English LinguisticsPage 1 1. Typological classification of languages, synthetic and analytic word forms - there are two classification systems (typological, genetic) - typological linguistics studies structural similarities between languages, regardless of their history - languages that share the same structure belong to the same type - the classification concerns ways of word formation - analytic / isolating / root languages (English, Chinese, Vietnamese) - all words are invariable - syntactic relationships are shown by word order - in order to express person, case, and other categories, the language needs single words - prepositional phrases and modal verbs are used to the boy, did he arrive?- synthetic / inflectional / inflecting languages (Czech, Finnish, Latin, Arabic) - the words typically contain more than one morpheme - there is no one-to-one correspondence between the morphemes and the linear structure of the word - words are formed by suffixes, declination, conjugation etc. - forms of person, case, and other categories are compounded in one word klukovi, pijel?- agglutinating / agglutinative languages (Turkish, Japanese, Swahili)- words are built up by stringing forms together, by sequences of morphs - polysynthetic / incorporating languages (Australian aboriginal languages)- is it characterized by long and complex word forms - it contains a mixture of agglutinative and inflectional features 2. Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages, position of English - Indo-European languages - it is the most widely spoken family of languages in the world - about 1.6 billion people speak Indo-European languages today - it contains many subfamilies Albanian, Armenian, Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Italic / Romance, and Slavic Anatolian (including Hittite) and Tocharian are two extinct subfamilies - 1786 - it was suggested that Sanskrit, Latin, Germanic, and Celtic have a common origin - the early Indo-European studies established many principles basic to comparative linguistics - the sounds of related languages correspond to one another in predictable ways - 100 - satem (ancient Iranian), centum (Latin) - from there the Eastern / Western division - 1813 - the name of the language family was given by Thomas Young - they descend from one common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European- it was probably spoken by semi-nomadic population in the steppe north of the Black Sea - it was highly inflected (nouns had at least 8 cases, rich verb conjugation) - comparatively modern languages have moved toward an analytic system - the decay of inflection was a result of the loss of the final syllables of many words - modern words are often much shorter than the ancestral Proto-Indo-European words - Indo-European languages spread throughout Europe and southern Asia in the fourth millennium BCEnglish LinguisticsPage 2 - Albanian branch - Albanian - Armenian branch - Armenian - Baltic branch - Latvian / Lettish, Lithuanian - Celtic branch - Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, Cornish - Germanic branch - English belongs to this branch, there are three groups - it is spoken by over 500 million people as a first language - it descended from the Germanic tribes who lived in northern Europe during the first millennium BC - Eastern - Old Gothic, Vandalic (both are extinct) - Western - English, Frisian (Anglo-Frisian)- German, Dutch, Flemmish, Afrikaans, Yiddish (Netherlandic-German) - Northern - Danish, Swedish (East Scandinavian); Norse / Norwegian, Icelandic, Faeroese (West) - Greek branch - Old Greek, New Greek - Indo-Iranian branch - there are about 500 languages (Sanskrit is extinct) - Indo-Aryan - Hindi, Bengali, Panjabi - Iranian - Persian, Pashto, Afghanistanese, Tadzhik, Kurdish - Italic / Romance branch - they descended from the spoken form of Latin - Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Rhaeto-Roman - Slavonic / Slavic branch - there are three groups - Eastern - Great Russian, White Russian, Ukrainian - Western - Czech, Slovak, Polish - Southern - Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Bulgarian, Macedonian - English language - it is spoken worldwide by a large and ever-increasing number of people - the estimated vary from 800 million to 1.5 billion - approximately 350 million people use it as their first language- 220 m. in the USA, 55 m. in GB, 17 m. in Canada, 15 m. in Australia - a further 400 million people use it as a second language- Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, the Philippines - the number is increasing fast due to people in India and China - non-Indo-European languages - there are many families - Hamito-Semitic group (Egyptian, Berber / Hebrew, Arabian) - Ural-Altaic group - Finno-Ugrian (Hungarian, Finnish, Lapp, Estonian) - Turco-Tataric (Turkish, Mongol, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazak, Yakut) - Sino-Tibetan group - Chinese, Tibetan, Bodo, Naga, Lolo - Japanese-Korean group - Japanese, Korean - Dravidian group (central India, Sri Lanka) - Telugu, Tamil, Kanarad - Austro-Asian group (Burma, Cambodia, Indo-China) - Mon, Khmer - Malayo-Polynesian group - Indonesian, Polynesian, Melanesian, Micronesian - Sudanese-Guinean group - Ibo, Nubian, Yoruba - Bantu group - Zulu, Swahili, Luganda, Subriya - Khoin / Hottentot group (African bushmen) - there are about 500 of them - Indian languages in AmericasEnglish LinguisticsPage 3 3. Theory of communication; signs, symbols, icons; sound symbolism - communication - a variety of behaviors, processes, and technologies transmitting meaning - the transmission and reception of information between a signaler and a receiver - interpersonal communication - there are two approaches - either all the ways in which people influence each other, even unintentionally (nonverbally) - or only the intentional interactions that occur by means of symbols - theory of communication / information theory - it is a branch of probability theory- it is concerned with laws governing the transmission, reception, and processing of information - it deals with - the numerical measurement of information - the representation of information (encoding) - the capacity of communication systems to transmit, receive, and process information - the real comprehensive theory of communication was developed in 1948 - Shannon and Weaver of the Bell company developed The Mathematical Theory of Communication - Shannon-Weaver model - this model included six elements - information source - the speaker - encoder - the vocal system - message - language and visual cues - communication channel - sound waves in the air - decoder - the listeners ears - receiver - the listener - questions - how accurately can the symbols of communication be transmitted - how precisely do the symbols carry the intended meaning - how effectively does the received meaning affect conduct in the desired way - semiotics - it is the study of sings and their use, language is viewed as one type of sign system - it focuses on the mechanisms and patterns of human communication and on the nature of knowledge - sign - a non-arbitrary indicator of the thing it signals clouds are the sign of rain - symbol - an arbitrary indicator, there is no inherent connection between the symbol and the thing - they are conventional, they can be changed red light is the symbol telling us to stop - iconic symbol - it is an indicator that to a certain extent suggests the meaning - still there is no inherent connection between the symbol and the thing it symbolizes though - the symbol can be present without the symbolized and vice versa a skull with crossed limbs - language is a conventional use of sounds, signs, and written symbols for communication- when we speak, we do not transmit our thoughts, we transfer sounds and visual cues - the sounds and visual cues have to be interpreted in order for communication to occur (convention) - sound symbolism - individual sounds do not have meanings (morphemes are the smallest meaningful units) - however, languages do tend to develop forms which have a relationship to objects of the outside world - sounds reflect then properties of the world sound symbolism / onomatopoeia - it is often considered a feature of poetry or child talk, but some everyday words are onomatopoeic - /s1/ conveys unpleasant associations (slime, slither, slug), /:/ indicates smallness (teeny weeny, wee) English LinguisticsPage 4 4. Saussurian concept of language, langue vs. parole - Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) - a Swiss linguist, his ideas influenced structuralism - during his studies, he published an important work on the vowel system of Proto-Indo-European - he became a professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Grammar at the University of Geneva - he distinguished sharply diachronic and synchronic approaches to language study - after his death, two of his students compiled his lecture notes and other materials into a seminal work Cours de linguistique gnrale (1916), translated as Course in General Linguistics (1959) - it explained his structural approach to language - it established many distinctions that have become basic to the study of linguistics - structuralism - it was developed out of Saussures notion of a language as a system of signs (broad) - in the narrow sense, it refers to the emphasis on segmenting and classifying utterances (Bloomfield) - structuralists saw language as a system of formal patterning - they paid little attention to the meaning which the patterns conveyed - structuralism analyzes large-scale systems by examining relations and functions of its smallest units - it values deep structures over surface phenomena - it is a prevailing method of linguistics, all modern schools come out of structuralism - Saussure viewed language as a system of systems and structures - he saw language as a system of code signs in a certain language community - this system is used on the basis on convention, social contract - relationship between the signifi (the thing, meaning) and the significant (the word) - language is a system of mutually dependent and interacting signs - he introduced terms langage, langue and parole- langage - the faculty of speech present in all humans, it is composed of two aspects - langue and parole - langue - the system underlying a language, it is the form / grammar of the language, competence - it is the sum of the language system, the sum of word-images stored in the minds of individuals - parole - the actual use of the language, the actual substance / speech forms, performance - it is a dynamic, social activity in a particular time and place - he preferred langue to parole (the study of grammar to usage, rules to expression) - he recognized two sides of meaning - signifiant (the thing that signifies, the sound image)- signifi (the thing signified, concept) - the relationship of signified to signifier is called a linguistic sign- the linguistic sign is the basic unit of communication within a community, langue is a system of signs 5. Prague linguistic school; language center vs. periphery; markedness - Linguistic Circle of Prague - it was influenced by Saussure and structuralism - it was founded by Vilm Mathesius in 1926 - other members were Roman Jakobson, Nikolay Trubetzkoy, Bohumil Trnka, Josef Vachek, Vladimr Skalika, Jan Mukaovsk, Ren Wellek - 1928 they took part in the Congress in Hague - 1929-39 they published works Travaux and Slovo a slovesnost - during the World War II was inactive, communists dissolved it in 1950s, today active English LinguisticsPage 5 - they favored the synchronic (descriptive) approach to linguistics over the diachronic (historical) - its main emphasis was on the analysis of language as a system of functionally related units - it expanded the focus of linguistics by including the context of language use - the structuralist influence is obvious in Trnkas work On the Linguistic Sign and the Multilevel Organization of Language (low levels build high levels) 1) phonology- Jakobson defined phoneme as the smallest unit of speech (combinatory, constitutive, distinctive unit) - he saw positional variants (allophones) as irrelevant features - neutralization of phonemes (let and led in Czech both pronounced /1et/) - they developed distinctive-feature analysis of sounds- each sound is seen as composed of a number of contrasting articulatory and acoustic features - linguistic analysis should focus on the distinctiveness of sounds rather than on the ways they combine - they stressed the features of phonemes and their interrelationships in different languages - this concept was elaborated on by Chomsky and Halle (The Sound Pattern of English, 1968) 2) morphology - use of phonemes for grammar, binary oppositions - Vachek examined the typology of languages (Characterology) - the tendency is to lose inflections, the form says little about the word class - there is a loosened relationship between affixes and roots - bound morphemes can be sometimes used independently (the -isms, teen) 3) semantics - Skalika developed the notion of sememe as the smallest meaningful unit of language 4) lexicology - Mathesius wrote a work called Centre and Periphery- language center is regular, stable, more prototypical and frequent - language periphery is unstable, fading, rare, not progressive, uncertain in terms of categorization - the rich - it is derived from an adjective, but behaves like a noun - it is a peripheral noun, because it cannot pluralize- -ing - it can be a verb, a noun, or an adjective, it falls between more categories and as such is peripheral 5) functional sentence perspective - the basic concept was devised by Mathesius - his theory was further developed by Dane and Firbas - it analyzes sentences and utterances in terms of the information they contain - the role of each sentence is evaluated for its semantic function in relation to the whole - in English, word order is a syntactic means, the sentence elements have a more or less set position - in Czech, word order is primarily governed by the needs of the functional sentence perspective - Firbas theory is based on the scale of communicative dynamism (theme-transition-rheme) - there are four factors that decide if an element is thematic or rhematic- context, semantic factor, linearity, prosodic factor (intonation) - he developed two scales of the distribution of communicative dynamism (presentation, quality scales) - typological markedness - an analytic principle, opposite pairs of linguistic features are marked / unmarked - in the broad sense, the distinction relates to the presence or absence of a feature (/d/ is marked for voice) - in generative grammar, markedness refers to frequency of a feature across the worlds languages - we can say that // is marked relative to /s/, or the Present Perfect is marked relative to the Past Simple English LinguisticsPage 6 6. Phonetics and phonology in the language system - phonetics - it is concerned with the physical properties of sounds; it has three subgroups - articulatory phonetics - it explores how the human vocal apparatus produces sounds - it describes ways by which the vocal organs modify the airflow to produce a sound - typically the place and manner of articulation are specified for each consonant - place - bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, post-alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, glottal - manner - plosive, fricative, affricate, glide, flap, nasal, lateral - vowels are produced by varying the position of his or her tongue (also rounding) - vertical axis - high, mid, low - horizontal axis - front, central, back - phonetic symbols and their articulatory definitions are abbreviated descriptions of these properties - the symbols commonly used are those adopted by the International Phonetic Association (IPA) - sounds can be made by touching two articulators or by an articulator and a stationary organ - acoustic phonetics - it studies physical properties of speech sounds - it studies the sound waves produced by the human vocal apparatus - it uses instrumental techniques of investigation to provide an account of speech patterns - a spectrograph is used to record significant characteristics of speech waves- it can also determine the effect of articulatory activities - auditory phonetics - it examines the way people perceive sound - the sound is mediated by the ear, auditory nerve, and brain - it includes the perception of pitch and loudness, and the way in which speech sounds are analyzed - it also deals with the ability to distinguish speech sounds - phonology - it is concerned not with the physical properties of sounds, as phonetics - it is concerned with how they function in a particular language, with the sound system of a language - it also explores universal properties displayed by language systems- phonemes of a language are minimal distinct units of sound that distinguish meaning in that language - phonemes are abstract units, they only represent sounds - phones are the smallest discernible segments of sound in speech, physical realizations of phonemes - each language has its own inventory of phonetic differences that it treats as phonemic - it uses transcription - broad phonemic (slant brackets), narrow phonetic (square brackets) - allophone is a positional variant of a phoneme, it does not have distinctive meaning - segmental phonology - it deals with individual segments, such as phonemes or distinctive features - suprasegmental phonology - it deals with features that extend over more segments (stress, intonation) - phonotactics - it explores sequential arrangements of phonemes which are possible in a language - it deals with the permissible syllable structure - related sciences - anatomy and physiology (articulation) - audiology (the nature of hearing) - neurology (the functioning of brain in producing speech) - acoustics (the study of sound and its attributes) - speech therapy and phoniatrics(pathological aspects of speech) English LinguisticsPage 7 eeuilip roundinglips spreadlips neutralfront middle backcloseclose-midopen-midopen7. Free variation, complementary distribution; vowels and consonants; rhythm - free variation - the ability of a sound to be substituted for another in a word without changing the meaning - two elements can occur in the same position - an example is the word envelope /enve1e0/ or /o:nve1e0/ - complementary distribution - it refers to the mutual exclusiveness of two sounds in a certain environment - sound A may appear only in environment X, and sound B only in environment Y (not A in Y) - for example, aspirated // in pit is in complementary distribution with non-aspirated // in spit- the English vowel system- the airflow remains unblocked during the production of vowels - there is no obstruction in the oral cavity - from the phonological point of view, they typically form the main part of the syllable (its peak / nucleus) - cardinal vowels - a set of standard reference points for the articulation and recognition of vowels - their system was devised by Daniel Jones; they are written in square brackets - three horizontal levels of the tongue (front, center, back) - four vertical levels of the tongue (close, close-mid, open-mid, open) - there are eight primary vowels and eight secondary (articulated with lips rounded) - they are placed on the borders of the vowel quadrilateral - monophthong / pure vowel - a vowel with a single perceived auditory quality - we distinguish here between long and short vowels (monophthongs) - English has seven short vowels / e + z b 0 e/ and five long vowels /: o: o: u: s:/ - diphthong - a vowel with a perceptible change of quality in one syllable (they belong to long vowels) - it may be represented by a single letter (my) or a sequence of letters (high) - one element is always more sonorous - in English it is always the first (falling), otherwise rising - the two elements may be balanced (1:1 ratio, as in Czech) or unbalanced (in English ca. 2:1) - we divide them according to the direction of the movement - closing - /a e o/ in English - Czech has only closing diphthongs - centering - originally from rhotic accents - /e ee 0e/ in English - opening, fronting, and backing diphthongs also exist - the English consonant system- consonants are produced by a relatively constricted or totally closed configuration of the vocal tract - the airflow is either restricted to such an extent that audible friction is produced, or completely blocked - there are three typical categories we use for classifying consonants - voicing - voiced sounds are lenis, that is produced with weaker breath energy - voiceless sounds are fortis, that is produced with a stronger muscular effort and force of exhalation - place of articulation - it concerns where the constriction is formed - bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, post- / palato-alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal - manner of articulation - it concerns the nature of the articulatory constriction - plosive, fricative, affricate, approximant, nasal English LinguisticsPage 8 plosives - they involve a complete closure in the vocal tract which is suddenly released - the outward movement of air is called plosion - // - fortis bilabial plosive; aspiration - /b/ - lenis bilabial plosive; devoicing at the beginning and end [b ] - /t/- fortis alveolar plosive; aspiration, dental before // and // [t ] - /d/ - lenis alveolar plosive; not much devoicing occurs; dental before // and // [d ] - /k/ - fortis velar plosive; aspiration - fronting before / :/, rounding before /0 u:/ and /w/ - /g/ - lenis velar plosive; devoicing at the beginning - fronting before / :/, rounding before /0 u:/ and /w/ fricatives - the airflow is not completely blocked during their production, as it is with plosives - the airflow is allowed to escape through a narrow restriction, called stricture - we distinguish sibilant fricatives /s z / and nonsibilant fricatives /I v / - /I/ (fortis labiodental fricative), /v/ (lenis labiodental fricative; devoicing in the final position) - // (fortis dental/ addental fricative), // (lenis dental / addental fricative) - /s/ (fortis alveolar fricative), /z/ (lenis alveolar fricative) - // (fortis post-alveolar fricative), // (lenis post-alveolar fricative) - /h/ - voiceless glottal fricative; it has a voiced allophone as in ahead [] affricates - combination of plosives and fricatives, it is a stop released as an affricate - the delayed release in affricates involves turbulence similar to that in fricatives - /t/ (fortis post-alveolar affricate), /d/ (lenis post-alveolar affricate) nasals - they are plosives in their quality, they are released through the nasal cavity - /m/ (lenis bilabial nasal), /n/ (lenis alveolar nasal), /q/ (lenis velar nasal; not initial position) approximants - they are produced with a minimum degree of constriction - some organs are getting closer to each other, they have a vowel-like quality - /1/ - lenis lateral alveolar approximant; devoicing after // and /k/; clear /1/, dark /1/- /t/ or /J/ - lenis post-alveolar approximant, only before a vowel in RP - // - lenis palatal gliding vowel / semi-vowel - /w/ - lenis bilabial gliding vowel / semi-vowel; devoicing in North England in Wh- /a/ - rhythm - it concerns the perceived regularity of prominent units in speech- there are two basic types of rhythm across the worlds languages - isochrony (stress-timing) - the stressed syllables fall at roughly regular intervals during the utterance - they fall regardless of the number of unstressed syllables in between - English is an example of this, as well as Swedish, Portuguese, Arabic, and Russian - isosyllabicity (syllable-timing) - all syllables occur at regular intervals of time - French or Czech are examples of syllable-timed languages - the rhythm sounds like machine-gun-rhythm to English speakers English LinguisticsPage 9 8. Form and function of intonation - intonation concerns the linguistic functioning of pitch at sentence level, it is the melody of speech - it is generally analyzed in terms of intonation contours or tone units- the study of intonation deals with the types of tone units and with the types of meaning which they convey- tone languages - the change of pitch can change the meaning of a word (Chinese) - intonation languages - the change of pitch does not change the lexical meaning, only the attitude - it shows the intention within the discourse - most European languages are intonation languages - the tone unit - it is the unit of intonation, the smallest tone unit can consists of one word- each tone unit consists of one or more feet (stress groups) - tonic syllable - the syllable which carries the tone - head - the part from the first stress within the tone unit up to, but not including, the tonic syllable - the head can be high or low - pre-head - all unstressed syllables before the first stress - tail - all syllables between the tonic syllable and the end of the tone unit You must | stop him from making a | fool | of himself. pre-headhead TONIC S.tail - form of intonation - there are many different treatments - Roach - he distinguishes five tones- fall - it is the neutral tone, it is most common in speech, it gives an impression of finality - rise - it anticipates further discussion or something more to follow, it means something unfinished - fall-rise - it conveys limited agreement or response with reservations, hesitation, apology - rise-fall - it conveys rather strong feelings of approval, disapproval, or surprise - level - it is flat, it conveys something routine, uninteresting, or boring - broken tune - we break one long tone instead of bringing a new tone I want you to read the other letter as soon as you can.- function of intonation- attitudinal - we communicate feelings and attitudes, it is often accompanied by paralinguistic features - we can say one sentence in different ways (happy, sad, angry) - we convey attitudes to the hearer, to what is being said, to the external situation - accentual - the placement of tonic stress is determined by intonation (they go hand in hand) - intonation helps achieve prominence within the tone unit (contrastive, emphatic intonation) - the typical position of the tonic syllable is the last lexical word of the tone unit - grammatical - intonation helps mark grammatical boundaries (phrases, clauses, sentences) - the boundaries can sometimes change the meaning (restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses) - grammatical phenomena are thus expressed by intonation - Wh-question (falling), Yes-No question (rising), statement (falling), listing (rises + fall) - discourse - we manage the discourse with the help of intonation, we include contextual factors - we stress less predictable words, we use falling intonation for new information - we unite our utterance with the others utterances, we indicate when someone else should speak English LinguisticsPage 10 9. Stress placement tendencies - stress refers to the relative perceived prominence of a unit of spoken language - stress has distinctive function in English (produce - /tbdu:s/ or /tedu:s/) - the production of a stressed syllable usually involves several aspects - an increase of articulatory force, increased rate of airflow, greater muscular tension in the articulators - greater intensity, higher pitch, and longer duration are typically involved - we recognize several degrees of stress - primary stress, secondary stress, and unstress- antigravity /+ntgt+vt/ - unstressed syllables tend to contain non-prominent vowels /e 0/ - when determining the stress of a word, we have to consider several aspects - if the word is simple or complex, its word class, the number of syllables, and the structure of the syllable- simple (monomorphemic) words- disyllabic verbs- if the second syllable contains a long vowel or ends with two and more consonants, it is stressed supply, attract, assist- this generally applies also with adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions (x honest, perfect) - disyllabic nouns- if the second syllable contains a short vowel, the first syllable is stressed product- trisyllabic verbs- if the last syllable has a short vowel and ends with one consonant, the preceding syllable is stressed determine, encounter- if the last syllable has a long vowel and/or two or more consonants, this syllable is stressed entertain- trisyllabic nouns- if the last syllable has a short vowel or /e0/, it is unstressed factory, potato- if the second syllable has a long vowel and/or ends with two or more consonants, it is stressed - complex (polymorphemic) words - we distinguish between derived (affix) words and compound words - affix words - there are no specific rules for prefixes - affix takes the primary stress (-ain, -ee, -eer, -ese, -ette, -esque, -que) - affix does not influence stress (-able, -age, -al, -en, -ful, -ing, -ish, -less, -ly, -ment, -ness, -ly, -wise) - affix shifts the stress elsewhere, usually to the preceding syllable (-eous, -ial, -ic, -ian, -ty, -ive) - compounds - there must be at least two free morphemes; there are three possibilities - the first word carries the primary stress, the second carries the secondary stress- two nouns (typewriter, airport, suitcase) - present participle + noun (sowing machine, dining-room) - adjective + noun (blackbird, blackleg, greenhouse, Newcastle) - the first word carries the secondary stress, the second carries the primary stress- adjective + past participle (open-minded, heavy-handed, cold-blooded) - number + noun (three-wheeler, second class) - adverbs (head-first, northeast, downstream) - verbs with the first element being adverbial (to downgrade, to freewheel, to ill-treat) English LinguisticsPage 11 - both word are stressed equally (level stress)- two nouns (fellow classmate, deputy headmaster, child prodigy) - noun + adjective (secretary general, court martial, sum total) - there is a tendency of many compounds to shift to the first group - some compounds have an alternative stress pattern - the stress changes under the influence of neighboring words - /w:kend/, but /w:kendha0s/ - /b+ttemed/, but /eb+ttemett:te/ - there are also differences in British and American pronunciation - weekend (BrE) x weekend (AmE) - kilometre (BrE) x kilometer (AmE) - there are several word-class pairs - nouns / adjectives typically have the first syllable stressed, verbs the second syllable object, abstract, contract, conduct, desert10. Phonotactics - the English syllable - syllable - it is the minimal unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds, it is a unit of rhythm - it can have three parts, but only the nucleus / peak is obligatory- this is typically a vowel, it can be a syllabic consonant (/1 n/, as in cattle or sudden) - the initial and final margins are optional - more usual classification is into onset and rhyme, with rhyme being divided into peak and coda- in /k+t/, /k/ is the onset, /+/ the peak, and /t/ the coda - a syllable ending in a consonant is a closed / checked syllable- a syllable ending in a vowel is an open / unchecked syllable- CV is the most common type of syllable from the viewpoint of universals - CVC is the most common type of syllable in English - phonotactics - it deals with the permissible structure in a language - the maximum clusters in English can be CCC V CCCC - initial position - there is always one initial consonant - two-consonant clusters - pre-initial /s/ + initial / t k I m n w 1/ - initial / t k b d g I v h m n/ + /t 1 w/ - three-consonant clusters - pre-initial /s/ + initial / t k/ + post-initial /t 1 w/ - initial clusters /st1 sw stw/ are not allowed, though - final position - there is always one final consonant - /h w t/ cannot be in the final position (/t/ only in non-rhotic accents) - pre-final /m n q 1 s/ + final all except /h w t/ + post-final /s z t d / - cramped /kt+mt/ - initial /k/ and post-initial /t/ - pre-final /m/, final //, post-final /t/ English LinguisticsPage 12 11. Assimilation, dissimilation, elision, liaison - assimilation - it is the influence exercised by one sound upon the articulation of another sound - the sounds thus become more alike, or even identical - it can be found in rapid, casual speech, the reason is the economy of effort - most cases of assimilation affect consonants (except for nasalization of vowels before nasals in AmE) - /A/ [B] / ___ C (A is realized as B in the environment of C) - most assimilation cases are contextual, but some are historical (the ending -s as [z] after sibilants) - regressive assimilation - a sound is influenced by the sound that follows - /A/ [B] / ___ C - it is most typical in English - progressive assimilation - a sound is influenced by the sound that precedes - /A/ [B] / C ___ - coalescent / reciprocal assimilation - it is both progressive and regressive, it is historical - /t/ [t] (nature), /s/ [] (issue), /z/ [] (measure) - assimilation of place - noticeable especially in regressive assimilation of alveolar consonants - /n/ [n ] / ___ { } - /n/ becomes dental before dental sounds (tenth, in theory) - /t/ [t ] / ___{ } - /t/ becomes dental before dental sounds (that thing, get those) - /k/ [k ] / ___ [V + front] - /k/ becomes front before front vowels (key, kid) - /m/ [] / ___ {I v} - /m/ becomes labiodental in front of labiodental sounds (comfort, emphasis) - /n/ [m] / ___ [C + bilabial] - /n/ becomes [m] before bilabial sounds (in bed) - /t/ [] / ___ [C + bilabial] - /t/ becomes [] before bilabial sounds (hit man) - /s z/ [ ] / ___ { } - /s z/ become palatal before palatal sounds (this shop, these shops) - assimilation of manner - it is less noticeable, found in rapid, casual speech - /d/ [n] / ___ {n} - /d/ becomes [n] before /n/ (good night) - // [n ] / {n} ___ - this is progressive assimilation; // becomes [n ] after /n/ (in the) - assimilation of voicing- it is rarer - /v/ [I] / ___ [V - voice] - /v/ becomes [I] before a voiceless sound (of course, have to) - in Czech, we devoice word-final voiced consonants, but this does not happen in English - snad /snat/ - dissimilation - it is the influence exercised by one sound upon another, so that the sound becomes less alike - it is quite rare, similar sounds are made more identifiable - it is typically a historical process and often involves the sounds /t 1/ - the Latin peregrinus became pilgrim /1gtm/ - the Norman purpurens became purple /s:1/ - the Italian colonello became colonel /ks:n1/ - elision - it is the omission of sounds or even syllables in connected speech (February as /Iebt/ - /t d/ in the neighborhood of consonants is most frequent - old man /e01m+n/, sandwich /s+nwt/, stand there /st+nee/ - /v/ in the preposition of- glass of beer /g1o:sebe/ English LinguisticsPage 13 - weak vowels - there are two possibilities, which are in some cases arbitrary - a weak vowel after / t k/ is omitted, the voiceless plosive is than aspirated - potato /tete0/, tonight /tnat/ - a weak vowel is omitted and the following syllable has zero onset - police /1:s/, tonight /tnat/, correct /ktekt/ - grammatical words - have /v/, had and would /d/, will /1/, is and has /s/, not /nt nt/ - liaison / linking - it is the introduction of a sound at the end of a word in certain phonological contexts - it involves linking words together by means of either inserting a new sound or omitting the glottal stop - Czechs tend to say /?/ at the beginning of words which begin with vowels (in English) - syllable boundaries are changed across the word boundaries - the coda becomes the onset of the next syllable - we have an appointment /w: h+ ve ne ont ment/ - linking /r/ - /t/ moves to the initial position of the next syllable (it is not an allophone) - her English /hs:tqg1/, car engine /ko:tendn/ - intrusive /r/ - intrusion is the addition of a sound which is not heard when the word is said in isolation - law and order /1o:teno:de/, idea of it /adetevt/ - intrusive /w/ - you are /u:wo:/, go away /ge0wewe/ - intrusive /j/ - he is /hz/, they are /eo:/ 12. Graphology, writing systems, the relationship between speech and writing - graphology - the writing system of a language - the data includes handwriting, print, and the forms displayed on computer screens - it is also the study of handwriting to obtain information about a persons character and personality - it is controversial, the evidence concerning the reliability and accuracy of graphology is limited - writing - the process or result of recording spoken language using a system of visual marks- systems of writing / script - the graphic form of the units of a language - collection of arbitrary signs that can represent all the words of a language- it is the method of writing down speech sounds in a systematic and consistent way - limited writing - it refers to objects and ideas (pictography, ideography)- full writing - it refers to words - forerunners of writing - petrograms (drawn on rocks) - petroglyphs (cut into rocks) - knot writing (Peru Indians - called kip) - scores on canes- picture scripts (limited writing) - a script based on pictures - pictographic - a symbol with a recognizable representation of reality (waves for sea) - ideographic - a symbol used to represent a whole word or concept - it has an abstract or conventional meaning (sun for wisdom, foot for go) - pictoideographic - it represents both a word and a concept (fish for fish, as well as for fishing) English LinguisticsPage 14 - phonetic scripts (full writing) - a script based on the real sounds - character / logographic - a sign represents a word (Sumerian, Egyptian; Chinese) - sometimes one sign represented more words (phonetic indicators needed) - logosyllabic - syllabic signs attached to the root logogram (endings, inflections) - syllabic - one symbol represents one syllable (Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese) - alphabetic / phonemic - one grapheme represents one phoneme (several systems) - one-to-one correspondence is an ideal (English - 26 letters x 44 phonemes) - most writing systems do not exist purely mixed systems also symbols like &, $, %, etc. - alphabet - a set of graphic symbols each of which represents a distinctive sound- hieroglyphic - mainly pictorial symbols, especially applied for the Egyptian form - cuneiform / wedge writing - a stylus was pressed into a clay tablet - Hebrew, Arabic- Greek - it developed from Mycenaean inscriptions Linear B, it directly represented vowels- all subsequent alphabets are derived from the Greek alphabet- Cyrillic - developed from Greek uncial script by Saint Cyril; originally had 43 letters, now 32- Latin / Roman - became generally accepted throughout Europe - Runic / Futhork - north-west Europe, it had 24 letters; from North Etruscan alphabet - the relationship between speech and writing- speech and writing occur in different communicative conditions speechwriting it is realized linearly in timeits linearity is not as absolute the speaker can subsequently specify what is saidrepetition and paraphrase is useless it is looser and less stablesyntactic units can be substantially longer intonation plays a major role (it is more emotional) intonation is partly replaced by punctuation it is accompanied by facial and bodily gestures 13. Parts of speech, means of their differentiation; conversion - parts of speech / word classes - they are groups of words with same syntactic and morphological properties - open classes (new words can be formed) x closed classes (no new words are formed) - nouns - they express names of persons, places, and things- adjectives - they modify nouns, expressing a characteristic quality or an attribute- pronouns - they can substitute for nouns or noun phrases- verbs - they are doing or action words- adverbs - they specify the mode of action of verbs- prepositions - they precede nouns to form single constituents of structure - conjunctions - they connect words, phrases, clauses, and sentences - particles - they are invariable parts that do not fit into other classes (to in infinitive, there is / are) - interjections - these are items with purely emotive function - determiners - they co-occur with nouns to express quantity, number, possession, and definitenessEnglish LinguisticsPage 15 - conversion - it is a process of word formation, also called functional shift- it involves a change of word class by the help of a zero morpheme - it is very progressive in English - verb to noun - a lot of them occur in phrases with verbs as have, take, give, make, get- break, blow, call, catch, drive, glance, laugh, look, search, talk, walk - adjective to noun - adjectives take on morphological marks of nouns (they form plural) - adult, criminal, female, native, radical, savage, superior - noun to verb - to bridge, to class, to eye, to hand, to master, to question, to surface, to value - adjective to verb - to calm, to dry, to empty, to humble, to lower, to round, to warm - adverb to verb (to down), to adjective (the down train), to noun (the whys and hows) - these are rare - modal verb to noun (Its a must.)- differentiating between word classes - many words are not morphologically marked- back - it can be a noun, an adjective, a verb, and an adverb - the differentiation between word classes is therefore difficult, we have to include context - however, sometimes there is a difference in spelling, in segmental pronunciation, or in stress - changes in voicing - the noun / adjective has a voiceless sound and the vowel is shorter - the verb has a voiced sound and the vowel is longer noun / adjectiveverbnoun / adjectiveverb househaushauz teeth/et: t:closek1e0sk1e0z beliefb1:I b1:vuseu:su:z adviceedvas edvazabuseebu:sebu:z halfho:I ho:vexcuseksku:s ksku:z - changes in stress - they occur mostly in disyllabic words with a Latin prefix - nouns / adjectives are stressed at the first syllable, the verbs are stressed at the second syllable noun / adjectiveverb absent+bsentebsentabstractaebsttektebstt+ktconvictkbnvktkenvktinsultnsz1tnsz1tpresentteznttzentrebelteb1tbe1surveyss:vesevesuspectszsektsesekt - changes in spelling - advice x advise, extent x extend, half x halve, speech x speak etc. English LinguisticsPage 16 15. Verb categories - telic verbs - they express an action heading towards a specific aim - to achieve this aim, the action must be completed - come, arrive, get, lose, leave, return, break, enter, begin, change, take, land, bring, abandon, recognize- he was falling asleep (telic action) - when it is interrupted, one cannot say he fell asleep - atelic verbs - they express an action for which reaching a certain point is not relevant - the action happens whatever its quantity and whatever point in time we may consider - see, observe, want, listen, rain, know, admire, belong, work, carry, wear, study, fight, follow, linger- he was sleeping (atelic action) - even if he was woken up earlier, the fact remains that he was sleeping - some verbs can occur as both telic and atelic- it is therefore more precise to talk about telic or atelic predications or actions, not telic or atelic verbs- sometimes the determination depends on modifying elements, but not always - She sings beautifully. (atelic) x She sang a song. (telic) - We played chess. (atelic) x We played a game of chess. (telic) 19. Modality, means of different types of modality; negation - modality - modal expressions signal the speakers attitude to the proposition or to the situation - modality is not only a grammatical phenomenon, but also a lexical phenomenon - intentional modality - it is the modality in the broad sense, it is an obligatory feature of each sentence- each sentence corresponds to one of the basic communicative sentence types - it constitutes the basic layer of sentence modality- epistemic / extrinsic modality - it expresses the likelihood of the proposition being true - it calibrates the area of meaning between yes and no- it uses lexical items like maybe, perhaps, certainly, probably, obviously- it also uses copular verbs like seem, appear, prove, turn out- deontic / intrinsic modality - it expresses the degree of desirability of the proposition becoming true - it calibrates the area of meaning between do it and dont do it- it uses especially modal verbs - grammatical modal expressions regularly have both epistemic and deontic uses - John should be there by now. - epistemic reading of should - it is likely that John is there - deontic reading of should - John is under an obligation to be there - negation - the negation in English has several forms - no, not, and prefixes like un-, dis-- the negation of a simple sentence is accomplished by inserting not between the operator and predication - We may not win the match.- the negator often occurs in the contracted form nt in colloquial speech - when a positive clause contains no auxiliary (Present and Past Simple), we introduce the substitute do- They dont / didnt understand the problem.- the negative particle not is frequently followed by one or more non-assertive items - They dont understand any of the questions.- abbreviated negation - there are typically two colloquial forms of negation - hes not x he isnt English LinguisticsPage 17 - negative intensification - there are various ways of giving emotive intensification to a negative - nothing at all / whatsoever, never in my life, not a single, not sleep a wink, not give a damn / straw- if a negative adjunct stands on the first place in the sentence, there is obligatory inversion- Never has anybody told me anything about that.- there are several words which are negative in their meaning, but not in appearance - seldom and rarely (not often), hardly and scarcely (almost not), barely (only just) - they are followed by non-assertive forms - when they appear in the initial position in a sentence, they cause subject-operator inversion - scope of negation - it is the relation between negative words and the non-assertive words they govern - clausal negation - negation normally extends from the negative word to the end of the clause - the subject and adjuncts before the predication normally lie outside the scope of negation - I definitely didnt speak to him. (its definite that I did not) - I didnt definitely speak to him. (its not definite that I did) - if an assertive word is used, it must lie outside the scope of negation - I didnt listen to some of the speakers. - local negation - it may be explained as negation of a clause condensed into a phrase - He wondered, not for the first time, ...; He sounded not entirely convinced. - focus of negation - the information focus is important for describing negative clauses - the scope of negation must always include the focus - we use contrastive stress to indicate which part of the clause can be understood in a positive sense - the typical intonation of such clauses is the contrastive fall-rise - Harry didnt attack the small boy. (someone did, but not Harry) - Harry didnt attack the small boy. (he did something to him, but he didnt attack him) - Harry didnt attack the small boy. (he attacked the big one) - Harry didnt attack the small boy. (he attacked the small girl) - it is sometimes necessary to determine the focus to understand the sentence - I dont want anybody for the work. - nechci nikoho (in the scope of negation) - nechci jen tak nkoho (outside the scope of negation) - double negation - more than one negative word is used within the same clause - grammatical (clausal) and lexical (local) - the negatives cancel each other out - the sentence has the same meaning (weakened - litotes) as the appropriate positive sentence - He isnt innocent. - What he says is not unreasonable.- I dont want to make a fuss about nothing.- I met a not unattractive woman. - His not very handsome face scared her.- two grammatical negators in different predications- I dont like doing nothing.- He isnt likely to have no previous engagement.- double grammatical in one predication - the second negation lies outside the scope of the first - Never did none of his friends come.; Nobody has never been in trouble.- An boat doesnt sink for no reason.English LinguisticsPage 18 - rules for placing the negative - it should be placed as close to the beginning of the sentence as possible - it is better to use nothing / none than not any in written language - transferred negation - the negation from the main clause is shifted into the dependent one - it happens in content clauses and with verbs like think, believe, suppose, expect, seem- I think it isnt true. x I dont think its true.- I believe she doesnt care about it. x I dont believe she cares about it.20. Communicative sentence types, their syntactic structure and function - we distinguish four communicative sentence types and four corresponding discourse functions - declarative sentence - its discourse function is a statement - interrogative sentence - its discourse function is a question - imperative sentence - its discourse function is a command - exclamatory sentence - its discourse function is an exclamation - declarative sentence - it is typically used in the expression of a statement - it is a declaration that something is, or is not, the case - its function is mostly to assert or report information - in English, it typically contains the subject before the verb (SV) - The door is open.- in Czech, the relative position of subject and predicate depends on communicative dynamism - we usually find the indicative form of the verb in statements, it presents the proposition as being true - however, it can be modified by means of epistemic modality - we can also find the conditional, which presents the proposition as possible or impossible - a declarative sentence can have other discourse functions than a statement - the function of a question - I wonder if she knows.- the function of a command - You are not supposed to do that.- interrogative sentence - it is used in the expression of a question - it differs from other sentence types in the word order, intonation, and specific lexical items - words which mark interrogative sentences are interrogative words (adjectives, adverbs, pronouns) - in the simple present and past tense, we use the auxiliary do- interrogative sentences primarily express a lack of information and ask for the missing information - Yes-No questions - the subject is placed behind the finite verb, they are marked by rising intonation - we use the auxiliary do in the present simple and past tense of lexical verbs - the speaker wants the addressee to confirm or disprove the content of the sentence - the content of the sentence may be correct, the Yes-No question thus expresses deontic modality - the answer to the question is yes or no, together with their synonyms - Did you call Ruth? - Yes, I did. / No, I didnt.- negative polarity indicates a surprise, the speaker expected the opposite to be true - Didnt you call Ruth?- declarative questions - the Yes-No question can have the word order of a statement - the difference is only in intonation - The elevator is still out of order?; You are already back?- secondary functions - Will you have some cake? (offer); Will you help me? (a polite request) English LinguisticsPage 19 - Wh- questions - they contain a Wh- word - they have a falling intonation and an inverted word order (the subject comes after the finite verb) - it wants to find out particular information, which is represented by the Wh- word - the Wh- word stands typically at the beginning of the sentence (who, which, what, why, how etc.) - if the Wh- word is the subject or part of subject, the sentence has the same structure as a statement - Who saw it? - John saw it.- What remains to be done? - A lot remains to be done.- the Wh- word is usually placed at the beginning even when there is a preposition in the sentence - Who did you go with?; What are you waiting for?; How many parts does it consist of?- it can function as a rhetorical question - it can be an echo question - It can take four hours. - How long?- alternative question - it involves the inversion of subject and predicate - it contains the alternative conjunction or- it can include two or more alternatives - each alternative is an independent tone unit, all unit except for the last have a rising intonation - Will you go there or should I?- Will you have fruit, cheese, or cake?- rhetorical question - it does not express a question, they are actually emotive declarative sentences - the speaker asserts or denies something- it is marked by the reversed polarity to the fact - the answer to a rhetorical question is obvious, and it does not need to be expressed - the presupposition of a rhetorical question is the statement of the reversed polarity - the implied answer to a positive rhetorical question is thus positive, and vice versa - Is everybody honest?; Who cares?; Isnt everybody a rascal sometimes?- question tag - we repeat the subject and the finite verb form of the sentence - the tag is joined to the respective sentence with a reversed (interrogative) word order - the subject is always in the pronominal form, lexical verbs are substituted by do- the question tag has a falling intonation - the speaker presupposes the validity of the proposition - they usually have the opposite polarity than the sentences they are joined to - The matter is urgent, isnt it?; It wont take long, will it?- the sentence and the tag can have the same polarity - the tag has then always a rising intonation - they express that the proposition is not the speakers opinion, but someone elses - The conference has been called off, has it?- they can also react to the reality of the situation - So youve arrived, have you?- imperative sentence - its discourse function is a command (order) - its basic form is the imperative with the subject in the second person not expressed - Write in block letters.; Keep off the grass.; Pay at the desk.- it can sometimes contain the subject, which is typical for spoken conversation - this can happen when the speaker wants to involve the addressee, or when there are more persons - You bet!; You move a bit further and you squeeze yourself here. English LinguisticsPage 20 - it can also signalize negative emotions - You mind your own business.; You be quiet.- the negative imperative is formed with the help of dont- the subject, when expressed, stands between dont and the verb - Dont touch it.; Dont anybody move.- imperative sentences with the addressee in the third person are typically expressed by let- Let him proceed.; Let that be a lesson to you.- exclamatory sentence - it does not constitute an independent type in Czech (it only differs in intonation) - in English, its syntactic structure is distinctive, it begins with how or what and it can involve so- What a nice dress you have!; How well I remember it!; I remember it so well!21. Constitutive and optimal sentence elements; sentence types based on syntactic structure - clause patterns - they can be distinguished properly only if the sentence is active - S-VBirds sing. - S-V-AShe lives in London. - S-V-CsShe is a spinster. - S-V-OI love her. - S-V-Oi-OdHe told me the news. - S-V-O-CoHe calls me a liar. - S-V-O-AHe put the butter in the fridge. - SV - the subject can be either agent (A dog barked.) or patient (She fainted.; Iron rusts.) - there are often some optional elements (adverbial, subject complement etc.) - She returned utterly worn out.- SVA - locative (He is away.; You are among your friends.) - temporal (The wedding is on Saturday.; The flight takes two hours.) - measure (His weight is twelve stone.; Her clothes cost a lot of money.) - locative + agent (Her face was streaming with tears.; The path was swarming with ants.) - manner (The material washes easily.; The book reads well.) - SVCs - The place is haunted.; The kettle was singing.; His eyes sparkled with joy.- SVO - both the subject and object can have various semantic roles - The key opened the door. (instrument, locative); My tent sleeps four people. (locative, measure) - The sight curled my blood. (causative, affected) - SVOi-Od - the indirect object can usually be left out - He sold me a bicycle.; She poured him tea. / She poured tea.- conversive predicate - Tom sold his bike to Dick. = Dick bought the bike from Tom.- Lucy lent it to Alice. = Alice borrowed it from Lucy.- SVOCo - He ran himself breathless.; She found the box empty.; Do you like your tea sweet?- She named her girl Jane.; They rejected the plan as unfeasible.- SVOA - some verbs need not only an object, but also some adverbial - She planted the garden with roses.; The furnish schools with visual aids.English LinguisticsPage 21 29. Minor sentences - English counterparts of Czech subjectless verbal sentences- the typical sentence in both Czech and English contains both the subject and the predicate - however, Czech also has the subjectless verbal sentence, which has no equivalent in English - Czech subjectless verbal sentences with a verbal predicate- they express actions without an agent - weather conditions and similar constructions - there are three possibilities in English - empty it in the subject - It has rained itself out.; It snowed all day.; Its clearing up.- there in the subject - There is a draught.; There was a flash of lightning.; There is no wind.- There is a lot of dust.; There is a fire.- noun in the subject - The rain poured down.; The sky has clouded over.; The snow was falling thick.- physical states - in these sentences, the bearer of the physical condition is expressed - the Czech bearer is typically the subject of the English sentence - I itch.; I shivered / shuddered / felt chilly.; He has a pain in his chest.; My hands are cold.- Your stomach rumbled.; His eyes sparkled.; My mouth felt dry.; I was seething.; I dreamed about it.- locative element - the locative expresses the source or place of a specific action - The place is haunted.; The floor creaked.; The windows rattled.; The room smelt of roses.- reflexive verb forms - there is an implied general human agent (everybody) - passive - These results have been reached / achieved.; Your cooperation was reckoned with.- The school was not well spoken of.- explicit means to express the agent - We / People / They used to read by candlelight.- constructions with there - Will there be any dancing?; There will be much construction here.- Czech subjectless verbal sentences with a verbal predicate- these sentences consist of the copula and nominal part of predicate - they describe various states - physical, psychological, description of the surroundings - physical and psychological states - the Czech bearer is again the subject of the English sentence - I am / feel well.; I was cold.; He felt lonely.; We are happy.; I feel like crying.- description of the surroundings - there is a locative element or it in the subject - It was quiet there. / The place was quiet.; The place was swarming with people.; It was warm.- it used with time and place - Its quarter past four.; It was before Christmas.; It was a long way there.- verbless minor sentences - there is no finite verb form, they are often considered as ellipsis - noun in common case - signs (No Waiting; Victoria Station) - newspaper headlines, chapter titles (Summit Talks in Moscow) - exclamations (Goal!; Charming girl!; Fire!) - requests (Silence!; Help!; Just a second.; Next, please.) - wishing (Good morning.; Happy New Year!; Cheers!; Ladies first!) - adjective and adverbial - Interesting.; Lovely.; Splendid!; Funny.; Finished. / Probably.; Of course.- exclamations with what / how - How clever of him!; What a nuisance!- infinitive - To go on.; To think we might have been in Rome!; Why bother?; How about going to Rome?- interjection - Dear me!; Goodness!; Damn!; Crash!; Bang!English LinguisticsPage 22 - double-nucleus verbless clause - it contains both the subject part and the predicate part - however, the predicate part is not expressed by a finite verb form, but by nominal means - Nasty business, this.; An extraordinary thing, that.; Not bad, that book of hers.; A nice girl, Ruth.- headlines and signs - Admission Free; Business As Usual; Buses Back to Normal- proverbs - Like father, like son.; First come, first served.; No pain, no gain.; Less haste, more speed.30. Semantics and lexicology - sign - Saussure recognized two sides of meaning- signifiant - the thing that signifies, the sound image - signifi - the thing signified, concept - the relationship of signified to signifier is called a linguistic sign- each word is a sign because it has its form and its meaning - there is a relationship between all three - the referent is described by the symbol - there is no direct relation between the symbol and the object - the object is usually an extralinguistic item - not all forms have their meaning or object - fairy is supernatural, it has no object - types of meaning- lexical meaning - it is the invariable part of meaning, it is the proper meaning - the same lexical meaning applies for all grammatical forms of a word (go, goes, going, went, gone) - grammatical meaning - it concerns the recurrent grammatical forms - Geoffrey Leech distinguishes between seven different modes of language - conceptual / referential / denotational meaning - it is the most essential type of meaning - it is the central issue enabling the communication, key of any word - collocational meaning - collocation represents a word-formation type of process- collocations can be studied from the point of view of connectivity (combinatorial power of words) - semantic point of view - if we do not obey rules, we either say a nonsense, or something pejorative- a herd of buffalo (OK) x a herd of people (pejorative, we point out non-human behavior) - connotational meaning - it concerns associations which are activated within the system - they may be very subjective (winter can be associated with Christmas, snow, skiing; death, decay) - multi-social meaning - it its the bare classification from lexical point of view - a word pronounced may associate it with particular features of the speaker (dialect, social class) - emotional meaning - it is concerned with the attitude of a speaker, it pertains to stylistics - reflected mode - it concerns polysemantic expressions, when a word has more than one interpretation - like in billboards, the reflected meaning is not identifiable, but can be thought of - thematic mode - it concerns functional sentence prospective - beyond the lexical semantics, it is a matter of syntax and textual linguistics SymbolFormWordReferentObjectMeaningTableABCReferenceDenotationDesignation SignificationEnglish LinguisticsPage 23 - shifts of meaning (semantic transfer) - there are several ways of shifting the meaning - they frequently concern historical changes - extension - ticket (theater train many areas today), column (building newspaper) - target (shield aim), ready (for riding horse for anything), awful (today horrible) - delivery (mail childbirth), property (possession quality), skeleton (body building) - limitation / restriction - meat (food meat), starve (die die of hunger), corn (in US maize) - hound (dog hunting dog), artist (today only painter) - metaphor - of a quality of one object transferred to another object (similarity) - the expression of one thing in terms of another thing - dead / frozen / conventional metaphor - mouth of the river, foot of the mountain, sea bed - personal feelings transferred onto things (cruel heat, virgin soil, learned eye, pitiless cold) - idiomatic - be cross with so., rolling in money, black leg, bellow the belt, be so,s sunshine- metonymy - an attribute of a thing is used for the thing itself (association of ideas) - it is based on outer similarity - She likes her bottle., a red-letter day, red tape, White House, Wall St., drink a glass- synecdoche - a species of metonymy, the object is expressed in terms of one of its parts a part is used for the whole - all hands (workers), your eye is blind, your Majesty- simile - a comparison is made between two different things as and like are used - as good as gold, drink like a fish, slippery as an eel, as sober as a judge- euphemism - replaces a phrase considered indelicate by a more delicate expression - She had one too many. (drunk), pass away / on (die), perspire (sweat) - dysphemism - a direct use of an offensive or indelicate expression instead of a delicate one - mug (face), boneshaker (car)- hyperbole / overstatement - emphatic exaggeration (Im starving., There were millions.) - litotes / understatement / meiosis - lessens the importance of something, understates the truth - not bad, industrial action (strike), its not overimpressive- sense relations between words- synonymy - words of similar or identical meaning, they are interchangeable in some contexts - full / absolute synonymy - it is rare, there is a tendency to avoid it (to specialize the meanings) - spelling x orthography, kind x sort, greenhouse x hothouse - partial synonymy - they differ in the extension of the denotational meaning - the words cannot be interchanged in all contexts - high x tall, holy x saint, quick x fast, expect x wait, pretty x handsome, foggy x misty- sources - parallel expressions of different origin - ask x question x interrogate - it can differences between varieties - girl x lass, boy x ladd, lorry x truck, lift x elevator- the difference can be of stylistic nature - the difference can consist in word formation - laugh x laughter, microphone x mic x mikeEnglish LinguisticsPage 24 - oppositeness - different form, it can be explained on the basis of contrast - complementaries - what is for A +, is for non-A - - they are typically adjectives or verbs, there are only two choices - married x single, male x female, be born x die, search x find, win x lose, open x shut- antonyms - there is a scale, it is not either-or but more-less, adjectives can be intensified - short x long, sad x happy, hot x cold- directional opposites - often from prepositions or adverbs - up x down, hill x valley, leave x enter, head x toe, cellar x attic, husband x wife- maronymy - it is the relationship between the whole and a part, something is included in something else - leg : table, father : family, duke : aristocracy, book : library, drop : rain, wine : alcohol- hyponymy & hyperonymy - a relationship of specific and general lexemes - one lexeme is included in the latter - dog is a hyponym of animal, animal is hyperonym of dog; dog and cat are co-hyponyms - paronymy - false friends, easily interchangeable words- affect x effect, economic x economical, human x humane- polysemy & homonymy - both groups have one form but several interpretations - we have to look at the etymology of the words to determine each case - polysemy - one word is associated with more meanings, the words are related in a way - it is an economical feature, one word can serve more purposes - plane (flat, aircraft), figure (statue, digits, feature), master (boss, degree) - foot (of a man, mountain, a measure, a base) - homonymy - more meanings associated with one form, there is no connection between them - full homonymy - it is quite rare - case (bedna, ppad, pd), bank (beh, banka), seal (tule, peetidlo) - race (rasa, zvod), tense (napjat, as), bear (medvd, nst) - partial homonymy- homophones - they are identical in pronunciation, but different in spelling - rode x rowed, knew x new, right x write- homographs - they are identical in spelling, but different in pronunciation - lead, tear, wind- malapropism / catachresis - an inappropriate replacement of a word or phrase by other words - it is a distortion or misuse of words due to ignorance- prodigal child x child prodigy, attitude x aptitude- componential analysis / semantic analysis- it decomposes words into linguistic primitives, called semes - a seme is the basic semantic metalinguistic unit, the simplest element of meaning - the primitives / semes are usually assigned binary values +/- - milk - liquid +, colorless -, organic + - stone - liquid -, colorless -, organic + - water - liquid +, colorless +, organic + English LinguisticsPage 25 31. Word formation, structure of words, word groups, valency. - derivation / affixation - it is the attachment of a suffix or prefix to the base - about 65% of new words are formed by derivation - prefixes - there are 60 to 70 prefixes in English, productive are for instance un-, re-, out-- they typically do not change the part of speech, they are class-maintaining - some prefixes (conversional prefixes) switch the part of speech, but this is peripheral- loud x aloud, danger x endanger- they usually do not take the main stress - negative - a-, dis-, in-, non-, un-- degree / size - arch-, co-, hyper-, mini-, midi-, maxi-, out-, over-, sub-, super-, sur-, ultra-, under-- orientation - anti-, contra-, counter-, pro-- locative - fore-, inter-, sub-, super-, trans-- time / order - ex-, fore-, post-, pre-, re-- suffixes - they determine the part of speech distinction and sometimes even the semantic aspect (piglet) - -er is one of the most productive suffixes - the suffix frequently affects the stress - some suffixes take the primary stress, some move it - suffixes bearing stress - -ade, -aire, -ain, -ale, -ee, -een, -eer, -ese, -ess, -esque, -ette, -ice, -ine, ... - suffixes moving stress to the preceding syllable - -ian, -ic, -ify, -ive, -logy, -or, -ous, -tion, -ual, ... - diminutive - -let, -ling, -ette, -ie- agential - -er, -eer, -or, -ist, -ant, -ster- feminine - -ess, -ine- abstract - -ness, -hood, -ation, -ship, -ocracy, -dom, -ism, -ity, -ery, -ment- conversion - a change of word class by the help of a zero morpheme - only historical development tells us which word is a source and which is a newly coined one - it enriches the wordstock, it is a matter of open-class units - n v - to land, to table, to stone the fruit, to voice an opinion- adj n - moderns, humans, untouchables- phrasal v n - holdup, pileup, setback, roundup, pickup, dropout, write-off - compounding - two words lose their original meaning and together form a completely new one- Germanic (determining item + main item) xRoman (main item + determining item) - there is a tendency to write the units together (other possibilities are separate words or hyphenation) - the names of individual compound types have been taken from Sanskrit - numerative (dvandva) - we sum up at least two elements (deaf-mute) - possessive (bahubrihi) - there is no relationship between the compound and the two separate elements - it usually specifies a bearer of a particular activity (bold-head) - descriptive (karmadha raya) - there is a positional relationship between the parts (Queen Mother) - derivational compound - queue-jumper, lady-killer, short-staffed, hard-liner, go-getter- phrasal compound - wait-and-see attitude, would-be actor, forget-me-not, merry-go-round- ad-hoc - the get-the-hell-out-of-here look- reduplicative compound - walkie-talkie, hocus-pocus, helter-skelter, chit-chat, Ping-PongEnglish LinguisticsPage 26 - back formation - a shorter word is derived by removing an affix from a longer one - it is the opposite process of derivation - usually verbs are formed from existing nouns - to compute, to baby-sit, to burgle, to clean, to sightsee, to televise- abbreviation / shortening / clipping - a reduced version of a word, phrase, or sentence - we can retain the initial, medial, or final morpheme of the original word - radial (radial tire), flu, phone, vocab, fib (fibble), ad, memo, specs, doc, vet, fan, prof, bus, phone, fridge- clipping can involve a change in spelling and/or pronunciation - mike, showbiz, telly, cos; demo, memo - acronym - a word made up out of the initial letters of other words - alphabetism (pronounced letter by letter) - EEC, BBC, UNO, VIP, EU, NHL, NBA- acronym in the narrow sense (pronounced as whole words) - NATO, UNESCO, yuppie, OPEC- blending / contaminated words - combination of clipping and compounding- it is a very modern process, it has been popular only for the last two hundred years - we can take a whole word and a morpheme, or only two morphemes, or only two splinters of words - smoke + fog = smog, breakfast + lunch = brunch, channel + tunnel = chunnel; Benelux- boat + hotel = botel, hooligan + fanatic = hoolifan, quasi + star = quasar - sound imitation / onomatopoeic words - jingle bell, gurgle, cough, twitter, bark, neigh, low- neologisms / new coinages - nonce words - they were originally made by one person (author) for a specific purpose and later accepted - mug (attack in the streets), bug (phone tapping), breakdown service, mobsters (hooligans)- borrowing - 50% of the English word-stock are loan words from other languages - internal structure of words- morpheme - it is the smallest distinctive linguistic unit, it can be a word on its own - it is an abstract unit realized in speech as morph (physical realization of a morpheme) - stem - the original smallest morpheme in a word friend for unfriendliness- base morpheme - the word from which another word has been directly derived unfriendly for unfriendliness- affix - a meaningful element attached to a word base, making a more complex word - it is used for derivation and inflection - prefix (an affix before the base), infix (an affix in the middle of the base), suffix (an affix after the base) - free morpheme - a grammatical unit which can be used as a word (blackbird black, bird) - a word can occur without a free morpheme (concur, depict, expel, reflect) - bound morpheme - a grammatical unit which cannot occur on its own as a word- inflectional - affixes which signal a grammatical relationship (no change of meaning) determine - determines, determined, determining English LinguisticsPage 27 - derivational - affixes which form new words (the word classes usually changes) determine - determination- word groups / collocations - they are set expressions of words that readily co-occur - words do not combine to form sentences, but expressions, it is the collocational level - they are basic to language, they have to be learned, their misuse indicates foreignness- they express the syntagmatic relationship held between the words - pay / draw attention - we cannot translate pay / draw literally, we have to predict the meaning - collocability - it is the degree with which the words join - some words are very restricted, and can combine with only one word - some words can make many collocations - grammatical collocation (grammatical valence) - we must consider the governing of individual items - a verb followed by a particular type of clause, a noun or a verb followed by a particular preposition - lexical collocations - there are several patterns - subject-verb pattern (the doer and the predicate) - a bomb explodes, bees buzz- verb-object pattern, creation - to make an impression, to pose a question, to set an alarm clock- verb-object pattern, nullification - to wipe st. out, to abolish st., to lift a blockade, to ease tension- adjective-noun pattern - weak tea (not feeble tea), warm regards (not hot regards), crushing defeat- noun-of-noun pattern - a colony of bees, a herd of buffaloes, a pride of lions, a school of whales- verb-adverb pattern - to apologize humbly, to appreciate sincerely, to affect deeply- adverb-adjective pattern - deeply absorbed, closely related, strictly accurate, hopelessly addicted- proverbs - it is a form of a sentence - they have a grain of wisdom, they are associated with imagination, with metaphor - some proverbs are international, some are only nation-based - A living dog is better than a dead lion.; Set a thief to catch a thief.- quotations - the richest source is the Bible, then Shakespeare and Greek classics - Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. (Shakespeare) - To err is human. (A. Pope) - For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. (A. Pope) - A little learning is a dangerous thing.- phrasal verbs - they have their own meaning, there are several interpretations - perfective interpretation - to fasten up (to finish the process of fastening) - non-idiomatic interpretation - we are allowed to interpret the two items separately (to blow up) - idiomatic - the meaning is not derivable from the components (to size up) - set expressions - they show a particular degree of integration and stability - they can be decomposed into words, but it does not help to determine the meaning - alliteration - words in an expression start with the same sound (safe and sound) - rhythm (on and on) - rhyme (fair and square, by hook or by crook) - imagery - contrast (sooner or later), metaphor (in a nut shell), synonymy (proud and haughty) - idioms and phrases - they are set expressions, they show mono-collocability- they can be placed in the periphery of a language, because they are so restricted English LinguisticsPage 28 - idiom - a semantic unit (we highlight the semantics) - phrase - a formal unit (we emphasize the form) 35. Historical background and the present day stratification of English wordstock, lexicography - English is the major lingua franca - it has ca. 350 mil. native speakers, but there are ca. 1 bill. English users - there is a pressure on the language from all over the world - it is comes into contact with other languages, and there are therefore lots of opportunities to borrowing - Celtic period (700 BC - 43 BC) - proper nouns remained (Aberdeen, Inchcape) - other nouns (bannock, cart, down, plaid, mattock) - Latin period (43 BC - 449 AD) - Latin was the first language that influenced English - domestic life (kitchen, kettle, cup)- food (pear, cheese, butter) - names of Roman camps (Lancaster, Chester)- new notions (altar, mass, priest, psalm, temple, palm, tunic, angel) - grammatical terms (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative)- Old English (449-1066) - a variant of West Germanic, spoken by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes - an inflected language - strong and weak verbs and declension of nouns and adjectives - Scandinavian words - Vikings invaded Britain periodically from the late 8th century on - the language of Vikings was very similar to Old English - Old English had words for these terms, but some Scandinavian words replaced them - everyday life - sky, skill, skirt, egg, sister, law, are, cut, both, take, bank, dirt, race, root, skill, skin, window, lift, rid, scare, get- adjectives - ill, ugly, awkward, rotten, sly, tight, weak- place names ending -by - Derby, Whitby- names ending -son - Stevenson, Johnson- Middle English (1066-1476) - dates from the Norman Conquest of 1066 - at the beginning of the Middle English period, the language was still inflectional - at the end, the relationship between the elements of the sentence depended on word order - only one example of a weak plural ending, oxen, survives in Modern English - the distinctions of grammatical gender in English were replaced by those of natural gender - the dual number and the dative and accusative of pronouns fell into disuse - the conjugation of verbs was simplified by the omission of endings - Norman (French) words - French was the largest and most important influence - before 1250 - about 900 new words appeared in English, they were words adopted by the English - baron, noble, feast, story, rhyme, minstrel (lower classes needed for dealings with nobility) - after 1250 - this influence was substantially larger, they were words imposed by the French - words pertaining to the government, court, to the arts, scholarship, and medicine - government - parliament, government, royal, country, money, crown, council, tax, minister, duke- legal - court, judge, jury, crime, prison, plead, accuse, punishment, advocate, sentence, trespass- religion - religion, sermon, baptism, clergy, vicar, crucifix, sanctuaryEnglish LinguisticsPage 29 - army - army, navy, defense - fashion - dress, fashion, cape, cloak, robe, garment, petticoat- Midland - a dialect of Middle English, it became important during the 14th century - the counties where it was spoken became centers of education, economy, and court - East Midland became the speech of the entire metropolitan area of London - its was used in the government offices and literature (Chaucer, Lydgate) - it was adopted for printed works by William Caxton this all contributed to the direct development into Modern English- the Great Vowel Shift - a major change in the pronunciation of vowels (15th-16thcentury) - a shift in the articulation with respect to the positions of the tongue and the lips - it changed the pronunciation of 18 of the 20 distinctive vowels and diphthongs - Modern English - the vocabulary was enlarged by increased borrowings from ca 50 languages - the revival of interest in Latin and Greek during the Renaissance brought new words - Italian words - cameo, stanza, stiletto, spaghetti, vendetta, violin- Spanish and Portuguese words - alligator, peccadillo, sombrero, junta, vertigo, tornado- from North America (raccoon, wigwam, squash), from West Indies (barbecue, cannibal) - from Africa (chimpanzee and zebra), from Australia (kangaroo and boomerang) - French words - chic, prairie, chamois, ballet, chateau- French affixes - -ette (usherette), -ade (cascade), -que (unique), -age (voyage) - German words (delicatessen, sauerkraut, hamburger), Dutch words (boss, sleigh, waffle) - thousands of scientific terms were developed to denote new concepts and inventions - many of these (neutron, penicillin, supersonic) are from Greek and Latin roots - others were borrowed from modern languages (blitzkrieg, sputnik, lunochod, robot) - grammatical changes (late 17th and 18th century) - formal grammatical rules established - word borrowings in American English- when the British started to colonize America, they brought English spoken in Britain at that time - there was a great need for new words in America (unknown animals, trees, institutions) - the first people the colonists came across to were American Indians - then they came to contact with French speakers (missionaries) around the Great Lakes - in the west they met Spanish speakers - even the Dutch, and later Germans, gave some words to American English; later Germans- words from native Indian languages- animals - woodchuck, chipmunk, opossum- proper names - Chicago, Pontiac, Cadillac, Michigan- compounds with Indian language - firewater, Great Spirit, dig up the hatchet- trees, plants - pecan, hickory, squash- words from French - one source was French explorers and fur traders, the other was New Orleans - prairie, bayou, praline- words from Spanish -- plants, animals - marijuana, mustang, barracuda, alligatorEnglish LinguisticsPage 30 - food - taco, tequila, tortilla- clothing - poncho, sombrero - words with the suffix -eria - cafeteria, groceteria, snacketeria, booketeria, washeteria- words from Dutch- toponyms - bush, hook - names of people - boss, Yankee, snoop - food - coleslaw, waffle- words from German - they are words mostly adapted in 19th century - food & drink - frankfurter, hamburger, cheeseburger, delicatessen, pretzel, sauerkraut- education - semester, seminar- words from other immigrant languages- Yiddish - kosher - African languages - voodoo, jukebox, jazz- Italian names of food and drink - lexicography - the art and science of dictionary making it is an applied science - lexicology and lexicography link together the abstract discipline semantics- in 1966, Dane published an article concerning vocabulary and wordstock- The Center and Periphery in Lexical Issues- within a wordstock of an language, there is a central and peripheral area - central (standard, neutral) words can be used regardless of the situation - peripheral words belong to literary and colloquial wordstock - dictionary - a reference book which lists the words of one or more languages - words are usually listed in alphabetical order denotation, connotation, coverage, grammatical description, pronunciation, etymology - lexicon - the vocabulary of a language, the lexical items / lexemes of a language - classification of dictionaries - according to the size - big / great/ national - include over 40.000 lexical units - medium, small / mini - according to the organization of entries- semaziological - they start with forms and end up with functions of words - alphabetical, retrograde / reverse (starting with suffixes), frequency, rhyming- onomaziological - they start with a concept and survey all the words connected with it - notional (clusters of words connected with one feature - thesauruses) - according to treating entries - unilingual - use only the mother tongue - explanatory - explain the word in the same language - bilingual or multilingual / polyglotsEnglish LinguisticsPage 31 - according to the area covered - general - pronunciation, school dictionary, etymological translation - special - technical, synonyms (thesaurus), antonyms, idioms, proverbs, slang, argot, surnames - Scots English, Shakespearean dictionary, terminology (medicine, law), abbreviations - according to the content - linguistic /non-linguistic dictionaries (encyclopedias) 38. Substitution, treatments - Quirk et als treatment- they include pro-forms under substitutes (in Halliday & Hasan, pro-forms belong to reference) - pro-forms for noun phrases - it includes one and the same (as in Halliday & Hasan) - personal reference (A vase fell on Bobs head. It was heavy and hurt him.) - demonstrative reference (John and Bill applied for the university. Each presented good references.) - pro-forms for adverbials- extended demonstrative reference (Hell come at six. That should be early enough.) - extended personal reference (Hell come at six. It should be early enough.) - pro-forms for predicate and predication- verbal substitution and clausal substitution 44. Pragmatics vs. semantics, principles, maxims, implicature - semantics - it is the study of meaning based on linguistic expression - it studies meaning derived explicitly out of the words - it applies the principles of structural linguistics to the study of meaning through semantic relations- semantic relations / sense relations are the relations of meaning which exist between words (synonymy) - pragmatics - it is a relatively new discipline, it has been popular since the 1970s- it studies language from the point of view of the users - the choices they make - the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction - the effects their use of language has on the other participants in an act of communication - it is confound to the spoken medium - it is often seen as a counterpart to semantics, which studies meaning explicitly conveyed by the form - for someone, pragmatics is indeed a subdiscipline of semantics, it is the other way around for others - pragmatics also incorporates the situation, which attributes to interpretation - pragmatics includes the physical and linguistic context, the intentions of the speakers - it explores what is understood, and yet not worded - Im cold. - it may convey a request for the addressee to close the window, to turn up the heating etc. - pragmatics thus abandons the boundaries of explicit language and goes to what is between the lines - semantics derives from the form, pragmatics from the function - semantics is rule-based, pragmatics is principle-based - rules are binding, whereas principles are only tendencies which often contradict each other - semantics is concerned with distinct units, pragmatics has a continuous character - semantics investigates the form, pragmatics investigates the ways to achieve communication goals - utterances are speech acts, there is a specific objective behind each speech act English LinguisticsPage 32 46. Speech acts - we do not only produce utterances containing grammatical structures and words - we perform actions via our utterances, these actions are called speech acts- Youre fired! spoken by ones boss is more than just a statement, it performs the act of ending employment - speech acts have labels like apology, complaint, compliment, invitation, promise, request etc.- these kinds of speech acts apply to the speakers communicative intention in producing an utterance - the communicative intention should be recognized in the speech event- locutionary act - the basic act of utterance, of producing a meaningful linguistic expression - it involves the forming of sounds and words to create a meaningful utterance - illocutionary act / force - the intention, force associated with an utterance - each utterance performs a speech act- Ill see you later. - it can have different illocutionary forces (prediction, promise, warning) - IFIDs (illocutionary force indicating devices)- performative verb (Vp) - expression with a slot for a verb that explicitly names the illocutionary act - I hereby (Vp) you that... (I ask you if, I state to you that, I request you to do) - other IFIDs are word order, stress, intonation contour, punctuation, mood - perlocutionary act / effect - the intended effect on the hearer, the intentions the speaker wants to achieve - felicity conditions - circumstances for the performance of a speech act to be recognized as intended - they are conditions which must be fulfilled before a speech act can be said to have been performed- general conditions - the participants understand the language being used, they are not talking nonsense - content conditions - for a promise / warning, the content must be a about a future event - preparatory conditions - the event of a promise will have beneficial effect - sincerity conditions - for a promise, the speaker genuinely intends to carry out the future action - essential conditions - in a promise, the speaker becomes obliged to carry out the action - speech act classes - there are five types of general functions performed by speech acts - declaratives - they change the world via the utterance- words change the world, world-to-word direction of fit (speaker causes X) - the speaker has