EDSENG 1 Introduction To Linguistics

INTRODUCTION
TO
LINGUISTIC
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
CHAPTER 1: Views About Language
CHAPTER 2: Acquisition of Language
CHAPTER 3: Historical and Contemporary Views of Language
Learning and Influences of Theories on
Language Teaching
CHAPTER 4: Phonology
CHAPTER 5: Phonetics
CHAPTER 6: Morphology
CHAPTER 7: Syntax
CHAPTER 8: Semantics
CHAPTER 9: Pragmatics
CHAPTER 10: Discourse

VIEWS ABOUT LANGUAGE
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
At the end of this chapter, learners should be able to:
1. Explore the different views about language.
2. Explain the processes how language differs from the
different views.
3. Acknowledge the beauty of language from the different
views.
1. The Structuralist
believes that language can be described in terms of observable and
verifiable data as it is being used. They also describe language in terms of its
structure and according to the regularities and patterns or rules in language
structure. To them, language is a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily
assigned to the objects, states, and concept to which they refer, used for
human communication.
 Language is a means of communication.

Language is an important means of communicating between
humans of their ideas, beliefs, or feelings. Language gives shape to
people’s thoughts, as well as guides and controls their activity.
 Language is primarily vocal.

Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by
the speech apparatus in the human body. The primary medium of
language is speech. Speech is language; the written record is but
secondary sounds of the language. While most languages have writing
systems, a number of languages continue to exist, even today, in the
spoken form only, without any written form. Linguists claim that speech is
primary, writing secondary. Therefore, it is assumed that speech has a
priority in language teaching.
 Language is a system of systems.

Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds.
Sounds are arranged in certain fixed or established, systematic order to
form meaningful units or words. For example, no word in English start
starts with bz-, lr- or zl- combination, but there are those that begin with
spr- and str- (as in spring and string). In like manner, words are also
arranged in a particular system to generate acceptable but the group of
words “Vince bought new book a” is not acceptable as the word order of
the latter violates the established convention in English grammar, the
Subject-Verb-Object or S-V-C word order.
Language is a system of structurally related elements or ‘building

blocks' for the encoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes
(sounds), morpheme (words), tag meme (phrases and sentences/
clauses). Language learning, it is assumed, entails mastering the
elements or building blocks of the language and learning the rules by
which these elements are combined, from phoneme to morphonic to word
to phrase to sentence.
 Language is arbitrary.
There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their
meanings or the ideas conveyed by them. Put another way, there is no
one to one correspondence between the structure of a word and the thing
it stands for. There is no reason why an animal that flies is called ibonin
Filipino, pajaroin Spanish, bird in English. Selection of these words in the
languages mentioned here is purely accident of history that native
speakers of the languages have agreed on. Through the years the year’s
reference to such animal has become an established convention that
cannot be easily changed.
That language is arbitrary means that the relationship between the

words and the ‘things' they denote is merely conventional, i.e. native
speakers of English, in some sense, agreed to use that sounds /dog/ ‘dog’
in English because native speakers of English ‘want' it to be.
1. The transformationalist
believes that language is a system of knowledge made manifest in
linguistic forms but innate and, in its most abstract form, universal.
 Language is a mental phenomenon. It is not mechanical. Language is
innate. The presence of the language acquisition device (LAD) in the
human brain predisposes all normal children to acquire their first language
in an amazingly short time, around five years since birth.
 Language is universal. It is universal in the sense that all normal children
the world over acquire a mother tongue but it is also universal in the sense
that, at a highly abstract level, all languages must share key features of
human languages, such as words into phrases and clauses; and all
languages have transformation rules that enable speakers to ask
questions, negate sentences, issue orders, defocus the doer of the action,
etc.
 Language is creative. It enables naïve speakers to produce and
understand sentences they have not heard nor used before.
2. The Functionalist
believes that language is a dynamic system through which
members of community exchange information. It is a vehicle for the
expression of functional meaning such as expressing one’s emotions,
persuading people, asking and giving information, making people do
something for others.
This view of language emphasizes the meaning and functions rather than
the grammatical characteristics of language, and leads to a language teaching
content consisting of categories of meaning/notions and functions rather than of
elements of structure and grammar.
3. The interactionists
believes that language is a vehicle for establishing interpersonal
relations and for performing social transactions between individuals. It is a
tool for creating and maintaining social relations through conversations.
Language teaching content, according to this view, may be specified and
organized by patterns of exchange and interaction.
4. Rationalist Paradigm.
According to the rationalist, which gave rise to the nature
perspective, the processes of the human intellect (e.g., sensation,
perception, thinking, and problem solving) are characterized by principles
of organization. These processes of cognition are qualitatively different
from the fairly disorganized events that occur in the observable world. The
organizing principles and processes that characterize cognitive structures
are said to enable humans to make sense of events in the world. From
this perspective, speaking and understanding language are considered
fundamentally human traits that are biologically determined. In contrast,
reading and writing require explicit teaching to develop these abilities and
are learned with much more effort and repetition, typically in a school
setting (Catts & Kamhi, 2005; Sakai, 2005).
Biological Bases for Rationalists:

Although Chomsky was among the first to suggest that humans possess
linguistic knowledge at birth, the psychologist Eric Lenneberg (1967) provided
much of the groundwork for the view that language is biologically based. He
argued that language, like walking but unlike writing, shows evidence of the
following properties:
Little variation within the species. Lenneberg argued that all languages are
characterized by a system of phonology, words, and syntax.
Specific organic correlates. Lenneberg argued that like walking but unlike writing,
there is a universal timetable for the acquisition of language. He suggested that
critical periods exist for second-language learning as well as for rehabilitation
after language loss due to injury or insult to brain function.
Heredity. According to Lenneberg, even with environmental deprivation, the

capacity for language exists—although it might be manifested in the use of
signing, as seen in individuals with hearing impairment.
No history within species. Lenneberg argued that because we have no evidence

for a more primitive human language, language must be an inherently human
phenomenon. (Lenneberg, 1967)
5. A Contemporary View.
Pinker and Jackendoff (2005) maintain that Chomsky Minimalist
View is inadequate because it ignores 25 years of research in the areas of
phonology, morphology, syntactic word order, lexical entries, and the
connection of a grammar to language processing, all of which are critical
for a theory of language acquisition.
Pinker and Jackendoff (2005) address more challenging questions, such as

“What is included in the language faculty?” by arguing that the language faculty is
an adaptation for the communication of knowledge. This specialized language
faculty triggers the development of linguistic knowledge that uses at least four
different mechanisms for conveying semantic relations: hierarchical structure,
linear order, agreement, and case.
According to these authors, the four mechanisms are sometimes used

redundantly. In arguing against the Minimalist Program, Pinker and Jackendoff
suggest that how the specialized language faculty is characterized must be
based on existing research, not on a program or theory that is incompatible with
the facts. In the more recent incarnations of the “nature” paradigm, Pinker (2006)
addresses the question, “What are the innate mechanisms necessary for
language learning to take place?” Certain cognitive accomplishments, such as
the representational function (i.e., the ability to represent objects or ideas
mentally), are known prerequisites for language to unfold. Furthermore,
metacognitive control or executive functioning that serves to monitor the
incoming stimuli, the motor output, and the learning that takes place must be
accounted for as well. Finally, individuals must operate with an unfolding theory
of mind (i.e., the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs, intents, desires,
knowledge, pretend, to oneself and others, and to understand that others have
beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one’s own) (Premack and
Woodruff, 1978) as the “language instinct” or the language faculty does its work.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
1. What view/views about language that presented more comprehensive? And
why?
2. Differentiate the rationalists to contemporary view of language.
3. Is there any common denominator of those views? Prove your answer.
POST-DISCUSSION ACTIVITY:
 Work in pairs and discuss the contribution of those views to language

development. List down your answers in one-half crosswise yellow paper.
ICCT Colleges Foundation Inc.
V.V. Soliven Avenue II, Cainta, Rizal.
QUIZ 1
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
SECTION & SCHEDULE: ____________________ SCORE: _____________
I.MULTIPLE CHOICES
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Encircle the letter of the correct
answer.
1. In this view about language, they believe that language can be described in terms of
observable and verifiable data as it is being used. Who are they?
A. Structuralist
B. Transformationalist
C. Rationalists
D. Interactionist
2. In this view about language, they believe that language is a system of knowledge
made manifest in linguistic forms but innate and, in its most abstract form, universal.
Who are they?
A. Interactionist
B. Rationalists
C. Transformationalist
D. Structuralist
3. In this view about language, they believe that language is a vehicle for establishing
interpersonal relations and for performing social transactions between individuals. Who
are they?
A. Transformationalist
B. Functionalist
C. Interactionist
D. Rationalists
4. In this view about language, they believe that language is a dynamic system through
which members of a community exchange information
A. Interactionist
B. Rationalists
D. Functionalist
5. In this view about language, they believe that speaking and understanding language
are considered fundamentally human traits that are biologically determined. In contrast,
reading and writing require explicit teaching to develop these abilities and are learned
with much more effort and repetition, typically in a school setting.
A. Contemporalists
B. Rationalists
C. Functionalist
D. Interactionist
6. Which statement is true about the view of language that language is arbitrary?
A. Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by the speech

apparatus in the human body. The primary medium of language is speech.
B. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or
the ideas conveyed by them.
C. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds.
D. Language is an important means of communicating between humans of their
ideas, beliefs, or feelings.
7. Which statement is true about the view of language that Language is a means of
communication?

apparatus in the human body.
B. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds.
C. Language is an important means of communicating between humans of their
D. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or
8. Which statement is true about the view of language that Language is primarily vocal?
A. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or

B. Language is an important means of communicating between humans of their
C. Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by the speech
D. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds.
9. Which among the statements about the contemporary view of language is incorrect?
A. Language teaching content, according to this view, may be specified and

organized by patterns of exchange and interaction.
B. The connection of a grammar to language processing, all of which are critical for
a theory of language acquisition.
C. This specialized language faculty triggers the development of linguistic
knowledge that uses at least four different mechanisms for conveying semantic relation.
D. Individuals must operate with an unfolding theory of mind (i.e., the ability to attribute
mental states such as beliefs, intents, desires, knowledge, pretend, to oneself and
others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires.
10. Which among the following statements is a view about language?
A. Behaviorism emphasizes that consequences of the response and argues that it

is the behavior that follows a response which reinforces it and thus helps to strengthen
the association.
B. The natural order hypothesis suggests that grammatical structures are acquired
in a predictable order for both children and adults, that is, certain grammatical structure
are acquired before others, irrespective of the language being learned.
C. According to Government Binding Theory language acquisition, the child
operated as a mini-linguist.
D. Language is a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily assigned oThe objects,
states, and concept to which they refer, used for human communication.
II. IDENTIFICATION
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Fill in the space provided what
is being asked or described in each items.
_______1. Language is a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily assigned to the objects,
states, and concept to which they refer, used for human communication.
______2. Language gives shape to people’s thoughts, as well as guides and controls
their activity.
______3. Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by the speech
______4. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their

meanings or the ideas conveyed by them.
______5. Language is a system of structurally related elements or ‘building blocks' for

the encoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes (sounds), morpheme (words),
tag meme (phrases and sentences/ clauses).
III. Alternative Choices: True or False.

DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Write TRUE is the statement is
correct and FALSE if otherwise. Put your answer on the space provided.
______1. Language is speech.

_____2. According to Integrationists, language is a tool for creating and maintaining
social relations through conversations.
_____3. According to Functionalist, language is a vehicle for the expression of
functional meaning such as expressing one’s emotions, persuading people, asking and
giving information, making people do something for others.
_____4. Language is a mental phenomenon. It is not mechanical. Language is innate.
_____5. Views about language was all about how people can acquire language.
ACQUISTION OF LANGAUGE:
At the end of this Chapter, the learners should be able to:
1. Identify the different theories of the Acquisition of Language.
2. Discuss the strength of theories of the Acquisition of language.
3. Explain the processes of how acquisition of language occur in
each theory.
1. Behaviorist learning theory.

Derived from a general theory of learning, the behaviorist view states that
the language behavior of the individual is conditioned by sequences of differential
rewards in his/her environment.
It regards language learning as a behaviorist like other forms of human

behavior, not a mental phenomenon, learned by a process of habit formation.
Since language is viewed as mechanistic and as a human activity, it is believed
that learning a language is achieved by building up habits on the basis of
stimulus-response chains. Behaviorism emphasizes that consequences of the
response and argues that it is the behavior that follows a response which
reinforces it and thus helps to strengthen the association.
According to Littlewood (1984), the process of habit formation includes the
following:
a. The child imitates the sounds and patterns which he/she hears around
him/her.
b. People recognize the child’s attempts as being similar to the adult
models and reinforce (reward) the sounds by approval or some other
desirable reaction.
c. In order to obtain mere of these rewards, the child repeats the sounds
and patterns so that these become habits.
d. In this way the child’s verbal behavior is conditioned (shaped) until the
habits coincide with the adult models.
The behaviorists claim that these three crucial elements of learning are a
stimulus, which serve to elicit behavior; a response triggered by the
stimulus, and reinforcement, which serves to mark the response as being
appropriately (or inappropriate) and encourages the repetition (or
suppression) of the response.
1. Cognitive learning theory. Chomsky argues that language is not

acquired by children by sheer imitation and through a form of
conditioning on reinforcement and reward. He believes that all
normal human beings have an inborn biological internal mechanism
that makes language learning possible. Cognitivists/ innatists claim
that the child is born with an ‘initial state’ about language which
predisposes him/her to acquire a grammar of that language. They
maintain the language acquisition device (LAD) is what the child
brings to the task of language acquisition, giving him/her an active
role in language learning.
One important feature of the mentalist account of second language
acquisition is hypothesis testing, a process of formulating rules and testing
the same with competent speakers of five central hypotheses.
The five hypotheses are:

a. The acquisition learning hypothesis. It claims that there are two
ways of developing competence in L2:
Acquisition – the subconscious process that results from informal,
natural communication between people where language is a
means, not a focus not an end in itself.
Learning – the conscious process of knowing about language and

being able to talk about it, that occurs in a more formal situation
where the properties of a language are taught. Language learning
has traditionally involved grammar, vocabulary meaning.
Acquisition parallels first language development in children

while learning approximates the formal teaching of grammar in
classrooms. Conscious thinking about the rules is said to occur in
second language learning while the unconscious feeling of what is
correct and appropriate occurs in language acquisition.
b. The natural order hypothesis. It suggests that grammatical structures

are acquired in a predictable order for both children and adults, that is,
certain grammatical structure are acquired before others, irrespective
of the language being learned. When a learner engages in natural
communication, then the standard order below will occur.
Group 1: present progressive -ing (She is running)

Plural -s (tables)
Copula ‘to be' (The girl is in school.)
Group 2: auxiliary ‘to be’ (She is playing.)
Articles the andan (That’s a table.)
Group 4: regular past –ed (She played yesterday.)

Group 3: irregular past forms (She went home.)
Third-person-singular s (She plays every day.)
Possessive -s (The boy’s bag is new.)
c. The monitor hypothesis. It claims that conscious learning on

grammatical rules has an extremely limited function is language
performance as a monitor of editor that checks output. The monitor is
an editing device that may normally operate before language
performance. Such editing may occur before the natural output or after
the output.
Krashen suggests that monitoring occurs when there is sufficient time
where there is pressure to communicate correctly and not just convey
meaning, and when the appropriate rules are known.
d. The input hypothesis. Krashen proposes that when learners are

exposed to grammatical features a little beyond of their current
learning (i.e., I + I) those features are ‘acquired'. Acquisition results
from comprehensive input, which is made understandable with the help
provided by the context. If learners receive understandable input,
language structures will be naturally acquired. Ability to communicate
in a second language ‘emerges' rather than indirectly put in place by
teaching.
e. The affective filter hypothesis. Filter consists of attitude to language,
motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. Thus learners with favorable
attitude and self-confidence may have a ‘low filter' which promotes
language learning. Learners with a low affective filter seek and receive
more input, interact with confidence, and are more receptive to the
input they are exposed to. On the other hand, anxious learners have a
high affective filter which prevents acquisition from taking place.
2. Transformational Generative Grammar—Chomsky Within the

nature perspective, the theory of Noam Chomsky is central. The
early versions of Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar
(1957, 1965) described the innate, generative knowledge that
enables the native speaker to produce a potentially infinite number
of novel utterances, utterances they have never heard before or
spoken, and to understand an infinite number of utterances based
on knowledge of the rule-system.
 Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar 1957, 1965) and

then Government Binding, also known as Principles and
Parameters (Chomsky, 1982) were elaborate descriptions of the
native speaker–hearer’s language knowledge of the components of
language: syntax, semantics, and phonology. In the syntactic
component, which was central to the Transformational Generative
Grammar, the underlying level of meaning of an utterance was
represented by the deep structure, whereas the superficial form of
an utterance (the syntactic form that we hear or produce) was
represented by the surface structure. Thus, for example, the
spoken sentence “Wash yourself” would have as its Deep Structure
all the important elements of meaning:
YOU (which is the understood grammatical subject) + (Present
Tense Marker) + WASH + YOU (the grammatical object).
 In the syntactic component, the deep structures and surface

structures of particular sentences were linked through a series of
transformations that were captured and represented by
transformational rules. For example, the Deep Structure of the
spoken sentence “Wash yourself” would look like this:
YOU + TENSE MARKER + WASH + YOU
To describe how the spoken form of a sentence was derived,

Chomsky invoked the concept of transformational rule. The deep
structure was said to undergo a series of transformations (called a
derivation), which would yield the final form of the spoken
utterance: “Wash yourself.”
 According to Chomsky’s (1965) early view, the child brought a

language acquisition device (LAD) armed with linguistic universals
to the task of language learning. Each native speaker–hearer of a
language appeared to possess a wealth of knowledge about his or
her “grammar.” Chomsky termed this knowledge linguistic
competence. In his account of language acquisition, the LAD was
said to enable children to develop a language system fairly rapidly.
This language system was sufficiently complex and generative,
allowing children to create a potentially infinite number of novel
utterances. This capacity was termed linguistic creativity, an ability
that every native speaker-hearer clearly possessed (Chomsky,
1957, 1965).
 Chomsky’s description of language acquisition, according to

Transformational Generative Grammar, suggested that the child’s
innate LAD armed with language universals could explain not only
the rapidity and uniformity of the language acquisition process, but
also the complexity of the language knowledge that is acquired
(Chomsky, 1982, 1988).
3. A revised theory of language, called Government Binding Theory,

was formulated in its most comprehensive form by Chomsky in
1982. This account of language described idiosyncratic parameters
of particular languages as well as universal principles across
different languages. The idiosyncratic patterns of particular
languages were captured in the “parameters,” which were set
differently for different languages. For example, the fact that a
particular language differs in the direction in which it embeds its
clauses to form complex sentences (right or left branching) is
captured in the parameter setting of the particular language
(Leonard & Loeb, 1988).
 According to Government Binding Theory language acquisition, the
child operated as a mini-linguist. That is, the child utilized not only
the universal features that languages have in common, but would
ultimately establish the parameters that make his particular
language unique. As the child accrued more and more examples of
his own language, he could generate hypotheses about how his
language works, and these hypotheses would eventually be either
confirmed or disconfirmed. Ultimately, the child was said to intuit a
finite set of generative rules—that is, rules with the capacity to
generate and understand a potentially infinite number of novel
utterances.
 Research in language development was also influenced by
Chomsky’s theory of Principles and Parameters. For example, as
noted by Leonard and Loeb (1988), the following three sentences
appear to be superficially similar in that all three italicized forms
have an antecedent. However, the forms in sentences 1 and 2 are
anaphors and are bound by the governing category (they refer to
the head noun), whereas the pronominal “they” in sentence 3 can
refer to a noun outside of the governing noun.
1. The girls liked each other.
2. The boys hurt themselves.
3. The children knew they were naughty.
4. Cognitive-Constructivist Models.
Jean Piaget, a Swiss biologist who referred to himself as a genetic
epistemologist, became fascinated with the acquisition of knowledge and
the “activity” of the body and mind that lead to intellectual growth (Flavell,
1963). His keen observations of children as they engaged in exploration,
play, and problem solving provided the data for his model of functional
invariants:
 Schemas, or mental structures, correspond to consistencies
in the infant’s or child’s behaviors or actions (e.g. the child
who frequently mouths and sucks objects after grasping
them is said to be using his or her “sucking” schema).
 Assimilation occurs when a child applies a mental schema to
an event; it embodies play, exploration, and learning about
the environment. The young child will apply his or her
sucking schema to the features inherent in the various
objects that are grasped and will repeat the behavior over
and over for the sake of play.
 Accommodation occurs as a result of the child’s new
experience with an object, event, or person, and embodies
the child’s ability to incorporate the new information,
resulting in changes in the child’s mental schemas. Each
time the child applies his or her sucking schema to a
different object, the sucking behavior will be slightly modified
to incorporate features of the object.
 Adaptation consists of assimilation and accommodation (i.e.,
the mechanisms for the acquisition of knowledge) as
described above. (Piaget, 1952)
 From a Piagetian perspective, learning is accomplished
throughout the lifespan by active participation of infants,
children, and adults. In the realm of language development,
the traditional Piagetian view maintains that a direct
relationship exists between cognitive achievements and later
linguistic attainments. More specifically, Piagetian theory
predicts that cognitive prerequisites for early word learning,
in the sensorimotor period (i.e., the first two years of life)
include concepts of object permanence, intentionality,
causality, deferred imitation, and symbolic play (Piaget,
1955)
5. Bloom and Tinker’s model

This suggests that a child’s intentionality (i.e., the child’s goal-
directed action, as well as her representations of objects, wishes,
feelings, and beliefs), contributes to her development in two ways.
First, the child’s actions in the world (sensorimotor actions,
emotional displays, play, and speech) as well as her acts of
interpretation and expression of language lead to the development
of new representations of the mental contents of her mind. Second,
the child’s participation in a social world depends on and is
promoted by these acts of expression and interpretation between
the child and her caregiver.
 Intentionality states include psychological attitudes (e.g.,

beliefs, desires, feelings) directed toward propositional
content (e.g., persons, objects, and events in the world).
Thus, the intentionality model speaks to the interaction
between two domains of development, affect (i.e., feelings
and emotions) and cognition, in the young child. The child’s
expression of his intentions is realized through emotion,
play, and speech.
 Although the intentionality model might be envisioned as a
psychological model, Bloom and Tinker (2001) suggest that
it embraces the social and cultural world of the child as well.
Their treatment of the social world resides in the child’s
representations of others in his mind. The interaction of the
child with the physical and social world and the effects of
these interactions on his development lead us to consider
this model as one example of the interactionist view of
development.
One component of the intentionality model (Figure 2-1) is engagement, which refers to
“the child’s emotional and social directedness for determining what is relevant for
learning and the motivation for learning” (Bloom & Tinker, 2001, p. 14). Here, Bloom
and Tinker are referring to the inter subjectivity that develops between the child and her
parent, which serves as the foundation for the child’s relatedness to other persons
throughout life. The relationship between the child and her caregivers, the child’s
relationships to objects and events, and her relationships in the physical world all
contribute to the child’s development of engagement.
Implications for teaching:
1. Teachers must continuously deliver at a level understandable by

learners.
2. Teaching must prepare learners for real life communication
situations. Classrooms must provide conversational confidence
so that when in the outside world, the students can cope and
continue learning.
3. Teachers must ensure that learners do not become anxious or
defensive in language learning. The confidence of a language
learner must be encouraged in a language acquisition process.
Teachers should not insist on learners conversing before they
feel comfortable in doing so; neither they should correct errors
and make negative remarks that inhibit learners in learning.
They should devise specific techniques to relax learners and
protect their egos.
4. Formal grammar teaching is of limited value because it
contributes to learning rather than acquisition. Only simple rules
should be learned.
5. Teachers should create an atmosphere where learners are not
embarrassed by their errors. Errors should not be corrected
when acquisition is occurring. Errors corrections is valuable
when learning simple rules but may have negative effects in
terms of anxiety and inhibitions.
6. Teachers should not expect learners to learn ‘late structure'
early.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
1. Differentiate views, theories, and models of the Acquisition of
language.
2. What essential model that best describes the acquisition of
language for you? Defend your answer.
3. Explain how the theories of acquisition of language differ from
each other.
• Group the class into four groups. Each group will pick one of the theories or
models that they can discuss and defend its probability to the class.

QUIZ 2
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
I.MULTIPLE CHOICES
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Encircle the letter of the
correct answer.
1. The learning theory that derived from a general theory of learning, the
behaviorist view states that the language behavior of the individual is conditioned
by sequences of differential rewards in his/her environment.
A. Cognitive Learning Theory
B. Behaviorists Learning Theory
C. Social Learning Theory
D. Psycho-social Learning Theory
2. The learning theory that Chomsky argues that language is not acquired by
children by sheer imitation and through a form of conditioning on reinforcement
and reward.
B. Behaviorist Learning Theory
3. These are the three crucial elements of learning according to behaviorist

except one.
A. Conditioning
B. Response
C. Reinforcement
D. Stimulus
4. What is the terminology for Cognitivists?
A. Innatists
B. Innaets
C. Innist
D. Inniast
5. What is one important feature of the mentalist account of second language

acquisition?
A. Central hypothesis
B. Hypothesis testing
C. Cognate hypothesis
D. Classical hypothesis
6. It claims that there are two ways of developing competence.
A. Affective filter hypothesis

B. Monitor hypothesis
C. Input hypothesis
D. Acquisition learning hypothesis
7. One of the five hypotheses of the acquisition of language that suggests that
grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order for both children and
adults, that is, certain grammatical structure are acquired before others,
irrespective of the language being learned.
A. Acquisition learning hypothesis

B. Input hypothesis
C. Natural order hypothesis
D. Affective filter hypothesis
8. It is the filter that consists of attitude to language, motivation, self-confidence

and anxiety.
A. Natural order hypothesis
B. Affective filter hypothesis
C. Input hypothesis
D. Monitor hypothesis
9. The monitor hypothesis. It claims that conscious learning on grammatical

rules has an extremely limited function is language performance as a monitor of
editor that checks output.
A. Monitor hypothesis
B. Input hypothesis
D. Affection filter hypothesis
10. Krashen proposes that when learners are exposed to grammatical features a
little beyond of their current learning (i.e., I + I) those features are ‘acquired'.
A. Input hypothesis
B. Natural order hypothesis

C. Affection filter hypothesis
II. IDENTIFICATION
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Fill in the space provided
what is being asked or described in each items.
______1. A revised theory of language that was formulated in its most

comprehensive form by Chomsky in 1982. This account of language described
idiosyncratic parameters of particular languages as well as universal principles
across different languages.
______2. A Swiss biologist who referred to himself as a genetic epistemologist,

became fascinated with the acquisition of knowledge and the “activity” of the
body and mind that lead to intellectual growth.
______3. This states include psychological attitudes (e.g., beliefs, desires, feel-
ings) directed toward propositional content (e.g., persons, objects, and events in
the world).
______4. Mental structures, correspond to consistencies in the infants or child’s

behaviors or actions.
______5. This occurs when a child applies a mental schema to an event; it

embodies play, exploration, and learning about the environment.
III. ALTERNATIVE CHOICES: True or False

DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Write TRUE is the
statement is correct and FALSE if otherwise. Put your answer on the space
provided.
______1. Teachers must continuously deliver at a level understandable by

learners.
______2. Teaching don’t prepare learners for real life communication situations.
______3. Teachers must ensure that learners do become anxious or defensive

in language learning.
_______4. Formal grammar teaching is of limited value because it contributes to

learning rather than acquisition.
_______5. Teachers should create an atmosphere where learners are not

embarrassed by their errors.
HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY VIEWS OF LANGUAGE
LEARNING AND INFLUENCES OF THEORIES ON LANGUAGE
TEACHING
At the end of this Chapter, the learners should be able to:
1. Identify the Historical and Contemporary Views of Language
Learning
2. Explain the how learning for language differs from historical
to contemporary view.
3. Appreciate how theories influenced the language teaching
today.
Historical and Contemporary Views of Language Learning

Sima Gerber, PhD, CCC-SLP, and Lorain Szabo Wankoff, PhD, CCC-SLP Views
Theories of language acquisition are considered central to the information that

speech-language pathologists must learn for several reasons. First, a descriptively
adequate theory of language development will provide an outline of what is learned by a
child when they acquire language. Secondly, theories of language development that
have explanatory adequacy will account for not only the facts of language development,
but also the mechanisms of language learning—that is, “how” language is learned
(Bohannon & Bonvillian, 2005; Chomsky, 1965).
Different paradigms and their differing perspectives will be described as they relate to
two questions:
 What do children acquire when they acquire language?

 Which processes account for how children acquire language?
1. Cross-linguistic evidence in child language has been a rich source of data
supporting Chomsky’s theory, as discussed by Leonard and Loeb (1988). For
example, unlike Japanese- and Mandarin Chinese–speaking children, English-
speaking children find the following sentences to be of increasing difficulty:
1. David fell to the ground when he reached the finish line.
2. When David reached the finish line, he fell to the ground.
3. When he reached the finish line, David fell to the ground.
 In English, the branching direction parameter is set for right

branching, where subordinate material typically occurs after the
main clause, as in sentence 1. In Japanese and Mandarin Chinese,
a left branching setting is required, so that subordinate material will
typically occur first, as in sentences 2 and 3. Thus speakers of
Japanese and Mandarin Chinese will have little difficulty
recognizing referentially dependent forms or pronominals that
precede the referents for which they stand (as in sentences 2 and
3). By comparison, English-speaking children will be slower in
acquiring left-branching sentences (Leonard & Loeb, 1988).
• Bootstrapping is a term that refers to the child’s ability to take

information s/he knows to learn new information. Prosodic bootstrapping
refers to the placement of target elements at the end of the utterance for
greater salience (e.g., a response such as Yes, she is might be used to
emphasize the copula form).
• Syntactic bootstrapping refers to the child’s use of grammar to learn

new language forms. For example, teaching a particular verb form in
several linguistic contexts heightens the child’s awareness of varied
syntactic uses of the form (e.g., She is pushing me; Who pushed her?
Don’t push) (Nelson, 1998).
2. Behaviorist Paradigm
- Based on the evidence gathered so far, it appears that the nature
argument alone is not sufficient to explain the child’s accomplishment in
developing language. Rather, the relative importance of an innate
language faculty versus environmental influence continues to be viewed
as controversial.
- Historically, the impetus for the nurture argument in learning and language
was the “blank slate” philosophy of John Locke (1960/1690). This
empiricist approach eventually gave rise to behaviorism in psychology.
According to this perspective, explanations of behavior rely only on
observable phenomena; in the most radical version of this position, no
inferences regarding internal, unobservable events are made. Thus
researchers and theoreticians who focused on the impact of the
environment targeted primarily observable and measurable events to
explain development.
• Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning was associated with the twentieth century

Russian physiologist Pavlov (1902). In his most famous experiment, a dog
was presented with food along with the ringing of a bell. After repeated
pairings of the two, the dogs would salivate upon hearing the bell even
before the meat powder was introduced. Through classical conditioning,
an association (a conditioned response) was formed between the bell and
salivation; this association had not previously existed. While the meat
powder was termed the “unconditioned stimulus,” the bell became the
“conditioned stimulus.” Salivation was the “unconditioned response” to the
meat powder and the “conditioned response” to the bell. The phenomenon
of stimulus generalization was observed as well. That is, although the
conditioned response would fade or become extinguished with time,
before its extinction, some salivation could be elicited by similar bells
(Cairns & Cairns, 1975; Pavlov, 1902). Pavlov’s classical conditioning
paradigm introduced the world of psychology to the concepts of stimulus,
response, paired association, and stimulus generalization, all of which are
typically integrated into clinical practice with the paradigm of operant
conditioning.
• Operant Conditioning
The paradigm of operant conditioning, including the notion of a

verbal operant such as “tacts” (naming behaviors) and “mands”
(commands), was developed by B. F. Skinner (1957). Proponents of this
nurture view argued that although environmental stimuli were not always
identifiable, the frequency of certain behaviors or antecedent behaviors
could be increased if positive reinforces (or consequences) were
contingent upon the targets. The principles of operant conditioning were
derived from and based on observations made and data collected in
animal laboratories. For example, if a rat in a cage received reinforcement
with pellets of food for its bar pressing (i.e., bar pressing that was initially
accidental), the frequency of its bar pressing was found to increase. Also,
the type of response could be shaped through a schedule of reinforcement
of successive approximations to the target stimulus. In these views,
explanations for the acquisition of speech and language relied heavily on
the role of imitation as well as paired associations between unconditioned
stimuli (e.g., food or a bottle) and unconditioned responses (e.g.,
physiological vocalizations). Invoking principles of classical conditioning,
phonological productions or vocalizations would be the conditioned
responses to the caretaker’s vocalizations (i.e., conditioned stimuli) that
had been paired with the unconditioned stimuli (e.g., food or bottle).
• The law of effect (i.e., the intensity and frequency of a response will
increase with reinforcement, a principle of operant conditioning) was
utilized to explain the acquisition of the production of words. Language
acquisition was viewed as the result of gradual or systematic
reinforcement of desirable or target behaviors. Thus, initially, gross
approximations of the target (e.g., any vocalization at all) would be
reinforced. According to this view, parents would teach children language
through both imitation training of words and phrases as well as the
shaping of phrases and sentences through successive approximations of
adult-like speech.
- From the perspective of conditioning, the sentence was described as a

chain of associated events. Each word would serve as the response to the
preceding word and the stimulus to the following word. According to the
argument, grammatical categories and various sentence types could be
learned through contextual generalization. In this explanation, children
would generalize grammatical categories based on word position (Braine,
1966).As with the nature theories, nurture explanations had some
limitations. Although selective reinforcement and paired associations could
account for certain aspects of sound and word learning, relying solely on
principles of behaviorism to explain the acquisition of language knowledge
proved inadequate. Stimulus–response explanations could not begin to
describe or explain the development of the complex system of language
knowledge that the young child acquires in such a short amount of time.
Behaviorists were challenged to account for unobservable meaning
knowledge, utterance novelty and complexity, and the rapidity with which
language was typically acquired. Critics argued that parents more typically
would give children feedback about their inaccuracies in meaning rather
than about their inaccuracies in syntax.
3. Interactionist: Cognitive Interactionist Paradigm

- Interactionist models of language development can be discussed relative
to two paradigms: cognitive interactionist (Information Processing and
Cognitive-Constructivist) and social interactionist (Social-Cognitive, Social-
Pragmatic, and Intentionality Model). Within each of these paradigms,
various perspectives can be described, all of which presume that the child
brings some preexisting information to the task of language learning and
that her environmental input plays a significant role in her language
development. The specifics of what the child brings to language learning
and how the environment interacts with these innate capacities varies
within these views. While they are grouped together as interactionist views
in this section, the implications of each perspective for speech-language
pathologists are dealt with separately to reflect the unique contribution
each has had on the discipline.
4. Information Processing Models

- In a historical description of information processing approaches to
language, Klein and Moses (1999) note that in the late nineteenth century
and early twentieth century, Broca and Gall were among the first
researchers to try to locate language functions in the brain. The
connection between brain function and language was studied in victims of
brain injury due to stroke, in patients with traumatic war-related injuries,
and, ultimately, in children with language disorders and learning
disabilities. Descriptions of brain function and modes of language
processing as well as perceptual–motor aspects of childhood language
disorders were described by Cruickshank (1967) and Johnson and
Mykelbust (1967).
- An information processing model of language was eventually developed

by Osgood (1963). Osgood’s model identified the modalities that were
said to underlie language functioning—namely, visual and auditory
memory, auditory discrimination, visual association, visual reception, and
auditory closure.
5. Connectionist
- Describes parallel processing rather than serial processing of language.
According to this view, networks of processors are connected and several
operations or decisions may occur simultaneously (Bohannon &
Bonvillian, 2005). These multilayered networks of connections function to
interpret linguistic input from the exemplars provided to them. The
statistical properties of syntactic forms determine their rate of acquisition,
and cues that consistently signal particular meanings should be acquired
first. Research reported by Bates and MacWhinney (1987) and
MacWhinney (1987) has offered support for this view by using data from
the acquisition of several languages, including French, English, Italian,
Turkish, and Hungarian. For example, Turkish children, whose language
has an extremely reliable case-marking system, master case considerably
sooner than word order, which has often been considered a universal cue
to sentence meaning over other cues (Bohannon & Bonvillian, 2005;
Slobin & Bever, 1982).
6. Social-Cognitive Models
- Other developmental interactionists who have influenced the language
learning research include Vygotsky (1986) and Bruner (1975, 1977).
Vygotsky believed that children’s cognitive development resulted from
interaction between children’s innate skills and their social experiences
with peers, adults, and the culture in general. In addition, Vygotsky is well
known for his description of the “zone of proximal development”—that is,
the area between what a child can accomplish independently and what he
can accomplish with another person who has greater knowledge,
experience, or skill in the area and who provides some scaffolding (i.e.,
help).
- When collaborating on a task, the child and the adult engage in a dialogue
that is then stored away by the child for future use as “private speech”
(e.g., self-directed talk or when a youngster is “talking to himself”)
According to Vygotsky, when language emerges in the form of private
speech, it can be used as a tool to guide and direct problem-solving and
other cognitive activities. Similarly, Bruner’s work (1975, 1977) was
pioneering relative to social interactionist theories of language acquisition.
- Bruner (1977) suggested that when care-givers and their infants engage in
joint referencing, they share a common focus of interest that ultimately
contributes to language acquisition. Three mechanisms (indicating, deictic
terms, and naming) serve to establish joint reference between a caregiver
and baby, essentially laying the groundwork to enter the language
acquisition process. According to Bruner, the caregiver that uses an
“indicator” is using gestural, postural, or vocal means to get the baby’s
attention. With time, these indicators become more conventional symbols
as the caregiver adjusts his or her communication to the level of the child.
If the child reaches for an object that the caretaker is holding or if the child
looks at the caretaker, the child is likely to receive an enthusiastic
response from the adult. When the child begins to use gestures and
vocalizations to show, point, or give objects, the caregiver will typically
respond verbally, vocally, or gesturally to the child. When using “deictic
terms” (e.g., here, there, this, that, you, me) with changing referents,
caregivers incorporate spatial and contextual cues to assist children in
comprehending this terminology. “Naming” occurs when the child can
associate a label with a referent, which is accomplished receptively before
it is accomplished expressively.
- Bruner also introduced the notion of scaffolding as one way in which
caregivers facilitate language learning and dialogue. Caregivers are said
to adjust the degree of linguistic and nonlinguistic support that they offer to
children as they are learning language. For example, as the young child
becomes more verbal, the caretaker will typically need to provide less
nonverbal cuing during conversation (Bruner, 1975, 1977). In
contemporary social-cognitive research, children are said to possess a
unique capacity that enables them to learn language by interpreting the
intentions of those who interact with them. Social cognitive views, such as
that advocated by Paul Bloom (2000), suggest that children learning
language need at least a primitive theory of mind to enable them to
adequately interpret the intentions of others. Children’s requisite cognitive
abilities allow them to process information, while their preformed concepts
for entities in the world serve as the basis for word learning and language
development. While helpful adults might accelerate or assist in the
process of word learning, as long as children can infer the referential
intentions of others, no other social support is necessary. Tomasello,
Carpenter, and Liszkowski (2007) support the view that children’s
inference of intentionality is critical for word and language learning.
Pointing serves the child by not only drawing attention to the self, but also
to the objects that she finds interesting enough to communicate about.
The child’s use of pointing or gesture with words also helps her segue into
syntax. For example, “children combine pointing gestures with words to
express sentence-like meanings (‘eat’ + point at cookie) months before
they can express the same meanings in word + word combination (‘eat +
cookie’)” (Goldin-Meadow, 2007, p. 741).
7. Social-Pragmatic Models
- Pragmatics in linguistic theory has traditionally been concerned with the
functions of language, speaker–listener roles, conversational discourse,
and presupposition. Research in the pragmatics of language originated in
the work of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969). In terms of the functions of
adult language, linguists identified three types of speech acts: per
locutions, illocutions, and locutions.
 Perlocutions referred to how listeners interpreted the speaker’s
speech acts;
 Illocutions referred to the intentions of the speaker; and
 Locutions referred to the meanings expressed in the utterance.
- In describing how intentionality develops in young children, Bates,

Camaioni, and Volterra (1975) used this paradigm of functional categories.
During the perlocutionary stage, which was said to extend from birth to 9
months, the child’s actions and behaviors are given communicative intent
by the caretaker. For example, the caretaker might interpret a baby’s
cooing as a sign of happiness or contentment. The illocutionary stage (8 to
12 months) marks the period of time when children first produce their truly
intentional behaviors, either vocally or gesturally. Gestures such as
showing, giving, or pointing, perhaps accompanied with vocalizations, are
typically used. During this time, children are said to produce the
nonlinguistic precursor to the declarative referred to as the proto
declarative (e.g., gesturing or vocalizing to point out an object or event) as
well as the nonlinguistic precursor to the imperative referred to as the
proto imperative (e.g., gesturing or vocalizing to request an object or an
event). The third stage, referred to as the locutionary stage (12 months of
age), is characterized by the use of words produced with gestures to
convey specific meanings and intentions.
- A pragmatic approach to child language was taken by Halliday (1975) who

described the functions of his son Nigel’s nonlinguistic communication.
These functions included satisfying needs, controlling the behaviors of
others, interacting, and expressing emotion and interest. With his first
words, Nigel could explore and categorize things in his environment,
imagine or pretend, and inform others of his experiences.
- John Dore (1974, 1975) identified the primitive speech acts of children at
the one-word stage of language (e.g., labeling, answering, requesting an
action, requesting an answer, calling, greeting, protesting,
repeating/imitating, and practicing) as well as the speech acts of children
at multiword stages of language development. Beyond such speech acts,
research in the area of pragmatics addressed the child’s knowledge of
presupposition (Greenfield & Smith, 1976) and the child’s understanding
of conver-sational protocol, including topic control and conversational turn-
taking (Bloom, Rocissano , & Hood, 1976).
Influences of Theories on Language Teaching
1. Applied linguists claim that theories of language learning as well as

theories of language may provide the basis for a particular teaching
approach/method. To illustrate, the linking of structuralism and behaviorism has
produced the audiolingual method (ALM), oral approach/situational language
teaching, operant conditioning approach, bottom-up text processing, controlled-
to-free- writing, to cite a few. These methods underscore the necessity of
overlearning, a principle that leads to endless and mindless mimicry and
memorization (‘mim-mem’). They are also characterized by mechanical habit-
formation teaching, done through unremitting practice: sentence patterns are
repeated and drilled until they become habitual and automatic to minimize
occurrences of mistakes. Grammar is taught through analogy, hence,
explanation of rules are not given until the students have practiced a pattern in a
variety of contexts.
2. The cognitive learning theory has given birth to the cognitive approach
to learning that puts language analysis before language use and instruction by
the teacher, before the students practice forms. It is compatible with the view that
learning is a thinking process, a belief that underpins cognitive-based and
schema-enhancing strategies such as Directed Reading Thinking Activity, Story
Grammar, Think-Aloud, to name a few.
3. The functional view of language has resulted in communication-based

methods such as Communicative Language Teaching/Communicative Approach,
Notional Functional Approach, Natural Approach. These methods are learner-
centered, allowing learners to work on pairs or groups in formation gap tasks and
problem-solving activities where such communication strategies as information
sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction are used.
4. The view that is both cognitive and affective has given risen to a holistic
approach to language learning or whole-person learning which has spawned
humanistic techniques language learning and Community Language Learning. In
these methods, the whole person including emotions and feelings as well as
language knowledge and behavior skills become central to teaching. The
humanistic approach equips learners “vocabulary for expressing one’s feelings,
for sharing one’s values and viewpoints for others, and for developing a better
understanding of their feelings and needs.”
DISCUSSION POINTS:
1. What are the contemporary views of language learning?

2. Differentiate the historical to contemporary views of language
learning.
3. Explain how the different theories about language learning
affect the language teaching today.
 Work in pairs and cite five examples of the influence of language
learning theories to the language teaching today

V.V. Soliven Avenue II, Cainta, Rizal
QUIZ 3
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
I.MULTIPLE CHOICES
answer.
1. In child language has been a rich source of data supporting Chomsky’s theory,
as discussed by Leonard and Loeb (1988).
a. Cross-linguistic evidence
b. Behaviorist Paradigm
c. Cognitive Interactionist Paradigm
d. Information Processing Models
2. According to this perspective, explanations of behavior rely only on observable
phenomena; in the most radical version of this position, no inferences regarding
internal, unobservable events are made.
3. This language development is can be discussed relative to two paradigms:

cognitive interactionist (Information Processing and Cognitive-Constructivist) and
social interactionist (Social-Cognitive, Social-Pragmatic, and Intentionality
Model).
4. Osgood’s model identified the modalities that were said to underlie language
functioning—namely, visual and auditory memory, auditory discrimination, visual
association, visual reception, and auditory closure.
5. Describes parallel processing rather than serial processing of language.

According to this view, networks of processors are connected and several
operations or decisions may occur simultaneously (Bohannon & Bonvillian,
2005).
b. Social-Cognitive Models
c. Social-Pragmatic Models
d. Connectionist
6. Vygotsky believed that children’s cognitive development resulted from interaction

between children’s innate skills and their social experiences with peers, adults,
and the culture in general.
d. Connectionist
7. Pragmatics in linguistic theory has traditionally been concerned with the functions
of language, speaker–listener roles, conversational discourse, and
presupposition.
d. Connectionist
8. This is a terminology that refers to the child’s ability to take information s/he
knows to learn new information.
a. Bootstrapping
b. Operant Conditioning
c. Classical Conditioning
d. Prosodic Bootstrapping
9. This refers to the child’s use of grammar to learn new language forms. For
example, teaching a particular verb form in several linguistic contexts heightens
the child’s awareness of varied syntactic uses of the form.
a. Locutions
b. Syntactic bootstrapping
c. Illocutions
d. The law of effect
10. He was the famous proponent of Classical Conditioning.
a. Pavlov
b. Piaget
c. Vygotsky
d. Bruner
II. IDENTIFICATION
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Fill in the space provided
what is being asked or described in each items.
_____1. He introduced the notion of scaffolding as one way in which caregivers

facilitate language learning and dialogue.
_____2. He identified the primitive speech acts of children at the one-word stage
of language (e.g., labeling, answering, requesting an action, requesting an
answer, calling, greeting, protesting, repeating/imitating, and practicing) as well
as the speech acts of children at multiword stages of language development.
_____3. He is well known for his description of the “zone of proximal

development”—that is, the area between what a child can accomplish
independently and what he can accomplish with another person who has greater
knowledge, experience, or skill in the area and who provides some scaffolding
(i.e., help).
_____4. He developed the Information Processing Model of language.
_____5. He developed the paradigm of operant conditioning, including the notion

of a verbal operant such as “tacts” (naming behaviors) and “mands” (commands).
III. ALTERNATIVE CHOICES: True or False.

statement is correct and FALSE if otherwise. Put your answer on the space
provided.
_____1. Applied linguists claim that theories of language learning as well as

theories of language may provide the basis for a particular teaching
approach/method.
_____2. The Behaviorist learning theory has given birth to the cognitive approach
to learning that puts language analysis before language use and instruction by
the teacher, before the students practice forms.
_____3. The functional view of language has resulted in communication-based

methods such as Communicative Language Teaching/Communicative Approach,
Notional Functional Approach, and Natural Approach.
_____4. The view that is both cognitive and affective has given rise to a holistic
approach to language learning or whole-person learning which has spawned
humanistic techniques language learning and Community Language Learning.
_____5. The humanistic approach equips learners “vocabulary for expressing
one’s feelings, for sharing one’s values and viewpoints for others, and for
developing a better understanding of their feelings and needs.”
Linguistic Concepts:
Scope of Linguistic Studies.
Phonology. It studies the combination of sounds into organized units of

speech, the combination of syllables and larger units. It describes the sound
system of a particular language and distribution of sounds which occur in that
language. Classification is made on the basis of the concept of the phoneme.
Phonology is the study of the sound system of language: the rules that given
pronunciation. It is the components of grammar made up of the elements and
principles that determine sound patterns in a language.
Phonetics. It studies language of the level of sounds: how sounds are

articulated by the hand speech mechanism and received by the auditory
mechanism, as well as how sounds can be distinguished and characterized by
the manner in which they are produced.
Morphology. It studies the patterns of forming words by combining

sounds into minimal distinctive units of meaning called morphemes. It deals with
the rules of attaching suffixes or prefixes to single morphemes to form words.
Morphology is the study of word formation: it deals with the internal structure of
words. It also studies the changes that take place in the structure of words, e.g.
the morpheme ‘go' changes to ‘went' and ‘gone' to signify changes in tense and
aspect.
Syntax. It deals how words combine to form phrases, phrases combined

to form clauses, and clauses join to make sentences. Syntax is the study of the
way phrases, clauses, and sentences are constructed. It is the system of rules
and categories that underlies sentence formation. It also involves the description
of rules of positioning of elements in the sentence such as noun phrases, verb
phrases, adverbial phases, etc.
Syntax also attempts to describe how these elements function in the sentence,
i.e. the function that they perform in the sentence. For example, the word girl has
different functions in the following sentences:
a. ) The girl is reading a new novel.

b. ) She gave the girl a new novel.
In sentence a), girl functions as the subject of the sentence while in sentence b) it
functions are indirect object.
Semantics. It deals with the level of meaning in language. It attempts to

analyze the structure of meaning in a language, e.g. how words are related in
meaning: it attempts to show these interrelationships through forming
‘categories'. Semantics accounts for both word and sentence meaning.
Pragmatics. It deals with the contextual aspects of meaning in particular

situation. Pragmatics is the study of how language is used in real communication.
As distinct from the study of sentences, pragmatics considers utterances – those
sentences which are actually uttered by the speaker of the language.
Discourse. It is the study of chunks of language which are bigger than a

single sentence. At this level, inter-sentential links that form a connected or
cohesive text are analyzed. The unit of language studied in discourse and
pragmatics may be an utterance in an exchange or a text.
PHONOLOGY
By the end of this topic, students are able to:
1. Understand the system of sound and sound combinations in
English (Phonology).
2. Discover how contrastive sounds function and how non-contrastive
sounds function
3. Learn how to recognize and identify phonemes and allophones.
4. Learn about the ways phones can function in a language.
Phonology, The study of the sound structure of language

DOES LANGUAGE HAVE STRUCTURE?
If there were no structure, then:
 We would have to memorize lists of utterances.
 There would be no units into which utterances can be decomposed.
 Utterances would be unrelated to each other.
WHAT KINDS OF STRUCTURE?

Units that are:
 Paradigmatically opposed to each.
 Syntagmatically related to each other.
Paradigmatic contrasts
Units that are paradigmatically opposed to each other belong to different classes that
function in different ways.
E.g. words belong to paradigmatically contrasting grammatical classes.
We know this by applying a substitution test.
I was happy to _________
Learn/leave/wander/relax (verbs)
*underneath/overhead
*student/door/wanderer/relaxation
*energetic/thoughtful/green/sad
Syntagmatic relationships
 The units can be parsed into higher order units in different ways
 The order of units matters
 There can be a multileveled hierarchy
 There is headedness
SYNTAGMATIC I: PARSING INTO HIGHER-ORDER UNITS

"Australian boys and girls love to swim"
Could be either:
[Australian boys] and girls love to swim
Or:
Australian [boys and girls] love to swim
SYNTAGMATIC II: ORDER MATTERS

Australian boys and girls love to swim
*Boys Australian and girls to swim love
(note: "*" means that this is not possible)
SYNTAGMATIC III: HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE
A hierarchical structure means: there are units within units within units...
E.g. a noun-phrase is a unit, and so is a verb-phrase, but together they makeup another
unit called a sentence:
[[Great truths]NP [were spoken] VP]S=
…and the unit, noun-phrase, is itself made

Up of two other units, an adjective and a noun
SYNTAGMATIC IV: HEADEDNESS

Headedness means that one of the units that makes up a hierarchical unit is
obligatory. This obligatory unit is the head of the hierarchy.
For example:
 exclamations aside, you can't usually form a sentence without a verb (so the verb
is the head of the sentence)
 every noun-phrase must have a noun (so the noun is the head of the noun-
phrase)
Phonology-- if there is structure to sound then:

ARE THERE UNITS?
What's the evidence that:
 They are paradigmatically contrastive?
 They form syntagmatic relationships?
PHONOLOGY: UNITS
In each human language, there are a finite number of units called phonemes that
a language uses to build its words.
Animal languages
 They don't have phonemes (no 'building blocks' for words) and so there is a one-
to-one relationship between meaning and sound.
Human languages
 phonemes are combined in different, productive ways to produce new meanings
e.g., /pɪt/→/tɪp/
 the relationship between meaning and sound is arbitrary
PHONOLOGY: PARADIGMATIC OPPOSITIONS I

Words must sound sufficiently distinct (from each other) in order to be understood.
For this to be possible, phonemes have to be chosen from a number of
dimensions, or natural classes, that have contrastive values.
Contrastive is in an articulatory and/or acoustic sense. For example, phonemes
are often chosen from the natural class Stricture which has contrastive articulatory
values
(Stop/fricative/approximant) which have different acoustic consequences
(silence/aperiodicity/low frequency energy)
PHONOLOGY: PARADIGMATIC OPPOSITIONS II
Languages tend to form phonemes out of natural classes in a highly productive way.
For example:
Nasality oral vs. nasal (2)
Place bilabial vs. alveolar vs. velar (3)
Maximum number of possible phonemes = 2 x 3 = 6
b d g m n ŋ
Nasality -nasal -nasal -nasal +nasal +nasal +nasal
Place bilabial alveolar velar bilabial alveolar velar
This is one of the reasons why phonemes tend to form patterns:

Language A
b d g
m n ŋ
f s
Is much more probable than
Language B
b g
n
ʃ h
Syntagmatic structure
Is there syntagmatic structure in phonology?
 Can phonemes be grouped into superordinate units?
 Does order matter?
 Are there hierarchies? (Units within units within units)?
 Is there headedness?
SYNTAGMATIC I: SUPERORDINATE UNITS

The simplest evidence that there are superordinate phonological units is that, in
almost every language, phonemes are organized into syllables.
SYNTAGMATIC II: ORDER

In all languages, the order in which phonemes can occur in syllables is restricted.
for example:
In English, /k/can be followed by /w j l r/ at the beginning of a syllable:
/kwiːn/('queen'); /kjʉːt/ ('cute'); /kliːn/('clean'), /kriːp/ ('creep').

But there are not many words in English that can begin with /pw/, /bw/, /tl/, /dl/.
And although approximants can follow some oral stops, /w r l/can't follow nasals:
/nw/, /nl/, /nr/ don't occur.
SYNTAGMATIC III: HIERARCHY
Utterances are made up of one or more intonational phrases
 [When I get to Sydney] [I'll visit Emily]
 Every int national phrase is made up of one or more words
 You could have an intonational phrase as small as one word. For example:
[Stop!] [Emily?] [Adelaide] [Is in South Australia]

 Every word is made up of one or more syllables
 Every syllable is made up of one or more phonemes
SYNTAGMATIC IV: HEADEDNESS

Is one of the units at each level of the hierarchy obligatory?
Intonational phrase
Every intonational phrase has to have a tonic syllable. The word containing the
tonic syllable is often called the nuclear accented word.
Word
Every word has to have a primary stressed syllable.
Unstressed syllables are optional ('pat', 'John', 'said')
Secondary stressed syllables are possible ('imagination'), but optional ('America')
Syllable
Every syllable has to have a nucleus which is a vowel, or vowel-like sound
Initial consonant(s) are optional ('opt', 'each', 'own')
Final consonant(s) are optional ('free', 'say', 'do')
Conclusions
There is structure to the sounds of language. In phonology, we want to find out
what this structure looks like as well as how it differs across languages.
EVIDENCE FOR STRUCTURE.

There are units (phonemes, syllables, words, intonational phrases)
There is paradigmatic contrast (e.g. oral vs. nasal phonemes)
There is syntagmatic structure
 Phonemes are sequentially grouped or parsed into syllables
 There are restrictions on the sequential order of phonemes in a syllable
 There are multiple hierarchies
 There is headedness
Phoneme and Allophone: Introduction

Trubetzkoy (1939) wrote
"It is the task of phonology to study which differences in sound are related to
differences in meaning in a given language, in which way the discriminative elements ...
are related to each other, and the rules according to which they may be combined into
words and sentences."
Linguistic units which cannot be substituted for each other without a change in
meaning can be referred to as linguistically contrastive or significant units. Such units
may be phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic etc.
Logically, this takes the form:-
IF unit X in context A GIVES meaning 1
AND IF unit Y in context A GIVES meaning 2
THEN unit X AND unit Y belong to separate linguistic units
eg. IF sound [k] in context [_æt] GIVES meaning "cat"
AND IF sound [m] in context [_æt] GIVES meaning "mat"
THEN sound [k]and sound [m] belong to separate linguistic units
PHONEMES
Phonemes are the linguistically contrastive or significant sounds (or sets of
sounds) of a language. Such a contrast is usually demonstrated by the existence of
minimal pairs or contrast in identical environment (C.I.E.). Minimal pairs are pairs of
words which vary only by the identity of the segment (another word for a single speech
sound) at a single location in the word (eg. [mæt] and [kæt]). If two segments
contrast in identical environment then they must belong to different phonemes. A
paradigm of minimal phonological contrasts is a set of words differing only by one
speech sound. In most languages it is rare to find a paradigm that contrasts a complete
class of phonemes (eg. all vowels, all consonants, all stops etc.).
eg. The English stop consonants could be defined by the following set of minimally
contrasting words:-
i) /pɪn/ vs /bɪn/ vs /tɪn/ vs /dɪn/ vs /kɪn/

Only /ɡ/does not occur in this paradigm and at least one minimal pair must be found
with each of the other 5 stops to prove conclusively that it is not a variant form of one of
them.
ii) /ɡɐn/vs/pɐn/vs/bɐn/vs/tɐn/vs/dɐn/
Again, only five stops belong to this paradigm. A single minimal pair contrasting /ɡ/and
/k/is required now to fully demonstrate the set of English stop consonants.
iii) /ɡæɪn/vs/kæɪn/
Sometimes it is not possible to find a minimal pair which would support the
contrastiveness of two phonemes and it is necessary to resort to examples of contrast
in analogous environment (C.A.E.). C.A.E. is almost a minimal pair, however the pair
of words differs by more than just the pair of sounds in question. Preferably, the other
points of variation in the pair of words are as remote as possible (and certainly never
adjacent and preferably not in the same syllable) from the environment of the pairs of
sounds being tested. eg. /ʃ/vs/ʒ/in English are usually supported by examples of pairs
such as "pressure" [preʃə]vs "treasure" [treʒə],where only the initial consonants differ
and are sufficiently remote from the opposition being examined to be considered
unlikely to have any conditioning effect on the selection of phones. The only true
minimal pairs for these two sounds in English involve at least one word (often a proper
noun) that has been borrowed from another language (eg. "Confucian"
[kənfjʉːʃən]vs"confusion" [kənfjʉːʒən], and "Aleutian" [əlʉːʃən] vs "allusion"
[əlʉːʒən]).
A syntagmatic analysis of a speech sound, on the other hand, identifies a unit's
identity within a language. In other words, it indicates all of the locations or contexts
within the words of a particular language where the sound can be found.
For example, a syntagm of the phone [n] in English could be in the form:-
( #CnV..., #nV..., ...Vn#, ...VnC#, ...VnV..., etc.)
whilst[ŋ]in English would be:-
(...Vŋ#, ...VŋC#, ...VŋV..., etc)

but would not include the word initial forms of the kind described for [n].
Note that in the above examples, "#" is used to represent a word or syllable boundary,
"V" represents any vowel, and "C" represents another consonant.
For example, examples of the type "#CnV..." would include "snow" [snəʉ], "snort"
[snoːt]and "snooker" [snʉːkə]. In this case, the only consonant (for English) that can
occupy the initial "C" slot is the phoneme /s/, and so the generalised pattern could be
rewritten as "#snV...”
ALLOPHONES
Allophones are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme. In
other words a phoneme may be realised by more than one speech sound and the
selection of each variant is usually conditioned by the phonetic environment of the
phoneme. Occasionally allophone selection is not conditioned but may vary from person
to person and occasion to occasion (ie. free variation).
A phoneme is a set of allophones or individual non-contrastive speech
segments. Allophones are sounds, whilst a phoneme is a set of such sounds.
Allophones are usually relatively similar sounds which are in mutually exclusive
or complementary distribution (C.D.). The C.D. of two phones means that the two
phones can never be found in the same environment (i.e. the same environment in the
senses of position in the word and the identity of adjacent phonemes). If two sounds are
phonetically similar and they are in C.D. then they can be assumed to be allophones of
the same phoneme.
eg. in many languages voiced and voiceless stops with the same place of
articulation do not contrast linguistically but are rather two phonetic realizations of a
single phoneme (ie. /p/=[p,b],/t/=[t,d], and /k/=[k,ɡ]). In other words, voicing is not
contrastive (at least for stops) and the selection of the appropriate allophone is in some
contexts fully conditioned by phonetic context (eg. word medially and depending upon
the voicing of adjacent consonants), and is in some contexts either partially conditioned
or even completely unconditioned (eg. word initially, where in some dialects of a
language the voiceless allophone is preferred, in others the voiced allophone is
preferred, and in others the choice of allophone is a matter of individual choice).
eg. Some French speakers choose to use the alveolar trill [r]when in the village
and the more prestigious uvular trill [ʀ]when in Paris. Such a choice is made for
sociological reasons.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
1. Does language have structure?
2. What are the kinds of Structure?
3. What are the Syntagmatic Structure?
4. Differentiate Phonemes and Allophones.
 Work in pairs and cite five examples of phonemes.

QUIZ 4
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
I. IDENTIFICATION
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Put your answer after the
sentences.
1. It is the study of the sound structure of language.
2. It is to have a nucleus which is vowel, or vowel like sound.
3. It is to have a primary stressed syllable.
4. It is to have a tonic syllable.
5. It identifies a unit’s identity within a language.
6. It is a set of allophones or individual non-contrastive speech segments.

7. These are the sounds, whilst a phoneme is a set of such sounds.
8. It is one of the units that makes up a hierarchical unit is obligatory.
9. It tend to form phonemes out of natural classes in a highly productive way.
10. It is must have a sound sufficiently distinct from each other.
II. ALTERNATIVE CHOICES: True or False

statement is correct and FALSE if otherwise. Put your answer after the
sentences
1. A of minimal phonological contrasts is a set of words differing only by one

PARADIGM speech sound.
2. A PHONEMES are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme.
3. An ALLOPHONES are the linguistically contrastive or significant sounds or set

sounds of a language.
4. Only /g/ symbol does occur in a paradigm
5. PHONEMES are sequentially grouped or parsed into syllables.
6. UNITS that are paradigmatically opposed to each other belong to different

classes that function in different ways.
7. A hierarchical structure are units within units within units.
8. TWO units of the hierarchical unit is obligatory.

9. Every WORD is made up of one or more syllable.
10. Every SYLLABLE is made up of one or more phonemes
PHONETICS
By the end of this course, students are able to:
1. Understand how sounds are produced, how they are transmitted,
And how they are perceived (Phonetics).
2. Differentiate between consonants and vowels.
3. Get basics on English pronunciation.
4. Understand different aspects of English pronunciation
Introduction to Speech Production

OVERVIEW OF SPEECH GENERATION
Speech is achieved by compression of the lung volume causing air flow which may
be made audible if set into vibration by the activity of the larynx. This sound can then be
made into speech by various modifications of the supralaryngeal vocal tract.
1. Lungs provide the energy source - Respiration
2. Vocal folds convert the energy into audible sound - Phonation
3. Articulators transform the sound into intelligible speech - Articulation
LUNG STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

Expanding the thoracic cavity by expanding the rib cage (raising the ribs) and by
lowering the diaphragm increases lung volume, decreases air pressure in the lungs and
so air is drawn in from the form the outside to equalize pressure. Contracting the
thoracic cavity by contracting the rib cage (lowering the ribs) and by raising the
diaphragm decreases lung volume, increases air pressure in the lungs and so air is
expelled from the lungs to equalize pressure with the outside air.
LARYNX STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION
The larynx is a continuation of the trachea but the cartilage structures of the
larynx are highly specialized. The main cartilages are the thyroid, cricoid and arytenoid
cartilages. These cartilages variously rotate and tilt to affect changes in the vocal folds.
The vocal folds (also known as the vocal cords) stretch across the larynx and when
closed they separate the pharynx from the trachea. When the vocal folds are open
breathing is permitted. The opening between the vocal folds is known as the glottis.
When air pressure below closed vocal folds (sub-glottal pressure) is high enough the
vocal folds are forced open, the vocal folds then spring back closed under both elastic
and aerodynamic forces, pressure builds up again, the vocal folds open again, ... and so
on for as long as the vocal folds remain closed and a sufficient sub-glottal pressure can
be maintained. This continuous periodic process is known as phonation and produces a
"voiced" sound source.
Different laryngeal adjustments affect the way that the vocal folds vibrate and can
result in different voice qualities, some of which are important linguistically in some
languages.
ARTICULATION
When sound is produced at the larynx, that sound can be modified by altering the
shape of the vocal tract above the larynx (supralaryngeal or supraglottal). The shape
can be changed by opening or closing the velum (which opens or closes the nasal
cavity connection into the oropharynx), by moving the tongue or by moving the lips or
the jaw.
CONSONANTS
Distinction between Consonants and Vowels
The distinction between vowels and consonants is based on three main criteria:-
1. physiological: airflow / constriction
2. acoustic: prominence
3. phonological: syllabicity
Sometimes, it is necessary to rely on two or three of these criteria to decide whether

a sound is a vowel or a consonant.
Physiological Distinction
In general, consonants can be said to have a greater degree of constriction than
vowels. This is obviously the case for oral and nasal stops, fricatives and affricates. The
case for approximants is not as clear-cut as the semi-vowels /j/and /w/are very often
indistinguishable from vowels in terms of their constriction.
Acoustic Distinction
In general, consonants can be said to be less prominent than vowels. This is
usually manifested by vowels being more intense than the consonants that surround
them. Sometimes, certain consonants can have a greater total intensity than adjacent
vowels but vowels are almost always more intense at low frequencies than adjacent
consonants.
Phonological Distinction
Syllables usually consist of a vowel surrounded optionally by a number of
consonants. A single vowel forms the prominent nucleus of each syllable. There is only
one peak of prominence per syllable and this is nearly always a vowel. The consonants
form the less prominent valleys between the vowel peaks. This tidy picture is disturbed
by the existence of syllabic consonants. Syllabic consonants form the nucleus of a
syllable that does not contain a vowel. In English, syllabic consonants occur when an
approximant or a nasal stop follows a homorganic (same place of articulation) oral stop
(or occasionally a fricative) in words such as "bottle" /bɔtl̩ /or "button" /bʌtn̩/.
The semi-vowels in English play the same phonological role as the other
consonants even though they are vowel-like in many ways. The semi-vowels are found
in syllable positions where stops, fricatives, etc. are found (eg. "Pay", "may", and "say"
versus "way").
VOWELS
Vowel Articulation
Approximate tongue positions for four vowels
The tongue position for the "neutral vowel" [ɜ]is indicated on the above diagram
by the black line. This tongue position creates an approximately constant cross-
sectional vocal tract area from the glottis to the lips. This results in a vowel spectrum
which has uniformly spaced spectral peaks.
Changing the shape of the vocal tract by raising, lowering, fronting or retracting
the tongue results in vowel spectra of different patterns and this in turn is responsible for
the different perceived quality of the various vowels.
Shown in this diagram, contrasted with [ɜ], is a low vowel [ɐ](blue), a high front
vowel [i](red) and a high back vowel [u](green).
Vowel Lip Postures

Approximate lip postures for four vowels
This diagram displays the two extreme lip postures and two intermediate lip
postures. The high front cardinal vowel [i]has a very spread lip posture. The high back
cardinal vowel [u]has a very tightly rounded lip posture. The low front cardinal vowel
[a]has a spread lip posture but this is a more neutral posture than for [i]because the
lower jaw position for this vowel causes the lips to be more open. The half-open back
cardinal vowel [ɔ]has a rounded lip posture but the lips are more open than for [u]
because of the lower jaw position.
The actual lip posture for vowels in any particular language may be similar to that
of the closest cardinal vowel with the same lip posture feature, but often speakers of
many languages adopt a more neutral posture than would be indicated by these
cardinal vowels. Languages that have lip posture contrasts are more likely to adopt the
more extreme lip posture to emphasize those contrasts. For example, a language with
the vowel phonemes /i/and /y/ (such as French) tend to have a strongly spread /i/and a
strongly rounded /y/to maximize their difference perceptually. Languages without
rounding contrasts, such as English, may relax the degree of rounding of rounded
vowels and the degree of spreading of spread vowels. In English the extent to which
this is true varies from dialect to dialect. For example, Australian English is often
described as having rounded vowels which are spoken by many speakers with less
rounding than similar vowels in some other dialects of English. This impression may be
due, however, to the observation that /ʉː/in Australian English is less rounded than
/uː/in American English. This difference in degree of rounding may simply be due to the
fact that the American phoneme is a high back vowel and the Australian phoneme is a
high central vowel. There is a tendency for front vowels to be less rounded than back
vowels in the absence of a rounding contrast (although there are exceptions to this
tendency).
Complex Vowel Articulations
Diphthongisation
Diphthongs are essentially single vowel phonemes that consist of two pure vowel
targets in sequence. In diphthongs it is often assumed that both targets have equal
importance and one does not dominate the other in determining the identity of the
vowel. When an initial brief vowel gesture is dominated by a following full target the
initial gesture is referred to as onglide. When a final brief vowel gesture is dominated by
a preceding vowel target the brief final gesture is referred to as an off glide. Sometimes
diphthongization can be extended to three vowel targets in diphthongs.
Two identical sequences can be identified as a single diphthong phoneme in one
language and as a monophthong phoneme plus a semi-vowel phoneme in another
language.
Transcription
Diphthongs are ideally transcribed as a sequence of two vowel symbols that
represent, as closely as possible, the pronunciation of each of the two targets.
e.g. /aɪ/ /eɪ/ /æɔ/

Onglides are usually indicated by a preceding superscript and offglides by a
following superscript of a symbol appropriate to the pronunciation of the glide gesture.
Such glides are very often schwas, but this is certainly not always the case.
eg.[əi] [ɔə]
Nasalisation of Vowels
In the lecture on vowels we have already dealt briefly with nasalised vowels. This
vowel nasalisation is a complex articulation and is an example of simultaneous
nasalisation. Such contrastive simultaneous nasalisation must not be confused with
contextual and pervasive nasality. Contextual nasality occurs in vowels, as well as
approximants and fricatives, when they are adjacent to nasal stops. Pervasive nasality
is nasality that occurs throughout a person's speech as a result of habit, dialect or
pathology. Simultaneous nasalisation of consonants is very rare as a contrastive feature
in languages.
Transcription
Simultaneous nasalisation is transcribed by placing the "tilde" symbol ̃over the
symbol for the sound being nasalised.
eg. [e]̃ , [æ̃], [ɐ]̃

Vowel Retroflexion
Vowel retroflexion introduces an r-colouration to a vowel, usually by curling the
tongue tip up and back from its normal position, but without moving the tongue body
from it normal position for that vowel. Such vowels are often called "rhoticised" vowels.
This vowel feature is commonly found in the speech of many American and Irish
speakers of English. It occurs in the environment of a following [ɹ]but in some cases the
rhoticised vowel is all that remains of a deleted following [ɹ]or alternatively the vowel is
completely deleted and the [ɹ]becomes syllabic.
Transcription
In the past vowel retroflexion was sometimes indicated by a following superscript
"ɹ"as in [əɹ]. The current IPA standard recommends instead the following
transcription:-
e.g. [a˞] [ɔ˞] [ə˞](i.e. the affected vowel followed by the diacritic ˞ )
Types of Vowel
HIGH-LOW SYSTEMS
Languages with minimal vowel systems typically have three vowel phonemes:
one high front, one high back, and one low vowel with no length contrast systems.
In other words there is a maximum dispersal of vowel quality towards the far
corners of the vowel space.
Length contrast.
Some languages are based on this basic system but have in addition the added
dimension of vowel length.
HIGH-MID-LOW SYSTEMS
No length contrast.
Length contrast.
Note that this table for Australian English does not imply that there are
intermediate levels between mid and either high or low. The intermediate positions for
/oː/and /ɔ/merely indicate indecision about whether to make /oː/mid or high and
whether to make /ɔ/mid or low.
Nasal and Length Contrast
Rounding Contrast
FOUR HEIGHT CONTRASTS

Rounding and Nasal contrast.
The upper limit is about 21 monophthong phonemes (eg. Swiss German and
Alsatian German with length and rounding contrasts).
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
International Phonetic Alphabet
(Revised to 2005)
IPA Consonant Symbols

Pulmonic Consonants
Pulmonic consonants are consonants that depend upon an aggressive (outward-
flowing) air stream originating in the lungs. For more details on pulmonic consonant
airstream characteristics see the topic on “Airstream and laryngeal features in
speech production".
The following table contains all of the single-articulation pulmonic consonants
listed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (revised to 2005). The aspirated stops and
the voiceless alveolar trill don't actually belong in this table as they are combinations of
existing consonant symbols plus diacritics.
The column titles are abbreviations of the place of articulation of the consonants
in that column. For a key to the place-of-articulation abbreviations, see the table
immediately below this table. The row titles indicate the manner of articulation of the
sounds in that row. In this table, whenever two symbols appear in the same cell, the
upper symbol is voiceless and the lower symbol is voiced. For more detailed information
on voicing in consonants see the topic on "Airstream and laryngeal features in speech
production".
The third symbol in the oral stop cells is the voiceless aspirated stop.
Non-Pulmonic Consonants
These non-pulmonic consonants don't use pulmonic airflow. Instead they use
velaric airflow (clicks) or glottalic airflow (implosives and ejectives).
Complex Articulations
The following table is a list of some of the complex consonants that have either
double articulation (both places of articulation with the same degree of stricture) or
secondary articulation (a primary articulation coupled with a secondary articulation with
a lesser degree of stricture) that also have their own single IPA symbol.
Most other double articulations are represented by two IPA symbols tied together
by a ligature (for example k͡p for a double bilabial-velar stop). Most other secondary
articulations are indicated by the addition of a diacritic to the symbol for the primary
articulation (for example dˠ for a voiced velarized alveolar stop).
In the following table, [w]is the lip-rounded counterpart of the approximant

[ɰ]and [ɥ]is the lip-rounded counterpart of the approximant [j]. Note that the labial-
velar and labial-palatal approximants are not "labialized" as both the labial articulation
and the velar or palatal articulation have approximant stricture. (This is also true for
[ʍ]except that the two articulations have fricative stricture.) Since both articulations
have the same stricture these sounds are double articulations and so take the place-of-
articulation labels "labial-velar" and "labial-palatal".
The last two symbols on this table have a primary palatal articulation with
fricative stricture and a secondary alveolar articulation with approximant stricture (note,
however, that usage of these two symbols varies in the literature and they are
sometimes confused with [ʃ]and [ʒ]).
DISCUSSION POINTS:
1. What is the function ofLung Structure?
2. What is the function ofLarynx Structure?
3. Differentiate the Consonants and Vowels.
4. What are the types of Vowels?
 Work in pairs and practice the proper pronunciations of all vowel

sounds.
QUIZ# 5
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
I. IDENTIFICATION
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Put you answer before the
sentences.
1. Vocal folds convert the energy into audible sound is called.
2. Lungs that is provide the energy source is called.
3. It is the Articulators which transform the sound into intelligible speech.
4. It is usually contrast of a vowel surrounded optionally by a number of consonants.
5. It is essentially single vowel phonemes that consist of two pure vowel targets in
sequence.
6. It is a continuation of the trachea.
7. It can be said to have a greater degree of construction than vowels.
8. It is indicated by a preceding superscript and offglides by a following superscript of a

symbol appropriate to the pronunciation of the glide structure.
9. It is a complex articulation and is an example of simultaneous nasalisation.
10. It introduces an r-colourationto a vowel usually by curling tongue tip up and back
from its normal position.
II. MULTIPLE RESPONSES
DIRECTIONS: Read carefully the given statements in each item. Choose from the given
choices the letter that corresponds to your answer.
1. Which of the following that is example of /3/ IPA.
I. Burn II. Letter
III. Born IV. Roof & Room
a. I only b. I and II c. III only d. IV only
2-3.
I. bit and women II. see
III. kit IV. seat and peal
2. Which are the following that is example of /i/ sound?
a. IV only b. II and III c. I and III d. II only
3. Which are the following that is example of /I/ sound?
a. I and II b. I and III c. II and III d. IV only
4-5
I. /æ/ II. /3/
III. /o/ IV. /i/
4. Which symbol that is example of MADAM word.
a. II only b. I and II c. II and IV d. I only
5. Which symbol that is example of BOAT word.
a. III only b. I and II c. II and III only d. II only
6-7
I. Fire, Laugh, and Phone II. Pen, Hopping, and Jump

III. Tummy, Lamb, and Man IV. Sheep, Eagle, and Field.
6. Which is the best example of /p/ sound?
a. II only b. I only c. I and II d. IV only
7. Which is the best example of /i:/ sound.
a. II only b. I and II c. IV only d. II and IV
8-10
I. θ II. æ
III. ð IV. ^
8. Which is the best example of θ symbol?
a. Thick, Healthy, and Teeth b. This, Mother and With
c. Television, Visual and Leisure d. Cut, Money and Up
9. Which is the best example of ð symbol?
10. Which is the best example of ^ symbol?

MORPHOLOGY
LESSON OBJECTIVES:
At the end of this Module, students should be able to:
1. Students will be familiar with different types of morphology and how it is used
across languages.
2. They will be aware of which principles of language govern the distribution of
morphology and how morphology interacts with other components of language.
1. Morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria

a. It is a word that has meaning
b. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its meaning or
without meaningless reminders.
c. It recurs in different words with a relatively stable meaning.
The word unhappily has 3 morphemes {un-}, {happy} , {-ly} while the word spaghetti is a
single morpheme.
2. Allomorphs are morphs which belong to the same morpheme. For example, /s/, /z/
and /әz/ in /kæts/ ‘cats’, /bægz/ ‘bags’ are allomorphs of the plural morphemes {(e)s}.
Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme that may phonologically or morphologically
conditioned; e.g. {-en} as in oxen and children are allomorphs of {plural} morpheme.
3. Free morphemes are those can stand on their own as independent words, e.g.
{happy} in unhappily, {like} in dislike, {boy} in boyhood. They can also occur in isolation ;
e.g. {happy}, {like}.
4. Bound morphemes are those that cannot stand on their own as independent words.
They are always attached to a free morpheme or a free form. E.g. {un-}, {ly},{dis} {-
hood}. Such morphemes are also called affixes.
Bound morpheme are those cannot stand alone as words; they need to be attached to
another morpheme; e.g. {com-}; {de-}, {sun-} to be attached to {press} as in compress,
depress, suppress
5. Inflectional morpheme is those that never change the form class of words or
morphemes to which they are attached. They are always attached to complete words.
They cap the word; they are closed-ended set of morphemes- English has only 8
inflectional morphemes.
• noun plural {-s} – “He has three desserts.”
• noun possessive {-s} – “This is Betty’s dessert.”
• verb present tense {-s} – “Bill usually eats dessert.”
• verb past tense {-ed} – “He baked the dessert yesterday.”
• verb past participle {-en} – “He has always eaten dessert.”
• verb present participle {-ing} – “He is eating the dessert now.”
• adjective comparative {-er} – “His dessert is larger than mine.”
• adjective superlative {-est} – “Her dessert is the largest.”
Derivational morphemes are those that are added to root morpheme or stems
to derive new words. They usually change the form class of the words to which they are
attached, they are open-ended, that is, they potentially infinite number of them ; e.g.
formal+ {ize} formalize\ care+{-ful}.
Word. Formation processes
Derivation. This involves the addition of a derivational affix, changing the syntactic
category of the item to which it is attached (e.g.., orient to orientation.)
Category Extension. This involves the extension of a morpheme from one syntactic
category to another.
Compounding. This involves creating a new word by combining two free morphemes
(e.g., putdown; biitersweet)
Root creation. It is a brand new word based on no pre-existing morphemes (e.g. Kodak)
Clipped Form. It is shortened form of a pre-existing forms (e.g. bra <brassiere)
Blend. It is a combination of parts of two pre-existing forms (e.g. smog<smoke+fog)
Acronym. It is a word formed from the first letter(s) of each word in a phrase (e.g. NASA
< National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
Abbreviation. It is a word formed from the names of the first letters of the prominent
syllables of a word. (E.g. TV< Television)
Proper Name. This process forms a word from a proper name. e.g. hamburger
<Hamburg;sandwich)
Folk Etymology. This process forms a word by substituting a common native form for an
exotic .
Back Formation. This process for a word by removing what is mistake for an affix (e.g.
burgie<burglar)
Morphophonemic Processes
These are the processed that produce a great deal of linguistic variability :
assimilation, dissimilation, deletion, epenthesis, metathesis.
Assimilation is a process that results from a sound becoming more like another
nearby sound in terms of one or more of its phonetic characteristics; a process in which
segments take on the characteristics of neighboring sounds; e.g. possible-impossible)
Dissimilation is a process that results two sounds becoming less alike in
articularyor acoustic terms; a process in which units which occur in some contexts are
‘lost’ in others; e.g. library instead of ‘library’.
Deletion is a process that removes a segment from certain phonotic contexts. It
occurs in everyday rapid speech.
Epenthesis is a process that inserts a syllable or no syllabic segment within an
existing string of segment.
Metathesis is a process that reorders or reverses a sequence of segments; it
occurs when two segments in a series switch places.
Structures
1. Structure of Predication has two components; a subject and a predicate; e.g. the sun
rises, warriors fought bravely, snow has ceased falling.
2. Structure of Complementation has two basic components: a verbal element and a
complement ; e.g. weigh the options; serve the masses be courageous
3. Structure of Modification has two components; a head word and a modifier, who’s
meaning serves broaden, qualify, select, change, or describe or in some way affect the
meaning of the head word.
4. Structure of Coordination has two basic components: equivalent grammatical units
and joined often but not always by a coordinating conjunction; e.g. pins and needles.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
1. How does a teacher diffirentiate morphology according to students proficiency

2. What are the similarities of Word-Formation Processes and Morphophonemic
Processes.
PRACTICES:
1. Cannot stand alone, but must be attached (bound) to other morphemes
2. When added to a word, make or derive a new word with a new meaning
-something changed ex: use (v.) + able -> usable (adj.)
3. Indicate grammatical roles; do NOT change basic meaning of the word (English only
has 8)
QUIZ #6
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
I. IDENTIFICATION.
DIRECTIONS: Identify what is being described in the statement. Write your answer on
the space provided.
______1. Are those that cannot stand on their own as independent words. They are
always attached to a free morpheme.
______2. A morphs which belong to the same morpheme.
______3. Is a short segment of language that meets three criteria?
______ 4. That can stand on their own as independent words.
______ 5. Are those that never change that form class of the words or morphemes to
which they are attached.
______ 6. This is involving the extension of a morpheme form one syntactic category to
another.
______ 7. This involves creating a new word by combining two free morphemes.
______ 8. This process forms a word by removing what is mistaken for an affix.
______ 9. This process forms a word from a proper name.
______ 10. It is shortened form of a pre-existing forms.

II. Multiple Choice.
DIRECTIONS: Encircle the letter of the correct answer.
1. Is a process that results in two sounds becoming less alike in articulatory or

acoustic terms.
A. Assimilation
B. Dissimilation
C. Deletion
D. Epenthesis
2. Is a process that results two sounds becoming more like another nearby sound
in terms of one or more of its phonetic characteristics.
A. Assimilation
B. Dissimilation
C. Deletion
D. Epenthesis
3. Is a process that reorders or reverse a sequence of segments.
A. Assimilation
B. Folk Etymology
C. Deletion
D. Methathesis
4. Is a process that removes a segment form certain phonetic contacts.
A. Assimilation
B. Folk Etymology
C. Deletion
D. Methathesis
5. Is a process that inserts a syllable or non-syllabic segment within an existing

string of segment.
A. Clipped Form
B. Epenthesis
C. Deletion
D. Methathesis
6. It is a combination of parts of two pre-existing forms.
A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
7. It is a word formed from the names of the first letters on the prominent
syllables of a word.
A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
8. This involves the addition of a derivational affix, changing the syntactic

category of the item which is attached.
A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
9. It is a word formed from the first letters of each word in a phrase.
A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
10. Has two basic components: a verbal element and a complement.
A. Structure of Prediction
B. Structure of Complementation
C. Structure of Modification
D. Structure of Coordination
THE GRAMMAR OF SENTENCES
At the end of this Module, students should be able to:
1. Students will expand their basic understanding of form, meaning, and use in
longer discourse settings including academic discourse.
2. Students will begin to integrate form, meaning and use in academic discourse
settings.
3. Students will integrate form, meaning and use in academic discourse settings
The Syntax of Languages

These lessons cover the grammar of sentences, the very basics of syntax. They will
build on the grammar of words.
 Clause
“A clause is a group of related words containing a subject and a predicate”
For example, he laughed.
A clause refers to a group of related words (within a sentence or itself as an
independent sentence) which has both subject and predicate.
Example:
I will meet him in office.
The part of above sentence “I will meet him” is a clause because it has a subject(I) and
a predicate(will meet him). On the other hand, the rest part of above sentence “in office”
lacks both subject and predicate(verb) such group of word is called phrase.
A clause may stand as a simple sentence or may join another clause to make a
sentence. Therefore, a sentence consists of one, two or more clauses.
Examples.
• He is sleeping. (one clause)
• The kids were laughing at the joker. (one clause)
• The teacher asked a question, but no one answered. (two clauses)
• I am happy, because I won a prize. (two clauses)
• I like Mathematics, but my brother likes Biology,
because he wants to become a doctor. (three clauses)
Clauses are divided into main clause (also called independent clause) and subordinate
clause (also called dependent clauses).
 Types of Clauses
There are two major types of clauses main (or independent) clause and
subordinate (or dependant) clause. Main Clause and Subordinate Clause –
Comparison
He is buying a shirt which looks very nice.
The above sentence has two clauses “He is buying a shirt” and “which looks very
nice”. The clause “He is buying a shirt” expresses a complete thought and can alone
stand as a sentence. Such a clause is called main or independent clause.
While the clause “which looks very nice” does not express a complete thought and
can’t stand as a sentence. It depends on another clause (main clause) to express
complete idea. Such a clause is called subordinate or dependent clause.
 Main or Independent Clause

“Main (or independent) clause is a clause that expresses a complete thought and
can stand as a sentence.
Examples:
I met the boy who had helped me.
She is wearing a shirt which looks nice.
The teacher asked a question but no one answered.
He takes medicine because he suffers from fever.
He became angry and smashed the vase into peaces.
In the above sentences each underlined part shows main clause. It expresses
complete though and can stand as a sentence that is why a main or an independent
clause is normally referred as a simple sentence.
 Subordinate or dependent Clause

Subordinate (or independent) clause is a clause which does not express complete
thought and depends on another clause (main clause) to express complete thought.
Subordinate clause does not express complete idea and can’t stand as a sentence. A
sentence having a subordinate clause must have a main clause.
Example:
He likes Chinese rice which tastes good.
The clause “which tastes good” in above sentence is a subordinate clause
because it does not express complete thought and can’t stand as a sentence. It
depends on main clause (he likes Chinese rise) to express complete thought.
Examples.
I bought a table that costs $ 100.
He takes medicine because he suffers from fever.
The teacher asked a question but no one answered.
Subordinate (or dependent) clauses are further divided into three types,
1. Noun Phrase
2. Adjective Phrase,
3. Adverb Phrase
 Types of Subordinate Clause

Functions of Subordinate Clause.
A subordinate (dependent) clause may function as a noun, an adjective or an
adverb in sentence. On the basis of their function in a sentence, subordinate clauses
can be divided in to following types.
1. Noun Clause
2. Adjective Clause.
3. Adverb Clause
 Noun Clause
“A dependent clause that functions as a noun in a sentence is called noun clause.”
A noun clause performs same function like a noun in a sentence.
Example:
What he did made a problem for his family.
In above sentence the clause “what he did” functions as a noun, hence it is a

noun clause. A noun clause works as a noun that acts as a subject, object, or predicate
in a sentence. A noun clause starts with words “that, what, whatever, who, whom,
whoever, whomever”.
Examples:
Whatever you learn will help you in future. (noun clause as a subject)
What you said made me laugh. (noun clause as a subject)
He knows that he will pass the test. (noun clause as an object)
Now I realize what he would have thought. (noun clause as an object)
 Adjective Clause
“A dependent clause that functions as an adjective in a sentence is called adjective
clause.”
An adjective clause works like adjective in a sentence. The function of an adjective is to
modify (describe) a noun or a pronoun. Similarly a noun clause modifies a noun or a
pronoun.
Example:
He wears a shirt which looks nice.
The clause “which looks nice” in above sentence is an adjective clause because it
modifies noun “shirt” in the sentence.
An adjective clause always precedes the noun it modifies.
Examples.
An apple that smells bad is rotten.
The book which I like is helpful in preparation for test.
The house where I live consists of four rooms.
The person who was shouting needed help.
Adjective clause begins with relative pronoun (that, who, whom, whose, which, or
whose) and is also relative clause.
Adjective (relative) clauses can be restrictive clause or nonrestrictive clause
 Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Clauses

Adjective (relative) clauses can be restrictive clause or nonrestrictive clause. A
restrictive clause limits the meaning of preceding noun or pronoun. A nonrestrictive
clause tells us something about preceding noun or pronoun but does not limit the
meaning of preceding noun or pronoun.
Example:
•The student in the class who studied a lot passed the test. (restrictive clause)
•The student in the class, who had attended all the lectures, passed the test.
(nonrestrictive clause)
In the first sentence the clause “who studied a lot” restrict information to
preceding noun(student), it means that there is only one student in the class who
studied a lot, hence it is a restrictive clause.
In the second sentence the clause “who had attended all the lectures” gives us
information about preceding noun but does not limit this information to the preceding
noun. It means there can be several other students in the class who had attended all
the lectures.
A comma is always used before a restrictive clause in a sentence and also after
nonrestrictive clause if it is within a main clause. “That” is usually used to introduce a
restrictive clause while “which” is used to introduce a nonrestrictive clause.
Example:
The table that costs $ 100 is made of steel. (restrictive clause)
The table, which costs $ 100, is made of steel. (nonrestrictive clause)
 Adverb Clause
“A dependent clause that functions as an adverb in a sentence is called adverb
clause”
An adverb clause like an adverb modifies a verb, adjective clause or other
adverb clause in a sentence. It modifies(describes) the situation in main clause in terms
of “time, frequency (how often), cause and effect, contrast, condition, intensity (to what
extent).”
The subordinating conjunctions used for adverb clauses are as follows.
Time: when, whenever, since, until, before, after, while, as, by the time, as soon as
Cause and effect: because, since, now that, as long as, so, so that,
Contrast: although, even, whereas, while, though
Condition: if, unless, only if, whether or not, even if, providing or provided that, in case
Examples.
Don’t go before he comes.
He takes medicine because he is ill.
Although he tried a lot, he couldn’t climb up the tree.
Unless you study for the test, you can’t pass it.
1. Noun Phrase
A noun phrase contains a noun and other related words (usually modifiers and
determiners) which modify the noun. It works like a noun in a sentence.
A noun phrase consists of a noun as the head word and other words (usually
modifiers and determiners) which come after or before the noun. The whole phrase
functions as a noun in a sentence.
Noun Phrase = noun + modifiers (the modifiers can be after or before noun)
Examples:
He is wearing a nice blue shirt. (as noun/object)
She brought a glass full of juice. (as noun/object)
The boy with blond hair is laughing. (as noun/subject)
A man on the road was fighting. (as noun/subject)
A sentence can also contain more noun phrases.
For example: The girl with hazel eyes bought a beautiful car.
2. Prepositional phrase
A prepositional phrase possesses a preposition, object of preposition (noun or
pronoun) and may also consist of other modifiers.
Examples: on a table, near a wall, in the room, at the office, under a tree.
A prepositional phrase starts with a preposition and mostly ends with a noun or
pronoun. Whatever prepositional phrase ends with is called object of preposition. A
prepositional phrase works as an adjective or adverb in a sentence.
Examples:
A boy on the road is singing a song. (As adjective)
The man in the room is our father. (As adjective)
She is shouting in a loud voice. (As adverb)
He always treats in a good manner. (As adverb)
3. Adjective Phrase
An adjective phrase is a group of words that works like an adjective in a
sentence. It consists of adjectives, modifier and any word that modifies a noun or
pronoun.
An adjective phrase works like an adjective to modify (or tell about) a noun or a
pronoun in a sentence.
Examples:
He is wearing a nice blue shirt. (modifies shirt)
The girl with blond hair is singing a song. (modifies girl)
He gave me a glass full of juice. (modifies glass)
A boy from China won the race. (modifies boy)
Prepositional phrases and participle phrases also work as adjectives so we can
also call them adjective phrases when they function as adjective. In the above sentence
“The girl with blond hair is singing a song”, the phrase “with blond hair” is a prepositional
phrase but it works as an adjective.
4. Adverb Phrase
A group of words that functions as an adverb in a sentence is called adverbial
phrase. It consists of adverbs or other words (preposition, noun, verb, modifiers) that
make a group work like an adverb in a sentence.
An adverbial phrase works like an adverb to modify a verb, an adjective or
another adverb.
Examples:
He always treats in a good manner. (modifies verb treat)
They were shouting in a loud voice. (modifies verb shout)
She always speaks with care. (modifies verb speak)
He sat at a corner of the room. (modifies verb sit)
They returned in a short while. (modifies verb return)
A prepositional phrase can also act as an adverb phrase. For example in
above sentence “He always treats in a good manner”, the phrase “in a good
manner” is a prepositional phrase but it acts as an adverbial phrase here.
5. Verb Phrase
A combination of main verb and its auxiliaries (helping verbs) in a sentence is
called verb phrase.
Examples:
He is eating an apple.
She has completed her task.
You should prepare for the exam.
She has been working for two hours.
According to generative grammar, a verb phrase can consist of main verb, its
auxiliaries, its complements and other modifiers. Hence it can refer to the whole
predicate of a sentence.
Example: You should prepare for the exam.
6. Infinitive Phrase
An infinitive phrase consist of an infinitive (to + simple form of verb) and modifiers
or other words associated to the infinitive. An infinitive phrase always works as an
adjective, adverb or a noun in a sentence.
Examples:
She likes to read novels. (As noun/object)
To earn money is a desire of everyone. (As noun/subject)
He shouted to inform people about fire. (As adverb, modifies verb shout)
He made a plan to buy a flat. (As adjective, modifies noun plan)
7. Gerund Phrase
A gerund phrase consists of a gerund(verb + ing) and modifiers or other words
associated with the gerund. A gerund phrase works as a noun in a sentence.
Examples:
I like writing good essays. (As noun/object)
She started thinking about the future. (As noun/object)
Sleeping late night is not a good habit. (As noun/subject)
Crying of a baby woke him up. (As noun/subject)
8. Participle Phrase
A participle phrase consists of a present participle (verb + ing), a past participle
(verb ending in -ed or other form in case of irregular verbs) and modifiers or other
associate words. A participle phrase is separated by commas. It always works as an
adjective in a sentence.
Examples:
The kids, making a noise, need food. (modifies kids)
I received a letter, mentioning about my job. (modifies letter)
The chair, made of steel, is too expensive. (modifies table)
We saw a car, damaged in an accident. (modifies car)
9. Absolute Phrase
A group of words including a noun or pronoun and a participle as well as any
associated modifiers is called Absolute Phrase (also called nominative phrase).
Absolute phrase describes (give information about) the entire sentence. It resembles a
clause but it doesn't have a true finite verb. It is separated by a comma or pairs of
commas from the rest sentence.
Examples:
She looks sad, his face expressing worry.
She was waiting for her mother, her eyes on the clock.
John is painting a wall, his shirt dirty with paint.
DISCUSSION POINTS:
1. Prepare 5 example of clauses.

2. Explain the different types of clauses.
3. Enumerate and give examples of phrases.
PRACTICES:
1. What grammatical element is contained in the following sentence?Running with

scissors can cause serious injury.
A. Infinitive phrase
B. Dependent clause
C. Gerund phrase
2. What grammatical element is repeated in the following sentence?When I am too tired
to get up in the morning, when I have forgotten to do my homework, when I have
nothing to wear, I usually ask my mom if I can stay home from school.
B. Dependent clause
C. Independent clause
D. Gerund phrase
3. What grammatical element is contained in the following line?To be or not to be. . .
B. Independent clause
C. Gerund phrase

QUIZ #7
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
IDENTIFICATION: Identify what is being described in the statement. Write your answer
on the space provided.
_______1. Clause which does not express complete thought. And depends on another
clause to express complete thought.
_______2. A dependent clause that functions as a noun in a sentence is called.
_______3. Contains a noun and other related words. It works like a noun in a sentence.
_______4. Is a group of words that works like what in a sentence?
_______5. A combination of main verb and its auxiliaries.
_______6. Consist of a present participle, a past participle and modifiers.
_______7. A groups of words including a noun or pronoun and a participle as well as

any associated modifiers.
_______8. Works as a noun in a sentence.
_______9. Consist of an infinite, and modifiers or other words associated to the

infinitive.
_______10. Works like an adverb to modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb.

II. DIRECTON: Modify the underlined words.
1. He always treats in a good manner.
2. A boy from China won the race.
3. They returned in a short while.
4. He made a plan to buy a flat.
5. Crying of a baby woke him up.

SEMANTICS
At the end of the lesson the students should be able to:
1. Know what is the importance of semantics
2. Convey richer meaning when speaking and/or writing.
3. Aware that words may be intentionally chosen to convey a specific
meaning.
The Meaning of Language

When you know a language you know:
• When a word is meaningful or meaningless, when a word has two meanings,
when two words have the same meaning, and what words refer to (in the real world or
imagination).
• When a sentence is meaningful or meaningless, when a sentence has two

meanings, when two sentences have the same meaning, and whether a sentence is
true or false (the truth conditions of the sentence).
- Semantics is the study of the meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and
sentences.
– Lexical semantics: the meaning of words and the relationships among words.
– Phrasal or sentential semantics: the meaning of syntactic units larger than one
word.
• Compositional semantics:
- formulating semantic rules that build the meaning of a sentence based on the
meaning of the words and how they combine.
- Also known as truth-conditional semantics because the speaker’s knowledge of
truth conditions is central.
• If you know the meaning of a sentence, you can determine under what
conditions it is true or false
– You don’t need to know whether or not a sentence is true or false to
understand it, so knowing the meaning of a sentence means knowing under what
circumstances it would be true or false
• Most sentences are true or false depending on the situation
– But some sentences are always true (tautologies)
– And some are always false (contradictions)
Entailment and Related Notions

• Entailment- one sentence entails another if whenever the first sentence is true the
second one must be true also.
Example:
Jack swims beautifully – it entails Jack swims but,
Jack swims, does not entails Jack swims beautifully
• When two sentences entail each other, they are synonymous, or paraphrases
Example:
Jack postponed the meeting Jack put off the meeting
• When one sentence entails the negation of another sentence, the two sentences are
contradictions
Example:
Jack is alive Jack is dead
Ambiguity
• Our semantic knowledge also tells us when words or phrases have more than one
meaning, or are ambiguous
– Syntactic ambiguity arises from multiple syntactic structures corresponding to the
same string of words
Example: The boy saw the man with the telescope
– Lexical ambiguity arises from multiple meanings corresponding to the same word or
phrase
Example: This will make you smart
Compositional Semantics
• Compositional semantics: to account for speakers’ knowledge of truth,
entailment, and ambiguity, we must assume that grammar contains semantic rules for
how to combine the meanings of words into meaningful phrases and sentences
– The principle of compositionality asserts that the meaning of an expression is
composed of the meaning of its parts and how the parts are combined structurally
Semantic Rules
• Semantic Rule # I:
- if the meaning of NP (an individual) is a member of the meaning of the VP (a
set of individuals), then S is TRUE, otherwise, it is FALSE
Example: Jack swims
Word: Meaning:
Jack refers to the individual Jack
Swims refers to the set of individuals that swim
• If the NP, (Jack), is among the set of individuals that swims (the VP) then the sentence
is TRUE
• Semantic Rule # 2:
Jack kissed Laura.
- If the NP jack is among the set of people who kissed Laura (the VP), then the
sentence is true.
- The meaning of the sentence Jack kissed Laura, which is derived in rule #2,
establishes the meaning of the VP (establishes the set of people who kissed Laura)
 When Compositionality Goes Awry: Anomaly
• An anomalous sentence:
Example: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
• This sentence is syntactically fine, but contains semantic violations such as

describing ideas as both colorless and green
• Other sentences are uninterpretable because they include nonsense words:

Example: He took his vorpal sword in hand.
 When Compositionality Goes Awry: Metaphor

• Metaphors are sentences that seem to be anomalous but are understood in terms
of a meaningful concept
• To understand a metaphor we must understand the individual words, the literal
meaning of the expression, and facts about the world
– To understand Time is money you need to know that in our society people are
often paid according to the amount of time worked
 When Compositionality Goes Awry: Idioms

• Idiomatic phrases are phrases with meanings that cannot be predicted based on
the meanings of the individual words
– The usual semantic rules for combining meanings do not applydrop the ballput his
foot in his mouth hit it of
• All languages have idioms, but idioms are rarely directly translatable
Example: kick the bucket = “to stretch the (animal) leg”
Lexical Semantics: Reference

• Referent: the real-world object designated by a word
– Jack, the happy swimmer, my friend, and that guy can all have the same referent in
the sentence Jack swims.
– But, some NPs do not refer to any particular individual, such as:
• No baby swims.
– While the happy swimmer and Jack may refer to the same individual in some
cases, the happy swimmer means something extra:
• The happy swimmer is happy.
• Jack is happy
Lexical Semantics: Sense

• Sense: an element of meaning separate from reference and more enduring; the
manner in which an expression presents the reference
– Barack Obama
– The President
– Michelle Obama’s husband
• The word unicorn has sense but no reference
• Proper names tend to have reference but no sense
– Sometimes two proper names have the same referent
(Unabomber & Ted Kaczynski); these pairs of nouns are called coreferential
These have the same reference but diferent senses
Lexical Relations: Synonyms

• Synonyms: words or expressions that have the same meaning in some or all contexts
Examples: apathetic - indiferent
sofa - couch
• Some assert that there are no two words with exactly the same meanings
• After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, many French words of Latin
origin entered the language, giving rise to synonymous pairs:
– English: heal Latin: recuperate
– English: send Latin: transmit
Lexical Relations: Antonyms

• Antonyms are words that are opposite in meaning
– Complementary antonyms:
• alive/dead, present/absent, awake/asleep
• alive = not dead, dead = not alive
– Gradable pairs: no absolute scale
• big/small, hot/cold, fast/slow, happy/sad
• Some pairs of gradable antonyms contain a marked and an unmarked term,
with the unmarked term being the one used in questions of degree:
– How high is the mountain? not How low is the mountain?
Lexical Relations: Antonyms

– Relational antonyms: display symmetry in their meaning
• give/receive, buy/sell, employer/employee
– “Autoantonyms” or “contranyms” are words that are their own antonym
• dust = to remove small particles
• dust = to scatter small particles
Lexical Relations
Homonyms (or homophones): words that have different meanings but are
pronounced the same:
Example: bear and bare
Homographs are words that are spelled the same:
Example: bear and bear,
dove and dove
Heteronyms are words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently:
Example: dove and dove
Polysemous words are words with multiple, conceptually or historically related
meanings
Example: diamond: the geometric shape; a baseball field
Hyponyms involve the relationship between a general term and specific
instances of that term
Examples: rose, iris, daisy, and poppy are all a kind of flower,
so rose, iris, daisy, and poppy are all hyponyms of the word flower
Semantic Features
• Semantic features are properties that are part of word meanings and reflect our
knowledge about what words mean
– For example, antonyms share all but one semantic feature
• big has the semantic feature “about size” and red has the semantic feature
“about color,” so the two cannot be antonyms
– The semantic features of the word assassin include that assassins must be
human and kill important people
Evidence for Semantic Features
• Speech errors, or “slips of the tongue” provide evidence for semantic features
because the accidentally uttered word shares semantic features with the intended word:
Semantic Features of Nouns

• Some languages have classifiers, or grammatical morphemes that indicate the
semantic class of the noun
– Swahili has one set of singular and plural markers for nouns that have the
semantic feature “human” and another set for those that don’t
• In English the type of determiner that accompanies a noun depends on whether

it is a count noun (can be enumerated and pluralized) or a mass noun (cannot be
enumerated or pluralized)
– Count nouns such as dog and potato can be counted and pluralized (I have two dogs)
– Mass nouns such as rice and water cannot be pluralized or counted (*I have
two rices) and do not take the article a (*I have a rice)
Semantic Features of Verbs
• Verbs also have semantic features attached to them
– darken includes the semantic feature

“cause”, as does kill and uglify
– break can be analyzed as follows:

“cause” to “become” brokenu
• The semantic features of verbs can also have syntactic consequences
• Verbs can describe events (eventives) or states (statives), and these verbs
afect the possible sentence structures:
– Eventive sentences sound good when passivized, put in the progressive, used
as imperatives, and with certain adverbs:
Eventive: Oysters were eaten by John Eventive: John is eating oysters
Statives: ?Oysters were liked by John Stative: ?John is liking oysters
Eventive: John deliberately ate oysters Eventive: Eat oysters!
Stative: ?John deliberately liked oysters Stative: ?Like oysters!
DISCUSSION POINT:
1. Why is it important to know the meaning of language?

2. What is the importance of semantics?
3. Why we should know the rules of semantics?
 Work in pairs and create five examples of semantics and apply

the rules.
QUIZ #8
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
I. IDENTIFICATION:
DIRECTION: Identify the words being referred to by the following statement
below. Write your answer on the space provided.
_____________1. It is the study of meaning of morphemes, words, phrases and

sentences.
_____________2. It is the meaning of words and the relationship among words.
_____________3. It is the meaning of syntactic units larger than one word.
_____________4. It is formulating semantic rules that build the meaning of a

sentence based of the meaning of the words and how they combine.
_____________5. Compositional semantic is also known as_____ because the

speaker’s knowledge of truth condition is central.
_____________6. It is one sentence entails another if whenever the first
sentence second one must be true also.
_____________7. It arises from multiple meanings corresponding to the same

word or phrase.
____________8. This are sentence that seem to be anomalous but are

understood in terms of meaningful concept.
____________9. These are phrases with meanings that cannot be predicted

based on the meanings of the individual words.
____________10. It is the real-world object designated by a word.
II. Lexical Relations:

Direction: Write whether the following words are Homonyms, Homographs,
Polysemous, and Hyponyms.
________1. bark- (sound of dog) bark- (part of tree)
________2. hound- (dog breed) hound- (to pester)
________3.row- (argument) row- ( row of seats)
________4. present- (a gift) present- (to introduce)
________5. poker, roulette (games)
_______6. bow- (front of ship) bow- (ranged weapon)
_______7. lead- (guide) led- (metallic)
_______8. desert- (dry place) desert- (abandon)
_______9. address- (where one live) address- (to give speech)
_______10. fix- (attach, arrange, repair)

PRAGMATICS
1. Define pragmatics
2. Describe the purpose of language
3. Share example of pragmatics and explain its purpose
Pragmatics is the study of:

• language in context
• language use
• meaning in communication
• the use of natural language in communication
• the study of the relations between languages and their users
• how literal and non-literal aspects of linguistic meaning are determined by principles
that refer to the physical or social context in which language is used
• the ways in which context contributes to meaning
Pragmatics- involves communication between people and, therefore, includes
the human element in particular intentions and interpretations.
'We communicate more than we say explicitly.' (Poole 1999: 34)
Central issue in pragmatics

The disparity between:
a) what we intend to communicate and
b) what we actually say
Sentence and utterance
Sentence -(an abstract entity):
-a string of words independent of (non-linguistic) context
Utterance- (a concrete entity)
-a specific instance of speech in a specific context
Abstraction and Instantiation

Phoneme morpheme lexeme sentence
Phone morph word utterance
Grammatical and felicitous/appropriate

Grammatical properties
John places his laptop in the mug and leaves.
1. Correct word order for English (SVO)
*John in the mug his laptop places and leaves.
2. Correct grammatical agreement
*John place his laptop in the mug and leave.
3. Subject of second clause understood as equivalent to subject of first clause,
i.e. John.
John places his laptop in the mug and he (John) leaves.
However, although grammatically perfectly correct, we still realize it's a rather odd
statement.
Why?
How could we 'repair' it?
What's odd!
Odd because, from what we know about laptop and mugs:

1. laptops are too big to fit in mugs (or, vice versa, mugs are too small to fit in laptops );
2. we do not usually use mugs to carry laptops in;
3. we usually put liquids in mugs, and laptops are solid.
This is common sense, world knowledge NOT linguistic knowledge.

How could we 'repair' it?
1. By assuming this is a story in a fantasy world.

2. By assuming that the speaker/writer made a mistake ('bag' instead of 'mug'?)
NB. 'Repairing' only makes sense if we assume that the speaker wants to and is
able to communicate something reasonable.
We could also assume he/she was just trying to be funny! Or that he/she is mad!
Or, perhaps, he/she doesn't know the language well.
Logic and meaning

Harry opened the door and the rat ran into the room.
What happened first?
Does this sentence describe the same situations the following?
The rat ran into the room and Harry opened the door.Purely formally, however,
the two sentences are logically equivalent.
In logic: a & b ↔ b & a
THEREFORE:
IF:
Harry opened the door = a
the rat ran into the room = b
AND
a&b↔b&a
THEN:
Harry opened the door and the rat ran into the room.
AND
The rat ran into the room and Harry opened the door.ARE EQUIVALENT
temporal sequence. However, we do not give them the same interpretation.We assume
(by convention) that the linear sequence of the sentences also implies a temporal
sequence,such that a takes place before b.
Pragmatics is the study of:

• speaker meaning
• contextual meaning
• how more gets communicated than is said
• expressions of relative distance
Communication
INTENTION INTERPRETATION
Speaker utterance listener

Meaning
Contextual meaning
How people: organize what they want to say in accordance withwho they are
talking to,
where,when and under what circumstances.
Look at the following exchange.
How do you interpret what's going on?
A: We're off!
B: Yes.
Who are the discourse participants?
Where are they?
What time of day is it?
How can you make sense of their exchange? Expressions of relative distance
physical, social, conceptual closeness implies shared experience.
The better you know somebody, the more knowledge you share, the less explicit
you need to be
Shared social norms
People are social creatures:belong to social group,
follow expected patterns of behaviour
e.g. saying appropriate things, being polite
email:
Hi there professor! Do we have lecture tomorrow?
Bye XXX
Kirstin
Shared knowledge (and experience)

We do not always need to give all details:
E.g. I wanted to cook a meal but I ran out of gas.
Knowledge:
cooking involves heat
cooking can be done on a cooker;
often in Malta cookers work with gas;
the gas comes in large metal containers;
the amount of gas in a container is limited
Absurd communication
I wanted to cook a meal. You cook meals by
heating up the food, i.e. vegetables, or meat etc.
You can cook on a gas cooker. A gas cooker runs on gas. The gas comes from a
metal container. I had a gas container. I thought it still had gas in it. The gas in a
container is limited by space. I ran out of gas. As a result, I couldn't cook the meal.
N.B. The language correct but not meaningful in a 'normal' context.
- Grammatically correct but pragmatically inappropriate.
Impication/implicature
A: John's new car is parked in front of his house
Implies:
(a) John has a car
(b) it is new
(c) it is parked in front of his house
(d) John is at home
(a) – (c) cannot be invalidated, i.e., hold true by virtue of
sentence meaning (otherwise we'd have to assume that
speaker lied)
However, if B saw that John had left the house:
invalidates (d) (speaker did not lie)
CONTEXT
SPEAKER LISTENER
SHARED KNOWLEDGE/
EXPERIENCE
Our interpretation of utterances is based on the assumption that, in communicating,
people are being helpful
DISCUSSION POINT:
1. Why is it important to study pragmatics?
2. What does it mean that “ We communicate more than we say explicitly.”
 Divide the class into two groups and describe the purpose of
language in a skit.
DISCOURSE
1. Know the emergence of the study of discourse
2. Appreciate the strong influence of linguistic discourse in grammar
3. Apply knowledge gain about discourse
In the mid-1960s, the humanities and the social sciences witnessed a remarkably
synchronous paradigm shift with the birth of several new but mutually related
‘interdisciplines’ such as semiotics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics as
well as the study of discourse.
The emergence of the study of discourse may be summarized as follows.
1. Anthropology
Already in the early 1960s, among the first to recognize the relevance of the
study of discourse anthropologists such as Dell Hymes (1972) became interested in the
ethnographic study of communicative events (beyond the traditional study of myths and
folklore), a direction of research followed by many other anthropologists under the label
of the ‘ethnography of speaking’ (or the ‘ethnography of communication’; Bauman &
Sherzer, 1974; Saville-Troike, 1982) and then more broadly within linguistic
anthropology (Duranti, 2001).1
2. Linguistics
Linguists were not lagging far behind during the late 1960s, when some of them
realized that the use of language obviously was not reduced to the structures of
isolated, abstract, invented sentences – as was the case in structural and generative
grammars – but needed analyses of structures ‘beyond the sentence’ and of whole
‘texts’, for instance to account for anaphora and coherence. Whereas initially still largely
within the formal paradigm of ‘text grammars’, also this linguistic approach soon merged
with the other approaches to a more empirical analysis of actual language use.
The names associated with these early attempts at text and discourse grammars are:
 János Petöfi (1971),
 Wolfgang Dressler (1972), and Teun A.van Dijk (1972, 1977), in Europe, and
 Joseph Grimes (1975),
 Tom Givón (1979),
 Sandra Thompson and Bill Mann in the USA, the latter two under the label of
Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann & Thompson, 1988).
The roots of the European text grammars, apart from the obvious influence of
Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, are however diverse and range from literary
theory and semiotics to Russian formalism and Czech and French structuralism.
Although not under the label of ‘text grammar’, also early studies in Functional
Systemic Grammar, founded by Michael Halliday in the UK (and then Australia), paid
much attent7ion to discourse, for instance in the account of ‘cohesion’, the
grammatical expression of semantic coherence (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). This work
was later followed by a large number of other studies on the grammatical and
semiotic aspects of discourse in the same SF-paradigm (among many other
studies, see, e.g., Martin, 1992).
3. Formal Grammar
On the other hand, increasingly formal and explicit studies of language use for
discourse participants, coreference, deictic expressions and tenses, continued to be
engaged in, from the 1970s both by logicians and philosophers, such as Hans Kamp
(1981) and his Discourse Representation Theory and others influenced by the
mathematician and formal philosopher Richard Montague. This approach states that
discourse semantics is dynamic and depends on context.
4. Pragmatics
Within the tradition of British analytical philosophy, the 1960s also saw the very
successful birth of another new inter discipline, namely pragmatics. Based on the work
of Austin (1962) on How to Do Things with Words, it is especially the study of John
Searle (1969) on speech acts and an influential essay of H. P. Grice (1975) on
conversational maxims that sparked a flow of studies on language use extending the
traditional focus on syntax and semantics with a pragmatic component, accounting for
the illocutive functions of language in terms of speech acts, implicatures and other
aspects of contextually based language use. More generally, Pragmatics has become
the discipline that houses many of the studies of language use beyond grammar, such
as the influential work on politeness by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (Brown
& Levinson, 1987).
5. Semiotics
Within the study of literature and the arts, the mid-1960s also witnessed the
emergence of semiotics, the general study of signs and symbol systems. Originally
based on the work of philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, and structural linguists such
as Louis Hjelmslev and André Martinet, this new discipline became popular especially
due to the work of Umberto Eco (1976) in Italy, and Roland Barthes (1964) and many
others in France.
Semiotics was not limited to language, stories and other forms of discourse, but
was also studied in other semiotic codes, such as images, film, dance and architecture.
Within discourse studies, semiotics has especially been propagated, in a rather different
paradigm, by the work of Gunther Kress, and Theo van Leeuwen (Kress & van
Leeuwen, 1990; van Leeuwen, 2005).
6. Conversation Analysis
In sociology, the interest in discourse emerged within the broader framework of
‘ethnomethodology’, a direction in microsociology focusing on the ways people
understand and manage their everyday life.
Under the influence of Harold Garfinkel (1967), on the one hand, and of Erving
Goffman (1959, 1961), on the other hand, this interest in mundane interaction became
very popular with the study of conversation, pioneered by Harvey Sacks, Manny
Schegloff, Gail Jefferson in a very influential article in Language (Sacks, Schegloff &
Jefferson, 1974), followed by many other studies in several disciplines. Whereas
discourse grammars studied sequences of sentences, Conversation Analysis (CA)
closely analyzed interactional sequences and phenomena such as turn taking,
interruptions, pauses, laughter, opening and closing conversations, and many other
properties and strategic moves of spontaneous talk now being accessible due to
meticulous transcriptions of audio and video recordings (the influential collections by
Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; and Drew & Heritage, 1992).
7. Sociolinguistics
At the end of the 1960s, appeared another new discipline at the boundaries of
linguistics and the social sciences, Sociolinguistics. Although initially studying variation
of grammar, especially pronunciation, due to variables as class, age or gender, some of
these studies, also by the founders of sociolinguistics, Bill Labov (1972a, 1972b) and
Susan Ervin Tripp (1972), focused on naturally occurring discourse, such as child
discourse, storytelling about everyday experiences or the verbal play by African–
American adolescents (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972). From a different perspective, later
work in ‘interactional sociolinguistics’ provided more insight into details of interaction
and their relation to the social context (Gumperz, 1982a, 1982b).
8.The Psychology of Text Processing and Artificial Intelligence
A few years later, at the beginning of the 1970s, also cognitive psychology (such
as the work of Walter Kintsch, 1974) went beyond the self-imposed limitations of the
study of the mental processing of wordsand isolated sentences, and began to study the
production, comprehension and memory of discourse in general, and of stories in
particular. Thus, it could be shown that the notion of macrostructure, first developed in
text grammar (van Dijk, 1972, 1977, 1980), also had a cognitive basis, for instance in
the production and comprehension of discourse topics (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). This
direction of research soon became very popular in cognitive psychology, also because
of its many obvious applications, for instance in education and the mass media. One of
the many influential notions introduced in this research is that of a mental model – a
representation of events and situations in ‘episodic memory’ (the record of all our
personal experiences) – as the basis of all discourse production and understanding
Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Another important contribution came
from the closely related field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), namely the fundamental role of
knowledge in discourse processing, for instance in the form of mental ‘scripts’ of
prototypical episodes (Schank & Abelson, 1977). Although much of this work was (and
is) carried out in the various domains of cognitive science, it also has had much
influence in linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and the study of literature,
such as studies on the comprehension of radio messages (Lutz & Wodak, 1987).
Methodological Common Ground
We see that more or less at the same time, namely between the mid-1960s and
the early-1970s, we witness closely related new disciplines emerging in the humanities
and the social sciences. Despite their backgrounds in different mother disciplines, and
despite a large diversity of methods and objects of study, these new disciplines of
semiotics, pragmatics, psycho- and sociolinguistics, ethnography of speaking as well as
conversation analysis and discourse studies had several things in common. We may
summarize this methodological common ground as follows:
• Interest in properties of ‘naturally occurring’ language use by real language users,
instead of a study of abstract language systems and invented examples.
• A study of larger units than isolated words and sentences, and new basic units of
analysis: texts, discourses, conversations or communicative events.
• Extension of linguistics beyond grammar towards a study of action and interaction.
• Extension to non-verbal (semiotic) aspects of interaction and communication:
gestures, images, film and multimedia.
• Focus on dynamic cognitive or interactional moves and strategies.
• Study of the role of the social, cultural and cognitive contexts of language use.
• Analysis of a vast number of hitherto largely ignored phenomena of language use:
coherence, anaphora, topics, macrostructures, speech acts, interactions, turn-taking,
signs, politeness, mental models, and many other aspects of discourse.
Historical and Social Backgrounds

It might be speculative to relate this renewal in the humanities and social
sciences to the more general revolutionary spirit of the end of the 1960s, as we also
know it from the Civil Rights Movement in theUSA, the feminist movement worldwide,
as well as the student movements both in the USA and Europe.
Yet, it is probably no coincidence that against the broader background of
African–Americans rebelling against racism, of women opposing patriarchy, and
students protesting against traditional university hierarchies, the end of the 1960s also
saw the emergence of new scholarly paradigms. Not seldom, thesewere also defined by
young scholars rejecting the theories and methods of their teachers and of the
traditional orientations in literature, linguistics, sociology, anthropology and psychology.
Note though, that the social and political nature of the changes in society did not (yet)
lead to similar changes in the disciplines. Indeed, initially many of the changes of the
new disciplines were formal and only defined by a broader object of study, rather that
inspired by a revolutionary spirit aiming to change society. There are (generally
European) exceptions to this general ‘apolitical’ beginning of discourse analysis and
sociolinguistics, especially in Germany and Austria, such as the work by Dittmar (1976)
on sociolinguistics, by Leodolter (=Wodak) (1975) on language in the courtroom, Wodak
(1986) on therapy groups and Wodak & Schulz (1986), on the Language of love and
guilt – discourses between mothers and daughters. Although in the social sciences
especially frequent reference was made to the ‘Critical Theory’ of the Frankfurt School,
the new studies of signs, speech acts, language variation, stories, communicative
events, conversation, film, text processing or discourse structures seldom took place
within a broadersocio-political movement of dissidence and opposition against social
inequality.
References to Adorno and Benjamin, for instance, initially were found in literature
or in the philosophy of the social sciences, rather than in the new disciplines of
language use and discourse. More frequent references to the work of Habermas had to
wait until Habermas himself had discovered pragmatic theory (Habermas, 1981). In that
respect, at least in these disciplines, academic theory and social movement remained
two distinct areas of social practice. It is only with such later developments as critical
discourse studies that these two different forms of dissent merged.
Integration and Further Developments
Although most of the new (inter- or cross) disciplines mentioned above had
different backgrounds, objects, methods and sometimes inconsistent philosophies, the
last decades have witnessed increasing integration in the broad field of the study of
language use. In the following decades, much work in pragmatics, sociolinguistics,
conversation analysis and the ethnography of speaking often overlapped, especially
because of their shared interest in the study of conversational interaction in social
contexts.
Discursive Psychology
These interdisciplines were soon joined by other directions of research and new
paradigms in the 1980s, such as Discursive Psychology within social psychology,
interested especially in the way ‘psychological’ notions (such as ‘memory’) are enacted
in discourse in general, and conversation in particular (Potter & Wetherell, 1987).
Rejecting individual cognitive psychology, laboratory experiments and traditional social
psychological notions such as attitudes, Discursive Psychology, as pioneered by
Michael Billig (1987, 1988), Jonathan Potter (1996), and Derek Edwards (1997), thus
sought alignment with ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, on the one hand,
and the work of (the later) Wittgenstein,
Interaction and Cognition
Whereas earlier studies in literature, semiotics and text grammar largely focused
on the analysis of written texts, nearly all work in the interdisciplines just mentioned
focused on spoken language in general, and on ‘talk in interaction’ in particular. Only in
cognitive science and some directions of discourse grammar, pragmatics,sociology and
anthropology do we find a more cognitive orientation towards the study of language use
and discourse –an orientation on the ‘mind’ generally rejected or ignored by
interactional approaches to discourse (see the contribution in van Dijk, 2006). These
developments have their counterpart in cognitive linguistics, for instance in the work on
meaning and metaphor by George Lakoff (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) – work that also has
found application in (critical) discourse studies.
There should be little doubt that before long also this broad gap between
interaction and cognition will be bridged, especially since discourse obviously is both a
form of social interaction, as well as a form cognition of communication, and because
there are many ‘mental’ notions that are crucial in any kind of discourse study, such as
meaning, coherence, topics, inference, presupposition, knowledge, belief, opinion, and
so on. Indeed, the very notions of action and interaction cannot properly be defined
without ‘cognitive’ notions such as plan, aim, goal, purpose, coordination, monitoring,
and so on. It is within the study of discourse that such an integration of cognitive and
interactional approaches is most fruitful. The last decades have seen extraordinary
advances in both the study of interaction and that of cognition, and the time has come to
integrate these results. Insight into the detailed mental strategies (and their neurological
basis) of discourse production and comprehension may thus be combined with what we
now know on the details of interactional moves and strategies.
Critical Discourse Studies
At the end of the 1970s, another direction of research emerged in the study of
discourse:
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), originally introduced in a seminal book by Roger
Fowler, Gunther Kress, Bob Hodge and Tony Trew, Language and Control (1979), and
later developed by Norman Fairclough (1989) in the UK, Ruth Wodak (1989) in Austria
and Teun A. van Dijk (1993) in the Netherlands (for introduction, see, e.g., Wodak &
Meyer, 2001). Although some isolated scholars earlier showed some interest in a more
critical approach (e.g., Mey, 1985), we have seen that most of the new studies of
language use emerging in the 1960s were at first quite apolitical. Rather late when
considered against the revolutionary background of the end of the 1960s referred to
above, Critical Discourse Analysis finally began to focus on issues of power,
domination, and social inequality, and on the relevance of gender, race and class in the
study of text and talk.
Much of this critical work was paralleled by similar work done mostly by feminist
women on the relations between language, discourse and gender, and on the ways
male domination is reproduced in text and talk (for an early study, see Kramarae, 1980;
for the vast number of later studies, see the references in
Holmes & Meyerhoff, 2003). Although at first not explicitly carried out within a
CDA-framework, much work on gender and discourse is in fact an excellent example of
a CDA approach (for an explicit CDA approach to gender studies see, e.g., Lazar, 2005;
Wodak, 1997).
Other studies, such as by Wodak and van Dijk, especially focused on the
reproduction of racism and antiSemitism in discourse, for instance in political discourse,
the press, and textbooks (among many studies, see, e.g., van Dijk, 1993; Wodak, et al.,
1990; Wodak & van Dijk, 2000).
In the same way as the study of discourse spread in most of the humanities and
social sciences, also the more critical approaches to language, discourse and
interaction can now be found in many disciplines.
The awareness has grown that with the increasingly powerful methods of the
explicit and systematic description of talk and text, and the more sophisticated theories
of cognition and interaction in their social and institutional contexts, discourse and
conversation analysts are well prepared to tackle more complex and socially relevant
issues. Though, still reluctantly by the more formally inclined scholars interested in more
‘autonomous’ approaches to structures of text and interaction, it has become more
widely acceptedthat discourse is profoundly embedded in society and culture, and
hence, closely related also to all forms of power, power abuse and social inequality. It
has been shown how ethnic prejudices and ideologies are daily produced and
reproduced by political and media discourse of the elites, and thus contribute to the
reproduction of racism. The same is true for everyday sexism in many kinds of
discourse – from conversation to advertising – and the reproduction of the system of
male domination. Obviously, such a critical focus on the discursive reproduction of
social inequality cannot be limited to a narrow discourse or conversation analytical
approach, and requires further integration with the socialsciences. Such an integration
will also need to go beyond the gaps that still influence much of scholarly practice, such
as between micro and macro approaches in sociology, or between cognitive and
interactional approaches throughout the social sciences. This will also require further
integration of the discipline that so far as remained rather distant from the developments
in discourse studies, namely political science – a strange phenomenon when we realize
that policies and politics are ‘done’ virtually only in text and talk.
Finally, besides such a critical perspective in the study of discourse, we face the
challenge of a vast number of urgently required applied studies. These fields of
applications are many, and fortunately much work is already under way. Perhaps most
relevant here are the many application in the field of education, from first and second
language learning and literacy, to the development of curricula, textbook, classroom
interaction, and teaching and learning in general – most of which is discursive (in the
broad semioticsense: text, talk, sound and image). Similar observations hold for the
applied studies of the mass media, of journalism education and of course the field of
psychological intervention. Indeed, there are few applied fields of study and intervention
that do not have an important discursive dimension, and besides its critical perspective,
discourse studies need to increasingly also focus on concrete practical issues of
contemporary societies.
Dimensions of Discourse and Fields of Discourse Studies
The historical sketch – given above – of the emergence of discourse studies in
the various disciplines of the humanities of the social sciences, and its increasing
integration with its sister disciplines, such as semiotics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics,
already provides first insights into the various dimensions of discourse and the fields of
the new cross-discipline. Let us now examine this configuration of the newdiscipline and
its object of study more closely. Thus, for instance, we on the one hand have cognitive
studies of the mental processes involved in the production or comprehension of
discourse, and interactional studies of everyday conversation or institutional talk, on the
other hand. The same is true for more cultural approaches in the ethnography of
speaking, and – in a quite different, more critical, perspective (focusing on e.g., popular
culture or youth culture) – in the ‘Cultural Studies’ developed by Stuart Hall and others
in the UK (Hall, et al., 1978). Strangely, following the same general division of the
mother disciplines, the historical approach to discourse – outside of the theory of
historiography and oral history – so far has been quite marginalin discourse studies,
with the exception of, for instance, the work on anti-Semitism by Ruth Wodak (Wodak,
et al., 1990).
Besides these interdisciplinary approaches in discourse studies, the ‘core’ of the
new discipline remains the systematic and explicit analysis of the various structures and
strategies of different levels of text and talk. Let us briefly review these, also in order to
show how the vast field of discourse studies is organized in various subdisciplines that
also have become more or less independent, as also was the case for, say, lexicology,
phonology, syntax and semantics within linguistics.
Discourse Grammar
The strong influence of linguistics on discourse studies and its development still
shows in the prominent position of grammatical analysis in many discourse studies. We
have seen above that this influence of linguistics also played a central role in the
development of discourse studies, namely in the first ‘text grammars’. We also saw that
various directions in formal grammar (as well as in logic and formal philosophy)
continue to be one of the productive areas of formal discourse analysis. Unfortunately,
this formal direction of research is virtually unknown in other domains of discourse
studies. Within less formal ‘discourse grammars’, we continue to have studies of the
sound structures of discourse (Bolinger, 1989; Brazil, 1975), for instance in studies of
intonation, as well as studies of discourse syntax (Givón, 1979) continuing for instance
the early work on anaphora, which also has links to formal discourse studies.
Strangely, discourse semantics has remained an underdeveloped area of
discourse grammar. Yet, if there is one level of discourse that contributes to the specific
discursive nature of text and talk, it is the study of meaning, as we also know from the
first studies of coherence in the 1960s and 1970s. Part of discoursesemantics, and
shared with work in cognitive linguistics, is of course the research on metaphor, already
mentioned above. Also very relevant is the study of semantic implication (entailment)
and presupposition, for instance as one of the basic dimensions of coherence: In order
to establish coherence relations between the propositions of a discourse, we often need
to spell out the ‘missing links’ of the propositions implied or presupposed by the
propositions explicitly expressed in discourse.
There are many more aspects of discourse meaning that need systematic
analysis and that cannot simply be reduced to the semantics of words and sentences.
For instance, discourse may describe (prescribe, account for, etc.,) events, actions and
actors and may do so in many ways: more or less explicitly or implicitly, more or less
generally or specifically, more or less precisely or vaguely, with many or few details, as
background or as foreground, and so on. There are many constraints on sequences of
descriptions, such as an increasing focus from broader to narrower objects of
description (e.g., from a house to a room in the house, from a room in the house to
furniture in the room, and from furniture to an object on such furniture, and so on – and
in general not vice versa).
The same is true for descriptions of time and tense sequences and, the way
persons and social actors are described, and so on.
One new line of research, carried out within the general framework of Functional-
Systemic grammar, is that of Appraisal Theory, which examines the way opinions are
expressed in discourse (Martin & White, 2005). Discourse meanings may be
characterized in terms of sequences of propositions, but we know thatmeanings are not
limited to local or sequential structures, but also may characterize whole discourses.
The classical example are the ‘topics’ of discourse, traditionally described in terms of
‘semantic macrostructures’, and typically expressed in headlines, leads, introductions,
conclusions, initial ‘thematic’ sentences, and so on (van Dijk, 1980). In linguistic terms,
topics are global meanings that dominate the local meanings of sequences of
sentences or turns of talk. In cognitive terms, topics represent the most important
information of a discourse, as it is being assigned by speakers/writers or recipients.
Topics also represent the kind of information that is best recalled when
understanding discourse, and it is the kind of meaning we usually plan ahead before
starting (or continuing) to speak or write. Despite the fundamental relevance of such
global meanings in the organization and processing of discourse, it is strange that many
directions of discourse and conversation analysis ignore or do not make explicit such
global semantic structures. Indeed, much more semantic research will be necessary to
examine in much more detail the relations between such ‘macrostructures’ and the
‘microstructure’ of local meanings of words and sentences. At the same time, these
studies of local and global meanings of discourse of course need to be related to the
cognitive analysis of discourse, also because they require an explicit account of the
fundamental role of knowledge in the local and global coherence of text and talk. We
see that both at the local and the global level of discourse meaning, there is a vast area
of discourse analysis that remains virtually unexplored, but that should form an
important element of future research on discourse grammar.
Stylistics
Better explored, especially also in sociolinguistics and literary studies, has been
the dimension of language and discourse ‘style’, for instance in what has come to be
known as the subdiscipline of stylistics (Eckert & Rickford, 2001; Scherer & Giles,
1979). Notoriously difficult to define exactly, also because it has so many non-linguistic
meanings (such as the style of clothes, houses, people, etc.,), style may briefly be
defined in terms of the variable expression of discourse as it is conditioned by aspects
of context. The most obvious manifestations of style may be found, as we also know
from sociolinguistics,in the various way people may pronounce sounds, thus producing
more or less formal, more or less casual, more or less higher or lower class ‘styles’ of
speech. Contrary to involuntary ‘accents’, such sound variation is called part of the
‘style’ of a discourse if the speaker is able to control such variation of pronunciation, for
instance to accommodate to the way the recipients speak, or to signal familiarity or a
more formal relationship. Similarly, also lexical variation has traditionally been seen as
one of the basic characteristics of discourse style, usually under the condition that the
underlying meanings remain (more or less) the same. In other words, ‘saying the same
thing in other words’ has often been the rather informal definition of style.
Again, such variation is stylistic if it has contextual conditions or consequences,
as when politicians or newspapers of different political ideologies use the lexical item
‘freedom fighter’ or ‘rebel’, rather than ‘terrorist’, or vice versa, or want to keep a
balanced expression when talking about ‘insurgents’. That is, word choice is one of the
ways people betray their underlying opinions, social attitudes and ideologies, also
because the use of lexical items is associated with underlying norms and values. Apart
from such ‘ideological’ variation of lexical style, there is also a more social one, for
instance in order to express or establish more or less formal positions or relationships.
Thus, politicians in the UK will rather speak about ‘expelling economic
immigrants’ than about ‘throwing scroungers out of the country’ as some racist tabloids
(and politicians) may do, in which case popular styles may combine with racist
(ideological) style. Lexical styles typically come in levels, such as high (very formal,
official), medium (everyday public), and low (colloquial, popular) or even very low
(vulgar) levels of expression. More in general, thus, lexical style signals important
aspects of the context, such as the formality of the event, the social power, position and
status of speakers or recipients, the relations between the participants, the opinions and
ideologies of the speakers, and so on. Such is not only the case for lexical style (or
pronunciation) in talk, but also shows at other levels of discourse, as we know from the
stylistic difference between an English broadsheet, quality newspaper (now also often in
smaller format) such asthe Guardian, on the one hand, and the popular style of the
tabloid The Sun, on the other hand, which also shows in size, type and color of
headline, pictures, lay-out and many other forms of multimodal expression. The same is
true for the difference between the syntax of a Guardian editorial and than of a Sun
editorial. Although usually limited to a study of context-dependent grammatical variation
of expressions (sounds, lay-out, words, sentences), we might extend stylistic analysis
also to other levels of discourse, as long as we maintain one (lower) level constant. For
instance, elite and popular newspapers may write very different stories about the ‘same
event’ (that is, with the same underlying topic or semantic macrostructure), adding or
omitting different details, and we might also call this a difference of ‘style’ between the
newspapers.
Rhetoric
Discourse studies is often defined as the contemporary discipline of what used to
be called rhetoric since antiquity, that is, the practice and study of ‘good’ public
speaking and writing, for instance in parliament, in court or in literature.
Also today, and especially in the USA, the ‘new’ rhetoric is sometimes defined as
a special (sub) discipline in the humanities that overlaps with discourse studies. As is
the case for stylistics, rhetoric is often associated with the study of literature, rather than
with the study of discourse more generally (among a vast amount of studies of rhetoric,
Sloane, 2001).
In order to avoid collapsing rhetoric with discourse studies in general, we
(narrowly) define rhetoric as the subdiscipline of discourse studies focusing on the use
of special ‘rhetorical’ structures of text and talk, such as metaphors, comparisons, irony,
hyperboles, euphemisms, etc., that is, the kind of structures that were traditionally called
‘figures of style’ in classical rhetoric. Unlike other structures of text and talk, these
‘rhetorical’ structures are optional, and used especially to convey or produce specific
effects, for instance as part of strategies of persuasion. These ‘figures’ emphasize or
de-emphasize meaning and thus, draw special attention of recipients, which may lead to
less/better memory of the meanings thus, [de]emphasized. For instance, if politicians or
newspapers want to diminish the negative associations of the word ‘racism’, they may
use the less harsh term ‘popular discontent’ instead. And vice versa, if they want to
emphasize the negative aspect of the arrival of many new immigrants, they might
typically use the expressions ‘wave’ or ‘invasion’, which are at the same time metaphors
and hyperboles (van Dijk, 1993). Given these examples, it is not surprising that rhetoric
is especially popular in the humanities – for instance in the study of literature – and in
the social sciences, for instance in studies of political rhetoric or advertising, although
strictly speaking such studies should not be limited to figures of speech, but also deal
with the cognitive effects of such language use on the recipients and the whole
communicative context. Also, it should be emphasized that discourse has many other
‘persuasive’ dimensions apart from these special rhetoric structures, such as
argumentation, the use of emotion words, and so on.
Superstructures: Discourse Schemas
Whereas stylistics and rhetoric were traditionally closely related to literature and
grammar, there are other structures of text and talk that go far beyond the grammatical
characterization of discourse, and which may be called ‘superstructures’, because they
are abstract form-schemas that globally organize discourse across sentence
boundaries.
A well-known example is the form-schema of argumentation, including such
conventional categories as premises and conclusions. These have been further detailed
in contemporary argumentation studies, a major subfield of discourse studies (van
Eemeren, Grootendorst, Henkemans, 1996). Similarly, stories are often analyzed in
terms of abstract narrative schemas, featuring such categories as Summary,
Orientation, Complication, Resolution and Coda, more or less in this order, as we know
from much narrative studies,another large field of discourse studies (Labov & Waletzky,
1967; Ochs & Capps, 2001). In the same way, many other discourse genres have
‘canonical’ structures that have become conventional and more orless fixed ‘forms’ or
‘formats’ of a genre.
A scholarly article typically consist of such categories as Title, Abstract,
Introduction, TheoreticalFramework, Data/Subjects, Analysis, Conclusions, depending
on the discipline and the subject matter. News reports in the press similarly have one or
more Headlines, a Lead, Main Event Description, Context, Backgrounds, History and
Comments, as formal categories for the organization of specific kinds of information —
typically obtained by different news production strategies, sources or professionals (van
Dijk, 1988). Many professional and institutional discourse types may have such
conventional formats. Even informal conversations have such fixed formal categories,
such as greetings and leave taking, and so on. Much work on professional genres deals
with such ‘schematic’ structures of text and talk (Bhatia, 1993; Gunnarsson, 1997;
Swales, 2004; Ventola & Mauranen, 1996).
Note that all these structures are global, and not local: Just like topics or
semantic macrostructures, they characterize discourse as a whole, or apply to larger
fragments of discourse. Also, even when originally they might have had specific
meaning functions, they are formal categories defining abstract schemas. Thus, the
headline of a news report is a fixed, obligatory category that applies to any news report,
whatever its meaning or content. Yet the function of such a headline is semantic and
cognitive: It expresses the main topic of the text, which in turn organizes its local
meanings, and signals the mostimportant information about an event.
Whereas most other structures of sentences and discourse correspond to
various subdisciplines, there is no subdiscipline that specifically deals with these
schematic structures in general. Rather, different text types or genres may be
associated with such schemas, as we have seen for the conventional schema of an
argumentation.
Discourse Pragmatics
We have seen that pragmatics is one of the overlapping sister-disciplines of
discourse studies: Many studies of discourse are also called ‘pragmatic’ because they
somehow have to do with the study of ‘language use’, rather than with grammar. Here
such a general use of the term ‘pragmatics’ will be avoided, because obviously the
study of ‘language use’ also takes place in socio- and psycholinguistics and other
disciplines, and we prefer to use the notion in a more restricted, technical way than as
some kind as ‘wastepaper basket’ of linguistics (as the philosopher Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
used to say). Part of such a broader study of language use, as we also have seen
above, are for instance the ways language users express or signal politeness and
deference, and in general manage ‘face’. Thus, whereas the study of grammar and style
specifically focuses on form, and semantics focuses on meaning, these pragmatic
aspects rather are specific properties of interaction, such as the social relations
between participants.
Incidentally, although nearly all internationally influential studies referred to in this
chapter are written in English, we should not forget that vast amounts of discourse
studies have been published in French, German, Spanish, Russian and other major
languages. Thus, the study of discourse pragmatics was carried out in Germany already
since the early 1970s, for instance in the work of Wunderlich, Ehlich, and Rehbein (see
the papers in Wunderlich, 1972), scholars who later contributed many other studies in
thefield of discourse analysis. The same is true, for instance, for the work on pragmatic
discourse markers and argumentation by Ducrot (1972, 1980, 1984), in France. It is not
feasible here to review all relevant work in other languages than English. More
specifically, pragmatics will here be understood as the subdiscipline of discourse
studies focusing on speech acts or illocution, that is, the specific social acts
accomplished by language users and that typically are (only) accomplished by text or
talk, such as assertions, promises, questions, congratulations, and so on. Like
sentences and their meanings (propositions), also speech acts usually come in
sequences, as is the case in conversations, parliamentary debates, and other types of
discourse. And as we do for sequences of propositions, also sequences of speech acts
can be said to be locally or globally coherent, for instance when one speech acts
providesreasons for the next one (such as in the sequence Assertion-Request ‘It’s stuffy
in here. Could you please open the window?’). Similarly, the global speech act
performed by this chapter is one of an assertion,whereas the global speech act of an
editorial in the press may be an accusation or a recommendation and the weather
forecast a prediction (van Dijk, 1981).
Conversation Analysis
Last but not least, the vast field of research commonly labeled ‘Conversation
Analysis’ (CA) specifically focuses on the interactional nature of language use and
discourse. Although early work in CA specifically dealt with informal, spontaneous
everyday conversation, later studies also more generally deal with ‘talk in interaction’,
that is, also with institutional dialogues of many kinds. Emerging from microsociology
and ethnomethodology, these studies are specifically interested in the ‘local order’ of
social structure, and how also institutions and organizations are daily produced and
reproduced by talk (Boden & Zimmerman, 1991; Drew & Heritage, 1992).
Although often presented as a separate subdiscipline, the study of talk-
ininteraction obviously belongs to the broader study of discourse. Many of the
interactional aspects of talk are closely related to grammar, semantics, pragmatics and
other dimensions of discourse: Turn taking is based on clues from intonation, syntactic
structure or meaning units. Openings and closings of talk are schematic categories that
havesimilar functions as Introductions, Headlines, on the one hand, or with Conclusions,
on the other hand, prominent in many spoken or written types of discourse. Moves and
strategies of interaction are organized also in terms of meaning, as is the case for
agreements and disagreements. Selfpresentation strategies have both interactional as
well as semantic and formal characteristics, as we also know from such well-known
disclaimers as “I am not a racist, but…”. Indeed, most of the conditions of local and
global coherence, of style and rhetoric, characterize both spoken and written discourse,
and it does not make sense, therefore, to distinguish two disciplines of discourse
studies. On the other hand, studies of written discourse (for instance in argumentation),
should not neglect the interactional dimension of such discourse. And in many forms of
Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) today,such as chatting, talk-in-interaction is
written or multimodal rather than spoken. In sum, the complex and subtle structures and
strategies of interaction are multiply related to all other levels and dimensions of
discourse, and may be studied in a unified framework. Studies on the formal or meaning
aspects of discourse may be complemented by a study of their interactional
dimensions,and vice versa, as we have seen above, the analysis of talk in interaction is
inextricably related to other local, sequential and global dimensions of discourse, from
intonation and syntax, local and global meanings, to schematic organization and speech
acts.
Genre Analysis
From the brief summary given, we see that the study of discourse is a vast field,
consisting of many subdisciplines, and at the same time overlapping with other new
interdisciplines, such as sociolinguistics, and with sister disciplines such as pragmatics
and semiotics. It either is a part or overlaps with virtually all mother disciplines of the
humanities and social sciences.
This overlap with other disciplines also produces the kinds of studies that focus
on different genres, such as the study of many types and subtypes of text and talk in
politics, the media, education, science, law, business, the bureaucracy and also
parliamentary speeches, news reports, editorials, textbooks, classroom lessons, laws,
business letters, phone calls, annual reports, meetings, bureaucratic forms along with a
host of other genres (Bhatia, 1993; Lemke, 1990). Note though that genres are not
merely described in terms of their structures at any of the dimensions mentioned above,
debate has very few exclusive structures – its topics, its forms of rhetoric, its
argumentation, and so on may be part of any discourse about the same subject – and
hence needs to be defined in terms of specific context categories, such as MPs, political
parties, government and opposition, constituents and voters, as well as in terms of
political goals and processes, knowledge and ideologies. Some of these contextual
elements may be accompanied by specific discourse forms, as when members of the
same party in British parliament are traditionally addressed as ‘my honourable
friend’.Such contextual approaches may be combined with the more traditional
descriptions of discourse genres in terms of their structural characteristics, for instance
stories in terms of narrative schemas, style, topics or the perspective of the narrator, or
news reports in terms of its canonical schema, featuring headlines and leads, and other
categories – besides some special lexical items preferred in news discourse (e.g., the
short formal word ‘bid’ in English headlines, rather than the longer noun ‘attempt’). Note
that genre analysis is merely a collective label for what in many respects have become
more or less autonomous subdisciplines of discourse studies, such as conversation
analysis, narrative analysis, argumentation analysis, the study of classroom interaction,
political discourse analysis, media discourse analysis, and so on.
With the usual increasing specialization we know from other disciplines, it is likely
that in the future we’ll have discourse analysts specialized in the study of news in the
press, high school textbooks, schizophrenic talk, parliamentary debates, life stories,
soaps (tele novelas), and so on for many hundreds of other discourse genres defined as
discursive social practices. Applied Discourse Studies
Although we may thus expand the field of discourse studies as far as the study of
the human activity of text, talk and communication may bring us, we now have
summarized at least some of its major subdisciplines. Each of these subdisciplines has
its own background, theories, terms, objects of analysis, methods, aims, introductions,
handbooks, journals, conferences, and even associations of scholars. Each of these
subdisciplines have a more applied dimension, when no longer mere theory or
description is relevant, but concrete applications, interventions and the use of science in
the solution of social problems are required. In linguistics, we are familiar with the use
of grammar in the study of first or second language learning, translation, and other
aspects of language use. In discourse studies, the number ofpossible applications is so
vast that they cannot even be summarized here, because they pertain to anyaspect of
language use, interaction and communication, from literacy to the formation of
journalists, peace negotiation and the critique of advertising and political manipulation.
Pervasive and probably most relevant are all applications in education, such as
curricula, the production of adequate (and non-racist, non-sexist, etc.,) textbooks,
programs of classroom intervention, testing and so on.
Now we have some more insight into the structures of talk and text, as well as
their cognitive basis and social and cultural contexts, we in principle are also in a better
position to engage in the treatment of the many social issues that have a discursive
dimension. People may not first think of text and talk when dealing with racism, for
instance, until it is shown that racist prejudices and ideologies that are the basis of racist
discrimination are largely acquired by discourse, especially the public discourses of the
elites, e.g., in politics, the mass media and textbooks. Much critical and practical studies
on discourse combine theoretical, descriptive and ‘applied’ dimensions, and indeed
hardly differentiate between such dimensions of scholarly activity. Critical discourse
analysis focuses on social problems and not on scholarly paradigms, and tries to
understand and solve such problems with any kind of method, theory or description that
may be relevant – taking into account the experiences and perspectives of the
participants.
DISCUSSION POINT:
1. What is the basis of the emergence of the study of discourse?
2. What are the methodological common grounds of ethnography of speaking as

well as conversation analysis and discourse?
 What is is the importance of discourse in language?

QUIZZES 9-10
NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________
I. IDENTIFICATION:
Direction: Identify the words being referred to by the following statement below.
Write your answer on the space provided.
__________1. It is the study of the relations between languages and their users.
__________2.He became interested in the ethnographic study of communicative
events (beyond the traditional study of myths and folklore).
__________3. Discourse Representation Theory and others influenced by the

mathematician and formal philosopher.
__________4.It is the general study of signs and symbol systems.
__________5.It is a direction in microsociology focusing on the ways people

__________6.At the end of 1960’s appeared another new discipline at the
boundaries of linguistic and social science.
__________7.It is a representation of events and situation in the episodic
memory.
__________8.It is the record of our personal experiences.
__________9.The__________ is often define as the contemporary discipline of
what used to e called rhetoric.
__________10.It is specifically focused on the interactional nature of language
use and discourse.
II. MULTIPLE CHOICES

Direction: Read and analyze the statement below. Choose the letter of the
correct answer on the space provided.
1. It is the use of natural language in communication
a. Semantics
b. Linguistics
c. Pragmatics
d. Discourse
2. It involves communication between people and, therefore, includes the

human element in particular intentions and interpretations.
a. Pragmatics
b. Lexical
c. Linguistics
d. Discourse
3. He became interested in the ethnographic study of communicative events

(beyond the traditional study of myths and folklore).
a. Wolfgang Dressler
b. Dell Hymes
c. Joseph Grimes
d. Bill Mann
4. Discourse Representation Theory and others influenced by the

a. H. P. Grice
b. Penelope Brown
c. Stephen Levinson
d. Richard Montague
5. How to Do Things with Words, was written by:
a. Austin (1962)
b. Searle (1969)
c. H. P. Grice (1975)
d. Levinson (1987).
6. It is the general study of signs and symbol systems.
a. Semiotics
b. Pragmatics
c. Discourse
d. Syntax
7. It is a direction in microsociology focusing on the ways people understand

and manage their everyday life.
a. Methodology
b. Ethnomethodology
c. Sociology
d. Ethnology
8. It the record of all our personal experiences.
a. Short term memory

b. Long term memory
c. Episodic memory
d. Explicit memory
9. It interested especially in the way ‘psychological’ notions (such as

‘memory’) are enacted in discourse in general, and conversation in
particular.
a. Social psychology
b. Discursive Psychology
c. conversation analysis
d. discourse psychology
10. What does the acronym CDA means:
a. Critical discourse analyze

b. Critical discursive analysis
c. Critical discourse analysis
d. Critical discursive analyze
PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION
NAME: _________________________________ PERMIT #: _____________

SECTION & SCHEDULE: __________________ DATE: ________________
I. MULTIPLE CHOICES
answer.
1. The learning theory that derived from a general theory of learning, the behaviorist
view states that the language behavior of the individual is conditioned by sequences of
differential rewards in his/her environment.
B. Behaviorists Learning Theory
2. The learning theory that Chomsky argues that language is not acquired by children
by sheer imitation and through a form of conditioning on reinforcement and reward.
B. Behaviorist Learning Theory
3. These are the three crucial elements of learning according to behaviorist except one.
A. Conditioning
B. Response
C. Reinforcement
D. Stimulus
4. What is the terminology for Cognitivists?
A. Innatists
B. Innaets
C. Innist
D. Inniast
5. What is one important feature of the mentalist account of second language
acquisition?
A. Central hypothesis
B. Hypothesis testing
C. Cognate hypothesis
D. Classical hypothesis
6. It claims that there are two ways of developing competence.
A. Affective filter hypothesis
B. Monitor hypothesis
C. Input hypothesis
D. Acquisition learning hypothesis
7. One of the five hypotheses of the acquisition of language that suggests that
grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order for both children and adults,
that is, certain grammatical structure are acquired before others, irrespective of the
language being learned.
A. Acquisition learning hypothesis

B. Input hypothesis
D. Affective filter hypothesis
8. It is the filter that consists of attitude to language, motivation, self-confidence and

anxiety.
A. Natural order hypothesis

B. Affective filter hypothesis
C. Input hypothesis
9. The monitor hypothesis. It claims that conscious learning on grammatical rules has
an extremely limited function is language performance as a monitor of editor that checks
output.
A. Monitor hypothesis
B. Input hypothesis
D. Affection filter hypothesis
10. Krashen proposes that when learners are exposed to grammatical features a little
beyond of their current learning (i.e., I + I) those features are ‘acquired'.
A. Input hypothesis
B. Natural order hypothesis
C. Affection filter hypothesis
11. In this view about language, they believe that language can be described in terms of
observable and verifiable data as it is being used. Who are they?
A. Structuralist
B. Transformationalist
C. Rationalists
D. Interactionist
12. In this view about language, they believe that language is a system of knowledge
made manifest in linguistic forms but innate and, in its most abstract form, universal.
Who are they?
A. Interactionist
B. Rationalists
D. Structuralist
13. In this view about language, they believe that language is a vehicle for establishing
interpersonal relations and for performing social transactions between individuals. Who
are they?
A. Transformationalist
B. Functionalist
C. Interactionist
D. Rationalists
14. In this view about language, they believe that language is a dynamic system through
which members of a community exchange information
A. Interactionist
B. Rationalists
D. Functionalist
15. In this view about language, they believe that speaking and understanding language
are considered fundamentally human traits that are biologically determined. In contrast,
reading and writing require explicit teaching to develop these abilities and are learned
with much more effort and repetition, typically in a school setting.
A. Contemporalists
B. Rationalists
C. Functionalist
D. Interactionist
16. Which statement is true about the view of language that language is arbitrary?
B. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or the
ideas conveyed by them.
C. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds.
D. Language is an important means of communicating between humans of their ideas,
beliefs, or feelings.
17. Which statement is true about the view of language that Language is a means of
communication?
B. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds.
C. Language is an important means of communicating between humans of their ideas,
D. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or the
8. Which statement is true about the view of language that Language is primarily vocal?
A. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or the
B. Language is an important means of communicating between humans of their ideas,
C. Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by the speech
D. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds.
19. Which among the statements about the contemporary view of language is incorrect?
A. Language teaching content, according to this view, may be specified and organized
by patterns of exchange and interaction.
B. The connection of a grammar to language processing, all of which are critical for a
theory of language acquisition.
C. This specialized language faculty triggers the development of linguistic knowledge
that uses at least four different mechanisms for conveying semantic relation.
D. Individuals must operate with an unfolding theory of mind (i.e., the ability to attribute
mental states such as beliefs, intents, desires, knowledge, pretend, to oneself and
others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires.
20. Which among the following statements is a view about language?

A. Behaviorism emphasizes that consequences of the response and argues that it is the
behavior that follows a response which reinforces it and thus helps to strengthen the
association.
B. The natural order hypothesis suggests that grammatical structures are acquired in a
predictable order for both children and adults, that is, certain grammatical structure are
acquired before others, irrespective of the language being learned.
C. According to Government Binding Theory language acquisition, the child operated as
a mini-linguist.
D. Language is a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily assigned tothe objects, states,
and concept to which they refer, used for human communication.
21. In child language has been a rich source of data supporting Chomsky’s theory, as
discussed by Leonard and Loeb (1988).
A. Cross-linguistic evidence
B. Behaviorist Paradigm
C. Cognitive Interactionist Paradigm
D. Information Processing Models
22. According to this perspective, explanations of behavior rely only on observable

phenomena; in the most radical version of this position, no inferences regarding
internal, unobservable events are made.
23. This language development is can be discussed relative to two paradigms: cognitive
interactionist (Information Processing and Cognitive-Constructivist) and social
interactionist (Social-Cognitive, Social-Pragmatic, and Intentionality Model).
24. Osgood’s model identified the modalities that were said to underlie language
functioning—namely, visual and auditory memory, auditory discrimination, visual
association, visual reception, and auditory closure.
25. Describes parallel processing rather than serial processing of language. According
to this view, networks of processors are connected and several operations or decisions
may occur simultaneously (Bohannon & Bonvillian, 2005).
B. Social-Cognitive Models
C. Social-Pragmatic Models
D. Connectionist
26. Vygotsky believed that children’s cognitive development resulted from interaction
between children’s innate skills and their social experiences with peers, adults, and the
culture in general.
D. Connectionist
27. Pragmatics in linguistic theory has traditionally been concerned with the functions of
language, speaker–listener roles, conversational discourse, and presupposition.
D. Connectionist
28. This is a terminology that refers to the child’s ability to take information s/he knows
to learn new information.
A. Bootstrapping
B. Operant Conditioning
C. Classical Conditioning
D. Prosodic Bootstrapping
29. This refers to the child’s use of grammar to learn new language forms. For example,
teaching a particular verb form in several linguistic contexts heightens the child’s
awareness of varied syntactic uses of the form.
A. Locutions
B. Syntactic bootstrapping
C. Illocutions
D. The law of effect
30. He was the famous proponent of Classical Conditioning.

A. Pavlov
B. Piaget
C. Vygotsky
D. Bruner
II. ALTERNATIVE CHOICES: True or False

DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Write TRUE is the statement is
correct and FALSE if otherwise. Put your answer after the question.
1. A of minimal phonological contrasts is a set of words differing only by one
PARADIGM speech sound.
2. A PHONEMES are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme.
3. An ALLOPHONES are the linguistically contranstive or significant sounds or set
sounds of a language.
4. Only /g/ symbol does occur in a paradigm
5. PHONEMES are sequentially grouped or parsed into syllables.
6. UNITS that are paradigmatically opposed to each other belong to different classes
that function in different ways.
7. A hierarchical structure are units within units within units.
8. TWO units of the hierarchical unit is obligatory.
9. Every WORD is made up of one or more syllable.
10. Every SYLLABLE is made up of one or more phonemes
III. IDENTIFICATION
DIRECTIONS: Read the following statements carefully. Put your answer after the
sentences.
1. Language is a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily assigned to the objects, states,
and concept to which they refer, used for human communication.
2. Language gives shape to people’s thoughts, as well as guides and controls their
activity.
3. Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by the speech
4. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or the
5.Language is a system of structurally related elements or ‘building blocks' for the
encoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes (sounds), morpheme (words), tag
meme (phrases and sentences/ clauses).
6. It is the study of the sound structure of language.
7. It is to have a nucleus which is vowel, or vowel like sound.
8. It is to have a primary stressed syllable.
9. It is to have a tonic syllable.
10. It identifies a unit’s identity within a language.

MIDTERM EXAMINATION
NAME: _________________________________ PERMIT #: _____________

SECTION & SCHEDULE: __________________ DATE: ________________
I. IDENTIFICATION.
DIRECTION: Identify what is being described in the statement. Write your answer on
the space provided.
__ _ 1. Are those that cannot stand on their own as independent words. They are
always attached to a free morpheme.
__ __ 2. A morphs which belong to the same morpheme.
____ 3. Is a short segment of language that meets three criteria?
_ _ __ 4. That can stand on their own as independent words.
____ 5. Are those that never change that form class of the words or morphemes to
which they are attached.
_______6. Consist of a present participle, a past participle and modifiers.
_______7. A groups of words including a noun or pronoun and a participle as well as
any associated modifiers.
_______8. Works as a noun in a sentence.
_______9. Consist of an infinite, and modifiers or other words associated to the
infinitive.
_______10. Works like an adverb to modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb.
_______11. This is involving the extension of a morpheme form one syntactic category
to another.
_______12. This involves creating a new word by combining two free morphemes.
_______13. This process forms a word by removing what is mistaken for an affix.
_______14. This process forms a word from a proper name.
_______15. It is shortened form of a pre-existing forms.
_______16. Clause which does not express complete thought. And depends on another
clause to express complete thought.
_______17. A dependent clause that functions as a noun in a sentence is called.
_______18. Contains a noun and other related words. It works like a noun in a
sentence.
_______19. Is a group of words that works like what in a sentence?
_______20. A combination of main verb and its auxiliaries.
_______21. Vocal folds convert the energy into audible sound is called.
_______22. Lungs that is provide the energy source is called.
_______23. It is the Articulators which transform the sound into intelligible speech.
_______24. It is usually contrast of a vowel surrounded optionally by a number of
consonants
_______25. It is essentially single vowel phonemes that consist of two pure vowel
targets in sequence.
_______26. It is a continuation of the trachea.
_______27. It can be said to have a greater degree of construction than vowels.
______28. It is indicated by a preceding superscript and offglides by a following

superscript of a symbol appropriate to the pronunciation of the glide structure.
______29. It is a complex articulation and is an example of simultaneous nasalization.
______30. It introduces an r-colouration to a vowel usually by curling tongue tip up and
back from its normal position.
II. MULTIPLE CHOICES.

DIRECTIONS: Encircle the letter of the correct answer.
1. Is a process that results in two sounds becoming less alike in articulatory or acoustic
terms.
A. Assimilation
B. Dissimilation
C. Deletion
D. Epenthesis
2. Is a process that results two sounds becoming more like another nearby sound in
terms of one or more of its phonetic characteristics.
A. Assimilation
B. Dissimilation
C. Deletion
D. Epenthesis
3. Is a process that reorders or reverse a sequence of segments.

A. Assimilation
B. Folk Etymology
C. Deletion
D. Methathesis
4. Is a process that removes a segment form certain phonetic contacts.

A. Assimilation
B. Folk Etymology
C. Deletion
D. Methathesis
5. Is a process that inserts a syllable or nonsyllabic segment within an existing string of

segment.
A. Clipped Form
B. Epenthesis
C. Deletion
D. Methathesis
6. It is a combination of parts of two pre-existing forms.

A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
7. It is a word formed from the names of the first letters on the prominent syllables of a
word.
A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
8. This involves the addition of a derivational affix, changing the syntactic category of
the item which is attached.
A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
9. It is a word formed from the first letters of each word in a phrase.

A. Acronym
B. Blend
C. Abbreviation
D. Derivation
10. Has two basic components: a verbal element and a complement.

A. Structure of Prediction
B. Structure of Complementation
C. Structure of Modification
D. Structure of Coordination
III. TRUE OR FALSE. Write TRUE if the statement is correct, otherwise FALSE.
______1. Blend is a combination of parts of two pre-existing forms.

______2. Derivational Morpheme are those that are added to root morphemes.
______3. Free Morphemes are those cannot stand on their own as independent words.
______4. Morpheme is short segment of language.
______5. She cooked at home. Is an example of Bound Morpheme?
______6. Independent Clause is a clause which does not express complete thought.
______7. Noun Phrase contains a noun and other related words.
______8. Gerund phrase works like an adverb to modify a verb, an adjective or another
adverb.
______9. Back Formation is a process forms a word by removing what is mistaken for
an affi.
______10. Methathesis is a process that reorders or reverses a sequence of segments.

FINAL EXAMINATION
I. IDENTIFICATION:
DIRECTIONS: Identify the words being referred to by the following statement

below. Write your answer on the space provided.
_____________1. It is the study of meaning of morphemes, words, phrases and
sentences.
_____________2. It is the meaning of words and the relationship among words.
_____________3. It is the meaning of syntactic units larger than one word.
_____________4. It is formulating semantic rules that build the meaning of a

sentence based of the meaning of the words and how they combine.
_____________5. Compositional semantic is also known as_____ because the

speaker’s knowledge of truth condition is central.
_____________6. It is one sentence entails another if whenever the first

sentence second one must be true also.
_____________7. It arises from multiple meanings corresponding to the same

word or phrase.
____________8. This are sentence that seem to be anomalous but are

understood in terms of meaningful concept.
____________9. This are phrases with meanings that cannot be predicted based
on the meanings of the individual words.
____________10. It is the real-world object designated by a word.

It is the study of the relations between languages and their users.
__________11.He became interested in the ethnographic study of

communicative events (beyond the traditional study of myths and folklore).
__________12. Discourse Representation Theory and others influenced by the

__________13.It is the general study of signs and symbol systems.
__________14.It is a direction in microsociology focusing on the ways people

__________15.The__________ is often define as the contemporary discipline of
what used to e called rhetoric.
II. MULTIPLE CHOICES
DIRECTIONS: Read and analyze the statement below. Choose the letter of the
correct answer on the space provided.
11. It is the meaning of words and the relationships among words.

a. Lexical semantics
b. Phrasal semantics
c. Compositional semantics
d. Discourse semantics
12. It is the meaning of syntactic units larger than one word

a. Discourse semantics
b. Lexical semantics
c. Phrasal semantics
d. Compositional semantics
13. It arises from multiple syntactic structures corresponding to the same

string of words.
a. Semantic ambiguity
b. Syntactic ambiguity
c. Linguistis ambiguity
d. Lexical ambiguity
14. It is the use of natural language in communication

a. Semantics
b. Linguistics
c. Pragmatics
d. Discourse
15. It involves communication between people and, therefore, includes the

human element in particular intentions and interpretations.
a. Pragmatics
b. Lexical
c. Linguistics
d. Discourse
16. He became interested in the ethnographic study of communicative events

(beyond the traditional study of myths and folklore).
a. Wolfgang Dressler
b. Dell Hymes
c. Joseph Grimes
d. Bill Mann
17. Discourse Representation Theory and others influenced by the

a. H. P. Grice
b. Penelope Brown
c. Stephen Levinson
d. Richard Montague
18. How to Do Things with Words, was written by:

a. Austin (1962)
b. Searle (1969)
c. H. P. Grice (1975)
d. Levinson (1987).
19. It is the general study of signs and symbol systems.

a. Semiotics
b. Pragmatics
c. Discourse
d. Syntax
20. It is a direction in microsociology focusing on the ways people understand

and manage their everyday life.
a. Methodology
b. Ethnomethodology
c. Sociology
d. Ethnology
21. It the record of all our personal experiences.
a. Short term memory
b. Long term memory
c. Episodic memory
d. Explicit memory
22. It interested especially in the way ‘psychological’ notions (such as

‘memory’) are enacted in discourse in general, and conversation in
particular.
a. Social psychology
b. Discursive Psychology
c. conversation analysis
d. discourse psychology
23. What does the acronym CDA means:

a. Critical discourse analyze
b. Critical discursive analysis
c. Critical discourse analysis
d. Critical discursive analyze
24. It examines the way opinions are expressed in discourse.

a. Appraisal Theory
b. Functional-Systemic grammar
c. CDA
d. CA
25. It may briefly be defined in terms of the variable expression of discourse

as it is conditioned by aspects of context.
a. Style
b. Stylistics
c. Linguistics
d. Pragmatics
III. Lexical Relations:
Direction: Write whether the following words are Homonyms, Homographs,
Polysemous, and Hyponyms.
________1. bark- (sound of dog) bark- (part of tree)
________2. hound- (dog breed) hound- (to pester)
________3. row- (argument) row- (row of seats)
________4. present- (a gift) present- (to introduce)
________5. poker, roulette (games)
_______6.bow- (front of ship) bow- (ranged weapon)
_______7. lead- (guide) led- (metallic)
_______8. desert- (dry place) desert- (abandon)
_______9. address-(where one live) address- (to give speech)
_______10. fix- (attach, arrange, repair)
IV. Tell whether the following words and meaning are a Lexical Relations:
Synonym or Antonym.
DIRECTIONS: Write S if it is Synonym and A if it is Antonym on the space
provided.
_____1. afraid- valiant
_____2. ask- retort
_____3. begin- commence
_____4. correct- accurate
_____5. friend- antagonist

_____6. laugh- chortle
_____7. naughty- mischievous
_____8. noisy- tranquil
_____9. repair- demolish
_____10. small- minuscule
ANSWER KEYS:
QUIZ #1:
I. MULTIPLE CHOICES
1. A
2. C
3. C
4. D
5. B
6. B
7. C
8. C
9. A
10. D
I. IDENTIFICATION
1. Structuralist
2. Language is a means of communication.
3. Language is primarily vocal.
4. Language is arbitrary.
5. Language is a system of systems.
1. TRUE
2. TRUE
3. TRUE
4. TRUE
5. FALSE
QUIZ #2:
I.MULTIPLE CHOICES
1. B
2. A
3. A
4. A
5. B
6. D
7. C
8. B
9. A
10. A
II. IDENTIFICATION
1. Government Binding Theory
2. Jean Piaget
3. Intentionality
4. Schema
5. Assimilation
1. TRUE
2. FALSE
3. FALSE
4. TRUE
5. TRUE
QUIZ #3:
I Multiple Choice
1. A
2. B
3. C
4. D
5. D
6. B
7. C
8. A
9. B
10. A
II. Identification
1. Bruner
2. John Dore
3. Vygotsky
4. Osgood
5. B. F. Skinner
III. Alternative Choices: True or False
1. TRUE
2. FALSE
3. TRUE
4. TRUE
5. TRUE
QUIZ #4:
I. Identification
1. Phonology
2. Syllable
3. Word
4. Intonational Phrase
5. Syntagmatic
6. Phoneme
7. Allophones
8. Headedness
9. Language
10. Words
II. Alternative Choices: True or False.
1. TRUE
2. FALSE
3. FALSE
4. FALSE
5. TRUE
6. TRUE
7. TRUE
8. FALSE
9. TRUE
10. TRUE
QUIZ #5:
I. IDENTIFICATION
1. Phonation
2. Respiration
3. Articulation
4. Syllables
5. Diphthongs
6. Larynx
7. Consonants
8. Onglides
9. Vowel Nasalisation
10. Vowel Retroflexion
II. MULTIPLE RESPONSE
1. A
2. A
3. A
4. D
5. A
6. A
7. C
8. A
9. B
10. D
QUIZ #6:
I. IDENTIFICATION
1. Bound Morpheme
2. Allomorphs
3. Morpheme
4. Free Morpheme
5. Inflectional Morpheme
6. Category Extension
7. Compounding
8. Back Formation
9. Proper Name
10. Clipped Form
II. MULTIPLE CHOICE
II. Multiple Choice
1. B
2. A
3. D
4. C
5. B
6. B
7. C
8. D
9. A
10. B
QUIZ #7:
I. IDENTIFICATION
1. Dependent Clause
2. Noun Clause
3. Noun Phrase
4. Adjective Phrase
5. Verb Phrase
7. Absolute Phrase
8. Gerund Phrase
10. Adverb Phrase
II.
1. As adverb
2. Modifies boy
3. Modifies Verb return
4. As Adjective, modiefies plan
5. as noun/ subject
QUIZ #8:
I.IDENTIFICATION
1. SEMANTICS
2. LEXICAL SEMANTICS
3. PHRASAL OR SENTENTIAL SEMANTIC
4. COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTIC
5. TRUTH CONDITIONAL SEMANTIC
6. ENTAILMENT
7. LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
8. METAPHORS
9. IDIOMATIC PHRASES
10. REFERENT
II.LEXICAL RELATIONS
1. HOMONYMS
2. HOMOGRAPHS
3. POLYSEMOUS
4. HOMOGRAPHS
5. HYPONYMS
6. HOMONYMS
7. HOMOGRAPHS
8. HOMOGRAPHS
9. HOMOGRAPHS
10. POLYSEMOUS
QUIZZES #9-#10
I. IDENTIFICATION
1. Pragmatics
2. Dell Hymes
3. Richard Montague
4. Semiotics
5. Ethnomethodology
6. Sociolinguistics
7. Mental model
8. Episodic memory
9. Discourse studies
10. Conversation Analysis
II.MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. C
2. A
3. B
4. D
5. A
6. A
7. B
8. C
9. B
10. C
PRELIMINARY EXAM:
I. MULTIPLE CHOICES 8. B 28. A
1. B 21. A 9. A 29. B
2. A 22. B 10. A 30. A
3. A 23. C 11.A
4. A 24. D 12. C
5. B 25. D 13. C
6. D 26. B 14. D
7. C 27. C 15. B
16.B 8. FALSE
17. C 9. TRUE
18. C 10. TRUE
19. A III. IDENTIFICATION
20. D 1. Structuralist
2. Language is a means of
communication.
3. Language is primarily vocal.
II. Alternative Choices: True or False.
4. Language is arbitrary.
1. TRUE
5. Language is a system of systems.
2. FALSE
6. Phonology
3. FALSE
7. Syllable
4. FALSE
8. Word
5. TRUE
9. Intonational Phrase
6. TRUE
10. Syntagmatic
7. TRUE
MIDTERM EXAM:
I. Identification 8. Gerund Phrase

1. Bound Morpheme
10. Adverb Phrase
2. Allomorphs
11. Category Extension
3. Morpheme
12. Compounding
4. Free Morpheme
13. Back Formation
5. Inflectional Morpheme
14. Proper Name
15. Clipped Form
7. Absolute Phrase
16. Dependent Clause
17. Noun Clause 7. C
18. Noun Phrase 8. D
19. Adjective Phrase 9. A
20. Verb Phrase 10. A.
21. Phonotation
22. Respiration III. True or False
23. Articulation 1. TRUE
24. Syllables 2. TRUE
25. Diphthongs 3. FALSE
26. Larnyx 4. TRUE
27. Consonants 5. FALSE
28. On Glides 6. TRUE
29. Vowel Nasalisation 7. TRUE
30. Vowel Retroflexion 8. FALSE
II. Multiple Choice 9. TRUE
1. B 10. TRUE
2. A
3. D
4. C
5. B
6. B
FINAL EXAM:
I.IDENTIFICATION 9. IDIOMATIC PHRASES
10. REFERENT
1. SEMANTICS
11. DELL HYMES
2. LEXICAL SEMANTICS
12. RICHARD MONTAGUE
3. PHRASAL OR SENTENTIAL
13. SEMIOTIC
SEMANTIC
14. ETHNOMETHODOLOGY
4. COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTIC
15. DISCOURSE STUDIES
5. TRUTH CONDITIONAL
SEMANTIC
6. ENTAILMENT
II.MULTIPLE CHOICE
7. LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
8. METAPHORS 1. A
2. C 9. A
3. B 10. S
4. A
5. B
6. B
7. A
8. A
9. B
10. C
11. B
12. C
13. A
14. A
15. B
II. LEXICAL RELATIONS

1. HOMONYMS
2. HOMOGRAPHS
3. POLYSEMOUS
4. HOMOGRAPHS
5. HYPONYMS
6. HOMONYMS
7. HOMOGRAPHS
8. HOMOGRAPHS
9. HOMOGRAPHS
10. POLYSEMOUS
IV.
1. A
2. A
3. S
4. S
5. A
6. S
7. S
8. A

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INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: Views About Language

CHAPTER 2: Acquisition of Language

CHAPTER 3: Historical and Contemporary Views of Language

Learning and Influences of Theories on

CHAPTER 10: Discourse

 Language is a means of communication.

 Language is primarily vocal.

 Language is a system of systems.

Language is a system of structurally related elements or ‘building

That language is arbitrary means that the relationship between the

Biological Bases for Rationalists:

Heredity. According to Lenneberg, even with environmental deprivation, the

No history within species. Lenneberg argued that because we have no evidence

Pinker and Jackendoff (2005) address more challenging questions, such as

According to these authors, the four mechanisms are sometimes used

 Work in pairs and discuss the contribution of those views to language

NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________

SECTION & SCHEDULE: ____________________ SCORE: _____________

A. Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by the speech

A. Language is speech, primarily made of vocal sounds produced by the speech

A. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their meanings or

A. Language teaching content, according to this view, may be specified and

10. Which among the following statements is a view about language?

A. Behaviorism emphasizes that consequences of the response and argues that it

______4. There is no inherent relation between words of a language and their

______5. Language is a system of structurally related elements or ‘building blocks' for

III. Alternative Choices: True or False.

______1. Language is speech.

1. Behaviorist learning theory.

It regards language learning as a behaviorist like other forms of human

1. Cognitive learning theory. Chomsky argues that language is not

The five hypotheses are:

Learning – the conscious process of knowing about language and

Acquisition parallels first language development in children

b. The natural order hypothesis. It suggests that grammatical structures

Group 1: present progressive -ing (She is running)

Group 4: regular past –ed (She played yesterday.)

c. The monitor hypothesis. It claims that conscious learning on

d. The input hypothesis. Krashen proposes that when learners are

2. Transformational Generative Grammar—Chomsky Within the

 Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar 1957, 1965) and

 In the syntactic component, the deep structures and surface

To describe how the spoken form of a sentence was derived,

 According to Chomsky’s (1965) early view, the child brought a

 Chomsky’s description of language acquisition, according to

3. A revised theory of language, called Government Binding Theory,

5. Bloom and Tinker’s model

 Intentionality states include psychological attitudes (e.g.,

Implications for teaching:

1. Teachers must continuously deliver at a level understandable by

ICCT Colleges Foundation Inc.

NAME: ___________________________________ DATE: ______________

SECTION & SCHEDULE: ____________________ SCORE: _____________

A. Cognitive Learning Theory

B. Behaviorists Learning Theory

C. Social Learning Theory

D. Psycho-social Learning Theory

A. Cognitive Learning Theory

B. Behaviorist Learning Theory

C. Social Learning Theory

D. Psycho-social Learning Theory

3. These are the three crucial elements of learning according to behaviorist

NAME: _____________________ DATE:

SECTION & SCHEDULE: ________ SCORE: _

NAME: _____________________ DATE:

SECTION & SCHEDULE: ________ SCORE: _

NAME: _____________________ DATE:

SECTION & SCHEDULE: ________ SCORE: _