Linguistics
Noam Chomsky: World famous Linguist
Introduction
What is Language, how is it structured, and who does it serve? Linguistics
concerns itself with these and further questions. Its fundamental viewpoints
and technical terms are introduced here.
Language und Linguistics
There is no other creature on this planet that shows the same ability to
communicate like humans. Talking, crying and whispering are all ways of
communication that are unique to humans. Life would be so much harder without
written and spoken communication.
What is Language ?
Language is a complicated signalling system. We share some of the design
features of language with animals. Others are unique to humans. What are
these features? One such feature is called Displacement: humans
have a sense of the past and future. We can use language to talk about
more that just the here and now. This is one characteristic unique to humans.
Open-endedness is the ability to say things that have never been said before.
Another is the highly developed vocal tract which only humans possess.
This organ enables us to produce many different sounds.
What is Linguistics ?
Linguistics is the science of language - of languages in general as well
as individual languages. There are many aspects of linguistics. There is
a specialised branch for approach to language:
-
Language Acquisition and Communication
How do we learn language? How does the process of language understanding
and production operate? This discipline gives responses to these questions.
It takes a look at the role of memory in language and long we use memory
when we begin to learn a language. Language acquisition is a mixture of
linguistics and psychology.
Historical linguistics concerns itself with the historical development
of languages and how they have changed over time. These are easy to see.
Try comparing Chaucer (14th Century), Shakespeare (16th
and 17th Century) with modern day novels in order to observe
the differences in English.
The subject matter of both subjects is language and how humans use
it as a communication system. Phonetics concerns itself with concrete utterances,
usually on the basis of measured signals. The aim of phonetics is to investigate
how these signals are produced: how are they transmitted as sound (acoustic)
and how they are perceived by the listener. Phonology concerns itself more
with utterances spoken out loud. Its aim is to describe the phonetically
measurable speech signals as linguistic characters of a language system,
and to ascertain the rules and principles of their functioning.
Morphology examines the form, inner structure, function and occurrence
of morphemes, i.e. the smallest meaningful linguistic units. Morphemes
can be divided into free morphemes, which can exist on their own (e.g.
tree), and bound morphemes, which can only appear as part of a word (e.g.
ess, waitress). New word forms can result from inflection or derivation:
With inflection, typically affixes are added to the trunk; the grammatical
category of the word is preserved. The procedure for derivatives is rather
unsystematic, i.e. the addition of an affix to different trunks can have
different results. The category of a word can change.
Syntax concerns itself with the rules and principles, according to
which words can be joined to sentences. Sentences can not just have any
arrangements of words. They have an internal structure.
Semantics concerns itself with the meaning of characters. Structural
semantics examines the meaning of words of a single language system. The
meaning of a word results from its relationship with other words. It primarily
concerns itself with the structure of vocabulary as well as the content
and relation to other words. Generative semantics concerns itself generally
with the semantics of sentences. Furthermore it points out associations
between sentences and articles.
Text linguistics concerns itself not only with the structural characteristics
of texts but also with the circumstances of its emergence, its connection
with other texts, its processing and its linguistic variation.
Sociolinguistics concerns itself with the various relations between
language and society. How can one determine the difference between someone
from Scotland and someone from Ireland? How does language change? Does
the language of a male differ from that of female? Sociolinguistics tries
to answer these questions.
Why study linguistics ?
Linguistics has the excitement of a young science. There is still much
to be discovered. In the course of an ACL degree students can do original
research and maybe discover something that has never been discovered before.
Sources: Ipsen, Guido.'Linguistics for Beginners:
A guide and Textbook for the Orientierungskurs Linguistik',
Website:
Linguistics
for Beginners.
Graddol, D., Cheshire,J. and Swann, J.(1995)'Describing Language'. Philadelphia:Open
University Press.
Trouvain, J and Koreman,J. ' Information über das Studium der Phonetik
und Phonologie an der Uni Saarbrücken'
Website:http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/phonetik/wasndas_ob.html
Semiotik, Semantik, Pragmatik - eine Einführung'
Website:
http://santana.uni-muenster.de/Linguistik/user/steiner/semindex/intro.html
Fakultät für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, Uni Bielefeld
Website: http://www.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/studs.html
