(“scrabble” by mydalliance is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Linguistics – The Basics

Here we’ll go through some of the basic ideas and assumptions of linguistics. If you’d like to dig deeper into these concepts, check out Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of How English Works – definitely not required but could be a good supplement!

 

Starting with… ENGLISH

Some reflection questions:
What is English?
How do you define it?
What English do you speak?
How can you tell it apart from other Englishes?
Or other languages?
What is “Standard English”?

There are no “right” answers here – language escapes easy definition. The boundaries are fuzzy, and often more social than linguistic.

Clarifying Terms

What is linguistics?
The systematic study of language

What is language?
Again, tricky question! Some part of human communication…

What kind of language does linguistics care about?
The language people produce through speech and signing (traditionally less focus on written language)

What is grammar?
The “rules” that language users unconsciously follow; patterns of  sound, word structure, sentence structure, meaning, etc.

The Process of Language Change

Language change is natural!

See this example from Beowulf:

Lines 20-25:
Swá sceal geong guma góde gewyrcean
fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme
þæt hine on ylde eft gewunigen
wilgesíþas þonne wíg cume
léode gelaésten: lofdaédum sceal
in maégþa gehwaére man geþéön.

Audio (excerpt from this longer reading):

And a young prince must be prudent like that,
giving freely while his father lives
so that afterwards in age when fighting starts
steadfast companions will stand by him
and hold the line. Behavior that’s admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.

What was familiar? What was unintelligible?

You can see examples of sound changes (listen to those vowels!), spelling changes (“þ” instead of “th”), and remnants of an old inflectional system (all those “e” and “um” endings)

It’s written in “(Old) English”, but is it actually the same language we speak?

 

Another example, from the Canterbury Tales:

From the Wife of Bath’s Prologue:

Thou likenest wommenes love to helle,
To bareyne lond, ther water may nat dwelle.
Thou liknest it also to wilde fyr;
The moore it brenneth, the moore it hath desir
To consume every thyng that brent wole be.
Thou seyest, right as wormes shende a tree,
Right so a wyf destroyeth hir housbond.
This knowe they, that been to wyves bonde.

Then you compared a woman’s love to Hell, 
To barren land where water will not dwell, 
And you compared it to a quenchless fire, 
The more it burns the more is its desire 
To burn up everything that burnt can be. 
You say that just as worms destroy a tree 
A wife destroys her husband and contrives, 
As husbands know, the ruin of their lives.  

A little easier to understand, but still pretty different

More Latin/French-derived words

Still some spelling differences, old inflectional endings

 

Historical linguists track these changes to gain understanding of relationships between different “languages” and varieties. These relationships are often modeled in “family trees”:

(“Family tree of the indo-european languages” by EnriBrahimaj is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

(this image by Madman2001 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

 

 

Descriptive versus Prescriptive Grammar Rules

Prescriptive rules are prescribed by an institution; often, you learn them in school and need to make a conscious effort to follow them

Outside of linguistics, most people focus on prescriptive rules when they’re talking about grammar

Examples:
Don’t end a sentence with a preposition
Don’t start a sentence with ‘because’

Descriptive rules describe the natural behavior of speakers; for your first language, you automatically pick these up without instruction

A descriptive approach doesn’t care what’s “correct”, but is interested in what people actually do

Examples:
‘Like’ can indicate quotation (“She was like That’s rude!”)
Make a noun plural by adding –s
Adjectives go before the nouns they describe (But in languages like Spanish, the descriptive rule is the opposite: adjectives go after the nouns they describe)

 

Case studies:

Multiple Negatives

Prescriptive rule: You can only have one negative per sentence, or two negatives make a positive
I don’t have no money ➡ I don’t have any money

Descriptive rule: Multiple negatives can be used for emphasis
I don’t have no money 👍

Ain’t

Prescriptive rule: ‘Ain’t’ is not a “real” word
He ain’t listening ➡ He isn’t listening

Descriptive rule: ‘Ain’t’ is the negative form of am/is/are
He ain’t listening 👍

Who and whom

Prescriptive rule: ‘Who’ becomes ‘whom’ in object position (after a preposition)
We wondered who they were talking about ➡ We wondered whom they were talking about

Descriptive rule: Who is acceptable in all positions
We wondered who they were talking about 👍

 

Some of these descriptive rules might not apply to your way of speaking, but they do describe some varieties of English

Linguistics is generally more interested in descriptive rules

What’s another example of a prescriptive rule? A descriptive rule?

 

Next up… phonetics!