Subject

: General Linguistics

Day

: Saturday

Institute

: ASTI

Time

: 16.17.40

Department

: English Department

Lecturer

: Venncio Pereira

Level

: Semester IV

I.

Introduction to general linguistics

Linguistics knowledge and performance on what is grammar:

We use the term grammar with a systematic ambiguity. On the one hand, the term refers to
the explicit theory constructed by the linguist and proposed as a description of the speakers
competence. On the other hand, it refers to this competence itself.

Teaching grammar:

Descriptive grammar:

Prescriptive grammar:

Every human who speaks a language know its grammar. When linguists wish to describe a
language, they attempt to describe the grammar of the language that exists in the mind of the
speakers. There will be some difference among speakers knowledge, but there must be shared
knowledge too. The share knowledge the common parts of the grammar makes it possible to
communicate through language. To the extent that the linguists description is a true model of the
speakers linguistic capacity, it is a successful description of the grammar and of the language
itself. Such a model is called a descriptive grammar. It does not tell you how you should speak;
it describes your basic linguistic knowledge. It explains how it is possible for you to speak and
understand, and it tells you what you know about the sound, words, phrases, and sentences of
your language.
There is a rule in the grammar such as every sentence has a noun phrase subject and a verb
phrase predicate. When we say that a sentence is grammatical, we mean that it conforms to the
rules; conversely, an ungrammatical sentence deviates in some ways of the rules.

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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

From ancient times until the present, purists have believed that language change is corruption,
and there are certain correct forms that all educated people should use in speaking and writing.
They wished to prescribe than describe the rules of grammar which gave rise to the writing of
prescriptive grammar.

The descriptive grammar of a language attempts to describe everything speakers know about
their language. It is different from a teaching grammar, which is used to learn another language
or dialect. Teaching grammars are used in school to fulfill language requirements. Teaching
grammars state explicitly the rules of the language, list the words and their pronunciation, and
aid in learning a new language or dialect.

Activity in the classroom

In pair/group:

1. Describe the grammar of the language (s) you can speak and find out some mistakes
people always make in the languages you and they can speak.
2. Do the demonstrations on teaching grammar in the language (s) you can speak?
3. Do the teaching on prescription grammar on the language (s) you can speak.

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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

Subject

: General Linguistics

Day

: Saturday

Institute

: ASTI

Time

: 16.17.40

Department

: English Department

Lecturer

: Venncio Pereira

Level

: Semester IV

II.

Sentence Patterns of Language (Syntax)

To grammar even kings bow. By; JB. Molire, Les femmes Savantes, II, 1672
Any speaker of human language can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.
This can be shown quite easily through examples such as the following.
a. John went to the movies.
b. John went to the movies and ate popcorn.
c. John went to the movies, ate popcorn, and drank a coke.

1. The cat chased the mouse.

2. The cat chased the mouse that ate the cheese.
3. The cat chased the mouse that ate the cheese that came from the cow.
4. The cat chased the mouse that ate the cheese that came from the cow that grazed in the
field.
In each case the speaker could continue creating sentences by adding an adjective, or a noun
connected by and, or a relative clause. All languages have mechanisms such as these
modification, coordination, and clause insertion that make the number of sentences limitless.
Obviously, the sentences of a language cannot be stored in a dictionary format in our heads.
Sentences are composed in discrete units that are combined by rules. The system of rules
explains how speakers can store infinite knowledge in a finite space our brains.
Part of what we mean by structure is word order. As suggested by the Shoe, cartoon, the
meaning of a sentence depends largely on the order in which words occur in a sentence, thus,

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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

She has what a man wants

Does not have the same meaning as

She wants what a man has.

Grammatical or Ungrammatical
In English and in every language, every sentence is a sequence of words, but not every sequence
of words is a sentence. Sequences of words that conform to the rules of syntax are well formed
or grammatical, and those that violate the syntactic rules are ill formed or ungrammatical.

Read the examples below.

Although the following sequence consists of meaningful words, the entire expression is without
meaning because it does not comply with the syntactic rules of the grammar.
1. I cant read the memo you sent.
2. That was because I wrote in a hurry.
3. It says proposal him on contract not very Friday.
4. Well, he can read his own writing but now what?

Activity in the classroom

In pair/group:

Start to write s short sentence in English then make it long and even longer. Add more
words till the sentence becomes the longest sentence.

Make grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in Mambae. Then try to explain it

clearly.
4
th

Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

Subject

: General Linguistics

Day

: Saturday

Institute

: ASTI

Time

: 16.17.40

Department

: English Department

Lecturer

: Venncio Pereira

Level

: Semester IV

III.

The study of word formation (Morphology)

The study of internal structure of words, and the rules by which words are formed, is
morphology.
One can learn thousands of words in a language and still not know the language. Anyone who
has tried to be understood in a foreign country by merely using a dictionary knows this true. On
the other hand, without words we would be unable to convey our thoughts through language.

What is a word? What do you know when you know a word? Suppose you hear someone say
morpheme and havent the slightest idea what is means, and you do not know what the smallest
unit of linguistic meaning is called. Then you do not know the word morpheme. A particular
string of sound s must be united with a meaning, and a meaning must be united with specific
sounds in order for the sounds or the meaning to be a word in our mental dictionaries. Once you
learn both their sounds and their related meaning, you know the word. It becomes an entry in
your mental lexicon (the Greek word for dictionary), part of your linguistic knowledge.

English the sounds of the letter bear and bare represent four homonyms (also called
homophones), different words with the same sounds, as shown in the sentences:
1. She cant bear (tolerate) children.

3. Bruin bear is the mascot of UCLA,

2. She cant bear (give birth to)

4. He stood there bare and beautiful

children.
Couch and sofa, though thy have the same meaning, are two words because they are represented
by two different strings of sounds.
Sometimes we think we know a word even though we dont know what it means. In a class
students had heard the word antidisestablishmentarianism and believed it to be the longest word
in the English language. Yet, many of these students were unsure of its meaning.

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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

Content words and function words

Language makes an important distinction between two kinds of words:

Content words are nouns, verbs adjectives and adverbs. These words denote concepts such as
objects, actions attributes and ideas that we can think about like children, anarchism, soar, and
purple. Content words are sometimes called the open class words because we can and regularly
do add new words to these classes.
Function words are conjunctions such as; and, or, and but prepositions such as in and of; the
articles the, a/an, and pronouns such as it and he. These kinds of words are called functions
words because they have a grammatical function. For example the articles indicate whether a
noun is definite or indefinite the boy or a boy. The preposition of indicate possession as in the
book of yours. But this kind of word indicates many other kinds of relations too. Function
words are also sometimes called closed class.

Morphemes: The minimal units of meaning

A
desirable
likely
inspired
happy
developed
sophisticated

B
undesirable
unlikely
uninspired
unhappy
undeveloped
unsophisticated

If we assume that most basic unit of meaning is the word, what do we say about parts of words
like un-, which as a fixed meaning? In all the words in column B un- means the same thing
not. Undesirable means not desirable, unlikely means not likely, and so on.
Just as un- occurs with the same meaning in the words above, so does phon in the following
words.

Phone

phonology

phoneme

Phonetic

phonologist

phonemic

Phonetics

phonological

allophone

Phonetician

telephone

Phonic

telephonic

symphony
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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

Phon is a minimal form in that it cant be decomposed. Ph does not mean anything; pho, though
it may be pronounced like foe, has no relation in meaning to it; and on is not the preposition
spelled o-n. In all the words on the list, phone has the identical meaning, pertaining to sound.
Words have internal structure, which is rule-governed. Uneaten, unadmired, ungrammatical are
words in English, but *eatenun, *admiredun and *grammaticalun (to mean not eaten, not
admired, not grammatical) are not because we do not form a negative of a word by suffixing
un but by prefixing it.

The linguistic term for the most elemental unit of grammatical form is morpheme. The word is
derived from the Greek word morphe, meaning form. Linguistically speaking, then Goldwyn
should have said in two morphemes: im-possible.
The study of internal structure of the words, and of the rules by which words are formed, is
morphology. This word itself consists of two morphemes, morph + ology. The suffix ology
means science of or branch of knowledge concerning. Thus, the meaning of morphology is
the science of word forms.
Part of knowing a language is knowing its morphology. Like most linguistic knowledge, this is
generally unconscious knowledge. A single word may be composed of one or two morphemes.

One morpheme

boy, desire

Two morphemes

boy + ish, desire + able

Three morphemes

boy + ish + ness, desire + able + ity

Four morphemes

gentle + man + li + ness

un + desire + able + ity

More than four

un + gentle + man + li + ness

anti + dis + establish + ment + ari + an + ism

A morpheme may be represented by a single sound, such as the morpheme a meaning without
as in amoral or asexual, or a single syllable, such as in child and ish. A morpheme may also
consist of more than one syllable, as in crocodile; or by four or more syllables, as in hallucinate.

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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

Free morpheme and bound morpheme

Free morphemes are morphemes that can stand alone as words while bound morphemes cant.
For example; house, book, happy are free morphemes because they can stand alone as words.
But unhappy has two morphemes; un is a bound morpheme and happy is a free morpheme.

Try these:
These are ________ morphemes: possible, correct, happy, title
These are ________ morphemes: in, un, im, un

Match the morphemes!

________________ ________________ ________________ ________________

Some morphemes like boy, desire, gentle and man may constitute words by themselves. These
are free morphemes. Other morphemes like ish, -ness, -ly, dis-, trans- and un- are never words
by themselves but are always parts of words. These affixes are bound morphemes.

We know whether each affix precedes or follows other morphemes. For example; pre(premeditate, prejudge) and bi- (bipolar, bisexual) are prefixed. They occur before other
morphemes.
Some morphemes occur only as suffixes, following other morphemes. In English, for example;
suffixes morphemes are:
-ing in sleeping, eating, running, climbing
- er in singer, performer, reader, beautifier
-ist in typist, pianist, novelist, linguist, and
-ly in manly, sickly, spectacularly, friendly.
English the plural morpheme s is a suffix, e.g.; boys, machines.

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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.

Derivational morphology
Bound morphemes like ify and cation are called derivational morphemes. When they are
added to a root, a new word with a new meaning is derived. For example, the addition of ify to
pure purify means to make pure and the addition of ation- purification means the
process of making pure. Derivative words make the words have different in meaning from the
root of the words.

The Hierarchical Structure of the Words

Adjective

Un

Adjective

Noun

Atic

This order reflects the hierarchical structure of the word. A

word is not a simple sequence of morphemes. It has an
internal structure. For example, the word unsystematic is
composed of three morphemes, un-, system, and atic. The
root is system, a noun, in which we add the suffix atic
resulting in an adjective, systematic. To this adjective, we
add the prefix un- forming a new adjective, unsystematic.

System

Noun + Adjective

= Adjective

Un

= Adjective

+ Adjective

Further morphological rules can be applied to the structure given above. For example, English
has a derivational suffix al, as in egoistical, fantastical, and astronomical. In these cases, -al is
added to an adjective -egoistic, fantastic, astronomic to form a new adjective. The rule for al
is as follows:
Adjective

+ al

= Adjective

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Source: Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams. An introduction to language 7 edition.