Linguistics

Linguistics is the science of language. It is the subject whose practitioners devote their energy to
understanding why human language is the way it is. They study the history, acquisition, structure, and use
of as many language as possible.

What do linguists study?

The work of linguists falls into two main areas: language structure and language use.

Linguists interested in language structure consider the formal properties of language, including
word structure (morphology), sentence structure (syntax), speech sounds and the rules and patterns between them
(phonetics and phonology), and meaning in language (semanticsand pragmatics).

Linguists also study the way that language is used, and this can cover a very broad range of subjects, since language
enters almost every area of human activity. Examples include: psycholinguistics (the psychology of language
acquisition and use); historical linguistics and the history of languages; applied linguistics (using linguistic
knowledge to help in real-world situations like language teaching); sociolinguistics, varieties of English, discourse
analysis and conversation analysis (language use in social contexts); and stylistics (the use of different styles in
language).

Branches of Linguistics

a. Conversation Analysis
b. Discourse Analysis
c. History of Linguistics
d. Language Acquisition
e. Morphology
f. Phonetics
g. Phonology
h. Pragmatics
i. Psycholinguistics
j. Semantics
k. Sociolinguistics
l. Syntax
m. Varieties of English

Conversation Analysis
Language is a wonderful thing. It is essentially what separates human beings from the world's plethora of
cohabiting species. We, as humans, have the ability to communicate with one another using any of the
world's languages; assuming that your communicator is a speaker of the same language.
Conversation then is massively important to us as human beings. We can convey our thoughts and desires
to others, influence and entertain through speech. Without it, we certainly wouldn't be the evolved species
we are today, and you probably wouldn't be reading this right now!

As linguistics has evolved and become an entirely independent social science, so too has our interest into
just how humans interact and what the implications of the types of conversation we use are.

Conversation Analysis arose as a discipline that helps us to delve deeper into the intricacies of
conversation. A lot of it might seem common sense but remember this; you're aware of what conversation
implies but could you explicitly state why certain things are funny, rude or sarcastic? Conversation
Analysis aims to explain these ideas through the analysis of real life conversations.
In this section we will aim to explain Conversation Analysis in relation to...
 How it is studied - how does one go about analysing a conversation? What techniques are used?
 What actually is Conversation Analysis - don't have a clue what it is? Start here.
 When is Conversation Analysis studied - our interactive timeline will be able to summarise key
dates in the history of the discipline.
 Where is Conversation Analysis studied - every idea has an origin. Find out where Conversation
Analysis was born.
 Who are the key researchers/figures in the discipline - find out who made the biggest
contributions.
 Why it is studied - what's the point? What can we learn?

Conversation Analysis then is basically what linguists use to look at conversations and analyze what was
said, why it was said and how it was said. You might think that this a pointless endeavor, but have
you ever stopped to think about just how complex speech becomes when you factor in social contexts and
just generally the pragmatics in situations?

Conversation Analysis then becomes a discipline that aims to explain the many intricacies and tacit
knowledge (meaning everyone understands what occurs during conversation, but couldn‟t implicitly state
why) of social interaction.

References
[1]
Jefferson. G. (ed) (1992). Harvey Sacks: Sacks Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell

How is Conversation Analysis studied?

1) Simple transcription - by this we mean all we're going to transcribe is the basic pattern of speech,
focusing on little more than what was said and when. This approach might be useful if you've got a lot of
data to transcribe and your focus doesn't really necessitate going any further in terms of IPA
transcriptions or paralinguistic features.

Simple Transcription
1 F: so how was your day?
2 M: yeah it‟s been alright, had a couple of lectures, they were a bit boring (.) I did a bit of work
inbetween but ive still got loads to do (1.0) like im gonna have to spend all weekend doing my essay and
my report
6 F: really? i dont have much at all
7 M: (1.0) Yeah well (.) I hate you
8 F: uhuhhuhuh
9 M: huhh
10 F: thanks erm (.) so what we gonna do tonight?
11 M: (1.0) I dunno, I need to do my work and I might go see a film
13 F: (1.0) ohhh okay

Hopefully there shouldn't be anything too difficult to grasp about this transcription. Brackets denote
pauses, numbers within a bracket denoting how long the pauses was in seconds, with full stops within a
bracket generally meaning the pause was less than a second in length but still significant enough to
warrant noting. The numbers down the side simply add line numbers for referencing! Importantly though,
we can still see conversational features such as turn-taking, and points where laughing occurs. These
might be important features to help analyze a conversation.

2) Phonetic Transcription - the transcription below is a phonetic transcription of the conversation using
the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This sort of transcription might be helpful if one wanted to
look at how accentual or phonetic features might affect conversation. For example, if you look at line 12
and see [fɪləm], this is a Newcastle variant on the pronunciation of the word 'film' - pronounced with an
extra syllable in the coda of the word. Transcribing a conversation in this way then can help linguists
research different varieties of a language and how they might affect conversation.

Phonetic Transcription
1 F: sə haʊw wʊz yə deɪ
2 M: yeə ɪtz biːn ʊəlraɪʔ hæd ə kʊpəl lektʃəs θə wə ə bɪʔ bʊəriŋ (.) ɪ dɪd ə bɪʔ əv wɜːk ɪnbətwiːn but æv
stɪl gɒt ləʊds tə duː (1.0) laɪk æm gʊnnə æv tə spend ʊəl wiːkend duːɪn mæ eseɪ ænd rəpʊəʔ
6 F: rɪəliː aɪ dəʊnt hæv mʊtʃ æt æl
7 M: (1.0) yeə wel (.) ə heɪt yuː
8 F: uhuhhuhuh
9 M: huhh
10 F: ðænks ɜːm (.) səʊ wɒt wə gʊna duː tənaɪʔ
11 M: (1.0) aɪ dʊnəʊ aɪ niːd duː mæ wɜːk ænd aɪ maɪt gəʊ siː æ fɪləm
13 F: (1.0) əʊ əʊkeɪ

Going Further...

There are many ways to analyze conversation using all sorts of confusing looking symbols called
diacritics. These symbols can denote features such as word stress ( ' for example denotes primary stress
for a syllable in a word), speaker intonation and even things such as false starts or unintelligible
utterances. These are all tools used by academics to study and analyse conversation, but for us at the
moment, are probably not worth delving into at such a level. Just be aware that conversation can be
analyzed in all of the ways mentioned above and however detailed one might want it to be!

Who does Conversation Analysis?

Conversation Analysis has been researched since the 1960s by hundreds of professors or just those
interested in how speech works! However, there are three researchers that are seen as more important than
the rest. Take a look below to learn about the founders of CA and how they became interested in it.

Harvey Sacks

Sacks (1935-1975) is often considered to be the founder of Conversational Analysis but he wasn't a
linguist! Sacks was a sociologist who studied under Erving Goffman, a prominent sociologist, at
University of California, Berkeley, where he received his PhD in 1966. By this time, he had already
graduated from Yale Law School, where he met and was influenced by Harold Garfinkel, a famous
researcher looking into ethnomethodology (the methods people use in everyday speech.)

He became Acting Professor of Sociology in UCLA in 1963 and moved to the University of California,
Irvine in 1968. Garfinkel, Goffman and Sacks worked as Fellows at the Centre for the Scientific Study of
Suicide in Los Angeles between 1963-4; this was when Sacks became interested in CA. Unfortunately,
Sacks died in a car crash when he was 40 years old, leaving only a few published papers but a huge
legacy!
Emanuel A. Schegloff

Schegloff (1937-) worked closely with Sacks to develop Conversation Analysis. Like others in this field,
Schegloff didn't start his academic career as a linguist; he was a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at
the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) where he still works today! Similarly to Sacks, he
received his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley and began working with Sacks on some key
studies into everyday speech.

He is considered today to be the leading researcher in Conversation Analysis and regularly published
papers and texts on the subject, leading it to now be studied in countries across the world.

Gail Jefferson

Jefferson (1938-2008) worked alongside Sacks on CA, focusing mainly on the methods of transcribing
recordings. These methods and notations that she has developed are still used today.

She attended UCLA in 1965 studying dance, but after taking a class led by Sacks, became interested in
sociology and completed her PhD in Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine in 1972. She
held many temporary posts in Universities across the USA, such as the Universities of Massachussetts
and Pennsylvania, but did most of her research when she wasn't working for a University and wasn't paid!

She died in the Netherlands, just after her 70th birthday and her research into the transcription of
recordings are considered vital to linguistics today.

When is Conversation Analysis studied?

Since Conversation Analysis has been practised since the 1960s, there have been many significant studies
that have changed how speech is analysed. View the timeline to learn more about the developments in
Conversation Analysis and how these have impacted on the study of Linguistics.

Where is Conversation Analysis studied?

Conversation analysis developed in the 1960s through collaboration between linguistic pioneers Harvey Sacks,
Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson from lectures by Sacks at UCLA, California. They began their work as they
disagreed with the Chomskian idea that actual conversational speech is too disorganized and degraded from the ideal
form of language to be worth studying.

CA emerged along with the cognitive approach to language across the social sciences, which placed emphasis on
participants' orientation to social and cultural constructs. This area is known as cognitive linguistics. This type of
analysis involves the observance of action, mutual knowledge, and social context. CA preceded the contemporary
interest in social interaction that has continued to pervade throughout numerous academic fields.

CA Stems from the sociological work of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel. Goffman‟s innovative technique
was to focus his studies on interactions within everyday situations.

Much of conversation analysis focuses on institutional interaction, how people communicate in different working
environments such as lawyers in court. But other studies have included Sacks' investigation into calls to suicide hot
lines[1]. In the 1970s, study of ordinary conversation as a research field was finally established. In the 1990s, work
place studies were established in technological environments. CA can really take place anywhere humans interact
with each other in any way.

Recently CA has been applied by researchers in fields separate from linguistics, with particular use in feminism and
the development of feminist linguistics. It has also been used as a basis for further theories in this field including
Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA).
References
[1]
Pomerantz, A. and Fehr, B.J., (2011). ''Conversation analysis: An approach to the Analysis of Social Interaction". In: van Dijk, T.A. Discourse Studies: A
Multidisciplinary Approach. SAGE. pp. 165–190.

Why is Conversation Analysis studied?

The study of speech produced in ordinary human interactions is an important research in understanding
communications in society. Conversation Analysis is the study of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-
interaction, but what is the aim of studying these interactions? Principally, it is to discover how
participants understand and respond to one another in their turns at talk, with a central focus on how
sequences of action are generated.
Conversation Analysis may then be conceived as a specific analytic trajectory which may be used to reach
a specific kind of systematic insight in the ways in which members of society 'do interaction'. In their
introduction to a collection of research papers, Heritage & Atkinson (1984) write:

The central goal of conversation analytic research is the description and explication of the competences
that ordinary speakers use and rely on in participating in intelligible, socially organized interaction. At
its most basic, this objective is one of describing the procedures by which conversationalists produce
their own behavior and understand and deal with the behavior of others. A basic assumption throughout
is Garfinkel's (1967: 1) proposal that these activities - producing conduct and understanding and dealing
with it -are accomplished as the accountable products of common sets of procedures.

Ultimately, it is through this that we can see how finely the details of actual, naturally occurring
conversation can be subjected to analysis that will yield the technology of conversation. The idea is to
take singular sequences of conversation and tear them apart in such a way as to find rules, techniques,
procedures, methods, maxims (a collection of terms that more or less relate to each other and that I use
somewhat interchangeably) that can be used to generate the orderly features we find in the conversations
we examine. The point is, then, to come back to the singular things we observe in a singular sequence,
with some rules that handle those singular features, and also, necessarily, handle lots of other events.

Example Research: Sacks (1967)

The origins of Conversation Analysis

Suicide
As you know by now the research of Harvey Sacks was right down at the grass-roots of CA, beginning with his
insight into calls to the suicide prevention hotline he worked at. In Sacks' Fall Lecture of 1964 he said that his
interest in the details of human conversation came from the a concern held by the hospital that certain callers would
not disclose their names.[1] The question being asked was whether or not something could be done to help callers
feels comfortable enough to offer their names to the hotline. As a result Sacks began to look into the sensitivities of
call openings. The observations gleamed from this analysis led to the foundations of Conversation Analysis as we
see it today.

Sacks also analysed other aspects of conversation interaction, that in comparison to his research into suicide could
be considered mundane and somewhat trivial, however this was used in an attempt to appreciate the
'extraordinary richness and multifacedness of Sacks' corpus'.

Telling News
Sacks insisted that the achievement of a two party conversation is a skilful, collaborative accomplishment, but such
collaboration is not limited to talk between strangers. Sacks used the example of friends telling and receiving news
as an emotive topic. He noted that we sometimes have less news to give to someone who we haven't spoken to for
six months than to someone we see every day, but surely this should be the other way round?

The questions Sacks asks are as stated: 'how in the world would it be that you could have something to talk about
everyday with somebody, and not have something to talk about when you talk to them every six months? Why is it
that you don't have six months of news? You could figure that the less you talk with somebody, say a friend who
lives in another city, the more you would have to say!'

Sacks answers this puzzle with the idea that what counts as news depends on its immediacy. An item that may
happily be reported to a friend the day after it happened, no longer appears to be noteworthy after six months. If
something is not mentioned soon after it happened, then it can 'amount to nothing.'
so the items of news that you can tell someone after six months are only things that are worthy of attention over such
a long period and if you don't have them, you have nothing to talk about. In short, to be able to manage
conversation after a long break as though it were a daily event is a special skill which is worthy of a remark.
Something that conversation analysis can reveal about the power of interaction.
As you can appreciate the breadth and vigor of Sacks' research, it is among the most influential of works in
linguistics and continues to be an area of interest to this day.

References
[1]
Baker, C.D., Emmison, M. and Firth, A., (2005) Calling for Help: Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins
Pub.

Discourse Analysis
To truly understand what Discourse Analysis is, it is important to first understand what discourse is.
There are three ways in which we can describe discourse; each of which are of equal importance:
 Firstly, discourse can be described as language beyond the level of the sentence. By this we
mean that it is a type of language that extends past features such as sounds (phonetics), structures
(syntax) and the parts that make up words (morphology).
 The second description of discourse concerns language behaviors linked to a social practice; this
suggests that a discourse is a type of language. For example, the most popular discourse you may
have heard of is the discourse of law, whereby legal documents are written in as much depth as
possible to avoid any vagueness and ambiguity. This style of writing is unique to the legal
profession, meaning it is a specific kind of discourse.
 Finally, discourse is described as being a system of thought. This is by far the most scientific
description of the three, as it disagrees with the notion that knowledge and truth are either
universal or objective. Conversely, it suggests that the ideas about knowledge and truth emerge
from particular social and historical situations. An example would be the process of contemporary
science and its attempts to produce objective knowledge. The concept of objectivity is itself
socially constructed; it's subjective. This means that 'natural' categories are actually produced by
human categorization, such as the differences between humans and animals; all humans are
animals, but not all animals are humans. However, this is purely because humans have decided it
has to be like this. Discourses appear to produce 'natural' knowledge, but they're actually shaped
by powerful institutions (such as capitalism and heterosexuality).

This may all seem a little bit confusing at the moment, so for now just be aware that discourse, in its
broadest definition, refers to a written or spoken type of communication. As such, a discourse analysis
attempts to delve deeper into the various types of written or spoken language.

What is Discourse Analysis?

 Discourse can be defined in three ways:
 Language beyond the level of a sentence
 Language behaviours linked to social practices
 Language as a system of thought
 Discourse Analysis (DA) is a modern discipline of the social sciences that covers a wide variety
of differentsociolinguistic approaches. It aims to study and analyse the use of discourse in at least
one of the three ways stated above, and more often than not, all of them at once. Analysis of
discourse looks not only at the basic level of what is said, but takes into consideration the
surrounding social and historical contexts. As Sam Kirkham mentions in the video below, making
the distinction between whether a person is described as a „terrorist‟ or a „freedom fighter‟ is
something DA would look at, whilst considering the implications of each term. To expand,
'terrorist' is a term that brings negative connotations of evil and violence, whereas 'freedom
fighter' has positive connotations of fighting towards political upheaval of dictatorships. So, one
term is looked upon a lot more favourably than the other, and this is what a Discourse Analyst
would consider, as well as looking at the relationship of these terms with a widely used term such
as „Muslim‟. Discourse analysts will look at any given text, and this just means anything that
communicates a message, and particularly, how that message constructs a social reality or view of
the world.

A sub-discipline of DA is „Critical Discourse Analysis‟ (CDA), and this looks at discourse from a
politically motivated level. An analyst in this field will identify a topic for analysis, and then collect a
corpus of texts, before finally analysing it to identify how language is used to reproduce ideologies in the
text. A corpus is large, structured electronic database of texts, often used in linguistics. Using a corpus
isn't the only method of analysis in CDA, as any method which provides an insight into ideology in
discourse is accepted by researchers. CDA will look at the different levels of a text; the macro, meso and
micro levels (see sample research)

How is Discourse Analysis studied?

There are many ways to conduct a discourse analysis study, some of which are listed here:
 Conversation Analysis
The study of social interaction. This can encompass both verbal language and non-verbal
language such as body language.
 Interactional Sociolinguistics
A subdiscipline of sociolinguistics that takes interaction into account when studying the meaning
created by language users.
 Critical Discourse Analysis (Example Research)
An interdisciplinary of discourse analysis that views language in terms of its social practices;
considering how social and political powers are represented in speech.
 Stylistics
A practice of linguistics that studies and interprets texts. It links literary criticism and linguistics
together, but remains descriptive (i.e. it isn't judgmental).

However, a discourse analysis is not limited to these methods. At risk of sounding repetitive, it must once
more be stressed that a discourse analysis concerns practically any form of text; be it written, spoken or
visual etc.
Who does Discourse Analysis?
Many sociolinguists have looked into the study of discourse, leading to the discipline we now recognise
as Discourse Analysis. DA has grown in popularity in the the social sciences since the 1950s due to the
hard work of many key researchers, so on this page we will look at three of the most important people
involved with the development of Discourse Analysis.
It was perhaps a French philosopher, Michel Foucault, who set the stepping stones for many social
theorists and discourse analysis itself. The theories of Foucault have actually led to a specialised variant
of discourse analysis, called Foucauldian discourse analysis. In 1972, Foucault wrote “Nothing has any
meaning outside of discourse”,[1] and the point he was trying to make here was that discourse creates a
social context and gives meaning to anything that is spoken about. This includes institutional objects such
as power and knowledge and discourse analysts work from these ideas about social objects to look for the
truth in their structures. For more on Foucault and his key theories, see the video attached below.

Norman Fairclough is a key researcher in discourse analysis, although the principle of his work is
concentrated on the variant of Critical Discourse Analysis, which looks at how power and ideology are
reproduced through language. He is considered as one of the founders of critical discourse analysis, and
his first book Language and Power (1989) was all about looking at discourse usage and how it related to
unequal measures of power. The is one of the key concepts in CDA, considering how language
reproduces power, and the effect of this in society.

Teun Adrianus van Dijk is a prominent scholar, who currently lectures at the Pompeu Fabra University in
Barcelona, Spain. Van Dijk has published many books on discourse analysis and critical discourse
analysis, with the bulk of his work looking at racism in discourse. This is important work for the social
sciences as understanding how racist ideologies are reproduced by 'symbolic elites' (a term used by van
Dijk to refer to politicians and journalists among others) is key to working towards cutting racism and
prejudices out of society.

When is Discourse Analysis studied?

Discourse has been studied for thousands of years, with the ancient Greeks considered the first to look at
discourse. However, the term Discourse Analysis is a fairly modern addition to the discipline of
linguistics, first coming into common usage during the 1950‟s. It was really in the time that followed this
that key theories and approaches were developed; Michel Foucault, who published his 'Archaeology of
Knowledge' in 1969 with further work into the 1970s. This work is considered the birth of modern day

Where is Discourse Analysis studied?

As 'Discourse Analysis' covers just about any analysis of a text, there isn't really a specific place where it
has to be studied and conducted. Discourse can be seen everywhere, so a discourse analysis can arguably
be conducted anywhere.
However, here are a few locations of where historical incidents in discourse analysis have occurred:

 Germany: Austrian stylistician Leo Spitzer produces the Stilstudien (Style Studies) in 1928. This
is often attributed as being the earliest form of a discourse analysis; its influence became
widespread. So much so that Michel Foucault himself translated it into French, which popularised
it beyond the parameters of scholars.
 Peru: Using the model of discourse analysis theorised by American linguist Zellig Harris, James
A Lauriault/Loriot, a linguist from America journeyed to Peru and formed logical, mathematical
rules that transcended a simple sentence structure.
 Worldwide: In the late 1960s/70s, approaches to discourse analysis were developed universally.
This time however, they began to cross reference with many of the social sciences such as:
Semiotics, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics and Psycholinguistics.
  Europe: As mentioned earlier, Foucault became a key theorist in the idea of discourse as a
system of thought in the 20th century. Since then, he has been regarded as a catalyst in the
development of discourse analysis.

Why is Discourse Analysis studied?

There are many reasons why we may want to study discourse analysis:
 One of which would be that the language we use in everyday life is used by everybody. It might
sometimes be incoherent or nonsensical, but nevertheless we can usually comprehend it; it is a
prevalent phenomenon.
 Another reason is that people never communicate things in either a natural or objective way. This,
according to a discourse analyst, simply means that our language always seeks a particular
response when we use it. Usually, it's a cognitive process (i.e. an unconscious decision), making
it interesting to a linguist. For example, look at the way these two common utterances are
expressed:
a) "Are you sure you want to go out?"
b) "How come you want to go out?"

As you can see, both a) and b) concern the same query. However, if you were to say utterance a),
then the likely result you'd be seeking would be for the person you're addressing to not go out. In
contrast, utterance b) would be less demanding; it is more of an actual query than
a dissuasive device.

Example Research: Critical Discourse Analysis

What is CDA?
Critical Discourse Analysis is a form of discourse analysis that studies the relationship between discourse
and ideology (a set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that constitute a perspective on the world).[1] It
focuses on critiquing social injustice, and has strong links to the study of language and power.[1] Most
critical discourse analysts approach a text with a political goal or agenda of some kind, and are often
advocates for social justice and social change, seeking to show how a text could be biased towards a
particular ideology.[1]

What is Critical Discourse Analysis?

A critical research perspective

Critical Discourse Analysis can be used to analyze texts covering a wide range of topics, for example:
racism, sexism, homophobia, politics, immigration, crime and many more. The reasons why critical
discourse analysts study these topics is usually political motivated. Almost any text (although, usually
articles) written about these topics can be analyzed using CDA, as journalists constructing these texts
have to make a number of decisions in how an ideology will be represented. For example, choices of who
to take quotes from, terms used to name someone, what perspective the text is written from, what
statistics are used, etc. can all have an impact on the ideology that the text portrays overall.[2

The importance of context

CDA emphasises the importance of studying texts in their full social and historical context[1]. Critical
discourse analysts generally agree that there are three levels of discourse context: Macro, Meso and
Micro. At the macro level, the analysis of context asseses the relationship between the text and broader
social processes and ideologies; for example, what social issues are of particular importance at the time
the text was created. At the meso level, analysis focuses on the context of production and reception of the
text; where was the text made? Who was it written by? What perspective might this person want to
promote? What kind of person might read this text? etc. Finally, the micro level of discourse context
simply looks at what is actually being said in the text, and what linguistic features and devices are being
used to depict an idea.

Linguistic analysis in CDA

A lot can be inferred from the lexical and grammatical choices made by the author of a text. These
linguistic choices are not ideologically random, and have purposefully been used to portray a particular
idea. Here are some common linguistic devices studied by critical discourse analysts.
[1]
 Active or Passive voice
 The use of an active verb gives a clear picture of who performed a particular action, and
to whom, for example: "Police attack protestors".
 The use of a passive verb states what has been done, and to whom, but does not blame
anyone in particular for the action, for example: "Protestors attacked".
 Alternatively, nominalization can be used, where the noun form of the verb is used to
create even more ambiguity, for example: "Attack on protestors".
[1]
 Naming
 The ways in which people are named can also perpetuate ideologies. For example, the
newspaper headline "five Asian youths involved in armed robbery" creates a very
different picture than "five young men involved in armed robbery".
 Similarly, the way people are described in texts, or after giving quotes can present two
different pictures, for example: "Dr Sarah Jones" creates a different picture than "Single
mother of two, Sarah Jones".
 Pre-modifiers
 Pre-modified nouns can present varying views of a topic. For example, "gay marriage" or
"same-sex marriage" implies that this is essentially different from hetero-sexual marriage.
 Indirect quotes
 This is particularly common, when the results of a poll are being used, for example "poll
shows 70% oppose gay marriage", however there may be no evidence of reported speech
saying this.
Example
Here is an example of an article we have analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis:
Summary of Analysis
 Micro analysis
 Regular use of indirect quotations from vague sources such as 'a witness' or 'a security
source'.
 Tend to use collective nouns, rather than naming the individuals responsible.
 Two instances of active verbs 'kills' and 'shoot', rather than the sentences being put in the
passive. This could be to emphasise who was responsible.
 Evidence of pre and post modification, for example 'shot dead' and 'Lebanese soldiers'
for emphasis.
 Meso analysis
 The article is taken from the guardian which has a centre-left political alignment.
 Macro analysis
 Conflict in the Middle East is a prominant topic in world news at the moment, and a
report where two nations are uniting against Assad, rather than fighting each other
, would be of social relevance at this time.

Why study CDA?

There are a number of reasons for studying Critical Discourse Analysis. One is taking an interest in social
and cultural issues, and how these issues affect society as a whole, looking at how social injustice is
portrayed, and how certain social groups may be misrepresented in discourse. Another reason, is that
CDA allows you to look at topics that interest you specifically. Finally, looking at CDA in more depth
will give you new tools with which to study language, not just academically, but in everyday life too, for
example, when reading newspapers or magazines, or watching the news.
References
[1]
Johnstone, B., (2008). Discourse Analysis, 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell.
[2]
Richardson, J., (2007). Analysing Newspapers: An approach from critical discourse analysis,
Hampshire: Palgrave macmillan.
[3]
Caldas-Coulthard, C. and Coulthard, M., (1996). Texts and practices: readings in critical discourse
analysis, London: Routledge.

History of Linguistics

It‟s important to distinguish between the History of Linguistics (a scientific discipline), and the history of
languages. Languages have been spoken for thousands of years, and the history of language is rich.
However the History of Linguistics arguably started off as early as 6th century BC with Pāṇini‟s
description of Sanskrit grammar (Sanskrit was an early language spoken in India). The majority of early
linguistic thought was based around the study of religious texts. In modern day History of Linguistics
however, the main focus of study is what people of the past thought about language. This is done as the
way people thought about language can be used to find out about their opinion of the world around them.

Below is an image of the Tower of Babel, a story from the Old Testament in which people of one
language came together and built a tower up towards heaven, the power of which was said to threaten
God. God therefore created different languages to prevent people collaborating in this way again.

How is the History of Linguistics studied?

As studying the History of Linguistics is looking at views of language from the past, the most valuable
tool for a student of the History of Linguistics is to be able to find and look through
many historical sources and accounts. From piecing together information that has been garnered from
education, language, in fact all aspects of society, we can begin to create a coherent image of how people
saw language in the past.

When and Where was it studied?

Linguistic study has been taking place all over the world for centuries. The study of linguistics itself in
Europe goes back as far as the 4th century BC. Language around this time was studied more as a
philosophy and its focus was on religious texts.[1] However, the history of linguistics as a field of study is
actually a relatively recent thing! Please view the timeline below for a brief overview of what was
happening when and where in the study of linguistics:

Who Studies the History of Linguistics?

The actual reading of the History of Linguistics as a topic has been a somewhat recent development in
linguistic study. The two main scholars associated with the study are the late Dr Vivien Law and our very
own Professor Andrew Linn.

The first, Dr Vivien Law, held the only lectureship in the world dedicated to the history of linguistic
thought in Cambridge's Department of Linguistics. However, she originally studied Classics and German
at McGill University in Montreal, before moving to Cambridge to do her PhD, moving her interest to the
History of Linguistics. In the late 1990s she was made Reader in the History of Linguistics Thought and a
Fellow of the British Academy, efforts which are commemorated in The Vivien Law Prize for an Essay
on Language and History, established by The Henry Sweet Society.[1]
However, Professor Andrew Linn is the only, yes really the only, Professor of the History of Linguistics
in the world – yet another reason to come to the University of Sheffield! Unlike Law he began his studies
focusing on English, and then completed his PhD in the History of Linguistics – supervised by Vivien
Law herself.

Although the study of the History of Linguistics itself has been a recent innovation, with academic texts
first being published in the late 1960s, the actual study of linguistics itself began much earlier, as early as
the late 600s with the Venerable Bede studying the language of the Bible. As fun as that sounds, the next
developments in linguistics moved away from the bible, with early linguists such as Bishop Robert Lowth
and Bishop John Wilkins studying the language of Hebrew poetry and the idea of a Universal
Philosophical Language - the idea of a global language that everyone would be able to communicate with.
Surprisingly this didn't work out, or we'd all be calling 'trousers' 'pants', walking on the sidewalk and
answering our cells in the middle of the Mall.

Why is the History of Linguistics studied?

Firstly, (some) people are fascinated with the past. The weirdos. Not only that, but some other people,
probably the same lot, come to think of it, have a desire to have a greater understanding of our intellectual
framework.

Vivien Law was one of those people who thought that it was cool to do some studying on the History of
Linguistics and she said that by looking at the History of Linguistics one can gather a greater
understanding of the human psyche. She stated: "The one-sidedness that we perceive in the past warns us
to be alert to the one-sidedness of the present and it is here that this history of linguistics has something to
offer which no other branch of intellectual history can."

Example Research: Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) is considered to be the founding father of modern linguistics. He

founded the structuralist school of thought which claims that language can be studied as self-contained
and structured system at a single point in time.[1]

Much of the research within the history of linguistics is based on the ideas of language study from the
past and this is true of Saussure's work. The development of semiotics can be traced back to Ancient
Greece, associated with philosophers such as Aristotle and Stoics who, at this time, were analyzing the
nature of signs, language and meaning. Many other theories of language have been built upon these early
thoughts.

Saussure was a talented linguist who was able to speak French, German, English, Latin, Greek and
Sanskrit. His theories of language were often based on ancient theories of language. He was an expert on
Sanskrit and was heavily influenced by the work of Panini.

Saussure gave lectures between 1907 and 1911 at the University of Geneva. His main theory was
semiotics - the idea that human language is a system of signs. He rejected the theory of language as being
"a naming process only - a list of words each corresponding to the thing it names" arguing that this
"assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words; it does not tell us whether a name is vocal or
psychological in nature... finally it lets us assume that the linking of a name and a thing is a very simple
operation". [2]

A sign is a unit used to represent and convey meaning. A sign is arbitrary because "the bond between the
signifier and the signified is arbitrary".[2] This basically means that the meanings that people attach to
signs is subjective, people can apply different meanings to one sign. Also, this link is a matter of societal
convention. Signs gain meanings from the associations we give them as a society. For example...

A no smoking sign doesn't directly tell us not to smoke but we know not to because of the meanings we,
as a society, associate with the sign when we see it.

Saussure's work goes beyond linguistics and has influenced other disciplines such as anthropology,
sociology and literary criticism. It has also influenced and inspired many different interpretations.

References
[1]
McGregor, W., (2009). Linguistics: An Introduction. Continuum.

Language Acquisition

The acquisition of language is 'the greatest intellectual

feat any of us is ever required to perform'
(Bloomfield, 1933)

How we acquire language is still one of the greatest biological accomplishments in human history.
Language is part of what makes us human: no other species can develop language to represent actions,
objects, feelings and ideas but most young children make it look easy!

All of us have managed to acquire language, it is the reason why you can read the words in this passage
and hopefully extract meaning from it!

If you have ever tried to learn a second language, you will know the effort it takes to try and understand
the new vocabulary, sentence structure and grammatical rules. It can take many years to become fluent in
another language, so how is it that most children seem to be pretty accurate by the time they leave
nursery?

It is these kinds of questions that still manage to leave experts pondering.

Language acquisition is one of the most passionately deliberated branches of linguistics, incorporating
ideas from multiple fields including biology, psychology and philosophy.

This section tackles the fascinating topic of language acquisition from a linguist's perspective:
 What is Language Acquisition?
 When did research begin?
 Who has an interest in Language Acquisition?
 How have people studied Language Acquisition?
 Where do these studies take place?
 Why do people have an interest in Language Acquisition?
 What about bilingual language acquisition?
Do we acquire a second language in the same way that we learned our native language?
 Do atypically developing children learn language in the same way?

What is Language Acquisition?

Language is a very important part of life. Communication between people not only enables us to
understand one-another, but aids in developing relationships and allowing us to communicate our
problems, suggestions and plans. I'm sure you can all agree that language is a crucial part of everyday life.
But how did we learn to speak? How do we know what to say and when to say certain things? Language
Acquisition is something that can often be misunderstood, or simplified, or even forgotten. Yet from the
word GO, acquiring language and using language is an amazing ability we, as human-beings, have

Key terms
 Babbling - The experimentation of sounds by an infant, tending to include recognisable words.
 Inflections - The modification of words grammatically to form different tenses or number. E.g.
cat (singular) + -s (inflection) = cats (plural) E.g. walk (present tense) + -ed (inflection) = walked
(past tense)
 Intonation - The rise and fall of voice when speaking. Enables differentiation between phrases.
E.g. questions, exclamations etc, all use different intonation patterns
 Phonemes - Small segments of sound.

Linguistic Milestones - General Trends

Age (Months) Linguistic Milestones

0  Recognition and preference of mother's voice (even from inside the womb!)
 Ability to distinguish phonemes
 Can distinguish own language from a foreign language

4  Child can recognize own name

 Child is sensitive to word order
 7  Early babbling is seen
 Start to understand first words (e.g. Mummy)

12  Jargoning (when babbling becomes more specified to the child's mother tongue:
stress and intonation patterns are recognizable)
 First words produced
18  Understand around 50 words
 Produce two-word utterances

24  Multi word utterances produced with basic grammatical features

60  6,000 word capacity

 Ability to produce complex sentences has been gained, with full comprehension
[1]
Table adapted from Matthew Saxton (2010:17)

Subject literature provides guidelines for the averages age specific language features are acquired - but
different authors cite different milestone dates, depending on where they conducted their research. So It's
important to note that dates, in terms of specific linguistic milestones, are not concrete and can vary
slightly from child to child (see Language Acquisition in Exceptional Circumstances for more
information).

What's acquired?
In order to speak a language as adults do, children need to have acquired five areas of linguistic
competence: Phonology, Lexis, Semantics, Grammar and Pragmatics.

Phonology
Phonological development is the acquisition of sounds in order to pronounce words. Child
Language Acquisition begins at birth. The inner ear has the only bones in the whole body which
are fully formed at birth, thus enabling the child to start recognising their mother's voice in the
first day of living and also allowing the child to differentiate one language from another at such
an early stage. The vocal tract is not fully developed at birth which, when compared to the
formation of the inner ear, helps to biologically explain why it is that perception of sounds comes
before the ability to produce sounds. Through 'vocal playing' (highlighted in the 5 pre-verbal
stages below) children learn to control their vocal tract to produce sounds
accurately. (REMEMBER: Each child differs, so the dates provided are a guideline).
 Basic Biological Noises (approximately 0-8 weeks) - Vocalisations: coughing, crying, a low
cooing, laughing etc.
 Cooing and Laughing (approximately 8-20 weeks) - Short vowel-like sounds produced when
the baby is in a settled state: more melodic than biological noises. At three and a half months, a
baby's voice box is in place and gradual control of vocal muscles is gained.
 Vocal Play (approximately 20-30 weeks) - 'Cooing' sounds develop into sounds which are much
more definite and controlled.
 Babbling (approximately 25-50 weeks) - All babies babble! It is an innate feature of human
beings: even deaf babies babble. There are two stages of babbling:
 Reduplicated babbling, for example [mamama], emerges from around 6 months
 Variegated babbling, for example [adu] and [maba], is when there is movement away
from fixed patterns and sounds become more complex and closer to speech. Consonants
and vowels can change from one syllable to the next.
28 Week Old Baby Babbling

 Melodic Utterance (approximately 36-72 weeks) -Intonation, rhythm and melody develop,
resulting in babies sounding more and more as though they are speaking the language. The
occasional few words may have started to appear. Parents start to assume different sounds
resemble different linguistical structures, such as questioning, exclaiming and greeting etc. Babies
of different nationalities sound increasingly different from each other.
64 Week Old Baby "Talking" on the Phone

Lexis
Lexical development is the acquisition of words.

Katherine Nelson[2] classified children's first 50 words as:

1. Naming things or people: ball, Daddy, juice, milk.
2. Actions or events: down, more, up.
3. Describing or modifying things: dirty, nice, pretty.
4. Personal or social words: hi, bye-bye.

Semantics
Semantic development is the acquisition of the meaning of words. Children tend to use words more
broadly than adults and over-extensions and under-extensions are found to be produced.
 Over Extensions - A child uses a word in a broad sense. For example, the word 'dog' may be
used to refer to all four-legged animals with a tail. Over-extensions reflect a child's learning and
their growing knowledge of the world; noticing similarities and differences between objects.
 Under Extensions -A child uses a word more narrowly than an adult would. For example, using
the word 'shoe' only when referring to their own shoes.
These features of semantic development are crucial in gaining meaning and understanding of words.
Eventually, children will overcome these features.

Grammar/Syntax
There are three main stages of grammatical development.
 Holophrastic Stage (12-18 months) -The Holophrastic stage consists of children learning and
producing single word utterances that function as phrases or sentences. For example:
 'Gone' could mean 'it's all gone'
 'Teddy' could mean 'that's my teddy'
 'More' could mean 'I want more'
Sometimes children's productions are longer and are considered as being one unit or a whole phrase (this
is called a Holophrase). For example:
 'Allgone' and 'Gosleep'
Intonation plays a key role during this stage. Children learn the ability to distinguish between
interrogative, declarative and imperative phrases, and despite their limited grammatical structuring, are
able to aid their communication more effectively. For example:
 'Dada?' said with a rising intonation, would imply a question
 'Dada' said with a falling intonation, would imply declarative statement
 'Dada!' said in exclamation, would imply imperative statement
 Two-word Stage (18-24 months) - The Two-word stage comprises a child using (quite
obviously, as stated in the title) two words to form a sentence. 'Baby chair', 'Mummy eat' and 'Cat
 bad' are all examples of utterances at this stage and as it may be obvious, require interpretation.
Context of an utterance can aid the ambiguity behind such statements. For example:
 'Baby chair' could mean...
1. Possession: 'this is baby's chair'
2. Request/command: 'put baby in chair'
3. Statement: 'baby is in the chair'
 Telegraphic Stage (2-3 years) - The Telegraphic stage, is when children have acquired and start
to use multiple-word utterances. At this stage, some of the children's utterances are grammatically
correct...
 'Amy likes tea' - (Subject + Verb + Object)
 'teddy looks tired' - (Subject + Verb + Adjective)
 'Mummy sleeps upstairs' - (Subject + Verb + Adverbial)
Whilst others have grammatical elements missing...
 'This shoe all wet' - (the stative verb carrying meaning is missing: is)
Children are more likely to retain CONTENT words (nouns, verbs and adjectives that refer to real things)
and FUNCTION words (that have grammatical function: pronouns, prepositions and auxiliary verbs) are
often omitted.
Overgeneralisations are also found at this stage. This is when children make virtuous errors in their
allocation of inflections. For example:
 The inflection -s to mark plurality is seen to be added to irregular verbs: sheep - sheeps
 The inflection -ed to mark past tense is seen to be added to irregular verbs: go - goed
Such examples would suggest that children try to figure out grammar by themselves, using
grammatical rules productively to establish forms, not by hearing form from the people around them in
their environment. Children would not hear such examples as 'goed' from the adults around them.

Pragmatics
Pragmatic development highlights children's motivation to acquire language in the first place, as it serves
different purposes and functions. Pragmatics aren't acquired immediately, nor does it take a short period
of time for a child to acquire them. This process is on-going until the age of approximately 10 years.

Halliday[3] classified functions of language as being:

1. INSTRUMENTAL - to express needs
2. REGULATORY - to control behaviours of others
3. INTERACTIONAL - to relate to others
4. HEURISTIC - to gain knowledge of the environment
5. PERSONAL - to express yourself
6. IMAGINATIVE - to use language imaginatively
7. INFORMATIVE - to convey facts and information

References
[1]
Saxton, W., (2010). Child Language Acquisition and Development. London: SAGE Publications.
[2]
Nelson, K., (1973). 'Structure and Strategy in Learning to Talk'. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 149(1-2). 1-137.
[3]
Halliday, M. A. K., (1975). Learning How To Mean. London: Edward Arnold Ltd.

How is Language Acquisition studied?

Although, as we have mentioned, language acquisition is an interesting topic, it is only recently that real
linguistic research has been generated.

Early studies were diaries of spontaneous speech where the researcher would observe the child speaking
in context. Conclusions about language acquisition would then be drawn from this data. This method has
advantages and disadvantages.
 Advantages
 It provides information about many aspects of
development.
 Shows relative frequency of occurrence of
constructions.
 Enables opportunities to compare, not only the
child's pronunciation, but any aspect of
development with surrounding adult input.
Disadvantages
 This would not provide an example
of everyconstruction the child knows.
 Each study involves only one child, limiting the
ability to generalise the results. This is therefore
a very time consuming method providing results
which may not even be reliable!
 Interpretation difficulties arise.

In the early 20th Century, a huge emphasis was placed on Behaviourist approaches to explaining
language acquisition which lead to large group studies involving systematic/controlled tests - The most
influential behaviourist theory is that of Operant Conditioning proposed by Skinner (1950s) who
generalised his thorough research on rats to explain how children acquire language. (Click here to learn
more about Skinner's theory)

Towards the late 1970s, linguists began to use more experimental/strict observational techniques.
Researchers became more interested, not in the child's actual production of language but of their
comprehension, for we have to assess what children know about language by the way they use it. I.e.
language competence is usually reflected in language performance. When researching child language,
researchers are interested in looking at three things: grammaticality
judgement, production andcomprehension.

The table below summarises the methods used by linguists in order to test these aspects.

Type of Method
Language
Performance
Grammatical Sentence Possibilities
ity Judgment The experimenter would produce a number of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences
to the child, asking them which ones are 'okay'
e.g. ''Jessica is a girl.' Is that sentence okay?'
''Jessica are a girl.' Is that sentence okay?'
Production Spontaneous Speech (Natural Speech Sampling)
This method is a naturalistic observation as opposed to an experiment. The researcher
would record and transcribe the child's speech, focusing on a particular aspect of
production. Researchers might then want to share their data or compare it to other data in
order to test the generalizability of their work. This is made possible by CHILDES
(Child Language Data Exchange System: MacWhinney and Snow 1985 and 1990) which
maintains copies of various researcher's transcriptions of child's speech.[1]

Elicited Production (EP)

Experimental methods can extract language production in a controlled fashion which
allows the researcher to target particular aspects of linguistic knowledge.

The experimenter might provide the children with a fictional context, provoking them to
give responses with an inverted question (Thorton 1996):
 Experimenter: In this story, the crane is tickling one of the zebras. Ask the puppet which
one.
Child: Which zebra is getting tickles by the crane?

This method, like natural speech sampling provide detailed examples of a child's ability
to create and organize language.

Another EP method focuses on the extent to which children can be 'led' to a particular
language form. Potts et al. (1979) studied relative clauses, where the child was asked to
complete the experimenter's sentence:

Experimenter: Some children walk to school and some children ride

the bus. These children...
Child: ... who ride the bus, that ride.

Elicited Imitation (EI)

In EI tasks, children are required to imitate sentences which have been specifically
designed to test particular principles. In EI, the analysis of children's "errors" may reveal
their linguistic understanding. Slobin and Welsh (1973) provide an example of this:

Experimenter: [Mozart [who cried]] came to my party

Child: [Mozart cried] and [he came to my [party]

This example shows that the child is maintaining the meaning whilst abandoning
the form (relative clause embedding is converted to a coordinate structure) implying the
difficulty children have with embedded clauses.

Experimenter: [[The blue shoes] and [blue pencils]] are here

Child: [blue pencil are here] and [a blue pencil are here]

This example shows that the child is maintaining the form whilst abandoning
the meaning.
Comprehen- Act Out/ Toy-Moving Task
sion This method is useful for testing language comprehension because of its simplicity and
game - like nature. The children may be asked to 'act out' a story presented to them by
using dolls. The child's performance of such tasks provide rich information about
whether they comprehend the language they are being asked to interpret.

Truth Value Judgment Task

This method might include an adult acting out a situation or providing a picture showing
a particular action. The child will simply be asked to judge whether this is a possible
interpretation for a particular sentence by answering either 'yes' or 'no'. Like the act out
tasks, the Truth Value Judgment Task can test for possible limitations on interpretation,
but in a more direct way. The task thus provides data which can be quickly and easily
summarized.

Example Experiment
The Wug Test was an experiment carried out by Jean Berko in (1958) which aimed to investigate the
acquisition of the plural and other inflectional morphemes in English-speaking children. Berko presented
the child with a made up creature which she named a 'Wug' then, when presenting another asked them
'Now there are two...?' On this cue, most of the children tested replied 'Wugs', applying the correct plural
suffix 's' with the allomorph /z/ to the noun despite having never heard it ('Wug') before. Berko's test
showed that children have productive rules: they don‟t learn by hearing every possible form (they hadn‟t
heard „wugs‟ due to it being an invented word) but by applying linguistic rules that they subconsciously
know. Although the derivation of these rules is not addressed by Berko, 'The Wug Test' could provide
possible evidence for Chomsky's theory of 'Universal Grammar'

Student Research
As we have seen, the are tonnes of ways of studying the acquisition of language! Even just talking to a child for a
few minutes can provide a huge insight to their comprehension and ability. Here is a video of students studying
Language Acquisition at The University of Sheffield. The group explain their investigation, referring to the methods
they used to carry out the study and their reasons for using such methods.

Summary of Student Research

The experiment intended to study derivational affixes (the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word,
e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy) in children's speech. They uses Natural Speech Sampling which involved recording
an hour of child speech, then, transcribing it to then analyse what features were used by the child.

References
[1]
Lust, B., (2006). 'How Can We Tell What Children Know? Methods for The Study of Language Acquisition' In: Lust, B. Child Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. pp. 123-124.
[2]
Berko, J., (1958). 'The Child's Learning of English Morphology' In:
Natalicio, D.S. and
Natalicio L.F.S., (2006). Learning: A Journal of Research in Language Studies.

Who studies Language Acquisition?

Language acquisition has generated interest amongst many researchers. The subject has undoubtedly been
of interest to people (not just linguists) since time began, however, it was not until the late nineteenth
century that intense research on the matter began to take place. As a result of such research, a number of
theories as to how language is acquired have been developed.

This page summarizes the theories and research of:

 Noam Chomsky
 Jean Piaget
 B. F Skinner
 Michael Tomasello

Before discussing these theories, let's have a look at what students, who take courses other than
Linguistics, at The University of Sheffield thought about how they acquired language....
 Parental reinforcement?
TV and Radio?
Interacting with children?
The environment?
Or...?

Nature/Nurture
When thinking about language acquisition, linguists generally take one of two
perspectives: Nativisim (The idea that language, and the ability to acquire it, is innate i.e. that it exists
from birth) or Empiricism (The idea that language is shaped by the environment and is
thus learned). These conflicting approaches have lead to the notorious Nature/Nurture debate which
becomes apparent in every theory aiming to explain any human behavior.

'NATURE'

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and philosopher, was born on the

7th of December 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied at
theUniversity of Pennsylvania where, in 1955, he received his PhD in
Linguistics. Chomsky is probably the most famous linguist of the 20th
and 21st century!
Chomsky has generated lots of ideas within Linguistics, but probably his
most influential contribution to the field is his work on language
acquisition in which he quite firmly takes the 'nature' side of the debate.
In his book Syntactic Structures (1957) Chomsky develops the concepts
of:
o The Language Acquisition Device
o Universal Grammar

Chomsky believes that all humans are born with an unconscious knowledge of language structure which
is due to an innate mechanism known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Language is
therefore acquired through applying and refining an inherent set of rules.[1]

Chomsky also defined the concept of a Universal Grammar in which he suggests that human languages,
although they may seem different, share many similarities in terms of their underlying grammatical
structure. He believes that the Language Acquisition Device enables children to acquire any human
language due to an innate knowledge of these rules.[1] Chomsky (along with many other Nativist linguists,
whom, often refer to themselves as Chomskyans) have developed the concepts of Universal Grammar and
the LAD, thus making this theory the most influential theory of language acquisition.

Jean Piaget
 Another Nativist theory is one defined by Jean Piaget: the trendsetter
for the skinny tie and a well known figure in both linguistics and
cognitive psychology (to learn more about the psychology of language,
see Psycholinguistics)
Piaget (9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist
who primarily studied cognitive development in children. His theory has
been massively influential, especially in the education system.

Piaget takes a Constructivist approach, suggesting that cognition is developed through the application of
cognitive 'schemas' (ways of organizing specific chunks of information). He concluded that through their
interactions with the environment, children actively construct their own understanding of the world.
Piaget's theory suggests that children's language develops simultaneously with their logical thinking and
reasoning skills. Piaget believed that understanding and language develops through 4 predetermined
stages linked to age and a child can only progress onto the next stage having established the previous one.
These stages are defined as:
 Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)
 Pre-Operational Stage (2-7 years)
 Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
 Formal Operational Stage (11+ years)

'NURTURE'

B. F. Skinner
A traditional empiricist approach to explaining language acquisition
was proposed by Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990), an
American behaviorist and social philosopher. He received
his PhD from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as a
researcher until 1936. Skinner explains that all human behavior is a
result of Operant Conditioning in which positive or
negative reinforcement is provided for certain behaviors. Skinner
generated his theory as a consequence of his experiments on rats! He
proved that rats could be conditioned to pull a lever as they discovered
that it produced the positive reward of releasing food. Skinner then
generated this theory to the acquisition of language. He believed that children imitate adults who play an
important role in shaping their usage through reinforcement. Positive reinforcement may be given in the
form of attention or praise which then encourages the child to repeat such language forms,
whereas negative reinforcement may exist in the child's frustration of not being understood or being
denied positive comments, thus motivating them to use the necessary language forms. As a result of such
reinforcement, children are eventually conditioned into using language correctly.
 Michael Tomasello

Michael Tomasello (who appears to be smuggling Harry Potter's glasses) is an American Developmental

Psychologist born 18 January 1950 Florida, USA. He received his bachelor's degree from Duke
Universityand his doctorate from University of Georgia.

Tomasello is a critic of Chomsky, and on rejecting his Nativism theory, went forth to develop a usage-
based account of how children acquire language. This suggests that the use of language leads to knowledg
of language, thus children acquire language by understanding how others use language around them.

According to Tomasello, to acquire language, a child must:

 Understand that speakers us language with intention

  Realise that a person is trying to communicate with them
 Identify the patterns in their language
 Use their knowledge of the world to formulate hypotheses
 Test those hypotheses
 Generalise patterns

Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)

 The child begins to think logically and tests their motor skills.
 The child experiences the physical world through their senses and begins to classify things in it; When first
words start to emerge they therefore tend to be concrete rather than abstract (i.e. salient objects).
 Object permanence (the ability to understand that when an object is removed from their vision, it still
exists) develops.
 In his book "The Language and Thought of the Child," Piaget describes two functions of children's
language: the "egocentric" and the "socialized." During the this stage, children's language is egocentric:
they talk either to themselves for pleasure or to help their understanding. [2]

Pre-Operational Stage (2-7 years)

 Language makes rapid progress.

 They begin to construct simple Subject-Verb-Object sentences.
 Language at this stage is still egocentric as they are still not able to see things from another's point of view.
 Language shows animism: the belief that inanimate objects have human feelings, and artificialism: the
belief that the world is man-made.
 Children do not yet have the ability to reverse processes. i.e. they will deny that 'their sister has a sister'.

Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)

 The child can understand the present but they cannot hypothesise (predict the future).
 They can form a series of ideas by experience but not by fully understanding.
 There is a clear understanding of the size of things (i.e that the world is bigger than just their own) and they
are no longer egocentric.
 They will understand that there are causal relationships (i.e. if somebody commits a crime, they will go to
jail).
 Language becomes socialised, showing characteristics such as questions, answers, criticisms and
commands.
 They will begin to grasp some abstract concepts (i.e. Is there a God?)

Formal Operational Stage (11+ years)

 Abstract reasoning skills develop - They can hypothesise and think things through that don't have to be
proven.
 Language is completely internalised: Children no longer have to count on their fingers or read aloud.

Support for Nativist theories Support for Empiricist theories

 Brown, 1970 found that children in every  The case of Genie is very important to both
culture make the same relationships linguistics and psychology as it provides
between grammatical concepts, thus crucial evidence for how a person's
supporting Universal Grammar. environment strongly influences their
development.
 Children of all cultures tend to go through
the same early stages at similar times Genie was rescued from severe deprivation at the age
despite parental input. of 13 by Social Services. She had been denied all
forms of interaction due to her having a mentally ill
 Children rarely respond to corrections from father who forbade her to make a sound.
adults, suggesting adult input isn't
Furthermore, Most of her life was spent tied to a
effective, as with this example:
chair, depriving her of any exploration of her
 Child: Want other spoon, Daddy. environment. Genie was found having no language
 Father: You mean you want THE OTHER ability - Brain tests subsequently showed that her left
SPOON? hemisphere (language facility) was non-existent.
 Child: Yes, I want other one spoon please Therapists attempted to rehabilitate the girl but she
Daddy. only ever developed very few language techniques.
 Father: Can you say “the other spoon”? This sad and rare case shows how important it is to
 Child: Other… one… spoon.
 Father: Say… “other”. have sufficient interaction with your environment in
 Child: Other. order to develop language but also that there is a
 Father: “Spoon.” 'critical period' by which language has to be
 Child: Spoon. internalised or it will never develop.
 Father: “Other… spoon.”
 Child: Other… spoon. Now give me other
one spoon? (M. Braine, 1971)

 Jean Berko and Roger Brown

(1960s) They found that a child who
referred to a plastic fish as a 'fis',
substitution the s found for the /s/ couldn't
link the adults use of 'his' with the same
object - showing that children know how a
word should be said but they have
difficulty in pronouncing the same word
themselves.

Criticisms of Nativist theories Criticisms of Empiricist theories

  It is logical to suggest that humans have an
innate understand of grammar but other
important language features such
asSemantics (meaning) must have been
developed through learning and
experience.
 Piaget's theory does not account for:
Language as a means of communication or
how children learn sentence structure.
 Skinner developed his theory through applying the
results of observation on rats to humans. However,
considering how different the human mind is to that of
a rat, can this really be generalised?
 Pinker (1994) has shown that parental correction of
language isn't actually that useful! He gives this
example:
Child: Want another one spoon, Daddy
Adult: You mean, you want the other spoon

Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please daddy.

 Piaget doesn't take into account: social
context, different cultures and individual
differences.
This example shows that although the parent is providing the
child with the correct version, he is simply ignoring it and
applying his own grammatical rules, thus supporting Chomsky's
theory of innate grammar.

 The speed with which children acquire language does

not correspond to the minimal amount of parental
reinforcement provided.

It seems to be the case that one theory alone is not sufficient in explaining the acquisition of language as it is clearly
a mixture of nature and nurture. The ongoing and almost impossible question that modern linguists are trying to
answer is 'how much is innate and how much is learnt?!'

References

[1]
Chomsky, N., (1957). Syntactic Structures. Germany: Mouton and Company.

[2]
Piaget, J., (1959). The Language and Thought of The Child. London: Routledge.

Picture Credits

 Monkeys: Phil Whitehouse: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philliecasablanca/4429566034/

When is Language Acquisition studied?
Like any established linguistic discipline, Language Acquisition has been studied for many years and continues to be
studied in the present day.

Take a look at the interactive timeline below to gain a further understanding of when key works, theories, institutions and
individuals contributed to the area of language acquisition:

Earliest Developments

In approximately 400BC, PLATO began to research language using observation based ideas. He considered the ability of
language and how, to some extent, it could be innate. This very early work prompted further interest in language
acquisition, which is highlighted in the timeline below:

Timeline of Key Works, Theories, Institutions and Individuals

Where is Language Acquisition studied?

Language acquisition occurs in each and every community across the world that uses speech. But where is it studied?

 Research into language acquisition dates back to the neo-grammarians of ancient history. However, western
societies tend to be the leaders in linguistic research.
 Because children in western civilisation tend to have similar exposure to language it is easy to make generalisation
about them.
 Key research has been carried out in institutions such as:

 Harvard Law School (Skinner)

 University of Pennsylvania (Chomsky)
  Duke University and the University of Georgia (Tomasello)

 Research is expensive to carry out which is why it is carried out in institutions in countries that are relatively
wealthy. Unsurprisingly, the U.S.A is responsible for the majority of research over the past 50 years.

 Different cultures raise their children in different ways. The more remote and less developed parts of the world ten
to have their own rituals and methods of developing children's language, making the less researched areas even
more interesting!
 Whilst most western children learn language in a similar sort of way, there are children worldwide who do not lear
language in a typical way. See language acquisition in exceptional circumstances for a look at how blind and deaf
children learn language, or hop over to our bilingual language acquisition page for a detailed look into children wh
develop more than one language at a time!
 Unfortunately, not all children receive a rich language environment that is so crucial when acquiring language.
There have been some cases where children have been raised away from human civilisation and usually reared by
animals. Kamala and Amala, the Wolf Girls of Midnapore, were found in India, as was Dina Sanichar, the Indian
Wolf Boy.
 There have been a few instances where children have been raised in horrific conditions, sometimes hearing as little
as 5 words throughout childhood. See the extreme social deprivation page for an in-depth look at what effect this
treatment has on developing children such as Genie, who was rescued and examined rigorously throughout the
1970s in Los Angeles.

Why is Language Acquisition studied?

So why is it that language acquisition has attracted so much interest in recent years?

Interest Understanding Applications

 The fact that we are the only  The human mind is extremely  Insight into the acquisition of
species that communicates complex and thus plays a vital language can enable us to
 through the use of speech, is
fascinating when you think
about it!
 One of life's BIG questions
revolves around why and
how we have the ability to
acquire language so
effectively?
 Research into language
acquisition is relatively new,
but has "taken off"
considerably since the late
20th century.
part in the acquisition of
language.
 By studying language acquisition
you can gain insight into the
structure and working nature of
the human mind.
 Psycholinguistics also helps
enable us to gain greater
understanding of the language
phenomenon. (For more
information,
seePsycholinguistics).
 The study of language acquisition
helps to develop
linguistical theories.
effectively help people if hel
is needed!
 Speech Therapy: From
children with speech
impairments, to aiding
recovery of those who have
lost speech due to illness,
such as a stroke.
 Severe cases of language
deprivation, for example The
case of Genie. (To find out
more, see Psycholinguistics:
The Case of Genie).

The Case of Genie

The sad case of Genie has received extensive linguistic and cognitive analyses[1] due to her shocking situation that
significantly impacted on her ability to learn language. Genie was found at the age of 13.9 years and it became
apparent of the abuse she had experienced from the age of 20 months. She had experienced „extreme
deprivation‟[1] in which she was confined to living in darkness, strapped to a potty during the day and strapped in a
sleeping bag and placed in a caged crib at night[1]. She was beaten by her father if she made any sound. When she
was found, it was clear that she was severely impacted physically, psychologically and verbally but after
nourishment Genie appeared to improve physically and cognitively. Nonetheless, her ability to speak was severely
damaged and she was never able to speak in a manner expected of a 13 year old girl. Genie was able to acquire
words and basic sentence constructions „want mild‟ „Genie love Curtis‟, but was never fluent in language. This
holds suggestion that there is a „critical period‟ for learning language.

Critical Period
„A period of time with a distinct onset and offset during which experience can lead to learning by an organism;
assumed to be innately programmed and irreversible‟. [1]
Yet, to limit Genie‟s difficulties in production of speech down to being a result of no exposure to language during
the critical period of learning is not entirely conclusive. The severe physical and mental damage „make it difficult to
view this case as conclusive in evaluating a Critical Period Hypothesis for language development‟. [1]

References

[1]
Lust, B., (2006). Child Language: Acquisition and Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bilingual Language Acquisition

A lot of people in the world speak more than one

language to a bilingual standard (meaning that they speak both languages to the standard of which you speak your
mother tongue): It is estimated that two in three children worldwide speak more than one language!

"There is a widespread popular impression that the children of bilingual parents are linguistically at risk because
their brains will not be able to cope, and they will grow up confused and 'semilingual'.

There is no justification for this pessimism: There are millions of bilingual children worldwide. Most of these
children will have the same linguistic abilities as a monolingual child upon starting school. But the process of
[1]
learning two languages is not exactly the same as the process of learning one..."

A, B, C... It's easy as 1, 2, 3: The Three Main Stages of Acquisition in a Bilingual

Child[1]
 The child builds a list of When sentences begin to have 2+ As vocabulary grows in both
words, as a monolingual does, elements, words from both languages, translation equivalents
but the single list is comprised languages are used. This mixing develop.The acquisition of
of words from both languages. declines rapidly: By age 3, less grammatical rules takes longer
than 5% of sentences contain because there are two separate
words from both languages. systems which can become confused
at the early stages but are eventually
easily separated by the child.

What is bilingualism? Where is bilingual acquisition studied?

Bilingualism is often hard to
define because some linguists
see a fine line between second
language acquisition and the
acquisition of language to a
bilingual state: Second language
acquisition is the acquisition of a
non-native language which
usually happens through some
exposure to the second language
in childhood, adolescence or
adulthood. Bilingualism, on the
other hand, is the native-like
control of two
languages [2] when the child is
exposed to both languages from
birth or at least before the end of
the 'critical period' for language
learning (for more on critical
period, click here).
It is estimated that roughly 5000 languages are spoken in 200 countries worldwide so it
can be studied in a wide variety of places.[3] It is often studied in the home to allow for
natural productions of speech in both languages from the child.
Who studies the acquisition of more than one language and how do they go about
it?
Research in this area is normally carried out in a case study format of children who are
brought up in bilingual environments. A linguist named Leopold, for example, brought
up his daughter, Hildegard, in America. Hildegard was spoken to in English by her
mother and German by her father. Leopold showed her development in both languages
in four books, focusing on different aspects of Hildegard's development: 1) Vocabulary
development, 2) Pronunciation development, 3) Word formation and sentence structure
and 4) his extra notes on her development.
Why is the acquisition of two languages studied?

When is the acquisition of two
languages studied?
The acquisition of more than
one language has only been
studied in the last 100 years or
so. It was first studied by
linguists such as Ronjat (1913)
and Leopold (1939-49). (For
more information on Ronjat and
Learning language is one of the most complex things humans undertake so learning two
languages simultaneously brings another level to the process. Exposure to
multiple languages at a young age allows for them to be acquired more easily and to a
greater proficiency, even though it may take longer for both to be acquired to the same
standard as a monolingual and the bilingual may never acquire as many words in a singl
language. Difficulties bilingual children encounter are also interesting for linguists, for
example the use of a grammatical construction from one of the languages when
speaking the other could suggest that the construction is easier in the other language.
Leopold, click here).

A case of widespread bilingualism

 Not all children who grow up to be bilingual are exposed to both languages in the same
way. Below is a table summarising the typical ways in which a child can learn two languages
at the same time.
 The Six Types of Childhood Bilingual Language Acquisition

Type Parents Community Strategy

'One person, one Different native One of the parents' Each parent speaks own
language' languages by degree of languages is dominant languages to child from
competence in other birth

'Non-dominant home Different native One of the parents' Both parents speak non-
language' languages languages is dominant dominant language to child
from birth

'Non-dominant home Share some native Dominant language is not Parents speak own
language without language that of the parents language to child
community support'

'Double non-dominant Different native Dominant language is Parents each speak own
home language without languages different from both language to child from
community support' parents' languages birth

'Non-native parents' Share same native Dominant languages is One parent addresses child
language same as the parents' in a language that is not
native to him/her

'Mixed languages' Bilingual Sectors of community Parents code-switch and

may also be bilingual mix langauges

[4]

Listen to the following interview (approx. 3 mins) with Kim, a 19-year-old student, who was
brought up in a 'one person, one language' environment.

Background: Kim's mum is French and her dad is English. She was brought up in
England but her mum spoke to her in French until she was around 5 years old. Her
brother, Phil, is 2 years 2 months younger than her.
References

[1]
Crystal, D., (2010). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[2]
Bloomfield, L., (1933). Language. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

[3]
Bhatia, T. K. and Ritchie, W. C., (2006). The Handbook of Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell.

[4]
Romaine, S., (1995). Bilingualism. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Second Language Acquisition

'One language sets you in a corridor for life.
Two languages open every door along the way'
(Frank Smith)

As this section is about Language Acquisition, there is another important point for us
to consider - Second Language Acquisition. You might have experience of learning another
language which is not your mother tongue. Can you remember why you needed to learn
that? What did you think, or feel when you learned it? Well, lots of linguists also started to
feel curious about things related to learning another language, and that was the point when
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) appeared. Now, let's look around SLA by seeing it
from 2 big parts - background and key points.

Basic background knowledge of SLA

What is Second Language Acquisition (SLA)?

Though it sounds very simple, you need to look at this term carefully. Also, it is really
important to differentiate between SLA, First Language Acquisition and Foreign
Language Acquisition.
First language acquisition (= Child language acquisition)
The field that studies cases of mother tongue acquisition.

Second language Acquisition The field that studies language(s) that you learned after
acquiring your mother tongue, including third and fourth languages.

These two notions and terms are completely contrast with

each other.
Foreign Language Acquisition The field that studies languages that you acquired inside
certain educational environments on purpose. e.g. an English student who learns French as
a module in the classroom or a Japanese student who learns English in the UK for taking a
TOEFL test.

This doesn't mean that they are in the opposite position, but just different terms. In broad
sense, foreign language acquisition can be included in the second language acquisition.

When was SLA first studied?

When was SLA first studied?

In 1957, Noam Chomsky's new publication brought theoretical revolution to the linguistic
field. The idea of a 'language acquisition device ' promoted the study of psycholinguistics,
and a bunch of study results also stimulated the study of First Language Acquisition. Soon,
scholars also started to give attention to studying second language acquisition. Thus, SLA
has not been studied for long compared to other areas of linguistics.

Why should we study SLA?

1. It is really important to acquire a second language as the world is becoming more

and more globalized, and as a result, demand for studying about SLA is also
increasing.
2. SLA is quite a new field of linguistics, so it needs to be researched more and more.
3. By studying SLA, it could be possible to develop new, more proficient teaching
methods which can be taught to students who learn a second language. "Much of
what we now know about the way people learn languages has been discovered only
[1]
in the last twenty years, and many teaching methods are much older than that."
Key Points & Case studies about SLA

Key points

There are some key aspects mainly considered in SLA researches, and each includes sub-
categories.

PICTURE HERE

How do we study SLA? & What is a case study?

"A case study is a detailed study of a learner's acquisition of a L2. It is typically longitudinal,
involving the collection of samples of the learner's speech or writing over a period of time,
[2]
sometimes years."

Two Case studies of Second Language Acquisition

[2]
These two case studies below are from the book written by Rod Ellis:
So far, we have looked through really simple introductory versions of Second Language
Acquisition.
For further reading, please consult the 'Taking it further' page and references below.

References

[1]
Dulay, H. et al., (1982). Language Two. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[2]
Ellis, R., (1997). Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Language Acquisition in Exceptional
Circumstances
Language Acquisition has been a topic of interest for heaps of clever investigators and
theorists over the past century. Whilst there are general similarities amongst children
learning language, not every child develops in this way. This page explores the complex,
exciting development of children who learn language differently to a typically developing
child.

Language Development of Deaf Children

90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, meaning just 10% of the deaf population
are likely to be raised in a fluent sign language environment. Unsurprisingly, the range in
linguistic ability in deaf children is huge.

The variety amongst deaf speakers doesn't end there. There are hundreds of
different sign languages across the globe including 36 different varieties across
Europe alone! 50,000 people use British Sign Language as their first language in
the U.K and a whopping 2,000,000 signers use American Sign Languageevery day!

Sign vs. Vocal Language

Whilst children born to hearing parents may not have the same exposure to sign
language, those that are surrounded by sign language develop language at the
same rate, if not sooner than hearing children. This recent discovery has resulted in
millions of enthusiastic parents teaching signs to hearing babies in an
attempt to encourage their language development [1].

When a hearing child is learning language, he or she may explore an object while a
parent names the object aloud. This routine is simple when both visual and audio input are
available to the child. The added obstacle for parents of a deaf child is firstly attracting the
child to an object and then providing the child with a sign. Parents have a number of
methods to help with this process, including:

1. Leaning into the child's visual field and repeating the sign
2. Signing on the child's body
3. Moving the child's hands
4. Using visual material such as picture books and picture cards

Below is a video demonstrating some of the methods of teaching sign language to young
children:

It doesn't end here...

Sign Language isn't the only language deaf individuals can acquire. 'Lip reading' also known
as 'speech reading' is one of the most popular forms of communication aside from sign language.
However, just 30% of spoken English is visible. For example, Bilabial sounds (sounds made
with both lips, like 'p', 'b' and 'm') are impossible to distinguish. Try silently mouthing the
words pale, male and bail to a friend - they will think you've repeated one word three times!

The 'bionic ear'

A very recent technological breakthrough in audio technology has transformed the hearing
of thousands of profoundly deaf and hard of hearing individuals. Cochlear implants send sound
past the damaged area of the ear and straight to auditory nerve and then to the brain, which
recognizes the signals as sound. After four decades of scientific trial and error, the cochlear
implant has been released universally, providing those with the very least audio ability a chance
to hear. Also referred to as the 'bionic ear', the cochlear implant is now available to children as
young as two, meaning spoken language acquisition may replace a child's dependency on sign
language.

For more information on the cochlear implant and its benefits to the deaf community, click here.
Child Directed Speech in Sign Language?

There have been a number of studies on the sign language used by a parent to their child.

The results show larger, more clearly presented signing, slower movements and much shorter
utterances. Interestingly, like child directed speech, research shows children respond better to
this form of signing than signing directed at adults [2].

Children's Sign Language Errors

Unlike verbal communication, sign language is visually prominent and editable, so parental
corrections are much more practical and direct. So these children should clear up any
confusion in no time, right? Wrong! Correcting a child learning sign language
is just as ineffective as a correcting a child learning spoken language!
See support for nativism for more information.

The Language Development of Blind Children

Imagine entering the world without the ability to see any of the world around you. Do you think learning new skills
would be harder if you couldn't see? Imagine trying to learn new sounds without the visual demonstration of others
to help you. Blind children do not have the ability to observe objects or see things in their natural environment.
Additionally, there is no opportunity to recognise non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures and body
movements. Do you think this would put blind children at a disadvantage?

According to Monti Civelli (1983) there are no differences between the language of sighted and the language of
blind adolescents of equal intellect. It appears blind children don't need sight to learn language adequately. After
reading how typically developing children learn language, some of you may be wondering how this can be!

What do we know?

The proportion of blind children in the U.K is still relatively small: 'There are an estimated 25,000 blind and
partially sighted children in Britain, which is just 2 in every 1,000 children'. (Morris and Smith,
2008). For these reasons, research into the development of blind children before the 1970s was non-existent.
Recent interest has focused on comparisons with sighted children. Whilst some researchers are
unhappy with comparing sighted and non sighted children in fear of discriminating against the
minority, this method has provided us with an interesting insight into blind children's language
development:

 A.E Mills [2] conducted a study on three blind children and compared their development
with three sighted children. He found the speech sounds that are easily seen when
produced (such as b, th-) are developed later in the language of blind children, whereas
the sounds that are less visible (for example: k,g,h) are learned at the same rate as sighted
children. Interestingly, these sounds are learned eventually, suggesting children don't
need a visual example when learning sounds.
 According to multiple studies, blind children typically produce their first word at the
same age as sighted children. It seems visual impairment doesn't affect children
producing early words.
 By having no sight, blind children develop a greater understanding of the things that rely
on other senses, namely hearing and touch.
 Picture books on exotic animals or unusual experiences are not accessible to blind
children, meaning vocabulary of this nature is generally delayed. This conclusion has
caused a surge of interest in making this vocabulary accessible for blind children.
 Blind Children have a greater tendency to produce personal social words and words
surrounding the home. The reasons for this is still uncertain: it could be anything from the
language exposure of the child to the difference of interests between blind and sighted
children.

Some of these findings make some important distinctions between the development of sighted
and the development of non-sighted children, perhaps indicating that we benefit from having all
five senses to pick up information from our environment. This kind research has been crucial in
supporting nurture over nature in the Nature vs. Nurture debate.
What makes blind language acquisition so fascinating?

The development of language for any child is an outstanding achievement, but a child who
manages to acquire language without the use of sight is even more remarkable. Some of the
questions that intrigue linguists today include:

 How does a blind child describe colours? What is their perception of things such
as light and dark, fluorescent and shadow?
 What does a blind child understand by the words look and see?
 How do blind children describe things they haven't experienced, such as unusual
animals?
 Research into how blind children learn language will show us new and effective ways to
teach language and encourage their speech. Specialised centres and societies have already
been established to develop the language and social skills of blind children, using
specialist toys and materials designed to teach children in ways that will benefit them the
most.

References
[1]
Beyer. M., (2007). Teach Your Baby to Sign: An Illustrated Guide to Simple Sign Language for
Babies. Gloucester: Fair Winds Press.
[2]
Bishop. D. and Mogford-Bevan. K., (1993). Language Development In Exceptional
Circumstances. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.

Sample Research Paper - Berko and Brown

(1960)
Word Association and the Acquisition of Grammar (1960)

This section has a lot to do with syntactic development in children. If you would like to get a good grasp on what syntax is
click here before you continue to read this page.
So now you've brushed up on your syntactic knowledge, let's play an association game...

What words would you associate with these?

Table

Dark

Man

Deep

Soft

Mountain

Would you choose words such as:

Chair

Light

Woman

Shallow

Hard

Hill

or:

Eat

Night

Work

Hole
 Pillow

High

You picked words from the first set, didn't you? Have you noticed that the words in the first association set (chair, light
etc.) all belong to the same word category as the initial set of words?

Table NOUN NOUN Chair

Dark ADJ ADJ Light

Man NOUN NOUN Woman

Deep ADJ ADJ Shallow

Soft ADJ ADJ Hard

Mountain NOUN NOUN Hill

BUT the second association set (eat, night etc) don't belong to the same word category as the initial set of words?

Table NOUN VERB Eat

Dark ADJ NOUN Night

Man NOUN VERB Work

Deep ADJ NOUN Hole

Soft ADJ NOUN Pillow

Mountain NOUN ADJ High

As you may have guessed, the first association set is often produced by adults and the second by children. Berko and
Brown found this out in their pre-experiment literature review.

Berko and Brown knew that there were several principles of association used by young children:
1) similarities/differences between the words

2) the closeness of the words as a result of space/time

3) high probability of the words being paired in speech

and they proposed that as a child gets older, they use another principle of association which has the increasing effect of
associating a word to another of the same category.

Hypothesis

As syntax develops in children, syntactic similarities in words become an increasingly important determinant in word
association, which leads to the transition from associating words that are not in the same category to words that are in
the same category (often known as heterogeneous andhomogeneous respectively).

Method

They used 4 groups, each with 20 participants, 10 male and 10 female in each group.

Groups 1, 2 and 3 were made up of students from grades 1, 2 and 3 at a school in Massachusetts and group 4 (Known as
'ad') was comprised of adults from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Each participant had to complete two different tests: A Word Association Test and a Usage Test

Word Association Test

All of the participants had to associate 36 words with another, six from each of the following categories: Adjectives,
adverbs, intransitive verbs (verbs that can appear without an object i.e. 'I wept'), transitive verbs (verbs that have to be
accompanied by some sort of object i.e. 'we sent it'), count nouns and mass nouns.

The list was as follows:

Count Nouns (C.N.): table, house, foot, needle, apple, doctor.

Mass Nouns (M.N.): milk, water, sand, sugar, air, cheese.

Adjectives (Adj.): dark, soft, cold, white, sweet, hard.

Transitive Verbs (T.V.): to send, to bring, to find, to take, to hit, to invite.

Intransitive Verbs (I.V.): to skate, to come, to live, to laugh, to stand, to walk.

Adverbs (Adv.): quickly, slowly, sadly, now, softly, gently.

Usage Test

A 'new word' was introduced to the participants and used in two different sentences. The two sentences allowed the
placement of the word in one of the six parts-of-speech mentioned in the word association section. The participants had
to use it in sentences they made up themselves, and these were scored as 'correct' if the new word was used as it ought
to be.
This was repeated with 12 different 'new words'. The 'new words' were all pronounceable nonsense syllables, as follows:
Wug, boff, latt, roog, stog, huft, nass, sib, bik, rik, nare, and pilk.

Scoring

Scoring on the Word Association Test involves assigning response words to a part-of-speech; scoring on the Usage Test
involves determining the correct part-of-speech from its use in a sentence by the participants.

Results

Mean homogeneous scores on Word Association Test and Usage Test for each part-of-speech:
The results show that as age increases, so does the ability to categorise words into groups of the same parts-of-speech.
This was a very important discovery in terms of language acquisition research because it showed a specific aspect of
syntactic development that hadn't been researched before.

(Adapted from: Berko, J. and Brown, R., (1960). 'Word Association and the Acquisition of Grammar'. In: Child Development. Vol 31 issue 1. Oxford: Blackwell)

Morphology
Your mental dictionary

On leaving secondary school a student typically knows around 60,000 free words. They are called free words because the
can be used independently and don’t have to be attached to other words to have a meaning.[1] All words we know are
stored in our mind in a mental dictionary where, just as in a real dictionary, each entry contains information on form and
use. Consider what you know about the wordwork:

 its pronunciation and spelling

 the meaning of the verb work (to do a job that you are paid for) and that which prepositions go
together with work (to work with a friend, for a law firm, at a university) and
 that it is also a noun (a job or activity that you do regularly, especially in order to earn money) that
is uncountable, that is, you can‟t say “I applied for a work” or “my brother has two works”.

Some words are updated as their meaning change (eg. gay that used to mean "bright" and "cheerful" but now is
associated with "homosexual", and mouse which is an animal and since recently also a computer device) and
new words are added all the time. Think about all the new words that have come about during the last few
decades (eg. to diss, docusoap, alcopop and hotspot). The capacity of your mental lexicon is immense and we
benefit from this knowledge not only when we use existing words but also when we create or try to understand
new words.

Let‟s try this out with the word trilk. Even though you haven‟t heard this word before (because I just made it up)
you can quickly figure out how to use it. In looking at the sentence Amy trilked to school yesterday we find out
that the word trilk is a regular verb and thus follows the typical grammatical pattern (trilk, trilked,
trilked or dance, danced, danced). In knowing that, we can use it in different tenses, like Amy was trilking in the
garden when I called her. (progressive form). We can also apply our knowledge on how to make verbs into
nouns and say Amy is a real trilker,or use it as an adjective Amy’s trilky style is very amusing.

You will probably never find the word trilk in an English dictionary but you can apply your knowledge of rules
and categories to use and interpret words and this is what morphology is all about: The mental system of rules
that helps us form and understand words.[2]

In this section we will give you an introduction to what morphology is and why and how people study it, and
once you're done reading you'll not only have taken your first step towards engaging in morphology, but also be
able to answer these questions:

 What does it actually mean to diss someone and where does the word come from?
 Why is it called brunch and not breakfunch?
 What does -gate mean in Watergate and Irangate?

References

[1]
O'Grady, W., (1997). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Longman.
[2]
Fasold, R. and Connor-Linton, J., (1991) An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

What is Morphology?
Morphology – the internal structure of words

The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning 'shape,

form', and -ology which means 'the study of something'. The term is used
not only in linguistics but also in biology as the scientific study of forms and
structure of animals and plants, and in geology as the study of formation
and evolution of rocks and land forms. We are going to stick to morphology
in linguistics, as the scientific study of forms and structure of words in a
[1]
language. Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the
first time in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the
[2]
term for the study of the form of words. Today morphology forms a core
part of linguistics.

Key Terms
 affixes: a morpheme that is attached
to something else to modify its
What is a word?
meaning, e.g. un- in unhappy

bound morpheme: a morpheme tha

cannot stand on its own but must be
If morphology is the study of the internal structure of words, we need to
attached to another word, e.g. -er,
define the word word before we can continue. That might sound easy -
plural -s
surely we all know what a word is. In texts they are particularly easy to
spot since they are divided by white spaces. But how do we identify words
circumfix: a morpheme consisting of
in speech? A reliable definition of words is that they are the smallest
two parts, one that is attached to th
independent units of language. They are independent in that they do not
depend on other words which means that they can be separated from other front and one to the back of a word
units and can change position.[3] Consider the sentence:
complex word: a word consisting of
The man looked at the horses. two or more morphemes, e.g. work-
er
The plural ending –s in horses is dependent on the noun horse to receive
meaning and can therefore not be a word. Horses however, is a word, as it free morpheme: a morpheme that
can occur in other positions in the sentence or stand on its own: can stand on its own, e.g. house

The horses looked at the man.

infix: an affix that is inserted into a
- What is the man looking at? - Horses.
word
Words are thus both independent since they can be separated from other
words and move around in sentences, and the smallest units of language morphemes: the smallest meaning-
since they are the only units of language for which this is possible. bearing unit of language

morphology: the study of

the internal structure of
Morphemes - the building blocks of morphology words

prefix: an affix that is attached to th

front of a word, e.g. pro- in proactive
Although words are the smallest independent units of language, they have
an internal structure and are built up by even smaller pieces. There root: a base to which bound
are simple words that don‟t have an internal structure and only consist of morphemes can be attached
one piece, like work. There is no way we can divide work (wo-rk?) into
smaller parts that carry meaning or function. Complex words however, do
simple words: a word consisting of
have an internal structure and consist of two or more pieces.
Consider worker, where the ending –er is added to the root work to make it only one morpheme, e.g. work
into a noun meaning someone who works. These pieces are
called morphemes and are the smallest meaning-bearing units of suffix: an affix that is attached to the
language.[4] end of a word, e.g. plural -s on noun

We said that words are independent forms, and a simple word only word: the smallest
consisting of one single morpheme is therefore a free morpheme, that is, it
independent units
is a word itself. Examples are house, work, high, us and to. Morphemes that
must be attached to another morpheme to receive meaning
are bound morphemes. If we break the word unkindness into its three
morphemes un-, kind and -ness, we get two examples of bound
morphemes: un- and -ness, as they require the root kind to make up a
word. These are also called affixes as they are attached to the stem. The
affix un- that go to the front of a word is a prefix and -ness that goes to
the end is a suffix.

There are also infixes and circumfixes, although they are not very
common in English. We mostly see infixes as curse words integrated in
morphemes like the ones you can see below[5], or like the example from the
American sitcom you can see below. A circumfix is a morpheme that
attaches to the front and the back of a word, as you can see in the
examples of Dutch past tense below:

The graphic shows free and bound morphemes according to positions

Drawing Morphology Trees

In order to show the internal structure of a word, we draw morphology trees. The following
video demonstrates how to draw a simple morphology tree and a complex morphology tree:

YouTube Video

Below are the completed morphology trees from the video:

For more information on drawing morphology trees go to How is Morphology
studied?

The purposes of studying morphology

The internal structure of words and the segmentation into different kinds of
morphemes is essential to the two basic purposes or morphology: 1. the
creation of new words and 2. the modification of existing words.[6]Think
about it, we create new words out of old ones all the time. Hereyou can
read more about how word creation is studied.
References
[1]
Aronoff, M. and Fudeman, K., (Date unknown). What is Morphology? [pdf.] Oxford: Blackwell. Available
at:<http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/

0631203184%5CAronoff_sample%20chapter_What%20is%20morphology.pdf.> [Accessed 23.05.2012 at 15.00].

[2]
Booij, G. E., (2007). The Grammar of Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

[3]
Fasold, R. and Connor-Linton, J., (2006). An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[4]
O'Grady, W., (1997). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Longman

[5]
McGregor, W., (2009). Linguistics : An Introduction. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

[6]
Fasold, R. and Connor-Linton, J., (2006). An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. New York: Cambridge University Press.

How is Morphology studied?

To understand the ways in which linguistic morphology is studied we must first determine
some basic definitions.

Complex Words

Along with word formation processes, complex words are a great point of interest when studying
Morphology. We seek to analyse the positions of the different morphemes which make up the word in
question and then the reasons as to why certain morphemes act in the way that they do.

some examples of complex words are..

BOOKS

HOSEPIPE

ORGANISATION

UNNECESSARILY ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM

Analysis of complex words

Complex words can be broken down into smaller units for analysis. They are be made up from different
elements; roots, bases, free/bound morphemes and affixes (see the 'key vocabulary' section, right,
for full definitions) Although not all words contain all of these elements, sometimes it is a combination of
two or more.

Affixes are attached to bases in order to modify meaning. There are two types of affix that we must be
familiar with:

 Prefix: Is a morpheme that is attached to the front of a base. e.g

DEACTIVATE

 Suffix: Is a morpheme that is attached to the end of a base. e.g

STUPIDLY

Now that we have covered the basic definitions it is time to look at how morphology is studied in greater
detail..

Three approaches

As in most fields requiring analysis of a specific subject, there is more than one approach used by linguists
in order to examine morphological structures.

1. Morpheme based

Also referred to as 'item and arrangement' approach. Here words are analysed as an arrangement of
different morphemes. American linguist Leonard Bloomfield states that morphemes are the smallest
meaningful unit of language. Thus the approach to word analysis should be based on the premis that words
are a combination of smaller units which each carry meaning themselves. Read more about Leonard
Bloomfield here Who does Morphology?

Examples of this would be the -s that is used to mark plurality within words such as pigs and the -
en in oxen. Morpheme based morphology believes that these morphemes en and s have a meaning in their
own right, and transform the original word to the plural of whatever the noun may be.

2. Lexeme Based

This approach is also referred to as 'item and process' and is more complicated than the above method. It
differs from the morpheme based approach as words in this instance are not viewed as an arrangement of
individual morphemes. Instead the word set or lexeme is the result that is left when a set of processes or
rules have been applied to the root of the word in question.

3. Word Based

Is also referred to as 'word and paradigm' approach. This method relies on the fact that generalisations
exist between the forms of inflectional patterns. More simply that words can be categorised based on the
patterns that they fit into. An example of a paradigm in the Spanish language is that regular verbs which
have an ending 'ar' in their infinitive form will have 'a' as their ending in the present tense, 3rd person.
E.g

The spanish infinitive 'bailar' = to dance

in the 3rd person becomes baila = he/she dances

Two Further Distinctions

Inflectional

Expresses grammatical changes by altering word forms. For example singular words might take inflectional
morpheme 's' in order to make them plural.[1] They do not alter the part of speech of a
word: girl and girlsboth remain as nouns. They usually only appear as suffixes in
English.[2]

Derivational

Here new words are formed from old ones but the two are considered to be separate words in meaning. Th
part of speech and basic meaning is changed. Run and Re-run are examples of this. They can appear as
[1]
both affixes and suffixes in English.

Representing Word Structure: Tree diagrams

Linguists show the analysis of word structure by drawing morphological trees. They are a useful tool to
illustrate processes of derivation and inflection.[4] There are many rules to consider when drawing these
trees but they are extremely useful as they can demonstrate the forms of simple words such a cat as well
as complex words like antidisestablishmentarianism - the longest word in the English Dictionary.

[3]
Take the adjective COMPLICATED. To draw a tree you must:

 divide the word up into its various morphemes. COMPLICATE + (E)D

 Identify the root and label its Part of Speech. COMPLICATE = Verb
  Find the first affix to be added and then label its part of speech 'Aff' = ED
 Then join the affix to the root and then label the part of speech of the word that results.

For a visual example of how to draw this, and other trees,check out the video at the bottom of the page
'What is Morphology?'

Also, for more information about morphology trees have a look at this tree tutorial [3]

References

[1]
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_1998/ling001/morphology2.html

[2]
Richard Nordquist (2003) Morphology[Website] http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/morphologyterm.html [Accessed 13.5.2012].

[3]
David Brett Drawing Tree Diagrams [Website] http://davidbrett.uniss.it/morphology/treeDiagEx/treeDiag.html [Accessed 12.05.2012].

Who does Morphology?

Basically, anyone who considers themself a 'Linguist' will have studied Morphology at some point. Defined as the
study of word formation, Linguists must understand Morphology before being able to study other Linguistic Areas
such as Syntax and Language Acquisition. You could say that morphology is one of theKey Foundations for
linguistic study.

Many Linguists have closely studied morphology and carried out research into the sub-discipline however we will
focus on 4 key researchers who have all written key publications in morphology and contributed significantly to
this interesting and important area of Linguistics.
If you would like to find out more about the following people, there is a link which will give you more details about
their research and publications.
Mark Aronoff

The Linguistic Society of

America: A professional
society for linguists founded
in 1924 with over 5,000
members. Its aim is to
advance the scientific study o
the human language.

Phonology, syntax,
 Aronoff is a Morphologist and Professor at The State University of New York semantics and
at Stony Brook. psycholinguistics: Other
key sub-disciplines of
 In 2005 he was the President ofThe Linguistic Society of America. linguistics. Phonology is the
study of the structured
 Aronoff's research explores almost all aspects of Morphology and its relations system of sounds of a
tophonology, syntax, semanticsand psycholinguistics. language. Syntax is the study
of sentence structure and the
 Two of his key textbooks include: 'What is Morphology' and 'Morphology by rules which govern what is
itself' and has published a number of Journal Articles which show the breadth grammatical and what is not.
of his knowledge of morphology and demonstrate his extensive research into Semantics is the study of the
the sub-discipline. meaning of language.
Psycholinguistics is the study
The following link will take you to Mark Aronoff's profile on the Stony Brook of the relationship between
University website. Here you can also download some of his papers: language and the human
mind. See other subsections
http://www.linguistics.stonybrook.edu/faculty/mark.aronoff of the website for
more information on these
topic areas.

Andrew Spencer

 Currently a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Morphosyntax: Linguistic

Essex teaching morphology and phonology. units that have morphologica
and syntactic (relating to
 His main research interests are morphology and morphosyntax. sentence structure)
properties.
 Spencer is the author of 'The Handbook of Morphology' in the
Blackwell Handbooks of Linguistics. The Concise Oxford
Dictionary of
To find out more about Andrew Spencer's research and to view a list of his Linguistics: For those who
publications, you can visit his university profile by clicking on the link below. are new to studying
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~spena/
linguistics, this dictionary
offers coherent definitions
 and explanations of all
aspects of Linguistics as well
Peter Matthews as Morphology.

Structural
 British Linguist and former Professor and Head of Department of Linguistics at
Linguistics: Studies
the University of Cambridge.[1]
language as a system of sign
and explores the theory that
 One of his key publications on morphology includes 'Morphology:
these signs gain their
An Introduction to the Theory of Word Structure'.
meaning from their
relationships and contrasts
 Another of Matthews' most significant works is 'The Concise Oxford
with other signs.
Dictionary of Linguistics' published in 2007.

If you think you would like to study linguistics at University or if you just find it really
Morpheme-based
interesting, Peter Matthew's 'Concise Dictionary of Linguistics' would be a book worth Morphology:Theory that new
buying to help you on your way to becoming a budding linguist! The book includes words are formed from
key information about Morphology as well as other sub-disciplines of Linguistics. Click arranging morphemes (the
on the link below to view the book on amazon and to find out more details about it: smallest meaning-bearing
unit of language.)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Concise-Dictionary-Linguistics-Paperback- Morphophonemics: the

Reference/dp/0199202729/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335785832&sr=8-1- study of the phonological
fkmr1 realisation of the allomorphs
of the morphemes of a
language.

Leonard Bloomfield

 American linguist who led the development of Structural

Linguistics. His approach was scientific based.[2]

 Supported the theory of Morpheme-based Morphology and considered a

morpheme to be the minimal form with meaning but not the meaning itself.
 Was key to the development of the theory ofMorphophonemics.[3]
  One of his key works is 'Language', a highly influential textbook which he
published in 1933. This textbook includes an extensive and detailed section on
morphology.

 Bloomfield was one of the founding members of the Linguistic Society of

America and also its President in 1935.

To find out more about Leonard Bloomfield and his morphological theories including
the Theory of Morphophonemics, click on the following link.

http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~langendoen/Bloomfield.pdf

References
[1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Matthews_(linguist)> [Accessed 30.04.2012].
[2]
Bloch, B., (1949). Leonard Bloomfield. Language. 25(2). pp. 87-98.

[3]
Terence Langendoen, D., (1998). 'Bloomfield'. In: Wilson, R. and Keil, F. (ed). The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive

Science.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 90-91.

When is Morphology studied?

Morphology Timeline

Morphological studies have been known to date as far back as the 6th century Key terms
BC, when the ancient Indian linguist Pāṇini (see History of Linguistics) was believed to
have formulated the 3,959 rules of ‘Sanskrit’ morphology in the text ‘Aṣṭādhyāyī ‘.[1]
Pāṇini - Nothing is known
about Pāṇini's personal life or where
he was from.

Greco-Roman- The geographical

regions and countries that were
The Greco-Roman grammatical tradition also took interest in morphological influenced with the language, cultur
analysis, as well as studies in Arabic morphology by Marāḥ al-arwāḥ and Aḥmad b. „alī and government of the ancient
Mas„ūd at the later dates of 1200 CE.[2] Greeks and Romans.

Systemic Functional Grammar-

Developed by Michael Halliday and
 places the function of language
central and looks at social context.
"Context, Semantics, Lexico-
Grammar and Phonology-
Graphology. Concerns the field (wha
is going on), Tenor (the social roles
and relationships between the
participants), and the Mode (aspects
of the channel of communication,
When looking at more recent dates, in the 1920s The Prague School was the
e.g., monologic/dialogic,
earliest group of linguists who set up their own literary circle which used functioning
frameworks and theories.[3] The well-known linguist Michael Halliday was spoken/written, +/- visual-contact,
influenced by the work of The Prague School when developing his own ideas etc.)."
onsystemic functional grammar.[4]

Linguistic Structuralism-focuses on
words and how they relate to the
world that they designate.

Lexical Functional Grammar-

 C-structures have the form of

context-free phrase structure trees.

 F-structures are sets of pairs of

attributes and values; attributes may
be features, such as tense and
gender, or functions, such as subject
and object.

Michael Halliday

Phrase Structure Grammar-Also

known as constituency grammar and
was developed by Noam Chomsky.

Functional Discourse Grammar-

In the mid twentieth century The Copenhagen school[5] was one of the most important This is the Grammatical Component
developers of linguistic structuralism together with the fore-mentioned Prague of verbal communication and is
linked to Conceptual Component, an
School and The Geneva School. However, in the late 20th and the more recent early
Output Component, and a Contextua
2000s, the Copenhagen school has turned from a purely structural approach to
Component.
linguistics to a functionalist one.
 Role and Reference Grammar- In
RRG the description of a asentce in
formulated as (a) and its logical
structure and communicative
functions, and (b) the grammatical
procedures that are available for
expression of meanings.

Lexical functional grammar, was developed by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan in
the 1970s, and is a type of phrase structure grammar. It mainly focuses onsyntax, including
how it links with morphology and semantics.[6]

Simon Diks was a dutch linguist who originally developed the ideas of Functional
discourse grammar in the 1970s and 1980s and has since been increasingly
developed by Linguists such as Kees Hengeveld.[7]

Role and reference grammar, developed byRobert Van Valin in

the 1980s engages functional analytical framework with a more formal
mode of explanation.[8]

References

[1]
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gazetteer/pager.html?objectid=DS405.1.I34_V02_298.gif [Accessed 15.05.2012]
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphology_(linguistics)#cite_note-0 [Accessed 15.05.12]
[3]
http://www.praguelinguistics.org/en/about
[4]
http://www.isfla.org/Systemics/definition.html
[5]
Seuren, Pieter A. M., (1998). Western linguistics: an historical introduction.
[6]
http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/external/LFG/
[7]
http://home.hum.uva.nl/fdg/Home_index.asp
[8]
http://wings.buffalo.edu/linguistics//people/faculty/vanvalin/rrg.html
Where is Morphology studied?
Morphology is studied across the whole world and is taught and researched within all universities which
have a linguistics department.

The map below shows just some of the main areas in which morphology is studied and taught as a sub-
discipline and the labels in red indicate particular places where it is researched extensively. As
demonstrated by the map, morphology is a global sub-discipline but notice that it is only the economically
developed and rapidly developing areas of the world (North America, Europe, Australia, China) in which it is
studied. This is because extensive Linguistic Research requires a rich academic infrastructure, which
Less Economically Developed Countries are unable to offer.

All the time, there are morphology conferences (formal meetings to which people can attend) and talks
going on across the world in which linguists present their research which is then discussed amongst other
linguists and researchers. Examples of talks on morphology [1] that have recently taken place are:

 Al-Sayyid: A language blooms in the desert

By Mark Aronoff at Stony Brook University, New York USA

 On putative morphology-phonetics interactions

By Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero at The University of Manchester, England
  Experiments in Morphological Evolution
By Richard Sprout at The Oregon Health and Science University, USA

 Has politeness a (morphosyntactic) future?

By Greville Corbett at The University of Surrey, England

References
[1]
<http://semlab1.sbs.sunysb.edu/tags/morphology> [Accessed 10.05.2012].
Why is Morphology studied?
Key terms
Aims of Morphology
The traditional concern of morphology is the identification of morphemes.
Linguists interested in morphology look at the parts that words are divided
into and study the meaning of these individual parts. The main aim of Morphemes: The smallest units of
morphology is to assign meaning to parts of words, so for example: language that carry meaning or
function.
borrow-ing
This is divided into two morphemes- one free morpheme (borrow) and one
bound morpheme (-ing). Once a linguist can tell that '-ing' is a bound Free morphemes: words that can
morpheme, they know this will be the case in all situations where that stand alone and still make sense.
particular morpheme arises.

Bound morphemes:Morphemes tha

Types of bound morphemes cannot stand alone, they need to be
attached to a free morpheme in
order to be a proper, meaningful
word.
There are two types of bound morphemes- inflectional and derivational.

Inflectional morphemes are a combination of the root and affix usually

resulting in a word of the same class as the original root. Inflectional Affixes: A morpheme attached to
morphemes don't tend to change the meaning of the root word either, it something else.
just turns the original word into a plural, past tense etc word.

The addition of these types of affixes are there to mark grammatical

Root: The core of the word. What's
functions. The highlighted parts are examples of inflectional morphemes left when affixes are taken away.
found in the following words:

Syntax: The study of sentence

running, jumped, eaten, funner, dogs structure.

Derivational morphemes are also a combination of the root and an affix, Vowel Harmony: The first vowel of
but in this case the meaning or word class of the original word often the suffix depends on the last vowel
changes. An example of this is below: of the word that the suffix is being
attached

Happiness
Here, adding '-ness' to the root 'happy' changes the word from an adjective
to a noun.

Inflectional and derivational morphology are how many new words

enter the language.

Morphology vs. Syntax

'Grammar' is often used as a blanket term to cover both morphology and

syntax (actually, morphology is the study of word forms, and syntax the
study of sentence structure).

Morphology and syntax are however closely related, and there is

often an argument as to whether learning morphology leads to the
acquisition of syntax, or if syntax provides the features and
structures upon which morphology operates.

It is possible to have the syntax right, but the morphology wrong- for example,
in children's language the child will often put together their sentence perfectly well, but use
the wrong affix, or apply an affix where there needn't be one- for example, 'I felled over'
instead of 'I fell over'.
From this example we can see how morphology is in fact very
irregular- the past tense inflection '-ed' that is found in words such
as 'walked', 'danced' or 'jumped' is not applied to all past tense
constructions. This is one of the major differences between
morphology and syntax, syntax follows strict rules, while morphology
is often inconsistent with many exceptions to the rules.

Other Languages and Morphology

English Morphology is in fact very dull in comparison to that of other

languages. In Turkish, for example, a huge array of words can be created
by adding suffixes to just one root, and because of this the number of
words in the language is very high.

The morphology of other languages also seems to be more rule governed- for example, in
Turkish the use of suffixes is dependent on 'vowel harmony'. The distribution of plurals
is dependent on whether the sound is a back vowel or a front vowel- so the Turkish word for
'candle' which is 'mum' becomes 'mumlar' (candles), while 'kibrit' (the Turkish word for match)
becomes 'kibritler' (matches) because it is a front vowel.

Example Research
Shouldn't it be Breakfunch?

A really interesting example of research on morphology is a journal article which looks Key term
into blending and blend structure. But before looking at this research, you need to know what these things
mean!
Blending
morpholo
What is Blending and Blend Structure? process w
new word
created b
Blending is a process where a new word is created by combing non-morphemic parts (see column
combining
on the right for explanation) of two or more already existing words. These are either shortened and
non-morp
put together or are already overlapping. As you can see in the examples below blends are usually
parts of e
made up by the first part of one word and the last part of another. Some well-known examples in
words.
English are:

smog (smoke+fog)
brunch (breakfast + lunch) Blend
Structur
Most speakers don‟t realise that blends are actually fusions of words as they are often very well way in wh
integrated in the language. Did you know that the computer term bit is actually a blend two sourc
of binary and digit, and modemit put together by modulator and demodulator?[1] have been
together.
Therefore the Blend Structure is the way in which the two source words have been put together (blended)
to form the new word.

Journal
Article: A
Examples of blending in English piece of w
While blending may not be considered one of the most productive forms of new word formation, it published
nonetheless gives us some valuable new words - some of which can be very entertaining! a print of
medium.
We've all heard of words such as brunch (breakfast + lunch) and smog (smoke + fog), and probably are very
aware that these are the result of blending- but some words become so much a part of our language that we
forget their origins! Non-mor
parts: Pa
Glimmer = gleam + shimmer word that
Moped= motor + pedal have the
morphem
 Sitcom= situation + comedy that does
meaning,
And then there are the blends that make obscure words, words that wouldn't come about if it weren't for
in brunch
the development of new technology and a developing social culture:

Chexting= cheating + texting

Textpectation = texting + expectation Orthogra
spelling.
Flirtationship = Flirting + relationship

Phonemi
Most of these kind of constructions are made for slang use, whereas ones such as glimmer and moped have smallest u
earned their places in dictionaries and are now considered words within their own right! sound e.g
the b in b
Shouldn't it be be Breakfunch? - The journal article
So now you're all clued up on the process of blending and the concept of blend structure and
how Blendiferous it all is we can now give you a real example of linguistic research into this morphological Quantitiv
phenomenon. The research is presented in a Journal Article entitled: Analysis
that aims
produce n
results su
Shouldn't it be be Breakfunch? A quantitative analysis of blend structure in English by Stefan Th. Gries.[2] graphs an
statistics.

As you will find out if you go to university, journal articles can be reallywordy and really long and rather
difficult to get your head around! This is because they are written by researchers for other researchers to
Slang: La
read so the writing style is very different to what you would find in textbooks. However, in this case we have
that is co
just summarised the main points of the research to enable you to understand it. to be very
informal.
 The research investigates the word-formation process of blending in English and its main aim is to
find out what factors determine why certain words are blended together in such a way.

 The paper analyses the orthographic and phonemic structure of blends on a quantitative basis. The Source
table below, taken from the journal article, shows the blend structure of the word Brunch which has Words: T
been formed from the source words Breakfast and Lunch. It indicates the percentages of each word original w
that appear in the blend. which are
create a n

Word Fo
Process:
in which t
word is m
  The main factors discussed in relation to the blend structure of words are:
- the amount of information each source word contributes.
- the similarity of the source words to the blend.

 The method that was used by Gries (the researcher) to produce the results included statistical tests
using quantitative data. Mathematical equations and statistics are often important aspects of
Linguistic Research when analysing data.

 The results show that the amount of material contributed by the words is determined by the degree
of recognisability of the source words and that the similarity of source words to the blend plays a
vital role in blend formation.

Here you can download and read the whole journal article.

References

[1]
O'Grady, W., (1997). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Longman.
[2]
Gries, S. T., (2004). Shouldn't it be be Breakfunch? A Quantitative Analysis of Blend Structure in English . Walter de Gruyter & Co.
2004. http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=VqzneIAAAAAJ&cstart=20&citation_for_view=VqzneIAAAAAJ:Wp0gIr-
vW9MC. [Accessed 23.05.2012].
Phonetics
welkʌm tuː fənetɪks

Visit our pages and see what exciting things phoneticians do and what exactly phonetics is concerned with. This video wi
give you a short taster of what you can expect to learn about and hopefully you will enjoy it!

welkʌm tuː fənetɪks... what does that mean? It looks like gobbledygook right now but after taking a look through these
pages, you'll be able to phonetically transcribe.

Have you ever wondered how exactly you create the sounds you make when speaking? Why not? We know that to run
you need to move your legs, and to eat we need to chew our food with our teeth. So how come we don't necessarily
know that our alveolar ridge helps make the sound /s/ as in sit.

Every sound we make involves our mouth moving in slightly different ways, using our articulators, like our tongue and
teeth.

Phonetics is also concerned with auditory perception and acoustic properties of speech.

Discover who is involved with phonetics and how they research it. We'll tell you how you could go about doing it and
when and where the milestones in phonetics were achieved.

By this point you may be wondering why. Find out why researchers study phonetics as well.

Phonetics VS. phonology

So what‟s the difference between phonetics and phonology I hear you ask?

Well, phonology is concerned with phonemes, which are abstract meaningful units of speech, differing
within each language. It also deals with the rules by which these sounds are constrained in order to make
words (for example, in English, a word can never begin with the consonant cluster "ng").

Phonetics, however, is concerned with allophones, which are the actual physical manifestations of speech
sounds. It is involved with how these sounds are actually produced in the vocal tract, transmitted by
sounds waves and perceived by our auditory system. Phonetics is really just a description of the speech
sounds, whereas phonology deals with meaning. So basically phonetics is the physical side of speech.

Alveolar what?

Don't worry about all this strange terminology, after reading all about phonetics, you'll be able to distinguish between a
voiced and voiceless sound, and tell people all about their velum.

This section will give you an insight into what phonetics is all about, who and why people study it, along with where it wa
first studied and how the linguists went about it.

Will you be a phonetics geek?

Will you be able to complete the tasks to test your knowledge on phonetics? Watch the videos and try out the puzzles in
order to become the next Henry Sweet. (Who?) You may take a real shine to phonetics, if you want to dig a little deeper,
check out the finding out more page and get clued up and find out further information on how to become phonetician of
the year.

What is Phonetics?
First things first, phonetics has a lot of new terminology to take on board. Check out this glossaryto find new terms
with clear definitions.

Phonetics is all about studying the sounds we make when we talk. There are three main branches of this discipline.

The three branches of Phonetics

Acoustic Phonetics

This is the study of the sound waves made by the human vocal organs for communication and how the sounds are
transmitted. The sound travels through from the speaker's mouth through the air to the hearer's ear, through the form o
vibrations in the air. Phoneticians can use equipment like Oscillographs and Spectographs in order to analyse things like
the frequency and duration of the sound waves produced. Acoustic phonetics also looks at how articulatory and auditory
phonetics link to the acoustic properties.

Auditory Phonetics

This is how we perceive and hear sounds and how the ear, brain and auditory nerve perceives the sounds. This branch
deals with the physiological processes involved in the reception of speech.
Articulatory Phonetics

Articulatory phonetics is interested in the movement of various parts of the vocal tract during speech.The vocal tract
is the passages above the larynx where air passes in the production of speech. In simpler terms which bit of the mouth
moves when we make a sound.

VPM labels is a term that is used in phonetics, it means Voice Place Manner labels. These labels are given to sounds, in
order to describe where the sound is produced, how and whether it is voiced or unvoiced (voiceless).

Check out this diagram to help you see where exactly the articulators are.

Voiced and Voiceless sounds

Voiced sounds are sounds vibrate the vocal chords, you can feel this in the throat. Whereas voiceless sounds don't vibrate
the vocal chords. Why not give it a go! Place two fingers on the front of your throat and make the /z/ sound as in buzz, do
you feel your vocal chords vibrating? Now try doing the same thing but making the /s/ sounds as in grass, what do you
feel now? The /s/ sound is a voiceless sound and the /z/ sound is voiced.

Place of Articulation

Speech sounds are classified in terms of which articulators are used, in other words, which bit of the mouth is used in
making the sound. Here are some basic classifications to get you started.
Term Explanation Example

Bilabial Sound made using both /p/ as in pat

lips. /b/ as in bat

Labiodental Sound made using the /f/ as in fat

lower lip and upper /v/ as in vase
teeth.

Alveolar Sound made where the /d/ as in dad

tongue touches the /s/ as in sat
alveolar ridge.

Dental Sound made using the /ð/ as in the

teeth and tongue. / θ/ as in thing

Velar Sound made using the /k/ as in cat

back part of the tongue /g/ as in gate
and the soft palate
(velum).

Glottal Sound made using the Glottal stops:/ʔ/

glottis.

Manner of Articulation

Manner of articulation is how the tongue, lips and jaw along with other speech organs are involved when making a sound

The manners:

Plosive (stop)
Sounds that are made with complete a complete stop of air flow in the vocal tract. Sounds like /p/, /b/, /t/ and /k/.

Nasal
Sounds that are made where air escapes through the nasal cavity. Sounds like /n/ and /m/.

Fricative
A sound produced by a near complete stoppage of air. Sounds like /s/, /z/ or /f/.
Approximant
Sound made where one articulator comes close to another without causing audible friction. Sounds like /w/ or /r/.

 Lateral Approximant: Where air escapes through the sides of the tongue, however the tongue blocks the air from
going through the middle of the mouth. Sounds like /l/.

Affricate
A sound made that starts like a plosive and then releases into a fricative. Sounds like /dʒ/ and /tʃ/.

Now we know if a sound is voiced or voiceless, the place of articulation and manner of articulation we can start
to make VPM labels (Voice Place Manner labels).

For each sound we need to decide, if its voiced or voiceless and where and how the sound is made. Here are a
few examples:

/s/- Voiceless Alveolar Fricative

/b/- Voiced Bilabial Plosive

/m/- Voiced Bilabial Nasal

/θ/- Voiceless Dental Fricative

The IPA

The IPA is a system devised to create a standardised representation of all the sounds spoken by a language. This is used in
phonetic transcription. It provides a clear and consistent way to transcribe words when phoneticians transcribe dialects
for example. Every single speech sound or 'phoneme' has its own symbol corresponding to it. This helps us to transcribe
words, the exact way they are said. (See Where is Phonetics studied? for more information on the IPA community.)
 The IPA looks very daunting at first glance so here is a bit of an easier way to help you learn the IPA symbols on a basic
level.

Vowel Sounds

æ as in cab e as in pet ɪ as in kit

ɒ as in dog ʊ as in dug ʌ as in putt (like a southerner saying strut)

ɪə as in fear eə as in pear ɔɪ as in toy

aɪ as in buy əʊ as in float eɪ as in hey

aʊ as in cow uː as in room iː as in leek

ɜː as in third aː as in arm ɔː as in pour

ə as in about

Consonant sounds

b: as in bad k: as in cat d: as in dog f as in frog g as in gas h as in help

l as in leap m as in man n as in no p as in pat r as in rat s as in sat

t as in tap v as in veil z as in zoo j as in yellow w as in wash ʒ as in leisure

dʒ as in large tʃ as in child ʃ as in ship θ as in thing ð as in the ŋ as in flying

ʔ is a glottal stop.

The IPA looks very daunting at first glance so here is a bit of an easier way to help you learn
the IPA symbols on a basic level.

Vowel Sounds

æ as in cab e as in pet ɪ as in kit

ɒ as in dog ʊ as in dug ʌ as in putt (like a southerner

saying strut)

ɪə as in fear eə as in pear ɔɪ as in toy

aɪ as in buy əʊ as in float eɪ as in hey

aʊ as in cow uː as in room iː as in leek

ɜː as in third aː as in arm ɔː as in pour

ə as in about
 Consonant sounds

b: as in bad k: as in cat d: as in dog f as in frog g as in gas h

as in help

l as in leap m as in man n as in no p as in pat r as in rat s

as in sat

t as in tap v as in veil z as in zoo j as in yellow w as

in wash ʒ as in leisure

dʒ as in large tʃ as in child ʃ as in ship θ as in thing ð as in the

ŋ as in flying

ʔ is a glottal stop.

Why not have a go at transcribing some words yourself? Start with easy short
words (like your name, etc) and build it up!

How is Phonetics studied?

The phonetician Raymond Stetson wrote: Speech is rather a set of movements made audible than a set of sounds
produced by movements.

The field of phonetics can be roughly divided into study of the speaker (articulatory), the sound(acoustic), or of
the listener (auditory). Each of these divides down further. There's a useful diagram on page 10 of Hewlett & Beck's
'Introduction to the Science of Phonetics'.
Methods in Articulatory Phonetics

There are various instruments to help us look at the vocal apparatus during speech.

A real-time or recorded MRI lets us actually watch the vocal tract, and see how it changes during speech. See the video
below for an example of this.

Other methods are a bit more abstract:

 Ultrasound Tongue Imaging involves sending ultrasound waves through the

tongue from various angles, and comparing the time taken to receive the echo. A
gap between the tongue and palate will show up in the image as a line.
 Palatography involves using a colouring agent (such as dye) on a speaker's tongue
or the roof of their mouth to identify which part of the mouth is used when
producing different sounds. This method is currently used at UCLA (See Where is
Phonetics studied?)

When we begin to analyse the frequencies of the sounds we produce, we're getting out
of articulatory phonetics and into acoustic phonetics.

Methods in Acoustic Phonetics

Acoustic phonetics is the study of the sound in the air; the way it travels from speaker to
listener. We record speech and try to investigate its acoustic characteristics. Even recorded
speech is difficult to study though – sound is temporary whether it's recorded or not. We
need visual representations of the sound, the simplest of which is the oscillogram (a way
of visualising sound waves) and with these graphs we can analyse and compare the
frequencies and other properties of speech sounds. (See the example below)

However, speech is very complex, because it consists of many signals, each with their own
frequency. Even so, there is still a regularly repeating period. It will repeat with a particular
frequency, which we call the fundamental frequency. This is what we recognise as the 'pitch'
of an utterance, and depends on the rate of vibration of the vocal cords. There are many
complex methods for finding the fundamental frequency of an utterance, but all have some
degree of error, especially because the vocal cords don't give a perfectly periodic signal.

Still, if the vocal cords open and close 150 times in a second, the fundamental frequency
will be 150Hz.

 Changing this frequency is how we make 'He's late?' into a question. But it's not
important for giving meaning to the sounds in other ways; that's why an /a/ sound is
the same sound whether said by a man or woman.

Methods in Auditory Phonetics

Now we get to the listener. The hearing mechanism is quite well understood,
but it's difficult for phoneticians to get a look at it 'in action' as it receives a
sound. The instruments are generally too invasive to use, so when they're
needed we have to use cadavers.

But it's good to be reminded that hearing's not quite as simple as just using
our ears. We can feel vibrations (even if we're deaf) and even vision plays a
part.
For example, we find it easier to understand people in person than on the
phone, and not being able to see somebody's mouth can be disorienting,
especially in a noisy environment, or in a foreign language.

ECG's and other ways of directly measuring the brain are important - just like in speech
production - but a lot of study is still done by exposing subjects to sounds in large quantities
and analysing what they say they can hear. By graphing the results of tests like these,
researchers can get a picture of where people see one vowel as 'turning into' another.

Where to next?

 Why is Phonetics studied? - Follow on to this page to find out the purposes of
studying phonetics.
 What is Phonetics? - Find out more about the three branches of phonetics.

References

http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/facilities/physiology/static_pal_new/webpal.html

Photo Credits:

 (Oscillogram) http://www.hum.uu.nl/uilots/lab/courseware/phonetics/basics_of_acoustics_1/oscillogram.html
  (Covered mouth) http://modernreject.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/mouth+shut1.jpg

Who does Phonetics?

Influencing the Field

Below are four modern (ish) figures which have contributed to the research of phonetics. Here we will explore a brief account of their
lives and what they have brought to this branch of linguistics.

John C Wells (1939-)

Wells studied at Cambridge University and the University College of London. He is a well

acclaimed phonetician having previously been the president of theInternational Phonetic Association from 2003-2007 and
president of the World Esperanto Association from 1989-1995. Later in his career, Wells returned to the University
College of London to teach Phonetics.

However, he is most famous for his work on descriptions of Varieties of English. In 1990, He wrote the pronunciation
dictionary for Longman (a publisher) exploring the sound variations of words used in different accents throughout Britain
- he also included American variations.

Now in his retirement, Wells continues his love of phonetics in an online blog. (See Finding out more).

Daniel Jones (1881-1967)

Jones first studied at Cambridge University gaining a degree in maths; it was only until later whilst studying in Germany
that he discovered his love of phonetics. Throughout 1905-6 he worked and
learnt under the famous Paul Passy (founder of the International Phonetics Association) in Paris.

Jones was the first linguist to use the term 'phoneme' in the western world. He wrote the English Pronouncing Dictionary
in 1917 which gained much recognition. For a big part of his life he was a lecturer at the University College of London, also
with the role as the head of the department of Phonetics.

Peter Ladefoged (1925-2006)

Phonetic work does not necessarily have to be within an academic setting. On the picture to the

left, Professor Peter Ladefoged (second from right) acts as the linguistic consultant on the famous film from 1964My Fair
Lady.

The majority of his life work revolved around documenting the sounds of endangered languages (See Why is Phonetics
studied? for more information on endangered languages). Ladefoged travelled the world (especially Africa and Asia)
attempting to record the rare languages that he found. His aim wasn't to save the languages but solely record them.

He began his career studying at the University of Edinburgh and from 1962-1991 taught at the University of California. He
was also an active member of the International Phonetic Association.
Henry Sweet (1845-1912)

Sweet's specialist work in phonetics was in relation to 'the teaching of languages'. He particularly worked on Germanic languages,
including Old English and Old Norse.

Initially beginning his education at Oxford University, Sweet later studied in Germany until returning to Oxford as a lecturer of
phonetics in 1901.

The first scientific description of RP (Received Pronunciation ..BBC English ..Queen's English etc.) was developed by Sweet as well as
founding the 'British School of Phonetics'.

He published a number of books which gained scholarly recognition - even as an undergraduate student! One of his most famous
works is 'A Handbook of Phonetics', which is still used and an influential piece today.

See where abouts in history this phonetician was influential : Henry Sweet is featured in our phonetictimeline.

Other Key People

 Alexander Melville Bell

 David Abercrombie
 Ian Maddieson
 Ian Wilson
 John Ohala
Where is Phonetics studied?

Origins

Phonetics was first ever studied over 2,500 years ago, around 500 BC in India. The theorist who studied this area
of linguistics was called Pāṇini (Featured in our timeline) and he focused his work on the place and manner of
articulation (See What is Phonetics? if you've forgotten what these terms mean) of consonants in Sanskrit - the
ancient language which was his native tongue. The study of Phonetics has advanced greatly since then
but Pāṇini‟s work has had a lasting effect with the major Indic alphabets (which are alphabetic-syllabary writing
systems used throughout South, Central and Eastern Asia) still ordering their consonants according to Pāṇini‟s
original classification.

Key Events & Communities

In 1886, a French linguist named Paul Passy formed the International Phonetic Association in Paris.

 They created the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which is a system of phonetic notation that you will
become very familiar with! It has become a standardised representation of all the sounds available in spoken
language.
 The International Phonetic Association also produce a peer-reviewed academic journal three times a year since it
was first created in 1971, which is called the Journal of the International Phonetic Association. It includes up-to-
date research in phonetics as well as applied phonetics.

There is also a conference called the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS)

 This is held every four years, with each conference being held in a different country.
 There have been 17 conferences at the current date, with the last being held in Hong Kong in 2011, and the next
one being held in Glasgow in 2015.

Although the field of phonetics has had few large advancements throughout the years, in the last century two
important revolutions have happened; with the creation of the sound spectrograph in the 1950s and
the accessibility of computers in the 1970s which is still experiencing advancements.
Phonetics is also a popular branch of linguistics in the USA with many universities and
linguists doing work in the field. The University of California, particularly the Berkeley
campus, is particularly invested in the research and teaching of Phonetics, boasting a large
number of professors in the field, producing and publishing many of their own books and
journals on the topic.
Why is Phonetics studied?

Aims

To us, speaking and listening to speech comes sonaturally. Have you ever consciously thought about what
processes are involved in this? This is exactly what Phonetics aims to do. It aims to give a "systematic,
conscious consideration of how speech sounds are made, what they sound like, and how they compare with
each other".[1]

Applications

Phonetics is an important foundation to many areas of linguistics. Think about this. Without the study of
Phonetics...

 How could you study a child's development in their production and perception of speech sounds? - Child Language
Acquisition.
 How would you be able to understand and treat speech and hearing disorders? - Clinical Phonetics.
 How would a computer system be able to turn text into speech correctly? - Speech Synthesis.
 How would a mobile phone be able to recognise what you say to it? - Speech Recognition.
 And, in a criminal trial, how could you prove whether a voice recording is or isn't the suspects voice? - Forensic
Phonetics.

Clinical Phonetics

Speech and hearing disorders can have a huge impact on somebody's social life and can also affect them in their career, causing them
many financial difficulties. This is where Clinical Phonetics comes into use. In order to help people with their speech and hearing, we
need to be able to understand how things work normally. Thus, knowing how speech sounds are produced (Articulatory Phonetics) and
how they are perceived (Auditory Phonetics). By knowing what is right, we can recognise what is going wrong and can finally help the
person with their speech or hearing disorder!

First and Second Language Acquisition

Without us consciously realising, Phonetics was a crucial

part of learning language earlier on in life, with us babbling on
like there was no tomorrow and our ears being as alert as ever. Thanks to Phonetic research being applied to chil
language acquisition, we now know exactly how proficient a child's perception of speech sounds is. Did you
know that very young babies are able to differentiate between alien speech sounds? Try doing this yourself by
listening to a completely unfamiliar language (e.g. on YouTube). This will most likely sound like complete
gobbledegook and it should be quite difficult to differentiate between the sounds. As a matter of fact, it is a skill
gradually lost by the age of 12 months, meaning that we no longer have the perceptual aptitude to do this.
Therefore, this has been described as a "perceptual narrowing" phenomenon.

Knowing more about the way speech sounds are produced also means we can devise better ways of teaching and
learning the oral aspects of foreign languages, in second language acquisition.

Studying the sounds of endangered languages

Endangered languages have been of great interest to both anthropologists and linguists for decades. It can be said
that a culture is nothing without its language. The culture's history, traditions and ways of life are all ingrained
into the language, shaping it and unifying its people. So it's not hard to figure out what happens when this
language is no longer spoken. Essentially, it's culture leaves with it. As minority groups are gradually starting to
favour the majority language, more and more people are losing their mother tongue. Exposure to modern day
novelties, such as TV, radio and easy modes of transport, means that other languages are becoming
more accessible than ever. It is predicted that just under an immense 60% of the worlds languages will be lost in
a hundred years time.

So how is this important in Phonetics? Simply, if the language is no longer spoken, then neither are its sounds, meaning
they are extremely vulnerable of being completely lost. Ladefoged, an influential academic in this field, has previously sai
that "the disappearance of a language is a loss of a resource for the scientific study of human speech
communication".[2] Phoneticians strive to document the phonetic structures of these endangered languages before they
disappear undiscovered.

Speech Technology

Traces of Phonetics can be seen in technology in your everyday lives, from your TV or Radio, to your mobile phone or video camera.
We are able to make recordings of speech and play them back easily. It is a field that has been growing for decades, and
still has amazing potential. Here are some examples of inventions in speech technology. (Also, see the Why
Study Phonology? page which also talks about this, applying it to phonology).

Speech synthesis

You may already be familiar with the famous Stephen Hawking and probably know of him due to the way he
communicates. He uses a speech synthesiser, which converts what he types into speech. There are two stages to
this. The first stage includes a phonetic transcription of the text and its prosody (e.g. intonation, phrasing and
duration of sounds). The second is turning this information into sound. However, it isn't as simple as it sounds.
The machine has to factor in that a speech utterance is a continuous stream of sounds, meaning that individual
speech sounds should not be produced as they would be in isolation. Instead, they should be produced in terms of
the environment within which they are. For example, say the words 'pill' and 'lip' out loud. If you pay close
attention to the /l/ in both words, you will realise that the articulations are subtly different. This is because they
are in different contexts within the speech utterance. Therefore, there is no point telling a machine to produce an
/l/ (phoneme), but to tell it which type of /l/ (allophone) instead. Phonetic research helps to make this distinction.

Speech recognition

This is speech being recognised by a machine. Nowadays, speech recognition is used extensively
and is of huge benefit in many fields, such as healthcare and the military. It can also be found
applied to things like video games, robotics, in court and even aerospace. However, variability in
speech is a huge hurdle in speech recognition and there are several confounding factors which
can affect its accuracy. For example, variations in speech can be caused by accent, age, sex and
also health. The YouTube video to the right illustrates how accents can be particularly problematic
for speech recognition.

Forensic Phonetics

This involves Phonetic research and analysis of speech for the court of law. In court cases, sometimes evidence i
given in the form of a speech recording which phoneticians are frequently called upon to analyse. Imagine that
the prosecutor is claiming that the voice in the recording is that of the defendant's. A phonetician would then be
required to prove this right of wrong by analysing the articulatory and acoustic properties of the recording,
something of which is allegedly as unique as a fingerprint.

References

[1]
Hewlett, N. and Beck, B., (2006). An Introduction to the Science of Phonetics. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, Inc.
[2]
Ladefoged, P., (2006). Preserving the sounds of disappearing languages. [online]. Available at:

<http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/ladefoge/Preserving%20sounds.pdf> [Accessed 23.05.2012]

Example research: Pronunciation Preferences

in British English
Background

We all know that British English has a Received Pronunciation (RP)- a standardised accent, AKA Southern
British English, Queens English, BBC English, Oxford English and so on (I'm sure you get the gist!). Most
importantly, RP is characteristically known to be the most widespread and prestigious accent across Britain. But
is it actually as "set in stone" as it appears? There are many debatable pronunciations in RP regarding the vowels
consonants and stress patterns. Here are some questions to consider when thinking about this.

 How do you pronounce the vowel in the word scone - is it like the vowel in cone or con?
 For the word tune, do you say 'chune' or 'tyune'?
 How exactly do you pronounce February?
 Why is the 's' in absorb articulated as /z/, but in absurd it is articulated as /s/?

Introduction
What is the research?

It is a survey which was undertaken in 1998 with a series of around 100 multiple choice questions. These
questions investigated which variants (the different pronunciations of a word) of controversial pronunciations,
like the ones mentioned above, were the most preferred amongst native British English speakers.

Why should I read this?

Essentially you are killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. This piece of example research is heavily
applied to the fields of Sociolinguistics and Varieties of English, therefore you can learn about Phonetics whilst
enhancing your knowledge on other areas of linguistics too. It illustrates exactly how far the application of
Phonetics can go and how it is a crucial groundwork to many other areas of Linguistics. Even more, it was
conducted by John C. Wells, a well-known phonetician of University College London (UCL), who specialises in
this area of study.

To find out more about other applications of phonetics, see Why is Phonetics studied? Also, have a nose
through the Sociolinguistics and Varieties of English sections if you'd like to expand your knowledge further.

What's the point of the research?

1. It provides phoneticians a better awareness of speakers' main preferences in pronunciation. This insight helps
them to transcribe the different pronunciations of words in dictionaries ordered from most preferred to least
preferred.
2. Correlations between the age of respondents and the preference of variants means that we can spot language
change in action. This will be illustrated later!

Method
How was the research conducted?
The survey was in the style of a poll. This is an unusual research method in phonetics and also in sociolinguistics due to its
unreliability in most types of studies. For example, it would be pointless to give people a questionnaire about what their
own speech is like because of the effects of social desirability. In other words, there would be a high chance of their
answers being subjective, rather than objective and therefore there answers would not be a true representation of what
their speech is really like. A questionnaire is suitable for this study though because it actually wants the respondents to
give subjective answers. They were instructed "indicate the pronunciation you prefer".

How were the questions asked?

Here is an example of a question in the questionnaire:

Who were the respondents?

The number of respondents included in this study was 1,932. The questionnaire was purposely publicised in a way which
selectively grabbed the attention of speech and language lovers. This ensured that more care and motivation would go
into completing the questionnaire, than if respondents were to have been selected at random. It was advertised through
phonetician colleagues and students, a public academic lecture, the radio and through the UCL website for the
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics. There were two essential, strict regulations in the recruitment of the
respondents:

1. They had to be native British English speakers

2. They needed to have lived in Britain from the ages of 4 to 15.

The age and region of childhood variables below are reflected upon in determining whether they correlate with the
variants preferred.

Findings

Areas of interest

'Garage'

 Is it a 'gararggge'? (/'gærɑːʒ/ - strong second vowel) or a 'garidge' (/'gærɪdʒ/ - weak second vowel)?
 The first is usually considered the typical, traditional pronunciation.
 66% of the young compared to 13% of the old respondents preferred 'garidge' though.
 This demonstrates potential language change, meaning that the pronunciation used by the youngest generation could be
passed on to future generations and be used even more widely.

'February'

 There were two parts in this word that were addressed.

1. The consonant following the /b/. Variants: /j/ ('you') and /r/ ('rou')
2. The vowel between /u/ and /ri/. Variants: /e/ ('eri'), /ə/ ('uhhri') and zero vowel.

 There has been a gradual increase in the preference for the /j/ variant over time with 64% of the young compared to 13% of
the old respondents preferring it.
 There has also been a rapid favour for /e/ among young respondents, although at the time the survey was conducted, the /e
and /ə/ variants were almost equally preferred.

'Schedule' - an example of American influence

  'Shedule' (/ʃ/ - traditional British English pronunciation) or 'skedule' (/sk/ - American English pronunciation)
 Even though, overall, /ʃ/ was preferred by 30%, when looking at the preferred variant across the different age groups, a
dramatic difference can be seen. 8% of the oldest age group voted /sk/, compared to 64% of the young, strongly indicating
sound change in process.

Yod coalescence - 'perceptual', 'situation' and 'tune'

 This is a typical example of sound change occurring over hundreds of years.

 Variants: /tj/ ('perceptyual', 'sityuation' and 'tyune') is gradually being replaced by /tʃ/ ('percepchual', 'sichuation' and
'chune')
 These particular words were chosen because they used to be pronounced only with the variant /tj/ in RP.
 In all words, the /tʃ/ variant was the most preferred in younger respondents than older, especially in the word 'tune'
 Wells states that this could be because "change is more readily accepted in familiar words".
 He also says that the use of the /tʃ/ variant could follow the pattern of American English, where it is only produced in the
context of it appearing before a weak vowel, like in the words demonstrated.

Pre-consonantal weak vowels - 'careless'

 Don't be scared off by the name! It simply means that the questionnaire looked at which of the weak vowels (/ɪ/ or /ə/) were
preferred when appearing before a consonant.
 The word 'careless' was used, to see whether respondents preferred to pronounce it as 'careliss' (/ɪ/ like in 'Alice') or
'carelerss' (/ə/ like in 'callous').
 Unexpectedly, 76% preferred /ə/ and 24% preferred /ɪ/.
 Every respondent from Wales and most from North England voted /ə/.
 This finding meant that Wells was able to put the /-ləs/ variant in first place when listing different pronunciations in the
Longman Pronunciation Dictionary which he puts together.

Stress patterns - 'princess'

 In words there is a primary stress which is placed on one of the syllables. The syllable in
which the primary stress is placed depends on the word's part of speech (whether it's a
noun, verb, adjective and so on) and also on prosodic features, such as whether the vowel
in the syllable is strong or weak.
 The primary stress in 'princess' in British English is traditionally on the final syllable (-cess)
whilst in American English, it is on the initial syllable (prin-).
 The majority of people, 60%, preferred placing stress on the final syllable.
 However, from the results, we can see that people are very gradually favouring towards th
initial stress.
 This could be evidence of American English influencing British English.

References
Wells, J.C., (1998). 'Pronunciation Preferences in British English: A New Survey'. Speech, Hearing and Language: Work in
Progress. 11, 129-138. London: UCL Phonetics and Linguistics.

Phonology
What is this thing called Phonology?

Phonology is...

 A branch of linguistics
 Study of the sound structure of languages
 How speech sounds are used to convey meaning.

Phonemes V. Allophones

Phonemes are the meaningfully different sound units in a certain language (the smallest units of sound). For
example, 'pat' and 'bat' differ in their first phoneme.

Allophones are the various ways in which the phonemes can be realized as actual phonetic speech sounds, and
can give rise to different pronunciations of the same word.
Phonology looks at many different things...

 Why do related forms differ? Sane—Sanity. Electric—Electricity/ Atom—Atomic

 Phonology finds the systematic ways in which the forms differ and explains them

 What is stored in the mind?

 Phonology studies abstract mental entities, such as structures and processes. This contrasts
with phonetics, which deals with the actual production and acoustics of the sounds of language.

 What sounds go together?

 Looks at what sounds/sound combinations are accepted and why.

 How are sounds organized into syllables?

 With the use of phonological trees syllables are broken up more easily.
Syllables made up of Rime and Onset. Rime made up of Nucleus and Coda.

 What are the differences between languages?

 For example, different languages can used different phonemes, or different syllable structures
(what sounds can go together to make sequences or words) and phonology identifies these differences.

One Last thing... 

It's Important to know the different between phonetics and phonology as they have very different meanings.
Here is a video (extremely cheesy, we know) that helps to lay out those differences.

Also refer Phonetics to get a better idea of the differences and similarities between these two related areas of linguistics.

How is phonology studied?

Languages are not randomly constructed: every language has an organised sound system. Phonology is concerned with
processes in the mind, determining the rules of a language.
We each have tacit knowledge of our native language. Tacit knowledge = when you know something without
understanding how or why you came to 'know it'. This tacit knowledge allows us to adhere to the rules of the relevant
sound system.E.g if you were asked to make up a word you would be more likely to say something like "plond" rather than "plofw".
This is because the underlying knowledge you have of the English language tells you that two consonants such as 'fw'
cannot appear next to each other at the end of a word.

Identifying Phonemes

Minimal pair test (also known as contrastive pairs)

 A phoneme is defined as a single meaningful unit.

 'bat' and 'bats' have two different meaning, this is due to one phoneme being different - /s/
 So we can clarify that /s/ is a phoneme as when added on the end of the word it changes to meaning from a singular noun to
a plural noun.
 Other examples are 'lack' & 'wack', 'seat' & 'beat', 'cry' & 'dry' - as long as the phoneme changes the words meaning
semantically or grammatically it is classed as a phoneme.

Organisation of sounds

The International Phonetic Association (I.P.A.)

 The international phonetic association organises all consonantal phonemes in terms of voice place manner
production on a chart.
 Vowels are organised on a four sided diagram in a quadrilateral shape based on the position and shape that the
mouth makes to produce the sound.
 E.g. if you say "E" then "O" you should feel that your mouth moves to take on two very different shapes to produce
the different vowels
 Both of the chart and diagram can be easily accessed via any internet search engine quoting "Internation Phoneti
Association".
 http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/pulmonic.html
 http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/vowels.html

Phoneme Sequences - Syllable structures

 Phonology aims to understand the rules of a particular language's syllable structure.

 You may be familiar with a guessing game that requires you to break words into syllables of a film/book title etc.
 But in phonology each syllable is then broken down further into smaller parts.

Multi-tiered phonological theory

 So we start off with a word, each syllable is labelled as σ.

then split into further branches - N=Nucleus, R=Rime O=Onset, C=Coda

however phonologists would usually transcribe the word in the phonetic alphabet so the final drawing would look
something like

The vowel is the heart of the syllable this is the nucleus, the onset is the consonant preceding the vowel.

The Rime can be branched into a nucleus and coda at a more advanced level, if you would like to delve deeper into
syllable structures the Peter Roach book on the 'Finding out more about Phonology' is a good starting point.

Phonological Processes
  Assimilation
A phoneme is realised more like a phoneme of a nearby phoneme. E.g. - "Hot coffee" the 't' is realised more like a /k/ at
the beginning of 'coffee'.

 Coalescence
Two consonental phonemes that are next to eachother E.g. "bet you" are realised as one phoneme, so would sound more
like "bechoo".

 Elision/ Deletion
Often occurs when there is a complex pronunciation E.g. "police" > "p-lice" , "potato" > "p-tato".

 Liason
Making an extra sound (phoneme) in the middle of two words. E.g. "idea of" > "idea-r-of".

 Epenthesis
Inserting an extra sound in the middle of a word. E.g. "hamster" > "hampster".

Who does phonology?

Key Researchers

Jacob Grimm (1785-1863)

 Discovered Grimm’s Law—first law in Linguistics concerning sound changes.

 For more on Grimm go to Where is Phonology studied?

Jan Baudouin De Courtenay (1845-1929)

  Studied distinctions between language and speech.
 Shaped the modern use of the term “phoneme.”

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

 Said that language is a formal and arbitrary system.

 Looked at abstract phonology (in the mind, not on the tongue.

Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938)

 Created general phonological laws.
 Contributed to the definition of phoneme. (Find definition on the Phonology page.)

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)

 Developed a discipline of phonology.
  Looked at ‘Structuralism’—structure analysis of language.

Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle (1968)

 Published The Sound Pattern of English.

 This was the basis for Generative Phonology.

Noam Chomsky
 Chomsky has done a lot for linguistics in his career. Also a Philosopher, scientist, historian, and activist.
 Described as the “father of modern linguistics.”
 Has worked for over 50 years as a professor in the Department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT.
Where is Phonology studied?
Phonology - like all sub-disciplines of Linguistics - is studied all over the globe and developments in knowledge and
practice are coming to fruition all the time.

Here, you can find a key to the places that have given us some great and founding thinkers of Phonology.

Germany

First on our list is Germany, where Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), one half of the Brothers Grimm, began his career and life works in
Phonology, specifically diachronic phonology - the study of language over time. Grimm was a master in comparative
phonology, rigorously researching several old and modern languages - Gothic, Scandinavian literature, English - with the
aim of finding rules governing changes in sound production over the course of time. One such rule was was Grimm's Law.

Grimm's Law
Have you noticed similarities between Spanish, German and English words? German vater closely resembles
English father, as does Spanish pesc and English fish. Grimm noticed these too, and discovered that these were not simply
random co-incidences, but were the result of strict and rule-governed language change.

The basics:

Old Sounds New Sounds

/k/ /h/

/t/ /th/

/p/ /f/

/g/ /k/

/d/ /t/

/b/ /p/

Why Study Phonology?

Aims

Sounds change depending on the certain environment they are produced in. Phonology aims to analyse
these sounds and discover why this happens. This involves discovering how what happens in the brain is
transformed and produced as the physical sound. This allows phonologists to discover the different rules
there are for combining different sounds. Further afield phonologists‟ aim to use the information they find
from this research to find the numerous rules for various different languages.

Applications

There is a variety of ways of applying phonology.

 You can look at how sound systems have changed over periods of time. This aspect of
 phonology can be called historical or diachronic phonology. (For more see History of
Phonology)

 For example: In English older speakers pronounce the word „tune‟ with a /y/ between the initial
consonant and the first vowel so it would sound like „tyoon‟. Younger speakers however blend this
<y> sound into more of a <ch> sound. http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/changing-
voices/phonological-change/
 This links in closely with analysing languages individually.

 You can examine specific languages to discover the rules that apply to their phonology and
how these compare to other languages.

 For example: some languages are stress-fixed so the stress falls in the same place on every word,
languages like Hungarian and Finnish are like this. However other languages like English have a set o
rules which governs where stress falls.
 It is useful to look at all languages, including endangered languages, to ascertain the limits of
variation permitted. THis allows us to discover what the phonological systems of human minds can
and cannot do.

 You can also use phonology within a country to look at specific dialects and compare them
to one another.

 Northern speakers do not contain what is known as the „strut‟ vowel which is the vowel you here in
words like „putt‟ and of course „strut‟ in Standard English.
 Dialects and accents show a lot about how a country is divided and there are many stigmas attached
to certain dialects. For example cockney is renowned for „g-dropping‟ where the word final consonant
<g> is dropped in words like „walking‟. (For more on accents and dialects see Varieties of English)

Other than looking at specific languages, dialects and theories, phonology is also applied in
many vocations and to an array of technology.

 Speech (and song) recognition

This technology converts the spoken word into text. There are a variety of different
machines that use different technology to do it. The most basic is represented in my
diagram below.
 This technology can be used in health care, business and even legal transcriptions. The most obvious
use is on items such as phones where we can speak into the phone and it writes a text for us.

 Speech synthesis

This is where a machine is used to artificially produce human speech. Such machines are judged on
their quality by how close to human speech they actually sound. The most famous person that uses a
speech synthesizer is Stephen Hawking.

This video demonstrates one of the earliest speech synthesizers. As you can see it is very big and not
something you could easily carry around. So many developments have been made, which would have
involved a lot of phonological research, to get to the technology they have today.

There are a variety of speech synthesizers and they get very complicated. The simplest is a text to
phoneme conversion →This is where the machine stores a dictionary containing all the words of the
language with their correct pronunciations. So when the word is written in, the machine converts it to
the spoken word.

(For more information see Phonetics)

 Speech Pathologies and Therapy

 The vocation of a speech pathologist specializes in people with communication disorders. For us to
produce speech it involves many components that involve both aspects of phonetics and phonology.
 This job involves examining the persons...

 Speech (how they produce it, and the problems they have, if any.)
 Cognitive aspects of communication (what is happening in the brain.)
 Language (what is the person saying? Does it make sense?)

All these three are closely related to phonology and phonological processes. So to examine and
understand people with this disorder you need a good understanding of phonology.

 Swallowing (communication disorders can be linked to physical problems like this.)

 Sensory awareness (another physical issue that can cause communication problems.

 Language Acquisition and Development

This links to the „language acquisition‟ part of the website. It is all about how humans acquire and
learn to understand language along with producing and using words to communicate. Phonology play
a huge part in speech production and therefore is used to examine and analyse this stage in a child‟s
development. We can analyse how children formulate language and devise phonological theories of
the connection between what happens in the brain and the sounds they produce.

(For more see Language Acquisition)

 Understanding Social Identity and Social Exclusion

It is the language and communication skills that we first learn that increase our interest and awareness as
children. The more advanced our communication skills are the easier we find it to network and make
friends.
In order to evaluate social exclusion we examine the phonology and delayed phonology of the person. This
basically examines their communication skills so it can be identified if they struggle in social situations.
These studies can represent someones 'social identity' i.e. where they fit in socially with other people. So
ultimately how they interact with others; do they spend a lot of time alone or is the person someone with a
huge social network who always likes to be surrounded by people. These studies can help
explain behavioral problems that can cause people to do things out of the norm.
Generative Grammar - The basics
Generative grammar was first presented by Noam Chomsky and Halles in their book 'The sound pattern of English' (1986)

Chomsky claims humans have deep structure and surface structure of language.

Deep structure is the way we say things in our head this is linked to Chomsky's idea of competence. The majority of
people can produce sentences in their head but when they say it outloud it may be realised differently e.g. speech errors,
this is the surface structure or 'performance'. So what we think we are saying and what we produce are two different
things.

Chomsky found that there were similarities between different languages deep structures and developed a theory called
universal grammar interpreting this.

Universal grammar is the idea of 'innateness' that all humans are born with tacit knowledge of their native languages'
grammar. And that this basic knowledge of grammar which we are all born with is somewhat common in all languages.

For Example - 'Creoles' are made up languages, they invented when two similar languages merge into one. The sheer fact
that languages such as these can be made using both grammar systems is some evidence towards the universal grammar
argument. E.g. the creole language 'sango' this is a mix of Northern Ngbandi (african) and French.
History of Phonology
Phonology may seem to be a modern practice all about comparing Geordies with Scousers but it can actually be traced
back to the 4th Century BC when a grammar of the ancient Indian language "Sanskrit" was composed. This was one of the
first steps into phonological research, but there were many more developments to come before linguists reached the
stage that we are at today.

Example Study
Do bilingual two-year-olds have separate phonological systems?
Johanne Paradis
This study was carried out in 2001 and it demonstrates the sorts of areas that phonology is used in. In this particular case
it is used to distinguish whether bilingual two-year olds have two separate phonological systems for each language they
use or whether they have just one for both. So for each system do they have a different way in which the sounds
(phonemes) are realised and different rules on how these sounds can be put together to make words.

Adult bilinguals are said to 'have a unique and specific linguistic configuration'1 which basically means they don't have
two separate systems for each language, or just one for both but a unique system which is different to people that only
speak one language. In this study they also want to determine if two-year-olds are already at this stage of phonological
development and if they two only have one system for noth of the languages they speak that is different to monolinguals

Method of study

 Three different groups of children were studied. 18 french-speaking children, 18 English speaking children and 17
billingual French and English speaking children.
 They were given nonsense words like the french ones shown in the table below. The words were used by showing
pictures of unfamiliar animals and naming them using these made-up words. The children were then asked to
repeat the words.
 The aim was to analyse the word rhythm, stress and syllable weighting (how many syllables in a word) the
children used on these words and to compare this to how they say other real words in their own language.
 This allows the experimenter to analyse the phonological systems the children are using and determine whether
they have two separate ones for each language.
 Of course as with any study there were things that went wrong like children not repeating what was asked.
 The bilingual childen responded the best because the analysis took part in their own comfortable homes rather
than at a nursery or day-care like the other children.

Results
  Firstly the study showed that all the children that took part were, despite slight age differences, at a similar stage
of phonological development.
 The patterns they found when analysing the data showed there were many similarities between a monolingual
(one language speaker) and bilingual two-year olds phonological system.
 For the french words, both groups (french speakers and bilinguals) demonstrated specific predicted language
features, but in English only the monolingual children demonstrated these.
 Overall the evidence they found suggests that bilingual two-year-olds do have different phonological systems for
each language, but are not yet at the same level as adult bilinguals.

References

[1]
Grosjean, F., (1995). In: Paradis, J. 2001. Do Bilingual Two-year-olds Have Separate Phonological Systems? pp. 259.

Table: The International Journal of Bilingualism. 2001. 5:19.

Pragmatics
Have you ever asked someone to put the kettle on and expected them to make you a cup of tea?
This is pragmatics.

Have you ever told someone you are cold and intended for them to close the window?

This is pragmatics.

Have you ever complimented your mum before asking for something you want?

Ever heard the words 'I hereby pronounce you man and wife'?

Ever purposefully insulted someone?

Ever told a lie?

This is all pragmatics.

Even tone of voice can be pragmatics:

Pragmatics by Laura Drysdale by AllAboutLinguistics

Most of us have used this tone of voice to indicate an upcoming request!

Pragmatics is simply the study of meaning in interaction.

We aim to introduce you to some of the key thinkers and ideas of pragmatics as an area of linguistic study.

We will answer the who, what, why, where, when and how of pragmatics and give you a taster of theories and research in
the discipline.

And you can check your own knowledge of key terminology and ideas in the subject area with the practical activities
available.

Plus we've supplied you with references to a wealth of resources where you can go to find out more.

What is Pragmatics?
Definition[1]

 the study of the practical aspects of human action and thought.

 the study of the use of linguistic signs, (words and sentences), in actual situations.

Pragmatics outlines the study of meaning in the interactional context

It looks beyond the literal meaning of an utterance and considers how meaning is constructed as well as focusing on
implied meanings. It considers language as an instrument of interaction, what people mean when they use language and
how we communicate and understand each other.

Jenny Thomas[2] says that pragmatics considers:

 the negotiation of meaning between speaker and listener.

 the context of the utterance.
 the meaning potential of an utterance.
This may be best presented in an example:

Speaker: 'Are you putting the kettle on?'

Listener knows the speaker is hinting that they would like a hot drink.

OR

Speaker: 'What time do you call this?'

Listener interprets it as 'Why are you so late?' and knows it is not appropriate to reply with the literal time.

The context of the interaction and our everyday experiences allow us to construct and interpret layers of meaning beyond
what is literally suggested. For similar theories and ideas, see What is Conversation
Analysis?, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis and Semantics.

References

[1]
OED Online. (2012). Oxford University Press <http://www.oed.com/> [accessed 23.05.2012].
[2]
Thomas, J., (1995). Meaning in Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics. London: Longman.

How is Pragmatics studied?

Pragmatics can be studied using various different methods.

Empirical Pragmatics Theoretical Pragmatics

This is a relatively new method of pragmatics and involves This approach was initially how pragmatic analysis
studying actual language in use. The language data can be was conducted. Linguists used their own intuitions to
collected in various ways such as interview, spontaneous speech make generalisations about the meaning and
and experiments. Pragmatic theories and ideas are then applied to interpretation of hypothetical uterrances. The
analyse features and the text as a whole. See Conversation pragmatic theories, based on such hypothetical
Analysis and Discourse Analysis for similar methods.[1] interaction, were later applied to real data.
Corpus Pragmatics Historical Pragmatics

A corpus is a selection of electronic texts which are collected and
ordered. They can be searched according to different criteria.
Frequency and patterns of usage can easily be shown.
Generalisations about language can be drawn from patterns and
pragmatic analysis can be applied to the data.[2]
This considers historical texts in light of pragmatic
theories. It focuses on how linguistic features are
interpreted diffrently at various periods in time. It
also considers interactional exchanges over time and
the evolution of pragmatic theories.[4][5]

Experimental Pragmatics Contrastive Pragmatics

Experimental evidence can be used, together with intuition and
recordings, to confirm or disconfirm hypotheses.[3]
This compares the pragmatic principles of one
language/culture to those of another
language/culture to see if conversational function
and meaning is the same for different people. It
considers how language is used differently by
communicators of different languages.[6]

References

[1]
The Research Centre of Empirical Pragmatics (2011). <Empirical Pragmatics> [Accessed 23.05.2012]

[2]
What is a corpus? What is corpus linguistics? <Corpus Linguistics> [Accessed 23.05.2012]

[3]
Introduction to Experimental Pragmatics <Experimental Pragmatics> [Accessed 23.05.2012]
[4]
Jucker, A. H., (1995). Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English. Amsterdam: John

Benjamins Publishing Company.

[5]
Arnovick, L. K., (1999). Diachronic Pragmatics: Seven Case Studies in English Illocutionary Development. Amsterdam:

John Benjamins Publishing Company.

[6]
Oleksy, W., (1989). Contrastive Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Who does Pragmatics?

There are many linguists who have created and used theories within pragmatics, but here
we aim to introduce you to some of the key thinkers in pragmatics:
Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, described as 'the father of modern linguistics' is well known for
research across the whole of linguistics, and particularly for his work on linguistic
competence, in which our knowledge and understanding of language (and
pragmatics) is studied. He was born as Avram Noam Chomsky on the 7th December,
1928, in Philadelphia, America. He studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University
of Pennsylvania from 1945, earning a BA in 1949 and in 1951 earned his MA. He
achieved his PHD in Linguistics in 1955, and wrote one of his best known
works; Syntactic Structures in 1955. He also went on to become a professor at
the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in that year, where he remains today,
having become the Institute Professor in 1976.[1][2]

Paul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice (who often publishes under the name Paul), best known for his
work on the philosophy of language, was born in Birmingham on March 13, 1913. He
was born and raised in Harborne, Birmingham, and attended Clifton College, before
going on to study at Oxford, where he later taught until 1967. In this year he took up a
professorship at the University of California, where he taught until his death in 1988,
publishing many studies and journal articles throughout his career (See Example
Research: Conversational Implicature and Maxims for more information on his
work).[3][5]

John Austin
John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960) was born in Lancaster and studied the same
degree at Grice, Literae Humaniores ('Greats') at Oxford from 1929, recieving a first
class honours in 1933. After serving in MI6 during World War II, Austin became a
professor at Oxford, teaching Moral Philosophy. In 1955 he visited Harvard to give
guest lectures which would form the basis for 'How to do things with
words' (See Example Research: Speech Act Theory), where he met and
befriended linguist Noam Chomsky. Austin died of lung cancer at the age of 48.[6]

John Searle
John Rogers Searle, born July 31st, 1932, is an American Philosopher renowned for his
work on Speech Act Theory (See Example Research: Speech Act Theory). He began his
university education at The University of Wisconcin-Madison in the 1950s and went
on to then earn an undergraduate degree and a doctorate in Philosophy and Ethics at
Oxford University. He is currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University
of California.[7]

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872- 1970) was a British philosopher known for his works on
philosophy of language, among other subjects. He was born into an influential family,
with his paternal grandfather, John Russell, serving Queen Victoria as prime minister
during the 1840s and 1860s. He studied Mathematics and Philosophy at Cambridge
University from 1890, going on to build a career as a lecturer there while publishing
and researching many studies and various subjects. He died of influenza in 1970.[8][10]

Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson

Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson are colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholingistics (more information on this topic atPsycholinguistics), in The
Netherlands. Renowned for their work on politeness theory (see Example Research:
Face Theory and Politeness), they have published several works together on this and
other topics since their first collaborated work in 1978.[11][13]

Geoffrey Leech
Geoffrey Leech was born 16th January, 1936, whose main academic interests include
English grammar, pragmatics, and semantics (seeSemantics), was Professor of
Linguistics and Modern English Language at Lancaster University from 1974-2002,
before going on to become Research Professor in English Linguistics. He is most well
known for his work on Politeness Maxims (See Example Research: Conversational
Implicature and Maxims and Example Research: Face Theory and Politeness).[14]

And some other linguists to consider when thinking about pragmatics

 Jacob Mey
 Jenny Thomas
 Jonathan Culpeper
 Alvin Gouldner
 Ruth Wodak
 Paul Kerswill
 Erving Goffman

(Look at the Find Out More page for links to more information on these key thinkers)

Where to go next?

Visit the How is Pragmatics studied? page.

References
[1]
Anon, Wikipedia. (2012). Noam Chomsky.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[2]
Anon, A+E Networks. (2012). Noam Chomsky.<http://www.biography.com/people/noam-chomsky-37616> [Accessed
23.04.2012].
[3]
Anon, Wikipedia. (2012). Paul Grice. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Grice> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[4]
Chapman, S., (2009). Paul Grice: Philosopher and Linguist. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
[5]
Grandy, R. and Warner, R., (2005). Paul Grice. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grice/>[Accessed 23.04.2012].
[6]
Anon, Wikipedia. (2012). J.L. Austin. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._L._Austin> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[7]
Anon, Wikipedia. (2012). John Searle. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Searle> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[8]
Anon, Wikipedia. (2012). Bertrand Russell.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[9]
Russell, B., (1967). The Autobiography. London: Allen & Unwin.
[10]
Anon, The Nobel Foundation. (2012). Bertrand Russell- Biography.
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[11]
Anon. (N.D) Stephen C. Levinson. <http://www.mpi.nl/people/levinson-stephen-c.> [Accessed 23.04.2012]
[12]
Anon. (2012). Stephen C. Levinson.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Levinson> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[13]
Anon. (2012). Research- Penelope Brown. <http://www.mpi.nl/people/brown-penelope/research> [Accessed 23.04.2012].
[14]
Anon, Wikipedia. (2012). Geoffrey Leech.<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Leech> [Accessed 23.04.2012].

Picture Credits

Noam Chomsky: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26095572@N07/4553054788/ cloud2013

Bertrand Rusell: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9049083@N04/3971522643/ aldoaldoz

When is Pragmatics studied?

Pragmatics came about by extension of philosophical ideas from key thinkers like Ferdinand
de Saussure, but as the field developed, other important figures changed the course of the
discipline.

1905 Bertrand Russell put forward a key text in the "formalist" view on pragmatics.[1]

This formalism approach uses logical ideas to suggest there can only be literal meaning
of language. Imprecisions, indirectness and implicature in interaction therefore are
percieved as a deficiency in the language.

J.L. Austin counters Russell's view with a work fundamental to the "informalist"
view: How to Do Things with Words. This book also outlines levels of speech acts.
See Example Research: Speech Act Theory
1962

This informalism approach accepts that language is interdeterminate (can be vague,

ambiguous etc) but is interested in considering how we can still communicate so
 effectively using this ordinary and 'imperfect' language.

Paul Grice develops his theory of Conversational Implicatures and the Co-Operative
Principle. See Example Research: Conversational Implicature and Maxims

John Searle published further work on speech acts, including classifying them.
See Example Research: Speech Act Theory

1975 Brown and Levinson define "Face Theory". See Example Research: Politeness Theory

Jonathan Culpeper defines "impoliteness" linguistically and writes about it in relation to

Face Theory. See Example Research: Politeness Theory

1975

1987

1996

References
[1]
Russell, B., (1919). Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Where is Pragmatics studied?
Many of the key thinkers in the field of pragmatics are from Britain. Paul Grice was born in Birmingham, and taught at
Oxford University. However, he moved to the USA in later life, and this was where he developed his famous
Conversational Maxims.

Both J.L. Austin and Bertrand Russell were British, the former studying at Oxford and the latter at Cambridge. Their two
opposing standpoints on pragmatics show that Britain really was central to the field of Pragmatics. Jonathan Culpeper is
also British, and studied at Lancaster University.

Stephen Levinson is American but conducts his work in the Netherlands.

In their everyday research, linguists interested in pragmatics take their data from all kinds of daily interactions -
conversation, literature, politics. All of these have their own specific contexts which relate to the meaning of the
language.

Why is Pragmatics studied?

Pragmatics is studied to understand and explore conversational implicature and how meaning is constructed in
interaction.

This occurs when a sentence is ambiguous, for example:

'Flying planes can be dangerous'

Meaning One: Planes, that are flying, can be dangerous.

Meaning Two: Flying planes, as a pilot, can be dangerous.

This sentence is concluded to be lexically ambiguous.[1]

Linguists assert that that it is the 'context that we must invoke to determine what an ambiguous sentence means.'[1]

This simplified means that in the above example, if the person speaking

was a pilot it would be assumed that 'flying planes can be dangerous'

is from a captains perspective (meaning two); this reduces the ambiguity and

therefore the implicature so the comment is understood.

It is controversial to say that understanding context solves all complications in this area as...

... context by definition changes all the time yet the way in which it is described by linguistics suggests a
stationary snapshot of a situation.

Therefore a theory has been developed.

The Theory of Cooperation

Paul Grice (see Who does Pragmatics?) developed the theory of cooperation that helps determine what information
speakers should provide to give a sufficient response to the previous speaker's utterance. See this page for a full
explanation Example Research: Conversational Implicature and Maxims.
References

[1]
Mey, J., (1993). Pragmatics: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Picture Credits

Aeroplane: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caribb/194965685/sizes/o/in/photostream/ caribb

Example Research: Conversational Implicature

and Maxims
Summary

Conversational Implicature is a notion devised by Paul Grice in 1975. It looks at the relation
between what people say and what they actually mean in a conversation. Grice developed
four "maxims" of conversation, which describe what listeners assume speech will be like.

What?

Implicature is defined as "the implied meaning generated intentionally by the

[1]
speaker These meanings are often made covertly, hidden using politeness strategies
(See Example Research: Politeness Theory).

Example:

John: Do you want to come to the pub?

Fred: I'm washing my hair.

In this example, it seems as though Fred isn't actually answering the question. He certainly
doesn't actually say whether or not he will go to the pub with John. The implicature of his
response, though, is that he isn't coming. He has conveyed a meaning, intentionally,
without explicitly stating it.
The Co-operative Principle is the collective name for Paul Grice's four
conversational maxims which enable effective and cooperative conversation. Paul Grice
(who you can find out more about here: Who does Pragmatics?) came up with these not as
a set of prescriptive rules that people should follow in conversation, but as a means of
describing and analysing the way people convey meanings in real life interactions:

The Maxim of Quantity Giving only the necessary amount of information - not too much or too little.

Only speaking the truth - not knowingly giving false information.

The Maxim of Quality

Being relevant to the current topic of conversation.

The Maxim of Relation

Avoiding ambiguity or obscurity in your speech. [2]

The Maxim of Manner

Much pragmatic research goes into instances when theses maxims are broken which can be
done in one of two ways:

Flouting - overtly (obviously) breaking a maxim.

Violating - covertly (secretly) breaking a maxim.

Both of these are done to achieve something in the course of the conversation.

Below are examples of each of the maxims being broken:

Example 1 - The Maxim of Quantity

Laura could have simply answered "yes", but by adding on the rest of her answer, she could
be conveying some irritation towards Richard, implying that he had been nagging her for
some time.
 Example 2 - The Maxim of Quality

Here, Sophie is clearly lying to Tasmin, which probably implies that she doesn't want to give
Tasmin any of her gum because she either wants to save it for herself, or doesn't like her.

Example 3 - The Maxim of Relation

Richard's response seems entirely irrelevant to Sophie's question, as it make no reference

to the detention. However, Richard implies by this that he did not attend the detention, as
he went to a football match instead. Either that, or he wishes not to talk about it.

The pub example is also an example of this maxim being broken.

Example 4 - The Maxim of Manner

This is a very ambiguous and obscure (and also irrelevant) response from Tasmin, which
would require more explanation and context. Again, it could also imply she wishes not to
speak of it any further.

Who?
Conversational Implicature was put forward by Paul Grice.

When?
Grice's paper was published in 1975 in Syntax and Semantics and re-printed in 1989
in Studies in the Way of Words.

Where?
The paper was originally published in New York, and the reprinted version in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

Example Research:
Gricean Maxims in Jokes:
[3]
This article looks into how the maxims are applied and manipulated in humour. It says that many
jokes rely on breaking the maxims for their humourous value, for example breaking the maxim of
quantity: "Do you know what time it is?" "Yes." One conclusion of this paper is that going against the
expectations of the hearer can be very funny and wider pragmatic ideas can be understood through
looking at humourous texts.

Gricean Maxims and Disability

This article [4], which is unfortunately not available for free,looks at children with autism,
and asks whether they understand the Gricean Maxims, and whether they can use them, or
if their disability impairs this ability like it does other pragmatic features of their speech.
This study was conducted by psychologists, and therefore is a Psycholinguistic study
(See Psycholinguistics). The study shows that autistic children use or break the maxims
almost at random, when compared to children without the disability, showing a strong link
between conversational awareness and other pragmatic faculties.

Gricean Maxims and Gender:

[5]
This article takes on the stereotypical view that women's speech is more indirect than mens', and
tries to see how true this is, with reference to the Co-Operative Principle. The study aims to support or
deny the claim by providing empirical evidence, and finds that in general, male speakers flout the
maxims more often than women, and could therefore be said to be the more indirect of the genders,
contrary to the common view.

References

[1]
Culpeper, J. and Schauer, G., (2009). 'Pragmatics'. In: Culpeper, J., Katamba, F., Kerswill, P., Wodak, R. and McEnery,

T., (eds) English Language: Description, Variation and Context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 202-220.
[2]
Grice, P., (1975). 'Speech Acts'. In: Cole, P. and Morgan. J. (eds) Logic and Conversation In Syntax and

Semantics. New York: Academic Press. Reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words, ed. H. P. Grice, pp. 22–40. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press (1989).

[3]
Attardo, S., (1990). 'The Violation of Grice's Maxims in Jokes. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the

Berkeley Linguistics Society'. e-language. Linguistic Society of America. pp. 355-362.

[4]
Surian, L., (1996). 'Are Children with Autism Deaf to Gricean Maxims?' Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. 1(1). pp. 55-72.
[5]
Rundquist, S., (1992). 'Indirectness: A Gender Study of Flouting Grice's Maxims'. Journal of Pragmatics. 18(5). pp. 431-

449.

Example Research: Politeness Theory

Summary

Politeness is described as a social norm, or a set of prescriptive social 'rules'. Many linguists have aimed
to research politeness, including Brown and Levinson (1987), who developed their 'face theory' based
on the principles of our desire to be liked and to not be imposed upon.

What?

It is first important that you understand the concept of 'face'.

Face is defined as the public self-image every adult portrays, which must be attended to in
interaction.[1]

There are two aspects of this face: positive and negative.

 Positive face is the desire to be appreciated and liked.

 Negative face is the desire to have freedom and not to be imposed upon.
  A Face Threatening Act (FTA) is an act which deliberately threatens the face needs of others.[1]
Politeness
We can then see how this relates to
politeness.
Politeness is defined as using
communicative strategies to create and
maintain social harmony.[2] This can be
done in various ways:
 being contextually appropriate
 following social and cultural norms
 being socially positive by
addressing face needs
In order to save face, people have the
option to use politeness
superstrategies [1] with FTAs:
1. Bald on record is not attempting
to minimise the face threat.
2. Positive politeness is showing
you value someone so minimising
the threat to the positive face.
3. Negative politeness is not
impeding on someone so
minimising the threat to the
negative face.
4. Off record is avoiding
responsibility for the FTA often by
being indirect.
5. Withhold is not performing the
FTA
Politeness superstrategies are determined
by contextual factors:
 Power relations between speaker
Impoliteness
Considering the theory from another perspective, we will now
introduce you to impoliteness.
Impoliteness is defined as engaging in aggressive facework in
particular contexts to cause social disruption.[4] This can be
done in various ways:
 the speaker intentionally attacks face
 the listener perceives a face attack
 both of the above
[4]
There are also impoliteness superstrategies which can be
used with FTAs:
1. Bald on record is an unmitigated intentional face
attack.
2. Positive impoliteness is attacking the positive face
need by not showing you value someone.
 examples incude criticism, insults,
disagreements etc
3. Negative impoliteness is attacking the negative face
need by imposing on someone.
 examples include orders, threats,
requests
4. Off record is using indirect offence such as sarcasm or
banter.
5. Withhold is failing to be polite when it is expected.
 and listener
 Social distance between speaker
and listener
 How great the threat of the face
threatening act is

Our aim in conversation is generally

cooperative, so the more 'dangerous' we
percieve our FTA to be, the higher number
strategy we use.

An example of politeness superstrategies

An example analysis of impoliteness

Taken from the BBC Worldwide Youtube Channel, this video is an impression of Anne
Robinson on the BBC television show The Weakest Link. There are multiple levels of
impoliteness here.

 Firstly there is positive impoliteness done by the impressionist towards the

'contestants' as she serves to make them seem stupid and worthless.
 Secondly there is positive impoliteness done by the impressionist towards the real
Anne Robinson as she highlights the negative characteristics about her tv
personality.
 Finally there is off record politeness as most of the clip is just sarcasm, humour and
banter in this context, as it is meant to be interpreted as a comedy sketch.

Indirectness

Leech (see Who does Pragmatics?) also suggested a relationship between politeness and
indirectness; the more indirect/ off-record a suggestion or request (for example the 'I'm
really thirsty' example above), the more polite the utterance is perceived to be, and
therefore this 'saves face' more than a direct request.[3]

Who?
Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson were responsible for the development of Politeness
Theory. Jonathan Culpeper is a predominant researcher into impoliteness. See Who does
Pragmatics?
When?

They published the Politeness Theory in the book Politeness: Some Universals in Language
Usage in 1987.

Where?
The book was published in Cambridge by Cambridge University Press.

Why is Politeness Theory important?

In the foreword to the book, linguist John Gumperz claims that politeness in language is
studied to enhance our general understanding of social order and human cooperation within
society.

Some Example Research:

Politeness in the doctor's surgery

[6]
This article looks at politeness between patients and doctors, specifically how doctors respond to
the implicit and explicit messages from their patients. The study found that doctors can be seen to
threaten 'face' through prescribing medication that may limit the patient's lifestyle (therefore imposing
on them) and also when conveying bad news. However, doctors also save face when prescribing
medicine because they are backing up the patient's claim of illness. There is also face-threatening
within this situation because speaking about bad news and illness often makes others uncomfortable
and unhappy, and as a result doctors must respond in a way which makes the patient willing to talk
about illness without imposing, therefore not only saving face for the patient, but allowing them to see
that they are not imposing on the doctor. The article concludes that there is a great need for doctors
with communication skills because of these issues.

Politeness in government
[7]
This article looks at how MPs use politeness in 'Question Time', in order to maintain a
'parliamentary language' while effectively arguing. There is implicit confrontation conveyed by the
politicians, who are aware that they are being watched by a public audience, and cannot therefore be
seen as aggressive. As a result, the argument is 'toned down', or made to seem less confrontational
by the use of politeness strategies, for example they are not permitted to make 'personal' remarks,
and must address each other by title rather than name. This protects the MP's 'private face', and limits
what can be said in order to maintain a sense of professionalism.

Politeness in the courtroom

[5]
This journal article studies how Judges in a courtroom situation use politeness strategies to
maintain control and respect. Adelsward states that judges very rarely use markers of open disbelief
(despite what is often seen on fiction TV court cases), instead using interrogatives and repeating what
the defendant or witness says for emphasis on important points. Adelsward also says that a trial is in
itself a face-threatening act to the defendant, and Judges and prosecutors therefore use politeness
strategies in order to reduce the way in which they impose upon the defendant, hence hoping to make
them more comfortable to gain more information from them.

For more examples of similar research, you may also wish to look
at Sociolinguistics and Psycholinguistics. For more information on Politeness Theory please
see the Find Out More page which has references to a range of resources.

References

[1]
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. C., (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

[2]
Culpeper, J., (2009). Impoliteness: Using and Understanding the Language of Offence. Project Website: Linguistic

Impoliteness

[3]
Leech, G., (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

[4]
Culpeper, J., (1996). Towards an Anatomy of Impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics. 25 (3). pp. 349-367.

[5]
Adelward, V., (1988). Defendants' Interpretation of Encouragements in Court: The Construction of Meaning in and

Institutionalized Context. Journal of Pragmatics. 13. pp. 741-749.

[6]
Robins, L. and Wolf, F., (1988). Confrontation and politeness strategies in physician-patient interactions. Soc. Sci.

Med. 27 (3). pp. 217-221.

[7]
De Alaya, S.P., (2001). FTAs and Erskine May: Conflicting needs?- Politeness in Question Time. Journal of

Pragmatics.33. pp. 143-169.

Example Research: Speech Act Theory

What is Speech Act Theory?

The theory that certain utterances 'bring about a change in the existing state of affairs'. [1]

Example:

'I baptise thee' - said to a newborn means they are now a Christian.[1]

'I sentence you to five years imprisonment' - said to a convict means they spend five years in prison.

There are different levels of a speech act:[2]

Definition Example

Locution The actual words uttered. "What time do you call this?"

Illocution The intention behind the words uttered. Wanting an apology/

explanation for someone being
late.

Perlocution The influence of the words on the listener. Listener apologises/ explains.

Here is a video demonstrating the above example:

Who are the main researchers in this theory?

John Searle

John Austin

Geoffrey Leech

For more information see Who does Pragmatics?

Formulating this theory

Speech Act Verbs

There are certain types of verbs that indicate speech acts. These appear in five different forms which are
highlighted by Searle:[3]

Type Definition Example

Commissives The speaker commits themselves to performing an promises, oaths

action they have to then carry out

Declarations To bring something about in the world, a pronouncing someone man and wife,
statement pronouncing someone guilty

Directives To influence the listener to do something requests, commands, advice

Expressives A psychological state is expressed which has an congratulations, thanks

impact on the listener or speaker

Representatives A belief is expressed reciting a creed (religious beliefs

shared by a community)

These are all types of performatives, meaning they make something happen. To test for performatives
insert 'hereby' between the agent and the verb (see Syntax for definitions of these terms).
If it cannot be evaluated as true or false then it is a performative rather than a statement.

To test yourself on this, try out our Check Your Knowledge section.

Where was this theory formulated?

The primary research in this area took place in Britain as Austin was a British philosopher of language.

When was this theory formulated?

John Austin formulated this theory in his work about illocutionary acts in 1962. (How to do things with
Words, 1962)

Austin published this book containing all of the lectures delivered by William James' on pragmatics, given
whilst Austin was a student at Harvard University in 1955.

In his lectures James gives five subsections of performative speech acts differing from those later to be
proposed by Searle. They are as follows:

Type Definition Example

Verdictives giving a verdict guilty or not guilty

Exercitives exercising of powers, rights or influence voting

Commisives promising or otherwise undertaking betting

Behabitives attitudes and social behaviour apologizing, congratulating

Expositives conducting of arguments I assume, I illustrate, I concede

[2]

To read more around his work see the Find Out More section.

Example Research in Speech Acts

Speech Acts and Questionnaires: The Effect of Hearer Response

This journal article [5] looks at the construction of questionnaires, involving speech act responses, in
American English. Background research was conducted into a study where a questionnaire was formed
containing eight request dialogues and eight apology dialogues. Participants were given a conversational
structure which included a listener response and a preceding blank space to be filled in with a request or
apology. The study gave rise to an overwhelming number of overt apologies and indirect
requests, prompting Rose(2002) to research this further, and determine whether there was a
significant difference with the inclusion of hearer response.

In his own study two questionnaires were prepared one including the hearer response and the
other not, this time however only involving six situations. The findings were that the no hearer
response questionnaires tended to contain slightly longer responses and used slightly more supportive
moves. The inclusion of hearer response did not have significant impact on the requests elicited and so
therefore would pose no issue for miscommunication.

References

[1]
Mey, J., (1993). Pragmatics: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

[2]
Austin, J., (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[3]
Searle, J., (1980). Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
[4]
Rose, K., (2002). 'Speech Acts and Questionnaires: The Effect of Hearer Response'. Journal of Pragmatics 17. pp. 49-62.
Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics or 'the psychology of language' encompasses so many different aspects of language, from
language acquisition, to syntax and semantics, to phonolgy and morphology. With current and future
technological advances and with the collaboration of other disciplines, psycholinguistics aims to advance ou
understanding of the human brain.

The common aim of psycholinguistics is "to find out about the structures and processes which underlie a
human's ability to speak and understand language".[1]

Psycholinguistics involves:

 language processing - reading, writing, speaking, listening and memory.[2]

 lexical storage and retrieval - how are words stored in our minds and then used.
 language acquisition - how a first language is acquired by children.
 special circumstances - twins, deafness, blindness, dyslexia and brain damage.
 the brain and language - unique to humans? evolution and part of the brain concerned with
language.
 second language acquisition and use - Bilingualism, how a second language is learnt.

References

[1]
Aitchison, J., (1976). The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics.

[2]
Field, J., (2004). Psycholinguistics: the Key Concepts.
What is psycholinguistics? - Animal
communication
Can the messages and sounds made by animals be
seen as 'language'?
Linguist, Charles Hockett looked at the properties within human language, but are these properties
unique to human language? Or can they be applied to other communication systems? What about
animals?[1]

Charles Hockett originally designed a list of 13 design features of human spoken language, with
animal communication sharing some but never all or even most of these 13:

(Download as a file here)

The evolution of language in terms of the design features of language

(Download as a file here)
The Language of B
Worker bees perform a 'w
dance' in which they turn
and move their bodies to
how close a food source is
dance is specific to worke
and is believed to be inna
than learnt. The commun
bees shares some of Hock
design features such as
displacement. However th
language of bees is not ar
the signals used relate ph
the message, they are ind
rather than being symboli
The Language of
Chimps
It has been questioned wh
animals are cognitively ab
aquire language as human
this has led to the researc
cognitive and linguistic ab
animals such as chimpanz
 Although chimpanzees ha
found to be able to comm
with humans using keybo
still unclear whether the u
keyboards to signal is sym
indexical. It is also unansw
whether they are aware o
underlying structures and
orders in the language.[2]

Eight systems of communication that possess some of the language

design features
(Download as a file here) [1]

After the introduction of Hockett's original 13 design features of human spoken

language,[1] there was developments and alterations made to this creating Hockett's 16
design features of human spoken language:[3]

1. Vocal auditory channel - speaking and hearing

2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception - sound travels in all directions but
is localised by the hearer.
3. Rapid fading- once released the sound rapidly fades until it can no longer be heard.
4. Interchangeability - can be a receiver (hearer) and a transmitter (speaker)
5. Complete feedback - speakers can access everything about their productions
6. Specialization - a word means the same regardless of the energy put into producing
it, so if it is shouted or whispered.
7. Semanticity - signals have meaning, they relate to something.
8. Arbitrariness - symbols are abstract, unless it is an onomatopoeic word, they do not
sound like what they mean.
9. Discreteness - vocabulary is made of discrete units.
10. Displacement - language can be used to refer to things in space and time, things
that are not immediately present.
11. Openness - We can say sentences that others have never heard before but can still
understand. We can invent new messages.
12. Tradition - although you are born with the ability to acquire language you still have
to learn it. You are not born knowing how to use the entire communication system.
You can teach and learn the language.
13. Duality of patterning - only combinations of meaningless units can be meaningful
 14. Prevarication- We have the ability to lie using language.
15. Reflectiveness- We can use language to talk about language
16. Learnability- You can learn more than one language, you can learn languages
additional to your native language and be bilingual.

Test what you've just learnt on Hockett's design features on

Hocketts quiz on the check your knowledge page:

Check your knowledge

References

[1]
Hockett, C., (1960). 'The Origin of Speech'. Scientific American. 203. pp. 88-96.

[2]
Field, J., (2004). Psycholinguistics: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge.

[3]
Harley, T., (2008). The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. 3rd ed. Psychology Press.

What is psycholinguistics? - Atypical language

development
Atypical language development is language development that does not follow the For the case of Genie, follow this
usual pattern of acquisition, such as in deaf children, or when someone has a stroke, link:
had surgery or a head trauma leading to a loss of speech. This strand of The Case of Genie
psycholinguistics is studied to increase knowledge on abnormal language
development, to help rehabilitate and try to improve the language of the people in Or for more information, visit:
these situations. It can also lead to a better understanding of normal language Language Acquisition in
development. Studying abnormal language development and usage helps linguists Exceptional Circumstances
identify and understand in more depth what parts of the brain control what functions
of language e.g. where lexical information is stored or what part of the brain controls
motor movements that physically produce sounds and words using articulators.
Language Disorders

A language disorder can be described as the impairment or abnormal development of

understanding or use of written/spoken communication systems. Language disorders
can include anything from dyslexia or stutters to problems after surgery or as a result
of a stroke or old age.

Dysarthria

Dysarthria is a condition that can occur if the muscles used to help you talk are
damaged. In a person with dysarthria a nerve, brain or muscle disorder can make it
difficult to use or control the muscles of the mouth, tongue, larynx or vocal cords. It
is something that can be the aftermath of a stroke, severe brain trauma or a result of
neuromuscular diseases such as cerebral palsy or Parkinson's disease.

Aphasia

Aphasia affects the ability to understand and produce spoken language and can be
caused by a stroke, brain damage, dementia or invasive surgery. Aphasia patients can
be studied to help understand what parts of the brain control and process language.
There are many different types of Aphasia that cause different difficulties in the use
and understanding of language:[1]

 Broca's Aphasia - This type of aphasia causes speakers to use nouns more
than verbs and have many hesitations in speech. Function words and
inflections are not used and there is little or no structure in sentences.
 Wernicke's Aphasia - sufferers have severe problems with vocabulary and
retrieving stored words in their brain, they often use inappropriate nouns and
verbs. Their speech is fluent and they often dont realise they have speech
problems.
 Jargon Aphasia - "nonsense" incorrect or made up words largely used.
 Conduction Aphasia - difficulty or inability to repeat what they have just heard
even if it was understood
 Transcortical Aphasia - can easily repeat words heard but not understand
them
 Anomia - cannot retrieve stored words in the mind.

Think you know these? Have a go at our match exercise on the Check your knowledge
page.

Autism

Autism is a physical dysfunction in the brain that causes delayed cognitive and
linguistic development and lack in communication and interaction with others. Autism
is something someone is born with and those who are born autistic are often
completely mute or have delayed acquisition of language. Autism sufferers can also
use language but in a meaningless way such as repeating what they have heard. The
speech of an autistic person may be monotonous due to the underdevelopment of
language including intonation (varying tones in speech). The effects of autism on
language can vary from complete mutism to almost full use of language with just
difficulty in understanding and using pragmatics (seePragmatics for more
information).[1]

Echolalia is a condition common in Autistic people, where a speaker will

automatically repeat or echo what another person has said to them but they
are unable to ask for things when they want something and find it difficult
to put sentences together that they haven't heard from someone else.

Autistic people are often mistaken for being deaf, but it is just that they find it difficult
to understand the function of language, or because they don't like using language and
interacting because they are unsure of how people will react to them.

Sensory Impairment

Deafness

Sign language is extremely important for the acquisition of language in deaf people. It
can act as their primary language, with spoken and written English being like a 'late-
acquired second language'.[1] Prelinguistic deafness (if for example a child is deaf from
birth) can lead to delayed language acquisition, such as reaching a certain stage later
than a hearing child.

A greater understanding of psycholinguistics has lead to the development of cochlear

implants. A cochlear implant is an electronic medical device that replaces the function
of the damaged inner ear. Unlike hearing aids, which make sounds louder, cochlear
implants do the work of damaged parts of the inner ear (cochlea) to send sound
signals to the brain.[2]
Blindness

It is more of a challenge for blind children to learn language as they are given no visual
clues such as facial expressions or objects. Although it appears that blind children
acquire language systems slightly slower than sighted children, they still start to speak
their first words at roughly the same time.[2]

References

[1]
Field, J., (2004). Psycholinguistics: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge. pp. 16-17.
[2]
Field, J., (2003). Psycholinguistics: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge.
What is psycholinguistics? - Language
Acquisition
Language acquisition is just one strand of psycholinguistics which is all about how
people learn to speak and the mental processes involved. Are we taught to speak
by our parents, or are we born with knowledge in our brains that help us to pick up
language quickly? So really, it's a question of nature vs. nurture...

Nature
Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is one of the main theorists who has contributed a large amount to
the field of language acquisition. He believes that we have pre-wired structures
deep within our brains which helps us to have advance knowledge about language,
known as nativism. We do not just learn language randomly, but through a set of
rules. Children look for regular patterns in speech, and use these as rules to work
out new utterances, such as applying the past tense '-ed' ending to words such as
'work'. This allows for overgeneralisations such as 'runned'. This is known
as universal grammar.[1]

Later, Chomksy believed that we are born with 'switches' in our brains that can be For more information on language
set differently according to different language varieties. A principle such as word acquisition, visit the websites sectio
order can vary dependent upon what language is used. dedicated to this area via the link
below:
Example Language Acquisition

We can look at word order, as an aspect of syntax, to see how Chomsky's idea of
switches works. Word order varies depending upon language. English is a SUBJECT
- VERB - OBJECT language e.g. 'Charlie ate the apple', however, Turkish is SUBJECT -
OBJECT - VERB, 'Charlie elmayı yedi', which translates as 'Charlie the apple ate'. Key Vocabulary

Innate = in-built, something we are

born with.

Syntax = order of words.

Universal Grammar = the

understanding we have in our brains
of language, the rules that can be
 applied to language.

Parameter= switch settings for

language variations.

Imitation = copying.

Reinforcement = praise (positive

reinforcement) or being told off
SVO (negative reinforcement) to support
a child's use of language.
SOV

So, the child sets the parameter 'switch' (either SVO or SOV) on the word order
principle, dependent upon what language they are hearing. If it's English, it will be
SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT, or if it's Turkish for example, it will be SUBJECT-OBJECT-
VERB.

Nurture
Michael Tomasello

Tomasello believes ‘children acquire language first and foremost by understanding

how others use language’.[2] His theory suggests that we learn language through
using it ourselves, and from seeing how others use it. We have no innate
knowledge of language, and it is our general cognition skills that help us work out
language. When looking at the stages of acquisition, he believes it is the utterance,
rather than the actual words, that are most important. There should be a focus on
communication rather than the grammar structure that Chomksy suggests.

B.F Skinner

Skinner's research comes under the heading of behaviourism, which may be

familiar to those studying psychology. His belief is that children acquire language
through imitation of parents and others around them. When a child produces a
word successfully, their parents may reward this behaviour, meaning the child will
repeat this. However, if the child produces an utterance 'incorrectly', they receive
negative reinforcement, discouraging the child from doing this again.[3]
Summary
So, what you really need to know...

 There are many theories on language acquisiton.

 Chomsky believes we have innate structures in our brain to help us learn

language.

 Tomasello thinks we learn language from using it ourselves and hearing

others use it.

References

[1]
Chomsky, N., (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
[2]
Tomasello, M., (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. USA: Harvard

University Press.
[3]
Skinner, B.F., (1957). Verbal behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

How is psycholinguistics studied?

Until recent innovations in the field of neuroscience, brain surgery was one of the only ways for researchers to try and
find out how language worked in our brains. This, however, obviously limited the amount of information available, and
language obviously was not being used during surgery, and so it was impossible to see the brain in action. They tended to
try and affect parts of the brain and then see the result; for example, in the treatment of epilepsy, a bundle of nerves was
severed. As such, they could see which parts of the brain affected which parts of language, but obviously this is unethical
and does not give a good view of the smaller intricacies of what is happening.
As the brain is such an integral and delicate part of us humans, how do we get INSIDE it and look at how it
works?

Neuroimaging

This is the name of various methods of getting an image of the brain in order to work out its structure and its functions,
and is a relatively new development.

It originated in the early 1900s, with the first "neuroimaging" techniques performed by Walter Dandy, who gathered x-ray
images of Cerebrospinal fluid (the fluid the brain essentially "lives" in). These were produced by oxygen or helium being
pumped into the brain via a drilled hole in the head, so that the brain would show up more visibly on the x-rays.
Obviously, this was of great discomfort to the living participants, and modern methods have rendered methods such as
this obselete. His book on this [1] features images that he managed to produce using these methods.

There are many new methods of neuroimaging, which allows psychologists and linguists to get a picture of what is
happening in the brain. There are many of these new, non-invasive methods, for example include functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) magnetoencephalography, (MEG) and Position emission tomography (PET).

One of the current leading methods is fMRI, which studies brain function, and the happenings within the brain by looking
at blood flow. This method of scan can be used to map neural acivity in the brain and, since the 1990s, has become the
dominant method of brain mapping due to the fact that it does not require any surgery, be exposed to radiation, or need
to ingest anything.

An MRI scan and images produced by using this method

A more risky method of study is Position Emission Tomography (PET).This is an invasive measure of blood flow, brain
metabolism and glucose consumption.

The process of a PET scan:[1]

1. The subject is given a harmless dose of radioactive glucose, which enters the brain
2. The chemicals then accumulate within the brain. Depending on the different chemical, different regions
accumulate different amounts.
3. PET then measures the participants brain activity by placing a scanner on their head and the information is then
represented in colourful maps of the brain.

This method of neuroimaging has to understand the neural basis of the functions of speech, speech comprehension and
reading, among many others. As such, though dangerous due to the use of invasive radioactive substances, and high cost
it has been a very useful method to linguists, as well as other people studying in many other areas, and has allowed us to
find out information that many once thought would be impossible.

Reaction Times

"Think before you speak" is probably a saying everyone is more than familiar with, and as such the psychology of reaction
times is very important in our language use. How many times have you said something without realising and regretted it
straight afterwards? This simple linguistic feature we all share shows how the reactions of different parts of our body that
take part in speech are not working completely in sync, and sometimes there can be slip-ups.

Willem Levelt wrote about how reaction times shaped the way our language was used and how it is fundamental to each
process of speech, and how the generation of speech involves a number of "processing stages". For example, he talked
about how we all do something which is known "self monitoring". This process is subconscious and is when, as we are
speaking, we can make errors in pronunciation and grammar, and so we self monitor and, after registering a mistake
has been made, react to that, and often that means we go back and repeat these in the proper way, so as to make
ourselves understood in the way which we meant in our head, but didn't come out that way when we spoke as the
mouth's reaction times were slower than the brain's.

He commented on many of these processes that involved a number of processing stages and so broke them down into an
easily understandable, multi part theory of all the different parts of speech which can be found
here: http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/C/C96/C96-1002.pdf

So really, everyone thinks before they speak without even realising that we are doing it! These speedy, subconscious
processes are just one of the many things that makes the brain so interesting!
New areas of study

Up until recently, the only real way for people to communicate was face-to-face, and if that was not possible then letters
would have been used in place. However, with the dawn of new technology and ways of communication such as texting
and social networking, this has all changed and there is no longer such emphasis on face-to-face interactions. As such
linguists now need to look in depth at these forms of language, and look at what processes are involved in this and they
ways in which it affects our everyday life.

For example, in 'Psychology' by G Neil Manderson, Neil R Carlson and William Buskist, it is noted that areas such as this
are now being studied in areas such a CMC (computer-mediated communication). They noted that things have developed
with such speed, and can change so quickly, that research on the area is still in infancy.

However, we do have information, in psychology, a study by Hollingshead (2001) shows some of the findings of research
in this area. For example it was found that CMC restricts "non-verbal communication channels and other accompaniment
of spoken language". These features of language can be things such as stress, intonation and speed of speech, as well as
facial expressions and body language; things which cannot be conveyed via the medium of a computer. As such, it has a
detrimental effect on people with whom we have a closer relationship, and CMC can lead us to us to "surpress the
amount of information exchanged", which tends to lead to less rich communicative exchanges.

It is also thought that users of the internet will be creating 'entirely new social situations and communication
behaviours' [2] via online mediums, and as such it would be very interesting to see how these new things have an affect on
the development of the brain. As it is so new, it will most likely be our generation, or the one after us, that is used to
study the affect as they will be the ones for who these new methods of communication will be available from an early age
and possibly birth.

References
[1]
Buskist, W., Carlson, N. R., and Martin, G. N., (2007). Psychology. 3rd edition.
[2]
Kock, N., (2004). The Psychobiological Model: Towards a New Theory of Computer-Mediated Communication Based on Darwinian Evolution.
[3]
Levelt, W. J. M., A Theory Of Lexical Access In Speech Production.
[4]
Embick, D. and Poeppel, D., (2006). Mapping syntax using imaging: problems and prospects for the study of neurolinguistic computation.
[5]
Dandy, W., Rontgenograpgy of the Brain After the Injection of Air Into The Spinal Canal.

When & Where is psycholinguistics studied?

Psycholinguistics is studied throughout the world by many different people. Obviously it is a
combination of psychology and linguistics, so it is studied on a much wider scale than some
other areas of linguistics.

When Where

 Psycholinguistic research started as far back as
Plato, who was interested in human knowledge
and language, however, it became a concern in
linguistics during the second half of the
nineteenth century with linguists looking at
language acquisition.
 In 1960, Charles Hockett published a list of 'design
features of human language', where he identified
13 different features, that the language we use to
communicate as humans, is characterised by. This
list of features then went on to be developed into
a list of 16. SeeWHAT is psycholinguistics? -
Animal communication for the list of design
features.
 In the late twentieth century, Willem Levelt did a
great deal of study on what he called 'the mental
lexicon'. His work has become more prominent in
recent years, especially his research into speech
production. We can speak around two or three
word per second, yet errors are quite rare. For
more on Levelt, see reaction times in 'HOW is it
studied?'
 Since the 1990s, the advances in brain scanning
and mapping have provided new information for
psycholinguistics, meaning we can now see brain
activity relating to word processing,
 Psycholinguistic research is not limited to a particula
area in the world, but there is more evidence of
psycholinguistic study in the Western world due to
advanced science and technology.
 The Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics is based
in the Netherlands and looks at a variety of modern
issues in psycholinguistics.
Visithttp://www.mpi.nl/ to find out more
information.
 Chomsky completed a great deal of his work in
Massachusetts, USA. He did his research for his 1957
book, Syntactic Structures, at Harvard, and has now
worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) for over 50 years.
 Curtis conducted a case study on the feral child
Genie, who was discovered in Los Angeles by
authorities, treated in Los Angeles childrens hospital
and then taken to a home for adults with disabilities
in California. Her linguistic development and
language aquisition was assessed as it was abnormal
due to her extreme neglect and deprovation. For
more information visit WHY is it studied? Looking at
the Case of Genie and Others Subject to Extreme
Social Deprevation
 comprehension. Again, see HOW is it studied?
 For the future of psycholinguistics, click here.

Why is psycholinguistics studied?

This page will be looking and the horrific case of Genie, a young girl from Arcadia, California, whose extreme and
saddening case of social deprivation and contact with language can shed some light on some of the mysteries
of psycholinguistics.

Genie, which was a pseudonym for the girl for legal reasons, was a victim of severe social isolation for most of the first
thirteen years of her life. She had been locked inside her bedroom and strapped to a potty chair during the days, and slep
in a caged crib, confined by a straight jacket by night. To further make Genie’s situation worse, her father would not allow
her brother, the one tasked with feeding her infant food, to speak to her, and he himself would make growling dog like
noises from behind the door to keep her quiet, and when she did try to vocalize she would be beaten by her father. When
she was found, at the age of 13, she had learnt from the beatings she received to suppress almost all vocalizations, she
could speak very few words, and the ones she could tended to be negative, such as "stop it".
Due to Genie’s extreme and horrific circumstances, she was of great interest to psychologists, linguists and neurologists
who looked at her case, and could see the atypical development of her mind, and thus of her language. This was an
exceptional circumstance as this would never be able to be recreated in an experimental way due to the awful nature of
Genie's treatment. Harlan Lane, who was a psychologist at Northeastern University said that “It’s a terribly important
case. Since our morality doesn’t allow us to conduct deprivation experiments with human beings, these unfortunate
people are all we have to go on.”

In her case study, Susan Curtiss (1977) noted that many efforts were made in an attempt to teach Genie language but she
never fully acquired linguistic competence. As such, Genie's case lends strength to the argument that there is a "critical
period" in a child's development which, after has been missed, language will never be able to be fully acquired; a theory
which was first proposed by Eric Lennenberg. Curtiss also went on to develop a controversial hypothesis about how
language learning affects the two hemispheres of the brain, and Genie has also stirred up debate about between languag
and other mental abilities.

There have been other cases such as Genie's. Anna, who was looked at by Davis (1940, 1947) who was a girl of around fiv
years of age that had been found tied to a chair in a storage room of her farm home and had apparently been there since
babyhood. When found, she too was unable to talk, and when relocated to a children's home, lay in a limp position,
completely expressionless and was believed to be potentially deaf and blind. However, after nine months she was moved
to a foster home and she began to make improvements both cognitive and motor, after her foster mother gave her
"unremitting attention". After she left the foster home, and shortly before her death, she was located in a home for
retarded children, and began to develop speech after living there for two years. This is possibly further evidence of the
critical period, as it took her so long to develop one word speech, a level which she should have developed much quicker
had she had a typical upbringing.

In Language Development in Exceptional Circumstances [2] it is noted on page 115 that Luria (1973) suggested that the
brain develops differently if "one sensory modality is absent. As such, this means that in Genie's case, due to lack of
communication, her auditory sense was under stimulated, and as such her brain would have atypically developed. This
also links to more information on why psycholinguistics: What is psycholinguistics? - Atypical language developmen

Language Development in Exceptional Circumstances also outlines why it may be that children that have been in these
cases of social isolation have underdeveloped in the way they have. For example, it suggests malnutrition could be a
cause, but this alone has not been. However, it also says that John Dobbings (1984) commented how malnutrition may
produce "irreversible deficits and distortions... in the growing brain." Other theorists also suggest that these cases show
auditory-verbal stimulation and lack of opportunities for play can affect the development of the brain. Although it is
impossible to say exactly WHICH have contributed and how much to cases like Genie's, it would seem that they are
fundamental to the brain's development, and lack of them results in the saddening differences we see in these cases.

References
[1]
Bishop, D., (1993). Language Development in Exceptional Circumstances.
[2]
Curtiss, S., (1977). Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern Day Wild Child.

Example research: The Stroop Effect

GREEN BLUE YELLOW RED BLUE ORANGE PINK GREEN

Try reading out the colour these are printed in, rather than the word itself. It's pretty tricky, right? Well, this is all thanks
to something called the Stroop Effect.

What is it?

The Stroop Effect was first reported by John Ridley Stroop in 1935[1], and looks at how our brains process words. We
process these letters so quickly that we struggle to be able to say the colour rather than the word.

To look at how our brains process different things at various speeds, Stroop used three types of experiments. The first on
used the names of colours (blue, green etc) in black ink. The second had the names of colours in different coloured ink,
like you can see at the top of this page. The third experiment used simple squares of colour. For example...
 BLUE YELLOW GREEN PINK RED

BLUE YELLOW GREEN PINK RED

Findings

Stroop found that participants could say the colour of the squares on the last line more quickly than they could say the
colour of the words in line two. There was no difference between saying the words on line two, and saying the colours of
the squares on line three however.

Why is this?

Stroop believes the reason that saying the colour rather than the word is so hard for us is because our brains
automatically associates a word with a meaning. So when we see the word 'blue' we immediately think of the colour blue
which conflicts with us trying to say the ink colour. The part of the brain which gives a response when there are two
conflicting signals is believed to be the area called the anterior cingulate, near the front of the brain.

The process that chooses between conflicting signals is known as directed attention. This stops us saying one thing in
order to say another. There is ongoing research into directed attention and how it plays a part in our everyday life.

Summary
The experiment Stroop conducted is a classic example of how psycholinguistics is studied, as the findings lead to the understanding of how we attac
meaning to words, how we process language in our mind and what parts of the brain process and control language.

References
[1]
Stroop, J. R., (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions.
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning...

What is meaning?

How is meaning created in language?

How do people understand language and why do we understand it like we do?

These are some of the questions that semantics tries to answer. One of the main reasons we use language is to pass meaning from on
another, and semantics looks at how it all works.

Geoffrey Leech, Author of Semantics (1974) talks about why he chose to study Sema

"When I was a student, 55 years ago, the current climate

of linguistic thinking was against semantics. This was the era when American structuralism was in the ascendant, and it was considere
could not be studied objectively, and therefore had to be ignored.

At that time (1962) I was working with Michael (M.A.K.) Halliday, the most brilliant mind in British linguistics, who was developing h
asked him which of two fields (morphology or semantics – both of which I thought needed to be developed within his theory) I should
recommended semantics. This pleased me, as it had seemed to me absurd that linguists of that era concentrated on phonetics, phonology
ignored meaning.

After all, what is the point of language without meaning?

After that I wrote my PhD thesis on the semantics of English, and it was later published as a book (1969). I was then asked to write a m
on semantics for the general reader – a book that came out in the Penguin linguistic series in 1974. The rest, as they say, is history!"
Professor Geoffrey Leech

What is semantics?
Semantics is a sub discipline of linguistics which focuses on the study of meaning.
Semantics tries to understand what meaning is as an element of language and how it is
constructed by language as well as interpreted, obscured and negotiated by speakers and
listeners of language.[1]

Semantics is closely linked with another sub discipline of linguistics, pragmatics, which is
also, broadly speaking, the study of meaning. However, unlike pragmatics, semantics is a
highly theoretical research perspective, and looks at meaning in language in isolation, in the
language itself, whereas pragmatics is a more practical subject and is interested in meaning
in language in use.

Semantics is the study of meaning, but what do we mean by 'meaning'?

Meaning has been given different definitions in the past.

Meaning = Connotation?

Is meaning simply the set of associations that a word evokes, is the meaning of a word
defined by the images that its users connect to it?

So 'winter' might mean 'snow', 'sledging' and 'mulled wine'. But what about someone living
in the amazon? Their 'winter' is still wet and hot, so its original meaning is lost. Because the
associations of a word don't always apply, it was decided that this couldn't be the whole
story.

Meaning = Denotation?

It has also been suggested that the meaning of a word is simply the entity in the World
which that word refers to. This makes perfect sense for proper nouns like 'New York' and
'the Eiffel Tower', but there are lots of words like 'sing' and 'altruism' that don't have a solid
thing in the world that they are connected to. So meaning cannot be entirely denotation
either.

Meaning = Extension and Intention

So meaning, in semantics, is defined as being Extension: The thing in the world that the
word/phrase refers to, plus Intention: The concepts/mental images that the word/phrase
evokes.[2]

Semantics is interested in:

 How meaning works in language:

The study of semantics looks at how meaning works in language, and because of this it
often uses native speaker intuitions about the meaning of words and phrases to base
research on. We all understand semantics already on a subconscious level, it's how we all
understand each other when we speak.

Semantics introductory podcast by AllAboutLinguistics

 How the way in which words are put together creates meaning:
One of the things that semantics looks at, and is based on, is how the meaning of speech is
not just derived from the meanings of the individual words all put together, as you can see
from the example below.
[2]

The Principle of Compositionality says that the meaning of speech is the sum of the
meanings of the individual words plus the way in which they are arranged into a structure.
  The relationships between words:

Semantics also looks at the ways in which the meanings of words can be related to each
other. Here are a few of the ways in which words can be semantically related.
Semantic relationship Definition Example

Synonymy Words are synonymous/ synonyms when Begin and start,

they can be used to mean the same thing Big and large,
(at least in some contexts - words are Youth and adolescent.
rarely fully identical in all contexts).

Antonyms Words are antonyms of one another Big and small,

when they have opposite meanings (again, Come and go,
at least in some contexts). Boy and girl.

Polysemy A word is polysemous when it has two or Bright- shining and bright- intelligent.
more related meanings. In this case the Mouse- animal and mouse- on a
word takes one form but can be used to computer.
mean two different things. In the case of
polysemy, these two meanings must be
related in some way, and not be two
completely unrelated meanings of the
word.

Homophony Homophony is similar to polysemy in that
it refers to a single form of word with two
meanings, however a word is a
homophone when the two meanings are
entirely unrelated.
Bat- flying mammal and bat- equipment
used in cricket.
Pen- writing instrument and pen- small
cage.

[2]

 The relationships between sentences:

Sentences can also be semantically related to one-another in a few different ways.

Semantic relationship Definition Example

Paraphrase One relationship that two sentences can 'The boys like the girls' and 'the girls are
have with each other is being paraphrases liked by the boys',
of each other. This is a good example of 'John gave the book to Chris' and 'John
how we all understand semantics already gave Chris the book'.
on some level because people can easily
tell when a sentence is a paraphrase,
because when two sentences are
paraphrases of each other, even though
the form is different you will understand
the same meaning from them.
Paraphrases have the sametruth
conditions; if one is true, the other must
also be true.

Entailment Entailment is a little more tricky than

paraphrase in that the two sentences
don't mean exactly the same thing,
instead, when one sentence entails
another, for the second sentence to be
true, the first one must be true. There are
two different types of entailment.

Mutual enatilment When each sentence entails the other, i.e. 'John is married to Rachel' and 'Rachel is
each sentence must be true for the other John's wife',
to be true. 'Chris is a man' and 'Chris is human'.

Asymmetrical entailment With asymmetrical entailment, only one of 'Rachel is John's wife' entails 'John is
the sentences must be true for the other married' (but John is married does not
to be true, but that sentence may be true entail Rachel being his wife), 'Rachel has
without the other sentence nescessarily two brothers' entails 'Rachel is not an
having to be true. only child' (but Rachel not being an only
child does not entail Rachel having two
brothers).

Contradiction Sentences can also be semantically related 'Rachel is an only child' and 'Rachel's
when they contradict each other. brother is called Phil', 'Alex is alive' and
Sentences contradict each other when for 'Alex died last week'.
one to be true the other must not be.

[2]

 Ambiguity:

One of the aspects of how meaning works in language which is studied most in semantics is
ambiguity. A sentence is ambiguous when it has two or more possible meanings, but how
does ambiguity arise in language? A sentence can be ambiguous for either (or both!) of the
following reasons:
Lexical Ambiguity: A sentence is lexically ambiguous when it can have two or more
possible meanings due to polysemous (words that have two or more related meanings) or
homophonous (a single word which has two or more different meanings) words.

Example of lexically ambiguous sentence: 'Prostitutes appeal to the Pope'. This

sentence is ambiguous because the word 'appeal' is polysemous and can mean 'ask for help'
or 'are attractive to'.

Structural Ambiguity: A sentence is structurally ambiguous if it can have two or more

possible meanings due to the words it contains being able to be combined in different ways
which create different meanings.

Example of structurally ambiguous sentence: 'Enraged cow injures farmer with

axe'. In this sentence the ambiguity arises from the fact that the 'with axe' can either refer
to the farmer, or to the act of injuring being carried out (by the cow) 'with axe'.[2]

Semantics in the field of Linguistics

Semantics looks at these relationships in language and looks at how these meanings are
created, which is an important part of understanding how language works as a whole.
Understanding how meaning occurs in language can inform other sub disciplines such
as Language acquisition, to help us to understand how speakers acquire a sense of
meaning, and Sociolinguistics, as the achievement of meaning in language is important in
language in a social situation.

Semantics is also informed by other sub disciplines of linguistics, such as Morphology, as

understanding the words themselves is integral to the study of their meaning, and Syntax,
which researchers in semantics use extensively to reveal how meaning is created in
language, as how language is structured is central to meaning.

To find out about some of the key researchers in semantics please follow this link.

References

[1]
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/semantics.htm [Accessed 3.05.2012]

[2]
Wood, G.C., (2011). Lecture on Introduction to Semantics at the University of Sheffield.
How is semantics studied?
The study is semantics is highly theoretical. The main researchers are philosophers who
study semantics in a more theoretical manner. Some examples of these philosophers can be
seen on the who does semantics? page.

Lexical semantics can be defined as 'the study of meaning', therefore Key concepts in how semantics i
semanticists are interested in the lexical meaning of words rather than studied:
grammatical meaning. It is not so much a practical topic but one that
requires thinking rather than doing and does not really require any
experiments. It is about studying language in isolation and not language in
use. Some semanticists see native speakers as having semantic
Pragmatic competence- The
competence.
ability to use language in a
The study of semantics also ties in with other fields of linguistic study: contextually appropriate fashion.

Polysemy-
 Pragmatics- it would be impossible when studying semantics not to
come into contact with pragmatics. Some theoretical approaches A word that has two or more
have got rid of the distinction between semantic and pragmatic similar meanings.
competence. However, it is important to make the distinction
between a word's contribution to the meaning of an utterance and Chomskian-
the contributions of context (pragmatics). Pragmatic issues have
The linguistic period where the
been touched upon in many lexical semantic issues, like polysemy.
famous linguist, Noam Chomsky,
 Morphology- there is a question of whether word class is
was prevalent.
semantically determined.
 Psycholinguistics- Most lexical semantic issues can be addressed Cognitive linguistics-
from a psycholinguistic perspective, and psycholinguistic methods
offer evidence concerning how words and meanings are organised in A branch of linguistics that
the mind. interprets language in terms of
 Language acquisition– Unlike grammar, vocabulary is acquired concepts, which underlie its
throughout life, so some of the issues in lexical acquisition can be forms.
addressed from an adult first- or second-language angle.
Structural ambiguity-
What is semantic competence?
refers to a sentence or clause
It consists of the ability to judge which strings of words form grammatical with multiple possible meanings.
sentences. Similarly, semantic competence consists of the ability to
determine the meaning of a particular string of words. Since a particular
Syntax- The arrangement of
string of words may correspond to more than one syntactic structure, we words or phrases.
can take semantic competence to consist of the ability to determine
themeaning of a particular syntactic structure. This ability also consists of
the ability to determine the relationships between the meanings of distinct
syntactic structure. Therefore, the study of semantics is mainly based on
the intuitions of native speakers as we know on a subconscious level.[1]
Changes in the study of semantics
In the last twenty-to-thirty years there have been changes in the traditional ways of
studying semantics.

Chomskian linguistics and the nativist view sees all semantic notions as inherent.
However, this view was thought of as being unable to address many issues such as
metaphor and semantic change, where meanings within linguistics change over time.

On the other hand, cognitive linguistics views semantics, as an innate finite meaning
inherent in a lexical unit which can be used to generate meaning. This challenge to the
traditional Chomskian views is motivated by factors external to language, i.e.
language is not a set of labels stuck onto things but "a toolbox, the importance of
whose elements lie in the way they function rather than their attachments to
things."[2]

One tool used in the study of Semantics:

Syntax trees

Semantics also uses our theoretical knowledge of how language works on a broader
level to explain and formally note how meaning works. We can present how words
are arranged in utterances through drawing syntaxtrees- this may sound strange but
hopefully the video below will help to show you one way semantics can be studied.

Syntax Trees

Photo of the material discussed in the video

If you'd like to have a closer look at the structurally ambiguous sentence and its
paraphrases and trees that were discussed in the video please take a look at the
photos below. (Click to enlarge)
Finding out more

Please follow the links below to other sections of the web site if you'd like to find out
more about the topics covered in the video.

 Please follow this link if you'd like to find out more about whatmeaning is and
how it is created.

 Please follow this link if you'd like to find out more about structural
ambiguity, and see some examples.

 And if you'd like to find out more about syntax trees, you can follow this link
to the Syntax section of this web site.

Example Research: Basic Colour Terms

Example Research: The Semantics of Winning and Losing

References

[1]
http://web.mit.edu/rbhatt/www/24.903/l1.pdf
[2]
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/ajb/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Semantics.html
Who does semantics?
It would be impossible to inform you about all the people who have studied the field of
Semantics as it is such a vast topic in the area of Linguistics. This section will inform you of
some of the key researchers in the field and what they studied in their work.

Richard Donald Davidson Ray Jackendoff Geoffrey Leech

Montague

Richard Montague (1930-1971)

 He was an American mathematician and philosopher

 Studied at The University of California, Berkeley, earning a BA in Philosophy in 1950,
an MA in Mathematics in 1953 and PhD in Philosophy in 1957.He pioneered a logical
approach to natural language semantics, which became know as the Montague
Grammar.[1]

Donald Davidson (1917-2003)

 Was an American philosopher born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

 Served as Professor of Philosophy at The University ofCalifornia from 1981-2003.
 Developed an inspired approach to truth-conditional semantics
 Famously said "there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything
like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such
[2]
thing tobe learned, mastered, or born with."

Ray Jackendoff (1945- )

 American linguist and professor of philosophy at Tufts University.

  Mainly developed the semantic framework of Conceptual semantics which aim is to
provide a characterization of the conceptual elements by which a person understands
words and sentences to provide an explanatory semantic representation (title of a
Jackendoff 1976 paper)
 Built on the work of Noam Chomsky and his ideas on the acquisition of language. [3]

Geoffrey Leech (1936- )

 Professor of Linguistics and Modern Languages at Lancaster University from 1974-

2002.
 One main area of his academic interests in English Linguistics is semantics (also very
influential in the field of pragmatics)
 Wrote Semantics(1974; 2nd edn. 1981)
 You can read a quote from Geoffrey leech on the semantics home page [4]

You may notice that many of the key thinkers are philosophers, this could be because
semantics is a highly theoretical area of linguistics. You can find out more about this on
the how page.
References

[1]
http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/Richard_Montague_by_%20Partee_05.pdf.

[2]
Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. (1996). 'Donald Davidson'.

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/> [Accessed 03.05.2012].

[3]
Tufts University. (2010). 'Ray Jackendoff's Homepage'.

<http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/RayJackendoff/> [Accessed 03.05.2012].

[4]
Lancaster University, Department of Linguistics and English Language, 'Professor Geoffrey Leech' (n.d)

<http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/296> [Accessed 03.05.2012].

When is Semantics studied?

Its hard to pinpoint when semantics was first studied as a discipline but the study of meaning can be traced back to
Referential theories of meaning which were first studied in 1892. These theories have origins in the Philosophy of
Language, Logic and Mathematics.

1960s
The 1960s saw a big step up in the study of Semantics. Richard Montague proposed a system for defining semantic
entries. He showed that the meaning of a sentence can be split up into individual parts instead of studying it as one which
became known as the Montague Grammar.[1]
The 1960s also saw the rise of Noam Chomsky and his theory of Generative Linguistics. This has had a huge impact on the
whole of linguistics with his take on studying language. His theory of a Universal Grammar was a huge influence on the
whole of the linguistic field.

1970s
Eleanor Rosch was one of the biggest players in Semantic research in the 70s. She came up with a theory known
as Prototype Theory [2] which is based upon the idea that meaning is not Objective it is learned through experience.

Sociolinguistics really emerged as a field in the 1970s with William Labov reacting to Noam Chomsky'stheory within
linguistics. He argued that you should study Language in Use (E Language) rather than Language in the mind (I Language).
This again was a very important time within Linguistics with Semantic research being a part of this.

1980s - Present Day

Since the 1970s, Semantic research has still been going on. The last 30 years haven't been as important in Linguistic
research but that doesn't mean that their hasn't been any going on. For example, in the late 1990's, Lexical
Semantics [3] emerged which is a sub field of Semantics looking at the denotation and connotation so how words mean
exactly what they mean or can be used to describe concepts.

Elsewhere in Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics emerged through linguists George Lakoff and Ronald Langacker as a
reaction to Generative Linguistics. It argues that language has spawned from a basic form of Cognitive Processes that has
come into criticism from the Generative Linguists who are at the opposite end of the scale to the Cognitive Linguists.

References
[1]
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~akao/NLP_Paper.htm [Accessed 23.05.2012]
[2]
http://faculty.mercer.edu/spears_a/studentpages/webpagesfall09/prototype/head.htm [Accessed 23.05.2012]
[3]
http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/2821 [Accessed 23.05.2012]

Where is semantics studied?

Technically, Semantics can be first dated back to Ancient Greece in the work of the philosopher Plato who
posed many questions on the idea of 'meaning'.[1]

However, the earliest studies of Semantics strictly in the field of Linguistics can be found in Central Europe,
specifically France and Germany in the 1820s. During this time, French and German linguists such as Christian Karl Reisig
began to recognize words' meanings as significant features in the growth of language.[2]

In the 20th century linguistic semantics was most prominently studied in the United States of Americawith American
linguists such as Richard Montague, Eleanor Rosch and Noam Chomsky. This has continued into more recent years with
theories such as generative semantics being developed by Americanlinguistics such as George Lakoff and James D.
McCawley (born in Scotland but lived majority of his life in the USA).

Nowadays, the study of Semantics is continuing to be further developed by linguists across Europe andAmerica but is also
beginning to feature across the world.

The countries where semantics is mostly studied can be seen in the map above, with the highlighted areas being those
which have seen the greatest development in the field throughout its existence.

References

[1]
Pelletier, F. J., (1990). Parmenides, Plato and the Semantics of Non-Being. Chicago: U.C.P.

[2]
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/semanticist. [Accessed 19.05.2012]
Why is semantics studied?
Semantics is studied for a number of different reasons but perhaps one of the main ones could be:
"If we view Semantics as the study of meaning then it becomes central to the study of
communication which in turn is an imortant factor in how society is organised."[1]

The aim of semantics is to discover why meaning is more complex than simply the words written down in a
sentence. Semantics will ask questions such as:
"why is the structure of a sentence important to the meaning of the sentence?

"What are the semantic relationships between words and sentences?"

For example consider the following sentences:

a) Regina is an only child.

b) Regina's sister is called Martha.

Without any knowledge about semantics intuitively we know that only one of these sentences can be correct, despite the
fact grammatically they both make perfect sense.

Studying semantics will allow us to explain why only one of these sentences can be true.

Lets consider the following Newspaper headline:

"Enraged cow kills farmer with axe."[2]

This headline is confusing to read because in theory there are two possible meanings:

a) An enraged cow killed a farmer using an axe.

b) An enraged cow killed a farmer who had an axe.

Studying semantics will allow us to explain what it is exactly about the headline which is confusing and why readers could
be lead to believe there are two possible meanings.
Semantics and meaning

Semantics is also concerned with exploring our idea's of what "meaning" is. Intuitively we have our own ideas about what
a word means. Semantics aims to offer a definition for "meaning" however it is a difficult concept to explain so there are
number of different definitions such as:

 Connotation: A set of associations that a word's use can evoke. For example if someone uses the word "Summer"
you may think of "sunshine, holidays, the beach" However do these words cover the whole meaning of summer?
For example it isn't always sunny during the summer but that doesn't change the fact it is summer, or our
understanding that is it summer.

 Denotation: The set of entitiese to which a word refers: For example the word "Prime Minister" at the minute
refers to: Leader of the Conservative Party/David Cameron. However this can't possibly be the full meaning of the
word. David Cameron has not always and will not always be the Prime Minister, so therefore this cannot be the
full meaning of Prime Minister either?

These are just a couple of defitintions that semantics has come up with to try and define the concept of "meaning" but as
we can see neither are fully satisfactory. Therefore we can see that the aim of devising an absolute definition of meaning
is complex, Semantics aims to uncover why this is.

Summary
Hopefully from reading this section it will have become clear that there a numerous reasons to study semantics, for
example:

 To futher our understanding of how the relationship between the words and structure of a sentence can affect
meaning.
 To try and find a more comprehinsive definition of "meaning" which truly cover the concept.

References
[1]
Leech, G., (1981). Semantics: The Study of Meaning, 2nd edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

[2]
Barron, P., (2009). 'Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Axe'. Northern
Echo. http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/features/blogs/staff/peterbarron/4071811.Enraged_cow_injures_farmer_with_axe___/[Accessed 02.05.2012].

Example research: Basic Colour Terms

In this section we will give a brief overview of actual research that has been done into
the field of Semantics. Key terms
The first study we will look at is:
 Lingusitc relativity: A
theory which suggests
Basic Colour Terms: Brent Berlin and Paul Kay that " the language one
(1969) speaks profoundly affect
one's thought processes
This study looks at the semantics of colour words. How do we classify and
and the way one
interprets the world."[1]
categorise colours?
 Semantic Universals: Any
aspect of meaning which
In general human beings have the biological apparatus to see and
is somehow represented
discrimanate between different colours, and we are then able to to
and present in all
categorise the colours we identify verbally.
languages [3]

Different languages appear to classify colour differently for example in

English Berlin and Kay state that there are eleven primary colours, but in
the Philippine language of Hannunoo there are only 4. [1]
However it appears that systems of color naming do not vary randomly
across languages, there are constraints limiting the colour words to a small
number of possible types.

This illustrates the possible differences and similarities between languages

and leads us to question the nature of 'colour words' and their semantic
meaning and relations/relativity.

Hypothesis

Based on "intuitive experience of several languages" Berlin and Kay felt that "color words
translate too easily among various pairs of unrelated languages for the idea of lingusitc
[1]
relativity to hold true."

This differs from the perhaps more prominent views at the time regarding linguistic relativity.
American linguists and anthropologists believed that there was linguistic relativity. They
believed that each language codes thir individual experiences into sounds (words) in their own
individual way. This means that each language is semantically arbitrary (not related in any way
to another language.) This would mean that color words in each language have no relation to
another and therefore there cannot beSemantic Universals

However Berlin and Kay suggest there are "exactly eleven basic colour categories from which
the eleven or fewer basic color terms of any given language are always drawn." [2]
 The Eleven Basic Color categories:

white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange andgrey

Procedure
A standard set of colour stimuli were used to conduct the research which included
329 colour chips of 40 equally spaced color shades including 8 degrees of brightness.
These were mounthed on cardboard and covered in clear acetate so the informants
could map colors on the chart.

The data was collected by students and the authors of the book in each of the 20
languages studied.

 The basic color words of the language were elictied verbally from the
informant, usisng as little as possible of any other languages.
 The informant was then asked to map onto the stimulus board all the chips he
would for example call "red" and then the most typical example of "red."[2]
 Each informant was asked to map their color choices at least 3 times at one
week intervals.

Informants

 All informants were native speakers of their particular language.

 The choice of languages studied was down to the availabilty of informants
and in general they all resided in the San Frisco Bay area of California.[2]

Data

The languages studied were all "genetically diverse" which means they were not from
the same language family so very different.

 The primary data includes basic colour terminology from the following
languages:

Arabic (Lebanon, Bulgarian (Bulgaria), Catalan (Spain), Cantonise (China), Mandarin

(China), English (United States), Hebrew (Israel), Hungarian (Hungry), Ibibio (Nigeria),
Indonesian (Indonesia), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Pomo (Calafornia), Spanish
(Mexico), Swahili (East Africa), Tagalog (Philippines), Thai (Thailand), Tzeltal (Southern
Mexico), Urdu (India), and Vietnamese (Vietnam).
Normalised Foci of Basic Color Terms in Twenty Languages [4]

 Berlin and Kay then mapped the focus for each basic color term in al the
languages.
  The data shows how clearly the foci of color categories are similar among
totally unrelated languages.

Findings

 Berlin and Kay suggest this mapping supports their initial hypothesis that
"color categorization is not random and the foci of basic color terms are
similar in all languages."[2]
 By repeating the mapping procedure with the same and different informants
Berlin and Kay suggest that the categories for foci placements are highly
reliable.
 There was an unexpected finding through the course of this research which
was that if a language has less than 11 basic color terms then there are strict
rules and limitations as to which color categories will be present, which is
outlined below:

There are at least 6 evolutionary stages of language

The research suggets that there is a fixed order of evolutionary stages that all
languages must go through in order for the basic color vocabulary to increase:

1. All languages have words for black and white.

2. If a language contains 3 color terms one of them will be for red.
3. If a language contains 4 color terms, there will be a term for green or yellow
but never both
4. If a language has 5 color terms there will be words for both green and yellow.
5. If a language has 6 color terms, it will contain a word for blue.
6. If a language has 7 color terms, it will contain a word for brown.
7. If a language has 8 or more color terms it will contain words for pink, purple,
orange or grey. At least one or more of these colors will be present.

Conclusions
The findings of this trail suggest a number of interesting points about language and
therefore semantics and meaning.

Firstly the original hypothesis that there are 11 basic colour terms has been
supported, with all languages that were tested fitting this pattern.

The findings about the 6 (or more) evolutionary stages of language can lead to a
number of conclusions. Berlin and Kay suggest that there seems to be a "postive
correlation between general cultural complexity (an/or the level of technological
development) and the complexity of colour vocabulary.

The findings of the study seem to support this conclusion as all the languages of highly
industrialised places such as Europe and Asia speakers are at stage 7, meaning the
language has at least 8 color terms. However in places that are less industrialised,
with smalll populations, in isolated areas speakers are at the earlier stages in the
processes, such as 1, 2, and 3 meanings there are at maximum 4 basic colour terms.

This is interesting in terms of semantics because it suggests that an increase in basic

color terms could be explained as part of a general increase in vobulary of a language
as a response to a culture with a richer information environment. Therefore
languages change in order to help speakers communicate more effectively.

Hopefully the overview of this study will have given an insight into the type of
topics semantics is interested in, and how work into semantics can be carried out.

References
[1]
Leech, G., (1974). Semantics. England: Clays Ltd, St Ives plc.

[2]
Berlin, B. and Kay, P., (1969). Basic Color Terms: Their University and Evolution. California: University of California

Press.
[3]
Talmy, L., (2008). Universals of Semantics. New York: University at Buffalo. Available

at:<http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/talmy/talmyweb/Recent/universals.html > [Accessed 03.06.2012].

[4]
Hunt, A A., (2008). H-Chroma. Available at: <http://www.h-pi.com/theory/huntsystem7.html> [Accessed 05.06.2012].

Example Research: The Semantics of winning

and losing
This page will focus on a study into semantics:
Key Terms:

 Psycholinguistics: "The
The Semantics of Winning and Losing
branch of linguistics that
by Michael K Smith and Michael B Montgomery [1] deals with the
psychological processes
inherent in language
This study looks at headlines reporting the results of football matches in two acquisition and use. In
American newspapers. When analysing the headlines particular focus was paid to: early use also the
psychology of language
 The types of verbs used in each headline.
[2]
 The word order of the sentence, for example is it Subject-Verb-Object or
Subject-Verb?
 Aliteration and punning  Historical Lingusitcs:The
 The particular types of "action" verbs used to describe a win. branch of lingusitcs
concerned with how
In terms of semantics the study will make an argument for the psycholingustic theory languages change over
of "Semantic generativity;" which is the ability of the context and the metaphorical time.
possibilities of words to allow almost any verb to make sense in a headline.[1]
On a historical lingustic level the study is interested in how the continued use of a
particular verb for winning or losing may ulitimately lead to a change in it's (semantic)
meaning.

Research Questions
This study had three main research questions:

1. What kinds of of language do sports writers use when attempting to be

playful/humorous?
2. Is there a pattern to the number of ways winning and losing can be
described?
3. What effects might creative use of language in such headlines have on English
Language in general?[1]

Hypotheses
The study had a number of hypotheses in relation to the research questions:

 There will be much more variety in the use of verbs than might have been
 initially thought.
 When writing a headline sports writers will systematically take into account
the scores of a game and whether a team is favoured or not.
 There will be no limit to the types of headlines created, meaning some type of
psycholingusitc structure must be in place to allow for this creativity.
 The creative use of verbs in headlines may ultimately change the meaning of
the verb in a wider context. Therefore this creative use could have lasting
effects on the English Language.[1]

Method
The headlines of two different newspapers were analysed. The newspapers were the
local newspapers of the areas the researchers were living at the time.

1. The Knoxville News-Sentinel

2. The Memphis Commercial Appeal

The Sunday editions of both papers were analysed which included write ups of
Saturday's College football games. The Monday editions of both papers were
also analysed which reported on the Professional football games played on a
Sunday.

Each headline was recorded on 4x6 card along with:

 The names of the winning and losing teams.

 The score of the game.
 Page number of where the headline appeared in the paper.
 The betting lines for most of the teams which were given at the beginning of
the week. This was recorded because "it was hypothesized that pre existing
knowledge about which team should win or lose would affect the writing of
headlines and accounts of the game."[1]

In total 930 headlines were recorded over a two year period between 1980 and 1981

 The knoxville News-Sentinel in 1980= 447 headlines

 The Knoxviller News-Sentinel in 1981= 357 headlines
 The Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1980= 126 headlines (This total is
significantly lower because a lot of the headlines simply stated the scores of
the game rather than making any comment on the game, and these headlines
were not included in the analysis.) [1]

Results: Grammatical Patters in Headlines

The headlines were divided into 6 different grammatical categories, which were
decided upon through the different types of comments and descriptions which were
being made about the game.
  Category 1: Subject-verb-object headlines with no other modifiers. For
example, "Texas Tech spills Rice" or "Clemson cooksRice"or
"Rice cooks Arkansas"

In these examples we can see that Rice is favoured for punning. When the team
lost they were "spilled" or "cooked." However interestingly when they won
Rice "cooks" as well. This means the semantic role of "cook" can be reversed to
mean either winning or losing.

 Category 2: Subject-Verb headlines where only the winning/losing team was

mentioned. For example: "Minnesota Wins" or "Mustangsgallop"

In these headlines only one team is mentioned, usually the winner. This may
have been because of space limitations. As in Category 1 punning is also
present in these headlines.

 Category 3: Subject-verb-object headlines with a modifier. For example

"Panthers punish careless Cadets" or " Flat Falcons NipRedskins, Eye Playoffs"

There are different types of modification in these headlines. For example in the case
of the Panthers "careless" tells us more about the Cadets. However in the case of the
Falcons we have the modifier "flat" which tells us more about the Falcons but we also
have the modifier "eye playoffs." This gives us additional information about the
consequences of the game. The modification means the headline tells the reader
more than just who won/lost, it gives an indication into the implications of the result.

Category 4: Subject-verb sentences with a modifier. For example

"CraftyCardinanls Prevail" or "Tide flows in Offensive Show"

In this category there is again different types of modification bening used. In the case
of the Cardinals the modifier "crafty" tells us more about the Cardinals as a
team. However in the second example we get a prepositional phrase at the end of the
headline acting as a modifier "in offensive show." This gives us information about an
action in the game.

 Category 5: An individual team member or individual action in the game is the

focus of the headline. For example "Bennet rifles army over Holy Cross" or
"Air attack lifts rice."

In this category an individual player "Bennet" or an individual action "air

attack" is used in the Subject position in place of the whole team or game as a
whole. In both these cases the verbs used describe how the player or action
affected the winning or losing of the game as a whole.

 Category 6: Headline refers to the consequences of a game, sometimes in

context of the season as a whole. For example " Major S: 'Our mistakes were
deciding factor.'"

In this case the focus of the headline is neither the actions in the game or winning or
losing. Instead the headline focuses of the consequences of a game.

These examples are not exhaustive of all the different possible headlines but
hopefully demonstrate how the headlines can differ and how the use of modification
or different types of Subjects can affect the semantic meaning of a headline.

Results: Punning, alliteration and different verbs

The study looked at how common these different devices were in the
headlines. Each headline was independantly judged in by two different people, to see
if they each thought it contained alliteration or punning. If both agreed the headline
was then coded as containing alliteration or punning.The different verbs used in each
headline were listed in an alphabetical table.

Out of the 930 headlines:

 386 (42%) used alliteration

 142 (15%) used punning
 Most headlines were in the form of: subject-verb-object e.g.
"Cougars Drown Beavers"
 There were 222 different transitive verbs used e.g. ambush, batter, flog, maul
 There were 81 different intransitive verbs used e.g. breeze, cruise, rally, win

Category 1: Subject-Verb-Object Headlines:

 There were 308 headlines with this grammatical pattern.

 51% Contained alliteration
 18% Contained some form of punning.
 143 different verbs were used almost one for every 2 headlines.

From these results we can see that in this category the most popular device used in
writing headlines is alliteration, (which can also be multiple)
then there is different verb choice, and the least popular device is punning.

The pattern of results from Category 1 headlines is similar to Category 3 headlines

(Subject-Verb-Object with a modifier).

Categories 2 and 4 (Simple Subject-Verb/Modified Subject Verb) headlines display a

lower percentage of punning but display a higher figure for different verb choice.

In Categories 5 and 6 which were focused on either individual team members/actions

of the team or the consequences of the game the different types of verbs were not
analysed. This is because the study was interested in the types of verbs used to
describe winning/losing and categories 5 and 6 were not necessarily concerned with
winning/losing.

When the categories were combined there was still a different verb used in almost
every 2 headlines.

Implications

 There are a lot of different words we can use to describe winning or losing.
(The Semantic Categorgy of winning and losing)
 When creating headlines writers appear to be borrowing words from other
categories e.g. "Cooks" to describe winning and losing. This happends
frequently, in nearly every other headline.

So, are there already lots of verbs to describe winning and losing?
OR

Are sports writers using older words in a more modern way to describe winning and
losing?

Results: Scaling of verbs

Scaling is something that we do naturally. For example, there are different scales
relating to how "people percieve psychological differences in weights, times colours
or smells"[1]

In this study numerical values can be assigned to headlines in order to work out how
verbs relating to winning or losing are scaled in the minds of sports writers.
Each headline has 2 sets of numbers associated with it:

1. The margin of victory

2. The handicap of a team (how likley it is that a particular team will win or lose)

The researchers calculated the average margin of victory along with how much a team
was favoured to win in relation to each verb used.
To analyse the scaling of verbs the results were put into a table. This reveals
that there is an element of psychological scaling at work in sports headlines.

When a team barley wins (are at a lower end of the margin of victory) the verbs use
suggest survival or avoidance of control: held off, shade, elude, slip past.

When a team wins with a larger margin of victory the verbs used represent large
scale destruction: swamp, erupt, bury, demolish.

If the margin of victory is between these 2 extremes the verbs used represent varying
degrees of control: snare, deck, jolt.

From this analysis we can see that verbs are not chosen at random, or simply because
they work in an alliterative manner or are convenient for punning. The choice of verb
is mainly influenced by the margin of victory and the knowledge about which team is
more favoured to win.

Analysis of the data reveals that verbs from different semantic fields of human
activity are being used to stand in for more common verbs to do with "winning"

The Semantic categories which most often characterise the domain of winning/losing
are:

 Action/activity/destruction e.g. burst, drop, flatten = An impressive win

 Avoidance e.g. hold off, repel = A less impressive win[1]

Conclusion
This study reveals that a words semantic meaning is more complex than simply the
word itself. The words in the phrase/sentence can effect or influence the meaning of
an individual word.

The study also raises questions about how creative use of language can change a
words meaning in a more long term way.

For example, King & Montgomery state "decimate originally meant the killing of every
tenth person, a punishment often inflicted by Roman Generals upon capturing
populations or armies. However because the killing of one tenth would still be a blood
bath, the meaning of decimate has evolved to a broader sense of 'to destroy or kill a
large part." [1]

This highlights how the semantics or a word can change, and that meaning is more
complex than we may have first expected.

References
[1]
Smith, M.K and Montgomery, M. B., (1989). 'The Semantics of Winning and Losing'. Language in Society. 18 (1). pp.

31-57. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4168000 [Accessed 11.05.2012].

[2]
Oxford English Dictionary Online (2012). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available

at: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/239295?redirectedFrom=psycholinguistics#eid [Accessed 13.05.2012].

Sociolinguistics

Welcome to the fascinating, interesting, wonderful world of

SOCIOLINGUISTICS!

Sociolinguistics is basically the study of the effect that society has on language
use.
Below is a video with Sam Kirkham, a PhD student in Linguistics at the University
of Sheffield, explaining a little more...

What is Sociolinguistics?
Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society.
Sociolinguistics can help us understand why we speak differently in various social contexts,
and help uncover the social relationships in a community.

For example, you probably wouldn't speak the same to your boss at work as you would your
friends, or speak to strangers as you would to your family.

Sociolinguistics may also wonder whether women and men speak the same as each other.
Or why do people the same age or from the same social class or same ethnicity use similar
language?
Sociolinguistics attempts to explain all these questions and more.
Ultimately, sociolinguistics is everywhere!

To explain all these questions there are many KEY TERMS:

different micro and macroapproaches of sociolinguistics such as: Language performance
A speakers actual use of
 Interactional Sociolinguistics
language in actual
 Variationist Sociolinguistics
 Historical sociolinguistics situations
 Dialectology - this is equally similar to the study of differentVarieties Macro - large scale
of English Micro - small scale
 Discourse Analysis
Conversation analysis -
 Conversation Analysis
 Language planning and policy Study of talk interaction
[1]
Dialectology - The
branch of linguistics
Sociolinguistics is a move towards studying language performance, and concerned with the study
there are two arguments on why this should be studied within language: of dialects.

 Language is an interactive and cultural phenomenon which should be

studied.
 Actual language use is highly structured and not at a random.

These arguments split into two strands of sociolinguistics:

 Interactional Sociolinguistics
 Variationist Sociolinguistics
References
Information extracted from Holmes, J., (2001). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

[1]
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+dialectology&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-

GB:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=1yM&rls=org.mozilla:en-

GB:official&q=dialectology&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=EEHNT-

2tIYXqOa7lvfUP&ved=0CGMQkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=8c94bba531e6309e&biw=1024&bih=497

How is Sociolinguistics studied?

1. General facts about the study of sociolinguistics
 There are two approaches to the study of sociolinguistics 'micro' and 'macro'.
 Sociolinguistics focuses on 'linguistic performance'.
 It is studied in relation to the actual language that is produced and the way it is used in its wider social context.
 As a fairly new discipline areas of inquiry in the past primarily studied language in relation to 'linguistic
competence'.

KEY TERMS
Linguistic Competence:Knowledge of grammar
Linguistic Performance:Use of language
I-Language: Internal system in the mind
E-Language: External reflection of language
Observers Paradox: People alter their speech when they are aware they are being observed
Independent variables:The thing that changes in order to test/ measure the dependent variable
Dependent variables: The phenomenon that is being measure i.e. point of interest to researcher
Matched guise test:Recording of the same speaker using more than one answer. Sample/informants answers a attitudinal focused questionnaire
Verbal guise test: A range of speakers reading the same passage. Informants assess each speaker in a questionnaire
Vernacular: A dialect spoken in a certain region normally by ordinary people
Micro Sociolinguistics Macro Sociolinguistics
The social and linguistic influence on Studies about language
specific linguistic features. They look andcommunication more generally.
at individual differences and the way Look at language data on a wider
they are used e.g. the variation scale which leads to generalisations
between 'singing' and 'singin''. [4] and conclusions to be identified e.g.
the choices made about
conversational structure.[4]

Competence Vs Performance

Competence: Study of language in relation to:

 Linguistics Competence
 I - Language
Noam Chomsky argued that the focus of linguistics should address the innate capacity humans have of language. He
proposed his theory of 'Universal Grammar' which he defined as "The systems of principles, conditions and rules that
are elements of properties of all languages... The essence of human language" (Chomsky: 1976)

Performance: Study of language in relation to:

 Linguistics Performance
  E - Language
The way language is used in social and cultural contexts is structured in a way to fulfill particular social goals.

2. Methods and Applications

The focus for a linguistic study must have a purpose and that purpose must be to answer a particular linguistic or social
question. The way in which it is studied is through sociolinguistic theory and linguistic data, however any conclusions that
are drawn from this must be based on empirically tested evidence to be of any sociolinguistic significance.[4]

So, how do sociolinguists collect speech data for scientific and empirical analysis?

 Ethnographic Observation (Interactional):

Fieldwork conducted within a community to study the linguistic behaviors between different cultures and social
groups through observation and interpretation by which a recoding device is used to document the findings. This
type of observation strives to collect natural speech data and uncover what social factors may influence it e.g.
age, gender, social class, ethnicity etc. Language can be extremely dependent on social context for example we
manipulate our speech depending on the receiver, so in other words we wouldn't speak to our manager or work
colleague in the same way we might talk to a friend or family member.
However one problem in trying to elicit natural speech data when they know they are being observed is
labelled 'observers paradox' which refers to the presence of the observer affecting the language produced, the
speaker may become self-conscious which raises the question, how natural is the speech data? One way to
overcome this problem is by conducting research using the sociolinguistic interview developed by William
Labov.[3]
 The Sociolinguistic Interview (Variationist):
This sort of methodology is used to collect different styles of speech in the format of an interview. Examples of
speech data are elicited by either reading a passage, reading a word list, reading minimal pairs or through an
emotionally driven interview.[3]
Participants are generally less self-conscious and pay less attention to their speech when they become involved in
an emotionally engaging narrative. They become so immersed in the content of what they are saying they almost
forget that they are being observed therefore producing more natural spontaneous speech for example "Have you
ever been emotionally, verbally or physically attacked?"
 Statistics and Questionnaires
Statistics enables the researcher to quantify masses amounts of data and find out what they mean by using numbers.[2] A
understanding of statistical depends on four notions:
1. Population: This is also referred to as a sample which consists of people that are important to a researcher based
on some quality, which is usually a demographic quality such as gender, age, ethnicity etc.
2. Characteristic: Some sort of characteristic of the population e.g. linguistic diversity. Another name for a
characteristic is a variable and there are two different sorts - 'independent variables' and'dependent variables'.[2]
3. Quantification: This is a way of measuring the data. For example 'matched guise questionnaires'and 'verbal guise
tests' are helpful in finding out about attitudes towards language accent and dialect. Using questionnaires to find
out demographic information can reveal patterns between a demographic value e.g. social class, gender, age etc
and the variable under study.
4. Distribution: A way of calculating an average of the measurements (scores). Descriptive statistics is useful in
finding out the distributions within a set of data as it calculates the mean (adding the scores for every person
within the sample then dividing it by the total number of the sample size) and the standard deviation (how the
scores are positioned in relation to the mean e.g. a small standard deviation means they are close to the mean
and a large standard deviation means that they are more widespread i.e. a few further away from the mean).[2]

3. An example study: "Linguistic variation and social function" by Jenny Cheshire

If you would like to find out more about methods and applications in practice please see further An example study:
"Linguistic variation and social function" by Jenny Cheshire to find out what her findings were.

References
[1]
Cheshire, J., (1982). 'Linguistic Variation and Social Function'. In: Romaine, S. (ed). Sociolinguistic Variation in Speech Communities. London: Edward Arnold Ltd. pp.153-166.
[2]
Fasold, R., (1984). The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd.
[3]
Spolsky, B., (1998). Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[4]
Wardhaugh, R., (2006). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell publishing Ltd.

Who does Sociolinguistics?

As Sociolinguistics is such a broad topic, many people are taking an interest into it today.
You and the community you live in will relate to sociolinguistics, because you alter your
language depending on who you talk to. This variation doesn't make you a sociolinguist
personally, but it gives researchers a focus of study when researching this discipline, as
many peope wonder what are the causes for variation within speech.

KEY TERMS
Variationist Sociolinguistics-
Strand of Sociolinguistics which is
interested in looking at social
variation within dialects and
examine how variation is rule
governed.
Interactional Sociolinguistics-
Strand of Sociolinguistics which
looks at different styles of
interaction by speech
communities.
Labov, Eckert and Gumperz and Hymes are just a few examples of researchers who study
sociolinguistic. The difference between variationist and interactional sociolinguistics will
become clear as you come across other pages in the sociolinguistics section, but the key terms
box in the right hand side gives a simple definition of what they are.
For more examples of Labovs research it might be worth while checking out Example
Research: William Labov, New York City and Example Research: William Labov, Martha's
Vineyard, which goes more indepth into Labovs contribution to Sociolinguistics.

For an example of Eckerts research check out Example Research: Penelope Eckert, high school
ethnography which goes more indepth into Eckerts and Variationist's contribution to
Sociolinguistics.

Further examples of people working on these approaches, but in sheffield, includes Professor
Joan Beal, who's study of the language used in the Arctic Monkeys (a band from Sheffield)
songs represents a change in language between different generations. This shows that age has
an influence on spoken language.

References
[1]
Gumperz, J.J. and Hymes, D., (eds). (1972). Directions in Sociolinguistics:The Ethnography of Communication. New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

When is Sociolinguistics studied?

KEY TERMS
Dialectology
The scientific study of dialects and their associated features
Language Contact
When different languages, accents and dialects come into contact. This was very common during the 19th and 20th centuries as ease of travel
improved national and international relations.
Language Planning
When deliberate efforts are made to influence the function, structure and acquisition of languages within a speech community (this is normally
influenced by government- for example after the second World War, the modernisation of countries generated significant language planning)
Philology
The historical and comparative approach to studying written and spoken language

Speech Variations
Language differences between individuals, and how we all speak differently. This is a mixture of sociological, psychological, physiological and
linguistic factors.
Sociolinguistics dates back millenia, with basic studies conducted into Indian language variation in
relation to society dating as far back as 50BC! Humans have forever used language as a form of
communication- whether spoken, written, drawn, signed or printed.[1] But how were these social
norms of behavioural communication established in the first place? Sociolinguistics aims to
uncover the tangible relationship between society and language through historical consideration.
There is a long tradition in the general study of dialects, word meaning and culture,
and sociolinguistics is by no means a modern day phenomenon.

Sociolinguistics, as a science and widespread interest, has a relatively modern history in regards to its
contemporary academic study by scholars and students alike. Sociolinguistics as a sub discipline of linguistics began to emerge
[2]
towards the end of the 18th century, and into the beginning of the 19th century. Sociolinguistics became a primary focus of
th
linguistics, as academic study moved from the scientific approaches to the study of language of the 18 century, onto a more
philosophical, evolutionary approach which considered the social factors affecting language. Prior to this, language was seen as a
fixed entity, controlled entirely by the human mind, and the social aspects of language were disregarded. This differing approach to
[2]
the study of language was due to the increase of language contact and language planning.
The 19th and 20th centuries bought about sociolinguistic study intodialectology, involving
dialect surveys of different languages, as well asphilology, involving historically comparing
different languages, relying mainly on written language. Culture, ideas, discoveries and
institutions which emerged in the 19th century cumulated to form sociolinguistics as we know it
today. In the modern sense, it was Indian and Japanese linguists who first conducted study into
this relationship between language and society in the 1930s. However, it wasn‟t until 1952 that
the term ‘sociolinguistics’ was coined a term in a work by linguist Haver. C. [3] who lead
an investigation into speech in relation to social status. Western scholars, such as Labov and
Bernstein became interested in the study in the 1960s, conducting significant scholarly research
into the discipline of sociolinguistics. In the last few decades sociolinguistics has been one of the
main growth areas in the study of language, from both teaching and researching perspectives.[4]

References
[1]
Fisherman, J. A., (1971). Advances in the Sociology of Language
[2]
Williams, G., (1992). Sociolinguistics; A Social Critique. London: Routledge.
[3]
Dittmar, N., (1976). Sociolingistics; A Critical Survey of Theory and Application. London: Edward Arnold.
[4]
Hudson. R. A., (1980). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[5]
Chambers, J.K and Trudgill, P., (1998). Dialectology. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Where is sociolinguistics studied?

There were some VERY early studies conducted on language variation in relation to society in India as long India
ago as 5 BCE, 50 BCE and 500 CE.[1]
Research into dialectology (dialect differences, so words and grammar differences) was also conducted in
the late 1800s in Germany.[2] Germany
However, it wasn’t until the 20th century that America became the location for development and expansion
upon the viewpoint that the focus of linguistic research should be on actual language productions
(PERFORMANCE) of the speaker.
The key researchers behind interactional sociolinguistics, John J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes, both worked in United
States
the USA in the 1960s and produced their pivotal publication ‘Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography
of Communication’ (1972).[3]

The key researcher, and a name you’ll hear a lot in this topic, William Labov, also started his research into
variationist sociolinguistics in USA. This strand of sociolinguistics began in 1963 with Labov’s fundamental
study into phonological (pronunciations/ accent) variation in Martha’s Vineyard, USA. He began his research
at the University of Columbia [4] and currently pursues research into sociolinguistics, language change and
dialectology at the linguistic department at the University of Pennsylvania.[5]

Labov’s work did raise some concerns and provoked the research of Penelope Eckert into the influence of
friends on the language we use by observing friendship groups in a Detroit school. She received her PhD in
linguistics from the University of Columbia [6] – where she was a student of Labov’s – and continues her
research into variationist sociolinguistics at Stanford University, California.[7]

References
[1]
McConnell, Grant D., (1991). A Macro-Sociolinguistic Analysis of Language Vitality: Geolinguistic Profiles and Scenarios
of Language Contact in India.Sainte-Foy, Cananda: Les Presses de l'Universite Laval.
[2]
Chambers, J.K & Trudgill, P., (1998). Dialectology. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3]
Gumperz, J. J. and Hymes, D., (eds) (1972). Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. New
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
[4]
Columbia Linguistics Society, 'William Labov' (n.d.) <http://columbialinguistics.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/430-william-
labov/>[Accessed 31.05.2012].
[5]
University of Pennsylvania, 'William Labov' (n.d) http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/ [Accessed 16.05.2012].
[6]
Academic Room, 'Penelope Eckert' (n.d.) <http://www.academicroom.com/users/penelope-eckert> [Accessed
31.05.2012]
[7]
Stanford University, 'Penelope Eckert' (n.d) <http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/> [Accessed 17.05.2012].

Why is Sociolinguistics studied?

Sociolinguistics looks at the relationship between language use and social behaviours.

As mentioned in earlier sections, sociolinguistics is interested in explaining reasons for speaking differently in different
social situations and how language is used to convey a social meaning.Language is constantly used in spoken and written
forms. Behaviour towards language is a concern shared on an international level by political and educational leaders, as
well as the general public, so sociolinguistics is often seen in the headlines.
KEY TERMS
Lingua Franca
A language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.
There are endless examples of social behaviour towards language and language users; including Welsh nationalists covering up
English signs along Welsh roads. Sociolinguistics became more applicable to the interest of the ordinary person in the 1960s when
linguists, focusing in the sociolinguistic field, turned their attention to language variation.

Welsh signs

The media's promotion of sociolinguistics creates a buzz of interest around the topic, leading the public to take an interes
into sociolinguistics. An example of this is an interest in accents used in broadcasting, including the move from Received
Pronunciation to a variety of accents and dialects in television broadcasting.

Sociolinguistics is now a recognised part of 'linguistics' and 'language' modules in most courses at university level.
Language is an important means of establishing and maintaining relationships and provides a way for humans
to subconsciously read peers. Examining the way in which people use language in different social contexts can begin to
explain how language works and the workings of social relationships in a community.

The consideration of spoken communication enables a student of sociolinguistics to discover certain information about
the speaker from their language, without direct questioning, this includes sex, approximate age, regional and ethnic
origins, level of education and their attitude to the listener.Further to this, the study of language and identity, an aspect
of sociolinguistics, allows the application of sociolinguistics to everyday life.References
Giglioli, P. P., (1972) Language and Social Context. Australia: Penguin Books.
Holmes, J., (1992). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. New York: Longman Publishing.
Hudson, R. A., (1980). Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Todd, L., (1987). An Introduction to Linguistics. Essex: Longman Group Limited.
Trask, R. L., (1995). Language: The Basics. London: Routledge.
Trudgill, P., (1974). Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin Group.

The Sociolinguistic Variable

"It begins with the simple act of noticing a variation - that there are two
alternative ways of saying the same thing" [1]

Labov's quote here is pretty self-explanatory of what sociolinguistic variation is: it is

simply different words, sounds and language people use to explain the same thing.

These variants (different ways/ 'realisations' of saying the same thing) can
be lexical (words) or phonetic (sounds of the letters in the word).

What sociolinguistics are interested in is seeing which variants are used, and deemed
more appropriate for use, in certain social contexts.

References
[1]
Labov, W., (2008). Quantitative Reasoning in Linguistics. Available
from: <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/Papers?QRL.pdf> [Accessed 08.05.2012]

Example Research - Jenny Cheshire

"Linguistic variation and social function" by Jenny Cheshire
KEY TERMS
Vernacular: A dialect spoken in a certain region normally by ordinary people

Participant Observation:Researcher observes by being involved in the social practices of a particular culture or sub-culture

Overview:
Cheshire was interested in finding out how frequent nine non-standard features were in adolescents within the Reading
variety of English. Her findings of this study reveal "the extent to which they adhere to norms of
thevernacular culture" [1] but also illustrates how linguistic variables (features) are sometimes used to "fulfill social and
semantic functions".[1]

Non-standard feature Example Class

1 Present tense suffix with non-standard 3rd person singular "we goes shopping on Saturdays" A
subjects
2 Has with non-standard 3rd person singular subjects "we has a little fire, keeps us warm" A

3 Was with plural subjects "they was outside" A

4 Multiple negation "I'm not going nowhere" A
5 Negative past tense never, used for standard English didn't "I never done it, it was him" B

6 What used for standard English who, whom, "There's a knob what you turn" B
which and that
 7 Auxiliary do with 3rd person singular subjects "How much do he want for it" C

8 Past tense come "I come down here yesterday" C

9 ain't used for negative present tense with all subjects "I ain't going" C
[1]

The data:
 Recorded natural speech in Reading over a period of 8 months.
 Conducted participant observation to collect the data.
 There were thirteen adolescent boys and thirteen adolescent girls.
 The participants that were chosen were notorious for truancy and missing school therefore representing a
"delinquent subculture".[1]
Labov argues that "the use of non-standard features is controlled by the norms of the vernacular subculture". [1] In this
case the 'norms' associated with the sample under study were well defined, therefore used as 'indicators' to show a
'vernacular subculture' which are as follows:[1]

a) Trouble
b) Excitement
c) Skill at fighting
d) The carrying of a weapon
e) Participation in minor criminal activities

Cheshire also took into account the kind of jobs that were acceptable and unacceptable to have after the group had
finished school, style as marking of status or value in subcultures, and lastly swearing as a measure of vernacular
identity.[1]

Main Findings: Linguistic adherence to vernacular subculture

"Adherence to vernacular culture and frequency of concurrence of non-standard forms" (Cheshire 1982: 156)

Frequency of non-standard forms

The boys were divided into four groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the basis of which boys adhered to the vernacular culture on the
grounds of the indicators mentioned above. Group 1 had the most adherence whilst group 4 had the least. Groups 2 and
were in the middle.

Conclusions
As you can see from the graph above the group with the most adherence to the vernacular subculture were the group
who most frequently used the non-standard features, where as the group who least adhered to the vernacular culture
less frequently used the non-standard features. This ultimately shows that language performance is highly structured, the
boys that were involved in criminal activities, carrying of a weapon, who chose acceptable jobs such as slaughtering or
lorry driving and so on were the boys that used the non-standard features most frequently (group 1).
References
[1]
Cheshire, J., (1982). 'Linguistic Variation and Social Function'. In: Romaine, S. (ed) Sociolinguistic Variation in Speech Communities. London: Edward Arnold Ltd. pp. 153-166.

Example Research: William Labov, New York

City
American sociolinguist, William Labov, carried out research in New York City in 1962. He looked at thepronunciation of
/r/ in the middle, and at the end of words for example car and heart.
The New York accent is a non-rhotic accent, unlike most American accents, meaning that the /r/ is not pronounced, just
as in most British varieties of English; hence /ca:/, as can be heard below.
The phonemic representation for a rhotic pronunciation of car is [car]:
Car by AllAboutLinguistics

Whereas the phonemic representation for a non-rhotic pronunciation of car is [ca:]:

Ca: by AllAboutLinguistics

Labov believed that the higher the social class of a speaker, the more frequent the occurrence of rhotic /r/ in speech.

Labov's sample of participants included a variety of social classes. He conducted the study in three department
stores: Saks Fifth Ave (the highest social ranking), Macy's (middle social ranking), and S. Klein (lowest social ranking) to
collect his ranging sample.

Saks Fifth Ave

Labov looked for positions where /r/ could occur in speech and noted each instance of the occurrence of when it was
pronounced; as in [car].
He collected data through a variety of methods including, asking participants to read a word list and apassage, and
an informal interview; this was to try and collect natural speech in the interview and the carefully considered speech in
the reading of lists and passages.

Labov found a higher use of rhoticity in all social classes when reading the word list as opposed to in an interview. Labov
concluded from these findings that rhoticity appears to be related to social status. From a sociolinguistic point of view,
this tells us that rhoticity in New York is an important, useful indicator of social status.

References
Thomas, L. et al., (2004). Language, Society and Power: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Labov, W., (1966). The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Example Research: Penelope Eckert, high

school ethnography
Year of study: 2000
Research Method: 'Ethnography'
Outcome: Shared social practices more influential than social status
Influential? Work popularised ethnography and looking at social practice in Variationist sociolinguistics
KEY TERMS
Social Practice: the shared activity speakers engage in together

Ethnography: a study method involving detailed observation

Penelope Eckert's input into sociolinguistic research emerged in response tocriticisms of William Labov's studies. People
questioned whether Labov's focus on people in terms of their demographic categories (age, gender, ethnicity, social class
was really the biggest influence on language use.

So along came Eckert with the idea of the role of social practice.
A 'social practice' is what we share when we, as speakers, engage in an activity together. So, if you and someone else you
know play football together, you are sharing a social practice.

What Eckert did in her research was define groups in terms of the social practices the speakers engaged in. She did this
by observing friendship groups in a school in Detroit; this method of detailed observation of a community is known
as ethnography.

What she established were two very different groups in the school, the jocks and the burnouts, each containing
individuals with a mix of social class (parental occupation, housing etc.)

The jocks were a group in the school who actively engaged in and enjoyed school life. The diagram below shows their key
characteristics.
The burnouts were quite the opposite of the jocks, choosing not to become involved and interactive with the goings-on o
the school and engaging in rebellious behavior.
Eckert found that people tend to speak more like their friends - those who shared social practices together - than others
belonging in the same demographic category as them, ie. social class.

Think for yourself - do you agree with Eckert?

If you had to observe the language of these two people from two very different social groups (so don't share social
practices), but from the same social demographic (age, ethnicity, class), what would you expect the result to be?

Would you expect the speech of the girl in the top picture to be greatly different from the speech of the boy in the
bottom picture? Would you expect the topic of conversation to be about school in a negative or positive way? Who do
you think would be more polite and respectful towards others?
References
Eckert, P., (1989). Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School. New York: Teachers College Press.
Eckert, P., (2000). Linguistic Variation as Social Practice: The Linguistic Construction of Identity in Belten High. Malden. MA: Blackwell.

Example Research: William Labov, Martha's

Vineyard

Martha's Vineyard, Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts

In 1963, William Labov conducted research in to phonological change What is Phonetics? Labov was an
American Linguist- someone who has an interest in the study of LanguagesWhat is Phonetics? The research was carried
out at a place called Matha's Vineyard (hence the name of the study) which is a small island off the North east coast of
America. At the time, the island had a population of approximately 5,800, however it is important to note that during the
summer months this figure would swell as it was a popular holiday resort for up to 60,000 Americans.

Research (population and method)

KEY TERMS
Diphthong
Two vowel sounds occuring in the same syllable e.g cow, eye

Centralised diphthong
Diphthongs articulated with the tongue body in the centre of the mouth

Demand Charactieristics
A demand characteristic is a subtle cue that makes participants aware of what the experimenter expects to find or how participants are expected to behave. Demand characteristi
can change the outcome of an experiment because participants will often alter their behavior to conform to the experimenters expectations

Dialect
A variety of langauge distingused from other varieties of the same langauge by features of phonology, grammar and vocabulary. A dialect is distinguished by its speakers, and thei
geographic and social whereabouts

Phonological Change
Any sound change which alters the number or distribution of phonemes in a language over time

Labov focused his research on the /au/ and /ai/ vowel sounds, in words such as mouse and mice,
which in linguistic terms is called a diphthong. Labov interviewed 69 people, each from different
age, ethnic and social groups as to get a representative sample. Rather than getting his
informants to read simple word lists, Labov used an interview technique to subtly encourage the
participants to say the words containing the vowels which he wished to study. By using this
research method Labov tried to avoid demand characteristicsand make the conversation as
natural as possible so that the participants didn't necessarily know what Labov was looking for...

(Example questions from Labov's interviews)

 "When we speak of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, what does right
mean? ... Is it in writing?"
 "If a man is successful at a job he doesn't like, would you still say he was a successful
man?''
(These kind of questions subconsciously urge the participants to use words which contained the
desired vowels, such as life, might, right, both of which contain the diphthongs which Labov
was interested in)
 Findings

As a result, Labov found that the pronunciation of certain vowel sounds were sublty changing and
differentiating from the standard American pronunciationsand noted that locals had a tendency to
pronounce these diphthongs with a more central point, more like [əu, əi].

 Fishermen centralize /au/ and /ai/ more than any other occupational group
(Most prominantley, a small group of fishermen which made up 2.5 percent of the population had began to exaggerate a
tendency already existing in their speech.This was subconsciously, in order to establish and identify themselves as
Vineyarders, an independent social group rejecting the norms of mainland America which was bought over by the summer
holiday makers)
 People of the age group 30- 60 tend to centralize diphthongs more than younger or older
people
(A move from the standard American norms emerged, particularly in the younger speakers of this bracket
bewteen the ages of 31-45, towards a pronunciation associated with the fishermen)
 Up-Islanders used the centralized diphthongs more than people living in the area of Down-
Island
(Down island (East) was much more densely populated and favoured by summer visitors, whilst Up island (West
had many more original inhabitants and was much more rural

Conclusions
A big factor to consider when discussing the cause of these differences in pronunciations
in Martha's Vineyard is largely down to the attitude of its inhabitants;
 The heaviest users of this type of centralised pronunciation of diphthongs were young men who sought to identif
themselves as native Vineyarders, rejecting the values and speech style of the mainland.
 The fishermen in particular also resented the influx of wealthy summer visitors and were antipathetic to their
prescence as they believed it enfringed on their traditional way of island life. This in turn encouraged the
Vineyarders to establish a somewhat non-standard dialect and retain their social identity.
 The tight knit community subconsciously ensured that they created a linguistic divide between themand us. The
fishermen were seen to epitomise desirable values, which in turn caused other Vineyarders to adhere to a similar
style of pronunciation.
 For these Vineyarders, the new pronunciation was an innovation. As more and more people came to speak in the
same way, the innovation gradually became the norm for those living on the island and was established as a
dialect.
 Therefore, there seems to be enough evidence to state that generations, occupations
or social groups might be a big factor in language use as a sociolinguistic consideration.
A suitable hypothesis for further investigation is "People with a more posotive attitude towards Martha's Vineyard would
show more centralization than people who had a negative attitude towards it"

References
Gardiner, A., (2008). Revision Express, English Language. New edition. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Syntax
Syntax is all about the structure of sentences, and what determines which words go where. Studying syntax allows us
to define descriptive rules about how language works. It is the aim of syntacticians to find out the factors involved in
grammar, more specifically in regards to certain languages. Ultimately it is believed that there are such rules that apply to
all languages, which is why it is important to study as many different languages as possible.

The main characteristics taken into account in syntax are morphology (the structure of language and thesounds it uses)
and the principles which govern sentence construction. Syntax also notes the differences between written and spoken
language, as spontaneous speech will often ignore standard structural rules. By studying syntax you will learn about
different parts of speech, including just how many types of verbs there are, and many mind-boggling structural
phenomena such as why the location of contextual information determines who a pronoun is really talking about.

What Is Syntax?
So, what is syntax? You’ve probably heard of it before, but never really known what it was. Syntax is
basically the structure of sentences. Sentences have to follow certain structural rules in order to make
sense. You can’t just throw any words together to make a sentence!
Order words make sense need to… this doesn‟t make sense!
Words need order to make sense…. Ahh! Much better!
So what is the structure of a sentence? How do we know what is supposed to go where? We all
have tacit knowledge of sentence structure. This means we seem to instinctively know things but can't
quite explain them. We can tell the first sentence doesn’t make any sense, but the second sentence is
perfectly fine. So let’s investigate what sentences are made up of in order to understand the structure.

Phrases
Sentences are made up of smaller phrases. There are several difference types of phrase that can
be used in a sentence, but the two phrases which must be used in a sentence for it to make sense
are a noun phrase and a verb phrase.
In a phrase, we must have a word which is called the head. This is the core of the phrase, what the
phrase can’t exist without. So in a phrase like ‘the dog’ or ‘ran far away’, in the first phrase ‘dog’ is the
head because it is the main part of the phrase, and in the second phrase ‘ran’ is the head because it is
essential for the phrase to exist. We can have ‘dog ran’, which isn’t grammatical, but this still makes
sense since we can understand that the dog ran. But we can’t have ‘the far away’, this makes no sense
to us!

Modifiers

So „the‟ and „far away‟ have to be given a name to distinguish them from the head. We call these
modifiers. They modify the head and give it specific meaning. The determiner „the‟ modifies
the „dog‟ because it lets us know which dog we are referring to. The phrase „far away‟ modifies
the verb „ran‟ by letting us know the extent to which the dog ran.
Don‟t worry, this will all become a lot easier with some practise. Let‟s look at some types of
phrases now!

Noun Phrase
A noun phrase is usually the person or thing that is performing the verb in the sentence. It may
also be the person or thing that the verb is being done to in a sentence.
The person doing the verb in a sentence is known as the subject. For example, in the sentence
„Tom pushed the car‟, 'Tom' is the subject of the sentence as he is pushing the door. 'The car' is
the object in the sentence as the door is the object that the verb is being done to. Both of these are
noun phrases.
A noun phrase has to be made up of a noun, such as a name or a tangible object. Sometimes, a
determiner is needed in a noun phrase, for example ‘a cat’, ‘the dog’. 'A' and 'The' are called
determiners because they tell us which person or thing is involved in the sentence.

Syntax Trees

To explain sentence structures, we draw trees. Sounds silly, right? You‟ll soon find out that it's a
lot more complicated than it looks. Let‟s start with this noun phrase. We know a noun phrase is
made up of a determiner and a noun. First, we must label what parts of speech each of these are.

Next, we can draw two lines to join them together, creating a noun phrase!

If we look at a proper noun, we find it is a little bit different. A proper noun does not need a
determiner, so we can go straight to making it another noun phrase!

Now, we can draw noun phrases for both 'Tom' and 'The Car' in our sentence! But we aren’t quite
finished yet, now we need to talk about verb phrases.

Verb Phrases
Now that we have made some noun phrases, we can move on to verb phrases. The good news is
a basic verb phrase can be made up of one word. The bad news is not every sentence has a basic
verb phrase. For now let's look at the basic verb phrase.
So we‟ve looked at the noun phrases of this sentence, now how does the verb phrase fit in? Well
first, we identify the verb and label its part of speech.

Next, we can label it as a verb phrase. This is connected to the noun phrase 'The Car', so we
connect them and write the label above. But why is this the case?
We need to link all of this together. In this sentence, we must join up all of the phrases to make a tree
that says 'Sentence' at the top. But we can’t just simply join up the lines, we need a structure! In order
to figure out the structure, we need to look at constituents and relationships in a tree next.

Constituents
So, what is a constituent? A constituent is a word or a group of words that function together as a
unit. Don‟t be worried, this sounds scary but it‟s actually really easy! We can figure out what
words or groups of words are constituents by performing tests on them. There are four tests
which can be used on any suspected constituent. These are:
Omission – Create the same sentence but take away the word/words we are testing.
Replacement – Can we replace the word/words with just a single word?
Standalone – Can we form a question using the sentence, and the answer be the word/words
being tested?
Movement – Can we move the position of the word/words in the sentence and have the sentence
still make sense without changing the meaning?
Let‟s do some examples of these tests so you can see how they work.
First, omission. If we take the sentence „He sat down in the car‟, we can use the omission test to
figure out the constituents in the sentence. Let‟s take „in the car‟ as our constituent. If we take
this away, does the sentence still make sense grammatically?
„He sat down in the car.‟
„He sat down.‟
The sentence still makes sense. Therefore, „in the car‟ is likely to be a constituent; however we
can‟t be certain yet. It is always important to do more than one constituency test to figure out if
the word/words are constituents. It could pass one and fail the other three!
Next, let‟s do replacement. We take „He sat down in the car‟ and replace „in the car‟ with just
one word. Useful words to try and use in a replacement test are pronouns (he, she, it, this, that
etc).
„He sat down in the car.‟
„He sat down there.‟
The sentence makes sense once again! So ‘in the car’ has passed two constituency tests, but let’s try
another test first, just to make sure.
Time for the standalone test. We need to form a question using the rest of the sentence, and have the answer only be the
word/words we are testing.
„Where did he sit down?‟
„In the car.‟
Success! It surely must be a constituent now. But we‟ll do the final test just in case.
The final test is movement. Can we move the words we are testing to see if the sentence still makes sense?
„He sat down in the car.‟
„It was in the car that he sat down.‟
Once again the sentence makes sense. Now we have done these constituency tests, we know that „in the car‟ is a
constituent of the sentence „He sat down in the car.‟ But be careful, just because it is a constituent here does not
mean it is a constituent in every other sentence.

Relationships in Trees

So now we can identify constituents, let‟s go back to our tree. There are several important relationships in a synta
tree that we need to know about.

Domination – phrases can dominate words in a sentence tree. But how do we know which phrases dominate wha
A tree has a hierarchical structure, which means that a node or label dominates all that is below it. Sounds
complicated, huh? Just look at the picture below and we will explain everything.

We can see here that phrase A dominates phrase B and „in‟. We know this because phrase A is above phrase B an
is above the word „in‟. When a phrase is directly above something, we call this immediate domination. Phrase A
immediately dominates phrase B and „in‟, but it does not immediately dominate „the‟ or „car‟. But it is important
remember that even though it doesn't immediately dominate „the‟ or „car‟, it still dominates „the‟ and „car‟ becaus
is above them in the tree structure.

Naming Phrases
So, we looked before at verb phrases and noun phrases, but these aren‟t the only types of phrases you can have in
tree. We can also have adjective phrases, adverb phrases and prepositional phrases. We‟ll quickly talk about how
these are different to the other phrases.
Adjective Phrases - since phrases are named after the head, adjective phrases are simply phrases where the head
the phrase is an adjective. So for example the sentence „The big red car drove away‟ contains the adjective phras
'The big red car'. This includes the adjectives 'big' and 'red'.
An adjective phrase can contain more than one adjective, so we can make 'big red' into a phrase.

Next, we join this adjective phrase to the noun ‘car’ to make a noun phrase. But that's not all, since we have to add the
determiner ‘The’ to complete the phrase. From there we can continue to build up the tree.

Adverb Phrases - these work a lot like adjective phrases. They are found near to verbs (adverbs describe the ver
after all), such as „immediately‟ in the sentence „he sat down immediately‟. They are very easy to recognise, and
often form adverb phrases containing just one word: the adverb itself. But be careful, adverbs can appear in a
sentence and not be an adverb phrase! They are often used to modify an adjective, such as „the immediately
recognisable man‟. Here, the adverb „immediately‟ does not form an adverb phrase, but modifies the adjective in
adjective phrase „immediately recognisable‟.

Prepositional Phrases - another type of phrase that is very common in sentence structures. They may seem
complicated at first but they will get easier to recognise with some practise. If we take the sentence „The cat slep
the kitchen‟, we can break it down and analyse it to see where the prepositional phrase is.

Having labelled each word with its part of speech, we can see we have the preposition „in‟ in this sentence. So le
start putting it together. Hopefully by now, you can see that „the cat‟ is a noun phrase, and you can connect it. Yo
should have seen that „the kitchen‟ is also a noun phrase, and you can join it up as well.

Okay, so now let‟s join up „in‟. When we connect „in‟ and the noun phrase „the kitchen‟, we create a new phrase.
This phrase is immediately dominating the noun phrase and the preposition „in‟. Therefore, we have made a
preposition phrase. The noun phrase „the kitchen‟ is modifying the location of where the cat slept, meaning it is
modifying the word „in‟. So we know that „in‟ is the head of this phrase, making it a preposition phrase.

But we aren‟t quite finished yet! The preposition phrase „in the kitchen‟ modifies the verb „slept‟. So we now joi
the verb „slept‟ and the preposition phrase „in the kitchen‟ to make a new a phrase. Can you guess what phrase w
make here?

We make a verb phrase! This is because the verb is the head of the phrase and „in the kitchen‟ modifies it. So now
we have a noun phrase and a verb phrase left, and we can join them together to make a sentence.
Usually when you want to join a word to a phrase, the word you are adding will be the head of the phrase, meani
that whatever part of speech it is, the phrase will be named after that part of speech. So if we join a noun to an
adjective phrase, we will make a noun phrase. And if we join a verb to a noun phrase, we will make a verb phras

Co-ordinate Phrases
Co-ordinate phrases are rare phrases that do appear in English. You will have used them already, when you say
things like „fish and chips‟, „Max and Ben‟, and pretty much any situation where you join two nouns together usi
the conjunction „and‟. So how do we deal with these?

Here we have the sentence „Max and Ben ate their dinner.‟ We have labelled the words, and we can construct the
tree for the verb phrases, but we need to make a noun phrase for „Max and Ben‟. So how do we make the noun
phrase? Well, „Max‟ and „Ben‟ are both proper nouns, meaning that they don‟t need a determiner. So here we jus
simply join „Max‟, „and‟, and „Ben‟ together at the same time.

We can then label this as a noun phrase and join it to the verb phrase as a sentence!
But what if we don‟t have proper nouns? Let‟s take the sentence „The boy and the girl ate their tea.‟ Again, we fo
the verb phrase, but what do we do to make the noun phrase? If you can work it out now, write it down and then
check your answer with the tree below.

We created two separate noun phrases. We have the noun phrase „the boy‟ and the noun phrase „the girl‟, with „a
sitting in the middle of them. Now, we can join them up like we did with the proper nouns, making a noun phrase
that we can use to complete the sentence!

How Is Syntax Studied?

Two of the ways in which we can categorise Language studies are prescriptivism and descriptivism. The former is defining a set o
rules and using them as constraints, whereas the latter is merely observing language. The latter is the way in which syntax is studie
In order to get an insight into any area of Linguistics, it is important for the researchers to obtain samples, be they written, solicited,
 overheard or however you enjoy coming across your language (no judgements will be made). The sample is then transcribed for ease
and once that's done, the fun begins. It is parsed, as shown here.
What is interesting is that how these sentences are parsed may differ depending on the language. For instance, it would be clear to us
parse the sentence "I study linguistics" as having a noun phrase and a verb phrase. However, in Italian, the same sentence "studio la
linguistica" appears to have no initial noun phrase. This is because the "I" is encoded in the verb ending '-o'. In this case, it would be
analysed morphologically (about which you can find out more over here) ergo often it has to be considered in conjunction with synta
There are indeed theories which are seen by many (or indeed, very few) as encompassing all that is needed, the little cogs of which
merely need to be rearranged for each new language to fit. These view syntax as innately linked to one‟s psychology and as such are
studied in close quarters with the same.
One of the main theoretical approaches to syntax is Chomsky's Generative Grammar. Yep, he crops up everywhere. He's a busy guy.

Basically, this is formalising the rules we innately know as speakers of a language. These sets of rules can then be applied to a senten
to determine whether or not it is "grammatical". The theory is that this system would produce ALL and ONLY THOSE sentences wh
were syntactically feasible. Find out morehere.

References
Picture Credits

 Chomsky: http://www.ceasefiremagazine.co.uk

Who Does Syntax?

As syntax is one of the core foundations of all linguistic study, you can imagine there are countless linguists specialising in
this field. So here you will find a summary in chronological order of some of the main faces in syntax. This topic runs very
closely next to when is syntax studied, so make sure to take a look at the information on that page to understand the full
picture.
Wilhelm Humboldt (1767 to 1835)
Wilhelm Humboldt was the first European linguist to identify the human language as rule governed, rather than just
words and phrases which have meaning. This notion highly influenced Noam Chomsky's work, who often quoted
Humboldt's idea that language "makes infinite use of finite means", which means that any number of sentences can be
created using a restricted number of rules.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 to 1913)

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is an incredibly well known man in linguistics as he is considered to be one of the
most influential linguists of the 20th Century. His work, 'Cours de Linguistique Generale, mentioned in when is syntax
studied, is one of his best known works, compiled after his death. Which is generally thought to be the start 'structural
linguistics'.

Viggo Brondal (1887-1942)

Viggo Brondal, a Danish Philologist, alongsde Louis Hjemslev founded the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen. Hjemslev also
went on to found the journal 'Acta Linguistica' in 1939.
Noam Chomsky born 1928
'the father of modern linguistics'.

Roy Harris (born 1931)

Roy Harris is currently the professor of General Linguistics at Oxford University. Noam Chomsky was one of his students,
greatly influenced by Harris' ideas on 'transformational grammar'. To find out what he's doing now, check out his website
here http://www.royharrisonline.com/

References
Graffi, G., (2001). 200 Years of Syntax. A Critical Survey. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 98. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Picture Credits

chomsky:Andringje http://www.flickr.com/photos/69208326@N00/5523605498/
wilhelm humboldt & ferdinand de saussure: public domain

When Is Syntax Studied?

List of terms
head- the core of a phrase, in which the phrase can't exist without
phrase- a small group of words within a sentence or a clause
subject- part of the sentence (usually a noun or pronoun) which is performing the action
predicate- one of the two main parts of the sentence, along side the subject
direct object- a noun or pronoun in a sentence that receives the action of a verb
indirect object-A noun or pronoun that indicates to whom or for whom the action of a verb
in a sentence is performed.
i-language- a linguistic system which is internalised in the brain

References
Graffi, G., (2001). 200 Years of Syntax. A Critical Survey. Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 98. Amsterdam:
Benjamins.
Brown, K. and Miller, J., (1996). Concise Encyclopedia of Syntactic Theories. Oxford: Pergamon.

Picture Credits
  chomsky:Andringje http://www.flickr.com/photos/69208326@N00/5523605498/
 all other images: public domain

Where Is Syntax Studied?

Historically, it has been studied all over, starting with Pāṇini, a Sanskrit grammarian who wrote one of the first analyses o
syntax over 5000km from the native locale of grammaire générale and a good two millennia prior at that. Now, anywhere
with a university which has a Linguistics department is guaranteed to be full of students immersed in syntax.

Once we get down to it, it makes more sense for us to refer to syntax within the context of a particular language (for
example, in the first semester at the University of Sheffield, we looked at the syntax of English specifically as part of its
structure as a whole). Syntax, by this nature, is studied all over the world. In fact, it is such a core part of the way in which
language works, it’s also studied as part of many other disciplines of linguistics and indeed in other areas too, such as
politics, literature and psychology.

These might be familiar to you:

One example of this is those studying “Spanglish”; the mixing of Spanish and English in bilingual speakers where there is a
large population of both. This is an example of “code blending” and whilst there are no universally set rules, each speaker
employs her own syntactic constraints, which is what makes the phenomenon so fascinating. This is studied where it
occurs, such as in the south of the United States, around the borders, New York and Panama to name a few.

Why Is Syntax Studied?

So why do we even study syntax? We can all speak and understand each other; do we need to investigate how?
Well, yes! We are humans, it‟s in our nature to study things and understand how they work. So, whilst studying
languages and how they work, we must study syntax and sentence constructions!
Studying syntax is relevant to a lot of subject areas in linguistics. We must study syntax to understand how
children acquire their language, how they start constructing sentences and what stage do they learn the tacit
syntactic rules of the language. It‟s also good to study syntax so we can understand how bilingual and
multilingual speakers are able to construct their sentences despite having different structures for different
languages. The sentence structure isn‟t the same in English as it is in Japanese!
Studying syntax gives us many answers which are necessary for understanding how languages work, as well as
being the doorway to future research and theories on all aspects of linguistics!
We also study syntax to develop set rules and constraints on the language. We call these parameters. These
parameters limit what we can and can‟t do in a language, helping us establish an effective and working
communicative system. Some linguists believe that all languages have the same parameters. This idea is
called universal grammar, and was a theory developed by Chomsky in the 1960s. From these ideas of linguisti
parameters, we can learn, use and teach the correct way to make sentences. Basically, so we can all understand
each other!

Example Research

Syntax - The pillar of human language

What separates us from the animals? Why have humans been able to conquer the planet whereas no other animal hasn't? The answer is
of course language! "But hold on!" I hear you say, "We're not the only animals with language, whales sing to each other, dogs bark,
hyenas laugh and they all appear to understand one another." That is true, but these methods of communication are heavily simplified.
An animal call may mean 'There is food here' or 'Danger!' but what they lack is the ability to put these sounds together to form
complicated meanings.
Even if animals were able to do this, we would encounter another problem as to how to interpret these new complicated meanings.
What would the sounds for 'food here' and 'danger' together mean? Dangerous food? Food is here but there is also a leopard in the
bushes? This is where syntax comes in.

Syntax essentially categorises words, fills in the gaps and makes a group of words make sense. Every human in the world
uses the same syntactic structure to communicate with other humans, the only difference is the sounds that are
produced. This isn't to be confused with the order of where words appears such as Subject-Verb-Object compared to
Subject-Object-Verb in Japanese for example, as all languages contain nouns, verbs, prepositions, inflections etc. no
matter where they come in the sentence, they are still present. So there is clearly an underlying system that all humans
can understand and acquire.

So where is this stepping stone between one sound calls and a complex sentences? How did humans get here? Bickerton refers to the
case of Genie, a girl who had had no communication with anyone due to her father imprisoning her from the age of 18 months until
she was found years later at the age of 13. She had missed the critical age of of between 18 months and 3 years where she children
usually acquire an adult language (see language acquisition). When she was found she didn't know how to speak English at all. Even
after a long time of treatment from speech therapists and linguistic experts, she only managed to gain a very simple version of English
Her sentence's consisted of noun and verb or adjective and noun, occasional strung together and even more rarely with adverbs and
certain prepositions. Here's an example:
G: Genie have yellow material at school.
M: What are you using it for?
G: Paint. Paint picture. Take home. Ask teacher yellow material. Blue paint. Yellow green paint. Genie have blue material. Teacher
said no. Genie use material paint. I want use material at school.

He had expected her to either fully learn human language as someone might learn a 2nd language, or not be able to learn one at
all. Bickerton found it strange that the girl had developed a kind of proto, or base language. This form of speaking is actually more
common than you might think. If you've ever been on holiday to a country whose language you can't speak, you may have found
yourself trying to talk like this to get your point across. protolanguage is the most basic form of language, where the mere sounds of
words begin to form meanings when combined together.

There is still the issue of how language moved from the protolanguage structure to the syntactical structure. The answer lies in
explicity, or being as clear as possible. If a child were to say to you 'no socks!' how would you interpret it? That the child isn't wearing
socks? They do not own any socks? They don't want to wear socks? They don't want you to wear socks? There are too many ways for
the sentence to be interpreted. By adding new phrases to the sentence the meaning becomes narrowed down. The actual meaning in
this instance is 'I don't want to wear socks'. If we are to break it down, you can see it is rather difficult to not understand. The noun
phrase I refers to the speaker, don't is a combination of the verb to do and a negative, want to ties to don't to form the negative of
want, wear shows what what not/to do with the object, and finally socks the object of the sentence. Everything
from don't towear tells us something about the socks in relation to the child. A lot better and surprisingly, easier to understand than
simply 'no socks!'!
  Adapted from: Bickerton D. (1990) Language and Species The University of Chicago press

One of the most interesting aspects of the English language is the ability to change the
order of words and still end up with the same meaning such as 'John bought a book' and
'A book was bought by John'. You may recognise these as the active and the passive forms of a sentence,
the passive sentence being the one where the object is given more emphasis than the subject as opposed to the
standard subject-verb-object. But if we can easily shift the object and subject around, how do we recognise which
one is which in any given sentence?
The key actually lies with the verb. If we want to say that a hearty chuckle was let out by John at someone called
Mary (in far less words of course!) we might say 'John laughed at Mary'. Here, laughedacts as a bridge between
Mary and John indicating that what comes before the verb acts on what comes after the verb. This is called
a transitive verb. If we were to swap the subject and verb however we come up with 'at Mary laughed John' we
have a sentence which kind of makes sense, but doesn't seem to sit right on the tongue.
Another form of verb is the intransitive verb which does not need an object to function so we can say things lik
'John laughed'. Intransitive verbs are used extensively in the passive tense so we can use an intransitive from of
the verb laughed to move around the subject and object so we end up with 'Mary was laughed at by John'.
 Adapted from: R.M.W. Dixon (1989) Subject and Object in Universal Grammar Clarendon Paperbacks

Varieties of English
One of the first things to define is the difference between an accent and a dialect:

 An accent refers to the speakers' pronunciation of words.

 A dialect is a way of speaking that differs from other ways of speaking in
KEY TERMS AND IDEAS
the syntax (see What Is Syntax?) and the words it uses, as well as its
 Accent and dialect are two
pronunciation. different ideas, which go
Varieties of English is not just interesting to linguists and those studying English together in the studying o
Language and linguistics. On a much larger scale it's a topic open to the general variation across English.
public no matter how much previous knowledge or understanding they have. We  Stigmatisation(see Language
can be fairly certain that whether you have had direct contact with individuals attitudes and opinions). This is the
pre conceived ideas and opinions
with different accents or accessed this through media such as the television, that people have developed about
everyone is aware of the countless variations between speakers of the English certain accents, based on social,
cultural and sometimes even
Language. This diversity is what makes the topic so interesting to learn about, but purely aesthetic reasons.
is also the biggest factor in why certain accents have become stigmatised or  Speech communities are groups
'looked down on.' Because everyone has access to them, everyone is keen to who share the same norms and
ideas about language and how it
comment on 'what they like the sound of,' 'what sounds odd,' 'what makes the should be spoken.
speaker sound uneducated.'
Through this website we hope to demonstrate the several aspects involved in
studying the Varieties of English as well as identifying case studies and examples
of accents and dialects and look at the social and cultural factors surrounding
different speech communities.

What is Varieties of English?

The varying use of accents and dialects and the features this includes, makes up the study of Varieties of English. Som
accents are very much obvious and well known and others are harder for listeners to place geographically. Linguist
interested in varieties often consider
why some varieties are widely recognised whilst others are not.

According to Chris Montgomery (see Who does Varieties of English?) in a perceptions study in 2006, there were five top
dialects which were most recognised and that the listeners could place on a map. These were:
1. Scouse (Liverpool)
2. Geordie (Newcastle)
3. Brummie (Birmingham)
4. Cockney (London)
5. Manc (Manchester)
Interestingly, all these accents are urban varieties. This could suggest that recognition of accent has something to do with
geographical scale. For example, all the accents listed above, derive from large UK cities, which are typically well known.

Despite those questioned being most aware of these accents it doesn't mean that they are the mostpopular. In fact, accord
to a survey carried out by The Telegraph newspaper in 2008/9 the coolest accents were:

Varieties of English
How is Varieties of English studied?

Dialect maps are used to divide areas where different variants are used. This is shown through isoglosses. The term
isogloss comes from 'iso' meaning same and 'gloss' meaning language. Isoglosses are boundary markers indicating wher
one variant gives way to another. Isoglosses for different features can overlap creating a bundle of isolglosses, likely to
represent a major dialect boundary. Areas on either side of the isogloss line are presumed to be 'the same' with respect
one variable, this is always a simplification though. Patterns of isoglosses may sometimes be explained by geographical
features.They can show different pronunciations for example 'car' pronounced as /car/ or /ca:/. These pronunciations a
shown in one example of Sociolinguistic research: audio clips of the pronunciation of car - Example Research: William
Labov, New York City (see Phonetics for more on IPA). As well as this they are used to show lexical variation. In the
example to the right, our recreated map shows the distribution of different words to describe names for 'running water
which is smaller than a river,' such as Beck,
Brook and Burn.

Investigating Language Beliefs

Non-specialists generally judge language varieties based on their perception of 'correctness'. With some people having
opinions such as 'there is no such thing as dialects, there is just bad English'. Upon hearing a variety, people form opinio
about the locality of a place for example, economic status and crime rates, and about what people who come from
particular areas may be like. These perceptions often stem from media influence. This is how some varieties become
stigmatised. However, the views of non-specialists are inconsistent and there is often disagreement about which
languages are 'attractive'. Linguists researching this find it's not usually the accent itself being judged, but rather the
supposed characteristics of people who speak it. It is important to study language attitudes because we are then able to
distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic views.

Verbal guise techniques involve a series of speakers reading the same piece of prose. Informants listen to these speake
and then fill in a questionnaire assessing each speaker on factors such as intelligence, reliability, kindness and
successfulness. Peter Trudgill carried out a test using this method for his work 'The Pleasantness of an English Accent.' H
played ten UK accents to listeners from America, Canada, England and Scotland, here are the results indicating who
scored best in terms of 'pleasantness'
1. RP 2. South Wales 3. Bradford 4. Northern Ireland 5. Tyneside

6. Gloucestershire 7. Glasgow 8. Liverpool 9. West Midlands 10. London

His findings were that English and Scottish were successful at placing speakers regionally on a map, however if they plac
an accent incorrectly they then rated it upon the supposed accent rather than the real one. American and Canadian
listeners were less successful placing the accents regionally within the UK and did not have the same ratings as the Engl
and Scottish informants. So, for example, American and Canadian listeners would perhaps associate a variety with
Liverpool when it was actually from London and give judgements about Liverpool speakers, rather than what they are
actually hearing. From his verbal guise technique study, Trudgill came up with his Social Connotations hypothesis. This
says that speakers judge language varieties on the basis of beliefs about geographical locations: when a listener is
unfamiliar with an area, aesthetic responses to an accent are either inconsistent or not there. For example, a listener m
believe an accent comes from London and therefore the listener may have specific opinions about the speaker because
the social attributions, for example they are wealthy or have attachments to prestige or power.

Matched Guise Tests

A problem with the verbal guise technique is that there are inconsistencies with different people's reading styles, delive
and voice quality. In an attempt to better the experiment, a matched guise test records just one speaker. They read a
passage multiple times, using a different accent each time and then listeners undertake a task assessing each accent. Th
are not told that the speaker is the same in each case. A study by Purnell, Idsardi and Baugh in 1999 had one speaker
phone up the same landlord requesting housing in a variety of different accents: Standard American English, African
American English and Chicano English. Standard American English had a 70% success rate at obtaining a house viewing
with African American and Chicano English only having a 30% success rate. This indicates that there is obviously prejudi
on the basis of accent perception. The problem with this test is that finding one speaker with the ability to use a range o
accents is hard and it is also difficult to avoid stereotyping in accent replication.

The problem with any listening test when investigating language beliefs is that you cannot always tell that listeners know
where the voice is from. Are they judging the voice they can actually hear or what they think the voice is or where it is
from?
Studying Grammatical Variation
It is not as easy to study grammatical variation as it is far less frequent than phonetic features. Particularly as speakers a
more likely to be affected by the prestige of the codified Standard variety. For example, the high regard in which the
accent the Queen speaks is held in, with regards to grammar rather than accent variation. Two key surveys have been
undertaken however: Survey of English Dialects and the Survey of British Dialect Grammar (1986-89).

The Survey of English Dialects (SED) was published between 1962 and 1978. It was made up of mainly maps of four
regions; the North, East Midlands, West Midlands and the South. In total 313 locations were surveyed. The informants
where all non-mobile (to guarantee their speech was characteristic of their region), old (reflecting the speech of an olde
era), rural (these communities demonstrate less mobility) and male (as female speech is supposedly more class-
conscious). There were questionnaires using diagrams and pictures to obtain local names and terminology, direct and
indirect questioning. The SED overall provides incredibly useful data in terms of studying dialect variation. For example i
aimed to collect data from all across the UK, looking at recording local dialects before (or in case) they disappear. This
means that future dialect work can relate back to historical findings and still have real life examples and extracts of real
speakers, even if there are no true speakers any more.
Lexical Sets
One of the key ways of documenting language variation is through the use of lexical sets, first created by John
Wells. They are 24 different pairs of contrasting words which show the difference between RP pronunciation an
General American pronunciation. Two of these sets have become extremely useful as they are defining features
of the Standard Southern British English accent compared to a Northern accent; STRUT and BATH. It is the
pronunciations of the vowels in these words that have become the one feature most people recognise as showin
a North/South distinction. (Please see our The North South divide section for more on this.)
A copy of Well's lexical sets and example words which use the same sound:
1) Kit 10) Fleece 19) Near
Ship, Kid, Limp, build Creep, need, cheese, brief, field Beer, here, pier, fear, pierce

2) Dress 11) Face 20) Square

Step, ebb, tent, bread, friend Tape, fade, waist, play, reign Share, fair, bear, where, scare

3) Trap 12) Palm 21) Start

Tap, rag, hand, lapse, plaid Calm, ma, hurrah, Java Far, sharp, carve, heart, safari

4) Lot 13) Thought 22) North

Stop, odd, box, swan, wash Cause, taunt, hawk, chalk, broad For, orb, form, quart, cord

5) Strut 14) Goat 23) Force

Cup, bud, lump, come, touch Soap, joke, host, toe, mauve For, soar, floor, court, sword

6) Foot 15) Goose 24) Cure

Put, bush, good, wolf, could Loop, mood, tomb, two, fruit Moor, your, sure, gourd, fury

7) Bath 16) Price 25) happY

Staff, class, ask, fasten, laugh Ripe, side, child, try, eye Copy, Khaki, movie, coffee, money

8) Cloth 17) Choice 26) lettER

off, cross, soft, cough, Austin Boy, noise, spoil, employ, hoist Paper, sugar, standard, anchor, martyr

9) Nurse 18) Mouth 27) commA

hurt, birth, church, verb, word Out, crowd, cow, round, bough Quota, visa, panda, sofa, saga
Sense Relation Network (SRN)
Sense Relation Networks were devised by Carmen Llamas based upon Aitchison's (1997) 'web of words'. The SRN
encourages informants to list
all words they know for related concepts that they are provided with by giving them a blank chart with some key words
printed on. Informants then have to list all the words they can think of that mean the same thing, as shown in our
examples on the right. This provides an extensive range of elicited terms for researchers to study the full effect of a
linguistic variation with, while focusing on dialectal forms. It has since been used by the BBC Voices Project to analyse
speakers in a range of areas. See Why is Varieties of English studied? for further information on theBBC Voices Project.

The advantages of using SRNs include the fact that you can allow informants to take their time doing them,
normally they are given to informants for a week so that they can come up with responses in their own time, as
and when they think about them. Also very rich data can be gleaned from these tasks as informants feel
'empowered' because there is a lot of control attributed to them. Follow-up interviews often take place after thes
tasks where researchers can go into a lot of detail about informants opinions, such as why they feel they use
certain words, if they are influenced by anything in terms of the way they speak and comment on whether they
know about other lexical variants aside from the ones they are discussing.
References
[1]
Beal, J.C., (2010). An Introduction to Regional Englishes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd. (images and some key information on this page comes from this text)

Who does Varieties of English?

There are many key figures, who are involved in the study of variationist linguistics. (Please see Variationist
Sociolinguistics) Some of these are listed below:

Peter Trudgill is a sociolinguist (see What is Sociolinguistics?), professor and author who was born in 1943 in Norwich,
England. At King's College, Cambridge, he studied modern languages and later went on to receive his Ph.D from
the University of Edinburgh. During his career, he has taught in the department of Linguistic Science, Sociolinguistics an
English Language and Linguistics at universities that includeReading, Essex and Lausanne. He is currently a professor of
Sociolinguistics at the University of Agder,Kristianstad, Oslo. He has carried out extensive fieldwork all over the world
including Britain, Greece and Norway as well as teaching and lecturing in Europe, Canada, India, Hong Kong and Fiji (to
name but a few!) He applies Labovian sociolinguistic methodology and primarily studies dialect contact and its
effect.[1] (See Who does Sociolinguistics? for further information on Labov.)
 David Crystal is a linguist and academic, originally from Northern Ireland. As a child he lived in North Wales and in
Liverpool before studying English at University College London. He worked on the Survey of English Usage, corroboratin
with Randolph Quirk. He has since gone on to lecture at the University of Reading and at Bangor University; he is now a
honorary professor of Linguists at Bangor. Crystal is probably best known as an author/co-author of over 120 books whi
cover a wide range of linguistic topics. In recent years, he has looked at the evolution of the English language and in 200
he published a book titled Txting: The Gr8 Db8 which looked at the impact text language has had on our society.[2]

John C. Wells is a phonetician (see Phonology) from Merseyside. Until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental
chair for phonetics at the University College London. He grew up in a childhood of poverty yet still had great knowledge
ten different languages. He earned his BA degree at the University of Cambridge. He is well known for his book Accents
English and for being the president of theInternational Phonetic Association. A considerable part of his career focuses o
phonetically describing the varieties of English. He is the creator of X-Sampa, a phonetic alphabet for computers that
cannot handle the IPA. His work on the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary which was considered to have a much greate
scope than the only other Pronunciation Dictionary that had been released 30 years previously, it is in this that he
described his lexical sets, for more on this see How is Varieties of English studied?. Though retired he is still president of
the Spelling Society and runs a phonetics blog that attracts many readers.[3]

Chris Montgomery is a dialectologist who focuses primarily on non-linguists' perceptions in the field of perceptual
dialectology. His previous research has focussed on the north of England and southern Scotland. He is also interested in
the wider field of folk linguistics and language attitudes within the Varieties of English, so how linguistically naive
informants respond to language. His research has involved integrating Geographical Science into the study of language
variation and perception. He works in the department of English Language at Sheffield Hallam University and is coming
the University of Sheffield from September 2012.[4]

Joan Beal is a professor of English Language, currently working at the University of Sheffield. She worked at Newcastle
University, prior to Sheffield. In addition to researching the correlation between dialect and identity, she is also interest
in the history of English in the Later Modern period. Beal focusses her research in the North of England, claiming this is a
result of 'having spent all her career in the North of England' which has fed her interest in the region. As well as being a
lecturer, Joan Beal is also a co-editor of the Edinburgh University Press Dialects of English series.[5]

References
[1]
http://lettres.unifr.ch/fr/langues-litteratures/anglais/staff/prof-trudgill.html University of Fribourg [Accessed 23.05.2012]
[2]
http://www.davidcrystal.com/ David Crystal [Accessed on 23.05.2012]
[3]
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ University College London [Accessed 23.05.2012]
[4]
http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/hrc/sp-chris-montgomery.html Sheffield Hallam University [Accessed 23.05.2012]
[5]
http://www.shef.ac.uk/english/people/beal University of Sheffield [Accessed on 23.05.2012]

When is Varieties of English studied?

So when did it all begin?
The idea of studying dialects and varieties came about in the second half of the 19th century. [1] It is extremely difficult to
know exactlywhen Varieties of English were first studied. But what we do know is that now, accents and dialects are of gr
interest to many people.

Georg Wenker
The idea of studying language started in Germany, with Georg Wenker in 1876 who sent surveys to participants in the po
asking them to translate sentences into their local dialects. He composed 40 test sentences that, upon receiving the resul
would indicate how the different dialects varied.[2] He is considered to be the founder of linguistic geography.[3] In 1877,
Wenker sent out a refined version of his previous questionnaire which includes 38 sentences and a few months later, his
questionnaires were completed. This led him to produce the first linguistic atlas in the world; the Sprach-Atlas der Rhein-
provinz nordlich der Mosel sowie des Kreises Siegen. This included Wenker's own hand-drawn isoglosses.[3] Read more abo
isoglosses here: How is Varieties of English studied?

In the 1930s The Linguistic Atlas of the United States was published which was amongst the first dialect studies to include
social factors as well as regional.[1] This gave way to linguistic atlases of countries all over the world being produced as
dialectology became a topical interest.

In the 1950s, the University of Leeds decided to create the Survey of English Dialects which focused on different varieties
around the British Isles. They decided to do this, as they wanted to preserve and collect examples of English dialects befo
the local differences between dialects started to disappear. It was the first of its type to study the speech of England in su
depth. Initially, questionnaires were distributed containing over 1300 items to 313 different areas across England. These
questionnaires were targeted primarily at male farm labourers at approximately 65 years in age. This was done in an atte
to understand and preserve the traditional dialects of England from rural areas with folk-speech.[4]

The introduction of the tape recorder in the 1960s allowed dialectologists to record data for the first time meaning, not o
could they study dialects, but also preserve them for future reference [5]- something that had never been done before.

In the later half of the 20th century, researchers started to abandon their focus on traditional dialects, instead looking mo
at urban areas. The earliest cities to be studied were New York (Labov 1966), Detroit (Wolfram 1969) and Norwich (Trudg
1974). This move away from traditional methods caused linguists to focus on social factors, and its relationship with regio
variation.

This is how Varieties of English has become a discipline in its own right. At the point of its creation, the idea of studying
accents and dialects was an innovative one which has since been developed and grown.
References
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectology Wikipedia [Accessed 23.05.2012].
[2]
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/639757/Georg-Wenker Encyclopaedia Britannica [Accessed 23.05.2012].
[3]
Auer, P. & Schmidt, J. E., (2010). Language and Space: An International Handbook to Linguistic Variation: Theories and Methods. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
[4]
http://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Survey-of-English-dialects Survey of English Dialects, British Library [Accessed 23.05.2012].
[5]
Britain, D., (2001). 'Space and Spatial Diffusion'. In: Chambers, J., Trudgill, P. and Schilling-Estes, N. (eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell. p
603- 637.

Where is Varieties of English studied?

The global study

English has become known as a 'global language,' with it being the most widely spoken language in the entire
world.[1] Because of this, the study of the varieties of English can truly be undertaken anywhere with many different
'world' Englishes being identified, such as American English and Indian English. However, if we look back at the origins o
the study of the Varieties of English we can look at where it started.
 Originally, the study of Dialectology was a sub-discipline of the study of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics can be traced ba
as far back as 5 BCE in India, however it was only really considered to have been born in Northern Germany by Georg
Wenker, where he studied the varieties of German through the form of a postal questionnaire. This could be seen as the
first example of the study into varieties.

References
[1]
Mydans, S., (2007) 'Across cultures, English is the word'. New York Times. [Accessed 20.05.2012].
[2]
Survey of English Dialects (1951) http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/lavc/PDFs/SEDIM.pdf [Accessed 21/05/2012].

Why is Varieties of English studied?

Through studying Varieties, linguists are able to notice and predict future language change. It also helps to identity
general public opinion on language and encourages non-linguists to judge accent and dialect more similarly to the
descriptive way linguists do, rather than imposing prescriptive attitudes to their analysis. But many people feel that this
sort of analytical approach isn't open to them. Why should they change their ways of thinking? To help make this clear,
websites such as the BBC voices project work with individuals to allow linguists to gain knowledge, and therefore
understanding, of general perceptions. In return, linguistic approaches are introduced to show that languages:
AKK VARIETIES ARE EQUAL.

Another vital reason why Varieties of English has been studied in such depth is that many linguists believed that due to
phenomena such as dialect levellingand the effect that the media has had upon different dialects and accents across
Britain, the many varieties of English that have made the United Kingdom so unique have been slowly dying out. So
researchers within the BBC voices project and others have undertaken the massive responsibility of recording the many
dialects and accents within our country to try and preserve the unique nature and history of the English language.

References
[1]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/ BBC Voices. [accessed 22.05.2012].
Example research: Dialect levelling in Milton
Keynes

What is Dialect Levelling?

Levelling is when dialects come together from different areas and the two dialects mix. In this process
some features of each dialect can be lost in order to create a new dialect which has features of each. It has
been observed in dialects of English since the late 20th century. It occurred because of increased dialect
contact in the 20th century through improved mobility via new transport links and commuting to jobs from
rural areas to large cities. An example of dialect levelling is the case in Milton Keynes investigated by Paul
Kerswill in 1996.
So who is Paul Kerswill?
 Paul Kerswill, is a Professor of Sociolinguistics, who has taught at the University's of Reading,
Lancaster and currently at the University of York.
 Kerswill's main research interest is language variation and change. He particularly looks at change in
phonetics but also in grammatical variations.
 Much like this research example shows, his interests also lie in dialect contact and the effects this
can have on language.
 Kerswill describes his Milton Keynes study (shown here) as being an example of 'extreme
levelling.'[1]
 Kerswill has had countless publications, many of which can be found electronically, if you follow the
reference website at the bottom of the page. The publications are then listed as hyper-links under
the publications section of his biography.
Summary
In this case, Kerswill was interested in looking at social change with the increase in geographical and social
mobility and how this affected the pronunciation in the Milton Keynes area. Geographical mobility is though
to have far reaching effects because when people move to new areas they form new social and ethnic
groups and combine their ways of speaking. After World War 2 mobility in the south-east had a marked
increase.

Location
Milton Keynes is located in the south-east in Buckinghamshire, England bordering the counties of
Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire and just 90km north-west of London.
Milton Keynes

As part of Government policy Milton Keynes was established as a new town in 1969. Following this, the
population grew from 44,000 to 176,330 with the influx of new people from different areas. This is classed
as the most recent and fastest expanding new town.

The idea behind the study

Kerswill's study looking at the language in this area follows Labov's 1996 New York City research. (Please
follow this link :Example Research: William Labov, New York City for more information about this.)
However Kerswill looked at children compared to Labov who looked at the difference between the adults
and children, because children's speech is less fixed (meaning they are more likely to pick up new speech
features and adapt their current way of speaking.) Therefore they may be influenced more by the changing
dialects in the area.
Methodology
The method Kerswill used was to look at ten linguistic variables including the pronunciation of consonants
such as /t/ and /th/ and the long vowel /u:/ like in the word 'shoe' (you can look at what symbols such
as /u:/ mean by following this link and reading the section about the IPA. What is Phonetics?).

Kerwill's study used 48 children of mixed ages and the main variables were the age and gender of the
children. He used three sorts of studies. First, an elicitation experiment where the child is encouraged to
use certain linguistic forms. This included encouraging them to read out loud and answer quizzes. The idea
of this was to get the children to produce certain words, such as words containing variables Kerswill was
interested in, so their use could be easily studied. Secondly, he recorded their spontaneous speech by
interviewing them on a personal aspect of their lives such as friends and school. Finally the caregivers of
the children were also interviewed to see if the caregiver's language affected the child's in any way. All of
these results were then statistically analysed.

Results
Some of the results highlighted the role of children in the formation of new dialects. Kerswill found that
there was a lot of variation in the parents‟ accents, but there was much less variation among the
children. The children's accents also differed from the accents of speakers in the area surrounding Milton
Keynes, and even children whose parents were from outside of the south-east displayed no trace of their
parent's accent.

Some of the specific features Kerswill found in the children‟s speech included:
 The fact that younger speakers, especially young girls, showed similar pronunciations to their
parents, especially their mothers.
 Every Milton Keynes child also showed phonological features found in accents across the south-east
including London, suggesting the Milton Keynes accent has been influenced by varieties such as
Cockney and Estuary English (a „mid-way‟ variety between Cockney and RP spoken by people like
Janet Street-Porter, for instance).
 Vowel fronting: this is when a vowel is produced at the front, or towards the front of the mouth such
as the vowel in get. This phenomenon meant that in Milton Keynes, the pronunciation of the
word coke could sound almost like cake (please see Phonology for more information on vowels).
 The fact that older children displayed phonological characteristics of a new speech community and
that children around the age of 12 do most of the linguistic work when forming new dialects.

References
[1]
University of York - Department of Language and Linguistic Science. Available from:
<http://www.york.ac.uk/language/staff/academic-research/paul-kerswill/> [Accessed 02.06.2012].
[2]
Graddol, D., (1996). English: History, Diversity and Change. London:Routledge.

Example Research: London Jamaican

Mark Sebba: London Jamaican
In the 16th century, many people were brought over to England from the Caribbean during the period of slave
trading. The Jamaican people spoke minimal English and many of them didn't speak any English at all. In order to
communicate effectively with the British natives, there was a need to create a common language also known as a
'bridging language' or a 'pidgin'. When the immigrants from the Caribbean had children, the pidgin language, currently
known as London Jamaican, became the native language of the 2nd generation.[1] This created what is now known as
a creole: a 2nd generation pidgin.

As the Jamaican community within London grew, so did their language making London Jamaican one of the most popular
creoles in the capital city. London Jamaican is most commonly spoken in the home and in social groups as an informal
language. The speakers may swap between London Jamaican, London English and British Standard English depending on
the occasion. This is called code switching.[1] Both London English and London Jamaican are considered to bring together
people of the same ethnic background and exclude those who are different.[1]

Unfortunately, London Jamaican can't be recognised as an official language because there's never been a set of standard
rules established. It is primarily a spoken language and it is rarely written down so there's no official spelling system.

There are key features that segregate London Jamaican from other urban creoles.
Phonological: These : Deze
(Sounds) /ðeːz/ : *deːz+

Best : Bes
/bɛst/ : [bɛs]
[2]
Health : Helt
/hɛlð/ : [hɛlt]

Grammar: They walked : Dem waak

His belly : Him belly [1]
(For example, here the difference in possessive pronoun shows the contrast between a construction common in Standard English 'his belly' and the more regional construction 'him belly' whic
sounds unfamiliar to some people.)

Lexis: To : Fi
For : Pan
[2]
(to) steal : T'ief
It has been found by linguist Mark Sebba that, in recent years, more non-Caribbean members of the London community
are starting to use London Jamaican words, despite their different ethnic background. This is a result of natural diffusion
of language amongst people as non-Caribbean members try to emulate the status that London Jamaican has.[3]

This is an example of how two different varieties, one English, one Caribbean, have come together to form a 'new'
language which is now independently considered a variety of English. It also clearly illustrates language contact within
communities.
References
[1]
Auer, P., (1999). Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. Psychology Press.
[2]
Local, J. K., Wells, W. H. G and Sebba, M., (1985). 'Phonology for conversation: Phonetic aspects of turn delimitation in London Jamaican'. Journal of Pragmatics. 9. pp. 309-330
[3]
Sebba, M., (1997). Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Language attitudes and opinions

Accents and dialects come in all shapes and sizes and often the features of them, like how speakers
pronounce words is under scrutiny and subject to several differing opinions. Firstly it is important as a
linguist to be able to recognise the major differences between accents of English, before we consider
people's opinions of and attitudes towards them.

Peter Trudgill (see Who does Varieties of English?) suggests that it is possible to differentiate all the major
regional accents of England by using the sentence :

"VERY FEW CARS MADE IT UP THE LONG HILL"

This is because no two speakers from two different regions will pronounce all of these words in the same
way. Here are nine examples we collected from people from all different regions in England saying Trudgill'
sentence. Firstly, listen to each one and attempt to guess where the person is from based on the knowledg
you may already have of accents.
Accents and Opinions
People often instinctively form opinions about speakers based on their accents and dialects,
and you may have found yourself doing this while listening to the sound clips above.
However in linguistics we take a descriptive view of language and strongly avoid, in
particular, the use of the word 'correct' when talking about a certain accent or dialect. While
standardisation and RP are present (for example regional features are not present.)
(see Standardisation and RP for further discussion), this does not mean other accents (to do
with pronunciation) and dialects (looking at syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation) are less
adequate in any way. In fact, Standard English and RP are considered just one of many
accents by linguists. To find out more about how linguists research non-linguists views
about accents and dialects please visit our (How is Varieties of English studied?) section.
The outcome of these attitudes can have significant social consequences. For example often
regional accents incur images about that geographical location which in turn leads to
assumptions being made about the people who live there as a whole.

References

[1]
Beal, J.C., (2006). Language and Region. Abingdon : Routledge.

Standardisation and RP
RP stands for Received Pronunciation and is defined in the Oxford English dictionary as:
'The most commonly accepted or standard form of pronunciation; The standard, most regionally neutral form
of spoken British English, traditionally based on educated speech in southern England; abbreviated RP.' [1]
So what does it mean?
Many people immediately think of a traditional British accent when the listen to the pronunciation of an RP
variety. This term can also be used interchangeably with the phrase 'The Queen's English' which
suggests to many people that it is the correct way to speak as it is modelled by such a powerful
and prestigious figure. The influence of the accent being used in public schools and in renowned Universities such
as Oxford and Cambridge also means that it gains status as being seen to be the type of language that the educated
use. However, RP only describes pronunciation and doesn't look at grammatical features. For this
reason
it must be described as an accent and not a dialect because Standard English can be
spoken with anyaccent, not just RP'

The use of RP as a basis to make judgements

Received pronunciation has strong sociolinguistc links (see Sociolinguistics) and people who speak with a
particular accent are often judged differently to how speakers of other accents are judged. Think about
this... would you judge the speakers of these two sentences differently based on their constructions?

"I'd buy an expensive car, if I were rich!"

"I'd buy an expensive car, if I was rich!"
You probably had to read the sentences a few times to even notice the difference. There are standardised
sets of rules, passed down and encouraged to become norms and this is where we get the idea that some
grammatical constructions are right and some are wrong. In actual fact, the constructions of a regional
speaker in an area of the UK may be wrong to one person and perfect to someone just a few miles north or
south.

'There are times when it would be pretty much impossible to organize a sentence in a way that would
avoid doing this, for example' such as:
 In some passive expressions:
√ The dress had not even been paid for.
X Paid for the dress had not even been.

√ The match was rained off.

X Rained off was the match.[3]

This shows that attempting to adhere to certain rules without exception, can actually make expressions ungrammatical
Furthermore, it would seem as society changes and adapts, very strict language rules are becoming
more and more of an outdated concept.

References
[1]
OED, Third edition, June 2009 "Received Pronunciation, n." The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. 2009. OED Online. Oxford University
Press. Available at: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/272029?redirectedFrom=Received%20pronunciation%20#eid [Accessed 17.05.2012].
[2]
British Library; Sounds Familiar. Available at: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/find-out-more/received-pronunciation/ [Accessed
20.05.2012].
[3]
Oxford Dictionaries, 2012. Cambridge University Press. Available at: http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/ending-sentences-with-
prepositions [Accessed 23.05.2012].

The North South divide

The north-south divide is something which is widely discussed about varieties of English,
especially in the media. It often refers more widely to people's perceptions of a line
separating the country according to social, economic and political factors. Linguistically, it
is more specifically related to differences in speech, such as pronunciation, grammatical
constructions and how accents vary depending on the region in which the speakers live.

KEY TERMS
 North-South divide describes not only the

THE FROZEN THE WARM geographical split within the UK, but also social,
cultural, political and language factors which are
different depending on region.

NORTH SOUTH  Perception in this context is the ability to be aware o

divides and differences particularly in reference to
accent, regardless of there being no physical line.
 Wells lexical sets are a set of 24 sets of words
organised on the basis of how the vowels in the word
are pronounced and how they differs.
 BATH broadening the lengthening on the /a/ vowel
sound in words such as bath and grass.