Introduction to Linguistics

Linguistics is the study of languages. This is an esoteric knowledge of languages. The specialist of language refers to linguists. The father of linguistics is Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). There are still many other modern linguists besides de Saussure, one of the most popular is Noam Chomsky with his phenomenal theory Universal Grammar.

The object of this discipline is language, therefore the scope of linguistics is very broad. Essentially, it is divided into two big branches i.e. micro and macro linguistics. This article only discusses micro linguistics which will be explained generally. However, the writer will make an outline regarding both linguistics.

Micro Linguistics leads to the internal structure of languages, hence it is a very basic study of linguistics. Otherwise, macro linguistics refers to the external structure of languages. Micro linguistic consists of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, meanwhile macro linguistics includes sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistics, stylistic, discourse analysis, computational linguistics, cognitive-linguistic, applied linguistic, historical linguistic, and many more. 

Phonology is defined as a study that relates to the analysis of speech sounds. Basically, it is composed of phonetics and phonemics. Phonetics is the branch of phonology that study of how sounds are made via the articulatory and vocal tract by the speaker without concern whether the sounds distinguish the meaning or not. Three kinds of phonetics: articulatory, acoustic, and auditory. The most commonly studied by language learners is the articulatory phonetic since it relates to how humans produce speech sounds. The other two relate to the field of physic and neurology. Unlike phonetics, phonemics is a phonology branch study that object refers to phoneme, it is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of language. The sounds that distinguish meaning is defined as a phoneme. 

Branch of Phonology

Morphology is the study of word formation and the structure of words in a language. Words in a language consist of one element of meaning which is called morphemes. It is the smallest unit of words that have a meaning that cannot be divided further. One word can consist of more than one morpheme. For instance: ‘Reconstruct’ is formed by two morphemes Re (morpheme) + Construct (morpheme) = Reconstruct (word). A morpheme is divided into free and bound morphemes. Free morphemes (FM) can occur alone by themselves meanwhile bound morphemes (BM) must occur with another morpheme.

Examples:

FM =    Girl     Love     Boy      At         The      He

BM =   -ly        re-       -ism

FM consists of open class (lexical / content) i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives, and closed class (functional/grammatical words) i.e. conjunctions, determiners, prepositions, articles, and pronouns. BM is contained in affixes and roots. A short explanation of both is below:

According to Oxford Dictionary, an online affix is an addition to the base form or stem of a word in order to modify its meaning or create a new word. Therefore, the affixes may or may not change the meaning and part of speech of the words. It can be put in the initial (prefix), middle (infix), and end (suffix). For example:

Prefix   : inconvenient

Infix     : nowadays

Suffix   : helpful

Affix is divided into derivational (DA) and inflectional affixes (IA).  When DA is added to the free morpheme, it commonly changes the part of speech of the word, such as pay (v) to payment (n). Otherwise, the IA doesn’t change the word class e.g. writes (v) wrote (v) written (v).

Roots are morphemes (not affixes) that may or may not stand alone. 

Syntax is the study of sentence structure i.e. how phrases, clauses, and sentences are combined and constructed in a particular language. The structure refers to word order that consists of syntactic categories i.e. parts of speech (open and closed class), phrase structure grammars (Noun Phrase (NP), Adjective Phrase (AdjP), Verb Phrase (VP), Adverb Phrase (AdvP), Preposition Phrase (PP)), and sentence, as the essential point of the structure. The syntactic categories are illustrated in a tree diagram called a phrase structure tree. 

The phrase structure tree is also commonly called a tree diagram which provides information regarding syntactic categories in a particular sentence. It is a formal device for representing a speaker’s knowledge of phrase structure. Therefore, if ones want to make a tree diagram, one need to know phrase structure rules. These rules define the following: 

The parenthesis signifies the categories are optional. Nouns do not constantly have to be preceded by adjectives and verbs do not always have to be followed by prepositional phrases.

Semantic and pragmatic are defined as the study of meaning. Semantic is internal, meanwhile pragmatic is external. It means that semantic merely study the literal meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, and sentences without affected by context. It concerns with the relationships between signs or symbols, concept, and what they represent, and it does not account for any implied meaning.

Meanwhile, pragmatic refers to how context affects meaning. It focuses on the use of language in a particular situation. Thus, pragmatics constantly concerns factors outside (external) of language in which speakers communicate using language. For example, when you and your friend stay in a hot temperature room, then your friend says, “It’s really hot here”, that person may imply “Open the window, please or turn on the air conditioner, please.” Your friend does not merely express her/his feeling about the real situation through the statement “It’s really hot here,” he/she implies something else. Therefore, it does not have a literal meaning.

Due to this post only aiming to introduce linguistics generally, there are still a lot of things to observe regarding linguistics. In the following, there are some e-books, presentations, and videos about linguistics that are needed to fulfill your further curiosity about languages and linguistics. Break a leg!

Phonology

E-book: The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology

E-book: Phonetic and Phonology: An Introduction

E-book: What is Phonology

PPT Phonology
Video: Introduction to Phonetic and Pronunciation

Morphology

Introducing Morphology, Cambridge University Press
Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure, Edinburg University Press
Morphology: The Words of Language
PPT Morphology
Video: Lesson of Morphology

Syntax
E-book: Androw Radford-English Syntax an Introduction
E-book: An Introduction to English Syntax by Jim Miller
E-book: A Modern Course in English Syntax By Wekker & Haegeman
PPT Syntax
Video: Syntax

Semantic & Pragmatic
Ebook: Introducing English Semantics by Charles W. Kreidler
E-book: An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics
E-book: Pragmatics by George Yule

PPT: Semantics & Pragmatics
Video: Introduction to Semantics
Video: Why do semantics matter?
Video: Pragmatics - David Crystal

Depok, 30 April 2017

CQD

References

Andriyani, E. (2013, April). Syntax. Retrieved from www.slideshare.net: https://www.slideshare.net/Andriyanieka12/10-syntax-syntax-phrases-18509446

AR-Apps. (2015). Basic Linguistic.

H.P, A., & Abdullah, A. (2013). Linguistik Umum. Jakarta: Erlangga.

Introduction to (Applying) Linguistics. (2007/2008). Retrieved from www.fb10.uni-bremen.d: http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/ling/gk-lingintro07/org/ws0708/exam-answer-sheet1.htm

Leon, R. D. (2015, July 30). Retrieved from www.slideshare.net: https://www.slideshare.net/renedictdeleon/morphology-linguistics-51088052

Nelson, B. (2016). Retrieved from slideplayer.com: http://slideplayer.com/slide/6392679/

Online, O. D. (2017, April 29). Retrieved from English Oxford Living Dictionaries: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/affix