Tips for Linguistics

 Terms explained

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1.       Linguistic universals

Linguistic universal is a grammatical rule or linguistic feature that is found in all languages. It is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages. For example, all languages have Nouns and Verbs; all languages have vowel sounds and consonant sounds. It was an American linguist Joseph Greenberg (1915-2001) who proposed a set of 45 basic universals. Like Noam Chomsky ( universal  grammar) Greenberg sought to discover the universal structures underlying human languages. His approach was functionalist rather than formalist.

2.       Pidgin and Creole

Pidgin and Creole are two language varieties. Pidgin developed for some practical purpose like trading among the people who did not have a common language for communication. Sometimes it is a language between the rulers and the ruled.  Pidgin therefore is a link language. When pidgin becomes the mother-tongue of a speech community it is called Creole. There are many pidgins and creoles used worldwide where colonization took place. A Pidgin English was spoken between the colonists and natives.

3.       Langue and parole

Langue and Parole are two terms used by the structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure to refer to two aspects of language. Langue is the social aspect and parole is the individual aspect of a language. Langue is the conventionally accepted, fixed and abstract underlying system of rules. Parole is concrete individual utterances of a language by its users.

4.       Three term labeling of consonant sounds

1.       Place of articulation

a.       Bilabial, b). labio dental, c). dental,  d). alveolar , e). post-alveolar, f).  palate-alveolar,           g). palatal, h). velar  i).  glottal

2.       Manner of articulation

Plosives, affricates, fricatives, lateral,  nasals, semi vowels(frictionless continuats, approximants)

3.       State of glottis

                Voiced (vocal cords vibrate) and voiceless (vocal cords are wide apart)

5.       Types of phonetics

1.       Articulatory Phonetics (deals with how speech sound is produced)

2.       Acoustic Phonetics (deals with transmission of speech sounds)

3.       Auditory Phonetics (deals with how speech sound are received and perceived)

6.       Function class and formal class

7.       Processes of word formation

8.       Allomorphs

9.       T.G Grammar

Transformational Generative Grammar was proposed by Noam Chomsky in his famous book “Syntactic Structures” in 1957. More discussions on T.G grammar followed in another book “Aspects of the Theories of Syntax” (1965). He questioned the structural approach to the study of Grammar.

The term “Transformational Generative” suggests that there are two independent

10.   General Indian English (GIE)

Indian English is a term applied to the variety of English spoken in any state in India. It is largely different from the RP with respect to vocabulary, pronunciation and speech patterns. It developed as a result of the influence of mother-tongue of the people in India.  As a result of British colonial rule until Indian independence in 1947, English is an official language of India and is widely used in both spoken and literary contexts. Idiomatic forms derived from Indian literary and vernacular language have become assimilated into Indian English in differing ways according to the native language of speakers. Nevertheless, there remains general homogeneity in phonetics, vocabulary, and phraseology between variants of the Indian English dialect

11.   Affix-switch rule

12.   Cases of English nouns

13.   Broad types of memory

14.   Diglossia

In sociolinguistics, Diglossia is a situation in which two distinct varieties of a language are spoken within the same speech community. Often, one form is the literary or prestige dialect, and the other is a common dialect spoken by most of the population.  Sociolinguists may also use the term diglossia to denote bilingualism, the speaking of two or more languages by the members of the same community

15.   Idiolect

In linguistics, an idiolect is a variety of language that is unique to a person, as manifested by the patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that they use. Conceptually, the language production of each person, the idiolect, is unique. The term was coined by linguist Bernard Bloch: from Greek idio(personal, private) + (dia)lect

16.  Implosives

Implosive consonants are stops (rarely affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive  airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, implosives are indicated by modifying a voiced stop letter with a hook top: ⟨ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ⟩.

17.   Root/stem

The distinction is in the derivation. Stem-word is essentially chopping of the affix/suffix and what remains. Root needs to be a proper and valid word. That is, it must be morphologically the base. Root of went is go, but not the stem. When addition of suffix/affix transforms the root word, then root and stem may not be same.

Root is the smallest meaningful part of a word.
Stem is any morpheme which a syntactical affix can be added to
Base is any morpheme which an affix can be added to.
Example : agree is a root and base at the same time..it is a root because it is bare and an base because dis- and -ment can be added to it.
disagree is a stem because its is a verb and by adding ment it changes to an adjective
dis/ment are affixes.
affixes can't stand alone in languages. they are added to bases that changes both semantically and syntactically.

Root

In morphology, the root is the unit that provides the core meaning and to which affixes may be attached.

Stem

In morphology, the stem is the unit to which affixes are attached.

18.   Adjunct

An adjunct is a part of a sentence.

19.   Demonstrative pronoun and demonstrative adjectives

Words which can be used as adjectives as well as pronouns. This, that, these and those.

Demonstrative pronoun

They can be used to point out something or some one.

Example : This is my brother.

demonstrative adjectives

used in front of a noun as an adjective: Example : These boys are always lazy.

20.   Phonology

21.   Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is a branch of applied Linguistics that examines the interplay of language and society, with language as the starting point.

Sociolinguistics is the study of how language serves and is shaped by the social nature of human beings. In its broadest conception, sociolinguistics analyzes the many and diverse ways in which language and society entwine. It combines insights from a number of disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, psychology and anthropology.

The basic premise of sociolinguistics is that language is variable and changing.  As a result, language is not homogeneous — not for the individual user and not within or among groups of speakers who use the same language.

22.   Types of sentences (word order, meaning and clause structure)

Based on Word order

1. Statements (SVO)

 2. Questions – a: Y/N Questions (Aux V + Sub + Main V+(o)…..?)

                                        B: Information Questions (Question WorAux V + Sub + Main V+(o)…..?)

3.Imperatives (Verb+(o))

4.Exclamatory statement
Based on types of Clauses used

1.Simple – One Main Clause

2.Compund –More than one main clauses

3.Complex – combination of main clauses and subordinate clauses

23.   Conditionals

Sentences in which if or unless is used as conjunction for the purpose of subordination

Type 1. Real condition : Example .If you try hard, you will achieve your goal

Type 2. Unreal condition : Example .If you tried hard, you would achieve your goal

Type 3. Improbable  condition : Example .If you had tried hard, you would have achieved your goal

24.   Minimal pairs

25.   Consonant clusters

26.   Diphthongs

27.   Simple complex and compound words

28.   Inflectional and derivational suffixes

In grammar, inflection  is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case. The inflection of verbs is also called conjugation, and the inflection of nouns, adjectives and pronouns is also called declension.

An inflection expresses one or more grammatical categories with a prefix or a suffix 

In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happiness and unhappy from happy, or determination from determine. It often involves the addition of a morpheme in the form of an affix, such as -ness, un- and -ation in the preceding examples.

Inflectional Morphemes and Derivational Morphemes
"The difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes is worth emphasizing. An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word. For example, both old and older are adjectives. The -er inflection here (from Old English -ra) simply creates a different version of the adjective. However, a derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word. The verb teachbecomes the noun teacher if we add the derivational morpheme -er (from Old English -ere). So, the suffix -er in modern English can be an inflectional morpheme as part of an adjective and also a distinct derivational morpheme as part of a noun. Just because they look the same (-er) doesn't mean they do the same kind of work.

"Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the same word, they always appear in that order. First the derivational (-er) is attached to teach, then the inflectional (-s) is added to produce teachers."
(George Yule, The Study of Language, 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2006)

29.   Dialects

30.   Pitch

31.   Assimilation

In Phonetics, change in a sound due to the influence of a neighbouring sound is called assimilation

32.   Auxiliary verbs

33.   Types of clauses, noun clauses and adverbial clauses, finite and non finite clauses

34.   Duality of structure

"Human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously. This property is called duality(or 'double articulation'). In speech production, we have a physical level at which we can produce individual sounds, like n, b and i. As individual sounds, none of these discrete forms has any intrinsic meaning. In a particular combination such as bin, we have another level producing a meaning that is different from the meaning of the combination in nib. So, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meanings. This duality of levels is, in fact, one of the most economical features of human language because, with a limited set of discrete sounds, we are capable of producing a very large number of sound combinations (e.g. words) which are distinct in meaning."
(George Yule, The Study of Language, 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Definition : A characteristic of human language whereby speech can be analyzed on two levels: (1) as made up of meaningless elements (i.e., a limited inventory of sounds), and (2) as made up of meaningful elements (i.e., a virtually limitless inventory of words).

Duality of structure was coined by Anthony Gidden . The phrase is used in Chomsky by John Lyons to illustrate the differences between human and animal communication. It is described there as "two levels of grammatical structure." The first  is syntactic structure  and the second is  phonemes.

35.   Adjectival clauses

36.   Front vowels