Linguistics Majorship
Linguistics Majorship
3.
B.
Acquisition of Language
1.
Linguistic Concepts:
Scope of Linguistic Studies:
1. Phonology. It studies the combination of sounds into organized units
of speech, the combination of syllables and larger units. It describes
the sound system of a particular language and distribution of sounds
which occur in that language. Classification is made on the basis of
the concept of the phoneme.
Phonology is the study of the sound system of language: the rules that
govern pronunciation. It comprises the elements and principles that
determine sound patterns in a language.
2. Phonetics. It studies language at the level of sounds: how sounds are
articulated by the human speech mechanism and received by the
auditory mechanism, as well as how sounds can be distinguished and
characterized by the manner in which they are produced.
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voiceless p
voiced
b
Fricatives voiceless
voiced
Affricates voiceless
voiced
Nasals
voiceless
voiced
m
Liquids
voiceless
voiced
Glides
voiceless
voiced
w
Stops
f
v
t
d
s
z
Glottal
k
g
n
l
Velar
Palatal
Alveolar
Interdental
Labiodental
Bilabial
r
y
Source: Parker, F. & K. Riley. (1994). Linguistics for Non-Linguists.Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
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voiceless pairs (except for /h/); nasals, liquids, and glides are all voiced, as
are vowels.
Each consonant phoneme is not really an indivisible unit, but rather a
composite of values along these three dimensions. Each such dimension
constitutes a distinctive feature. For example, from one perspective /p/
and /b/ are not really units in themselves, but rather each is bundle of feature
values, as follows.
/p/
+bilabial
+stop
voice
/b/
+bilabial
+stop
+voice
5. Vowels are produced with little obstruction in the vocal tract and are
generally voiced. They are described in terms of the following
physical dimensions: tongue height, frontness, lip rounding, tenseness.
Different parts of the tongue may be raised or lowered. The lips may
be spread or pursed. The passage through which the air travels,
however, is never narrow as to obstruct the free flow of the airstream.
Vowel sounds carry pitch and loudness; one can sing vowels. They
may be long or short.
Front
Zurück
i
Tense
Lax
Hoch
()
Mid
Niedrig
Spread
a
Round
Source: Parker, F. & K. Riley. (1994). Linguistics for Non-Linguists.Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
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2
1
introductory
1
2
secondary
Morphology:
1. Morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:
a. It is a word or part of a word that has meaning.
b. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without
violation of its meaning or without meaningless remainders.
c. It recurs in different words with a relatively stable meaning.
The word unhappiness has 3 morphemes: {un-}, {happy}, {-ness}
while the word salamander is a single morpheme.
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-est
superlative
that.
6. Derivational morphemes are those that are added to root morphemes
or stems to derive new words. They usually change the form class of
the words to which they are attached; they are open-ended, that is,
there are potentially infinite number of them; e.g. actual + {-ize}
actualize; help + {-ful} helpful; {un-} + lucky unlucky.
7. Word Formation processes
Derivation. This involves the addition of a derivational affix,
changing the syntactic category of the item to which it is attached
(e.g., discern (V) discernment (N); woman (N) womanly (Adj)).
Category Extension. This involves the extension of a morpheme from
one syntactic category to another (e.g., house (N) house (V); fast
(Adj) fast (Adv))
Compounding. This involves creating a new word by combining two
free morphemes (e.g., sunset; drugstore).
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Pragmatics
1.
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