CU - BA - Sem IV - English Literature-IV

BACHELOR OF ARTS SEMESTER-IV ENGLISH LITERATURE 1

CONTENT Unit -1 English Language: Concept of Language .................................................................. 3 Unit - 2 Linguistics: Linguistics as A Scientific Study of Language .................................... 16 Unit - 3 Branches: Branches of Linguistics.......................................................................... 32 Unit - 4 Phonetics: Introduction of Phonetics ...................................................................... 48 Unit – 5 Production of Speech Sound : Vowels and Consonants in the Context of Indian Learner ........................................................................................................................................... 61 Unit – 6 Stress: Strong and Weak Syllable, Weak Forms Problems For Indian Learners...... 70 Unit – 7 Transcription: Phonetic Transcription of Words..................................................... 81 Unit - 8 Intonation, Problems and Remedial Measures ........................................................ 91 Unit – 9 Phonology: Minimal Pairs, Distinctive Features, Form and Meaning ................... 102 Unit– 10 Syllable Structure: Assimilation Rules, Dissimilation Rules ............................... 115 Unit –11 Morphology: Word Classes, Formation .............................................................. 122 Unit - 12 Morpheme: Bound Words and Free Words......................................................... 138 Unit - 13 Derivational Morphology: Compound Stress Pattern .......................................... 154 2

UNIT -1 ENGLISH LANGUAGE: CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE STRUCTURE 1.0 Learning Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 English Language: Concept of Language 1.3 Summary 1.4 Keywords 1.5 Learning Activity 1.6 Unit End Questions 1.7 References 1.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES The objectives of English language learning are: 1. To enable the student comprehend the spoken form. 2. To develop student ability to use English in day-to-day life and real-life situation. 3. To understand the written text and able to use skimming, scanning skills. 4. To write simple English to express ideas etc. Teacher should play different roles to get these objectives of English language. 5. To hear and understand spoken English 6. To understand what they read in English 7. To speak in English 8. To concern to passive command over the language 9. To relate to active command over the language. 10. To define language and demonstrate familiarity with the components of language 11. To understand how the use of language develops 12. To explain the relationship between language and thinking 3

1.1 INTRODUCTION English language teaching as well as learning have, over the centuries, assumed great significance, especially in the context of globalization, advances in information technology and the use of the Internet and Social-Media. Communication in English between people from different countries and ethnicities has grown phenomenally in the recent past. Tele-conferences and video conferences have become not only common but preferred in many organizations. Consequently, other language speakers are expected to develop the ability to speak English with a neutral accent. To be globally relevant, it is essential for an individual today to speak the language correctly with the right pronunciation, word and sentence stress and intonation. English Phonetics and Phonology has been specifically designed for people studying linguistics or English language courses as in them, phonetics and phonology form an essential component. People who seek to improve their ability to speak English with global intelligibility will also find this useful. Language production consists of several interdependent processes which transform a non- linguistic message into a spoken or signed linguistic signal. After identifying a message that needs to be linguistically encoded, a speaker has to select the individual words—known as lexical items, to denote that message through a process called lexical selection. During phonological encoding, the mental depiction of the words is assigned their phonological content as a sequence of phonemes to be generated. The phonemes are specified for articulatory characteristics which denote particular actions such as closed lips or the tongue in a particular location. These phonemes are then converted into a sequence of muscle commands which can be relayed to the muscles and when these commands get executed properly the intended sounds are produced. Language perception is the process by which a linguistic signal is received, decoded and understood by the listener. In order to perceive speech properly the continuous acoustic signal has to be converted into discrete linguistic units like the phonemes, morphemes, and words. To be able to correctly identify and categorize sounds, a listener prioritizes certain aspects of the signal which can reliably distinguish between different linguistic categories. Although certain cues are prioritized over others, many aspects of the signal can contribute to perception. For example, though oral languages prioritize acoustic information, it is proven that visual information is also used to distinguish ambiguous information when the acoustic cues are unreliable. 4

1.2 ENGLISH LANGUAGE: CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE Concept of language The English language is an Indo-European language in the West Germanic language group. Modern English is widely considered to be the lingua franca of the world and is the standard language in a wide variety of fields, including computer coding, international business, and higher education. As of 2020 there are 1.27 billion English speakers around the world. This makes it the most spoken language, ahead of Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion speakers) and Hindi (637 million speakers). More than 50 countries officially list English as an official language. Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release. Many definitions of language have been proposed. Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.” In addition to the simplicity of inflections, English has two other basic characteristics: flexibility of function and openness of vocabulary. Flexibility of function has grown over the last five centuries as a consequence of the loss of inflections. Definition: Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.” According to linguists, there are several characteristics that a communication system must have to be considered a language. These characteristics are: What does language mean: Beyond the criteria listed above, speakers may or may not be aware of some aspects of language. Languages commonly have certain structural aspects that convey meaning, as well as cultural aspects. A person might learn to speak a language in a grammatically correct way. However, without knowing the cultural conventions of that language, they might still struggle to communicate with native speakers. Languages are also fluid, changing as speakers produce 5

new forms and abandon old ones. In this way, languages evolve and diverge over time. An often overlooked final element of languages is that a fully complex living language must have native speakers. Some constructed languages are very complex and rule-governed, but without actual speakers who can communicate using them, a constructed language cannot be a fully realized language. 1. Language Sounds and Symbols Different sounds that have symbolic meanings make up the vast majority of languages. Individual sounds, like vowels and consonants in English, are called phonemes. Languages can have many phonemes or very few. For instance, the !Xóõ language, primarily spoken in Botswana, has 112 phonemes, while the Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea only has 11. English is somewhere in the middle, with 42 phonemes in most dialects. The smallest units of meaning in a word are called morphemes. In the word ''unbelievable,'' for instance, there are three morphemes: ''un-'' is a prefix, ''believe'' is a verb, and ''-able'' is a suffix that turns the word into an adjective. These grammatical constructions give spoken language structure. Many languages, but not all, also have written forms. There are several different ways to create written forms of languages. English has an alphabet, and letters are combined to produce words. Other languages, like Cherokee, have syllabaries where symbols represent clusters of sounds. Languages like Chinese have written forms that are not directly connected to pronunciation but are instead composed of symbols that now represent meanings. 2. Sign Languages Sign languages are a fascinating example of how language can go beyond speech. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people and communities around the world primarily use sign language. The movement of the hands, face, and body, rather than through speech, produce language. Typically, sign languages do not have standardized written forms. It is important to remember that while sign languages have a different modality from spoken languages, they are just as complex and rule-bound, fitting into all of the criteria of language listed above. They follow grammatical systems and can be used to express any idea. What is language? Language, be it spoken, signed, or written, has specific components: Lexicon: Lexicon refers to the words of a given language. Thus, lexicon is a language’s vocabulary. Grammar: Grammar refers to the set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of the lexicon. 6

Words are formed by combining the various phonemes that make up the language. A phoneme (e.g., the sounds “ah” vs. “eh”) is a basic sound unit of a given language, and different languages have different sets of phonemes. Phonemes are combined to form morphemes, which are the smallest units of language that convey some type of meaning (e.g., “I” is both a phoneme and a morpheme). We use semantics and syntax to construct language. Semantics and syntax are part of a language’s grammar. Semantics refers to the process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words. Syntax refers to the way words are organized into sentences While most people use language every day, it can be a tricky concept to define accurately. Essentially, language is a term for any complex communication system used by humans that consists of words and phrases that, when combined, can create infinite variable utterances. How humans initially developed language is not wholly clear and is something that linguists are still researching. Most humans learn at least one language in early childhood. If a person lacks exposure to language as a young child, they will never be able to fluently learn a language as an adult because of how human brain development works. English language, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family that is closely related to the Frisian, German, and Dutch (in Belgium called Flemish) languages. English originated in England and is the dominant language of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and various island nations in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It is also an official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa. English is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries of the world, and it is that status that has given it the position of a global lingua franca. It is estimated that about a third of the world’s population, some two billion persons, now use English. English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and is therefore related to most other languages spoken in Europe and western Asia from Iceland to India. The parent tongue, called Proto-Indo-European, was spoken about 5,000 years ago by nomads believed to have roamed the southeast European plains. Germanic, one of the language groups descended from this ancestral speech, is usually divided by scholars into three regional groups: East (Burgundian, Vandal, and Gothic, all extinct), North (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish), and West (German, Dutch [and Flemish], Frisian, and English). Though closely related to English, German remains far more conservative than English in its retention of a fairly elaborate system of inflections. Frisian, spoken by the inhabitants of the Dutch province of Friesland and the islands off the west coast of Schleswig, is the language most nearly related 7

to Modern English. Icelandic, which has changed little over the last thousand years, is the living language most nearly resembling Old English in grammatical structure. Modern English is analytic (i.e., relatively uninflected), whereas Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral tongue of most of the modern European languages (e.g., German, French, Russian, Greek), was synthetic, or inflected. During the course of thousands of years, English words have been slowly simplified from the inflected variable forms found in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Russian, and German, toward invariable forms, as in Chinese and Vietnamese. The German and Chinese words for the noun man are exemplary. German has five forms: Mann, Mannes, Manne, Männer, Männern. Chinese has one form: ren. English stands in between, with four forms: man, man’s, men, men’s. In English, only nouns, pronouns (as in he, him, his), adjectives (as in big, bigger, biggest), and verbs are inflected. English is the only European language to employ uninflected adjectives; e.g., the tall man, the tall woman, compared to Spanish el hombre alto and la mujer alta. As for verbs, if the Modern English word ride is compared with the corresponding words in Old English and Modern German, it will be found that English now has only 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden), whereas Old English ridan had 13, and Modern German reiten has 16. In addition to the simplicity of inflections, English has two other basic characteristics: flexibility of function and openness of vocabulary. Flexibility of function has grown over the last five centuries as a consequence of the loss of inflections. Words formerly distinguished as nouns or verbs by differences in their forms are now often used as both nouns and verbs. Openness of vocabulary implies both free admission of words from other languages and the ready creation of compounds and derivatives. English adopts (without change) or adapts (with slight change) any word really needed to name some new object or to denote some new process. Words from more than 350 languages have entered English in this way. Like French, Spanish, and Russian, English frequently forms scientific terms from Classical Greek word elements. Although a Germanic language in its sounds and grammar, the bulk of English vocabulary is in fact Romance or Classical in origin. English possesses a system of orthography that does not always accurately reflect the pronunciation of words; see below Orthography. The seven main functions of language: The functions are: 1. Expressive and Communicative Functions 2. Interpretative Functions 8

3. Control function 4. The Functions of Remembering and Thinking 5. The Discovery of One’s Name 6. Social Functions of Language 7. Creative Functions. 1. Expressive and Communicative Functions: The most basic function of language as we can guess, is that of the expressive function, an attempt to express a sudden change of state, fear, delight, pain or confusion. Whatever it is, such an expression is not a deliberate, conscious expression, but a spontaneous, immediate response not directed towards any other object. Incidentally, in many cases this also serves as a communication to other members of the group or species, particularly in situations of danger. Most probably, these functions are automatic instinctual functions, and found in lower organisms also. However, at the human level, the communicative role assumes more crucial importance 2. Interpretative Functions: It may be seen that when a particular occurrence or expression serves as a stimulus to others it also serves a function of becoming aware of interpreting a particular situation. Thus, the cry of one animal in the face of danger is interpreted by other members of the species. The interpretative function is very obvious at the human level. The interpretative function serves to restore a state of cognitive equilibrium. While the stimulus itself creates a condition of uncertainty or novelty, the interpretation serves to clarify the situation and restore the equilibrium. Such an interpretation helps to place the information in an appropriate position or slot in one’s cognitive world. Thus, when an offspring gets separated from the mother and suddenly finds her again the sound that may be made is different from the one that would have been made if a strange animal is seen. The sounds on the two occasions, may be phonetically similar, but there is a difference in the meanings of the two sounds meaning in a very elementary sense. One may question whether one can attribute qualities like meaning, cognition, etc. to animals. But one may also ask why not? Human bigotry particularly, that of the social scientists has prevented them from being objective and honest. Thus, the second major function of the language is to help the organism to interpret and organise cognitive experiences and position them in one’s cognitive world. 3. Control Function: 9

When one talks of the function of control, there emerges a social dimension apart from the individual dimension. Gradually, as associations get established between certain states of existence and a stimulus on the one hand and certain sounds, there results a reproducibility of a reaction. Thus, the child cries when he is hungry or suffering from pain. This cry in turn makes the mother, or even the animal mother to rush and help. Here is the beginning of control. The cry brings the mother’s attention and hope, and in later years the attention of those who are dear and close and those who are in a position to support. This is the first experience of mastering the environment and ability to control. Here it may be seen that at simple levels, this control function may not be deliberate and conscious, but as one grows and the environment becomes more organised, the control function of language becomes more and more central. All of us feel comfortable to talk to a person if we know his name. Whenever we meet a familiar face, we feel comfortable if we can remember his name. The importance of words, slogans, and ‘clarion calls’ in controlling the people and mob is too well-known to need any extensive discussion. 4. The Functions of Remembering and Thinking: Imagine our being able to think and remember without the use of words. It is almost impossible to recall or remember or think without the use of words and therefore, language. It is language, which helps us to encode experiences, store them and retrieve and decode. It is language, which helps us to translate experiences into thought and engage in processes of different types. 5. The Discovery of One’s Name: One of the important milestones in the development of the child is the discovery that he or she has a name and, this is the beginning of the sense of self- identity which leads to feelings like me, mine, others, not me, etc. The discovery of one’s name plays a very crucial role in the overall psychological development of the individual. It is the beginning of self-identity, and an attempt to look at oneself as an object. It is this which essentially makes for a difference between human organism and the non-human organism and between a very young child and an adult and mentally disturbed adult. This issue of formation of self-concept and self-identity has been examined in greater detail elsewhere but the important point to remember is the very critical role played by language in the development of the self and overall psychological development. 6. Social Functions of Language: In addition to these individual functions, language performs a very important social function. While promoting a sense of personal identity language also serves to develop a sense of social 10

identity, a sense of belongingness to a particular group, marking out different degrees of social proximity and distance. All of us belong to social groups speaking the same language. Similarly, the national anthem which is nothing but a set of words creates and maintains a sense of social identity. However, sometimes, this sense of social identity if it is very narrow, can result in social conflicts and confrontations between different groups. 7. Creative Functions: Language plays a very crucial role in imaginative and creative activity. Is it possible to think of writing a novel or poetry without language? Language, then not only helps us to control and regulate our cognitions but also enables us to break free and engage in creative imagination. Here again, paradoxically, language also contributes to the emergence of very ‘creative’ delusions and belief systems in the mentally ill. On the whole, one can see the very critical and crucial role played ‘by language in our life. It is perhaps, impossible to think of any place or situation in life where one can function without the help of language. Apart from the common functions of expression and communication, the psychological and social functions played by language are very crucial and are becoming more and more important in today’s world. This discussion of the functions of languages is rather brief, and has been attempted only to highlight the major functions. Perhaps, one can highlight many more functions of language. No wonder, freedom of speech is regarded as the most fundamental right. 1.3 SUMMARY  Language is a form of communication used exclusively by humans.  Several characteristics make up a human language, one of the most important of which is combinability.  Combinability is the phenomenon where sounds and words can be combined and added together to create a wide variety of meanings. Animals are thought not to have language because their calls, while communicative, cannot be added together to create new meanings.  Grammar governs all languages.  Grammar is a set of rules developed in each language to generate complex meanings. 11

 In English, phonemes, the individual sounds, break down words, and morphemes, are the smallest units of meaning in a word. While all languages have different grammatical constructions, all of them are equally complex and rule-bound.  Language is a communication system that has both a lexicon and a system of grammar.  Language acquisition occurs naturally and effortlessly during the early stages of life, and this acquisition occurs in a predictable sequence for individuals around the world.  Language has a strong influence on thought, and the concept of how language may influence cognition remains an area of study and debate in psychology. 1.4 KEYWORD  grammar set of rules that are used to convey meaning through the use of a lexicon  language communication system that involves using words to transmit information from one individual to another  lexicon the words of a given language  morpheme smallest unit of language that conveys some type of meaning  overgeneralization extension of a rule that exists in a given language to an exception to the rule  phoneme basic sound unit of a given language  semantics process by which we derive meaning from morphemes and words  syntax manner by which words are organized into sentences 1.5 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. What does language mean? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. What is the definition of language? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 12

1.6 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. How did the English language develop? 2. What influenced the development of Old English? 3. Where does English come from? 4. When did the English language become a popular language? 5. What is language a system of symbols and rules? 6. What makes a system of communication a language? Long Questions 1. What is a definition of language? 2. What are the functions of language? 3. What are the characteristics of English language? 4. Where does English come from? 5. What is the structure of language? 6. What are the functions of language? B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. The first thing to realise is that language is primarily spoken and not _______ a. written b. drawn c. Sketch d. Thought 2. Language is _______, not Static. a. primary b. evolutionary c. tertiary d. secondary 3. _______ is a system that contains sounds and alphabets. a. Linguistics b. Speech c. Language d. None of the above 13

4. Which animal sounds bow-wow? a. cow b. goat c. dog d. all of the above 5. The Latin word for Pebble is __________ a. Calculus b. Calculate c. Calculator d. None of the above Answers 1-a, 2-b, 3-c. 4-c, 5-a 1.7 REFERENCES References book  Abram, D., Spell of the Sensuous (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1997)  Allan, K. and Kate Burridge, Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)  Brown, G., “Explaining,” in The Handbook of Communication Skills, ed. Owen Hargie (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006)  Crystal, D., How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2005)  Dorian, N. C., “Abrupt Transmission Failure in Obsolescing Languages: How Sudden the ‘Tip’ to the Dominant Language in Communities and Families?” Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1986)  Foot, H. and May McCredie, “Humour and Laughter,” in The Handbook of Communication Skills, ed. Owen Hargie (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006).  Hargie, O. Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011)  Hayakawa, S. I. and Alan R. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 5th ed. (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1990) 14

Textbook references  Martin, J. N. and Thomas K. Nakayama, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 5th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010)  McCornack, S., Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007)  McKay, M., Martha Davis, and Patrick Fanning, Messages: Communication Skills Book, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1995)  Huang, L., “Technology: Textese May Be the Death of English,” Newsweek, August 2011, 8.  Humphrys, J., “I h8 txt msgs: How Texting Is Wrecking Our Language,” Daily Mail, September 24, 2007, accessed June 7, 2012  Martin, J. N. and Thomas K. Nakayama, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 5th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010)  McCornack, S., Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007) Website  Egocentricity in Child Language | Forms | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Relationship between Thought and Language | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Sex Behaviour of an Individual | Forms | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Brain Function and Language Behaviour | Human Behaviour | Psychology 15

UNIT - 2 LINGUISTICS: LINGUISTICS AS A SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE STRUCTURE 2.0 Learning Objectives 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Linguistics: Linguistic as A Scientific Study of Language 2.3 Summary 2.4 Keywords 2.5 Learning Activity 2.6 Unit End Questions 2.7 References 2.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES Linguistics is the scientific study of language. At the heart of linguistics is an understanding of:  The unconscious knowledge that humans have about language  How humans acquire language  The general and specific structures of language  How languages vary  How language influences the way in which humans interact with each other and think about the world  Linguists investigate how people acquire knowledge about language.  How this knowledge interacts with other thought processes?  How it varies between speakers and geographic regions.  How to model this knowledge computationally?  To study how to represent the structure of various aspects of language (such as sounds or meaning).  How to theoretically explain different linguistic patterns.  How different components of language interact with each other. 16

 Many linguists employ statistical analysis, mathematics, and logical formalism to account for the patterns they observe.  Linguistics is a major that provides insight into one of the most intriguing aspects of human knowledge and behavior.  Learning linguistics means learning about many aspects of human language, including sounds (phonetics, phonology), words (morphology), sentences (syntax), and meaning (semantics).  To understand how languages, change over time (historical linguistics).  How language varies from situation to situation, group to group, and place to place (sociolinguistics, dialectology).  How people use language in context (pragmatics, discourse analysis)  How to model aspects of language (computational linguistics)?  How people acquire or learn language (language acquisition).  How people process language (psycholinguistics, experimental linguistics). 2.1 INTRODUCTION Definition of linguistics Linguistics can be defined as the scientific study of language. This definition is barely sufficient to give the reader any positive hint of the fundamental principles of the subject. It may be made a little more revealing by drawing in greater detail the suggestions contained in the qualification ‘scientific’. For the moment, it will be enough to say that by the scientific study of language is meant its investigation by means of controlled and analytically verifiable observations and with reference to some general theory of language-structure. Linguistic terminology It is sometimes suggested that the terminology of modern linguistics is unnecessarily complex. This is a criticism which need not delay us long. Every language has its own technical vocabulary. It is only because the layman takes on trust the established sciences, and especially the ‘natural’ sciences, that he does not question their right to provide themselves with special vocabularies. The technical terms used by linguists rise in the course of their work. It is easily understood by those who approach the subject understandingly and without prejudgment. It should not be forgotten that most of the terms which the non-linguist employs to talk about language (‘word’, ‘syllable’, ‘letter’, ‘phrase’, ‘sentence’, ‘noun’, ‘verb’, etc.) originated as 17

technical terms of old-style grammar and are no less ‘abstract’ in their reference than the more recent creations of linguists. Linguistics is a social science discipline that looks at language, the differences in language between societies, how language is learned and the many different components of language. Linguistic studies help look out how language forms and functions in society, and how language changes over time. The scientific study of language is meant its investigation by means of controlled and empirically verifiable observations and with reference to some general theory of language- structure. It is sometimes suggested that the terminology, or ‘jargon’, of modern linguistics is unnecessarily complex. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The word was first used in the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the difference between a newer approach to the study of language that was then developing and the more traditional approach of philology. The differences were and are largely matters of attitude, emphasis, and purpose. Linguistics is the science of language, and linguists are scientists who apply the scientific method to questions about the nature and function of language. Hierarchy of language While we’re at it, let us also take a look at the hierarchy of language and how smaller units come together to form bigger, more complex structures of a language. Below, we start with the smallest unit (phoneme) and progress towards complete texts. 1. Phonemes - These are the smallest units of language that distinguish one word from another. For instance, the letters s, d, w, and b in the words say, day, way, and bay are phonetic elements. 2. Syllables - A word or part of a word that contains one vowel sound. For instance, the word day has one syllable, while daily has two syllables. 3. Morphemes - A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning that a word in a language can be divided into. For instance, the word unreasonable can be divided into three sections - un-, reason, and -able. 4. Words - A word is defined as the smallest sequence of phonemes that can stand on its own. Contrast this with morphemes that do not stand on their own. For instance, the 18

word management can stand on its own as an entity in language, but its constituent morpheme ‘-ment’ cannot. 5. Phrases - Any group of words that are used together without a full verb is called a phrase. Phrases can be just a single word or a complete sentence but do not include the subject-verb pairing. For instance, “under the bed”, “a box of chocolates”, “in the air” are examples of phrases. 6. Clauses - A clause is a group of words that has a subject and a verb. For instance, “Rahul swims fast” is a clause. 7. Sentences - Sentences are groups of words that express a complete thought. They’re similar to clauses but have a more thorough statement to make. “Rahul swims fast but not as fast as Samar” is a sentence that consists of two clauses separated by a ‘but’. 8. Texts - Finally, a text is a coherent sequence of sentences, be it spoken or written, that is up for critical analysis and interpretation. Texts can be classified by genre or type, such as poems, essays, books, news, conversations, etc. This is the basic hierarchical structure of a language. Although we’ve used English as an example, this is true for most languages of the world. 2.2 LINGUISTICS: LINGUISTIC AS A SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE What is linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Experts in linguistics work on specific languages, but their chief goal is to understand the nature of language in general by asking questions. Linguistic distinguishes human language from other animal communication systems. The main goal of linguistics, like all other intellectual disciplines, is to increase our knowledge and understanding of the world. Since language is universal and fundamental to all human interactions, the knowledge attained in linguistics has many practical applications. Linguists, with some training in other appropriate disciplines. Speech can be synthesized on a computer or how can a computer be programmed to understand human speech. The language problems of people with speech abnormalities be analyzed and rectified. The Sub-Fields of Linguistics 19

Language is a wonder with many layers, from the sounds that speakers produce to the meanings that those sounds express. The field of Linguistics is contained of several sub-fields. Most professional linguists become specialists in one or more of these sub-fields. The major ones are: 1. Phonetics The study of speech sounds is called phonetics. Phoneticians study both the production of speech sounds by the human speech organs (articulatory phonetics) and the properties of the sounds themselves (acoustic phonetics). 2. Phonology The study of language sound systems is known as Phonology. Phonologists are concerned about sounds contrast in one language but not another this explain why Spanish speakers have trouble with the difference between English sh and ch, or why English speakers have trouble with the different “u” sounds in French words like rue ‘street’ and roue ‘wheel’. The sounds of a language can or cannot occur one after the other (for example, why can words begin in st– in English but not in Spanish)? 3. Morphology The study of word structure is called Morphology. 4. Syntax The study of how linguistic units larger than the word are constructed, known as Syntax. 5. Semantics Semantic is the study of meaning. In addition to these sub-fields, there are a number of other sub-fields that cross-cut them: 1. Historical linguistics Historical linguistic is actually the study of how languages change over time, addressing such questions as:  Why modern English is different form Old English and Middle English.  What it means to say that English and German are “more closely related” to each other than English and French. 2. Sociolinguistics Sociolinguistic is the study of how language is used in society, addressing such questions. It is also about, what makes some dialects more “respected” than others, where slang comes from and why it arises, or what happens when two languages come together in “bilingual” communities. 20

3. Psycholinguistics The study of how language is processed in the mind, addressing such questions as is known as Psycholinguistic.  How we can hear a string of language noises and make sense of them.  How children can learn to speak and understand the language of their environment as quickly and effortlessly as they do.  How people with pathological language problems differ from people who have “normal” language. 4. Neurolinguistics The study of the real encoding of language in the brain, addressing such questions as  What parts of the brain different aspects of language are stored in?  How language is actually stored?  What goes on physically in the brain when language is processed?  How the brain compensates when certain areas are damaged? 1. Computational linguistics Learning and understanding a language comprises computing the properties of that language that are described in its phonology, syntax, and semantics. The challenge of describing this process connects linguistics with computational issues at a very fundamental level. How could syntactic structures be computed from spoken language? How are semantic relations recognized? How could these computational skills be acquired? The structure of language If we were to ask a non-linguist what are the final units of language, the building-blocks, so to speak, out of which sounds are created, he might well reply that the ultimate units of language are ‘sounds’ and ‘words’. He might add that words are made up of arrangements of sounds, each sound being represented, ideally, by a particular letter of the alphabet (in the case of languages customarily represented by a classification of alphabetic writing); and that, whereas the words of a language have a meaning, the sounds do not (their sole function being to form words). These several propositions underline the old view of language reflected in most grammars and dictionaries: the grammar gives rules for the construction of sentences out of words, and the dictionary tells us what the individual words mean. We shall have instance to examine critically 21

the terms ‘sound’, ‘word’, ‘meaning’ and ‘sentence’ which figure in these universal statements about language. However, for the purpose of the present initial discussion of the structure of language, we may leave these terms undefined. Certain differences will be indicated in the course of this chapter and will be made clear later. Phonology, grammar and semantics The traditional view of language incorporates the notions of composition (a more complex unit is composed of simpler, or smaller, units: a word is composed of sounds, a phrase of words, a clause of phrases, a sentence of clauses, and so on) and of correlation (each word is correlated with one or more meanings). The sounds of Language Phonetics and phonology The traditional view of language, according to which sentences are composed of words and words of ‘sounds”. In the course of our discussion of substance and form in the previous chapter we saw that the term ‘sounds’ is potentially unclear. We must now clear up this uncertainty. If the linguist is asked whether two ‘sounds’ are the same or different, or how many ‘sounds’ are there in a given language, he must know whether the question is one of matter or form; whether these ‘sounds’ are to be observed as physical objects which can be described without knowing to what language they belong or whether they are to be described in terms of such differences and similarities of sound as are functional in the language (by ‘functional’ is to be understood ‘applicable for the purpose of communication’). In the first case he will give a phonetic description of what he hears or analyses instrumentally. In the second he will give a phonological description. Speech-sounds Now differentiate, temporarily, between the terms ‘speech-sound’ and ‘phoneme’. A speech- sound is any phonetically different unit of sound; that is to say, any unit of sound produced by the speech-organs that can be distinguished by the phonetician from all other units of sound produced by the speech-organs. Grammar: General Principles ‘Grammar’ The term ‘grammar’ goes back (through French and Latin) to a Greek word which may be translated as ‘the art of writing’. But quite early in the history of Greek scholarship this word acquired a much wider sense and came to embrace the whole study of language, so far as this was undertaken by the Greeks and their successors. The history of western linguistic theory 22

until recent times is very largely the history of what scholars at different times held to fall within the scope of ‘grammar’ taken in this wider sense. Inflexion and syntax More recently the term ‘grammar’ has developed a narrower interpretation. As used nowadays, it tends to be restricted to that part of the analysis of language which was handled in classical grammar under the headings of inflexion and syntax. The traditional distinction between inflexion and syntax, which rests on the acceptance of the individual word as the fundamental unit of language may be formulated as follows: inflexion treats of the internal structure of words, and syntax accounts for the way in which words combine to form sentences. For the present, we may continue to take the notions of ‘word’ and ‘sentence’ for granted. Grammar, we will say, gives rules for combining words to form sentences. It thus excludes, on the one hand, the phonological description of words and sentences, and, on the other, an account of the meaning that particular words and sentences bear. Grammatical Units 1. Words 2. Sentences 3. Morphemes 4. Phrases 5. Clauses Old-style linguistic theory functions with two fundamental units of grammatical explanation: 1. The word 2. The sentence Both of these units are given practical recognition in the conventions of different writing systems. For instance, in the various alphabetic systems introduced for European languages, as well as for many other languages throughout the world, sentences are separated from one another by using special symbols of punctuation such as full-stop, question-mark, exclamation- mark etc. By capitalizing the first letter of the first word in each sentence; and, within sentences, words are separated from one another by spaces. For this reason, the educated layman is familiar with the term ‘word’ and ‘sentence’, and uses them freely in talking about language. We have been using the terms ‘word’ and ‘sentence’ without definition or explanation. We must now study these terms in the light of the over-all principles, taking account of the suggestions that ‘word’ and ‘sentence’ carry in everyday usage and in old-style grammatical theory. 23

The orthodox grammarians were little worried with the study of words into smaller elements. However, it is clear that, in many languages at least, such elements exist. For instance, the English word unacceptable is made up of three smaller units, each of which has a characteristic distribution: un, accept, and able. Grammatical Structure 1. Immediate constituents 2. Concatenation and linearity In our treatment of the general principles of ‘formal grammar’ in we deliberately accepted the view that all sentences had a simple linear structure: i.e. that every sentence of the language could be reasonably described, from the grammatical point of view, as a sequence of constituents which we assumed to be words. As an abstract illustration of what is meant by the term ‘string’ (which is the technical term used in mathematical treatments of the grammatical structure of language) we may consider the following instances: a+b+c+d The plus-sign is employed to indicate concatenation (‘chaining together’). The string results from the combination of the constituents, or elements, in a particular order. What the order represents depends upon the interpretation given to the system in its application to particular phenomena. In the case of natural languages, the left-to right ordering of the constituents in the string may be thought of as reflecting the time-sequence (from earlier to later) in spoken sounds or the left-to-right ordering of written sentences in the conventions used for English and most languages of the world today. At the same time, it should be realized that the same abstract principle of linear ordering might also be used for other purposes in the description of language. Grammatical Categories The term ‘category’ in traditional grammar So far we have adopted a purely ‘formal’ approach to grammatical analysis. In the present chapter we will discuss the traditional assumption that there exist certain ‘notional’ categories which are universal in the sense that they are common to all languages. We shall be concerned with the traditional theory of the ‘parts of speech’ and such ‘grammatical categories’ traditionally associated with the parts of speech as person, tense, mood, gender, number and case. First of all, something must be said in this introductory section about the term ‘grammatical category’ and its traditional implications. 24

There is very little consistency or uniformity in the use of the term ‘category’ in modern conducts of grammatical theory. It is frequently stated, like ‘class’ or ‘set’, to refer to any group of elements recognized in the description of certain languages. Some writers refer to the ‘parts of speech’ as ‘categories’; others, following the more traditional usage, control the application of the term to such structures associated with the ‘parts of speech’ in the traditional languages as have been mentioned above (person, tense, mood, etc.). There are other—wider, narrower or quite different—technical senses in which the term has been introduced. No attempt will be made here to give to the term ‘grammatical category’ a precise, technical explanation. Grammatical Functions Subject, predicate and adjunct Nuclear and extranuclear constituents It is a important principle of old-style grammar, and also of much modern syntactic theory, that every simple, declarative sentence consists of two obligatory major elements: 1. A subject 2. A predicate It may contain, in addition, one or more adjuncts. Adjuncts are optional, or structurally replaceable, elements of the sentence. They may be removed without upsetting the remainder of the sentence. The various kinds of adjuncts are place, time, manner, reason, etc. To explain the way in which these terms are applied, we may discuss to the sentence John killed Bill in Central Park on Sunday. The subject is John; The predicate is killed Bill In Central Park and on Sunday are adjuncts, of place and time respectively. Either or both of the adjuncts may be removed without destroying the grammaticality of the sentence: John killed Bill on Sunday, John killed Bill in Central Park, John killed Bill. By contrast, neither *killed Bill in Central Park on Sunday nor *John in Central Park on Sunday are grammatically complete. We will say that the subject and predicate together form the nucleus of the sentence. The subject and the predicate are therefore nuclear, and adjuncts extranuclear, elements. Semantics: General Principles The term ‘semantics’ 25

Semantics may be defined, initially and temporarily, as ‘the study of meaning’. The term ‘semantics’ is of comparatively recent origin, being created in the late nineteenth century from a Greek verb meaning ‘to signify’. This does not mean, that scholars first turned their attention to the investigation of the meaning of words less than a hundred years ago. On the contrary, from the early times down to the present day grammarians have been concerned in the meaning of words. Even frequently more interested in what words mean than in their syntactic function. A practical manifestation of this interest is seen in the uncountable dictionaries that have been produced throughout the ages, not only in the West, but in all parts of the world where language has been studied. As we have already seen, the categories of old-style grammar were to a large extent determined by their characteristic ‘modes of signifying’. Neglect of semantics in modern linguistics Many of the more influential books on linguistics that have appeared in the last thirty years devote little or no attention to semantics. The reason for this is that many linguists have come to doubt whether meaning can be studied as objectively and as rigorously as grammar and phonology, for the present at least. Semantic Structure The priority of sense-relations We have already seen that the vocabulary of a language will comprise a number of lexical systems the semantic structure of which can be described in terms of paradigmatic and syntagmatic sense-relations. we have stressed that these relations are to be defined as holding between lexical items and not between independently-determined senses. This last point is of considerable theoretical and methodological importance. It is one of the basic principles of ‘structuralism’, as developed by de Saussure and his followers. Every linguistic piece has its ‘place’ in a system and its function, or value, derives from the relations which it bonds with other units in the system. Receiving of the structural approach in semantics has the advantage that it permits the linguist to avoid commitment on the controversial question of the philosophical and psychological status of ‘concepts’ or ‘ideas’. As far as the experimental investigation of the structure of language is concerned, the sense of a lexical item may be defined to be, not only dependent upon, but identical with, the set of relations which hold between the item in question and other items in the same lexical system. 26

2.3 SUMMARY  Linguistics is a social science discipline that looks at language, the differences in language between societies, how language is learned and the many different components of language.  Linguistic studies help look out how language forms and functions in society, and how language changes over time.  The scientific study of language is meant its investigation by means of controlled and empirically verifiable observations and with reference to some general theory of language-structure.  It is sometimes suggested that the terminology, or ‘jargon’, of modern linguistics is unnecessarily complex.  Linguistics is the scientific study of language.  The word was first used in the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the difference between a newer approach to the study of language that was then developing and the more traditional approach of philology.  The differences were and are largely matters of attitude, emphasis, and purpose.  Linguistics is the science of language, and linguists are scientists who apply the scientific method to questions about the nature and function of language. 2.4 KEYWORD  Linguistic  Inflexion  Syntax  lexical systems  Semantic structure  Paradigmatic  Syntagmatic  Phonetics  Phonology  Morphology 27

 Syntax  Semantics  Nuclear  Extranuclear constituents  Historical linguistics  Sociolinguistics  Psycholinguistics  Neurolinguistics  Computational linguistics 2.5 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. What are the sounds? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. What is grammatical structure? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2.6 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. How are the modes of linguistic communication (speech, writing, sign language) related to each other? 2. How is language related to other types of human behavior? 3. How can a previously unstudied language be analyzed and written? 4. How can foreign languages best be taught and learned? 5. What features are common to all human languages? Long Questions 1. What are the sounds and how they work? 2. What is grammatical structure of language? 28

3. What is Linguistic terminology? 4. What are the sub-fields of Linguistics? 5. What are other sub-fields that cross-cut main sub-fields of Linguistic? B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. _______ language was spoken about 3000-3500 years B.C a. Indo Germanic b. Indo European c. Danish d. None of the above 2. The gradation process presents the change in the vowel sound of the __________. a. Adjective b. Pronoun c. Verb d. Noun 3. _______ of the English language distinguish three main stages in its development. a. Historians b. Europeans c. Europeans d. Foreigners 4. The Norman Invasion Conquest was in the year _______ a. 1066 b. 1088 c. 1089 d. 1100 5. Give the past tense for the word: Drive a. Drove b. Driven c. Drive d. Derive Answers 1-b, 2-c, 3-a. 4-a, 5-a 29

2.7 REFERENCES References book  Abram, D., Spell of the Sensuous (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1997)  Allan, K. and Kate Burridge, Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)  Brown, G., “Explaining,” in The Handbook of Communication Skills, ed. Owen Hargie (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006)  Crystal, D., How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2005)  Dorian, N. C., “Abrupt Transmission Failure in Obsolescing Languages: How Sudden the ‘Tip’ to the Dominant Language in Communities and Families?” Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1986)  Foot, H. and May McCredie, “Humour and Laughter,” in The Handbook of Communication Skills, ed. Owen Hargie (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006).  Hargie, O. Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011)  Hayakawa, S. I. and Alan R. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 5th ed. (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1990) Textbook references  Martin, J. N. and Thomas K. Nakayama, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 5th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010)  McCornack, S., Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007)  McKay, M., Martha Davis, and Patrick Fanning, Messages: Communication Skills Book, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1995)  Huang, L., “Technology: Textese May Be the Death of English,” Newsweek, August 2011, 8.  Humphrys, J., “I h8 txt msgs: How Texting Is Wrecking Our Language,” Daily Mail, September 24, 2007, accessed June 7, 2012  Martin, J. N. and Thomas K. Nakayama, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 5th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010) 30

 McCornack, S., Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007) Website  Egocentricity in Child Language | Forms | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Relationship between Thought and Language | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Sex Behaviour of an Individual | Forms | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Brain Function and Language Behaviour | Human Behaviour | Psychology 31

UNIT - 3 BRANCHES: BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS STRUCTURE 3.0 Learning Objectives 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Branches: Branches of Linguistics 3.3 Summary 3.4 Keywords 3.5 Learning Activity 3.6 Unit End Questions 3.7 References 3.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES  To learn what do humans have in common.  To learn how different languages evolved.  To learn how different are human languages?  To understand how do you become familiar with a language in such a short time?  To understand how it deals with the limitations that a language has.  To learn why linguistics is a wide area of study which clears your usual doubts. 3.1 INTRODUCTION Linguistics is a matter which deals with the nature of language. Whatever you try to speak and communicate is difficult. Human language is complex knowledge and abilities that enable the speaker to communicate with others. Thus they share their ideas, views, emotions, and desires with others. The way you speak depicts your expressions and feelings. Linguistic is the study of the science of languages. It defines how languages originated over time, how it is acquired, and what a person feels while expressing it. The study of different languages deals with linguistics. You make different analyses, form a different perception in your mind, and learn the different contexts of languages while dealing with them. Linguistics is a wide area of study which makes you understand the nature of a 32

language, how humans learn them, and how it has evolved. Your language states what you feel and express. Also, know how a language can put on the fire to bring up better communication. Also, Linguistics deals with the cognitive processes that play an important role when we are learning a language. Important aspects of Linguistics that deals with the structure of a language  Phonetics: It is the study of speech sounds, thinking about their physical aspects.  Phonology: It is the study sounds that a person makes while speaking.  Syntax: Syntax is the formation of sentences.  Morphology: Morphology deals with the formation of words.  Semantics: It is the study of certain meanings.  Pragmatics: It is the study of using a language. Also, you will learn how different economic, social, political, cultural, and historical factors bring a change in your language and tone. 3.2 BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS Linguistics is a very vast topic to deal with. Thus there are different subfields formed, which are known as branches of linguistics. Different interdisciplinary branches of linguistics are:  Historical Linguistics  Applied Linguistics  Sociolinguistics  Computational Linguistics  Psycholinguistics  Comparative Linguistics  Stylistics Let us study each one in detail: 1. Historical Linguistics: Historical Linguistics defines the evolution of languages over a span of time. Also, what changes a language has to undergo from the past many years. Also, you will understand what the different languages that evolved over the years are. This is one of the more intriguing branches of linguistics. It studies the evolution of languages over a period of time and analyses the changes that took place within them. One of the purposes of this branch 33

is the examination of ‘dead’ languages, such as Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, etc., and the emergence of current languages from them. Historical linguistics also enables us to reconstruct earlier stages of languages to understand how grammar, semantics, and phonetics can change over time. Historical Linguistics (also called Diachronic Linguistics) is a field of Linguistics that concerns the study of language change. It sounds similar to History of Linguistics and therefore, the two areas are sometimes wrongly conflated. In fact, they are different subjects. Historical Linguistics explores different aspects of language change. The most commonly studied areas in historical linguistics are: 1. Etymology: Studying the reconstruction and origin of words. 2. Analysis and description of multiple speech communities. 3. Tracing (as far as possible) the history of language. This includes Sanskrit, Latin, Old English, and also modern languages, such as German, Italian and Japanese. This process also involves grouping languages into categories, or “families”, according to the extent to which those languages are similar to each other. 4. Describing and analyzing changes of any type which have occurred cross-linguistically and within a language itself. Languages can change in any area of language; phonology, syntax, morphology and orthography are only a few of the areas which could be considered. 5. The construction of a framework of theories which can account for how and why languages change. Sub-fields As is evident, the study of Historical Linguistics concerns many different topics. For this reason, it is comprised of different sub-fields.  Comparative Philology (or Comparative Linguistics) concerns the comparison of cross-linguistic features in order to establish the relatedness of languages.  Etymology concerns the study of word histories. This process may involve answering the following questions: 1. Why did a particular word enter the language in question? 2. Where does that word/root come from? 3. How has its orthographic, phonological and semantic value changed over time?  Dialectology concerns the historical study of dialects. Features which are usually a matter for debate are grammatical variations between two dialects, and phonological changes within a dialect over time. 34

 Phonology concerns the study of the sound systems which exist (or have existed) in a specific language. Studies in phonology can also concern comparative approaches to language studies between different time periods, dialects and languages.  Morphology/Syntax concerns how the means of expression of a language evolve over time. It is usually focused on inflectional systems, grammatical structures, and word order. 2. Applied Linguistics: Applied Linguistics is the branch that deals with a problem-solving way in language and to provide better real-life issues related to the language. It is a combined knowledge field that gains knowledge from other branches, including psychology, sociology, anthropology. Applied linguistics involves the practical use of linguistics to solve real-life problems. Linguists make use of other fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc. to better understand how to apply their study of linguistics to help people and solve real-world concerns. The study and practice of applied linguistics are specifically geared toward addressing practical issues as opposed to theoretical constructs. Fields in which applied linguistics routinely come into play are education, psychology, communication research, anthropology, and sociology. It is best to understand such branches of linguistics with examples. Applied linguistics can be seen in speech therapy, translating texts from different cultures or ages, and even in the process of second-language acquisition. Applied linguistics can be described as a broad interdisciplinary field of study concerned with solutions to problems or the improvement of situations involving language and its users and uses. The emphasis on application distinguishes it from the study of language in the abstract – that is, general or theoretical linguistics. However straightforward this characterization of applied linguistics may be, it is not universally embraced. In fact, ever since the term ‘applied’ was attached to linguistics, language specialists identifying with this field of inquiry and activity have offered and continue to offer competing, sometimes contradictory definitions and descriptions of its scope, status, and significance. Lack of consensus on an issue as basic as the domains and limits of applied linguistics poses a particular challenge to an encyclopaedia compiler: how to capture the nature of a complex, dynamic field without slighting a particular point of view, a pet project, or an entire area of study? This situation is comparable to that of many other intellectual formations that arose in the mid– 20th century – such as composition studies, cultural studies, environmental studies, and women's studies – in that applied linguistics defies the traditional, taxonomic view of disciplinarity that seeks to draw clear and unambiguous boundaries. This state of affairs is 35

addressed in the following account of how applied linguistics came about and developed as an area of study and in a survey of some issues and areas of focus that occupy those who engage in the study of language problems that affect the lives of individuals, groups of individuals, or entire societies and cultures. 3. Socio Linguistics: It deals with the effects of society and the social life of a person on his language. Also, it deals with the effects of the interaction between languages. This is another one of those branches of linguistics that serves a crucial function in our understanding and application of linguistics. Because language is a deeply human and social construct, socio- linguistics deals with the effect of different aspects of society on language. On top of that, it studies the interaction of languages as people from different cultures and heritage interact. One example of sociolinguistics is the emergence of different dialects of a language, as is the study of language confluence, such as Hindi and English being spoken together as Hinglish. Language is central to social interaction in every society, regardless of location and time period. Language and social interaction have a reciprocal relationship: language shapes social interactions and social interactions shape language. What is Sociolinguistics? Sociolinguistics is the study of the connection between language and society and the way people use language in different social situations. It asks the question, \"How does language affect the social nature of human beings, and how does social interaction shape language?\" It ranges greatly in depth and detail, from the study of dialects across a given region to the analysis of the way men and women speak to each other in certain situations. The basic premise of sociolinguistics is that language is variable and ever-changing. As a result, language is not uniform or constant. Rather, it is varied and inconsistent for both the individual user and within and among groups of speakers who use the same language. People adjust the way they talk to their social situation. An individual, for instance, will speak differently to a child than he or she will to their college professor. This socio-situational variation is sometimes called register and depends no only on the occasion and relationship between the participants, but also on the participants’ region, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, and gender. One way that sociolinguists study language is through dated written records. They examine both hand-written and printed documents to identify how language and society have interacted in the past. This is often stated to as historical sociolinguistics: the study of the relationship between changes in society and changes in language over time. For example, historical 36

sociolinguists have studied the use and frequency of the pronoun thou in dated documents and found that its replacement with the word you is correlated with changes in class structure in 16th and 17th century England. Sociolinguists also generally study dialect, which is the regional, social, or ethnic variation of a language. Like, the primary language in the United States is English. People who live in the South, however, often vary in the way they speak and the words they use compared to people who live in the Northwest, even though it is all the same language. There are different dialects of English, depending on what region of the country you are in. What Sociolinguists Study Researchers and scholars are currently using sociolinguistics to examine some interesting questions about language in the United States:  There is vowel shift occurring in the North, in which pattered alterations to vowels is occurring in certain words. For example, many people in Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago are now pronouncing bat like bet and bet like but. Who is changing the pronunciation of these vowels, why are they changing it, and why/how is it spreading?  What parts of African American Vernacular English grammar are being used by white middle-class teenagers? For example, white adolescents might compliment a peer’s clothes by saying, \"she money,\" a phrase associated with African Americans.  What will be the impact on language in Louisiana due to the loss of monolingual French speakers in the Cajun region of Southern Louisiana? Will the French features of language be sustained even when these French speakers are gone?  What slang terms do younger generations use to show their affiliation with certain subgroups and to distinguish themselves from their parents’ generation? For example, in the early 2000s, teenagers described things that they enjoyed as cool, money, tight, or sweet, but definitely not swell, which is what their parents would have said when they were teenagers.  Which words are pronounced differently according to age, gender, socioeconomic status, or race/ethnicity? For instance, African Americans often pronounce certain words differently than whites. Likewise, some words are pronounced differently depending on whether the person speaking was born after World War II or before.  Which vocabulary words vary by region and time, and what are the different meanings associated with certain words? For example, in Southern Louisiana, a certain breakfast dish is often called lost bread while in other parts of the country, it is called French 37

toast. Similarly, which words have changed over time? Frock, for instance, used to refer to a woman’s dress, while today frock is rarely used. Sociolinguists study many other issues as well. For instance, they often examine the values that hearers place on variations in language, the regulation of linguistic behaviour, language standardization, and educational and governmental policies concerning language. 4. Computational Linguistics: This factor is concerned with the perception and study of written and spoken languages. In computer science, it deals with coding and programming skills. This is a relatively new branch of linguistics that deals with the use of language by computers and programs. Such branches of linguistics leverage computer science to analyse, model, and produce speech. One example of computational linguistics is the AI-driven Google Assistant that uses natural language processing and speech recognition systems to do your bidding. Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that applies computer science (algorithms) to analyzing and comprehending written and spoken language. The field combines linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), engineering, neuroscience, and even anthropology, to understand language from a computational perspective. When a computer can understand language, whether written or spoken, this helps facilitate our interaction with software and machines and enables progress in fields such as customer service, research, AI tools, and much more. Computational linguistics vs national language processing: what’s the difference? Although CL and NLP are similar in that they both involve computer science, linguistics, and machine learning, they have slightly different goals. CL focuses on the system or concept that machines can be computed to understand, learn, or output languages, while NLP is the application of processing language that enables a computer program to understand human language as it is written or spoken. Put simply, computational linguistics encompasses more than just NLP because it also covers text mining, information extraction, machine translation, and more. Why is computational linguistics important? 38

Computational linguistics as a concept may seem complex. In practice, it requires expert knowledge of machine learning to program software that can not only understand humans but respond meaningfully. Data scientists often analyze large amounts of written text in unstructured formats to build artifacts that can process or produce language. This is important because today humans are using technology to develop tools for completing tasks more efficiently. Computational linguistics first emerged to translate languages using computers, such as Chinese to English. These days, it supports customer service, such as making or refunding a purchase online with a chatbot or finding information quickly with the help of Siri on iPhones. Examples of CL in the real world There are many applications of CL in the real world. Here are just a few.  Machine translation: Using AI to translate from one language to another, such as from Chinese to English. Google Translate is a good example.  Chatbots: Software programs that simulate human conversation via spoken or written language, usually for customer service purposes. Many companies, such as Amazon and Verizon, have live chat available alongside phone and email options.  Knowledge extraction: Creating knowledge from unstructured and structured text sources. An example is Wikipedia, which is the product of random editors, and can be used to train an open information extractor’s precision and recall.  Natural language interface: These types of tools allow humans to interact with our devices’ operating systems using spoken words. Examples include Siri and Alexa.  Sentiment analysis: This is a type of NLP that identifies emotional tone in text or spoken language. Grammarly is an example of sentiment analysis. Approaches to computational linguistics Since its inception in the 1950s, computational linguistics has gone through several iterations. Here are some key approaches:  Developmental approach: Like a child learning a language over time, the developmental approach simulates a similar language acquisition strategy. Algorithms are programmed to adopt a statistical approach that does not involve grammar.  Structural approach: This approach is more theoretical, and runs large samples of a language through CL models to better understand underlying structures of the language.  Production approach: The production approach uses a CL algorithm to produce text, which can be broken down into text-based or speech-based interactive approaches. 39

 Text-based interactive approach: This falls under the production approach, where text written by a human is used to generate an algorithmic response. The computer can then recognize patterns and produce a response based on user input and keywords.  Speech-based interactive approach: Similar to the text-based approach, this one uses algorithms to screen speech inputs for sound waves and patterns.  Comprehension approach: With this approach, the NLP engine is programmed to naturally interpret written commands using simple rules. 5. Psycholinguistics: It deals with the study of various psychological factors that include how humans use and speak their language. Psycholinguistics is amongst the most popular branches of linguistics that studies the relationship between psychological processes and linguistic behaviour. An example of psycholinguistics is found in the study of how humans perceive language and why certain words have the capacity to trigger us emotionally, more so than other words. Such branches of linguistics also seek to understand how humans acquire and master languages. Psycholinguists often work with child psychologists and conduct research on speech and language development to understand how humans perceive and produce language. Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain; that is, the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language. Psycholinguistics is concerned with the cognitive faculties and processes that are necessary to produce the grammatical constructions of language. It is also concerned with the perception of these constructions by a listener. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were in the philosophical and educational fields, due mainly to their location in departments other than applied sciences (e.g., cohesive data on how the human brain functioned). Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information science to study how the mind-brain processes language, and less so the known processes of social sciences, human development, communication theories, and infant development, among others. There are several subdisciplines with non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain. For example, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own right, 40

and developmental psycholinguistics, as a branch of psycholinguistics, concerns itself with a child's ability to learn language. Study Areas Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field that consists of researchers from a variety of different backgrounds, including psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, speech and language pathology, and discourse analysis. Psycholinguists study how people acquire and use language, according to the following main areas: 1. language acquisition: how do children acquire language? 2. language comprehension: how do people comprehend language? 3. language production: how do people produce language? 4. second language acquisition: how do people who already know one language acquire another one? A researcher interested in language comprehension may study word recognition during reading, to examine the processes involved in the extraction of orthographic, morphological, phonological, and semantic information from patterns in printed text. A researcher interested in language production might study how words are prepared to be spoken starting from the conceptual or semantic level (this concerns connotation, and possibly can be examined through the conceptual framework concerned with the semantic differential). Developmental psycholinguists study infants' and children's ability to learn and process language.[3] Psycholinguistics further divide their studies according to the different components that make up human language. Linguistics-related areas include:  Phonetics and phonology are the study of speech sounds. Within psycholinguistics, research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds.  Morphology is the study of word structures, especially between related words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).  Syntax is the study of how words are combined to form sentences.  Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.  Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning. 41

History In seeking to understand the properties of language acquisition, psycholinguistics has roots in debates regarding innate versus acquired behaviors (both in biology and psychology). For some time, the concept of an innate trait was something that was not recognized in studying the psychology of the individual. However, with the redefinition of innateness as time progressed, behaviors considered innate could once again be analyzed as behaviors that interacted with the psychological aspect of an individual. After the diminished popularity of the behaviorist model, ethology reemerged as a leading train of thought within psychology, allowing the subject of language, an innate human behavior, to be examined once more within the scope of psychology. Origin of \"psycholinguistics\" The theoretical framework for psycholinguistics began to be developed before the end of the 19th century as the \"Psychology of Language\". The work of Edward Thorndike and Frederic Bartlett laid the foundations of what would come to be known as the science of psycholinguistics. In 1936 Jacob Kantor, a prominent psychologist at the time, used the term \"psycholinguistic\" as a description within his book An Objective Psychology of Grammar. However, the term \"psycholinguistics\" only came into widespread usage in 1946 when Kantor's student Nicholas Pronko published an article entitled \"Psycholinguistics: A Review\".Pronko's desire was to unify myriad related theoretical approaches under a single name. Psycholinguistics was used for the first time to talk about an interdisciplinary science \"that could be coherent”, as well as being the title of Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems, a 1954 book by Charles E. Osgood and Thomas A. Sebeok. 6. Comparative Linguistics: It defines how a language is similar and different from others. It deals with the properties of a language and its origin. Also, it deals with developing languages that are two or more languages having the same parent. As the name suggests, this branch is associated with identifying similarities and differences between languages that have a common origin. For instance, romance languages like Italian, French, and Spanish differ in speech and construction even though they all originated from Vulgar Latin of the Roman era. Studies in comparative linguistics also include studying distant languages, such as Sanskrit and German that are separated by thousands of kilometres and years, but which nevertheless have structural and etymological similarities. Stylistics: It deals with the study and interpretation of your tone. However, it does not limit symbolism, regional accents, dialogues, rhyme, sentence structure, etc. This is another one of the important branches of linguistics. It is the study and interpretation of style and rhetorics as 42

employed by different authors within a language. Oftentimes, such interdisciplinary branches of linguistics include the study of literature which lets one analyze symbolism, rhyme and rhythm, dialogues, sentence structures, etc. For example, the language used in politics and advertising is very different from that of religious texts and classical literature. The analysis of that comes within the domain of stylistics. What is linguistics - Some more branches While it is important to know about the major branches of linguistics, with examples, it is also equally necessary to learn the different subfields of linguistics that deal with the utterance of physical sounds, word order, and meaning construction. Here are a few more structural branches of linguistics that one needs to know about. Phonetics - The scientific study of speech sounds that investigate how humans perceive and produce sounds. Three sub-fields make up this branch, namely - articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and perceptual phonetics. Phonology - This branch studies how different sounds come together to form the spoken words of a language. It is the systematic arrangement of sound patterns in languages and dialects. Syntax - Syntax is the study of rules of word arrangement to form proper phrases and sentences. In English, the simplest form of syntax follows the ‘Subject + Verb + Object’ formula. Semantics - Semantic is one of the special branches of linguistics that deal with the study of meaning, reference, and truth. Semantics is related to various other fields and disciplines such as pragmatics (see below), philosophy and computer science as well. Morphology - Morphology is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study of words, their formation, and their relationship with other words within the same language. Whenever one is dealing with etymology, root words, prefixes, suffixes, and word stems, etc., one is operating in the domain of morphology. Pragmatics - This is one of the more unique branches of linguistics, in that it studies how the context of spoken or written language relates to semantics or the meaning of words. Pragmatics also borrows heavily from sociolinguistics and investigates how contextual clues can alter meaning in social interactions. 3.3 SUMMARY  The 5 major branches of linguistics include 43

1. Psycholinguistics 2. Sociolinguistics 3. Comparative linguistics 4. Computational linguistics 5. Applied linguistics.  The major branches of applied linguistics are conversation analysis, bilingualism and multilingualism, contrastive linguistics, sign linguistics, and language assessment.  The main subfields and branches of linguistics include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.  Due to the intricate structure of languages and their far-reaching impact, there are various subfields, domains, and specialised branches of linguistics. 3.4 KEYWORD  Psycholinguistics  Sociolinguistics  Comparative linguistics  Computational linguistics  Applied linguistics.  Bilingualism and  Multilingualism,  Contrastive linguistics,  Sign linguistics, and  Language assessment.  Phonetics,  Phonology,  Morphology,  Syntax  Semantics. 44

3.5 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. What are the primary important branches of linguistics? ___________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ 2. What is the main purpose of studying linguistics? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3. What is the branch of linguistics that studies meaning? ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 3.6 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions Short Questions 1. What are the 5 branches of linguistics? 2. What are the major branches of applied linguistics? 3. What are the subfields and branches of linguistics? 4. Why do we have different branches of linguistics? 5. What are the levels of linguistics? Long Questions 1. How will you define Linguistics? 2. What are the different branches of Linguistics and definitions? 3. What is language? 4. How does language serve as a medium of communication? 5. How does language serve as a medium of thinking? B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. Which of the following is a dialect? a. Wessex b. Iranian c. Northumberland d. None of the above 45

2. Give the Meaning for the Word Knave: a. Girl b. soldier c. Boy d. King 3. The Anglo-Saxon word gydig was derived by mutation from the word a. Good b. Great c. Giddy d. God 4. The Canterbury Tales was written by ________ a. Spencer b. Chaucer c. Marlowe d. Lyly 5. __________ began to enter England towards the end of fourteenth century. a. Indo-French b. Europeans c. Parisian French d. Dutch Answers 1-a, 2-c, 3-d. 4-b, 5-c 3.7 REFERENCES References book  Abram, D., Spell of the Sensuous (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1997)  Allan, K. and Kate Burridge, Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)  Brown, G., “Explaining,” in The Handbook of Communication Skills, ed. Owen Hargie (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006) 46

 Crystal, D., How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2005)  Dorian, N. C., “Abrupt Transmission Failure in Obsolescing Languages: How Sudden the ‘Tip’ to the Dominant Language in Communities and Families?” Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1986)  Foot, H. and May McCredie, “Humour and Laughter,” in The Handbook of Communication Skills, ed. Owen Hargie (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006).  Hargie, O. Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011)  Hayakawa, S. I. and Alan R. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, 5th ed. (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1990) Textbook references  Martin, J. N. and Thomas K. Nakayama, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 5th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010)  McCornack, S., Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007)  McKay, M., Martha Davis, and Patrick Fanning, Messages: Communication Skills Book, 2nd ed. (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1995)  Huang, L., “Technology: Textese May Be the Death of English,” Newsweek, August 2011, 8.  Humphrys, J., “I h8 txt msgs: How Texting Is Wrecking Our Language,” Daily Mail, September 24, 2007, accessed June 7, 2012  Martin, J. N. and Thomas K. Nakayama, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 5th ed. (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2010)  McCornack, S., Reflect and Relate: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2007) Website  Egocentricity in Child Language | Forms | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Relationship between Thought and Language | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Sex Behaviour of an Individual | Forms | Human Behaviour | Psychology  Brain Function and Language Behaviour | Human Behaviour | Psychology 47

UNIT - 4 PHONETICS: INTRODUCTION OF PHONETICS STRUCTURE 4.0 Learning Objectives 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Phonetics: Introduction of Phonetics 4.2.1 Place of Articulation 4.2.2 Manner of Articulation in Phonetics 4.3 Summary 4.4. Keywords 4.5 Learning Activity 4.6 Unit End Questions 4.7 References 4.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES  This section will offer the foundation for the enhancement of a student’s knowledge on phonetics and phonology.  A proper introduction of the theoretical keystones and conceptual framework of the scientific study of sound systems and its analyses will be the main objective of this section.  It will explain in detail the overview of phonetic properties, articulatory and acoustic descriptions and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription of the sounds in some languages of the world.  It also entails the phonological theory and covers many aspects of phonemics, phonological representations, features phonological alternations.  Finally, the pursuant should be able to learn about many of these concepts through the use of data analysis and problem-solving.  Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. Every language uses a certain number of speech sounds selecting on its own out of the large number of varied sounds the human 48

vocal organs can produce. Phonetics is involved with the description and classification of these sounds.  Phonology is the study of sound systems of a certain language and the analysis and classification of its phonemes. It explores the way sound functions in languages through phonemes, syllable structure, stress, accent, and intonation. Phoneme represents the smallest unit of sound that creates a difference in pronunciation and meaning.  Phonetics is understanding the description and classification of these sounds on the basis of how they are generated by our vocal organs (articulatory phonetics), how they are perceived by our hearing mechanism (auditory phonetics), and how they are transmitted through the air (acoustic phonetics). 4.1 INTRODUCTION Phonetics is that branch of linguistics that studies how a human produces and perceives sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are called phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-categories based on the speech characteristics involved such as A. How do humans plan and execute movements to produce speech or articulatory phonetics. B. How do various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound or acoustic phonetics. C. How do humans convert sound waves to linguistic information or auditory phonetics. Traditionally, the smallest linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone, also called a speech sound in a language but which differs from the phonological unit or phoneme. The phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones, and can also be defined as the smallest unit that differentiates meaning between sounds in a given language. Phonetics covers the basic two aspects of human speech: 1. Production - the ways humans make sounds 2. Perception - the way speech is understood. The communicative modality of the given language describes the method by which a language produces and perceives languages’ sounds. Languages which involve oral-aural modalities such as English produce speech orally (from the mouth) and perceive speech aurally (through the ears). Conversely sign languages, such as the Australian Sign Language called Auslan or 49

the American Sign Language also known as ASL, have a manual-visual modality, which means they produce speech manually using the hands and perceiving speech visually using the eyes. ASL and a few other sign languages have in addition a manual-manual dialect as well for use in tactile signing by people with visual and hearing impairment wherein signs are produced with the hands and perceived with the hands as well. 4.2 PHONETICS: INTRODUCTION OF PHONETICS English Phonetics and Phonology has been specifically designed for people studying linguistics or English language courses as in them, phonetics and phonology form an essential component. People who seek to improve their ability to speak English with global intelligibility will also find this useful.  Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. Every language uses a certain number of speech sounds selecting on its own out of the large number of varied sounds the human vocal organs can produce. Phonetics is involved with the description and classification of these sounds.  Phonology is the study of sound systems of a certain language and the analysis and classification of its phonemes. It explores the way sound functions in languages through phonemes, syllable structure, stress, accent, and intonation. Phoneme represents the smallest unit of sound that creates a difference in pronunciation and meaning.  Phonetics is understanding the description and classification of these sounds on the basis of how they are generated by our vocal organs (articulatory phonetics), how they are perceived by our hearing mechanism (auditory phonetics), and how they are transmitted through the air (acoustic phonetics). Modern Phonetics is divided into three main Branches: (1) Articulatory phonetics (2) Acoustic phonetics (3) Auditory phonetics.  Articulatory phonetics, which explains the ways sounds are made with the articulators,  Acoustic phonetics, which describes the acoustic results of different articulations, and 50