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What Is Linguistics

The document provides an overview of linguistics, defining it as the scientific study of human language and its characteristics. It outlines the scientific method used in linguistics, including observation, hypothesis, and rule formulation, and discusses the nature and definitions of language. Additionally, it highlights the characteristics of language, emphasizing its systematic, arbitrary, and communicative aspects.

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25 views5 pages

What Is Linguistics

The document provides an overview of linguistics, defining it as the scientific study of human language and its characteristics. It outlines the scientific method used in linguistics, including observation, hypothesis, and rule formulation, and discusses the nature and definitions of language. Additionally, it highlights the characteristics of language, emphasizing its systematic, arbitrary, and communicative aspects.

Uploaded by

elizabethlovepeace
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Contents

Lesson 1: What is Linguistics?


Lesson 2: Theories of origins of human language
Lecture 3-4: Functions & properties of human language
Lecture 5-6: Areas of linguistic study
Semantics
Lecture 7: Linguistics and other disciplines
Lecture 8-9: Language varieties
Lecture 10: Language and society
Lecture 11: Applications of linguistic knowledge
Lecture 12: Review

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What is (not) Linguistics?

• Two (2) things that linguistics is not:


1. Linguistics is not about studying to become an Okyeame ‘chief’s
spokesman.’
2. A linguist does not necessarily speak many languages.
• Linguistics is derived from Latin lingua which means tongue.

Linguistics is the scientific study of the nature and characteristics of


human language.
• Linguists approach the study of human language with a scientific
method:
Observe
Hypothesis
Rule or law 3
Example: Applying scientific method

• Remember the the three (3) steps: observe, hypothesis, and rule.
Observe a phenomenon.
(1) a. Mary washed her face.
b. * Her face washed Mary.
(2) a. We are studying linguistics.
b. * Are studying we linguistics.
Make a hypothesis (an idea you can test)
1. In English, the subject occurs before the object.
2. In English, the object occurs before the subject.
Rule:
Rule: Ordering of subject, verb and object in English
In English declarative sentences, the subject comes first, followed by the verb and
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then the object.
What is language?

(Sapir, 1921)
Language is purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating
ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.
(Finocchiaro, 1965)
Language is a system of arbitrary, vocal symbols which permit all people
in a given culture, or other people who have learned the system of that
culture to communicate or interact.
(Trager, 1949)
Language is a system of communication by sound, operating through the
organs of speech, among members of a given community, and using vocal
symbols possessing arbitrary conventional meaning.
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Characteristics of language

2 System: highly organized, rule based combination of sounds/signs,


words, sentences
Arbitrary: No real connection between linguistic form and meaning
Mode: Vocal (sound) or through sign
What about writing?
(Yule, 2010:212)
We can define writing as the symbolic representation of language
through the use of graphic signs. Unlike speech, it is a system that is not
simply acquired, but has to be learned through sustained conscious effort.
Not all languages have a written form . . . In terms of human development,
writing is a relatively recent phenomenon.
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