LING: INTRO TO LINGUISTICS
7:26:00 AM
Do you know about
LINGUISTICS????
Hmm jika kamu
mendengar kata LINGUISTICS, apa yang terpikir olehmu terlebih dahulu??
Sesuatu yang menakutkan?? Oh nooo its scary course??? Huuuuft I don’t like it.
Hmm maybe something like that, right??
Tapi kamu tidak akan
tahu bagaimana suatu hal sebelum kamu mengenalnya terlebih dahulu. Akan jauh
lebih menyenangkan, akan jauh lebih mengasikkan jika hal itu dapat menarik
hatimu untuk lebih giat lagi dalam belajar.
So, you have to know
about LINGUISTICS!!!!
What is Linguistics??
I have 3 definitions
of Linguistics, are:
Linguistics is the science of language. To do this, we will trace a parallel in
the individual human being from the time of the birth to the stage of complete
mastery of the language. That is, the complete language acquisition process in
its various stages. (according of book “A
linguistic Primer for Malaysians” by Loga Mahesan Baskaran, 2005 published
by University of Malaya Press).
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Language is essential in order
to function as a human being. To understand humans, we also need to understand
the phenomenon of language. As Noam Chomsky, one of the most important
linguists of the twentieth century, wrote in 1972:
“When we study human
language, we are approaching what some might call ‘the human essence’, the
distinctive qualities of the mind, that are, as far as we know, unique to man”.
In Linguistics, we
usually begin by describing a language, or rather language. Also, in
linguistics we not only deal with the form of sentences, but also describe
other aspects of language. Every language is used for general communication.
Using a natural language, human can in principle communicate with each other
about anything in their world. (according of book
“LINGUISTICS” edited by Anne E. Baker & Kees Hengeveld, 2012
published by Wiley-BLACKWELL).
The study of language
is conducted within the field of Linguistics. Contrary to popular belief,
linguists are not necessarily poligots-individuals fluent in many languages.
Instead, their primary interest is the scientific study of language. Like a
biologist studying the structure of cells, a linguists studies the structure of
language. How speakers created meaning through combination of sounds, words and
sentences that ultimately result in texts-extended stretches of language.
Linguistics is multidisciplinary, specialists in many disciplines bring their
own expertise to the study of language.
Linguistics are
engaged in the scientific study of language, they approach language. (according of book “Introducing English Linguistics”
by Charles F. Meyer, 2009 published by Cambridge University Press).
Linguistics is a
study about language. In studying linguistics, there are two major categories,
include:
· Pure
Linguistics
· Applied
Linguistics
Pure Linguistics
1.
Phonetic and Phonology
This level focuses on
the smallest unit of structure in language, the phoneme. Linguistic rules at
this level describe how sounds are pronounced in various context. For instance,
there is a rule of voicing assimilation in English that stipulates that when a
past tense marker is added to the stem of a verb, the last sound in the stem
determines whether the marker is voiced or unvoiced (whether or not the vocal
cords vibrate when the consonant is pronounced). Thus, even though the child
uses the wrong past tense form, the past tense marker is pronounced as /t/
because the last sound in the stem, /k/, is unvoiced.
This two primary linguistics discipline concerned with speech sounds-those
sounds that are used by humans to communicate. Both area are mutually
dependent. Phonetics describes the concrete, physical form of sounds (how they
are produced, heard and how they can be described), while phonology is
concerned with the function of sounds, that is with their status and inventory
in any given language.
2.
Morphology
The next level of
structure is the morpheme, the smallest unit of meaning in language. Rules of
morphology focus on how words ( and part of words) are structured. At the
beginning of the sentence, the child uses the pronoun I rather
than Me because English has rules of case assignment-pronouns
functioning as subject of a sentence take the subjective form (sometimes
referred to as the nominative case) rather than the objective form( or
accusative case). And because the number of the subject is singular, I
is used rather than plural form We.
Morphology comes from
a Greek word meaning ‘shape’ or ‘form’ and is used in linguistics to denote the
study of words, both with regard to their internal structure and their
combination or formation to form new or larger units.
3.
Syntax
The largest level of
structure is the clause, which can be analyzed into what are called clause
functions: subject, predicator, object, complement and adverbial.
At the level of
syntax, there are many ruled stipulating how constituents within a clause are
grouped. For instance, all language have constraints on how constituents should
be ordered. Because, English is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language.
Syntax, together with
inflectional morphology, belongs to what is in traditional terminology, ‘the
grammar of language’.
4. Semantics
One reoccurring theme
in this reader (for example, in the chapters on phonology, morphology and
syntax) has been is the focus on internal structure (for example of words and
sentences) in contrast to meaning (i.e. what a piece of language tells us about
the world). Semantics covers that domain of meaning.
Meaning as a concept
is initially more difficult to define than you might think. Because meaning is
at the core of human communication, the study of semantics cuts across all of
the other levels thus far discussed.
The study of
semantics is typically focused on such topics as the meaning of individual
words (lexical semantics) and the ability of words to refers to point in time
or individuals in the external world.
5.
Pragmatics
In human
communication, much of what is expressed goes beyond simply conveying
information to others. One limitation of semantics is that dimensions of
meaning that are outside the content of linguistics sign are also outside the
scope of description. Social and affective meaning are not covered by semantics
(which focuses on conventional/conceptual meaning only), but virtually any
real-life communicative situation contains signs which are used to express
something about the speakers and their social relationships.
Pragmatics is
concerned with how people use language within a context, in real-life
situations. While semantics is concerned with words, phrases and sentences, the
unit of analysis in pragmatics is an utterance made in a concrete communicative
context. Pragmatics is concerned with how factors such as time, place and the
social relationship between speaker and hearer affect the ways in which
language is used to perform different functions.
6. Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis is
one of the disciplines that deals with the study of language use and it
therefore in part overlaps with pragmatics. But it is also about how sentences,
the most complex units within the language system, are actually put to use and
combined with each other, i.e. are used as utterances. Most utterances we
make do not come as isolated sentences, but as longer stretches of language
use, i.e. as text and discourse. In fact, the term 'discourse' has come to be
used to refer to all units of language use whatsoever (even discourse over
longer stretches of time, such as a political or scientific discourse relating
to one particular topic), and with that integrates many aspects of the
situational and sociocultural context of utterances. By contrast, it is the
notion of 'text' that puts the emphasis on the linguistic unit that is larger
than a single sentence and therefore studies more of the context of an
utterance.
Many elements in a
language mark this textual cohesion, while others contribute to its overall
coherence with regard to its context, especially the background knowledge on
the part of the hearer or established by prior co-text. In particular, this
concerns the appropriate "packaging" of our messages within a text,
also known as information-structuring. While the lexical and grammatical
devices a language has to offer to establish cohesion and coherence apply to
spoken as well as written discourse, other principles of textual organization
are only found in spoken, interactive discourse, their analysis is grounded in
a separate discipline termed conversation analysis.
Applied Linguistics
Applied Linguistics provides a
strong understanding of concepts, current issues and research methods in the
core areas of applied linguistics.
Applied
linguistics mean that:
Education
(teaching, learning, acquisition, assessment).
Linguistics
( The study of
the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics,
phonology, morphology and the study of human speech, language
form, language meaning , and language in context)
Sociology
(the scientific study of human social behavior
and the study of society)
Anthropology
(the scientific study
of the origin and behavior of man, including the physical, social, and cultural
development of societies and cultures).
Psychology
(the science of mind and
behavior, and the application of such knowledge of various spheres
of human activity, such as education, health, occupational and employment
services).
Applied Linguistics
is an interdisciplinary field which mediates between the theory of language and
the practice of language learning.
There
are many kinds of Applied Linguistics, include:
Clinical
Linguistics (analysis and treatment of language
disorders).
Teaching and
Learning Foreign Languages (developing foreign language teaching
methods).
Educational
Linguistics (the use of the mother tongue in
school).
Lexicography
(theory and practice in organizing dictionaries; methods and techniques
for creating dictionaries).
Computational
Linguistics (the use of computers in language
analysis and use) .
Machine
Translation ( computerized translation).
ASR –Automatic
Speech Recognition
Language
assessment (to measure student learning of languages, to
determine what a student knows and/or can do and how well
instruction is proceeding ).
Forensic
Linguistics (the application of linguistic
knowledge, methods and insights to the context of law, language, crime
investigation, trial, experts, court, evidence, law, jurislinguistique).
Data Mining – (the
process of processing large volumes of data usually stored in a database and
searching for patterns and relationships within that data. It is automatic
extraction and processing of data).
Language
pedagogy (theory of developing teaching
methods).
Psycholinguistics (the study of the psychological
factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce
speech , relationship between language and human behavior).
Internet
linguistics (It studies new language styles and
forms that have arisen under the influence of the Internet and Short Message
Service [SMS]).
Sociolinguistics (study of the link between language
and society).
Neurolinguistics (describes the application of linguistic
theories to the classification and analysis of acquired disorders of language
or speech in patients with brain damage).
Language
interpretation (facilitating of oral or sign language
communication between users of different languages).
Corpus linguistics
(the
study of language as expressed in samples (corpora) or "real world"
text ; it is approach to deriving a set of abstract rules by which a natural
language is governed or else relates to another language).
Text Analysis (
written discourse).
Language,
culture, and pragmatics (cultural aspects in language
teaching in intercultural communication).
Language
Control / Dialectology (study of linguistic dialect,
variations in language and is based primarily on geographic distribution
; divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic
variation).
References:
Book “LINGUISTICS” edited by Anne E.
Baker & Kees Hengeveld, 2012 published by Wiley-BLACKWELL
Book “A linguistic Primer for Malaysians” by
Loga Mahesan Baskaran, 2005 published by University of Malaya Press
Book “Introducing English Linguistics”
by Charles F. Meyer, 2009 published by Cambridge University Press)--pdf
Companion to English Linguistics.pdf
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