Introduction to Linguistics-HS3017

Anindita Sahoo
IIT Madras

1
To begin with….
• When we study human language, we are approaching what some
might call the “human essence”, the distinctive qualities of mind that
we are, so far as we know, unique to man.
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind
• Fish swim, birds fly, people talk.“
-Norbert Hornstein
• The possession of language, perhaps more than any other attribute.
Distinguishes humans from other animals.
Victoria Fromkin, An introduction to Language
 What is Language?
• Human beings have been using language for a long time
• Dawn of human race present time
• Writing is a recent invention
• There is no human community that does not have a fully formed language
• Many don’t have scripts
• A child learns to speak before reading and writing
• Reading and writing are skills
• Language is a biological instinct
• Everyone is concerned about language
• Attention is given to:
Whether speech is correct or incorrect
How a child acquires language.
 Who work on Language?
• Many professions need some knowledge of language:
1. The speech correctionist – difficulties and impediments in language use
2. The teacher of English
3. The Foreign language teacher
4. The literary artist- language as a literary medium
5. The psychologist – differentiating humans from animals
6. The anthropologist- language and culture
7. The missionary
8. The historian- language and society
9. The philosopher – “logical syntax”
10. The communications engineer- transmits messages
11. Linguist
Who is a Linguist?
• They are specialists
• They work on an organized body of information about language
• Work through investigation and analysis
• Relationship of a linguist and other language professionals:: pure
chemistry and chemical engineering
• The more can be known about language the more we know about
ourselves.
Introducing the Topic
• Intents of the lecture:
i. to understand various approaches to language, culture and cognition
triangle
ii. To enable the participants to think like a linguist
iii. To strip of the participants of their linguistic prejudices
iv. To draw an extension in the areas of discourse analysis,
multimodality and cognition studies
 Introducing the Course
• Theme: Conceptual content of Language, Culture and Cognition

• Sub-themes:
i. Mentalism (Language as a mental phenomenon)
ii. Nativism (Language is innate and hard-wired at birth)
iii. Social Cognition (Language in context of culture and social
institutions)
iv. Lexicon (Building blocks of language)
Objectives of the Course
• Objective 1: to understand the complexity of linguistic structure in
connection with cultural and social practices

• Objective 2: to familiarize the participants about the cognitive aspect

of linguistics which can be extended to understand various language
processing relations as well as processes involving human cognition.
 Scope of the Course
• Relevant to academicians and practitioners working in a varied range
of language related phenomena.
• Scopes further on:
i. Language impairment
ii. Teaching-learning
iii. Language contact and change
iv. Language policy and planning
v. Discourse analysis
vi. Effective communication
 Course content
• Fundamentals of language:
i. The science of language (Rule governed and systematic)
ii. Linguistics vs. traditional grammar studies
iii. Linguistics- Formal vs. functional aspects
iv. Language myths (Some languages are more beautiful than others!)
v. Variations in language
 Course content
• Language and Culture:
i. Knowledge of language (Innate fundamental part of human genetic
make-up)
ii. Language acquisition (occurs as a natural part of the human
experience)
iii. Building blocks of human language (Phonemes to morphemes to
phrases and sentences)
iv. Linguistic universals (Patterns that occur systematically across
natural languages)
 Course content
• Laying the foundations: Sounds, words and sentences
i. Describing speech sounds (Identification of basic linguistic unit
called phoneme)
ii. Morphological analysis (neologism; derivational and inflectional
morphology)
iii. Syntax and grammar (Systematic correlation between ceryain types
of gestures and meaning)
iv. Spoken language: Oral gestures and Sign language: Manual
gestures
v. Semantics (as a part of grammar and mentalist enterprise)
The Communicative situation
Mental Grammar
• The Expressive variety of language use implies that a language user’s
brain contains unconscious grammatical principles. (Jackendoff 1994)
• Expressive variety: Language is the springboard for the first of the
Fundamental arguments
• Stereotypical utterances:
i. Hi, how are you?
ii. Please pass the salt
• What must be going on in your head that makes the understanding of
new possible constructions?
Why is Linguistics difficult?
• It is not inherently difficult
• Troublesome for beginners:
New terminology
Difference between the attitude
Distinction between language and writing/literature
Distinction between language and script.
Correct and incorrect speech
Descriptive and prescriptive grammar
Difference between “Language’ and ‘languages”
Not being a language purist
What does a linguist study?
• Studies the structured of Language in a scientific manner.

• Levels of analysis:
• Phonological
• Morphological
• Syntactic
• Semantic
• Pragmatic
 Who does a linguist study?
• Speech Community : The whole set of people who communicate with each other directly
or indirectly via a common language.
• Boundaries aren’t distinct
• Sometimes the political boundaries coincide
• E.g. Menomini language of the Menomini traib in Wisconscin:
French, Italian, German and Ladin (Rhaeto-Romance) in
Switzerland
• Speech Communities are fairly large
E.g. English: several hundred million speakers across the globe.
• They may also be very small
E.g. Tribal languages have only several hundred speakers- Chitimacha (American Indian
language) only 2 speakers, Austro Asiatic communities in India.
Language Families
• Typologically languages have been classified into broad categories.
▪ Indo-European
▪ Austronesian
▪ Niger-Congo
▪ Sino-Tibetan
▪ Atlantic- Congo
▪ Afro-Asiatic
▪ Pama-Nyungan
▪ Austro Asiatic
▪ Dravidian
The Nature of Human Language
• Language is not all about just words
• Knowing the sound system of a language includes more than knowing
the inventory of sounds.
• Knowing a Language also knowing certain sound sequences signify
certain concepts or ‘meanings’. E.g. boy
• Form and meaning relation is arbitrary
Window (English), finestra
(Italian), okho (Russian),
khiRki (Hindi), jaanla
(Bangla), jalakam
(Malayalam), Kitiki (Telugu),
Creativity of linguistic knowledge
• Enables you to combine words to form phrases, and phrases to
sentences
• No dictionary has ever had all possible sentences in any language
• Ability to produce new sentences ever spoken before and to
understand them is a human creativity
• Not every speaker of a language can create great literature, but you,
and all persons who know a language, can and do create new
sentences when you speak, and understand new utterances created
by others. (Chomsky 1959)
Creativity of linguistic knowledge
• Language is not limited to stimulus-response behavior (contrary to
Skinner’s Behaviorist theory)
• Verbal behavior (Skinner 1957)
i. the current features of the environment impinging on the speaker
ii. the speaker's history of reinforcement
• ‘knowing’ a language is really just a matter of having a certain set of
behavioral dispositions: dispositions to say (and do) appropriate
things in response to the world and the utterances of others
Creativity of linguistic knowledge
• Stepping on one’s toe -> Responding with a scream or a grunt
• Adding creativity (not controlled by stimulus): “Thank you very much
for stepping on my toe, because I was afraid I had elephantiasis and
now that I can feel it hurt I know I don’t.”
• Encounter with a new sentence:
“Daniel Boone decided to become a pioneer because he dreamed of
pigeon-toed giraffes and cross-eyed elephants dancing in pink skirts
and green berets on the wind-swept plains of the Mid-west.”
• Knowledge of a language makes it possible to understand and
produce new sentences. (Fromkin et al 2003)
Knowledge of sentences and nonsentences
Knowledge of sentences and nonsentences
Knowledge of sentences and nonsentences
• Acceptable vs. unacceptable & Grammatical vs. ungrammatical
• Besides knowing the words of the language, linguistic knowledge includes
RULES for forming sentences and making judgements
• Rules must be finite in length and finite in number so that they can be
stored in our finite brains
• They must permit us to form and understand and infinite set of new
sentences
• Unconscious constraints on sentences formation that are learned when
language is acquired in childhood.
• A language consists of all sounds, words and infinitely many possible
sentences. When you know a language, you know the words, and the rules
for their combination.
 Linguistic knowledge and performance
• How you use the linguistic knowledge in actual speech production
and comprehension is your linguistic performance
• Physiological and psychological reasons that limit the number of
phrases may include:
i. running out of breath
ii. leaving of audience
iii. losing track of what you have said
• Humans’ ability to use language (speaking and understanding) and to
make judgements about grammaticality of sentences, reveals our
knowledge of the rules of their language (a complex cognitive system)
How about this????

COLOURLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY

Language types
• Qualitative (basic word-order)
SOV, SVO (most prominent) & OSV, OVS (rarest)
• Quantitative (Statistical method based)
SOV (approx. 497); SVO (436); VSO (85)
• Theoretical (Attempts to find an explanation for the types of
language)
OV/VO) and SV/VS are the deciding factors of predominance

33
Word-Order typology
• SOV: most of Asia, except in Southeast Asia and the Middle East,
• SVO: much of sub-Saharan Africa, area extending from China and
Southeast Asia into the Austronesian languages of Indonesia and the
western Pacific; and Europe and around the Mediterranean,
• VSO: eastern Africa (among various Eastern Sudanic languages), in
North Africa (Berber), in the western extremes of Europe (Celtic), in
and around the Philippines, among Polynesian languages of the
Pacific, in Mesoamerica, and in the Pacific Northwest.
• One of the two rarest types, OVS is spoken in America, Amazon Basin
and Tierra del Fuego, while the other rare type, OSV is spoken in
Venezuela, Brazil, North-Eastern Australia and Indonesia.
34
Data discussion
1. Avar unnavai saappidukiraar
(He) (food) (eats m.)
2. Aval unnavai saapipdukiraal
(She) (food) (eats f.)
3. Wo chi shui guo. (I eat fruti)
4. Wo men shui guo. (We eat fruit)
5. Ni chi shui guo. (You eat fruit)
6. Ni men shui guo. (You all eat fruit)
7. Ta chi shui guo. (He/she eats fruit)
8. Ta men chi sui guo. (They eat fruit)
9. Zuo tian wo chi le shui guo. (Yesterday I ate fruit)
10. Ming tian wo chi shui guo.(Tomorrow I will eat fruit)

35
Data discussion (Chinese)
• Wo chi shui guo.
(I) (eat) (fruit)
Wo men chi shui guo.
(We all) (eat) (fruit)
Ni chi shui guo.
(You) (eat) (fruit)
Ni men chi shui guo.
(You all) (eat) (fruit)
Ta chi shui guo.
(He/she) (eats) (fruit)
Ta men chi shui guo.
(They) (eat) (fruit)
Ming tian wo chi shui guo.
(Tomorrow) (I) (eat) (fruit)

36
Grammar
• Consists of sounds, sound patterns, basic units of meaning such as
words, and the rules to combine all of these to form sentences with
the desired meaning
• Represents our linguistic competence
• Helps to understand the nature of language (internalized,
unconscious set of rules)
• Every human being who speaks a language knows its grammar
• Linguists attempt to describe the grammar of language that exists in
the minds of the speakers
Grammar
• Descriptive
i. When the linguistic description is a true model of the speaker’s
linguistic capacity
ii. Doesn’t tell you how you should speak, rather explains how it is
possible for you to speak
• Prescriptive
i. Prescribing the ‘correct’ forms that all educated people should use
in speaking and writing
ii. Puritan view of language use
 Grammar
• Why are prescriptivists bound to fail?
i. Language is vigorous, dynamic and constantly changing
ii. All languages and dialects are expressive, complete, logical as much
so as they were 200 or 2000 years ago
iii. The speakers muddle the sentences, not the language
iv. Focus is not on the speakers’ usage
• The laws that pertain to all languages are apart of universal grammar
 To sum up….
• Language is:
i. Central to human experience
ii. Vehicle of thought, abstract thinking and logical reasoning
iii. Primary carrier of culture across generations

40
Phonetics and Phonology
Introduction
• Phonetics is tricky because no discrete unit works unlike writing
system.
• Speech is continuous and cannot be broken into discrete units.
• Acoustic signal (sound wave) and speech articulators (the tongue and
lips) are the key elements.
• Bee, bah, boo- Overlap in articulation
Lend me your ears!
• Language starts with the ear.
• Babies can hear and imitate.
• Languages have boxes of sounds.
• Pick up the Englishness (or any language-ness).
• No language can be talked inside oneself.
• Listening (carefully and accurately) is the key and performance is the
outcome.
Phonetics
• Phonetics is the study of actual sounds that make the words of a
language.
• Every language has certain characteristics and they are distinct.
• English: 26 letters/alphabet but 42 sounds.
• Articulatory Phonetics/Production: How the sounds are produced by
our vocal organs.
• Auditory Phonetics/Transmission: How the sounds are perceived by
our hearing mechanism.
• Acoustic Phonetics/Reception: How the sounds are transmitted in the
air.
Waves of Speech air
• Crests
• Troughs
• Frequency
1. Fundamental frequency (initial)
2. Ferment frequency (terminal)
• Spectrogram
Phonetics
• Trachea (Wind pipe)
• Larynx
• Vocal cords
• Glottis
• Epiglottis
• Hard palate
• Soft palate
Phonetics
• Voiced speech sounds: When the vocal cords are loosely held
together and vibrate, the sounds are voiced. (Extra noise)
e.g. /b/, /d/, /z/, /g/, /v/
• Voiceless speech sounds: When the vocal cords are far apart and do
not vibrate, the sounds produced are called voiceless.
e.g. /p/, /t/, /s/, /k/, /f/
Sounds, words and Meaning
• Property of sounds
• Property of sounds they are arranges.
• John killed Mary. Vs. Mary killed John.
• Air stream mechanism
• Ingressive and Egressive mechanism of speech
• Ingressive (Air comes inside the lungs) (Mostly in Scandinavian
Languages)
• Egressive (Lung air goes out)
• Speech is a muscular effort
 English Speech Sounds
• English has a set of symbols to represent sounds
• Conventional English orthography has two problems
• What are they?
• Single letter: More than one sound
• Single speech sound: several different letters
• ‘t’ ‘sh’ ‘k’ (Speech Sounds)
(Letters
)
English Speech Sounds (Consonants)
English Speech Sounds (Consonants)
• Stops: When the airflow is completely obstructed during the speech
• Fricatives: when the airflow is forced through a narrow opening in the
vocal tract
• Affricates: Begins as a stop but gets released into a fricative
• Nasals: Gets produced with complete obstruction in the oral cavity
• Liquids: Smooth and flows easily sharing properties of both vowels
and consonants
• Glides: Vowel-like articulations
English Speech Sounds (Vowels)
Vowel Sounds in English
English Speech Sounds (Diphthongs)
Allophones
• Variations of certain phonemes are allophones
• Distinct articulatory and acoustic features
• Allophones which never occur in identical positions are in
‘complementary distribution’
• /t/ : [t] , [th]
• ’top’, ‘stop’, ‘metal’, ‘right’
Syllables
• Onset- Basic element (a consonant)
• Nucleus- Generally consists of a vowel
• Coda- Any following consonant
• E.g. ‘me’, ‘no’ – Have an onset and nucleus but no coda. Known as
open syllables.
• E.g. ‘cup’, ‘hat’ – Have a coda and are known as closed syllables.
• Consonant cluster: Combination of more than one consonants in the
onset and coda
Assimilation, Elision, Nasalization
• When two sound arguments occur in sequence and some aspect of
one segment is taken or ‘copied’ (Assimilation)
• The process of deliberate non-pronouncing a sound segment (Elision)
• Vowels are subject to nasalization when they occur before the nasal
sound
Morphology
Introduction
Background concepts
• One of the most fundamental units of language: WORD
• Words play integral role in the human ability to use language
creatively.
• How many words do we know?
• Finite vocabulary and infinite number of expressions at various
situations
• Open-ended vocabulary that contributes to our creativity.
• Human vocabulary is dynamic… add, delete and expand
Background concepts
• 13,000 words: Child entering school
• 60,000 words: Typical high school graduate
• 120,000: Literate adult
• Anyone who has mastered a language has mastered thi slong list of
words (lexicon)
• What do we know when we know a word?
• What kinds of information have we learned when we learn a word?
Background concepts
• Phonetic/phonological information
• Lexical structure information
• Syntactic information
• Semantic information
• Pragmatic information
e.g. bake (beik) v. baked, baking.
1. to cook, esp. in an oven, with dry heat.
2. To harden and dry in or as if in an oven <bake pottery>- n. A social
gathering as which baked food is served, ---- bak’er n.
Background concepts
• What are words?
• What are the basic building blocks in the formation of complex
words?
• How are more complex words built up from simpler parts?
• How is the meaning of a complex word related to the meaning of its
parts?
• How are individual words of a language related to other words of the
language?
Understanding Morphology
• A word is an arbitrary pairing of sound and meaning. (??????)
• No distinction between words, phrases and sentences.
• There are words which do not have any meaning.
• Not all sound sequences are words and not all sound sequences that
NATIVE SPEAKERS would identify as words have meanings.
• The NATIVE SPEAKERS have an intuition what is a word and what is
not?
Understanding Morphology
• Words: Simple and complex
• The basic part of a complex word- that is, the different building blocks
that make it up- are called morphemes.
• Morphemes are the minimal units of word building in a language.
• Cannot be broken down any further into recognizable or meaningful
parts.
e.g. a nadder -> an adder
a norange -> an orange
a napron -> an apron
Understanding Morphology
• Morphemes: Free and Bound
• Free morpheme can stand alone whereas a bound morpheme is
dependent.
• Classification of English morphemes:
Understanding Morphology
• Bound bases and Contracted forms are also bound morphemes.
(e.g. cranberry)
• Infixes are unique to certain languages like Bonto Igorot (spoken in
the Philippines)
(e.g. 1) ‘Kinayu’- Gathering wood
Kayu- wood
(e.g. 2) ‘tumengao-ak’- I will have a holiday.
‘tengao’- to celebrate a holiday.
Understanding Morphology
• Open class/content vs. Closed–class/function words
• Noun, verb, adjective, adverb vs. articles, prepositions,
demonstartives, quantifiers and conjunctions
• Telegraphic speech- open class or closed class?
• Aphasic brain syndromes- open class or closed class?
Neologism
• Finite vocabulary for potentially infinite world:
i. New words can be added
ii. The meaning of already existing words can be changed
• Coined words: ‘geek’
• Acronyms: ‘LAN’
• Alphabetic abbreviations: ‘HTML’
• Clippings: ‘Dr.’
• Blends: ‘infotainment’
• Generified words: ‘Xerox’
• Proper nouns: ‘Guillotine’
• Direct borrowing: ‘kindergarten’
• Indirect borrowing: ‘firewater’/’alcohol’ …. ‘iron horse’/ railroad train (Native American)
Changing the meaning of a word
• Change in grammatical category: ‘to ponytail her hair’
• Domain extension of vocabulary/ Metaphorical extension: ‘ship’,
‘captain’
• Broadening: ’cool’
• Narrowing: ‘girl’ ‘art’
• Semantic drift: ‘lady’ = ‘half’ / ‘bread’ + ‘dighe’/’kneader’
• Reversals: ‘square deal’ (1930’s and 40’s) vs. ‘square one’ (1950’s)
 Derivational Morphology
(word formation rules)
• Compounds and Compounding:
i. Noun+Noun (landlord)
ii. Adj+Noun (high chair)
iii. Preposition+Noun (overdose)
iv. Verb+Noun (go-cart)
v. Adj+Adj (red-hot)
vi. Noun+Adj (sky-blue)
vii. Preposition+Verb (oversee)
• Are Compound words limited to two words?
• Headless compound words???
Suffixing
• Agentive suffix ‘–er’ (writer, killer)
• Verbal suffix ‘-able’ (walkable, breakable) / ‘-ion’ (relation, dictation)
• Phonological change (addition of /abl/)
• Category change (verb to adjective)
• Semantic change (able to be X’d)
• Can all verbs take ‘-able’?
• Diminutive suffix ‘-y/-ie’ (dad-daddy, dog-doggie)
Backformation
• Word formations are reversed and it is a process of assuming a
simpler word to be complex to begin with.
• E.g Laser- Light amplification (by) simulated emission (of) radiation
• ‘Backformation’ itself is a backformed word.
Examples of Neologism from Literature
1. sponge-taneous: sponge + spontaneous. The choice of sponge was possibly in order to describe
the small spider and the fly.

2. slithy: Slithering + lithe (thin and long). Should convey the idea of a snake.

3. farbjous: fabulous + joyous. Describing a celebration.

4.galumphing: gallop + triumphant + ing. The knight is galloping back on his horse in triumph.

5. tulgey: a dark, dense forests. Possibly coined from the Anglo-Cornish word ‘Tulgu’ (dark)

and the Cornish word ‘Tewolgow’ (dense, thick).

6. Taggiye dewa- to tag someone on Facebook. The suffix ‘–iye’ in Bangla means ‘to do’

7. Hutum hashi: owlish smile. The word ‘hutum’ is used to describe a kind of owl, and hashi means
to smile.
Suppletion in Morphology
• Suppletion is the replacement of one stem with another, resulting in
an allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity to
the other allomorphs.
• Stem Suppletion: Walk-Walked vs. Go-Went
Big-Bigger-Biggest / Go-Better-Best
• Affix Suppletion: Cat-Cats vs. Ox-Oxen
dog-dogs vs. alum-alumnii
Semantics: The study of
Linguistic Meaning
Introduction
Semantics is the study of meaning Lyons (1977)

Semantics is the study of meaning in language Hurford & Heasley 1983

Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language Saeed (1997)

Semantics is the part of linguistics that is concerned with meaning Löbner (2002)

Linguistic semantics is the study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning Frawley (1992)

Linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings Kreidler (1998)
Linguistics Semantics
• Linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and
express meanings.
• Bigger question….. Why should we include semantics in the grammar
of language?
• If a grammar describes a language, part of it must describe meaning.
• Grammar must contain semantics and semantic information is an
integral part of grammar.
 Theories of Meaning
• Meaning of ‘Mean’
i. That was no mean accomplishment.
ii. This will mean the end of our regime.
iii. I mean to help if I can.
iv. Keep off the grass! This means to you.
v. His losing jobs means that he will have to look again.
vi. Lucky strike means fine tobacco.
vii. Those clouds mean rain.
viii. She doesn’t mean what she said.
ix. Please don’t be so mean.
Linguistic meaning vs. Speaker meaning
• Procrastinate means “to put things off” (Linguistic)
• In saying :It’s getting late,” she meant that we should leave. (Speaker)
• Analyse “The door is right behind you.”
Semantic features
Semantic Roles
• Agent
• Theme/Patient
• Instrument
• Experiencer
• Location
• Source
• Goal
• Benefactive
 Pragmatics
The Study of Language use and
Communication
Introduction
• Pragmatics is the study of relation of signs to interpreters. (Charles
Morris 1938)
• Pragmatics is the field of all those investigations which take into
consideration… the action, state and environment of a man who
speaks or hears (a linguistic sign). (Rudolf Carnap 1939)
• Modern definition: Pragmatics is the study of language use, primarily
the linguistic communication, in relation to the language structure
and context of utterance. (Wittgenstein 1953 ; Austin 1962; Searle
1969; Grice 1975)
The Problem
• We use language to do something or in doing something.
• Intentions, purposes, belief, desires (to do things)
• Talking is common and effortless, but using language successfully is a
complex enterprise.
• Mastering a second language is difficult for an adult.
• Communication is a social affair.
• Questions:
i. What is (successful) linguistic communication?
ii. How does (successful) communication work?
Linguistic Communication
• Message Model of Communication:
i. Speaker
ii. Hearer
iii. Message
iv. Feedback
Message Model of Communication
• Language functions like a conduit that transfers thoughts bodily from
one person to another
• In writing and speaking, people insert their thoughts or feelings in the
words.
• Words accomplish the transfer by containing thoughts or feelings and
conveying them to others.
• In listening or reading, people extract thoughts and feelings once
again from the words. (Reddy 1979)
Message Model of Communication
• Problems:
i. No supply of principles to understand Linguistic disambiguation and
contextual appropriateness.
e.g. Flying planes can be dangerous.
ii. Does not account for the fact that the message often contains
misinformation / Underdetermination of reference
e.g. Shrewd politician
iii. Does not account for speaker’s communicative intention
e.g. I’ll be there tonight. (Threat, promise, prediction)
Message Model of Communication
• Problems:
iv. Does not account for additional facts that we speak nonliterally
e.g. irony, sarcasm, figurative uses of language
v. Does not account for the fact that we sometimes mean to
communicate more than what our sentences mean
e.g. My car has a flat tyre. (gas station attendant vs. police)
vi. Does not connect at all with other uses than communication
e.g. firing or baptizing someone
Message Model of Communication
• Assumption of Message Model:
1. The language is unambiguous.
2. What the speaker is referring to is determined by the meaning of
referring expressions uttered.
3. The communicative intention is determined by the meaning of the
sentence.
4. Speakers only speak literally.
5. Speakers only speak directly.
6. Speakers use words, phrases and sentences only to communicate.
 Inferential Model of Communication
• Deals with the connection between sounds and communicative intentions.
• Linguistic presupposition (1) Communicative presupposition (2)
Presumption of Literalness (3) Conversational presumption (4)
• Need:
i. Notion of communicative intentions insertion
ii. Unique determining features of meaning of the expression uttered
iii. Accounts for literal, nonliteral, direct and indirect ways of
communicating
Inferential Model of Communication
• Linguistic presumption: Unless there is an evidence to the contrary,
the hearer is presumed capable of determining the meaning.
• Communicative presumption: Unless there is an evidence to the
contrary, a speaker is assumed to be speaking with some identifiable
communicative intent.
• Presumption of literalness: Unless there is an evidence to the
contrary, the speaker is assumed to be speaking literally.
• Conversational presumptions: Relevance, Sincerity, Truthfulness,
Quantity, Quality.
Pragmatic Concepts
• Linguistic context/Co-text vs. Physical Context
• Deixis: Pointing (Phrases which cannot be interpreted without
context)
• E.g. here, there, yesterday, tomorrow etc.
• Personal deixis, Spatial deixis and Temporal deixis
• Reference: An act by which a speaker uses language to enable a
listener to identify something.
• Inference: An additional information used by the listener to create a
connection between what is said and what must be meant.
Pragmatic Concepts
• Anaphora: Referring back, antecedent
• Presupposition
• Speech act: To describe actions such as ‘request’, ‘question’, ‘inform’
• Politeness
Language Endangerment
Language endangerment worldwide
• World’s language: 6000
• Americas: 900 (15%)
• Europe and Middle East: 275 (4%)
• Africa: 1900
• Asia and Pacific: 3000
• 20%-50%: Moribund
• 5%-10%: Safe
• 40%-75%: Weakening
Language endangerment in India
• India: Outstandingly multilingual country
• 2000 languages
• Indo-European: 54 languages (27%)
• Dravidian: 20 languages (10%)
• Austro-Asiatic: 20 languages (10%)
• Sino-Tibetan 84 languages (42%)
• Hindi: Flourishing with millions of speakers
• Many languages are facing endangerment or extinction (Andamenese
languages especially)
Language Endangerment
• Endangerment: A matter of degree
• World’s languages: A continuum (thriving ones at one end and extinct
ones on the other)
• Dialects: Variations found within languages
• Migrant languages: Norwegian in the USA, French in Canada, Estonian
in Sweden
• Enclave languages: Small languages surrounded by other totally
different languages
e.g. Albanian in Greece, Hungarian in Austria, Cimbrish in Northern
Italy and Korean in Japan
Life of Language
• Healthy/Strong/Safe language (All generations): Likely to be spoken
by children in the year 2100
• Endangered/Weakening (Only older generation not younger): Will
cease to be learned by children during 21st century
• Moribund/Dying (Only a few speakers, only non-children): No longer
learned as mother tongue by children or no longer spoken by children
• Extinct/Dead language (No longer spoken): No speaker; maybe found
in literature
Introduction
•Language is not restricted to only a set of words that
we use to communicate with others rather it was
born, grew with time, gave birth to different dialects
(!),and experienced death.
•Upon being taken good care any language will flourish
with more words, different sounds and grammar
rules.
Introduction
• Language is innate vs. learned behavior

• Meaning is the basis of language and it thrives by virtue of meaning

• Language is a symbiotic organism

• Language is neither an organ, nor is it an instinct.

Challenges faced
• Bringing recognition to the community speakers (The responsibility of
the authority)

• Recognizing the language as (one of) the official language

• Allowing the students to write the examination in the concerned

language (in case there is the language has a script)
Major reasons of endangerment
• Lack of a common language to interact with the elders in the
community

• The younger generation is not competent with their own native

tongue

• Lack of administrative support

• Discomfort to share things with outsiders

Approaches to language endangerment
• Language documentation approach (Salvage linguistics):
i. Salvaging the most conservative usage
ii. To gather what remains of the language in decline
• Describes what a given language was like when it was healthy
• Language endangerment phenomenon approach:
i. Concerned with the phenomenon
ii. Recording ‘uncontaminated’ form of language
iii. Studying the deviations
• Describes the process itself with external setting, speech behavior and
structural change
Language, Cognition,
Disorder etc.
What is cognition?
• Cognition refers to a range of mental processes relating to the
acquisition, storage, manipulation, and retrieval of information.
• Defined as ‘the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and
understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.’
• Cognition can be separated into multiple distinct functions,
dependent on particular brain circuits and neuromodulators.
• We need cognition to help us understand information about the
world around us and interact safely with our environment, as the
sensory information we receive is vast and complicated: cognition is
needed to distill all this information down to its essentials.
Roles of cognition
• Cognition has a physical basis in the brain with over 100 billion nerve
cells in a healthy human brain.
• Each of these can have up to 10,000 connections with other nerve
cells called neurons.
• Cognition fundamentally controls our thoughts and behaviors and
these are regulated by discrete brain circuits which are underpinned
by a number of neurotransmitter systems.
• Brain chemicals that play major roles in regulating cognitive process:
dopamine, noradrenaline (norepinephrine), serotonin, acetylcholine,
glutamate and GABA
Language in cognition
• Aspects of cognition: Ontological and Logico-Mathematical aspect
• Ontological aspect: the trivial observation that when we speak we
speak about something or else we do not speak.
• Questions:
1. Do we only speak about things that really exist in the actual world,
or do we also speak about things that do not exist in the actual
world but are merely thought-up, either as thought-up individuals
or as abstractions or reifications?
2. if we take the view that we also speak about nonexistent things,
what sort of things are things that do not exist?
Language in cognition
• In Chomskyan paradigm, the cognition studies deal with the nature of
our knowledge of language.
• Linguistic knowledge is a set of such principles and putting that
knowledge to use involves the interaction of these principles with
other systems of mental representation and computation.
• The data of linguistic performance are a product of our knowledge
(competence), but not of the mental system alone.
• I-Language vs. E-Language
Language in cognition
• To understand whether it is form or meaning or the relation between
them that is projected through and within human mind.
• Is linguistic form actually projected in the mind?
• Are meaning and relation mentally represented?
Ans: YES (grammatical competence)
• Independent cognitive system of the human mind dedicated to
language (I-Langauge)
• Consists of a collection of descriptive statements of language and/or
speech events, set of linguistic behaviors and responses.
Neural networks in Language and cognition
• What is the role of language in cognition?
• Do we think with words, or do we use made-up decisions?
• Chomsky (1965): Identification of the first mysteries about language
that science had to resolve
• Surrounding language cultures do not carry enough information for a
child to learn a language, unless specific learning mechanisms are
inborn in the mind of every human being.
• Specific enough for learning complex languages and flexible enough
so that the child of any ethnicity can learn her own language.
Neural networks in Language and Cognition
• Syntax is important and language learning is independent of
cognition
• Meanings appear independently from language
• Disagreement to this theory emerged in 1970s in the form of
cognitive linguistics
• Unification of language and cognition for the creation of meanings
• Knowledge of language is no different from the rest of cognition
• KoL is based on conceptual mechanisms
• Embodied and situated in the environment
Neural networks in Language and Cognition
• Language is not compositional, not all phrases are constructed with
words using the same syntax rules and maintaining the same rules
(e.g. metaphors)
• Cognitive linguistics is yet to lead to computational linguistic theory
to explain how meanings are created.
• Formal apparatus of cognitive linguistics is dominated by logic.
• Evolutionary linguistics emphasized language evolved together with
meanings.
• Fundamental property of language: Gets transferred from generation
to generation and language mechanisms are shaped by this process.
Neural networks in Language and Cognition
• All linguistic theories are formulated as logical systems and face
combinational flexibility
• Do we use phrases to label situations that we have already understood?
• Do we just talk without understanding any cognitive meanings?
• Does difference in cognitive and linguistic abilities have to play any role in
to understand language?
• What are the neural mechanisms that enable this flexibility?
• If there is no specific language module (as argued by cognitive linguists),
why kids learn language at a young age, but do not think like adults?
Neural networks in Language and Cognition
• Claims:
1. Human language and human cognition are inextricably linked
2. They have evolved jointly.
3. Language and cognition are separate and closely related
mechanisms of mind
4. Thinking by using cognitive contexts is possible (Example: playing
chess, solving mathematical problems).
5. Language and cognition are embodied
Aphasia: A language disorder
• Although our primary focus is on language processes in normal
individuals, we can learn a great deal about language by studying
individuals with impaired language functioning.
• An aphasia is a language disorder due to brain damage.
• Wernicke’s aphasia involves a breakdown in semantics:
e.g. Before I was in the one here, I was over in the other one. My sister
had the department in the other one. (Geschwind, 1972, p. 78)
• Semantic knowledge damaged, but phonological knowledge spared.
• Speech is devoid of meaning though articulated smoothly
Language in Aphasia
• Although our primary focus is on language processes in normal
individuals, we can learn a great deal about language by studying
individuals with impaired language functioning.
• An aphasia is a language disorder due to brain damage.
• Wernicke’s aphasia involves a breakdown in semantics:
e.g. Before I was in the one here, I was over in the other one. My sister
had the department in the other one. (Geschwind, 1972, p. 78)
• Semantic knowledge damaged, but phonological knowledge spared.
• Speech is devoid of meaning though articulated smoothly.
Language in Aphasia
• Broca’s aphasia: Called as Motor aphasia
• Frequent omission of functional and inflectional morphemes
• Agrammatic speech: Grammar markers are missing
• Conduction aphasia: Less common; patients generally mispronounce
words
• Speech is fluent but have disputed rhythm
• Base & Wash vaysse & fosh
Language in Children
• Language use in children is tacit knowledge.
• Children know more than they say.
• Elimination of closed class or function words (preposition and
conjunction etc) and in favor of open class or content words (nouns,
verbs etc.)
Language in Children
• Case study:
E.g. Imagine a young child, about 1 year old, interacting with her
mother. Typically, children around this age produce one word at a
time. When the mother leaves the room and then returns with the
child’s favorite doll, the child says “doll”, not “mother”. Later, when the
mother is helping her with lunch, the child points at the milk and says
“more”. Still later, when the child is struggling with her shoes and the
mother asks her what she is doing, the simple response is “off”.
 Disability: The issues of Dyslexia
• Dyslexia is a learning disorder, characterized by difficulties in
correlating orthographic and phonetic representation despite normal
intelligence (Lerner 1989; Lyon 1995; Fletcher & Shaywitz 1994)
• A neurobiological disorder that is characterized by difficulties with
accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and
decoding abilities (Lyon 2003)
• Consequences:
i. Reduced reading
ii. Messy reading comprehension
iii. Impeding growth of vocabulary
Types of dyslexia
• Genetic dyslexia: Transferred genetically
• Acquired dyslexia: Develops in an individual due to traumatic brain
injury, stroke, or dementia Both developmental and acquired (e.g.
‘river’ as ‘ocean’
• Surface dyslexia: Inability to read words with “irregular” or
exceptional print-to-sound correspondences (e.g. ‘yacht’, ‘colonel’)
• Phonological dyslexia: Difficulty in breaking the speech into individual
sounds (e.g. ‘sife’ and ‘sift’)
 Learning errors
• Orthographic errors:
i. Phonologically correct strings (e.g. prefre and prefer)
ii. Uncommon and infrequent words (e.g. datem instead of datum)
• Morphological errors:
i. Overgeneralization
ii. ignorance of the rule restrictions
iii. incomplete application of rules
iv. false concept hypothesis
Learning errors
• Phonological errors:
i. When the writer is unable to translate certain phonemes of a
certain word into graphemes.
ii. The mismatch between the phonemic and graphemic
representation results in the phonological errors. This also
indicated the writer’s non-reliability on lexical writing
Learning errors
Orthographic errors (phonologically accurate):
• Addition of letters: bumblebee/bummblebee
• Omission of letters: created/creat,
• Letter name strategies: dancing/danceing
• Schwa misspellings: table/tabal
• Substitutions: this/dis/dhis
• Misspellings: p.m./pime
e.g. The bumblebee was dancing merrily.
• Orthographic errors (phonologically inaccurate):
• Errors of vowels:
• a. Omission of vowels: book/bok
• b. Addition of vowels: rat/reat
• Errors of Plosive
• a. Omissions: bumblebee/ Barcy,
• b. Insertions: faithful/PamTam
• c. Substitutions: create/prat, hid/hit, book/bood
• Errors of Nasal:
• a. Omission of nasal after vowel: bumblebee/boble,
• b. Substitutions: merrily/merny
• Errors of vowels:
• a. Omissions: faithful/fatful, created/krat,
• b. Insertions: god/goad,
• Errors of Liquid:
• a. Omissions: create/ceat
• Mirror: dancing/dacid (mirror image: up-down), during/bloring (mirror:
left-right)
 • Orthographic errors:
a. under/adener, slept/saplet
• 4. Morphological errors:
b. Morphological errors on -ed: sleep/slipted,
c. Spoonerism: perfectly safe/ perfect safely
 • Syntactic errors:
a. Omission of determiner: This is a book/ This book
b. Omission of main verb: The rat hid under the mat/ The rat and mat
c. Omission of auxiliary verb: The bumblebee is dancing merrily/the beamble
dincing mrila
d. Omission of adverb: The bumblebee is dancing merrily/the bube dacid
e. Omission of preposition: I slept at 9p.m./I slipted 9 Pm
f. Insertion of preposition: The bumblebee is dancing merrily/The baumble
bee dance with merny
•
Sign Language
• Sign Language (SL): A gesture based language
• An independent language and is used all over the world with native
differences
• Varies from region to region
• Used by people with hearing loss to convey their messages
• Anything communicated in spoken language can be easily
communicated via gestures
• No international standard for SL
• American Sign Language: ASL; British Sign Language: BSL; Indian Sign
Language: ISL
ISL Grammar
• ISL has its own grammar
• Basic structure: Time-SOV
• No use of verb, article