The Study of Language (4th Edition) by George Yule

Editorial notes: The content below is Shai’s summary of “The Study of Language” (4th Edition) by George Yule^[I].

Ch.3 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE

• Phonetics = characteristics of speech sounds
• Articulatory phonetics = how speech sounds are made
• Vocal folds
  • Voiceless = e.g. [s], [f], when they are open and air passes unimpeded
  • Voiced = e.g. [z], [v], when they are drawn together, vibrating as air passes between
• Place of articulation
  • Bilabials = (bi/both + labia/lips) e.g. [b] [m] [p]
  • Labiodentals = upper teeth and lower lips, e.g. [f] [v]
  • Dentals = e.g. “theta” [θ] “eth” [ð]
  • Alveolar = tongue tip at alveolar ridge, e.g. [t] [d] [s] [z] [n] [l] [r]
  • Palatals = produced with the tongue and hard palate, e.g. sh [ʃ] ch [ʧ] j [ʤ]
  • Velars = tongue against the soft palate (velum), e.g. [k] [g]
  • Glottals = produced without active use of mouth, i.e. [h] (nb. voiceless sounds are produced with an open glottis – space between vocal folds).
• Manner of articulation
  • Stops = by briefly stopping air stream, e.g. [p] [b] [t] [d] [k] [g]
  • Frictives = blocking and pushing through air stream, e.g. [f] [v] [θ] [ð] [s] [z] [ʃ] [ʒ]
  • Affrictives = combine brief stop with obstructed release, e.g. [ʧ] [ʤ]
  • Nasals = e.g. [m] [n], nb. raised velum blocks nasal air flow except if lowered
  • Liquids = [l] – “lateral liquid”, air flows around tongue as it points at mid alveolar ridge; [r] – tongue tip raised and curled back near the ridge
  • Glides = involving tongue moving forward, e.g. [w] y [j], aka semi-vowels
  • Glottal stop = represented as [?], when the glottis is briefly completely closed, e.g. in the middle of “Oh oh” or Cockney speech
  • Flap = tongue tapping alveolar briefly, e.g. when saying “butter” as “budder”, the sound is represented as [D]
    • American English speakers tend to flap [t] and [d] consonants between vowels
• Vowels – described based on space in mouth and tongue elevation, per front to back, high to low
  • Relaxing pleasure vowels tend to be lower, which may require opening the mouth wider (e.g. ho, cf. hi)
• Diphthongs = two vowel combination, as vocal organs move from one position to another
• Nb. “shwa” [ə] = most common sound in English, e.g. word “a” or end of “the”

Ch.4 THE SOUND PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE

• Phonology = description of the systems of speech sounds in a language, nb. is essentially concerned with the idea of the sounds rather then physical articulation; the abstract set of sounds whose differentiation allows meaning to be distinguished.
  • Phoneme = a meaning distinguishing sound
  • Phonemes are essentially contrastive, and this is the basis for a basic operational test of their existence, i.e. does exchanging sounds change the meaning
  • Basis prediction is that sounds with similar features (e.g. bilabial), ie. members of a “natural class“, with have similar phonological behaviors (e.g. permissible sequences)
  • Phone = sound type qua auditory (nb. many distinguishable phones are treated identically by a language, i.e. the various allophonic phones of a language’s phoneme)
  • Allophone = set of all phones of a phoneme, these are distinguished by symbols, i.e. diacritics
  • Phonotactics = permitted arrangements of sounds
• A syllable must contain a vowel (or diphthong), and its permissible patterns and “consonant clusters” described (e.g. CVC, CCVC).
  • Technically made up of onset (consonant/s) + rhyme, made of a nucleus (vowel) + coda (and following consonants). Can lack an onset/coda; called “open” and “closed’.
• Coarticulation = making one sound almost at the same time as the next sound
  • Assimilation = when a feature of one sound is copied into the other, e.g. because of the voiceless [t], the normally voiced [v] becomes a voiceless [f] in “have to” as [hæftə]
  • Elision = not pronouncing a sound segment that might be present in the deliberately careful pronunciation of a word in isolation
    • Often occurs to /t/ in consonant clusters, esp in the coda position

Ch.5 WORD FORMATION

• Coinage
• Borrowing
  • Claque = loan translation
• Compounding (e.g. wallpaper)
• Blending = combining a beginning + end of words (e.g. telethon)
• Clipping (e.g. fax)
  • Hypocorism = clipping + “ee” sound, (e.g. telly), nb. popular in Australia (e.g. brekky)
• Backformation = reduce one form to another, esp. noun to verb (creating e.g. televise, babysit)
• Conversion = change form without reduction (e.g. bottled, see through [qua adj], ball park [qua adj])
• Acronym
• Derivation = by use of affixes
  • Cf. Prefixes, suffixes, and infixes (more common in other languages, but cf. unfuckingbelievable)
• Multiple processes, cf. “yuppie” is one one hand a hypocorism of its acronym, but was also formed via analogy with hippie and yippie (which was a hypocorism of an acronym for young international party [during the time of Vietnam protests]).

Ch.6 MORPHOLOGY

• Morpheme = minimal unit of meaning or grammar
  • Free morpheme = can stand by themselves, aka stem when used with a bound morpheme
    • Lexical morpheme = content carrying, considered “open” since it is easy to add to these (e.g. “cat”)
    • Functional morpheme = esp. conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns, considered “closed” since virtually never add new ones (e.g “and”)
  • Bound morpheme = can’t, are attached, including all affixes in English
    • Derivational morphemes = used to make new words or new grammatical forms from a stem (e.g. “-ness” can add to “good”)
    • Inflectional morphemes = used to indicate aspect of grammar (i.e. plural, singular, past tense, comparative, possessive)
      • Nb. doesn’t change the grammatical category of a word
      • Nb. a derivational affix is attached before an inflectional (e.g. “teach-er-s”)
      • Noun + -’s, -s
      • Verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en
      • Adjective + -er, -est
      • Some languages use reduplication affixes, i.e. an affix that is a repetition of a particular part of the word
      • Suppletion = the use of one word as the inflected form of another when the two are not cognate, often aka “irregular”
        • Cognate = words that have a common etymology
  • Cf. bound stems – e.g. the second morpheme in re-ceive
• Morph = an actual form used to realize a morpheme
  • Cf. just like various phones are treated equivalently as a phoneme, so too…
  • Allomorph = various morphs treated equivalently (e.g. “-s” and “-es”) for a morpheme (e.g. “plural”)
  • Nb. morpheme “plural” can be added to various lexical morphemes, e.g. “bus” or “man” or “sheep”, but with different morphs, including “-es”, vowel change and zero morph

Ch.7 GRAMMAR

• Grammar = describing the structure of a sentence so as to account for permissible sequences
• Traditional grammar is based on classical Greek and Latin studies,
  • Including their definitions for the parts of speech
    • Noun
    • Article (e.g. a, the)
    • Adjective
    • Verb
    • Adverb
    • Prepositions = words for providing information about time (e.g. at) place (e.g. in) or other connections (e.g. with)
    • Pronoun
    • Conjunction = words used to make connections/relations between events (e.g. and, because, when)
  • Traditional grammar also references grammatical categories, and determines which terms have agreement with others
    • Number = i.e. plural, singular
    • Person = distinction between first, second, third person
    • Tense
    • Voice = active or passive voice, e.g. x loves versus x is loved
    • Gender
  • Nb. despite the fact that these matter more, create more variance, for Latin than English
  • Prescriptive grammar = e.g. don’t split infinitives, don’t end sentences with a proposition
    • Cf. “to boldly go”, in Latin you cannot split an infinitive
    • Cf. linguistic etiquette versus breaking a Latin rule
• Versus “descriptive approach” = attempt to find regular structures
  • Structural analysis = re. distribution of forms
    • Test frame = sentences with empty slots, to test what forms are allowed, consequentially defining grammatical categories
    • Nb. shows that pronouns are not just a type of noun, but a type of noun phrase
    • Cf. hypercorrection = a non-standard usage that results from over application of a perceived grammatical rule
    • Determiner = expresses the reference of a noun or noun phrase
      • Article (the, a)
      • Demonstrative (this, that)
      • Possessive (my, their)
      • Quantifier (many, few, several)
    • Transivity = property of verbs relating to whether they can take direct objects and how many
      • Transitive = e.g. throw, injure, kiss
      • Intransitive = e.g. fall, sit
      • Ditransitive = can take two objects (nb. is not included in traditional grammar)
      • Ambitransitive = can be used as both transitive and intransitive (nb. is not included in traditional grammar)
  • Constituent analysis = determine how a sentence’s constituents combine and are combinable
    • Method can use [brackets] to show constituent structures, and which may be labeled in superscript, e.g. ^S[ ^NP[The dog] ^VP[loved ^NP[the girl] ] ]
    • Art = article (e.g. the); N = noun; NP = noun phrase; V = verb; VP = verb phrase; S = sentence, PN = proper noun, Adj = adjective; Pro = pronoun; Adv = adverb; Prep = preposition; PP = prepositional phrase, Aux = auxiliary verb

Ch.8 SYNTAX

• Syntax = the structure and ordering of components in a sentence in a language (from Gk. “a putting together”, “arrangement”)
  • Generative grammar = rules that produce all and only grammatical sentences
  • Surface structure = the syntactic form
  • Deep structure = the abstract form based on the constituent forms (e.g. NP+V+NP)
  • Nb. “Charlie broke the window” and “The window was broken by Charlie” have different surface, but the same deep, structures
  • Structural ambiguity = when the same surface structure can have different deep structures (e.g. “Annie bumped into a man with an umbrella”)
  • Tree diagram = often used to represent syntax
  • →= consists of, rewrites as
    • E.g. NP → Art (Adj) N
  • ( ) = optional constituent
  • { } = only one of must be selected
    • E.g. NP → {Art N, Pro, PN}
  • Auxiliary verb = “helping verb”, lexical rule {can, should, would, will, would}
  • Complement phrase (CP) = rewrites as a complementizer and a sentence, i.e. CP → C S
    • Complementizer (C) = the role of which is to introduce a complement phrase, e.g. “that”
• Phrase structure rules, incl:

• 1. S → NP VP
  2. NP → {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}
  3. VP → V NP  (PP) (Adj)
  4. PP → Prep NP
  5. S → NP VP
  6. VP → V CP
  7. CP → C S
• Recursion = property of sentences to use the same rules multiple times

• • Nb. the phrase structures rules #5-#6 allow for recursion, e.g. S[ NP[Mary VP[ V[knew CP[ C[that S[ NP[George] VP[knew Mary] ] ] ] ] ] ] ]”
• Lexical rules = specify which words can be used to rewrite phrase constituents, e.g. PN → {Mary, George}
  • Movement rule = used to move structures around in a sentence, e.g. to change it from a declaration into a question
• Linguistic competence = per Chomsky, the ideal system of knowledge underpinning a user’s language, removed from limitations (e.g. memory, distraction)
  • Cf. linguistic performance = per Chomsky, the actual use of language by its speakers
• Nb. rule for using wanna/want-to, only in cases where the phrase “want to” does not interrupt a target is “wanna” permitted
  • E.g. Who do you wanna visit, cf. You want to visit someone
  • E.g. *Who you wanna look after your pets, cf. You want someone to look after your pets

Ch.9 SEMANTICS

• Semantics = the study of the general meaning of words or phrases
  • Conceptual meaning = basically dictionary definition
  • Associative meaning = basically the words that come to mind
  • Semantic features = the conceptual features of terms (e.g. horse is +animate, +adult, -human)
    • This allows defining permitted terms in sentences, e.g. only animate nouns may use the verb “eat”
  • Semantic roles = the roles played by words within situations in a sentence
    • Agent = that performs the action
    • Theme = that is affected by the action
    • Instrument
    • Experiencer
    • Location
    • Source = where entity moves from
    • Goal = where the entity moves to
  • Lexical relations = between words
    • Synonymy = similar meanings
    • Antonymy = opposite meanings
      • Gradable antonyms = can be compared (e.g. older), and the negation of one does not necessitate the other (e.g. new/old)
      • Non-gradable antonyms = not normally compared, and negation implies the other (e.g. dead/alive)
        • Reversives = antonyms that mean the reverse of each other (e.g. dress/undress, enter/exit)
        • Marked/unmarked = the unmarked is the one of the pair normally used in questions (e.g. old is unmarked given “How old are you” and not “How young”)
        • Converses = subtype that are pairs that relate to each other from opposite points of view (e.g. win/lose, parent/child) (aka relational/reciprocal antonyms)
    • Hyponymy = the meaning of one is included in the other (e.g. flower/rose – flower is contained in the definition of rose, therefore rose is a hyponym of flower)
      • Superordinate terms = e.g. flower/animal relative to rose/dog
      • Co-hyponyms = those that share the same superordinate term (e.g. horse/dog relative to animal)
    • Prototypes = the characteristic instance of a category (e.g. chair, rather than bench, for furniture)
    • Homophones = same pronounciation
    • Homonyms = same spelling, nb. evolved by different histories
    • Polysemy = same spelling/form but multiple related meanings (e.g. foot, as of a person, and of a mountain)
    • Metonymy = using one word to refer to another word with which it has a close relation (e.g. white house for president, wheels for car)
      • Synecdoche is a subtype
    • Transferred epithet (aka hypallage) = an adjective attached to a noun (esp. inanimate) yet that is describing something else (esp. a person), e.g. sleepless night, quiet cup of coffee
  • Collocation = the frequency of words co-occuring
    • Corpus linguistics = the study of language by deriving rules based on sample sets

Ch.10 PRAGMATICS

• • Pragmatics = the “invisible” meaning that we recognize is meant even when not explicit
  • Context
    • Linguistic context, aka co-text = surrounding words
    • Physical context
    • Deixis expressions = terms that linguistically point
      • To things (it, this, these boxes)
      • People, aka people deixis (him, them, those idiots)
      • Spatial deixis (here, there, near that)
      • Temporal deixis (now, then, last week)
  • Reference = using words to refer, i.e. for listeners to identify something
    • Even a specific reference, e.g. “John,” is technically a range, albeit practically limited by context
    • Inference = the listener adding information to understand a reference, e.g. if X is an author then X can be used to reference a copy of a book by that author, for “Pass me your Chomsky”
    • Anaphora = a case of referring to an initial introduction, cf. an anaphoric expression is the actual repeated instances
      • Antecedent = the first mention
    • Presupposition = what a speaker assumes is true/known
      • “Constancy under negation” test = the presupposition should remain the same even if the sentence is negated (e.g. I still have a car no matter if “My car is a wreck” or “My car is not wreck”)
  • Speech acts = the action performed by a speaker with an utterance
    • Did you eat the pizza? Interrogative Question
    • Eat the pizza (please)! Imperative Command (Request)
    • You ate the pizza. Declarative Statement
    • Direct speech act = using a structure (e.g. interrogative) for its direct function (e.g. question)
    • Indirect speech act = using a structure with an indirect function (e.g. the interrogative “Can you pass the salt” for a request function)
    • Nb. often used because considered more polite
  • Politeness =  showing awareness and consideration of another person’s face
    • Face = in pragmatics, is your public self-image
    • Face-threatening act = something that represents a threat to another person’s self-image
      • E.g. a direct imperative command may threaten another’s social status and hence face
    • Face-saving act = something that lessens the possible threat to another’s face
    • Negative face = the need to be independent and free from imposition
      • E.g. a face-saving act emphasizing negative face can account for imposition (e.g. “Sorry to bother you…”)
    • Positive face = the need to be connected, to belong, to be a member of the group
      • E.g. a face-saving act emphasizing positive face can account for solidarity (e.g. “We both have the same problem…”)
    • Nb. very culturally dependent, e.g. some cultures consider directness more polite than others

^[I] “George Yule (born 20 March 1947) is a British linguist. He is known for writing introductory books on different branches of linguistics. His book The Study of Language is a best-selling introductory book taught in universities worldwide and translated into several languages”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Yule_(linguist).