An overview of the first four chapters

Chapter 1• Linguistics is the scientific study of language. “What

makes a field a science is if it involves constructing theories that make testable predictions, and then testing those predictions and revising the theory if the predictions turned out to be wrong. Linguistics is a science.”

• What gives science its main character are the principles of objectivity, observation and experimenting. Linguistics utilizes those principles.

Chapter 1

• Human language• It is language that makes the human being a

possible creature .For many Africans a newborn is a KINTU “thing”. It is not yet MUNTU “a person” until he/she talks. This means that it is language that gives a human his sane existence.

Chapter 1

• The relation between sounds and meanings is not natural or straightforward. The relation is rather arbitrary. So that there is no relation between the word D O G in English, for instance, and this four-legged canine creature.

• “Animal languages in a sense have a limited list of ‘words’, like those Konrad Lorenz found in crows. In animal communication, a ‘word’ is an entity of its own. Each of the monkeys’ cries has a distinctive meaning, ‘snake’, ‘eagle’, and so on.

Chapter 1• They cannot be decomposed into a small set of

meaningless components like phonemes. Animals have a dictionary consisting of a limited number of signs

• Creativity of the human language means the ability to invent combinations of words that you might not have heard before. It has been believed for long that a child acquires language only through imitation

Chapter 1

• Origin of the Language• According to Islamic, Jeudo-Christian view God

gave Adam the power to name all things.• Many myths believe that language is the gift of

some gods, Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians Indians.

• James IV of Scotland replicated the same experiment and it was believed the language spoken by children is Hebrew.

Chapter 1

• According to the Greeks (Socrates) there must have been a legislator who gave things their names and that there was a relation between the words and their meanings.

Chapter2

Chapter 3Phonology

• Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech

• sounds in a language. It is, in effect, based on a theory of what every speaker

• of a language unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language.

Phonology

• Each one of these meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme

• When we have a group of several phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we refer to them as allophones of that phoneme.

Phonology

• Phonemic distinctions in a language can be tested via pairs and sets of words.

• When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.

Phonology

• Phonotactics : This type of exercise involving minimal sets also allows us to see that there are definite patterns in the types of sound combinations permitted in a language. English, does not include forms such as pfz or spv.

Phonology

• Suprasegmental Features

• A syllable must contain a vowel (or vowel-like) sound. The most common type of syllable in language also has a consonant (C) before the vowel (V) and is typically represented as CV.

• Stress : extra Emphasis given to certain syllables.• It is phonemic : subject –subject

Phonology

• Intonation and tone

• Intonation languages : only grammar changes

• Tone languages : change in meaning

• Types of tone : level and contour

Phonology

• Rules of phonology • Dissimilation : diphthong-----dipthong • Feature addition: Aspiration• Segment deletion: French Petit livre---petit

oiseau• Movement : ask ----aks