Miyerkules, Pebrero 5, 2014

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTICS

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTICS





While ancient India and Greece had a remarkable grammatical tradition, throughout most of history, linguistics had been the province of PHILOSOPHY, RHETORIC, and LITERARY.
In 1786, there are regular sound correspondences among many of the languages spoken in Europe, India, and Persia. For example, the English ‘f’ sound often corresponds to a ‘p’ sound in, among others, Latin and Sanskrit, an important ancient language of India.
English, Latin and Sanskrit
Scholars realized that these correspondences – found in thousands of words- could not be due to chance or to mutual influence. The only reliable conclusion was that these languages are related to one another because they come from a common ancestor.
Much of the 19th century linguistics was devoted to working out the nature of this parent language, spoken about 6,000 years ago, as Russian, Hindi, and its other modern descendants.
The Study of Language Structure
At the beginning of the 20th Century, attention shifted to the fact that not only language change, but language structure as well, is systematic and governed by regular rules and principles. 
The attention of the world’s linguists turned more and more to the study of grammar- in the technical sense of the term the organization of the sound system of a language and the internal structure of its words and sentences.
This period also saw an intensified scholarly study of languages that had never been written down. It had by then become commonplace, for example, for an American linguist to spend several years working out the intricacies of the grammars of Chippewa, Ojibwa, Apache, Mohawk, or some other indigenous language of North America.
Language Use: Study of Language
There is also a long tradition in the study of what a word or sentence ‘means’ a particular thing and how these meanings go back to the ancient Greeks:
§   One is that meanings are mental representations of some sort; another is that the meaning of an expression is purely a function of how it is used. Both ideas have launched research programs that are active today.
       They have been joined by a third approach, building on work by philosophers such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, which applies formal methods derived from logic and attempts to equate the meaning of an expression with reference and the conditions under which it might be judged to be true or false.


THE ORIGIN OF MODERN LINGUISTICS


Language Uses:
·          Studies of Meaning
·          The Social Studies of Meaning
Language Use:
The Social Side of Language
Ø  In the past 50 years
-       Increasing attention to the social side of language as well as the mental.
The national liberation movements active in third world countries after the war posed the question of what would be their official language(s) after independence, a pressing question, since almost all of them are multilingual.
This led to scholarly study of the language situation in the countries of the world.
In addition, the movements for minority rights in the United States and other Western countries have led to a close examination of social variation that complements earlier work in geographical variation.


Scholars have turned the analytical tools of linguistics to the study of nonstandard varieties like African American Vernacular English and Chicano Spanish. And the women’s movement has led many linguists to investigate gender differences in speech and whether our language has to perpetuate sexual inequality.
Linguistics- as a study endeavors to describe and explain the human faculty of language.
In ancient civilization, linguistic study was originally motivated by the correct description of classical liturgical language, notably that of Sanskrit grammar by Panini (fl, 4th Century BCE) Tolkappiyam in Tamil, or by the development of logic and rhetoric among Greeks.
Beginning around the 4th Century BCE, China also developed its own grammatical traditions and Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar developed during the Middle Ages.
Modern linguistics began to develop in the 18th Century, reaching the “golden age of philology” in the 19th Century.


Contents


o    1 Antiquity
o    1.1 India
o    1.2 Greece
o    1.3 Rome
o    1.4 China
o    2 Middle Ages
o    2.1 Middle East
o    2.2 Europe
o    3 Modern Linguistics
o    3.1 Historical Linguistics
o    3.2 Descriptive Linguistics
o    3.3 Generative Linguistics
o    3.4 Other Subfields





Modern Linguistics
Modern linguistics does not begin until the late 18th century, and the romantic or animist theses of Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Christoph Adelung remained influential well into the 19th century.


THE INFLUENCE OF LINGUISTICS


Linguistics is not a teaching technique. It is not a method of beginning reading instruction; neither is it a panacea for eliminating most of the reading problems.
Administrators, supervisors, and classroom teachers need to understand both the essential of linguistics as a discipline and the implications of these principles to the teaching and learning of reading and all the other language skills.
Many Aspects of Language
Linguistics is the scientific study of many aspects of language. Each part of the study is worthy of serious, independent consideration: descriptive, comparative, and historical linguistics; transformational and generative grammar and tagmemic analysis; and the study of phonology, morphology, dialectology, and lexicography.
Comprehending the vital role of meaning which is carried by the suprasegmental features of stress, pitch, juncture in oral language, we recognize the lack of punctuation, capitalization, or other devices in the written language to carry this full meaning.
Natural Patterns
            The study of Linguistics has many implications in understanding the process of how meaning can be derived from printed symbols, when it is clearly understood that those symbols are a secondary representation of speech.
                A child who reads a sentence like, “The heavy spring rains made the ball park a mass of oozy, sticky mud”, with a heavy stress on each word is not getting a proper feel for his language and the groupings of its words into structures of meanings. The teacher might help the pupil to “hear” reading which follows the rhythm and flow and pauses of oral English intonation by having him listen to sentences read easily and naturally and then having him imitate the pattern he hears.
                While it is necessary during the skill development portion of the reading lesson to study, analyze, discuss and relate new words to other words, the teachers should realize that words in isolation always carry primary stress. Linguistics has focused our attention on many different ways words enter a language.
Economy in Learning
When the meaning of a new word is developed, considerable learning time could be saved if the word if the word and its various forms were related and taught together. A suffix can change the part of speech or form class to which a word may be assigned, thus enabling a single word function in more than a single position or form class.
The area of dialectology has been overlooked in the elementary school, but as teachers gain an understanding of the variations in language- variations in pronunciation, in vocabulary, and in grammatical structure- they can help students to bridge the gap from their own dialect to that of the printed page as well as to that of characters in stories and books the children are reading. Through the study of dialect and its insights into the way our language actually functions, more effective teaching can be done in teaching acceptable usage.
Dialect and Usage
As we become aware of the role of dialect and usage we gain a new insight into the place, function, and design of the dictionary. The information we teach about words and the dictionary should be accurate and in accordance with the principles of lexicography. When we really understand the impact of the profound statement that dictionaries are descriptive and not prescriptive, we change our approach to dictionary study and even simple glossary activities become more realistic and significant.
      Recently, Andrew Schiller, writing in Harper’s Magazine on English instruction, states that the old will be eventually be supplanted by the new; and although the tools have been given us in structural linguistics, it is necessary for us to learn to use them.



BIG NAMES IN LINGUISTICS WITH THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS


Aristotle
Ø  He developed a system of categories that continues to influence the way linguists approach the question of how language carries meaning.
Panini
Ø  Famous for developing the first comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar.
Ø  His Sanskrit grammar is the first known attempt to provide a complete description of a language.

Plato
Ø  He presents the naturalistic view that word meanings emerge from a natural process, independent of the language user.
Ø  His arguments are partly based on examples of compounding, where the meaning of the whole is usually related to the constituents.

Leonard Bloomfield
Ø  An American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s.
Ø  His influential textbook Language, published in 1933, presented a comprehensive description of American structural linguistics.
Ø  He made significant contributions to Indo-European historical linguistics, the description of Austronesian languages, and description of languages of the Algonquian family

Charles J. Fillmore
Ø  He has been extremely influential in the areas of syntax and lexical semantics.
Ø  His seminal article The positioning of embedding transformations in a Grammar introduced the transformational cycle, which has been a foundational insight for theories of syntax since that time.
Ø  He was one of the founders of cognitive linguistics, and developed the theories of Case Grammar (Fillmore 1968), and Frame Semantics (1976).

Michael Halliday
Ø  A British-born Australian linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistic model of language.
Ø  His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar (SFG)
Ø  Describes language as a semiotic system, “not in the sense of a system of signs but a systematic resource for meaning.”

Robert Lado
Ø  Predict and describe the patterns that will cause difficulty in Learning ESL and those that will not cause difficulty by comparing systematically the language and culture to be learned with the native language and culture of the student.
Contrastive Hypothesis
                   associated with 2 branches:
1.)    Psycholinguistics
2.)    Contrastive Linguistics

Ferdinand de Saussure
  One of his translators Roy Harris summarized his contribution as:
 “Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. The 20th view of language influenced development throughout the whole range of human sciences particularly in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology.”

Benjamin Lee Whorf
Ø  Contributed his ideas about linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language influences thought.
         (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)
                - is the idea that differences in the way languages encode cultural and cognitive categories affect the way people think.

Edward Sapir
Ø  Major Contribution


       Classification of indigenous languages of the Americas
       Develop the modern concept of the phoneme in phonology



Noam Chomsky
Ø  Compared his initial formulation of generative grammar with his structuralist predecessor's approach to syntax and then compared that formulation to the current perspective.
In the intervening six decades, Chomsky:
a)     Constructed a formal theory of grammar and explored its foundations
b)     Developed a cognitive/ epistemological interpretation of the theory, leading to the biolinguistic perspective
c)     Contributed major proposals for constraints on grammars resulting in a significant reduction in and simplification of the formal grammatical machinery; and
d)     Re-evaluated the theory of grammar in terms of language design, raising the possibility of empirical proposals about the language faculty as a biological entity with properties of economy, simplicity and efficient computation





Language in Its Social Setting Language

Language in Its Social Setting Language is a social phenomenon. In America — as anywhere — it’s shaped by contact, conflict and incredible cultural complexity. Dennis Baron explains how. Read Summary
Is E-mail ruining the language?
Can I be fired for speaking Spanish on the job?
Are we less literate than we used to be?
These questions reflect how language is a social phenomenon. Although many linguists believe that humans are genetically programmed to learn language, it takes social contact to flip the switch that makes us talk. So, linguists study not simply the sounds, grammars and meanings of the world’s languages, but also how they function in their social settings
Language varies according to the social structure of a local speech community. For example, American English has varieties, dialects that are subsets of the larger linguistic whole called English. Some dialects vary by geography: In the North, you put the groceries in a bag; in the South, you put them in a sack.
Language expresses group identity
Language also expresses solidarity or group identity. Language can separate insiders from outsiders, those in the know from those who didn’t get the memo, the cool from the pathetically unhip, and, in the case of the Biblical shibboleth, friend from foe.
Members of small groups such as families, couples, friends, roommates and work groups all give their language a spin suited to the group’s interests and experience. Members of a profession develop a jargon, an internally efficient job-related shorthand that permits them to impress, mystify or stonewall outsiders. In simple two-person conversation, language may reflect power differentials: One person may take charge while the other plays a subordinate role.
We sometimes label the language of larger social groups a social dialect, with differences in pronunciation and usage based on social class, ethnic factors, contact with other languages, gender or age. Let’s take a look at some issues in social dialects.
Focussing on the central question of sociolinguistics as defined by Joshua Fishman (1965): ‘Who speaks what language to whom and when?
We will look at language variety and change in a social context, and we will discuss the following questions: why do people speak differently, even though they live next door to each other? Why do certain grammatical “errors” persist? What is the social significance of new language varieties and the disappearance of others? Do language changes occur naturally or do people have an impact on them? Who decides on the forms and norms of a standard language, and why does it matter? Do men and women really speak differently?
What features of society affect language? How do they do so?
Any important aspect of social structure and function is likely to have a distinctive linguistic counterpart. People belong to different social classes, perform different social rôles, and carry on different occupations
Aspects of social organization
  • Gender
  • Peer group
  • Health or disability/body image
  • Occupation (trades, law, politics, news media, journalism, broadcasting)
  • Social class
  • Age
  • Ethnic group (may be link to regional variation)
  • Sexuality

Social context - factors which may influence use or response
  • Beliefs and attitudes (science, religion, morality)
  • Notions of propriety
  • Political Correctness
  • Fashions in language use
  • Education of speaker/writer and audience
  • Social situation (work vs. leisure; degree of [in]formality)
  • Intention or purpose
  • Stereotyping

Features of society affecting language use and response may be (more or less):
  • Static: e.g. ethnicity, gender, class background
  • Changing: e.g. education, age, social environment, attitudes and fashions
  • Situational/contextual: e.g. immediate social situation (workplace, home, recreation, peer group, perceived formality of situation)
Language features which may be affected by social categories or contexts:
  • Variety used
  • Purposes
  • Prescriptivism - notion of "correct" spoken, written and grammatical forms
  • Meanings (denotation and connotation)
  • Language change
  • Notion of propriety/social acceptability (PC and non-PC forms)

Structural features of language necessary for modeling sociolinguistics:
Lexis
(special lexicons or register)
Semantics
(special meanings)
Etymology
(related to semantics)
Pragmatics
(influence on choice of lang)
Phonology
Morphology
(derivational)
Grammar/syntax
Discourse structure
(in special forms - liturgy, trials)
Rhetoric
(law, politics, advertising)
Style
(figures of speech)

Language and gender

Historical bias: Language forms may preserve old attitudes that show men as superior (morally, spiritually, intellectually or absolutely) to women. Today this may cause offence, so we see these forms as suitable for change. But changes may be resisted if they seem clumsy.
The male as the norm: Men, man and mankind may imply this. The term for the species or people in general is the same as that for one sex only.
Personal pronouns and possessives after a noun may also show this implicit assumption. See Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage, quoted by Crystal (CEEL, p. 369), Carolyn Jacobson's Non-Sexist Language and the NCTE guidelines she quotes. See if a given text follows (any of) these guidelines or not.
Names and titles: Consider conventions of naming in marriage. Consider also titles for married and unmarried people of either sex. Why are stage performers often excepted from these "rules" (e.g. Michael Williams is married to Miss [now Dame] Judi Dench).
Look at nouns that denote workers in a given occupation. In some cases (teacher, social-worker) they may seem gender-neutral. Others may have gender-neutral denotation (doctor, lawyer, nurse) but not g-n connotation for all speakers and listeners. Speakers will show this in forms such as woman doctor, male nurse. Listeners may not show it but their expectations can be tested by statements or short narratives that allow for contradiction of assumptions (e.g. about a doctor or nurse depicted as the spouse of a man or woman, as appropriate).
Consider forms that differentiate by gender, in adding diminutive (belittling) affixes:Waitress, usherette, stewardess.
Semantic non-equivalences: These are pairs of terms that historically differentiated by sex alone, but which, over time, have gained different connotations (e.g. of status or value) and in some cases different denotations. Examples include:
Mrs,Ms/Mr; Miss/Master,Mr; mistress/master; governess/governor; spinster/bachelor; tomboy/sissy; Lady/Lord; lady/gentleman; dame/knight; bride/(bride)groom; madam/sir; queen/king; matron/patron; husband/wife; author/authoress; dog/bitch.
Patronizing, controlling and insulting: This is not just a gender issue - these are functions (or abuses) of language which may appear in any social situation. But they take particular forms when the speaker (usually) or writer is male and the addressee is female. In some cases the patronizing, controlling or insulting only works because both parties share awareness of these connotations. It is possible for the addressee not to perceive - or the speaker not to intend - the patronizing, controlling or insulting. Patronizing terms include dear, love, pet or addressing a group of adult women as girls. Note that calling men boys or lads is not seen as demeaning. (Why is this?)
Shirley Russell argues that insulting is a means of control. She quotes Julia Stanley, who claims that in a large lexicon of terms for males, 26 are non-standard nouns that denote promiscuous men. Some have approving connotation (stallion, stud). In a smaller list of nouns for women are 220 which denote promiscuity (e.g. slut, scrubber, tart). All have disapproving connotation. Equally terms denoting abstinence - like the noun phrase tight bitch - are disapproving. In Losing Out Professor Sue Lees argues that men control female behaviour by use of such terms, especially slag. Note that today both dog and bitch are used pejoratively of women. Dog denotes physical unattractiveness, while bitch denotes a fault of character.
Beauty: Judging women by appearance is well-attested by language forms. Blonde, an adjective of colour, becomes a noun, with connotations of low intelligence. Brunettehas a similar origin, as has the compound noun redhead (no common term for a woman with black hair). Babe is both approving (beauty) and disapproving (intelligence). More strongly pejorative (about intellect) is bimbo. A male equivalent - himbo - has not passed into common use. (The software on which this guide is written accepts bimbobut not himbo as a known form.) Hunk (approving) and wimp (disapproving) apply to men criteria of strength and attractiveness, but neither has clear connotation about intelligence.
Gender differences in spoken English: Keith and Shuttleworth record suggestions that:
  • women - talk more than men, talk too much, are more polite, are indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag, ask more questions, support each other, are more co-operative, whereas
  • men - swear more, don't talk about emotions, talk about sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more.


20 Figures Of Speech  
          
1. Alliteration- Repetition of an initial consonant sound.
  • A moist young moon hung above the mist of a neighboring meadow.
  • Guinness is good for you.
  • Good men are gruff and grumpy, cranky, crabbed, and cross.” 
2. Anaphora- Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
  • We shall go on to the end.
  • We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.
  • We shall depend our island. 
3. Antitheses- The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
  • Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing
  • Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.
  • Hillary has soldiered on, damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t, like most powerful women, expected to be tough as nails and warm as toast at the same time.
4. Apostrophe- Breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character.
  • “O western wind, when wilt thou blow
    That the small rain down can rain?”
  • “Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone,Without a dream in my heart,Without a love on my own.”
  • “Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.”
5. Assonance-  Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
  • “Those images that yet, Fresh images beget,
    That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.” 
  • “If I bleat when I speak it’s because I just got . . . fleeced.”
  • “The spider skins lie on their sides, translucent and ragged, their legs drying in knots.”
6. Chiasmus- A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed.
  • “Nice to see you, to see you, nice!” 
  • “You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
  • “In the end, the true test is not the speeches a president delivers; it’s whether the president delivers on the speeches.”
7. Euphemism- The substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.
  • We’ll see you when you get back from image enhancement camp.
  • You’ve got a prime figure. You really have, you know.
8. Hyperbole-  An extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.
  • “I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.”
  • “He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus.
  • “I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor.”
9. Irony- The use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.
  • “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.”
  • He is as smart as a soap dish.
  • I have no doubt your theatrical performance will receive the praise it so richly deserves.
10. Litotes-  A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite.
  • “The grave’s a fine a private place,
    But none, I think, do there embrace.”
  •  
11. Metaphor-  An implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.
  • Love is a lie.
  • Life is going through time.
  • You are the light in my life.
12. Metonymy- A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.
  • “Fear gives wings.”
  • “Detroit is still hard at work on an SUV that runs on rain forest trees and panda blood.”
  • “I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again.”
13. Onomatopoeia- The use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.
  • “Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong, ding-dong. The little train rumbled over the tracks.”
  • “Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room.”
  • “I’m getting married in the morning!
    Ding dong! the bells are gonna chime.”
14. Oxymoron- A figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side.
  • “How is it possible to have a civil war?”
  • “The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”
  • “A yawn may be defined as a silent yell.”
15. Paradox- A statement that appears to contradict itself.
  • “The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.”
  • “If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.”
16. Personification- A figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities.
  • “Oreo: Milk’s favorite cookie.”
  • “The road isn’t built that can make it breathe hard!”
17. Pun- A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
  • A vulture boards a plane, carrying two dead possums. The attendant looks at him and says, “I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”
  • Kings worry about a receding heir line.

18. Simile- A stated comparison (usually formed with “like” or “as”) between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common.
  • “Good coffee is like friendship: rich and warm and strong.”
  • “You know life, life is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We’re all of us looking for the key.”
19. Synecdoche- A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole (for example, ABCsfor alphabet) or the whole for a part (“England won the World Cup in 1966″).
  • “The sputtering economy could make the difference if you’re trying to get a deal on a new set of wheels.”
  • General Motors announced cutbacks.
20. Understatement- A figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is.
  • “The grave’s a fine and private place,But none,I think,do there embrace.”
  • “I am just going outside and may be some time.”




Submitted By: Julia Grace F. Bacon

                                                                        Submitted To: Mrs. Lotta G. Ferraris