Invitations to Linguistics
Language
Design features Functions of Language
Linguistics
Branches of Linguistics Important distinctions in Linguistics
Invitations to Linguistics
Phonetics: the study of how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It can be divided into three main areas of study articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and perceptual/auditory phonetics. Articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds, or the study of how speech sounds are produced.

Design features: the distinctive features of human language that essentially make human language distinguishable from languages of animals.
Function: the role language plays in communication or in particular social situations.

Design Features



Arbitrariness: the absence of any physical correspondence between linguistic signals and the entities to which they refer. Duality: the structural organization of language into two abstract levels: meaningful units and meaningless segments. Displacement: the ability of language to refer to contexts removed from the speaker’s immediate situation.

Distinctions inБайду номын сангаасLinguistics

Language competence: the ideal user’s knowledge of rules of his language, that is , of its sound structure, its words and its grammatical rules. A transformational – generative grammar is a model of language competence.

Distinctions in Linguistics


Synchronic linguistics: the study of a given language at a given time. Diachronic linguistics: the study of language change through time. A diachronic study of language is a historical study, which studies the historical development of language over a period of time.

Distinctions in Linguistics

Langue: the abstract linguistic system shared by all members of a speech community. Parole: the concrete utterances of a speaker.
Language performance: the language actually used by people in speaking or writing.

Speech Sounds
Phonetics
Description and classification of consonants and vowels
Functions of Language

Phatic communion: said of talk used to establish atmosphere or maintain social contact.
Metalanguage: a language used for talking about language.
Distinctions in Linguistics

Prescriptive: to make authoritarian statement about the correctness of a particular use of language.
Descriptive: to make an objective and systematic account of the patterns and use of a language or variety.
Phonology
Basic concepts: phone, phoneme, allophone Phonological processes: assimilation Suprasegmentals: syllable, stress, intonation, tone
Phonetics