English Syntac

A.      Phonology

Phonology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the structure and systematic patterning of sounds in human language, (Akmajian, 1984: 99). Part of Phonology includes :

a.       An investigation of how speech sounds are produced (articulated) in the vocal tract, ie an area known as articulatory phonetics.

b.      The study of physical properties of the speech soundwaves generated by the vocal tract, i.e an area known as acoustic phonetics, and

c.       The study which deals with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener. For example, a listener may perceive defferences in aspiration, e.g. between the aspirated /p/of [p^isn] pit and the unaspirated /p/of [Up] tip, Richards, J. 1985: 215).

As a mater of fact, there are three terms that are related to each other in relation to phonology, i.e. phonology itsell, phonetics and phonemics. The lerm phonology is often used to refer to the abstract rules and principles that govern the distribution of sound in a language. The second tern, phonetics, usually refers to the study of articulatory and acoustic properties of sounds. Whereas the last term, phonemics, may refer to one of three meanings, i.e.

The aim if phonology is to discover the principle that govern the way sounds are organized in language and to explain the variations that occur. We begin by analyzing an individual language to determine which sound units are used and which patterns they form the language’s sound system. We rhen compare the properties of different sound system, and work out hypotheses about the rules underlying the use of sounds in particular groups of language. Ultimately, phonologists want to make statements that apply to all languages.

Whereas phonetics is the study of all possible speech sounds, phonology studies the way in which a language’s speakers systematically use a selection of these sounds in order to express meaning.

“When we talk about the ‘sound system’ of English, we are referring to the number of phonemes which are used in a language and to how they are organized.” (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encylopedia of the English Language, 2^nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Phonology is not only about phonemes and systems that is, with what sounds languages ‘like’ to have, which sets of sounds are most common (and why) and which are rare (and also why). it turns out that there are prototype-based explanations fopr why the phoneme system of the languages of the world have the sounds that they do, with physiological/acoustic/perceptual expianations for the preference for some sounds over others. (Geoffrey S. Nathan, Phonology: A Cognitive Grammer Introduction. John Benjamins, 2008)

B.       Semantics

The technical term for the study of meaning in language is semantics. But as soon as this term is used, a word of warning is in order.

Any scientific approach to semantics has to be cleraly distinguished from a pejorative sense of the term that has developed in popular use, when people talk about the way that language can be manipulated in order to mislead the public. A newspaper headline might read. Tax increases reduced to semantics reffering to the way a government was trying to hide a proposed increase behind some carefully chosen words. Or someone might say in an argument, ‘That’s just semantics’, implying that the point is purely a verbal quibble, bearing no relationship to anything in the real world. This kind of nuance is absent when we talk about semantics from the objective point of linguistic research. The linguistic approach studies the properties of meaning in a systematic and objective way, with reference to as wide a range of utterances and languages as possible. (David Crystal, How Language Works. Overlook,2006)

A perennial problem in semantics is the delineation of its subject matter. The term meaning can be used in a variety of ways and only some of these correspond to the usual understanding of the scope of linguistic or computational semantics. We shall take the scope of semantics to be restricted to the literal interpretations of sentences in a context, ignoring phenomena like irony, metaphor, or conversatitonal implicature. (Stephen G. Pulman, “Basic Notions of Semantics.” SRI International, Cambridge, England).

Semantics is the study of the meanings of words and sentences.

“ As our original definitation of semantics suggest, it is a very broad field of inquiry and we find scholars writing on very defferent topics and using quite different methods, though sharing the general aim of describing semantics knowledge. As a result, semantics is the most diverse field within linguistics. In addition, semantics have at lest a nodding acquaintance with other disciplines, like philosophy and psychology, which also investigate the creation and transmission of meaning. Some if the questions raised in these neighboring disciplines have important effects on the way linguists do semantics.” (John I. Saeed, Semantics, 2^nd ed. Blackwell, 2003)

C.      Morphology

The term ‘morphology’ has been taken over from biology where it is used to denote the study of the forms of plants and animals . . . it was first used for linguistics purposes in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher (Salmon 2000), to the form of words. In present-day linguistics, the term ‘morphology’ refers to the study of the internal structure ofv words and of the systematic form-meaning correspondences between words. . . .

The notion ‘systematic’ in the definition of morphology given above is important. For instance, we might observe a form difference and a corresponding meaning difference between the English noun ear and the verb hear. However, this pattern is not systematic: there are no similar word pairs and we cannot form new English verbs by adding h- to a noun.” (Geert E. Booij, The Grammar of  Words: An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology, 2^nd ed, Oxford Univ. Press, 2007).

For English, [morphology] means devising ways of describing the properties of such disparate items as a, horse look, indescribable, washing machine, and antidisestablementarianism. A widely recognized approach divides the field into domains: lexical or derivational morphology studies the way in which new items of vocabulary can be buit up of combination of elements (as in the case of in-describ-able); inflectional morphology studies the ways words vary in their form in order to express a grammatical contrast (as in the case of hourses, where the ending marks plurality).

The distinction between words and lexemesprovides the basis for the division of morphology into two branches : inflectional morphology and lexical word-formation.

Inflectional morphology deals with the inflectional forms of various lexemes. It has something of the character of an appendix to the syntax, the major component of the grammar. Syntax tells us when a lexeme may or must carry a certain inflectional property, while inflectional morphology tells us what form it takes when it carries that inflectional property.

Lexical word-formation, by contrast, is related to the dictionary. It describes the processes by which new lexical bases are formed and the structure of complex lexical bases, those composed of more than one morphological element. The traditional term is simple ‘word-formation.’

D.      Pragmatics

What does pragmatics have to offer that cannot be found in good old-fashioned linguistics? What do pragmatic methods give us in the way of greater understanding of how the human mind works, how humans communicate, how they manipulate one another and in general, how they use language?

The general answer is : pragmatics is needed if we a fuller, deeper, and generally more reasonable account of human language behavior.

A more practical answer would be : outside of pragmatics, no understamding ; sometimes, a pragmatic account is the only one that makes sense, as in the following example, borrowed from David Lodge’s Paradise News :

‘ I just met the old Irishman and his son, coming out of the toilet’

‘ I wouldn’t have thought there was room for two of them.’

‘ No silly, I mean I was coming out of the toilet. They were waiting.’ (1992:65)

How do we know what the frist speaker meant? Linguists usually say that the sentences is ambiguous, and they excel at prodicing such sentences as

Flying planes can be dangerous or : The missionaries are ready to eat in order to show what is meant by ‘ambiguous’ : a word, phrase, or sentences that can mean either one or the other of two (or even several) things.

For a pragmatician, this is, of course, glourious nonsense. In real life, that is, among real language users, there is no such thing as ambiguity—excepting certain, rather special occasions, on which one tries to deceive one’s partner or ‘keep a door open’.

(Jacob L Mey, pragmatics: An Introduction, 2^nd ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

We have considered a number of rather different delimitations if the field [of pragmatics]. The most promising are the definitions thar equate pragmatics with ‘meaning minus semantics.’ or with a theory of language understanding that takes context into account, in order to complement the contribution that semantics makes to meaning. They are not, however, without their difficulties, as we have noted. To some extent, other conceptions of pragmatics may ultimately be consistent with these. For example, the definition of pragmatics as concerned with encoded aspects of context may be be less restrictive than it seem at first sight, for it in general (a) principles of language usage have as corollaries principles of interpretation, and (b) principles of lamguage usage are likely in the long run to impinge on grammar (and some empirical support can be found for both propositions), then theories about pragmatics aspects of meaning will be closely related to theories about the gramaticalization of aspects of context.

(Stephen C. Levinson, Pragmatics, Crambridge Univ. Press, 1983)

E.       Syntax

Example and Observations :

v  “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

(Linguist Noam Chomsky created this sentence-which is grammatically correct but incomprehensible—to demonstrate that rules governing syntax are distinct from therneanings words convey)

v  “[I]t is a mitake to belive that some English speakers follow rules in their speech and other do not. Instead, it now appears that all English speakers are siccessfull language learners: they all follow unconscious rules derived from their early language development and the small differences in the sentences of the sort that we are looking at here follow lines of social class and ethnic group rather than geographical lines. Thus we can speak of social varieties or social dialects. (Carl Lee Baker, English Syntax, 2^nd ed. MIT Press, 1995)

v  Within traditional grammar, the syntax of a language is described in terms of taxonomy (i.e. the classificatory list) of the range of different types of syntactic structures found in the language. The cental assumption underpinning syntactic analysis in traditional grammar is that phrases and sentences are built up of a series of constituents (i.e. syntactic units), each of which belongs to a specific grammarical function. Given this assumption, the task of the linguist analyzing the syntactic structure if any given type of sentences is to identify each of the constituents in the sentences and (for each constituent) to say what category it belongs to and what function it serves . . .

v  William Cobbett on Syntax (1818)

“Syntax is a word which comes from the Greek. It means, in tha language, the joining of several things together and as used by grammarians, it means those principles and rules teach us how to put words together so as to form sentences. It means, in short, sentences-making. Having been taught by the rules of etymology what are the relationships of words, how grow out of each other, how they are varied in their letter in order to correspond with the variation in the circumstances to which they apply, syntax will teach you how ro give all your words their proper situations or places, when you come to put them together into sentences. (William Cobbett, A Grammar of the English Language in a Series of Letters : Intended for the Use of School and of Toung in Genal, but More Especially for the Use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices and Plough-Boys, 1818)