Lecture notes 05/19/14 - Descriptive Linguistics o Prescriptivism- judgment of what is socially proper and correct (pronunciation, spelling, grammar...) o Descriptivism- description of language use o Linguists pay attention to “productivity” Refudiate- verb used loosely to mean “reject”: she called on to refudiate the proposal to build a mosque [origin- blend of refute and repudiate] o A tool for learning and writing an unwritten language Description of the sounds (pronunciation) - Phonology Description of the words (dictionary) - Morphology Description of grammar (text) - Syntax Description of use - Pragmatics o Points of articulation for sounds Speech sounds can be classified based on their articulation Consonantal sounds - Uvular Trill o |R| o Voiced: vocal cords vibrate during articulation o Uvular: back of the tongue at the uvula o Trill: directing air over the articulator so it vibrates o French: rendezvous (appointment) - Alveolar Trill o |r| o voiced: vocal cords vibrate during articulation o alveolar: articulated at the tip of the tongue o trill: manner of articulation is produced by directing air causing articulator (tongue) to vibrate o Esperanto: tri (three) - Voiceless velar fricative o |x| o voiceless: produced without vibrations of the vocal cords o velar: articulates back of tongue (at soft palate) o fricative: constricts air flow turbulence o Dutch: acht (eight) International Phonetic Alphabet- Developed as a common scientific tool for comparing languages - Based on Roman (Latin) alphabet - Goal of describing all sounds, some of which may not make a difference in one language or another Manners of Articulation - Bilabial, apicoalveolar, nasal, glottal, patal, etc. Phonemic Analysis - Allophones o Phonemes with two or more sounds Example: - /p/: aspirated pin; unaspirated spin - /k/: aspirated kin; unaspirated skin - /t/: aspirated tun; unaspirated stun - Stress or accent o Emphasis placed on the syllable of words o Example Present (noun) Present (verb) - Pitch or tone o Voice pitch accompanying a syllable’s production High level High rising Low falling Falling o In English… Declarative statements are characterized by contrasting pitches - They came in. - They came in? - Length o Continuation of a sound during its production Finnish - Tuli (fire) - Muta (mud) - Tuuli ( wind) - Muuta (other) In English… - Indicates exaggeration o “that dog is b-i-i-i-i-i-ig” o Orality and Literacy Orality of language- Emphasis on the oral aspect of language and societies o Literacy and writing “recent” advances o The basic orality of language is permanent Of ~3000 languages studied only 78 have literature Importance of orality - Misled views o “preliterate” o Oral histories Aspects of literacy - Three types o Logographic Each symbol is a word o Syllabic Individual symbols refer to syllables o Alphabetic Contrastive sound units (phonemes) Importance of understanding literacy - Resistance to literacy - Issues of nationalism and identity construction - Literacy= development (?) - Literacy= education (?) - How language works o Two “tricks” to human language: Chomsky: “language ‘makes infinite use of finite media’” De Saussure’s “arbitrary language” o Chomsky’s generative grammar Theory that looks at ways new sentences can be generated through rules of movement and combination The creation of new sentences can be infinite - You can have the largest integer, and add 1 to it to have a larger one Important to know that there is still a grammar that is followed and a reasoning behind generative
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