Linguistics

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Linguistics
Phonology
Syntax
Morphology
Semantics
Pragmatics
Theoretical linguistics
Generative linguistics
Cognitive linguistics
Language acquisition
First language acquisition
Second language acquisition
Applied linguistics
Psycholinguistics
Phonetics
Sociolinguistics
Creolistics
Evolutionary linguistics
Linguistic variation
Linguistic typology
Anthropological linguistics
Computational linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
History of linguistics
Language • natural • constructed
Grammar

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Its goal is to find out what language is and how it works, by trying to establish what aspects of grammar are universal to all languages, how languages differ, what systematic 'rules' language users intuitively employ, and how they come to 'know' these rules in the first place. A linguist, then, here refers to a linguistics expert rather than someone who has learned several languages.

Theoretical linguists are concerned with questions about the apparent human 'instinct' to communicate,[1] rather than authorising 'rules' of style or 'correctness' as found in grammar textbooks or popular guides.[2] For example, *dog the[3] is unacceptable in English, but this is not a fact that any native speaker has been taught, because children understand this well before they can follow instruction. It is implicit rules such as this, not those prescribed by an authority, that are of primary concern in linguistics.

Applied linguists may bring insights from linguistic research to approach real-life problems, in such fields as foreign language teaching, speech therapy and translation.[4] Additionally, to find evidence for a theory or test a hypothesis, theoretical and applied research often draw on descriptive linguistics, which documents the facts of individual languages; examples include information on a language's tenses or its range of speech sounds.


The study of linguistics

Core areas

Some linguists, such as theoretical syntacticians, focus on one 'core' area. Research may involve developing a model to describe and predict the workings of the system of language itself, rather than explaining how people happen to use language. These 'core' fields together constitute the grammar of a language - not a list of rules in a book, but components the system requires for communication.

  • Syntax is the study of how units such as words combine into sentences. For example, why is Bill ate the fish acceptable, but Ate the Bill fish is not?
  • Phonology refers to the system speakers use to represent language. For example, cat can be expressed through the utterance [kæt],[5] letters on a page, hand movements in a sign language, and even the dots and dashes of Morse code. Although there are potentially infinitely many ways of producing a sound, shaping a letter or moving a hand, phonologists are interested only in how these group into abstract categories: for example, how and why [k] is often perceived as different from [t], whereas in many languages, other sounds as different as those, are not.
    • Phonetics focuses on the physical sounds of speech, so often informs phonological inquiry by showing how pronunciations are related.[6] However, since this does not primarily concern itself with the study of abstract patterns in language, phoneticians' work usually complements linguistics, rather than describes a central component.
  • Morphology examines how linguistic units such as words and their subparts (such as prefixes and suffixes) combine. One example of this might be the observation that while walk+ed is acceptable, *ed+walk is not.
  • Semantics, within linguistics as opposed to other subjects such as philosophy, refers to the study of how language conveys meaning. For example, English speakers typically realise that Chomsky's famous sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is well-formed in terms of word order, but incomprehensible in terms of meaning.[7] Other aspects of meaning studied here include how speakers understand ambiguous sentences such as Visiting relatives can be boring depending on context, and the extent to which sentences which are superficially very different, such as The wine flowed freely and Much wine was consumed, mean similar things.[8]
  • Pragmatics is the study of how utterances relate to the context they are spoken in. For instance, the sentence I have one pencil can mean two very different things, depending on whether the speaker has been asked how many pencils they have, or are just confirming that they have at least one. This sort of understanding is not predictable just by knowledge of language; speakers must also know something about the intentions and assumptions of others to co-operate in communication.

Fields of linguistics

To factor out circumstances that may obscure fundamental insights, many linguists may choose to focus on language as presumed to occur in an idealised, adult, monolingual native speaker - prerequisites often found in mainstream generative linguistics.[9] In contrast, linguists whose research moves away from any of these four criteria may concentrate on fields arranged around the study of language use and learning:

  • Language acquisition, theoretical or applied study of how linguistic knowledge emerges in children and adults as first or subsequent languages, whether naturalistically (without instruction) or in the classroom;[10]
  • Sociolinguistics, the study of how language varies according to cultural context, the speaker's background, and the situation in which it is used;
  • Stylistics, the study of how language differs according to use and context, e.g. advertising versus speechmaking;
  • Linguistic variation, the study of the differences among the languages of the world. This has implications for linguistics in general: if human linguistic ability is narrowly constrained, then languages must be very similar. If human linguistic ability is unconstrained, then languages might vary greatly.
  • Computational linguistics has had a great influence on theories of syntax and semantics, as modelling syntactic and semantic theories on computers constrains the theories to computable operations and provides a more rigorous mathematical basis.

Other cross-disciplinary areas of linguistics include neurolinguistics, evolutionary linguistics and cognitive science.

Applied linguistics

Main article: Applied linguistics

Whereas theoretical linguistics is concerned with finding and describing generalities both within particular languages and among all languages, applied linguistics takes these results and applies them to other areas. Often applied linguistics refers to the use of linguistic research in language teaching, but this is just one sub-discipline:

  • Research in language teaching: today, 'applied linguistics' is sometimes used to refer to 'second language acquisition', but these are distinct fields, in that SLA involves more theoretical study of the system of language, whereas applied linguistics concerns itself more with teaching and learning. In their approach to the study of learning, applied linguists have increasingly devised their own theories and methodologies, such as the shift towards studying the learner rather than the system of language itself, in contrast to the emphasis within SLA.[12][13]


Approach to studying language

Modern linguists' methodologies, assumptions and practices differ significantly from those of past generations.

Prescription and description

Main article: Linguistic prescriptivism

Linguists seek to clarify the nature of language, to describe how people use it, and to find the underlying grammar that speakers unconsciously adhere to. Linguists do not judge what speech is better or worse syntactically, correct or incorrect grammatically, and do not try to prescribe future language directions. Nonetheless, some professionals and many amateurs do try to prescribe rules of language, holding a particular standard for all to follow.

Prescription comes in two flavors, those that are linguistically founded and those that are not. For instance, the rule of English that subjects and verbs must agree (i.e. that when the subject is third-person singular, the verb takes an "s" ending, like "I/you/they run" but "he runs") can be the basis of linguistically founded prescription, so long as the speaker is intending to speak standard American English. Speakers of standard American English do follow subject-verb agreement, and thus if the intention is to teach that language, this rule should be taught.

However, prescriptivists often stray from this type of linguistically founded recommendation. These prescriptivists tend to be found among the ranks of language educators and journalists, and not in the academic discipline of linguistics. Often considering themselves speakers of the standard form of a particular language, they may hold clear notions of what is right and wrong and what variety of language is most likely to lead the next generation of speakers to 'success'. For example, they may believe that all speakers of what they would call English should follow the same rule of subject-verb agreement, while in fact some varieties of English, which are in a sense distinct languages in their own right, do not do subject-verb agreement the same way. The reasons for their intolerance of non-standard dialects, treating them as "incorrect" , may include distrust of neologisms, connections to socially-disapproved dialects, or simple conflicts with pet theories.

Prescriptivists often also make linguistically unfounded recommendations that seem plausibly true, but which have little linguistic evidence to support them. For instance, the rule against leaving a preposition at the end of a clause or sentence (such as in I met the professor I wrote to) is commonly believed to be 'correct' English.[18] However, speakers of English not only use final prepositions frequently, indicating that it is perfectly natural English to do so, but bringing the preposition to the front may result in a sentence that could well sound ridiculous to any native speaker of English.[19]

Descriptive linguists, on the other hand, do not accept the prescriptivists' notion of "incorrect usage" in a general sense. They aim to describe the usages the prescriptivist has in mind, either as common or deviant from some linguistic norm, as an idiosyncratic variation, or as regularity (a rule) followed by speakers of some other dialect (in contrast to the common prescriptive assumption that "bad" usage is unsystematic). Within the context of fieldwork, descriptive linguistics refers to the study of language using a descriptivist approach. Descriptivist methodology more closely resembles scientific methodology in other disciplines.

Speech versus writing

Languages have only been written for a few thousand years, but have been spoken (or signed) for much longer. The written word may therefore provide less of a window onto how language works than the study of speech, even assuming that the culture which the language forms part of has a writing system - the majority of the world's languages remain unwritten. Furthermore, the study of written language can play no part in investigating first language acquisition, since infants are obviously yet to become literate. Overall, language is held to be an evolutionary adaptation, whereas writing is a comparatively recent invention. Spoken and signed language, then, may tell us much about human evolution and the structure of the mind.

Of course, linguists also agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile and valuable. For linguistic research that uses the methods of corpus linguistics and computational linguistics, written language is often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of spoken language are difficult to create and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written. Additionally, linguists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-mediated communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry. Writing, however, brings with it a number of problems; for example, it often acts as a historical record, preserving words, phrases, styles and spellings of a previous era. This may be of limited use for studying how language is used at the present time.

Innatism

One of the most interesting aspects of language is that normally, young children acquire whatever language is spoken (or signed, in the case of sign language) around them when they are growing up, without apparently being 'taught' the language. By contrast, other animals, even highly intelligent primates that are closely related to humans, need very intensive training to produce even minimally language-like behaviour.[20] Additionally, since children understand and produce utterances which they have never previously experienced, and since they appear to reject ill-formed sentences even at an early age,[21] it has been widely concluded that the infant brain must in some way be ready to acquire any language. 'Nativist' linguists argue that such a system, presumably specified in our genes,[22] must also account for why all languages are fundamentally similar.[23][24]

Historical linguistics

Whereas the core of theoretical linguistics is concerned with studying languages at a particular point in time (usually the present), historical linguistics (or diachronic linguistics) examines how language changes through time, sometimes over centuries. Historical linguistics enjoys both a rich history (the study of linguistics grew out of historical linguistics) and a strong theoretical foundation for the study of language change.

In universities in the USA, the non-historic perspective seems to have the upper hand. Many introductory linguistics classes, for example, cover historical linguistics only cursorily. The shift in focus to a non-historic perspective started with Saussure and became predominant with Noam Chomsky.

In popular culture, one aspect of linguistics which is particularly popular is etymology, the study of word origins. This is related to historical linguistics, in that a word's history is traced over time, but does not form a central component of modern language study; linguistics is more concerned with patterns of change over time and what this has to contribute to an understanding of the nature of language itself.

History of linguistics

Main article: History of linguistics

The questions of language, its origin and its nature have been a centre of interest in many civilizations.[25] However, before the 20th century, insights into language mainly involved explaining the grammar of particular languages, or describing changes over time. Such work laid the foundations for an extension of linguistic inquiry into the universals of language. In the 19th century, some scholars tried to establish laws to explain the historical evolution of languages. They were the first persons to consider themselves as linguist. However, modern linguistics much differs from that of the 19th century: its primary purpose is to explain how languages work at one given moment of time, not how they evolved through the centuries, and establishing how languages works through empirical evidence.

Modern linguistics study is largely inspired by the works of Noam Chomsky and his contemporaries. From the 1950s, they initiated new methods in linguistics. This produced explicit theories of grammar [26][27] - namely, systems that required no reference to other kinds of knowledge. For example, whereas a casual definition of a noun is 'a person, place or thing', Chomsky envisaged a system that could distinguish a noun from any other sort of linguistic unit without needing to know what a person, place or thing is. This approach to uncovering the components of language, rather than investigating the history, is typical of today's research.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The view that language is an 'instinct' comparable to walking or bird song is most famously articulated in Pinker (1994).
  2. ↑ A popular recent example is Truss (2003).
  3. ↑ An asterisk (*) indicates that what follows is unacceptable to speakers of that language.
  4. ↑ Increasingly, however, applied linguists have been developing their own views of language, which often focus on the language learner rather than the system itself: see for example Cook (2002) and the same author's website.
  5. ↑ Symbols in square brackets represent speech sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet; slanting brackets, as in /kæt/ 'cat', are used to represent phonemes - distinct, abstract units that may represent several sounds or written letters.
  6. ↑ Phonetics also covers speech perception (how the brain discerns sounds) and acoustics (the physical qualities of sounds as movement through air), as well as the study of articulation (sound production through the movements of the lungs, tongue, etc.).
  7. ↑ Chomsky, 1957: 15.
  8. ↑ Aitchison (2003: 87-99).
  9. ↑ 'Generative' linguistics' is most strongly associated with Chomsky (1957) and subsequent works.
  10. ↑ 'Acquisition' is a highly diverse field; as well as theoretical linguists studying the linguistic system itself through first language development and second language acquisition (SLA), applied linguists may examine mainly classroom learning and learners' experiences. Also, language teaching practice is the concern of education specialists outside linguistics. In any one study linguists' backgrounds and research orientations may overlap considerably, and there is little consensus even on fundamentals, such as the extent to which explicit instruction in presumed 'rules' of grammar can truly promote learning.
  11. ↑ e.g. Pinker, 1997; Scovel, 1997.
  12. ↑ The applied linguist Vivian Cook has, for example, introduced the term L2 user as distinct from L2 learner (see Cook's page: Background to the L2 User Perspective). The former are active users of the language; the latter those who learn for later use. Cook's view also severs a link to SLA, in that a user's language ability is seen not as an approximation towards native speakers' competence, but as a system in its own right.
  13. ↑ See also Wei (2007) for an appeal to focus on the learner rather than the system.
  14. ↑ The most famous case is Genie, an individual who was deprived of language throughout much of her childhood.
  15. ↑ Bishop (2006).
  16. ↑ Castagnaro (2006), for review.
  17. ↑ Grunwell (1997).
  18. ↑ Linguists sometimes refer to this rule as preposition stranding, since in I met the professor I wrote to the preposition's object (the professor in I wrote to the professor) has been left behind once the object has been moved. When a preposition is also moved to a non-final position, as in I met the professor to whom I wrote, this is called pied-piping or wh-movement, since words that can move can typically be replaced by words beginning with wh- (who, what, etc.).
  19. ↑ This rule is famously criticised in a quotation attributed to former British prime minister Winston Churchill: "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."
  20. ↑ Furthermore, the anthropological linguist Charles Hockett advanced the theory that a collection of design features, such as 'creativity' (speakers can produce novel utterances) collectively made language unique to humans. Some other species may make use of one or two of these (such as 'use of sound signals'), but never enough to use language (Hockett (1960); Aitchison (2003: 13-20). See also the phonetician John Coleman's webpage comparing different species according to design features.
  21. ↑ Chomsky (1957) strongly emphasised that this 'creative' aspect of language entailed that language could not simply be a product of a child's responses to their environment - a view usually associated with behaviourism and applied to language in Skinner (1957). Chomsky (1959) is a highly critical review of that work that was instrumental in moving linguistics away from such 'behaviourist' analyses of language use.
  22. ↑ e.g. Pinker (1994) makes an analogy between language and spiders' webs: spiders spin webs because their genes compel them to, though without the right environment no webs will appear. To that can be added that each web would be different, though following the same basic, innately guided webspinning template.
  23. ↑ The linguist Joseph H. Greenberg famously identified a series of universals of language (Greenberg, 1966); namely, 'laws' that seem to apply to all linguistic communication. One example is that all languages appear to have nouns and verbs, even though a language without verbs would be communicatively adequate (e.g. nominalized English).
  24. ↑ Ironically, neither Greenberg nor Hockett, whose work provided such important evidence for the 'nativist' position, themselves supported such a view. Greenberg was a typologist and empirical linguist interested in historical linguistics and what the similarities between languages suggested about the nature of language itself; his work has been seen as functionalist in its principles. Hockett was firmly in the pre-Chomskyan structuralist camp, and vigourously attacked the emerging school of generativism throughout his career. See William Croft's obituary for Joseph H. Greenberg and a copy of the New York Times obituary for Charles F. Hockett at linguistlist.org.
  25. ↑ For example, the early Indian grammarian {{UnicodePāṇini}}'s (ca 520–460 BCE) examined Sanskrit and produced several insights into the nature of grammar, such as the morpheme, which remain highly relevant in modern research and Plato in Cratyluswonders whether language has a natural or conventional origin.
  26. ↑ Chomsky N (1957).
  27. ↑ Chomsky N, Halle M (1968).

References

Further Reading

Popular Reading

Introductory texts

Texts for students, teachers and general readers.

  • Aitchison J (2003) Teach Yourself Linguistics. London: Hodder. 6th edition. ISBN 0-07-142982-4.
  • Aitchison J (2007) The Articulate Mammal: an Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London: Routledge. 5th edition. ISBN 0415420229.
  • Crystal D (2007) How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning and Languages Live or Die. London: Penguin. ISBN 9780141015521.
  • Hudson G (2000) Essential Introductory Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0631203044. Especially suitable for undergraduate study.
  • Lightbown P & Spada N (2003) How Languages Are Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3rd edition. ISBN 0194422240. Especially suitable for language teachers.
  • Pinker S (1994) The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow & Company. ISBN 0060958332 [2000 Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition]. Best-selling book on language acquisition and linguistics, arguing from a strongly 'nativist' perspective.
  • Trask RL (2004) Language: the Basics. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415340195.

Questions about language and linguistics

Frequently asked questions and discussions of popular misconceptions about language.

  • Bauer L & Trudgill P (eds) (1998) Language Myths. London: Penguin. ISBN 0140260234.
  • Napoli DJ (2003) Language Matters: A Guide to Everyday Questions About Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195160487.
  • Parkvall M (2006) Limits of Language. London: Battlebridge. ISBN 1903292042.
  • Rickerson EM & Hilton B (eds) The 5-Minute Linguist: Bite-Sized Essays on Language and Languages. London: Equinox. ISBN 184553199X.

Classic Works

Some of the most influential books, chapters and articles in modern linguistics.

  • Bloomfield L (1993) Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. ISBN 8120811968 [1995 New Ed edition]; ISBN 0226060675 [1994 University of Chicago Press edition].
  • Chomsky N (1957) Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. ISBN 3110172798.
  • Chomsky N (1959) 'A review of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior.' Language 35(1): 26-58.
  • Chomsky N (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0262530074.
  • Chomsky N (1966) Cartesian Linguistics: a Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. New York: Harper & Row. Reprinted (2003) with a new introduction by James McGilvray. Christchurch: Cybereditions. ISBN 187727545X.
  • Deacon T (1998) The Symbolic Species. London: Penguin. ISBN 0140264051.
  • Pinker S (1994) The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow & Company. ISBN 0060958332 [2000 Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition]. Best-selling book on language acquisition and linguistics, arguing from a strongly 'nativist' perspective.
  • Pinker S (1999) Words and Rules. London: Phoenix. ISBN 0753810255. A detailed discussion of the relationship between language and the mind, illustrated by a focus on irregular verbs.
  • Sapir E (1921) Language. New York: Harcourt Brace. ISBN 1406820571 [2006 Echo Library edition]; ISBN 0486437442 [2004 Dover Publications edition].
  • de Saussure, F (1916) Cours de linguistique générale. Reprinted and translated from the original as de Saussure F, Bouquet S (ed.) & Engler R (ed.) (2006) Writings in General Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019926144X.
  • Greenberg JH (1966) Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg JH (ed.) Universals of Grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp.73-113. 2nd edition.
  • Hockett CF (1960) 'The origin of speech.' Scientific American 203: 88-96.

Other References

  • Aronoff M & Rees-Miller J (eds) (2003) The Handbook of Linguistics. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 1-4051-0252-7.
  • Asher R (ed.) (1993) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Bright W (ed.) (1992) International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Brown KR (Ed.) (2005) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics Elsevier. 2nd edition.
  • Bussmann H (1996) Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. London: Routledge (translated from German).
  • Crystal D
    • (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • (1991) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-17871-6.
    • (1992) An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Language and Languages. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Frawley W (ed.) (2003) International Encyclopedia of Linguistics Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Malmkjaer K (1991) The Linguistics Encyclopaedia. London: Routledge (SBN 0-415-22210-9.
  • Taylor JR (2003) Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-870033-4.
  • Trask RL
    • (1993) A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08628-0.
    • (1996) Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology. London: Routledge.
    • (1997) A student's dictionary of language and linguistics. London: Arnold.
    • (1999) Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics. London: Routledge.

External links

See also

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