Introduction to the Linguistic Study of English

1. What is language?
There are two words in the title of this course that need some explanation. Firstly, if
somebody asked you "What is English?", you would most certainly reply that
English is a language. Your interlocutor might next wonder what was meant by
language. There are various definitions of language, but let us look at only two, one
from the early 1920s and one from the late 1980s.
In 1921 (p.8) the American linguist Edward Sapir defined language in the following
way: "Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating
ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced
symbols." Almost 70 years later, British Linguist, David Crystal (1989:251) said: [we
can refer] to language as human vocal noise (or the graphic representation of this
noise in writing) used systematically and conventionally by a community for
purposes of communication."
The first thing that we notice in both definitions is that language is restricted to
human communication, which raises two issues: do non-humans use language and
do they communicate. The answer to the first question is that only humans use
language, that is language is species-specific. Human beings are born with the
capacity to learn and use language and in this sense language is innate. Every child
that is born and that does not have a severe brain damage can learn a language.
This does not mean that the child is born with the capacity to learn a particular
language. An infant born by Croatian parents and raised in China in a Chinese
speaking family will learn Chinese with equal ease as we have all learned Croatian.
The main reason why language capacity is restricted to human beings is that
animals lack the necessary apparatus for the production of what Crystal calls vocal
noise. This apparatus for producing vocal noise consists of the larynx, the oral and
nasal cavities, the tongue, the teeth and the lips. Even our closest relatives,
chimpanzees, lack a larynx and a mouth that allow them articulation of a wide
variety of sounds produced by human organs of speech.
If animals are not equipped with speech organs which would enable them to
produce vocal noise called speech, can they communicate at all? One can often
hear expressions such as the language of bees, the language of traffic signs, etc.
These are obviously not languages in the above sense, but it cannot be denied that
there exist other systems of communication in addition to language. Let us consider
first some animal communication systems:
Scent. Some insects communicate by emitting chemicals, called pheromones, to
signal their reproductive readiness. Dogs urinate to mark their territory.
Colour. The colour of many animals plays an important role in communication. For
example, the octopus changes colour in order to communicate its readiness for
mating or to defend its territory.
Facial expressions. Chimpanzees and other apes can change their facial
expressions to communicate such things as anger, fear, frustration, readiness to
fight, etc.
Now, if you look back at the first definition of language, the one by Sapir, you will
1

notice that he mentions a system of voluntarily produced symbols. Now,

communication normally relies on using something to stand for something else. An
obvious example are words. We can use words to replace such real-word things as
car, blackboard, beer, dog. Such items that stand for the real-world objects are
called signs and for this reason language is also referred to as a system of signs.
Every sign consists of two parts: the signifier and the signified. We may say that the
sign indicates a relationship between the form (the signifier) and the meaning (the
signified).

signified

signifier

F. de Saussure (1863)
To relate the form to its meaning we need also someone who will interpret this
relation. In other words the relation between the signifier and the signified is not
direct, it is mediated through an interpreter. We can show this three-fold distinction
as in the following diagram:
Sign vehicle: the form of the sign
Sense/Interpreter: the sense made of the sign
Referent: what the sign stands for

Ogden and Richards (1923)/Charles Sanders Peirce (1931)

There are three types of signs:
1. Icon. It is a sign whose form has actual characteristics of its meaning, i.e. icons
always bear some resemblance to their referents. Onomatopoeic words like snip,
snap, snatch, buzz,
cuckoo are icons because they resemble what they signify. Photographs, for
example, are
icons because they show what the object in the photograph really looks like.
2. Index. An index is a sign whose form only has characteristics associated with the
realworld object For example, when you see a scull and crossed bones, this usually
means 'mortal danger'. When you see such a sign (index) on a bottle, it usually
means poison, and if you drink it you will look like that in a couple of weeks. When
you drive along a highway and you see a road-sign with a fork and a spoon on it,
you immediately recognize that this means that there is a restaurant nearby.
Indexical signs are not arbitrary because their presence has in some sense been
caused by the presence of the referent.
3. The third and the most important type of sign for our purposes is the symbol. A
symbol is a sign whose form and meaning are related only by convention, that is,
2

S
e
n
s
e
:
t
h
e
s
e
n
s
e
m
a
d
e
o
f
t
h
e
s
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g
n

there is nothing natural or intrinsic that would relate the signifier and the signified
and we say that the relationship between them is arbitrary. For example, what is
natural in the relationship between the word dog and the real animal. It is only by
convention that the speakers of English use the word dog, for an animal of the
canine species. Other languages use different signifiers for the same signified, e.g.
Hund in German, hont in Dutch, pas in Croatian, cane in Italian, etc.

1.1 Language vs. animal communication systems

Differences and similarities between human language and natural animal
communication systems can be best shown by comparing essential characteristics
of the two systems. These characteristics are called design features.
1. Interchangeability - this means that all members of the species can send and
receive messages. This is obviously true of human language. Although it is
sometimes said that bees use a special kind of'dance' to indicate the distance and
quality of the source of food, not all bees in a hive do that. Birds sing to mark their
territory, but this is done only by male birds. It seems that vocal noises produced by
non-human primates (e.g. chimpanzees and gorillas) are interchangeable.
2. Feedback. Users of the system monitor and correct their linguistic output. This is
true of humans; it has not been determined whether this is true of animal
communication systems.
3. Specialization means that the communication system is used only for
communication. This is true not only of human language but also of some animal
communication systems.Crying may also communicate something (e. g. a particular
emotional state), but people also cry when they have a foregn body in their eyes,
that is, communication is not the primary function of crying.
4. Semanticity. Humans use a system of arbitrary signs to convey meaning. Bee
dancing, bird calls and songs and vocal noises produced by chimpanzees and
gorillas are also used to convey meaning but the range of messages conveyed is
extremely small when compared to the vastness of human communication.
5. Arbitrariness. As has already been pointed out, there is no natural connection
between the signifier and the signified. This association is a matter of convention,
and only some onomatopoeic terms are not entirely arbitrary; although they are not
entirely arbitrary, they still differ from language to language. Compare the words for
cockoo in some other languages: coucou (French), cuchillo (Spanish), cuculo
(Italian), cucu (Romanian), cucvlus (Latin), Kuckuck (German), kukushka (Russian),
kakuk (Hungarian), kukavica (Croatian). Animal communication systems do not
seem to show arbitrariness.
6. Discretness. Human language consists of isolable units (phonemes,
morphemes, words) which can be combined into still larger units (phrases, clauses,
sentences). Animals (bees, birds, primates) do not combine different kinds of'dance'
or cries to produce novel messages.
7. Displacement refers to the ability to refer to events remote in time and space.
Only human beings are capable of communicating about things and events that
occured in the past or that will happen in the future. Bee dancing can show
displacement in the sense that bees can indicate the distance of food source, but
3

they cannot indicate where the food source was two days ago. Vocal noise
produced by birds or primates reflects primarily reaction to immediate events.
8. Creativity (Productivity) refers to the ability to create new messages on any
topic at any time. Every sentence we produce is in a sense completely new and
may have not been produced before. Humans are also capable of understanding
sentences they had never heard before. It is doubtful whether birdsong or
vocalization of certain monkeys convey novel messages. Another creative aspect of
language is the process of creating new verbs from nouns in English, as in the
following table adapted from W. O'Grady, M. Dobrovolsky and F.Katamba(1996):
Noun
leave the boat on the beach
stab the man with a knife
they spent the summer in Rome
we flew to London by Concorde

Verb
beach the boat
knife the man
they summered in Rome
we Concorded to London

9. Duality of patterning. Humans can combine meaningless units (phonemes) into

larger meaningful units or recombine them into other meaningful units (stop, spot,
pots). Animal communication systems do not exhibit such duality of patterning.
10. Tradition. Some aspects of the communication system are transmitted from
experienced adults to the younger members of the species. This is obviously an
important factor of language acquisition, but it is also found in some animal
communication systems.
11. Prevarication. This means that the users of the communication system can talk
nonsense or lie. This is certainly true of humans, but it is not clear whether animal
communication shows any signs of prevarication.
12. Learnability refers to the ability of the user to learn other variants (e. g. humans
can learn other languages or dialects). Animal communication systems are
genetically inherited and do not show this design feature.
13. Reflexiveness. Only humans can use language (metalanguage) to talk about
language, i. e. only humans write grammars and linguistic textbooks.
1.2 Language and linguistics
Now that we have answered the first question and have some idea of the
similarities and differences between human language and animal communication
systems, let us turn to the second part of the title of this course, viz. English. In the
past this seemed a fairly easy question because only two major regional varieties
were recognized: British English and American English. However, the situation is
not that simple, as you will see in more detail when we come to discuss some basic
issues in sociolinguistics. At this point, the problem is perhaps best illustrated by
considering titles of some books, such as World Englishes by Jennifer Jenkins
(2003). English is normally a non-count noun derived from the adjective English and
as such should not be used with a plural ending. The plural ending suggests here
that there is more than one English: British English, American English, Australian
English, Canadian English, South African English, etc. In addition to these
Englishes, all of which are spoken as the first language, there are also different
kinds of English spoken as second language.
Before discussing various kinds of English and the place of English in the
classification of languages let us turn to the term linguistic study of English, that is,
let us try to answer briefly what it means to study a language from a linguistic point
of view.
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The branch of science that studies language from a scientific point of view is called
linguistics, that is; "linguistics may be defined as the scientific study of language"
(Lyons 1968:1). The term scientific begs another question, but suffice it to say that
by scientific study of language we mean "its investigation by means of controlled
and empirically verifiable observations and with reference to some general theory of
language-structure." (Lyons 1968:1).
When you hear a language that you had never heard before at first it sounds simply
as some kind of noise. After some time you start to recognize some of this noise as
familiar sounds, such as /pl, /t/, lal etc. The sounds produced by humans when they
speak are studied by phonetics. However, because of the structure of their organs
of speech, humans are capable of producing an almost infinite variety of sounds,
but not all of these sounds are relevant to a particular language. For example, the
sound Ipl is pronounced differently in post and spit but this difference does not
cause any change in meaning, i.e. if you pronounce both sounds in the same way
you will still get your meaning across. On the other hand, compare the initial sounds
in cat, mat, sat in the sentence The cat sat on the mat. In each case these words
differ in meaning only because they have different initial sounds. Do not confuse
spelling and pronunciation because one and the same sound may be spellt in more
than one way, e.g. [f] in fish and enough. The branch of linguistics that studies
sounds which make a difference in a language is called phonology. Since
phonology studies only those sounds that have some function in a language it is
also sometimes referred to as functional phonetics. However, sounds do not have
any meaning (although they can cause a change of meaning) and therefore they
are combined into larger meaningful units, such as cat, dog, bird, etc. These larger
units are called morphemes and are studied by morphology. Although morphemes
have meaning ((i.e. they express a relation between a signifier and a signified) we
do not normally use them in isolation. We combine them into larger units like a big
dog or The dog saw the cat. The structure of such larger units (phrases, sentences)
is studied by syntax. Finally, not all combinations of morphemes (we shall come
later to the discussion of differences between morphemes and words) express the
same meaning. Compare the sentence above with The cat saw the dog. The
branch of linguistics which studies meaning is called semantics. Phonology,
morphology, syntax and semantics are traditionally referred to as the four major
branches of linguistics. Morphology and syntax are often subsumed under the term
grammar. Before we look at the place of English within the languages of the world,
let us turn to these traditional branches of linguistics and some less traditional ones.
Recomended reading:
Poole, Stuart C. 1999. An Introduction to Linguistics. Houndmill-Palgrave (ch. 1)
Dobrovolsky, Michael; 1996. Animal communication. In: William O'Grady, Michael
Dobrovoisky and Francis Katamba (eds.) Contemporary Linguistics. An
Introduction.Longman. (Chapter 16; especially 1; 2.1; 2.2; 7).

Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

-

Transmission of utterances (communication) is done by means of speech sounds

Q: What are other means of communication?
PHONETICS: the study of the spech sounds as phonetic segments or PHONES (articulatory
phonetics; acoustic phonetics; auditory phonetics)
Q: What is the power source of our spech sounds?
Organs of speech (Figure 1):

Q: What are other functions of the organs of speech?

CONSONANTS: sounds articulated via closure or obstruction in the vocal tract
Voiced: when the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them
apart as it passes through, creating a vibration effect.
Voiceless: when the vocal cords are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them
unimpeded.
Distribution of consonants Collins & Mees (2003) The Phonetics of English and Dutch.
Boston.Brill Leiden. (Figure 2):

- VOWELS: produced with a relatively free flow of air through the vocal tract
Place of articulation of vowels (Figure 3):

Q: Are vowels voiceless or voiced?

DIPHTONGS: combined vowel

sounds beginning with a vowel and
ending with a glide; movement from
one vocalic position to another

ASSIMILATION: a tendency of sounds to adopt a feature of neighbouring sounds (voiced

sounds attract voiced, voiceless atract voiceless)
IPA 1888; idiosyncratic spelling of English
Q: What does ghoti have to do with fish?
PHONOLOGY studies sounds in the context of languages and other speech varieties. It is
concerned with which sounds a language uses and how it arranges them.
Q: Do sounds have meaning?
PHONEMES are meaning distinguishing sounds with a contrastive function (fine vs. vine)
Phonemes: abstract units or sound-types PHONES phonetic units as different versions of a
phoneme regularly produced in actual speech ALLOPHONES a set of phones as versions of
one and the same phoneme: th in tar (aspiration) as an allophone of a phoneme /t/
MINIMAL PAIR two words identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring
in the same position (pat vs. bat)
Q: Find the minimal pairs: pat, pen, more, heat, tape, bun, fat, ban, chain, tale, bell, far, meal,
vote, bet, pit, heel.
SYLLABLE is a major unit greater than the segment (a sound): ONSET (consonant) + RIME
(vowel, the nucleus) + CODA
STRESS and INTONATION as suprasegmental features are alternation of the pitch
variation of the word/utterance: John wanted to do this today.
John wanted to do this today.
John wanted to do this today.

Further readings:
Poole, Stuart C. (1999) an Introduction to Linguistics. Palgrave. Basingstoke and New York.41-70.
Yule, George (1996) The Study of Language. CUP: 40-63.
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MORPHOLOGY
- the study of MORPHEMES building elements used to form composite words or grammatical units;
-

Q: Which is the smallest meaningful unit in language?

re-open-ed

meaning
'again'

meaning
'open'

grammatical function
'past tense'

free morphemes can stand by themselves as single words: ROOT vs. BASE

'a redheaded girl'

root

affix

root

base

Root is the smallest meaningful part of a word

Base is any morpheme which an affix can be added to.

Q: How do we call words consisting of two or more roots, e.g. 'blackbird'?

Lexical morphemes : open class of words

-

Free morphemes
Functional morphemes (conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns): closed
class of words

bound morphemes are not independent; attached to other forms: AFFIXES (prefixes, suffixes, infixes)

STEM is the basic word-form (free morpheme) used with bound morphemes :

un-

prefix

dress

stem

-ed

suffix

care

-less

stem suffix

-ness

suffix

Q: What is the stem in Latin cor, cordis, n.? And what is the root in Croatian udbenik?

CLITICS are contracted forms dependent on a host root morpheme: I've...He's...

ALLOMORPHS - realisations of a morpheme that are in complementary distribution to each other: [s],
[z], [iz] PLURAL MORPHEME or MORPH (a phonetic realization of a morpheme)

Q: What would we list as allomorphs of the morpheme PLURAL from this set of English words:

dogs, oxen, deer, judges, curricula?

-

DERIVATIONAL morphemes are used in forming new lexemes or derived words; restricted in their
application to a certain group of word stems LEXIS

black en ('make someone black')

pur ify ('make sth. pure')

serv er ('one who serves')

serv ant ('one who serves')

*beautiless vs. beatiful

-

Q: Which are original English derivational suffixes and which are the borrowed ones in the following set
of words: yellowish, revolutionarize, illegal, happy, redden, revolution, iconic

INFLECTIONAL morphemes are used to form grammatical constructions; can be applied to all the
members of a given category SYNTAX

Let me tell you about Jim's two sisters.

One likes to have fun and is always laughing.
The other liked to study and has always taken things seriously.
One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.

Q: Can you think of a way to state the rule that will accomodate all the examples given here?

teethmarks
clawmarks
*clawsmarks
lice-infested
roach-infested
*roaches-infested

the feet-cruncher
the finger-cruncher
*the fingers-cruncher
mice-infested
rat-infested
*rats-infested

Readings:
Dirven, R., M. Verspoor (2004) 'Meaningful building blocks'. In: Dirven, R., M. Verspoor (2004). Cognitive
Exploration of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 49-75.
Poole, S.C. (1999) ' Morphology'. In: Poole, S.C. (1999) An Introduction to Linguistics.Hampshire/New
York:Palgrave. 73-82.
Yule, G. (1996). 'Morphology'. In: Yule, G. (1996). The Study of Language. CUP. 74-85.

Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language

SYNTAX
- SYNTAX (Gr. syntaxis< sintassein, to join, put together) is the study of the structure and ordering
of components within a sentence (phrase syntax, clause syntax, sentence syntax).
- Grammar = syntax
- Traditional linguistic pyramid

Somebody taught English to children. Active

Children were taught English Passive
child (Sg.) children (Pl.)

SEMANTICS
SYNTAX
MORPHOLOGY
PHONOLOGY

sound form: \chil-drn, -drn\

- Descriptive vs. prescriptive approach to grammar

- Prescriptive approach is based on traditional analysis which is, on the other hand, based on
Latin paradigms:
Present tense,
active voice

1. per.sg.
2. per.sg.
3. per.sg.
1. per.pl.
2. per.pl.
3. per.pl.

I love
you love
he loves
we love
you love
they love

amo
amas
amat
amamus
amatis
amant

- Prescriptive rules
Q: What is wrong with the following sentences:
'I can't get no satisfaction'.
Mary runs faster than me.
And Mary crossed the finish line in a record time.
Who did you see?
He is the person to talk to.
I wanted to simply check if he's available tomorrow.
- Descriptive approach: Structural analysis one type of descriptive approach which describes
the distribution of forms (morphemes) in a language as it is used by its speakers

Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language

- Test-frames - tools for eliciting specific grammatical categories which share common
characteristics:
The _________makes a lot of noise.
I heard a ____________ yesterday.
Q: Establish a grammatical category which would fit the following test-frame:
The machine ______ a lot of noise.
I ______________ a blackbird yesterday.
- Syntax may also be explained in terms of a creative and systematic (largely subconscious)
component of grammar allowing for novel, but grammatically correct combinations of linguistic
component structures.
Q: Does it seem appropriate to put the words together as follows?
Brought a

father her

wedding

to shotgun

the

- Different levels of syntactic organization:

- Distribution helps in detemining a word's category by investigating the type of elements
(functional categories) with which the word can cooccur, i.e. by establishing its distributional
properties
Category
Noun
Verb
Adjective

Distributional property
ocurrence with a determiner
ocurrence with an auxiliary
ocurrence with a degree word

Examples
a car, the weat
has gone, will stay
very rich, too big

- Immediate constituent analysis shows how small constituents (components) in sentences go

together to form larger constituents. Its aim should be to make explicit, via a diagram, what we
believe to be the structure of grammatical sentences in a language.

Phrase level constituents

Her
The
Fred
He

father
man

brought
saw
took

a
the

shotgun to the
wedding
thief
in a
car
Jean

to

came

Honolulu
here

- Phrases are built around a 'skeleton' consisting of two levels where to each level elements of
different types can be attached
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Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language

NP

VP

AP

PP

phrase level

word level

S
VP
NP
Art
[The]

?
NP

N
[dog]

V
[followed]

Art
N
[the] [boy]

?
?
?

- Head - a word at the lowest level around which the phrase is built (N, V, A, P)
- Specifiers elements in a phrase helping to make more precise the meaning of the head (Det,
Qual, Deg)
- Complements are elements, themselves phrases, providing information about entities and
locations whose existence is implied by the meaning of the head (books about the war)
Q: Define highlighted elements within a phrase:
a) He likes books.
c) We were in the house when that happened.
e) Mary went out.

b) He was quite certain about that.

d) All animals eat.
f) Never eat before turning in.

- Phrase structure rules are grammatical mechanisms which regulate the arrangement of the
elements that make up a phrase:
NP (Det) N (PP)...
VP (Qual) V (NP)...
AP (Deg) A (PP)...
PP (Deg) P (NP)...

- The phrase structure template:

XP

Specifier

X
Head

Complement

Q: Analyze the following phrases according to the phrase structure template:

a) almost in the house
b) never drink the water
c) quite certain about Mary
d) the man
e) in the water
f) Fire!
- Sentence : the largest unit of syntactic analysis; the unit of a language which puts
concepts together and expresses an event.
3

Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language

- The sentence rule: S NPVP
- The structure of S

S
NP

VP
NP

Det
________

N
______

V
_______

Det
N
_____ ______

-Tests for phrase structure:

- The substitution test confirms the existence of a syntactic unit, i.e. a constituent by
replacing them by some other elements:
The citizens rebelled after they discovered the truth.
The students will wear ties if the teachers will do so.
They stopped at the corner and we stopped there too.
- The movement test proves that a single constituent can be moved to a different
position within the sentence.
- The coordination test defines a constituent by allowing it to be joined by another group
of words by a conjunction such as and, or, but.
Q: Perform a movement and a coordination test on the above sentences.

- Noam Chomsky 1950 Syntactic structures; basis of a generative grammar as a set of explicit
rules that yield an infinite number of grammatically acceptable sentences; a top-down approach.
- deep structure: language universals, i.e an abstract level of structural organization in which all
the elements determining structural interpretation are represented
- surface structure: the syntactic form sentences take; arbitrary.
Active vs. passive: different surface structure, same deep structure
Charlie broke the window vs. The window was broken by Charlie.
Conceptual ambiguity: same surface structure, different deep structure
Q: Provide a different 'surface structure' for the same 'deep structure' for the following
sentences:
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Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language

a)
b)
c)
d)

Lara was arrested by the police.

She took her coat off.
Somenone stole my bicycle.
I told him to turn down the volume.

Annie whacked a man with an umbrella. Who had an umbrella?

Q: In what ways are these expressions 'ambiguous'?
a) an English student
b) Flying planes can be dangerous
c) The parents of the bride and the groom were waiting
Further readings:
O'Grady, William, M. Dobrovolsky, F. Katamba (2001) Contemporary Linguistics : An Introduction.
St. Martin's Press. pp. 163-225.

Introduction to the Linguistic Study of English

SEMANTICS
- SEMANTICS is the study of meaning in human language; the term was first used in French by M.
Bral in 1893, in English in 1894
- Semantics vs. semiotics the theory of signs
- Semantics as a part of linguistics, a scientific study of language: language is regarded as information
system i.e a communication system: it associates a message (the meaning) with a set of signs (sounds
of words or letters):
Plato's Cratylus (app. 4th. c. BC): words are 'names' or 'labels' for things ('conventional' vs.
'natural')
Ferdinand de Saussure (1916):

SIGNIFIER
SIGNIFIED

- MEANING usually stated by producing a term that is more familiar than the one whose meaning is
being questioned (translation, explanation, paraphrase) DUALISM
- Ogden & Richards (1923) "The Meaning of Meaning": 16 different kinds of meaning
Q: Does meaning exist outside its connection to referents? Cf.: Wittgenstein (1953:31)...for a large
class of words... the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
- two kinds of semantics:
1. one that relates to non-linguistic entities (meaning in terms of our experience outside language:
REFERENCE

- denotation is attribution of meaning of a word or phrase to the entities to which it refers

- connotation is the set of associations that a word's use can evoke
Q: What would be the denotative and connotative meaning of the following words: winter, unicorn,
attractive, mother, pray...?
2. one that is intra-linguistic (one that deals with semantic structure and relationships that hold
between the linguistic elements themselves: SENSE)
- two levels of sense relations: lexical semantics (sense relations of individual lexical items and
phrases), sentence semantics
Q: Compare the grammatical and the semantic links in the following two embedded sentences:
The boy the man the woman loved saw ran away.
The question the girl the dog bit answered was complex.
Elements of lexical semantics
-

Componential analysis semantic decomposition or analysis of meaning of words in terms of

semantic features; it is most useful for uncovering and representing similarities among
semantically related words:

Introduction to the Linguistic Study of English

man:
human
male
adult
go

boy:
human
male
adult

woman:
human
male
adult

Positional manifestation:
Possessional manifestation:
Identificational manifestation:

girl:
human
male
adult

He went from Delhi to Sidney.

The inheritance went to Mary.
Max went from being quite composed into a
state of raving madness.

Q: To which of the above manifestation would the following verbs belong: fly, inherit, crawl,
become, give, turn into, buy, walk?
- Lexicalization is the process whereby concepts are encoded in the words of a language.
Words for 'snow' in Eskimo
aput
'snow on the ground'
quana
'falling snow'
piqsirpoq
'drifting snow'
qimuqsuq
'snow drift'
Q: How many English words pertaining to the perception of light can you list?
Synonyms are words or expressions that have the same meaning in some or all contexts
Q: Is there true synonymy? Study the following examples: youth
adolescent
purchase
buy
vacation
holidays
hide
conceal
tall
high
Antonyms are words or phrases that are opposites with respect to some component of their meaning,
e.g. right/wrong; big/small, up/down
Q: What are antonyms of the following words:

hot, light (adj.), teacher, buy...

Polysemy occurs where a word has two or more related meanings; one lexeme with a variety of
referents, e.g. key
Homonyms a single form with two or more entirely distinct meanings
Homophones: same ____________ different _____________. Ex:
Homographs: same ________________ different _____________. Ex.:
Q: Which of the following lexical items belong to the polysemous items and which to homonyms:
bank, bill, meat, bark, fair, wind, invalid, play, bat, bright...

Introduction to the Linguistic Study of English

Hyponymy is a semantic relationship of lexical items when the meaning of one form is included in the
meaning of another: daffodil-flower, poodle-dog, beech-tree...(hyperonymy) - helps in defining a
lexical item
Q: Fill in the missing lexical items:

____________
_________
animal

plant

________

horse _____ snake

ant

bee

vegetable ______ tree

carrot

rose pine ___

Prototype is the best exemplar of a category (of co-hyponyms) culturally and individually
determined helps in defining a lexical item
Q: How would you define the following: a whale, a platipus, molluscs, a tomato, a berry...?
Q: What is the basic lexical relation between the following pairs of words?
a) shallow deep b) mature ripe c)suite sweet d) table furniture e) move run

f) single married

Metaphor relatedness of meaning founded on the understanding of one concept in terms of another
(X is Y), e.g. treating the concept of time as if it were a concrete commodity: You're wasting my time;
How do you spend your time these days? etc.

Source

Target

metaphorical mapping
Q: i. Determine the basis for the metaphor sets used in the following sentences:
a) She gave him an icy stare.
He gave her the cold shoulder
They got into a heated argument

b) the eye of a needle

the foot of the bed
the hands of the clock

c) This lecture is easy to digest.

Chew on this thought for a while
Listen to this juicy piece of gossip

ii. Think of the phrases/idioms that would fit the metaphors: LIFE IS A JOURNEY; HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS
DOWN; BUSINESS IS WAR; ...

Introduction to the Linguistic Study of English

Metonymy- the relatedness of meaning based on a close connection in everyday experience or
contiguity meanings belong to the same conceptual domain: container-contents relation (bottle-coke)
whole-part (car-engine), representative-symbol (the President-the White House), author-work (Bachhis piece of music).
S
T

metonymic mapping
Q: Which of the following examples are best described as metaphor or as metonymy?
a) Computer chips are an important new technology.
b) The bookstore has some new titles in linguistics.
c) Yes, I love those. I ate the whole box on Sunday!
d) I had to park on the shoulder of the road.
e) The pen is mightier than the sword.
- Sentence semantics helps in interpreting the meaning of sentences, i.e. how the positioning of
words and phrases in syntactic structure helps determine the meaning of the entire sentence.
- The Principle of Compositionality: The meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its
component parts and the manner in which they are arranged in syntactic structure structural
ambiguity arises when the meanings of the sentence components can be combined in more than one
way, cf. wealthy men and women, Nicole can see the people with binoculars.
Further readings:
Dirven, Rene and Marjolijn H. Verspoor (2004). Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics
(Cognitive Linguistics in Practice). John Benjamins Publishing Co.
O'Grady, William, M. Dobrovolsky, F. Katamba (2001) Contemporary Linguistics : An Introduction.
St. Martin's Press. pp. 268-295.
Yule, George. The Study of Language. CUP. pp.100-111.

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

SOCIOLINGUISTICS
- SOCIOLINGUISTICS is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies the social aspect of language, i.e.
language in social contexts.
- SPEECH COMMUNITY is the focus of all sociolinguistic investigation (e.g. town, village, club or nation,
group of nations) its members share a particular language or a variety of a language as well as the norms
(rules) for the appropriateness of their language in social context
- SPEECH VARIETY is the language used by any group of speakers (Fig. 1):

Standard language (superposed variety)

Speech varieties

Sociolects (social s.v.)

Socio-economic status
Gender
Ethnic group
Age
Occupation
Others

Regional speech varieties (regional dialects)

Registers (functional s.v.)

Fig.1 Speech varieties

Casual
Formal
Technical
Simplified
Others

- THE STANDARD is the superposed variety chosen by the government, communication media, educational
system because of the economic and political prestige of its speakers; it is more fixed (allowing less
variation in pronunciation, spelling and grammar) and more resistant to change
- Sociolects are associated with the socio-economic status of their speakers (overt vs. covert prestige)
arranged along the vertical dimension, e.g.: use of vernacular/slang, taboo/swear words, vebal hedges
(perhaps, maybe), politeness formulas, gender exclusive differentiation: distinct grammatical markers
(Biloxi: 'carry it!' M to M kikank, M/W to W kitk, W to M kitat), distinct lexical items: e.g. Japanese:
(w) taberu (m) kuu = 'eat'
- Regional dialects- arranged along a horizontal dimension geographical distribution of speakers maps
with ISOGLOSSES- lines representing clear boundaries betweeen speakers of different dialects- the
opposite: a dialect continuum, when there is no sharp distinction, but dialects merge gradually
- Dialect vs. ACCENT difference in pronunciation (as opposed to the difference in vocabulary and
grammar found in different dialects)
- Functional speech varieties or REGISTERS:
SLANG is informal or non-standard variety of the language (adolescents) maintenance of a group
identity
JARGON is vocabulary peculiar to some field; occupational or sociolect (e.g. hackers: c.f.
hardware/software/freeware/shareware/postcardware/crippleware/guiltware; Internet: netiquette/client)
ARGOT is an obscure or secret language( e.g. Cockney rhyming slang: bees and honey, bird lime)

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

PRAGMATICS
- PRAGMATICS is the relation between language and its context of use (and the study of this relation):
meanings which are absent from the form of language may be inferred from the context.
- it is the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, addressee,
and other features of the context of utterance
- CONTEXT is of basic importance for eliciting pragmatic meaning: co-text (linguistic context) and
physical context;
Cf. The bank is steep and overgrown.
BANK ( a sign on the wall of a city building)
- DEIXIS (Gr. pointing) by language: deictics are morphemes with variable referential meaning. This
variation is determined by the specific context. Ex.: the definite article 'the'.
- Deictic usage requires the hearer to use paragmatics to infer the referent:
o personal deictics (personal pronouns which may distinguish person, number, gender,
grammatical relation);
o spatial deictics (demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these, those and some frequent
adverbs: here, there);
o temporal dictics (adverbs of time: now, then, today, yesterday); definitness (the definite
article the, demonstratives and personal pronouns (possessives).
Q: What are the deictic expressions in the following utterance:
I'm busy now so you can't do that here. Come back tomorrow.
- REFERENCE VS. INFERENCE: an act by which a speaker uses language to enable a listener to identify
something (a referent) is called reference whereas when there is any additional information used by the
listener to connect what is said to what must be meant we talk of inference.
Q: What kind of inference is involved in interpreting these utterances:
Professor: Bring your Plato to class tomorrow.
Nurse: The broken leg in room 5 wants to talk to the doctor.
Employee: The boss was so furious, there was smoke coming out of his ears.
- INFERENCE: cognitive process to complement the semantic model in discourse by its presuppositions
and entailments listeners use inferences
- PRESUPPOSITION: something the speaker assumes to be the case speakers have presuppositions, e.g.
Judge: Ok, Mr Smith, how fast were you going when you ran the red light?
- ENTAILMENT: what logically follows from what is asserted in utterance sentences have entailments
E.g. a) I killed that wasp. entails: The wasp is dead.

- Paul Grice: nonentailment relations

a.) She is poor but honest contrast between poverty and honesty
b.) John has good handwriting (recommendation letter for philosophy): he is not that good at philosophy
c.) My cat is in the kitchen or in the basement I don't know for fact that she is in the kitchen
d.) Jim: Are you coming to the party tonight? Sue: I've got an exam tomorrow.
1

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

- IMPLICATURE: an additional conveyed meaning; assumptions about the speaker's adherence to the
Cooperative Principle of Conversation (Grice 1975) : what is expressed is richer than what is said - concept
of an "expected" amount of information in discourse
- 4 sub-principles/maxims held together by the cooperative principle: make conversational contribution
as required by accepted purpose/direction

Gricean maxims:
1.) quantity: make contribution as informative as is requested
do not make it more informative
2.) quality: try to make a contribution that is true
dont say what you believe to be false
don't say for what you don't have adequate evidence

3.) relation: be relevant

4.) manner: avoid obscurity, ambiguity
be brief and orderly

- SPEECH ACTS - people perform actions with utterances: e.g. You are welcome!
-

Common label: apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, request

supported by circumstances of utterance = speech event:
cf. cold day, speaker sips tea: That tea is cold" complaint
hot day, speaker sips (ice-) tea : "That tea is cold" compliment

- there is no 1:1 correspondence of utterance/action, circumstances are important

- Direct speech acts: correspondence of form and function:

Forms
Did you eat the food?
Interrogative
Eat the food (please).
Imperative
You ate the food.
Declarative

Functions
Question
Command (request)
Statement

- Indirect speech acts when one of the forms is used to perform a function other than in a
corresponding direct speech act, e.g. Can you pass the salt? Question or ...?
Q: Someone stands betw. you and a TV set. Which is a direct and which an inderst speech act?
a) Move!
b) You're in the way. c) Could you sit down?
d) Please get out of the way.

Further readings:
Dirven, Rene and Marjolijn H. Verspoor (2004). Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics
(Cognitive Linguistics in Practice). John Benjamins Publishing Co.
O'Grady, William, M. Dobrovolsky, F. Katamba (2001) Contemporary Linguistics : An Introduction. St.
Martin's Press. pp.296-312.
Yule, George. The Study of Language. CUP. pp.112-123.

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY
-

mutual intelligibility: mutually intelligible varieties of a

language can be understood by speakers of each variety (dialect) e.g.:
o London English, Scottish English, Australian English, Miami English dialects;
o Florence Italian, Paris French are mutually unintelligible languages + political,
cultural, historical, religious factors: standard Croatian vs. standard Serbian; Chinese
(Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka)
LANGUAGE VS. DIALECT DISTINCTION

Q: Dialect or language?
Welsh, Flemish, Macedonian, Cockney, Afrikaans, Styrian, Sicilian, Catalan, Yiddish, Gaelic, Geordie
-

Types of language classification:

o genetic classification - according to its descent (ancestor language: attested (Latin),
reconstructed hypothetical proto-language (Proto-Indoeuropean))
o linguistic classification according to structural characteristics of languages
(phonological, morphological, syntactic); identification of linguistic universals
o areal classification according to characteristics of languages in geographical context

LINGUISTIC CLASSIFICATION :
I. PHONOLOGY:

i
- size and pattern of the vowel systems:
e
cca. half of the world's languages have a five vowel system:
- the span of vowel number is 3-9, e.g. Gudanji (Aus):3 (/i/, /u/, /a/),
English: 10 (/i:/, /I/ //, //, //, //,/u/,//, //, //)
- most frequent: /a/, /i/, /u/
- all languages have stops (/p, t, k/), almost all a fricative /s/
- suprasegmental (prosodic) features: when a pitch distinction is phonemic:

TONE LANGUAGES (Mandarin

u
o
a

Chinese: d 'build', d 'achieve', d 'hit', d 'big')

- fixed (predictable) vs. free (not predictable) stress

Q: Fixed or free stress? French, Croatian, English, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, Czech, Italian, English.
II. MORPHOLOGY: combination of morphemes
a) isolating or analytic languages: words consisting of a single (root) morpheme (Mandarin
Chinese, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Cambodian): Mandarin: Ta chi le
fan. 'He ate the meal'.
He eat PAST meal
b) polysynthetic languages: single words can consist of long strings of roots and affixes expressing
meaning of entire sentences, e.g. Inuktitut (Canada):
Qasuiirsarvigssarsingitluinarnarpuq. 'Someone did not find a completely suitable resting place.'
c) synthetic:
1

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

c') agglutinating: words contain several morphemes (root and affixes representing a single,
separate grammatical category and meaning), e.g.
Turkish: kj 'village', kj-ler 'villages', kj-ler-in 'of the villages'
c'') fusional: words consist o several morphemes (roots and affixes marking several grammatical
categories simultaneously), e.g.
Russian suffix -u:
Mi vidjim
ruk-u.
we see (1.Ps.Pl.)
hand-fem/sg/Ac
Q: Determine the morphemic typology of Croatian and English.

III. SYNTAX: word order in simple declarative sentences

o order of subject (S), direct object (O) and verb (V)
o most common: SOV, SVO, VSO (over 95% of the world's languages use one of these patterns)
Q: Find one common property for all the above patterns.
SOV
Turkish
Hasan kz- al-dw.
Hasan ox-Ac buy-Pst
'Hasan bought the ox.'

SVO
?

VSO
Welsh
Lladdodd y ddraig y dyn.
killed
the dragon the man
'The dragon killed the man.'

o small number of VOS: Malagasy (Madagascar): Nahita ny mpianatra ny vehivavy.

saw
the student
the woman
_______________________________
o a few of OVS and OSV languages (Amazon basin of South America)

Further readings:
O'Grady, William, M. Dobrovolsky, F. Katamba (2001) Contemporary Linguistics : An Introduction. St.
Martin's Press. pp. 372-412.

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

HISTORY OF ENGLISH
- English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages:
o Latin and the modern Romance languages,
o the Germanic languages,
o the Indo-Iranian languages, including Hindi and Sanskrit,
o the Slavic languages,
o the Baltic languages of Latvian and Lithuanian (but not Estonian),
o the Celtic languages and
o Greek.
- original Indo-European language: proto-Indo-European: father: Vater (German): pater (Latin): pitr

(Sanskrit)
- Germanic group of languages:
o
o

East Germanic (Gothic);

North Germanic (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic);
West Germanic (modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English).

Old English (c.1000)

Middle English (transl.:Wyclif,

1384)

Early Mod. Eng. (King James

Version of the Bible, 1611)

Fder ure ue eart on heofonum

si in nama gehalgod tobecume in
rice gewure in willa on eoran swa
swa
on
heofonum
urne gedghwamlican hlaf syle us to
dg
and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we
forgyfa
urum
gyltendum
and ne geld u us on costnunge ac
alys us of yfele solice

Oure fadir at art in heuenes halwid be

i name;
i reume or kyngdom come to be. Be i
wille don in here as it is dounin
heuene.
yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.
And foryeue to us oure dettis at is oure
synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris
at is to men at han synned in us.
And lede us not into temptacion but
delyuere us from euyl.

Our father which art in heauen,

hallowed
be
thy
name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done in earth as it is in heauen.
Giue us this day our daily bread.
And forgiue us our debts as we
forgiue
our
debters.
And lead us not into temptation, but
deliuer us from euill. Amen.

A CHRONOLOGY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

55 BCE - 436
449
450-480

792
871
911
c.1000

OLD ENGLISH

587
731

Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain begins (the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes); the Celts
Earliest OLD ENGLISH inscriptions date from this period (about half of the most commonly used
words in modern English have Old English roots (e.g. be, water, and strong)
The Venerable Bede publishes The Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Latin
(ecclesiastical terms such as priest, vicar, and mass)
Alfred becomes king of Wessex. He has Latin works translated into English and begins practice
of English prose. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is begun
Charles II of France grants Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger. The beginning of
Norman French
The oldest surviving manuscript of Beowulf dates from this period

1066

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

c.1150

The oldest surviving manuscripts in MIDDLE ENGLISH date from this period (mixture of AngloNorman and Old English)
English replaces Latin as the medium of instruction in schools, other than Oxford and Cambridge
which retain Latin

1349-50
1362
1384
c.1388

MIDDLE ENGLISH

1348

Wyclif publishes his English translation of the Bible

Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales
THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT begins (all long vowels became closer (higher, more tense) or
diphthongized: namena:m > n:m; break br:k > brik ; home ho:m > houm;

c.1400

mile mi:l > mil; house hu:s > hus

William Caxton establishes the first English printing press (standardization of English)
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

1476
1492
1525
1536
1549
1564-1616
1603
1604
1607
1611
1666
1702

The Statute of Pleading replaces French with English as the language of law. Records continue to
be kept in Latin. English is used in Parliament for the first time

William Tyndale translates the New Testament

First version of The Book of Common Prayer
The life of Shakespeare
Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English dictionary, Table Alphabeticall
The Authorized, or King James Version, of the Bible is published
Publication of the first daily, English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, in London

The Union of Parliaments (England and Scotland): the legislature was transferred to
London, and English became the official written language.

1755

Samuel Johnson publishes his dictionary; LATE-MODERN ENGLISH vocabulary (the

technological society + the British Empire)

1770
1776
1788
1803
1828
1851
1922
1928

LATE MODERN ENGLISH

1707

British penal colony established in Australia

Noah Webster publishes his dictionary
Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick
British Broadcasting Corporation founded
The Oxford English Dictionary is published

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

HISTORY OF ENGLISH
- English is a member of the Indo-European family of languages: Latin and the modern Romance languages, the
Germanic languages, the Indo-Iranian languages, including Hindi and Sanskrit, the Slavic languages, the Baltic
languages of Latvian and Lithuanian (but not Estonian), the Celtic languages and Greek.
- original Indo-European language: proto-Indo-European: father: Vater (German): pater (Latin): pitr

(Sanskrit)
- Germanic group of languages: East Germanic (Gothic); North Germanic (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and
Icelandic); West Germanic (modern German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, and English).
Old English (c.1000)

Middle English (Wyclif, 1384)

Early Modern English (King

James Version, 1611)

Fder ure ue eart on heofonum

si in nama gehalgod tobecume in
rice gewure in willa on eoran swa
swa
on
heofonum
urne gedghwamlican hlaf syle us to
dg
and forgyf us ure gyltas swa swa we
forgyfa
urum
gyltendum
and ne geld u us on costnunge ac
alys us of yfele solice

Oure fadir at art in heuenes halwid be

i name;
i reume or kyngdom come to be. Be i
wille don in here as it is dounin
heuene.
yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.
And foryeue to us oure dettis at is oure
synnys as we foryeuen to oure dettouris
at is to men at han synned in us.
And lede us not into temptacion but
delyuere us from euyl.

Our father which art in heauen,

hallowed
be
thy
name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done in earth as it is in heauen.
Giue us this day our daily bread.
And forgiue us our debts as we
forgiue
our
debters.
And lead us not into temptation, but
deliuer us from euill. Amen.

A CHRONOLOGY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

55 BCE - 436 Roman invasion of Britain
449
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain begins (the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes); the Celts
Earliest OLD ENGLISH inscriptions date from this period (about half of the most commonly used
450-480
words in modern English have Old English roots (e.g. be, water, and strong)
587
St. Augustine arrives in Britain. Beginning of Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons
The Venerable Bede publishes The Ecclesiastical History of the English People in Latin
731
(ecclesiastical terms such as priest, vicar, and mass)
792
Viking raids and settlements begin dream ('joy') draumr
Alfred becomes king of Wessex. He has Latin works translated into English and begins practice of
871
English prose. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is begun
Charles II of France grants Normandy to the Viking chief Hrolf the Ganger. The beginning of
911
Norman French
c.1000
The oldest surviving manuscript of Beowulf dates from this period
1066
The Norman conquest they spoke a dialect of Old French known as Anglo-Norman
The oldest surviving manuscripts in MIDDLE ENGLISH date from this period (mixture of Angloc.1150
Norman and Old English)
English replaces Latin as the medium of instruction in schools, other than Oxford and Cambridge
1348
which retain Latin
1349-50
The Black Death kills one third of the British population

Introduction to Linguistics for Students of English

1362
1384
c.1388
c.1400
1476
1492
1525
1536
1549
1564-1616
1603
1604
1607
1611
1623
1666
1702
1755
1770
1776
1782
1788
1803
1828
1851
1922
1928

The Statute of Pleading replaces French with English as the language of law. Records continue to be
kept in Latin. English is used in Parliament for the first time
Wyclif publishes his English translation of the Bible
Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales
THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT begins (all long vowels became closer (higher, more tense) or
diphthongized: namena:m > n:m; break br:k > brik ; home ho:m > houm; mile

mi:l > mil; house hu:s > hus

William Caxton establishes the first English printing press (standardization of English)
Columbus discovers the New World
William Tyndale translates the New Testament
The first Act of Union unites England and Wales
First version of The Book of Common Prayer
The life of Shakespeare
Union of the English and Scottish crowns under James the I (VI of Scotland)
Robert Cawdrey publishes the first English dictionary, Table Alphabeticall
Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, established
The Authorized, or King James Version, of the Bible is published
Shakespeare's First Folio is published
The Great Fire of London. End of The Great Plague
Publication of the first daily, English-language newspaper, The Daily Courant, in London
Samuel Johnson publishes his dictionary; LATE-MODERN ENGLISH vocabulary (the
technological society + the British Empire)
Cook discovers Australia
Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence
Washington defeats Cornwallis at Yorktown. Britain abandons the American colonies
British penal colony established in Australia
Act of Union unites Britain and Ireland
Noah Webster publishes his dictionary
Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick
British Broadcasting Corporation founded
The Oxford English Dictionary is published