oppression and liberation are twin pillars of concern that
include material, historical, and discursive dimensions and are enacted across time, people, and context.
At the heart of critical social theory is a commitment to work with heart, head, and hands.

Topic- 197: Considering ‘Discourse’ in Critical Discourse Analysis

People seek to make meaning with every aspect of who they are and what they are doing:
 How they use their bodies?
 Integrate objects, artifacts, and technology.
 Use gestures, time, and space.
 Adjust their tone of voice when they speak.
 Choose the words they use.
 Interact in particular ways with others.

Meanings are made through representational systems—language being used of the sign systems
to create meanings. Meanings are always embedded within social, historical, political, and ideological
contexts. The discourse has been assigned many meanings located between the linguistic and the social
perspectives.

Meanings are Motivated.

From a linguistic point of view, systemic functional linguistics (Halliday and Hasan, 1976;
Halliday, 1978) is the representational system—the theory of language—that is perhaps the most
embedded in critical discourse studies. Systemic functional linguistics as a theory of language is oriented

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toward choice and privileges meaning makers (language users) as agents making decisions about the
social functions of their language use. Discourses both construct and represent the social world and thus
can be referred to as constitutive, dialectical, and dialogic. Discourse is never just an artifact but a set of
consumptive, productive, distributive, and reproductive processes that exist in relation to the social world.
Discourses are social practices, processes, and products. Yule (1983) wrote, ‘The analysis of discourse is
necessarily the analysis of language in use. It cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms
independent of the purposes or functions that these forms are designed to serve in human affairs.’

Topic- 198: Considering ‘Analysis’ in Critical Discourse Analysis

There are, as many different approaches to analyse within critical discourse analysis, as there are
theories and problems to be studied (e.g., Titscher, Meyer, Wodak, & Vetter, 2000; van Dijk, 2001). The
important is the analyses, connected to a theory of the social world and a theory of language that is
coherent. Beyond that, procedures and methods vary.

In general, the view of methods of analysis is that one finds a research topic, applies a set of
theoretical frames (or allows the frames to emerge from the data) to that research topic, and then selects
appropriate methods, depending on the questions being asked and theories being used. Some analysts
draw on extensive fieldwork; others collect large corpuses of texts from archives, websites or news
sources. Some methods are less linguistically focused and more focused on the context in which the
discourse arises. Some foreground micro-level issues, others the impact of global issues on local
discourses. Other methods are interested in the historical emergence and evolution of a concept or
narrative. Most influential traditions of critical approaches are James Gee (1986; 1991; 1996; 2004),
Norman Fairclough (1989; 1992; 1995; 2003), and Gunther Kress (1979; 1993; 1996; 2001; 2003; 2009).

We cannot assign each scholar only one approach to critical discourse analysis because each
scholar has developed and drawn on different theories and methods over time, many of them are
overlapped. These researchers would all embrace the concept of methodological hybridity; they freely
admit that their methods are drawn from a wide range of scholarship.

Topic- 199: Different Approaches to CDA

James Gee’s Approach

An integrated approach to discourse analysis is the analysis of spoken and written language as it
is used to enact social and cultural perspectives and identities. Assuming no prior knowledge of
linguistics, James Paul Gee presents both a theory of language-in-use, as well as a method of research.
Norman Fairclough developed a three-dimensional framework for studying discourse, where the aim is to
map three separate forms of analysis onto one another. For example, analysis of (spoken or written)
language texts, analysis of discourse practices (processes of text production, distribution and
consumption) analysis of discursive events as instances of sociocultural practice.

Gunther Kress is one of the people credited with developing the branch of scholarship referred to
as critical linguistics. He uses a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication, and brings

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visual communication by applying social semiotics a theory based on meaning, social context, and
developing multimodality phenomenon. He equates with understanding of communication but not the
style or meaning of that communication. A social semiotic approach is concerned with how meanings are
made—in both the outward and inner interpretation of signs.

Both of these approaches provide a set of tools and resources for understanding social events and
practices that are taken up depending on the question. Our work is to apply these tools—and design new
ones—in a context that is meaningful for our own work.

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Lesson-35

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Topic- 200: Introduction

Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of linguistics which identifies, investigates, and

offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Language is at the heart of human life and the
applied linguistics answers the following questions:
 What language skills should children attain beyond basic literacy?
 Should children speaking a dialect be encouraged to maintain it or steer towards the standard
form of a language?
 Should everyone learn a foreign language?
 Language change. Should this just be accepted as an inevitable fact or should the change be
controlled in some way?
 Which languages should be used in law courts and official documents?

Since late 1950s with the advent of generative linguistics, applied linguistics has always
maintained a socially-accountable role, demonstrated by its central interest in language problems. In the
1960s, it was expanded to include language assessment, language policy, and second language
acquisition. In 1970s, it became a problem-driven field rather than theoretical linguistics, including the
solution of language-related problems in the real world. In 1990s, it broadened and included critical
studies and multilingualism. Research in applied linguistics was shifted to "the theoretical and empirical
investigation of real world problems in which language is a central issue. The ‘applied linguistics’ refers
to a broad range of activities which involve solving some language-related problem or addressing some
language-related concern.

Topic- 201: Scope

A large and open-ended number of quite disparate activities to which applied linguistics is
relevant. The scope of applied linguistics
 Language and education
 First-language education
 Additional-language education/second language education
 Clinical linguistics
 Language testing

Language, work, and law

 Workplace communication
 Language planning
 Forensic linguistics

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Language, information, and effect

 Literary stylistics
 Critical discourse analysis
 Translation and interpretation
 Information design
 Lexicography
All of these areas fall within the definition of applied linguistics. These are areas of inquiry by
organizations and journals concerned with the discipline.

Topic- 202: Major Branches

An interdisciplinary field of linguistics which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to

language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are
education, psychology, communication research, anthropology, and sociology.
 Bilingualism: the ability of an individual or the members of a community to use two languages
effectively.
 Multilingualism: ability to use multiple languages is known as multilingualism.
 Conversation analysis: an approach to the study of social interaction and talk-in-interaction has
exerted significant influence across the humanities and social sciences including linguistics.
 Contrastive linguistics: a practice-oriented linguistic approach that seeks to describe the
differences and similarities between a pair of languages.
 Sign linguistics: any unit of language (morpheme, word, phrase, or sentence) used to designate
objects or phenomena of reality.
 Language planning and policy: Decisions about language policies, requirements, and practices
have important consequences in all social contexts. Language planning refers to deliberate efforts
to influence the behaviour of others through language codes.
 Pragmatics: the study of the use of linguistic signs, words and sentences, in actual situations.

Topic- 203: Linguistics Applied

Guy Cook (2005) writes, ‘like Odysseus, applied linguistics has steered a difficult course between
a rock and a whirlpool and has been in constant danger of hitting one or disappearing down the other’.
Historically, there have been two main views on applied linguistics and they've been called linguistics
applied and applied linguistics.

Linguistics Applied was the initial understanding of the discipline in the 1970s and assumed that
anyone working within this field simply took insights from theoretical linguists. Applied Linguistics, as
rethought in the 1980s, wanted to establish applied linguistics as a complete discipline in its own right – a
complete and autonomous self that could also contribute to theory. The theoretical and applied disciplines
could now coexist in an equal and mutually beneficial relationship.

The distinction has been proposed by Widdowson (2000) in his seminal article: "On the
limitations of Linguistics Applied" published in Applied Linguistics Journal, OUP. He suggests that
Applied Linguistics is a mediating activity which seeks to accommodate a linguistic account to other

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partial perspectives on language to reformulate real world problems. Though in Linguistics Applied, as
Widdowson argues, the assumption is that the problem can be reformulated by direct application of
concepts and terms deriving from linguistic enquiry itself.

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Lesson-36
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS I

Topic- 204: Introduction

Psycholinguistics reviews in some detail the various features of language that people use to
produce and understand linguistic messages. The psycholinguist questions that where is this ability to use
language located? The obvious answer is “in the brain.” However, it cannot be just anywhere in the brain.

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological

factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. The discipline is mainly
concerned with the mechanisms in which languages are processed and represented in the brain.
Psycholinguistics has roots in education and philosophy, and covers the ‘cognitive processes’ that make it
possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical
structures.

Topic- 205: Neurolinguistics

The study of the relationship between language and the brain is called ‘Neurolinguistics’. The
field of study dates back to the nineteenth century when the location of language in the brain was an early
challenge. The accident of Mr. Gage made it clear to the scientists that language may be located in the
specific parts of the brain; it is not clearly situated right at the front.

Topic- 206: Language Areas in Brain

A number of discoveries have been made about the specific parts in the brain that are related to
language functions. The most important parts are in areas above the left ear. We need to look more
closely at some of the gray matter. So, if we observe a head, remove hair, scalp, skull, then disconnect the
brain stem (connecting the brain to the spinal cord) and cut the corpus callosum (connecting the two
hemispheres). If we disregard a certain amount of other material, we will basically be left with two parts,
the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. If we put the right hemisphere aside for now, and place the
left hemisphere down so that we have a side view, we’ll be looking at something close to the
accompanying illustration.

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The shaded areas in this illustration indicate the general locations of those language functions
involved in speaking and listening. We have come to know that these areas exist largely through the
examination, in autopsies of the brains of people who, in life, were known to have specific language
disabilities. We have tried to determine where language abilities for normal users must be by finding areas
with specific damage in the brains of people who had identifiable language disabilities.

Topic- 207: Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area

Broca's area or the Broca area is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere of the
hominid brain with functions linked to speech production. Language processing has been linked to
Broca's area. Since Pierre Paul Broca reported impairments in two patients. The part shown as in the
illustration is technically described as the “anterior speech cortex” or, more usually, as Broca’s area.

Paul Broca, a French surgeon, reported in the 1860s that damage to this specific part of the brain
was related to extreme difficulty in producing speech. It was noted that damage to the corresponding area
on the right hemisphere had no such effect. This finding was first used to argue that language ability must
be located in the left hemisphere and since then has been treated as an indication that Broca’s area is
crucially involved in the production of speech.

Wernicke’s Area

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A region of the brain concerned with the comprehension of language, located in the cortex of the
dominant temporal lobe. Damage in this area causes Wernicke's aphasia, characterized by superficially
fluent, grammatical speech but an inability to use or understand more than the most basic nouns and
verbs. This finding confirmed the left hemisphere location of language ability and led to the view that
Wernicke’s area is part of the brain crucially involved in the understanding of speech.

Topic- 208: The Motor Cortex and the Arcuate Fasciculus

Motor Cortex is the part of the cerebral cortex in the brain which originates the nerve impulses
that initiate voluntary muscular activity. The part shown as in the illustration is the motor cortex, an area
that generally controls movement of the muscles (for moving hands, feet, arms, etc.). Close to Broca’s
area is the part of the motor cortex that controls the articulatory muscles of the face, jaw, tongue and
larynx.
The arcuate fasciculus (Latin: curved bundle) is a bundle of axons that forms part of the superior
longitudinal fasciculus, an association fiber tract. The arcuate bidirectionally connects caudal temporal
cortex and inferior parietal cortex to locations in the frontal lobe. Close to Broca’s area is the part of the
motor cortex that controls the articulatory muscles of the face, jaw, tongue and larynx. Evidence that this
area is involved in the physical articulation of speech comes from work reported in the 1950s by two
neurosurgeons, Penfield and Roberts (1959).

These researchers found that, by applying small amounts of electrical current to specific areas of
the brain, they could identify those areas where the electrical stimulation would interfere with normal
speech production. The part shown in the illustration is a bundle of nerve fibers called the arcuate
fasciculus.

This was also one of Wernicke’s discoveries and is now known to form a crucial connection between
Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas.

Topic- 209: The Localization View

The localization view tempts to conclude that specific aspects of language ability can be accorded
specific locations in the brain, and the brain activity involved in hearing a word, understanding it, then

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saying it, would follow a definite pattern. The word is heard and comprehended via Wernicke’s area.
This signal is then transferred via the arcuate fasciculus to Broca’s area where preparations are made to
produce it, the signal is sent to part of the motor cortex to physically articulate the word. Certainly, it is an
oversimplified version of what may actually take place, but it is consistent with much of what we
understand about simple language processing in the brain. It is probably best to think of any proposal
concerning processing pathways in the brain, as some forms of metaphor that may turn out to be
inadequate once we learn more about how the brain functions. The “pathway” metaphor seems quite
appealing in an electronic age when we’re familiar with the process of sending signals through electrical
circuits. In an earlier age, dominated more by mechanical technology, Sigmund Freud subtly employed a
“steam engine” metaphor to account for aspects of the brain’s activity when he wrote of the effects of
repression “building up pressure” to the point of “sudden release”. In an even earlier age, Aristotle’s
metaphor was of the brain as a cold sponge that functioned to keep the blood cool. In a sense, we are
forced to use metaphors mainly because we cannot obtain direct physical evidence of linguistic processes
in the brain. Because we have no direct access, we generally have to rely on what we can discover
through indirect methods. Most of these methods involve attempts to work out how the system is working
from the picked up clues when the system has problems or malfunctions.

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Lesson-37
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS II

Topic- 210: Tongue Tips and Slips

We have all experienced difficulty, on some occasion(s), in getting brain and speech production
work together smoothly. There are possible clues to how our linguistic knowledge is organized within the
brain, ‘the tip of the tongue phenomenon’. We feel that some word is just eluding us, which we know, but
it just would not come to the surface. Studies of this phenomenon have shown that speakers generally
have:
 an accurate phonological outline of the word,
 can get the initial sound correct
 and mostly know the number of syllables in the word.

This experience also mainly occurs with uncommon words and names. Our ‘word-storage’
system may be partially organized on the basis of some phonological information. Some words in the
store are more easily retrieved than others. We make mistakes in this retrieval process because there are
often strong phonological similarities between the target word and what we actually produce; e.g., fire
distinguisher (for ‘extinguisher’) transcendental medication (instead of ‘meditation’).

Such types of mistakes are referred to ‘malapropisms’ after a character, Archie Bunker, who once
suggested that; we need a few laughs to break up the monogamy. Here some examples of slip of tongue:
Make a long shory stort (instead of ‘make a long story short’); Use the door to open the key, and a fifty-
pound dog of bag food.

Examples of ‘spoonerisms’ after William Spooner, an Anglican clergyman

Black bloxes (for ‘black boxes’)
Noman numeral (for ‘roman numeral’)
A tup of tea (‘cup’)
These all are treated as errors of articulation. It has been suggested that they may result from ‘slips of the
brain’ as it tries to organize linguistic messages.

Topic- 211: Slips of the Ear

Many scientists provide some clues to how the brain tries to make sense of the auditory signal it
receives. For example, the phrase ‘great ape’ may be heard ‘gray tape’. A similar type of
misunderstanding seems to be behind the child’s report that in Sunday school every one was singing
about: a bear called ‘Gladly’ that was cross-eyed for ‘Gladly the cross I’d bear’.

In this case, malapropisms (e.g., transcendental medication) originate as slips of the ear. Some of
these humorous examples of slips may give us a clue to the normal workings of the human brain as it
copes with language. However, some problems with language production and comprehension are the
result of much more serious disorders in brain function.

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Topic- 212: Aphasia

All of us experience ‘slips’, but there are people who live with it constantly. Certain types of
language disorders are generally described as ‘aphasia’. Aphasia is defined as an impairment of language
function due to localized brain damage that leads to difficulty in understanding and/or producing
linguistic forms. The most common cause of aphasia is a stroke; traumatic head injuries from violence or
an accident may have similar effects. Those effects can range from mild to severe reduction in the ability
to use language. Someone who is aphasic often has interrelated language disorders, and the difficulties in
understanding can lead to difficulties in production.

Different types of aphasia

 Broca’s aphasia
 Wernicke’s aphasia
 Conduction aphasia

Topic- 213: Types of Aphasia

The classification of different types of aphasia is usually based on the primary symptoms of
someone having difficulties with language. Following are some of the types of aphasia:

Broca’s Aphasia or Motor Aphasia: This type is characterized by a substantially reduced

amount of speech, in which distorted articulation and slow and often effortful speech are noted.

Agrammatic: In this type the speech consists entirely of lexical morphemes (e.g., nouns, verbs)
whereas there are frequent omissions of functional morphemes (e.g., articles, prepositions) and inflections
(e.g., plural -s, past tense -ed). Here is an example. I eggs and eat and drink coffee breakfast my cheek …
very annoyance … main is my shoulder … aching’ all round here. The patient faces difficulty in
articulating single words. However, comprehension is typically much better than production.

Wernicke’s Aphasia or Sensory Aphasia: The person with it has difficulties in auditory
comprehension. He produces very fluent speech but feels difficulty to make sense. He uses very general
terms. ‘I can’t talk all of the things I do, and part of the part I can go alright, but I cannot tell from the
other people’. He finds difficulty in finding the correct word, sometimes referred to as anomia.

Conduction Aphasia: This aphasia is less common, as it is associated with damage to the arcuate
fasciculus and is called conduction aphasia. In its symptoms, the person mispronounces words, but
typically do not have articulation problems. He is fluent, but may have disrupted rhythm because of
pauses and hesitations. His comprehension of spoken words is normally good. He produces words like the
following: vaysse and fosh for ‘base’ and ‘wash’. Language disorders described above are almost always
the result of injury to the left hemisphere.

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Topic- 214: Dichotic Listening

An Experimental Technique: Left hemisphere dominance for syllable and word processing is
called the dichotic listening test. This technique uses the generally established fact that anything
experienced on the right-hand side of the body is processed in the left hemisphere, and anything on the
left side is processed in the right hemisphere.

Right Ear Advantage: The right hemisphere appears to have primary responsibility for
processing a lot of other non-linguistic incoming signals. In the dichotic listening test, it can be shown
that non-verbal sounds (e.g., music, coughs, traffic noises, and birds singing) are recognized more often
via the left ear, meaning they are processed faster via the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is first
choice for non-language sounds (among other things) and the left hemisphere specializes in language
sounds (among other things too). These specializations may actually have more to do with the type of
processing, rather than the type of material, that is handled best by each of the two hemispheres. Analytic
processing, such as recognizing the smaller details of sounds, words and phrase structures in rapid
sequence is done with the ‘left brain’ . The holistic processing is done with the ‘right brain’.

Topic- 215: The Critical Period

The apparent specialization of the left hemisphere for language is usually described in terms of
lateral dominance or lateralization (one-sidedness). Since the human child does not emerge from the
womb as a fully articulate language-user, the lateralization process begins in early childhood. It coincides
with the period during which language acquisition takes place. During childhood, there is a period when
the human brain is most ready to receive input and learn a particular language. This is sometimes called
the ‘sensitive period’ for language acquisition, but is more generally known as the ‘critical period’.

Though some think it may start earlier, the general view is that the critical period for first
language acquisition lasts from birth until puberty. If a child does not acquire language during this period,
for any reason, then it is almost impossible for him/her to learn language later on. Many unfortunate well
documented cases provide us insight about what happens when the critical period passes without adequate
linguistic input.

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Lesson-38
SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Topic- 216: Introduction

The way that people talk depends on personal and social backgrounds. It also depends on the
details of a particular speech situation. The study of variation in speech depends on such matters is called
the domain of sociolinguistics, variation in the form of language, especially as the result of social
categories.

Sociolinguistics, thus, can be defined as the descriptive study of the effects of different aspects of
society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's
effect on language. There are certain social variables that are vital to the discipline such as: e.g., ethnicity,
religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc. The adherence to these rules is used to categorize
individuals in social or socioeconomic classes.

Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics. It is historically closely related to

linguistic anthropology, and the distinction between the two fields has been questioned. It differs from
sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. As the usage of a language
varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and these sociolects are
studied in sociolinguistics. People are normally aware of the social factors that make them to choose the
suitable language. Sociolinguists study the social context and its influence on language.

Topic- 217: The Standard Language and Vernacular Language

Varieties of Language

A standard language is a variety of language that is used by governments, in the media, in schools
and for international communication. There are different standard varieties of English in the world:
 British English
 North American English,
 Australian English
 Indian English, etc.

Standard Variety

It is an idealized variety, because it has no specific region. It is associated with administrative,

commercial and educational centers, printed in newspapers and books, and used in the mass media
regardless of region. It is more easily described in terms of the written language (i.e., vocabulary,
spelling, grammar) than the spoken language.

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Vernacular Language

A vernacular language is the native language or native dialect (usually colloquial or informal) of
a specific population, especially. It is distinguished from a literary, national or standard variety of the
language, or a lingua franca. It is used in the region or state inhabited by that population, and is spoken by
the ordinary people of a country or region.

Topic- 218: Accent and Dialect (Dialectology)

Whether we speak a standard variety of English or not, we all have certain accents, they can be
distinct or less noticeably recognised accents. It is a myth that some speakers have accents while others do
not have.

Accent: An accent is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or

nation. Technically, it is the description of aspects of pronunciation that identify where an individual
speaker is from, regionally or socially.

Dialect: Dialect includes the features of grammar and vocabulary as well as the aspects of
pronunciation. You don’t know what you’re talking about. For example, ‘Ye dinnae ken whit yer haverin’
aboot.’ (by a speaker of Scottish English might say)

Differences from Standard:

Pronunciation: Whit for what
Aboot for about,
Vocabulary: Ken for know
Havering for talking
Grammatical: Dinnae for don’t

Differences in vocabulary are often easily recognised. However, dialect variations in the meaning
of grammatical constructions are less frequently documented.

A: How long are youse here?

B: Till after Easter. (Speaker A looks puzzled.)
C: We came on Sunday.
A: Ah. Youse’re here a while then. (from Trudgill, 1983)

One of the criteria used in the study of dialects, or dialectology is to distinguish between two
different dialects of the same language and two different languages.

Topic- 219: Pidgin and Creole

A simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages. In some
areas, the standard chosen may be a variety that originally had no native speakers in the country. For
example, Tok Pisin, an English-based creole, used as a commercial and administrative language by over

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2 million people in Papua New Guinea which began many years earlier as a kind of “contact”. A pidgin
is a variety of a language that developed for some practical purpose, such as trading among people not
knowing each other’s languages. It may be a Chinese version of the English word ‘business’.

It will be described as an ‘English pidgin’ if English is the lexifier language, that is, the main
source of words in the pidgin. No same pronunciation or meaning as in the source is used. The word gras
has its origins in the English word ‘grass’, in Tok Pisin for ‘hair’. It is part of mausgras (‘moustache’) and
gras bilong fes (‘beard’). Several English pidgins are still used today. They are characterized by an
absence of any complex grammatical morphology and have a somewhat limited vocabulary. Inflectional
suffixes such as -s and -’s on nouns in Standard English are rare in pidgins. Common Structures are like
tu buk (‘two books’), di gyal place (‘the girl’s place’). Functional morphemes often take the place of
inflectional morphemes found in the source language. For example the English phrase your book, is like
buk bilong yu.

Between six and twelve million people still use pidgin languages and between ten and seventeen
million using descendants from pidgins called ‘creoles’. When a pidgin develops beyond its role as a
trade or contact language and becomes the first language of a social community, it is described as a
creole.

Tok Pisin is now a creole. Although still locally referred to as ‘Pidgin’, the language spoken by a
large number of people in Hawai’i is also a creole, technically known as Hawai’i Creole English. A creole
initially develops as the first language of children growing up in a pidgin-using community and becomes
more complex as it serves more communicative purposes. There are large numbers of native speakers and
are not restricted at all in their uses. A French creole is used in Haiti. English creoles are used in Jamaica
and Sierra Leone.

Topic- 220: Diglossia and Polyglossia

This is a situation in which two distinct varieties of a language are spoken within the same speech
community, ‘high’ or special variety, learned in school and used for important matters. In Arabic-
speaking countries ‘the high variety’ (Classical Arabic) is used in formal lectures, serious political events
and especially in religious discussions. The low variety is the local version of the language, such as
Egyptian Arabic or Lebanese Arabic.

The classic diglossic situation is the one in which two varieties of a language, such as standard
French and Haitian Creole French, exist alongside each other in a single society. Each variety has its own
fixed functions—one a 'high,' prestigious variety a 'low,' or colloquial, one. Using the wrong variety in the
wrong situation would be socially inappropriate.

Polydiglossia

The coexistence of two or more languages or distinct varieties of the same language, within a
speech community is known as Polydiglossia. According to Lindsay (2007), Polydiglossia is a term that
refers to a person's ability to communicate in more than two languages. Polydiglossia situations involve

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two contrasting varieties (high and low). The concept of polyglossia can be explained in the Singapore
Chinese speaking community. Three languages are used by Singaporean Chinese namely Mandarin,
Cantonese and Hokkien. Singaporean Chinese people will use Mandarin for their job; Cantonese and
Hokkien are for daily conversation among the family used as Informal language.

Topic- 221: Language and Culture

Language and culture is the study of language which originates in the work of anthropologists
who have used language as a source of information in the general study of ‘culture’. Culture can be
defined as ‘shared beliefs, values and behaviours of a social group’, where social group can be a family at
a micro level and a nation at a macro level (Byram, 2008).

Language is ‘socially acquired knowledge’. ‘Language is used not just as a tool for the exchange
of information, but as a symbolic system with the power to create and shape symbolic realities, such as
values, perceptions, identities through discourse’ (Kramsch, 2002). Our first language is initially acquired
without conscious awareness. We develop awareness of our knowledge, and hence of our culture, only
after having developed language. The particular language we learn through the process of cultural
transmission provides us, at least initially, with a ready-made system of categorising the world around us
and our experience of it. With the words we acquire, we learn to recognise the types of category
distinctions that are relevant in our social world. Very young children may not initially think of ‘dog’ and
‘horse’ as different.

In native cultures of the Pacific, there were no horses so no words for them. We must have a
conceptual system that includes these people, things and ideas as distinct and identifiable categories such
as dog or horse, rain or snow, father or uncle, week or weekend, etc. The relation of culture and language
is the way they share human values, realities and behaviours of a social group. According to Kramsch,
language expresses, embodies and symbolizes cultural reality.

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Lesson-39
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION I

Topic- 222: Acquisition and Stages of Acquisition

The acquisition of first language is remarkable for the speed with which it takes place. A child
long before he/she starts school, becomes an extremely sophisticated language user operating a system for
self-expression and communication. The human child cannot be compared to any other creature or
computer. The learning generally occurs without any overt instruction, regardless of great differences in
their circumstances. The idea behind it is, there is an innate predisposition in the human infant to acquire
language - special capacity for language with which each newborn child is endowed. There are many
different ways to characterize the developmental sequence. The stages of language production by the
children focusing primarily on the unfolding of lexical and syntactic knowledge are mentioned as follows:

It is observed in researches that the inborn language capacity is not enough. The child must be
physically capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a language. Same as hearing language
sounds is not enough because a crucial requirement appears as the opportunity to interact with others via
language.

Topic- 223: Cooing and Babbling

The earliest use of speech-like sounds has been described as cooing e.g., sequences of vowel-like
sounds, particularly high vowels similar to [i] and [u]. ‘cooing’ or ‘going’. By four months the child
brings the back of the tongue into regular contact with the back of the palate allowing velar consonants
[k] and [ɡ] to produce. Speech perception studies have shown that by the time they are five months old,
babies can already hear the difference between the vowels [i] and [a] and discriminate between syllables
like [ba] and [ɡa].

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Babbling

Between six and eight months, the child starts sitting up and producing a number of different
vowels and consonants, as well as combinations such as ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga. In the later babbling
stage, around nine to ten months, there are recognizable intonation patterns to the consonant and vowel
combinations being produced, as well as variation in the combinations such as ba-ba-da-da can be
observed.

Nasal Sounds

Common and certain syllable sequences such as ma-ma-ma and da-da-da are inevitably
interpreted by parents as versions of “mama” and “dada” and are repeated back to the child. This
“paralanguage” use of sound provides the child with some experience of the social role of speech because
adults tend to react to the babbling, however incoherent, as if it is actually the child’s contribution to
social interaction. Development stages are taken as approximate and are subject to variation in individual
children such as ‘by six months’ or ‘by the age of two’.

Topic- 224: The One-Word Stage

Between twelve and eighteen months the child produces a variety of recognizable single-unit
utterances. This stage is characterized by speech, in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects
like ‘Cookie’, ‘Cat’, ‘Cup’ ‘Spoon’ (usually pronounced [pun]).

Other forms such as [ʌsæ]: A version of ‘What’s that’, so the label ‘one-word’ for this stage
may be misleading, the term such as ‘single-unit’ would be more accurate.

Holophrastic

During this stage a single form functions as a phrase or sentence to describe an utterance that
could be analyzed as a word, a phrase, or a sentence. Holophrastic utterances seem to be used to name
objects; they may also be produced in circumstances that suggest the child is already extending their use.

An empty bed may elicit the name of a sister who normally sleeps in the bed, even in the absence
of the person named. During this stage the child may be capable of referring to Karen and bed, but is not
yet ready to put the forms together to produce a more complex phrase. It is over expectation from a
toddler to expect such thing. The child can only walk with a stagger and has to come downstairs
backwards.

Topic- 225: The Two-Word Stage

This stage is dependent on what we count as an occurrence of two distinct words used together. It
begins around eighteen to twenty months. The child’s vocabulary moves beyond fifty words. By two
years old, the child starts uttering a variety of combinations, similar to: Baby chair, mommy eat, cat bad
etc.

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The adult interpretation of such combinations is very much tied to the context of their utterance.
The expression depends on different circumstances: ‘Baby chair’ an expression of possession, (This is
baby’s chair), or as a request, (Put baby in chair), or as a statement (Baby is in the chair).

Whatever it is that the child actually intends to communicate through such expressions, the
significant functional consequences are that the adult behaves as if communication is taking place. The
child not only produces speech, but also receives feedback confirming that the utterance worked as a
contribution to the interaction. By the age of two, the child may producing 200 or 300 distinct ‘words’,
and is capable of understanding five times as many. Typically he/she is treated as an entertaining
conversational partner by the principal care giver.

Topic- 226: Telegraphic Speech

Between two and two-and-a-half years old, the child starts a large number of utterances that could
be classified as “multiple-word” speech. The salient feature of these utterances ceases to be the number of
words, but the variation in word forms that begins to appear. This is the stage characterized by strings of
words (lexical morphemes) in phrases or sentences such as:

 This shoe all wet

 Cat drink milk
 Daddy go bye-bye.
 Sentence building capacity
 Can get the word order correct

While this type of telegram-format speech is being produced, a number of grammatical inflections begin
to appear, the word forms and simple prepositions (in, on).

By the age of two-and-a-half, the child’s vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child is
initiating more talk while increased physical activity includes running and jumping. By three, the
vocabulary has grown to hundreds of words and pronunciation has become closer to the form of adult
language. At this point, it is worth considering what kind of influence the adults have in the development
of the child’s speech.

Topic- 227: Summary/Discussion

Some well-known studies suggest about social-class differences in language acquisition by

children. Betty Hart and Todd Risley remark that there are meaningful differences in the everyday
experience of young American Children. By the age of 3 years, the children from privileged families have
heard 30 million more words than children from underprivileged families. Longitudinal data on 42
families has been examined that showed enormous differences in the rates of vocabulary growth. The
children turned out to be like their parents in stature, activity level, vocabulary resources, and language
and interaction styles. However, other researchers think that 42 is not a very large sample, and there are
many other questions to ask. This work suggests that we should be concerned about possible lasting

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effects of cultural differences in children's linguistic environment and socio-economic status differences
in language learning.

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Lesson-40
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION II

Topic- 228: The Acquisition Process

The linguistic repertoire of the child increases with the passage of time. The question arises
whether the child is being taught or not. The idea is that a child is not really supported by what the child
actually does. In the vast majority of children; no one provides any instruction about how to speak the
language nor should we picture a little empty head gradually being filled with words and phrases. A more
accurate view highlighted the children actively construct from what is said to them, possible ways of
using the language. The child’s linguistic production appears to be mostly a matter of trying out
constructions and testing whether they work or not. A child is not simply imitating adult speech but a
child hears and repeats versions of sayings on different occasions. Adults simply do not produce many of
the expressions that turn up in children’s speech. Look at the following two examples:

NOAH: (picking up a toy dog) This is Woodstock. (He bobs the toy in Adam’s face)
ADAM: Hey Woodstock, don’t do that. (Noah persists)
ADAM: I’m going home so you won’t Woodstock me.
CHILD: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
MOTHER: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?
CHILD: Yes.
MOTHER: What did you say she did?
CHILD: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
MOTHER: Did you say she held them tightly?
CHILD: No, she holded them loosely.

One factor that seems to be important in the child’s acquisition process is the actual use of sound and
word combinations, either in interaction with others or in wordplay, alone.

Topic- 229: Developing Morphology

By two-and-a-half years old the child is beyond telegraphic speech forms. He/she incorporates
some of the inflectional morphemes that indicate the grammatical function of the nouns and verbs used.
First, the child uses is the -ing form in expressions such as: cat sitting, mommy reading book etc.
Secondly, -s form is used; for example, boys and cats

The acquisition of the plural marker is often accompanied by a process of overgeneralization.

S/he uses -s to form plurals and will talk about foots and mans. With the alternative pronunciation of the
plural morpheme used in houses (i.e., ending in [-əz]) they overgeneralize application and forms such as
boyses or footses. Along with overgeneralization, use of irregular plurals such as men which are quite
appropriately for a while they also use expressions like some:

mens and two feets, or even two feetses.

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Not long after the plural –s, the possessive inflection -’s also occurs in expressions like the
following:
 girl’s dog
 Mummy’s book

At the same time, different forms of the verb “to be,” such as are and was are started to be used.
The appearance of forms such as was and, at about the same time, went and came should be noted. The
irregular past-tense forms that we would not expect to hear before the more regular forms, the appearance
of the -ed inflection. Once the regular past-tense forms (walked, played) begin appearing in the child’s
speech, the irregular forms may disappear for a while, replaced by overgeneralized versions such as goed
and comed. Such oddities as walkeded and wented do not disappear till after the age of four when the
child start distinguishing which forms are regular and which are not. The regular-s marker on third person
singular present-tense verbs appears. It occurs first with full verbs like comes, looks etc. and then with
auxiliaries like does, has etc.
A great deal of variability is observed at this stage. Individual children may produce ‘good’ forms
one day and ‘odd’ forms the next. The evidence suggests that the child is working out how to use the
linguistic system while focusing on communication and interaction rather than correctness. The parents
who insist that the child didn’t hear such things at home are implicitly recognize that ‘imitation’ is not the
primary force in first language acquisition.

Topic- 230: Developing Syntax

Similar evidence against ‘imitation’ as the basis of the child’s speech production has been found
in studies of the syntactic structures used by young children. One child, specifically asked to repeat what
she heard, would listen to an adult say forms such as:
 The owl who eats candy runs fast
 Owl eat candy and he run fast.

The child understands what the adult is saying but just has her own way of expressing it. There
are numerous studies of the development of syntax in children’s speech. We will look at the development
of two structures that seem to be acquired in a regular way by most English-speaking children. In the
formation of questions and the use of negatives, there appear to be three identifiable stages. The ages at
which children go through these stages can vary quite a bit.
Stage 1: occurs between 18 and 26 months
Stage 2: between 22 and 30 months
Stage 3: between 24 and 40 months
The overlap in the periods during which children go through these stages is a natural effect of the
different rates at which different children normally develop these and other structures.

Topic- 231: Forming Questions

The child’s first stage has two procedures in forming questions. Simply add a Wh-form (Where,
Who) to the beginning of the expression, or utter the expression with a rise in intonation towards the end.

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Examples
 Where kitty?
 Doggie?
 Where horse go?
 Sit chair?
In the second stage, more complex expressions can be formed, but the rising intonation strategy continues
to be used.

More Wh-forms come into use, as in these examples:

Examples
 What book name?
 You want eat?
 Why you smiling?
 See my doggie?
 Second stage,

More complex expressions the rising intonation strategy continues to be used. It is noticeable that more
Wh-forms come into use, as in these examples:
 What book name?
 You want eat?
 Why you smiling?
 See my doggie?

In the third stage, the required movement of the auxiliary in English questions (I can have … ⇒
Can I have …?) is seen. It does not automatically spread to all Wh-question types In fact, some children
beginning school in their fifth or sixth year may still prefer to form Wh-questions (especially with
negatives) without the type of inversion found in adult speech (e.g., Why kitty can’t …? instead of Why
can’t kitty …?). Apart from these problems with Wh-questions and continuing trouble with the
morphology of verbs is found as in the following examples:
(e.g., Did I caught …? instead of Did I catch … ?), at stage 3 the child forms questions close to
the adult model, as in these examples:
 Can I have a piece?
 Did I caught it?
 Will you help me?
 How that opened?
 What did you do?
 Why kitty can’t stand up?

Topic- 232: Forming Negatives

The Stage 1percieves, in the case of negatives, the child seems to involve a simple strategy of
putting No or Not at the beginning, as in these examples:
 no mitten

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 not a teddy bear

 no fall
 no sit there

In the second stage, the additional negative forms are added and so don’t and can’t appear, with
no and not, as they are increasingly used in front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence,
as in these examples:
 He no bite you
 I don’t want it
 That not touch
 You can’t dance

The third stage sees the incorporation of other auxiliary forms such as didn’t and won’t while the
typical Stage 1 forms disappear. A very late acquisition is the negative form isn’t, with the result that
some Stage 2 forms (with not instead of isn’t) continue to be used for quite a long time, as in the
examples:
 I didn’t caught it
 He not taking it
 She won’t let go
 This not ice cream

The study of the developing use of negative forms has produced some delightful examples of
children operating their own rules for negative sentences. One famous example (McNeill, 1966) also
shows the futility of overt adult ‘correction’ of children’s speech.
 CHILD: Nobody don’t like me
 MOTHER: No, say ‘nobody likes me.’
 CHILD: Nobody don’t like me. (Eight repetitions of this dialog)
 MOTHER: No, now listen carefully; say ‘nobody likes me.’
 CHILD: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me.

Topic- 233: Developing Semantics

The anecdotes that parents retell about their child’s early speech (to the intense embarrassment of
the grown-up child) usually involve examples of the strange use of words. Having been warned that flies
bring germs into the house, one child was asked what “germs” were and the answer was “something the
flies play with.” It is not always possible to determine so precisely the meanings that children attach to the
words they use. It seems that during the holophrastic stage many children use their limited vocabulary to
refer to a large number of unrelated objects.

One child first used bow-wow to refer to a dog and then to a fur piece with glass eyes, a set of
cufflinks and even a bath thermometer. The word bow-wow seemed to have a meaning like ‘object with
shiny bits.’ Other children often extend bow-wow to refer to cats, cows and horses. This process is called
overextension and the most common pattern is for the child to overextend the meaning of a word on the

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basis of similarities of shape, sound and size, and, to a lesser extent, movement and texture. Thus the
word ball is extended to all kinds of round objects, including a lampshade, a doorknob and the moon. Or,
a tick tock is initially used for a watch, but can also be used for a bathroom scale with around dial.On the
basis of size, presumably, the word fly was first used for the insect and then came to be used for specks of
dirt and even crumbs of bread. Apparently due to similarities of texture, the expression sizo was first used
by one child for scissors, and then extended to all metal objects.

The semantic development in a child’s use of words is usually a process of overextension

initially, followed by a gradual process of narrowing down the application of each term as more words are
learned. Although overextension has been well-documented in children’s speech production, it isn’t
necessarily used in speech comprehension. One two-year-old used apple, in speaking, to refer to a number
of other round objects like a tomato and a ball, but had no difficulty picking out the apple, when asked,
from a set of round objects including a ball and a tomato.

One interesting feature of the young child’s semantics is the way certain lexical relations are
treated. In terms of hyponymy, the child will almost always use the ‘middle’-level term in a hyponymous
set such as animal – dog – poodle. It would seem more logical to learn the most general term (animal), but
all evidence indicates that children first use dog with an overextended meaning close to the meaning of
“animal.” This may be connected to a similar tendency in adults, when talking to young children, to refer
to flowers (not the more general plants, or the more specific tulips). It also seems that hyponymous
relations are acquired fairly late (after the age of five). In one study, a large number of kindergarten
children pointed to the same heavily laden apple tree when asked which tree has more apples. And also
when asked which tree has less apples. They just seem to think the correct response will be the larger one,
disregarding the difference between more and less. The distinctions between a number of other pairs such
as before/after and buy/sell also seem to be later acquisitions.

Despite the fact that the child is still to acquire a large number of other aspects of his or her first
language through the later years of childhood, It is normally assumed that, by the age of five, the child has
completed the greater part of the basic language acquisition process. According to some linguists, the
child is then in a good position to start learning a second (or foreign) language. However, most people
don’t start trying to learn another language until much later. The question that always arises is: if first
language acquisition was so straightforward and largely automatic, why is learning a second language so
difficult?

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Lesson-41

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION/LEARNING

Topic- 234: Second Language Acquisition and Learning

Some children grow up in a social environment where more than one language is used and are
able to acquire a second language in circumstances similar to those of first language acquisition. Those
fortunate individuals are bilingual. Most of us are not exposed to a second language until much later.
Even after years of study, our ability rarely matches our ability in our first language. There is something
of an enigma in this, since there is apparently no other system of “knowledge” that we can learn better at
two or three years of age than at thirteen or thirty. A number of reasons have been suggested to account
for this enigma, and a number of different approaches have been proposed to help learners become
communicator in a second language.

Second Language Learning

A distinction is made between learning in a “foreign language” setting as:
 A ‘second language’ setting
 English as a foreign language (EFL)
 English as a second language (ESL)
In either case, they are simply trying to learn another language, so the expression second language
learning is used more generally to describe both situations.

Acquisition and Learning

The term acquisition is used to refer to the gradual development of ability in a language by using
it naturally in communicative situations with others who know the language whereas learning is a more
conscious process of accumulating knowledge of the features, such as vocabulary and grammar, of a
language, typically in an institutional setting. (Mathematics, for example, is learned, not acquired.)

Those individuals whose L2 exposure is primarily a learning type of experience tend not to
develop the same kind of general proficiency as those who have had more of an acquisition type of
experience.

Topic- 235: Acquisition Barriers

Acquisition Barriers

The experience with an L2 is fundamentally different from that of L1 experience, and it is hardly
conducive to acquisition. They usually encounter the L2 during their teenage or adult years, in a few
hours each week of school time rather than via the constant interaction experienced as a child with a lot of
other things going on and with an already known language available for most of their daily
communicative requirements. Despite the fact that insufficient time, focus and incentive undermine many

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L2 learning attempts; some individuals who seem to be able to overcome the difficulties and develop an
ability to use the L2 quite effectively learn the language fast. However, sounding like a native speaker is
difficult. Even in ideal acquisition situations, very few adults seem to reach native-like proficiency in
using an L2. There are individuals who can achieve great expertise in the written language, but not the
spoken language. One of the greatest examples of this is Joseph Conrad. He wrote a lot of English novels
but whenever he used to speak English, he had his Polish accent.

This might suggest that some features of an L2, such as vocabulary and grammar, are easier to
learn than others such as pronunciation. Without early experience using the sounds and intonation of the
L2, even highly fluent adult learners are likely to be perceived as having an “accent” of some kind.

This type of observation is sometimes taken as evidence that, after the critical period for language
acquisition has passed, around the time of puberty, it becomes very difficult to acquire another language
fully. The optimum age for learning is ten to sixteen when the flexibility of our inherent capacity for
language has not been completely lost.

Topic- 236: Affective Factors

Yet even during this proposed optimum age for L2 learning, there may be an acquisition barrier
of quite different kind. Teenagers are typically much more self-conscious than younger children. If there
is a strong element of unwillingness or embarrassment in attempting to produce the different sounds of
another language, then it may override whatever physical and cognitive abilities there are. If this self-
consciousness is accompanied by a lack of empathy with the other culture, then the subtle effects of not
really wanting to sound like a Russian or a German or an American may strongly inhibit the learning
process. This type of emotional reaction, or ‘affect’, may also be caused by dull textbooks, unpleasant
classroom surroundings or an exhausting schedule of study and/or work. All these negative feelings or
experiences are affective factors that can create a barrier to acquisition.

If the learner is stressed, uncomfortable, self-conscious or unmotivated, they are unlikely to learn
very much. Children seem to be less constrained by affective factors. Descriptions of L2 acquisition in
childhood are full of instances where young children quickly overcome their inhibitions as they try to use
new words and phrases. Adults can sometimes overcome their inhibitions too.

Topic- 237: Focus on Method

Despite the barriers, the need for instruction in other languages has led to a variety of educational
approaches and methods aimed at fostering L2 learning. Caxton (1483) wrote:

Right good lernyng for to lerne shortly frenssh and englyssh.

The first to compile exercise material for L2 learners and his phrase-book format with customary
greetings:
 Syre, god you kepe.
 I haue not seen you in longe tyme

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More recent approaches designed to promote L2 learning have tended to reflect different
theoretical views on how an L2 might best be learned.

The Grammar–Translation Method

The most traditional approach is to treat L2 learning in the same way as any other academic
subject. Vocabulary lists and sets of grammar rules are used to define the target of learning. It focuses
more on memorization. Written language rather than spoken language is emphasized. It has its roots in the
traditional teaching of Latin and is described as the grammar–translation method.

The Audio Lingual Method

This method has the following characteristics:

 A very different approach
 Emphasize on the spoken language
 Became popular in the middle of the twentieth century
 Involved a systematic presentation of the structures of the L2
 Moving from the simple to the more complex
 Drills that the student had to repeat
It basic belief was that the fluent use of a language was essentially a set of “habits” that could be
developed with a lot of practice.

Communicative Approaches

More recent revisions of the L2 learning experience can best be described as communicative
approaches. They were partially a reaction against the artificiality of ‘pattern practice’. It was against the
belief that consciously learning the grammar rules of a language will necessarily result in an ability to use
the language. However there are different versions of how to create communicative experiences for L2
learners. This approach is based on a belief that the functions of language should be emphasized rather
than the forms of the language. These changes have coincided with attempts to provide more appropriate
materials for L2 learning that has a specific purpose, as in ‘English for medical personnel’ or ‘Japanese
for business people’.

Topic- 238: Focus on the Learner

Focus on learner is the most fundamental change in the area of L2 learning. It is a shift from
concern with the teacher, the textbook and the method to an interest in the learner and the acquisition
process. For example, one radical feature of most communicative approaches is the toleration of “errors”
produced by students.

Traditionally, “errors” were regarded negatively and had to be avoided or eradicated. The more
recent acceptance of such errors in learners’ use of the L2 is quite normal. Rather than consider a Spanish
(L1) speaker’s production of ‘in the room ‘there are three womens’ as simply a failure to learn correct
English; the utterance is taken as an indication of the natural L2 acquisition process in action. An “error,”

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then, is not something that hinders a student’s progress but a clue to the active learning progress being
made by the student just as children acquiring their L1 produce certain types of ungrammatical forms at
times. L2 learner may produce similar forms at certain stages. The example of ‘womens’ might be seen as
a type of overgeneralization.

Transfer ‘Cross Linguistic Influence’

Transfer means using sounds, expressions or structures from the L1 when performing in the L2.
For example, a Spanish (L1) speaker who produces ‘take it from the side inferior’ may be trying to use
the Spanish adjective inferior (=lower in English) and placing it after the noun, as is typical in Spanish
constructions.

Positive Transfer

If the L1 and L2 have similar features (e.g., marking plural on the ends of nouns), then the
learner may be able to benefit from the positive transfer of L1 knowledge to L2.

Negative Transfer

Transferring an L1 feature that is really different from the L2 (e.g., putting the adjective after the
noun) results in negative transfer and it may make the L2 expression difficult to understand. The negative
transfer (sometimes called ‘interference’) is more common in the early stages of L2 learning and often
decreases as the learner develops familiarity with the L2.

Interlanguage

The language produced by L2 learners contains a large number of ‘errors’ that seem to have no
connection to the forms of either the L1 or L2. Following is an example: ‘She name is Maria.’

Motivation

There are several factors that combine in a profile of a successful L2 learner. Obviously, the
motivation to learn is important. Many learners have an instrumental motivation. .That is, they want to
learn the L2 in order to achieve some other goal, such as completing a school graduation requirement or
being able to read scientific publications, but not really for any social purposes. In contrast, those learners
with an integrative motivation want to learn the L2 for social purposes, in order to take part in the social
life of a community using that language and to become an accepted member of that community.

Topic- 239: Communicative Competence

Communicative competence can be defined as the general ability to use language accurately,
appropriately, and flexibly. The first component is grammatical competence, which involves the accurate
use of words and structures. Concentration on grammatical competence only, however, will not provide
the learner with the ability to interpret or produce L2 expressions appropriately. The ability to use

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appropriate language is the second component, called sociolinguistic competence. It enables the learner to
know when to say according to the social context. For example: Can I have some water? versus give me
some water.

Much of what was discussed in terms of pragmatics has to become familiar in the cultural context
of the L2 if the learner is to develop sociolinguistic competence. The third component is called strategic
competence. This is the ability to organize a message effectively and to compensate, via strategies, for
any difficulties. In L2 use, learners inevitably experience moments when there is a gap between
communicative intent and their ability to express that intent. Some learners may just stop talking, whereas
others will try to express themselves using a communication strategy. For example, a Dutch L1 speaker
wanted to refer to een hoefijzer in English, but didn’t know the English word. So, she used a
communication strategy. She created a way of referring to the object by using vocabulary she already
knew, saying ‘the things that horses wear under their feet', the iron things’ and the listener understood
immediately what she meant. This flexibility in L2 use is a key element in communicative success. In
essence, strategic competence is the ability to overcome potential communication problems in interaction.

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Lesson-42

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Topic- 240: Introduction

Consider the following is a text from old English:

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
Si þin nama gehalgod.
To becume þin rice.
Gewurþe þin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. (Lord’s Prayer)

Historical linguistics is the field of investigation of the features of older languages, and the ways
in which they developed into modern languages. It involves using the study of language and change, also
known as philology and also called diachronic linguistics. In the nineteenth century, philology dominated
the study of language and one result was the creation of “family trees” to show how languages were
related. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:

 to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages

 to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into
language families (comparative linguistics)
 to develop general theories about how and why language changes
 to describe the history of speech communities
 to study the history of words, i.e., etymology

Topic- 241: The Family Tree Model

Jones (1786) made the following observation about Sanskrit, the ancient language of Indian law:
a number of languages from very different geographical areas must have some common ancestor. The
discovery brought forth Proto-Indo-European group of languages. Scholars set out to identify the
branches of the Indo-European family tree, tracing the lineage of many modern languages.

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Thirty such language families containing more than 6,000 different individual languages (actually
6,912 languages) were established. These languages are in danger of extinction while a few are
expanding. In terms of number of speakers:
 Chinese (about 1 billion)
 English (about 350 million

Topic- 242: Grimm’s Law

Grimm (1822) gave the concept of a systematic correspondence holding between the consonants
of Germanic languages, on the one hand and of the other Indo-European on the other.
p f
Latin English German
pedem foot Fuss

Grimm’s Law: These differences were first originally observed by Danish scholar, Rasmus Rask.
However, Grimm’s work was readily accessible to international scholars. Grimm's Law consists of three
parts which form consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift. The phases are usually constructed as
follows:

The asterisks indicate the sounds in question are reconstructed rather than being directly attested.
The PIE and PGmc are hypothetical constructs. [p] of English in spit, spew corresponds to a [p] in other
languages is in apparent violation of Grimm’s Law as in Latin spuo, etc. Similarly Gmc [t] is same as Gk
[t]. and Skt [t]. Each sound occurs as second segment of the two-consonantal cluster. The preservation
can be seen as a regular development in English spit, spew, stand etc.

Topic- 243: The Comparative Method

The standard way of demonstrating the genetic relatedness of languages is by means of

comparative method developed in earlier period of historical linguistics 1820 -1870. It is claimed many
of the related word across languages can be put into systematic correspondence in term of their
phonological and morphological structure. Words across languages can be put into systematic
correspondences in terms of phonological and morphological structure.

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 The words in table related not only in forms- but also in meaning.
 Words can change their meaning in the course of time.
 Latin word ‘horse’ was not ‘caballus’ ( more specific mean of peck horse) also meant ‘nag’ not
‘equus’ become a general and neutral word in place of ‘equus’
 The words do not cause problem semantically.
 The words may not change meaning but fall into disuse and be replaced.

Topic- 244: The Wave Model

During the 20th century the wave model has had little acceptance as a model for language change
overall. It has recently gained more popularity among historical linguists due to the shortcomings of the
Tree model. The wave model was originally presented by Johannes Schmidt.

In this diagram, the circles are to be regarded as diachronic; that is, they increase in diameter over
time, like the concentric waves on a water surface struck by a stone. The circles are stable dialects;
characters or bundles of characters that have been innovated and have become more stable over an
originally small portion of the continuum for socio-political reasons. These circles spread from their small

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centers of maximum effectiveness like waves, becoming less effective than dissipating at maximum time
and distance from the center. Languages are to be regarded as impermanent sets of speech habits that
result from and prevail in the intersections of the circles.

Topic- 245: Language Change

Language change is variation over time in a language's phonological, morphological, semantic,

syntactic, and other features. It is studied by historical linguistics and evolutionary linguistics. Influences
from the outside, such as the borrowed words from Norman French or Old Norse, are examples of
external change in the language. Following are a number of changes from Middle to Modern English:
 [h] hlud loud
 Hlaford lord
Some word lost sound but kept the spelling in the ‘silent letters’ like [k], [g]. e.g., knee, gnaw
The sound change known as metathesis involves a reversal in position of two sounds in a word acsian →
ask.
 frist → first
 brinnan → beornan (burn)
 bridd → bird
 hros → horse
 wæps → wasp

Following are syntactic change:

Old English
Subject-verb-Object
But, there were other different orders too that are not seen any more now.
Verb – subject as in ‘ferde he’(he traveled)
Object could be placed before the verb ‘he hine geseah’. He saw him.

There are also semantic changes. Modern English differs in the number of borrowed words that
have come to language since Old English. Many words have ceased to be used like the following:
 Foin ‘the thrust of sword’
 Were for man is only werefolf

There is also a broadening effect also.

 Holy day as a religious feast is now holyday for any day(s) off.

Similarly the narrowing of the meaning is also found.

 Hound for any kind of dog
 Wife any woman is only for married women now.

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Lesson-43
COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS

Topic- 246: What is Computational Linguistics?

There has been a dream of human science fiction in recent years that computer could use
language like humans. At present scientists have developed programs that can understand and learn
aspects of human language both written and spoken. Varying degrees of translating between languages is
possible. Computational linguistics seeks to develop the computational machinery needed for an agent to
exhibit various forms of linguistic behaviour. Agent means human being and artificial agents such as
computer program. Machinery mean computer programs as well as linguistics knowledge that they
contain. Computers have no intelligence. Their linguistic capabilities derive from programs that are
written for them. Computational understanding of language also provides insight into thinking and
intelligence.
The connection between these two fields is hardly accidental. Language involves complex
symbols system and computers are very fast mechanical symbol-processor. Computational linguistics
draws upon the involvement of linguists, computer scientists, and experts in artificial intelligence,
mathematicians, logicians, philosophers, cognitive scientists, cognitive psychologists, psycholinguists,
anthropologists and neuroscientists, among others. ‘Human knowledge is expressed in language. So,
computational linguistics is very important.’ (Mark Steedman)

Topic- 247: Processes and Methods of CL

The methods employed in theoretical and practical research in computational linguistics have
often drawn upon theories and findings in theoretical linguistics, philosophical logic, cognitive science
and of course computer science. Early work from the mid-1950s to around 1970 was theory-neutral. The
primary concern has been the development of practical techniques for such applications as MT and simple
QA.

In MT, central issues were:

 lexical structure and content,
 The characterization of ‘sublanguages’ for particular domains (for example, weather reports),
 Transduction from one language to another.

In QA, the concern was:

 Characterizing the question patterns encountered in a specific domain,
 The relationship of these question patterns to the forms in which answers might be stored.

By the mid-1960s with the increasing power and availability of general-purpose computers, the
dream of human-level artificial intelligence began to be fulfilled. Since the 1970s, the scientists have had
the aim of encoding the bulk of linguistic and world knowledge in more understandable, modular, re-
usable forms, with firmer theoretical foundations. With the emergence of comprehensive syntactico-
semantic frameworks such as Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar attention was given to the

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computational tractability of parsing, and the mapping from syntax to semantics. Language is a mirror of
mind, a computational understanding of language also provides insight into thinking and intelligence.

Topic- 248: Morphological Processing

Computational morphology deals with the processing of words and word forms, in both their
graphemic, i.e., written form, and their phonemic, i.e., spoken form. The task of an automatic
morphological analyzer is to take a word in a language and break it down into its stem form along with
any affixes that it may have attached to that stem. In processing a sentence such as:
Hussain reads well,
The analysis should be:
 Hussain as a proper name
 reads as the third person singular present form of the verb read (read+s)
 well as either an adverb or a singular noun

The morphological analyzer will not be able to identify the syntactic roles of words. The role is the
subsequent task of a syntactic parsing program.

Tokenization

Usually, the first step in morphological analysis is to identify separate words. This can be fairly
simple in languages like English, where words are delimited by space and punctuation characters, and
where sentence start with capital letters. But even in English ambiguous punctuation can cause
tokenization problems: periods may be part of an abbreviation UK. However it is very challenging in
synthetic languages.

Morphological analysis and synthesis

 incompatibilities
 in+con+patible+ity+s
 incompatibility+ Noun Plural

Use of a Simple Stemming Algorithm

A simple stemming algorithm is used which strips off suffixes to arrive at the stem form. The
most basic task in computational morphology is to take a string of characters or phonemes as input and
deliver an analysis as output.

Topic- 249: Syntactic Processing

How can a computer characterise the grammatical structure of a sentence? A syntactic parser
tries to find the best grammatical analysis of a sentence. However, there are ambiguous sentence with
more than one possible grammatical structure like the following:

I can fish.

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Context-free grammars
 S  V
→ NP VP → can
 V  V
P → Aux V → fish
 V  V
P → V NP → dance
 V  Au
P→V x → can
 V  D
P → Aux V NP → the
 N  N
P→DN → fish
 N  N
P→N → dance
 N  Pro
P → Pronoun noun → I

For this purpose we use ‘Toy grammar’. This toy grammar recognizes:
 Four different kinds of VPs: (Aux V, V NP, V, and Aux V NP)
 Three kinds of NPs (D N, N, and Pronoun)
 Terminals categories and non-terminals categories

Our toy grammar covers only three different verbs, one auxiliary verb, one determiner, two
nouns, and one pronoun, but even so it can describe quite a variety of sentences. Grammars written in this
format are called context-free grammars.

Parsing

There is another question. How can we get a computer to analyze the syntactic structure of a
sentence like the following?
 I can fish.
A parser takes an input sentence and produces one syntactic representations of it. But more than
one representation if there is syntactic ambiguity as in: I can fish. One way to represent the hierarchical
syntactic structure of a sentence is called a parse tree. There are several types of parsers. A top-down
parser, as you might expect, builds the parse trees from the top to down.

Topic- 250: Semantic Processing

How can a computer understand the meaning of an utterance?

The parse tree, a given part-of-speech may have more than one meaning.
Spot
 We found a nice spot for lunch.
 Out, out, damned spot.

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 Would you like a spot of tea? (British English)

Word-sense Disambiguator: It uses the context of neighboring words in the sentence as well as
other words in the document to figure out which meaning of a given word is most likely. It uses rules that
depend on context, and these rules can be derived by human intuition or by training a machine learning
program. A word’s syntactic and semantic properties are represented in the computer’s digital lexicon. A
word’s syntactic and semantic properties are represented in the computer’s digital lexicon.

Cook (v)
A verb’s meaning includes:
 Syntactic sub-categorization (the syntactic elements, or “arguments,” it combines with)
 Thematic roles (the semantic relations between a verb and its arguments).
a. COOK (Theme NP)
 Husain cooked meatloaf
b. COOK (Recipient NP, Theme NP)
 Husain cooked Mary a great dinner
c. COOK (Theme NP, Recipient for-PP)
 Husain cooked a great dinner for Mary,

Computational semantics is largely concerned with representing these kinds of semantic functions, the
rules for assembling the semantics of larger phrases from smaller ones.

Topic- 251: Application of CL

The impact of computational linguistics on society depends on the applications it makes possible.
Computers have for many years been using more computational linguistics tools in applications such as:
 multilingual word processing,
 spelling correction,
 grammar checking.

The increase in speed and storing vast amounts of information online have resulted in an
exponential increase in the amount of information available to computers, with a lot of it being in natural
languages.

Since computers can search through documents in different languages and find information much
faster than humans can, Search engines that troll through web pages have become extremely useful. With
the wide use of email and cellular phones, speech enabled applications have started to become a presence
in flight information and hotel reservation systems. It does the following tasks as well:
 Information extraction
 Speech recognition
 Speech synthesis
 Machine translation
These and other technologies provide opportunities to embed and apply computational linguistic methods.

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Lesson-44
LEXICOGRAPHY

Topic- 252: The Dictionary: Definition and History

There are many types of dictionaries and in up-to-date definition all types are not included.

A Prototypical Dictionary

The prototypical dictionary has the form of a static (book) or dynamic product (e-dictionary) with
an inter-structure that establishes links between the various components (e-dictionary) and is usually
alphabetically structured. A dictionary provides many useful things.
 A reference book
 Record of lexicon of language
 Quick to find information
 Serves as a guardian of purity of that language provides information on
 Spelling, form, meaning, usages of words and fixed collocation

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include
words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language.

Who invented the dictionary? Which dictionary came first? Was the first dictionary bilingual or
monolingual? The oldest dictionary dates back to 2600 BC. The Akkadian or Babylonian wrote on clay
tablet to make Sumerian language accessible. In medieval Europe, glossaries with equivalents for Latin
words in vernacular or simpler Latin were in use (e.g., the Leiden Glossary).The first edition of A Greek-
English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott appeared in 1843.The earliest dictionaries in
the English language were glossaries of French, Spanish or Latin words along with their definitions in
English. The word ‘dictionary’ was invented by an Englishman called John of Garland in 1220.The first
purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabetically, written by an English schoolteacher
Robert Cawdrey in 1604. It was not until Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
that a more reliable English dictionary was produced. Many useful dictionaries are available now.

Topic- 253: Source Materials for Dictionaries

The vocabulary of English contains words from more sources than any other language as a
consequence of its history and contacts with any other language. The substratum of English is Anglo-
Saxon. Overlaid on this stratum is a Stratum of Latinate vocabulary. The invading Germanic tribes, the
Angles, Saxon and Jutes also contributed to its richness. English has imported words from countless
languages around the world. Two basic methods by which a language may increase its vocabulary:
 Use of material available
 Import world from another language

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All new words are added to the word class: nouns, verbs, adjectives, with the majority being
nouns. Other ways of forming words:

Compounding: Seatbelt, bookshop

Derivatives: Careful, shipment
Acronyms: ATM, UNESCO
Loanwords: Spaghetti (Italian), tycoon (Japanese)

The data from which lexicographers draw their information have to be chosen to suit the type of
dictionary they are planning. The sources of lexicographers are:

Primary: archives, corpus

Secondary: fieldwork, other dictionaries, encyclopedia, www etc.

Topic- 254: Uses and Users of Dictionaries

Since 1960 lexicologists and lexicographers have become more and more convinced that
dictionaries have to be designed for special user groups in response to specific needs. A dictionary is not a
resource containing all sort of interesting facts of data about a language.it should be a tool for the solution
of problem that people may have when using a language. Throughout research was done to have
information about user+ uses of dictionaries on the bass of self-evaluation. Subject were given
questionnaire how often they use the dictionary, what they look up, for what purpose they open dictionary
and how satisfied they were with the result.

 Dictionaries are most used for reading tasks.

 Mostly in order to find out about meaning of unknown words.
 Less for writing tools especially for checking of spellings.
 Grammatical, etymological or phonetic information is only rarely looked up.
 In case of foreign languages, bilingual dictionaries are used more frequently.

Varantola (2002:33) divides dictionary users into three broad categories: language learners, non-
professional users, and professional users; the last being those who ‘normally use a dictionary to perform
a task that they get paid for.

Other user variables that affect behaviour are; age, mother tongue, second or foreign language,
language proficiency level, educational level, skill level in dictionary use etc. Much research has been
done over the last twenty years. Nevertheless uses and users of dictionaries remain for the moment
relatively unknown.

Topic- 255: Corpora for Lexicography

A dictionary describes the vocabulary of a language or a coherent subset of a language. For each
language and subset a set of texts can be assembled which provides evidence of the choices and
combinations of choices that are made by users of the language. Such a set of text is called corpus almost

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always in electronic form nowadays. The adequacy of the corpus depends on its size, its diversity and
skill of those who assemble it. A corpus is close to the centre of dictionary project. The lexicographer
should formulate a policy concerning the way in which the corpus will be used.

Topic- 256: Developments in Electronic Dictionary Design

An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed
through a number of different media. Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including:
 as dedicated handheld devices
 as apps on smartphones and tablet computers or computer software
 as a function built into an E-reader

As CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs, they are typically packaged with a printed dictionary to be
installed on the user’s own computer. As free or paid-for online products most of the early electronic
dictionaries were print dictionaries made available in digital form. The content was identical. But the
electronic editions provided users with more powerful search functions. But soon the opportunities
offered by digital media began to be exploited.

Electronic dictionary databases, especially those included with software dictionaries are often
extensive and can contain up to 500,000 headwords and definitions, verb conjugation tables, and a
grammar reference section. Bilingual electronic dictionaries and monolingual dictionaries of inflected
languages often include an interactive verb conjugator, and are capable of word stemming and
lemmatization. Electronic dictionaries are also available in logographic and right-to-left scripts, including
Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Thai. Several developers of
the systems that drive electronic dictionary software offer API and SDK – Software Development Kit
tools for adding various language-based functions to programs, and web services such as the AJAX API
used by Google.

Topic- 257: Linguistic Corpora and the Compilation of Dictionaries

The drastic improvement in the field or computer technology has made a lasting impact on the
diversified growth and expansion of a corpus and made it an indispensable resource for work of
linguistics and language technology. The computer has provided corpus designers a massive storage
facility and impressive test processing power, which they can access quite easily for their work. Some
major English dictionaries were compiled from corpora in electronic form. People realized that corpus
based electronic dictionaries are far more exhaustive, authentic and reliable. The printed dictionaries are
compiled manually with lexical databases obtained from secondary sources.

The electronic dictionaries contained information about the meaning, the usage of headwords
long with elaborate information of their lexical information, contextual usage and polysemous
connotations directly obtained from corpora. Besides, they contained etymological, phonological and
morphological information normally found in standard printed dictionaries.

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Language corpora are utilized to develop multilingual monological, bilingual dictionaries (in both
printed and electronic versions) machine readable dictionaries and multilingual lexical resource. In some
attempts introspective analysis of corpora established the fact that most of the hard words are never used
as part of actual vocabulary of people although they occupy important place in dictionaries.

This led scholars to argue for their removal because people never used them in normal linguistic
expression and interaction. Reference to the history of corpus-based studies in lexicology has an explicit
significance. It implies that both historical and diachronic corpora are available for excessive use in
lexicology for making a significant contribution to historical semantic and lexicology.

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Lesson-45

LATEST TRENDS OF RESEARCH IN LINGUISTICS

Topic- 258: What is Linguistic Research or Research in Linguistics?

Linguistics is an important field of study which was introduced as a regular discipline in the
universities of Europe as later as 1960s (Crystal, 1985).With the turn of the present century, this branch of
knowledge further developed and many specializations were offered in various branches of linguistics in
the well-known universities of the world (ibid). Research is one of the most important jobs of universities
in the modern world. Universities keep on encouraging their students to conduct research studies in the
neglected areas of various disciplines. It is a need of time to study the work of universities to evaluate
their performance and for determining the existing research trends in various disciplines.

There is no solid research to determine research trends in Linguistics in Pakistan. It may be a very
important study to find out research trends in linguistics in Pakistan. A key strand of linguistic research
evolved from the writings of Noam Chomsky (1965), who argued that the goal of linguistics should be to
study underlying linguistic competence‘: the rules that inform the production of grammatical sentences.

For Chomsky, the focus of study was the abstract system: the underlying structure of language.
Actual utterances were regarded as disorderly, chaotic and of no value in offering an understanding of
language as a system. A significant challenge to Chomsky‘s theories was made by the applied linguist,
Hymes(1972) who offered the term communicative competence in deliberate contrast to linguistic
competence’. As Hymes observes, a person who has only linguistic competence would be quite unable to
communicate – a social monster ‘producing grammatical sentences disconnected from the context in
which they occurred. Later on, however, a compromising attitude emerged in the world of linguistics and
the latest research trends show an interdisciplinary approach towards socio- and psycholinguistics. The
study and analysis of discourse is also one of the emerging areas of linguistics in the current era.

Topic- 259: Research Trends in Applied Linguistics

In the past quarter of the century, research in the field of SLA has grown enormously with the
quantity of published research increasing annually. It is striking, however, that the main thrust of research
has been towards establishing how language learners are similar and how processes of language learning
are universal. That is, traditionally, the majority of the research in SLA and applied linguistics looked for
phenomenon that would presumably affect all the individual language learners. In studies concerned with
SLA, researchers have tried to identify universal sequences in development or common processes, such as
transfer, cross-linguistic interference, and so forth that would affect everyone in the same way.

In the field of psychology two contrasting approaches to the study of human functioning have
long been recognized – the experimental and the differential approaches. The former focuses on
identifying structures and processes common to everyone – similarities between individuals. In contrast,
the latter approach emphasizes differences between people, seeking to identify the most relevant major

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ways that people vary. In the field of applied linguistics, with the researcher’s awareness of the potential
impact of learners’ differences on L2 learning, an era of research with focus on the L2 learners’ variables
was marked in the 1970s. Concern about the learner variables resulted in an increasing number of studies
that accounted for the learner’s differences from different perspectives in ESL/EFL contexts. Learners’
differences can generally be divided into three categories: personality, cognitive, and affective. A basic
question concerned has been why all individuals with normal faculties successfully acquire their first
language but meet with different degrees of success when they attempt to master a second language. The
answer to this fundamental question, as the literature shows, concerns the individual L2 learner and lies in
his/her personality, cognitive, and affective construct.

Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the
comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics
draws methodology and theory from fields such as neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive science,
neurobiology, communication disorders, neuropsychology, and computer science.

Forensic linguistics is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods and insights to the
forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of
applied linguistics. According to Rastegar (2006), the research work using simple linear model of
correlation was more in quantity while that using complex casual modelling, although less in quantity,
was promising and of qualitatively high calibre and importance. The researcher concludes that casual
modelling-pathway analysis is an effective tool of data analysis in the field of applied linguistics.

Topic- 260: Current Trends in Linguistic Research Methodology

Lazarton (2000) studied trends in research methodology and use of statistics for data analysis in
Applied Linguistics. She attempted to find out if the current research trends in empirical studies published
in journals of Applied Linguistics matched with the research models recently discussed in the same field.
Thus, the aim of this research was to know how latest models of data analysis were adopted by
researchers in the field of Applied Linguistics. For the purpose, the researcher analyzed and classified 332
articles published in four well-known journals of Applied Linguistics during the period 1991-1997.

The articles were classified into qualitative and quantitative etc. categories, sub-classified into
various categories on the basis of research methodology, data analysis techniques and research models
used in the articles. The classification was based on the claim of researchers without further evaluation.
For example, if a researcher claimed that s/he had used regressive analysis method in the study, the article
was included in the subclass of regressive analysis without evaluating whether the regressive analysis
technique as claimed by the researcher was used properly or not. According to the findings, almost 88%
of research articles in the selected journals were quantitative studies. Statistical research methods were
used in the quantitative research.

On the other hand, a limited number of qualitative studies published in the four research journals
understudy had followed ethnography and oral and written analysis models. In the quantitative research
which used statistics for analysis, techniques of descriptive statistics were used in most articles published
in the selected journals. According to the author (Lazarton, 2000), almost 50% of the authors applied

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ANOVA for data analysis in the research studies of quantitative nature. The remaining half used other
statistical methods like Pearson Correlation, t-test, regressive analysis, chi-square test, MANOVA etc. in
their research papers. The researcher thinks it ‘troubling’ that use of ANOVA is so common in empirical
research in Applied Linguistics because, according to the author, it is not an easier test (ibid). Finally, she
recommends future researchers to combine both qualitative and quantitative research.

Topic- 261: Research Trends in Linguistics in China

Young, Lichun and Jun (2001) analyzed contents of four Chinese journals of Applied Linguistics
and equal number of journals of the West for comparative study of research trends in Applied Linguistics.
The aim of the study was to compare research trends in linguistics in China with those of the West. The
focus of this study was research methods used in applied linguistic studies published in the journals of
both groups. The top research journals from both groups were selected. Articles published in the selected
journals were analyzed with focus on research methodology used in the studies published during last two
decades. The data were categorized into classes like qualitative, quantitative, classroom interaction
analysis and non-empirical studies, etc. The findings were presented in two (decade-wise) pools.

According to the findings, utter dominance with gradual decrease of non-empirical studies
marked main trends in the field of Applied Linguistics in China. Besides, quantitative research method
was adopted more than qualitative research methods. On the other hand, in the West, qualitative and
empirical research was more liked than non-empirical quantitative research, while ‘personal experiences
and reviews were virtually absent’ (Young et. al, 2001, p.7). Argument-based opinions, although existed
in the West, were not confused with research articles. A wider gap between qualitative and quantitative
research which existed in China had been bridged up by the West. Ethnography as a method of research
was the latest phenomenon of the 80s decade. The analysis of data was always statistical and scientific.
Nature and relation between research and language, SLA, (in) dependence of practice on theory and
Chomskyan influence on linguistic theories were topics which emerged as prominent theoretical issues in
the research scenario of the West during the period under study. The favourite topics of study for Chinese
researchers included language policy, language teaching, correlation between national ideology and
language teaching, translation studies, significance of research in China and theories of language. One of
the significant findings of this research is that there was an utter difference between research trends in the
first and second decade of the study period in China in the field of applied linguistics.

The lack of inferential statistics in applied linguistic research and that of experimental designs
was found to be a vital deficiency in research work of first decade of the study period. But the next
decade saw a significant change in the approach of Chinese researchers towards research methodology.
The areas which were neglected in the previous decade became foci of attention in the next decade. The
neglected areas of research and major lacunae in research methodology were pointed out in the first
decade of the study period. As a result, an utter change in the attitude of researchers was noted in the next
decade regarding the use of research methods. The study shows vigilant nature of the Chinese towards
research. Constant improvement in the field of research speaks of the dynamic process of evolution in
research in China. One of the important developments noted by the researchers was that subjective
research was replaced by objective research and the number of studies based on only ‘personal
experiences and views’ decreased. Memory based research reports were replaced by empirical studies.

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Topic- 262: Research Trends in Linguistics in Japan

Izui (1962) studied research trends in Japanese linguistics. The article is divided into four parts.
The first part is about vowels of Japanese, the second about research studies on the origin of Japanese
language, the third on various research studies in Japan and the last part is about the dominant theories
and research methodology in Japanese linguistics.

In the first part, the researcher gives history, origin and development of the vocalic system of
Japanese. The writer enumerates efforts of Japanese researchers during past centuries to study and
analyze nature of vowels of Japanese language. It is pointed out that most of the efforts of researches to
understand the nature of Japanese vowels were focused on ancient Japanese and Chinese scripts and
distribution of occurrence of vowels with other phonemes.
In the second part of the article, the researcher describes efforts of Japanese researchers and the
problems faced by them in the way to determine origin of their language. In this section, the writer
summarizes efforts of various researchers to find out the origin of Japanese language in different (families
of) languages like Altaic, Ural, Austronesian or Korean etc.

The third part of the article is about study of languages of the East and West. In this section, the
researcher summarizes very briefly efforts of Japanese linguists and researchers for decipherment of the
ancient script and its comparison with the existing scripts. The writer particularly describes efforts of the
researchers to explain the script and grammar of Sihia. Among other important works published in Japan
are those about various languages and dialects of the world. Of special importance, in the opinion of the
writer, are studies on the origin and grammar of languages which may help to understand the origin of
Japanese language. The researcher particularly points out the rarity of studies on Australian, American
and African languages and strongly recommends the Japanese researchers to pay special attention to these
languages ‘to achieve broader base’ in Japanese linguistics (Izui, 1962, p. 54).The last part of this survey
is about the theories and methodologies used in research in the field of linguistics in Japan.

The writer finds no significant difference in linguistic theories and research methods prevalent in
Japan and the world. Most of the research in Japan is, in the opinion of the writer, under influence of
Saussure’s thought. In the field of research methodology, significant achievement in Japanese linguistics
is the activities of the Mathematical Society of Linguistics in Japan which works for ‘mathematical
management of linguistic facts’ (ibid, p.54). Another prevalent theory in Japanese linguistics is modern
stylistics.

Topic- 263: Trends of Linguistics in India

Jha (2003) studied current trends in linguistics in India. The study surveys progress in the field of
information technology developed for linguistic purposes. It also gives passing remarks on the current
status of languages and attitude of speakers in Indian society and politics. Depicting the linguistic
scenario of India, Jha (2003) describes, that there are over a thousand languages with well-defined
grammars, of five language families namely, Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, and
Andamanese.

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Introduction to Linguistics (ENG502) VU

According to the claim of the writer, considerable development in the field of information
technology enabled India to use IT for linguistic purposes by ‘preserving data of the dying languages.
Different public and private organizations, Universities and IT institutes are constantly working for
finding ways to use IT in linguistics. According to the researcher (ibid), Indian organizations are working
for creation and analysis of corpora, integration of language technology into curricula, development of
speech databases, speech engines, machine translation, speech to speech translation and many other
internet related programmes. The researcher concludes with a comment on the issue of funding in
research. The researcher claim that the funding provided by the government of India is enough for
development of various research projects for integration of IT and linguistics; however, the writer feels
that the funding provided by private sector organizations to the researchers is not enough.

Topic- 264: Recent Progress in Applied Linguistics

Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary subject and has wide development prospect. It occupies
an irreplaceable important position in contemporary linguistic researches to a large extent and owns great
practicability value. So, applied linguistics study has developed to the stage of cognitive theory and social
constructivist theory. Cognitive theory school plays an important promotion role for development of
applied linguistics. It advocates learners’ learning subjectivity and creativity and considers language study
is an active activity process. But, cognitive theory neglects researched on nonintellectual factors. Social
constructivist theory makes up for this shortcoming. It stresses equal importance of social environment
and cultural knowledge and holds knowledge acquisition is the result of learners’ contact and interactions
in specific social environment. It has great enlightenment on linguistics teaching practice and theoretical
teaching and provides a new opportunity for applied linguistics development.

The development process of applied linguistics is human socialization process. Because social
constructivist theory regards language as an important constituent part of social semantic system,
language learners are important members in whole social group. Besides, it will make research fields of
applied linguistics become wide, continuously update foreign language teaching idea and teaching mode
and make foreign language teacher face larger teaching pressure.

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