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1. Branches of linguistics in the macrolinguistic / microlinguistic perspective ?
Linguistics can be subdivided into several branches according to the perspective of the study or to the focus on a certain category of phenomena or hypotheses.
John Lyons identifies four such distinctions:
a) general – descriptive;
b) diachronic – synchronic;
c) theoretical – applicative;
d) macrolinguistic – microlinguistic.
Microlinguistics is a branch of linguistics that concerns itself with the study of language systems in the abstract, without regard to the meaning or notional content of linguistic expressions. In micro-linguistics, language is reduced to the abstract mental element of syntax and the physical elements of phonology and phonotactics. It contrasts with macro-linguistics, which includes meanings, and especially with sociolinguistics, which studies how language and meaning function within human social systems.
Microlinguistics includes phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics.
Macrolinguistics includes sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, stylistics, discourse analysis, computational linguistics, cognitive linguistics, applied linguistics.
# 1 Microlinguistics
* 1.1 Phonetics
* 1.2 Phonology
* 1.3 Morphology
* 1.4 Syntax
* 1.5 Semantics
* 1.6 Pragmatics
# 2 Macrolinguistics
[1] Microlinguistics
[1.1] Phonetics
Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds. It studies how speech sounds are articulated, transmitted, and received.
[1.2] Phonology
Phonology is the study of how speech sounds function in a language, it studies the ways speech sounds are organized. It can be seen as the functional phonetics of a particular language.
[1.3] Morphology
Morphology is the study of the formation of words. It is a branch of linguistics which breaks words itno morphemes. It can be considered as the grammar of words as syntax is the grammar of sentences.
[1.4] Syntax
Syntax deals with the combination of words into phrases, clauses and sentences. It is the grammar of sentence construction.
[1.5] Semantics
Semantics is a branch of linguistics which is concerned with the study of meaning in all its formal aspects. Words have several types of meanign.
[1.6] Pragmatics
Pragmatics can bedefined as the study oflanguage in use. It deals with how speakers use language in ways which cannot be predicted from lingistic knowledge alone, and how hearers arrive at the intended meaningof speakers. PRAGMATICS =MEANING-SEMANTICS.
[2] Macrolinguistics
[2.1] Socilinguistics
Socilinguistics studies the relations between language and society: how social factors influence the structure and use of language.
[2.2] Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics is the study of language and mind: the mental structures and processes which are involved in the acquistion, comprehension and production of language.
[2.3] Neurolingistics
Neurolingistics is the study of language prodessing and language representation in the brain. It typically studies the disturbances of language comprehension and production caused by the damage of certain areas of the brain.
[2.4] Stylistics
Stylistics is the study of how literary effects can be related to linguistic features. It usually refers to the study of written language, including literary text, but it also investigates spoken language sometimes.
[2.5] Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis, or text linguistics is the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which language is used. It deals with how sentences ins poken and written language form larger meaningful units.
[2.6] Computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an approach to linguistics which employs mathematical techniques, often with the help of a computer.
[2.7] Cognitive linguistics
Cognitive linguistics is an approach to the analysis of natural language that focuses on language as an instrument for organizing, processing, and conveying information.
[2.8] Applied linguistics
Applied linguistics is primarily concerned with the application of linguistic theories, methods and findings to the elucidation of language problems which have arisen in other areas of experience.
2. Dichotomies in the divisions of linguistics ?
Dichotomy is defined as division into two usually contradictory parts or opinions: “the dichotomy of the one and the many” (Louis Auchincloss). IN BRIEF: A division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups.
A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts.
In other words, it is a partition of a whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets) that are:
· mutually exclusive : nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts, and
· jointly exhaustive : everything must belong to one part or the other.
The two parts thus formed are complements. In logic, the partitions are opposites if there exists a proposition such that it holds over one and not the other.
Usage:
· The above applies directly when the term is used in linguistics. For example, if there is a concept A, and it is split into parts B and not-B, then the parts form a dichotomy: they are mutually exclusive, since no part of B is contained in not-B and vice-versa, and they are jointly exhaustive, since they cover all of A, and together again give A.
An important topical division is between the study of language structure (grammar) and the study of meaning (semantics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words combine into phrases and sentences) and phonology (the study of sound systems and abstract sound units). Phonetics is a related branch of linguistics concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), non-speech sounds, and how they are produced and perceived. Other sub-disciplines of linguistics include: evolutionary linguistics which considers the origins of language; historical linguistics which explores language change; sociolinguistics which looks at the relation between linguistic variation and social structures; psycholinguistics which explores the representation and functioning of language in the mind; neurolinguistics which looks at the representation of language in the brain; language acquisition which considers how children acquire their first language and how children and adults acquire and learn their second and subsequent languages; in addition, discourse analysis is concerned with the structure of texts and conversations, and pragmatics with how meaning is transmitted based on a combination of linguistic competence, non-linguistic knowledge, and the context of the speech act.
Linguistics - Dichotomies and language
The study of linguistics can be thought of along three major axes, the endpoints of which are described below:
· Synchronic vs Diachronic: Synchronic study of a language is concerned with its form at a given moment; Diachronic study covers the history of a language or family of languages and structural changes over time.
· Theoretical vs Applied: Theoretical (or general) linguistics is concerned with frameworks for describing individual languages and theories about universal aspects of language; applied linguistics applies these theories to other fields.
· Contextual vs Autonomous: Contextual linguistics is concerned with how language fits into the world: its social function, how it is acquired, how it is produced and perceived. Autonomous or Independent linguistics considers languages for their own sake, aside from the externalities related to a language. Sometimes the terms macrolinguistics and microlinguistics are used for the corresponding terms of this dichotomy.
Given these dichotomies, scholars who call themselves simply linguists or theoretical linguists, with no further qualification, tend to be concerned with autonomous, theoretical synchronic linguistics, which is acknowledged as the core of the discipline.
Linguistic inquiry is pursued by a wide variety of specialists, who may not all be in harmonious agreement; as Russ Rymer flamboyantly puts it:
"Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers, philologists, psychologists, biologists, and neurologists, along with whatever blood can be got out of grammarians."
3. Levels of linguistic investigation according to the unit of description ?
Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics. Although phonetics often informs phonology, it is often excluded from the purview of theoretical linguistics, along with psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Theoretical linguistics also involves the search for and explanation of linguistic universals, that is, properties all languages have in common.
Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is spoken (or how it was spoken in the past) by a group of people in a speech community. All scholarly research in linguistics is descriptive; like all other sciences, its aim is to observe the linguistic world as it is, without the bias of preconceived ideas about how it ought to be. Modern descriptive linguistics is based on a structural approach to language, as exemplified in the work of Bloomfield and others.
Linguistic description is often contrasted with linguistic prescription, which is found especially in education and in publishing. Prescription seeks to define standard language forms and give advice on effective language use, and can be thought of as the attempt to present the fruits of descriptive research in a learnable form, though it also draws on more subjective aspects of language aesthetics. Prescription and description are essentially complementary, but have different priorities and sometimes are seen to be in conflict.
Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, linguistics or psychology.
Bloomfield and Sapir were leaders in descriptive linguistics, now often referred to as structural linguistics. According to them, languages should be described as interlocking assemblages of basic units and as functioning wholes independent of earlier developmental stages. Such descriptions might then form the basis for comparing related languages and reconstructing their common origin. Sapir identified the phoneme as a basic unit of sound patterning and offered evidence for its psychological reality. Bloomfield, on the other hand, advocated indirect observation to identify the distinct meanings associated with units of form. His followers developed a mandatory set of discovery procedures for all valid analyses that built upon the sequential distribution of units of sound. These procedures, and strictures against mixing comparison with description, were in practice often violated, with good reason. Linguists were prepared to assume that languages might differ from one another without limit; thus, one could assume no commonalities. They were reacting in part to clumsy attempts to superimpose categories of classical grammar on descriptions of New World languages. Many of them thought that the grammatical categories of language might shape perceptions of reality.
4. Unique features of language as contrasted with animal communication ?
Human language differs from animal communication in many ways. While humans use language to produce an infinite number of unique sentences as a form of communication, animals lack this ability. Animals communicate by signal codes, which means they have a limited number of statements, generally as simple responses to certain situations. As one researcher says, “…the natural sounds and gestures produced by all nonhuman primates show their signals to be highly stereotyped and limited in the type and number of messages they convey.” Human language, on the other hand, is a true language - a system of arbitrary signs which allows us to convey unlimited interactions.
For one, human language differs because it has form and meaning, which means it has a structure which combines sounds, gestures, letters, and written words which when put together have a certain significance or meaning. Secondly, human language differs because it is creative, meaning that we can (with language) produce (and understand) an infinite number of new sentences which have never before been spoken; we can lie and joke and even talk about things that don’t make any sense. Thirdly, human language differs because it has displacement, which basically means that we as humans can talk about things in the past and future, and things that are either right in front of us or miles away. While some animals, like bees, have shown signs of limited displacement, and while certain apes have been able to acquire a number of sign language messages, animal communication is restricted to very simple messages like “look out” or “danger!” Animals cannot say “look out, I saw a snake in that tree yesterday” or make jokes, lie, and talk about the imaginary (which linguists refer to as the ability to use tropes).
Many researches have tried to teach primates language, and while some chimps and apes have been more successful than others in language acquisition, the end result has always shown that primates can only learn language to a certain extent, and usually only things related to stimulus-controlled phenomena like eating and drinking. Language was only rarely spontaneous with these animals, they usually displayed redundancy and imitation, and no research shows them to have the same ability of language learning like a human child. Gua was a chimp in the 1930s that was raised as a child along with the researcher’s own baby son. Gua understood more words than the human boy at sixteen months, but never learned any more than that, while the boy of course did. Among other things, primates have a different vocal apparatus than ours which prevents them from producing spoken language. Research has simply shown that primates are not capable of learning human language.
Non-primates have shown an even lesser chance of acquiring human language. Dolphins have shown the ability to understand and act on certain commands, but they have not displayed understanding for “novel utterances, metaphors, jokes, and lies.” Not to mention the fact that producing spoken human language is simply impossible for these animals.
Like other animals, dolphins also have a limited number of messages which they produce amongst each other. Dolphins, as well as apes and other animals have no way of communicating about the past, expressing their feelings, lying to each other, and among other things, talking smack about their enemies. Human language, however, differs because it gives us the ability to do all of those things and more
5. The components and nature of native speaker’s linguistic knowledge ?
Linguistic competence is a native speaker's knowledge of language. It was defined in 1965, by Noam Chomsky. This term is used to describe a speaker’s underlying ability to produce grammatically correct expressions. Linguistic Competence is about how well people can form words or a sentence grammatically in the correct format (Ottenheimer, H.J.(2006). The anthropology of language: An Introduction to linguistic anthropology. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth). It is classified as knowledge of language versus use of language. The object of linguistics is linguistic competence, knowledge of a language possessed by ‘an ideal speaker-listener’. Linguistic competence is designed as a scientific idealization, filtering out ‘grammatically irrelevant conditions’, errors produced in ‘actual linguistic performance’(Linguistic Competence, www.faqs.org/theories/Li-Ly/Linguistic-Competence). Linguistic Competence will not help the communicator to negotiate the complexities of formal and informal address or terms, nor will it alert the communicator when words change their meaning. In order to use language successfully a person would need to understand the concept of communicative competence (Ottenheimer, H.J.(2006). The anthropology of language: An Introduction to linguistic anthropology. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth).
Linguistic Competence defines the system of rules that governs an individual’s tacit understanding of what is acceptable and what is not in the language they speak. The concept, introduced by the linguist Noam Chomsky in 1965, was intended to address certain assumptions about language, especially in structuralist linguistics, where the idea of an unconscious system had been extensively elaborated and schematized. Competence can be regarded as a revision of the idea of the language system. The empirical and formal realization of competence would be performance, which thus corresponds to diverse structuralist notions of parole, utterance, event, process, etc. Chomsky argues that the unconscious system of linguistic relations, which Ferdinand de Saussure named langue, is often mistakenly associated with knowledge or ability (or know-how). Chomsky is concerned to establish a science that would study what he calls “the language faculty”, in analogy with other mental faculties like logic, which as a kind of intuitive reasoning power requires no accumulation of facts or skills in order to develop. Grammatical knowledge too seems to be present and fully functional in speakers fluent in any language....
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