Definition of Language

According to Robins: “Language is a symbol system based on pure or arbitrary

conventions... infinitely extendable and modifiable according to the changing
needs and conditions of the speakers.”

According to this definition, language is a symbol system. Every language selects some
symbols for its selected sounds. The English sound /k/ for example has the symbol k for
it. These symbols form the alphabet of the language and join in different combinations to
form meaningful words. The system talked of here is purely arbitrary (random) in the sense
that there is no one
to one correspondence between the structure of a word and the thing it stands for. The
combination p.e.n., for example stands, in English, for an instrument used for writing.
Why could it not be e.p.n. or n.e.p.? Well, it could also be e.p.n. or n.e.p. and there is
nothing sacrosanct (sacred) about the combination p.e.n. except that it has now become
a convention—a convention that cannot be easily changed.

According to Hall: “Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and

interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary
symbols.”

According to Noam Chomsky: “A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences,

each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”

Chomsky meant to convey that each sentence has a structure. Human brain is competent
enough to construct different sentences from out of the limited set of sounds/symbols
belonging to a particular language. Human brain is so productive that a child can at any
time produce a sentence that has never been said or heard earlier.

Characteristics of Language
1-Language is a Means
of Communication
Language is a very important means of communication
between humans. One can communicate his or her ideas,
emotions, beliefs or feelings to the other as they share a
common code that makes up the language. No doubt, there are many other means of
communication used by humans e.g. gestures, nods, winks, flags, smiles, horns, shorthand,
Braille alphabet, mathematical symbols, Morse code, sirens, sketches, maps,
acting, miming, dancing etc. But all these systems of communication are extremely
limited or they too, in turn, depend upon language only. They are not as flexible,
comprehensive, perfect and extensive as language is. Language is so important a form of
communication between humans that it is difficult to think of a society without language.
It gives shape to people’s thoughts and guides and controls their entire activity. It is a
carrier of civilization and culture as human thoughts and philosophy are conveyed from
one generation to the other through the medium of language. Language is ubiquitous in
the sense that it is present everywhere in all activities. It is as important as the air we
breathe and is the most valuable possession of man.
Animals too have their system of communication but their communication is limited to a
very small number of messages, e.g. hunger, fear, and anger. In the case of humans,
the situation is entirely different. Human beings can send an infinite number of messages
to their fellow beings. It is through language that they store knowledge, transfer it to the
next generation and yoke the present, past and the future together.
Language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no
inherent relation between the words of a language and
their meanings or the ideas conveyed by them (except in
the case of hieroglyphics where a picture of an object may represent the object). There is
no reason why a female adult human being be called a “woman” in English, “aurat” in
Urdu, “zen” in Persian and “femine” in French. Selection of these words in the languages
mentioned here is purely arbitrary, an accident of history. It is just like christening a new
born baby who may be christened John or James. But once a child is given some name in
a purely arbitrary manner; this name gets associated with the child for his entire life and
it becomes an important, established convention. The situation in the case of the
language is a similar one. The choice of a word selected to mean a particular thing or
idea is purely arbitrary but once a word is selected for a particular referent, it comes to
stay as such. It may be noted that had language not been arbitrary, there would have
been only one language in the world.
Language is not an amorphous, a disorganised
or a chaotic combination of sounds. Any brick
may be used anywhere in a building, but it is
not so with sounds or graphic symbols standing for the sounds of a language. Sounds are
Language is Arbitrary
Language is a System of Systems
Language is a Means
of Communication
arranged in certain fixed or established, systematic order to form meaningful units or
words. Similarly, words are also arranged in a particular system to frame acceptable
meaningful sentences. These systems operate at two levels: phonological and syntactical.
At the phonological level, for example, sounds of a language appear only in some fixed
combinations. There is no word, for example, that starts with bz–, lr– or zl– combination.
There is no word that begins with a /ŋ/ sound or ends in a /h/ sound. Similarly words too
combine to form sentences according to certain conventions (i.e. grammatical or
structural rules) of the language. The sentence “The hunter shot the tiger with a gun” is
acceptable but the sentence “the tiger shot a gun with hunter the” is not acceptable as
the word order in the latter sentence does not conform to the established language
conventions.
Language is thus called a system of systems as it operates at the two levels discussed
above. This property of language is also termed duality by some linguists. This makes
language a very complex phenomenon. Every human child has to master the conventions
of the language he or she learns before being able to successfully communicate with
other members of the social group in which he or she is placed.
Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds
only produced by a physiological articulatory
mechanism in the human body. In the beginning,
it must have appeared as vocal sounds only. Writing must have come much later, as an
intelligent attempt to represent vocal sounds. Writing is only the graphic representation
of the sounds of the language. There are a number of languages which continue to exist,
even today, in the spoken form only. They do not have a written form. A child learns to
speak first; writing comes much later. Also, during his life time, a man speaks much
more than he writes. The total quantum of speech is much larger than the total quantum
of written materials.
It is because of these reasons that some linguists say that speech is primary, writing is
secondary. Writing did have one advantage over speech—it could be preserved in books
or records. But, with the invention of magnetic tapes or audio-cassettes, it has lost that
advantage too. The age-old proverb ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ does not hold much
ground when one finds that the spoken words, at the beck and call of a really good orator,
can do much more than a pen. Just think of Mark Antony’s speech in ‘Julius Caesar’ that
inspired the whole mob into action and spurred them on to a mood of frenzy to burn and
kill the enemies of Julius Caesar. A number of modern gadgets like the telephone, the
tape recorder, the Dictaphone, etc. only go to prove the primacy of speech over writing.
Language is a set of conventional
communicative signals used by humans for
communication in a community. Language
in this sense is a possession of a social group, comprising an indispensable set of rules
which permits its members to relate to each other, to interact with each other, to cooperate
with each other; it is a social institution. Language exists in society; it is a means
of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations. It is as a member
of society that a human being acquires a language. We are not born with an instinct to
learn a particular language––English, Russian, Chinese or French. We learn a language as
member of the society using that language, or because we want to understand that
society, or to be understood by that speech-community. If a language is not used in any
society, it dies out.
Language is Primarily Vocal
Language is a Social Phenomenon
Language is thus a social event. It can fully be described only if we know all about the
people who are involved in it, their personalities, their beliefs, attitudes, knowledge of
the world, relationship to each other, their social status, what activity they are engaged
in, what they are talking about, what has gone before linguistically and non-linguistically,
what happens after, what they are and a host of other facts about them and the situation
they are placed in.
No language was created in
a day out of a mutually
agreed upon formula by a
group of humans. Language is the outcome of evolution and convention. Each generation
transmits this convention on to the next. Like all human institutions languages also
change and die, grow and expand. Every language then is a convention in a community.
It is non-instinctive because it is acquired by human beings. Nobody gets a language in
heritage; he acquires it, and everybody has been provided with an innate ability to
acquire language. Animals inherit their system of communication by heredity, humans do
not.
Although language is symbolic, yet its symbols are
arranged in a particular system. All languages have
their system of arrangements. Though symbols in each
human language are finite, they can be arranged infinitely; that is to say, we can
produce an infinite set of sentence by a finite set of symbols.
Every language is a system of systems. All languages have phonological and grammatical
systems, and within a system there are several sub-systems. For example, within the
grammatical system we have morphological and syntactic systems, and within these two
sub-systems we have several other systems such as those of plural, of mood, of aspect,
of tense, etc.
Language is a unique
phenomenon of the
earth. Other planets do
not seem to have any language, although this fact may be invalidated if we happen to
discover a talking generation on any other planet. But so far there is no evidence of the
presence of language on the moon. Each language is unique in its own sense. By this we
do not mean that languages do not have any similarities or universals. Despite their
common features and language, universals, each language has its peculiarities and
distinct features.
Language has creativity and productivity. The structural elements of human language can
be combined to produce new utterances, which neither the speaker nor his hearers may
ever have made or heard before any, listener, yet which both sides understand without
difficulty. Language changes according to the needs of society. Old English is different
from modern English; so is old Urdu different form modern Urdu.
The language that human beings use consists of two
sub-systems - sound and meaning. A finite set of sound
units can be grouped and re-grouped into units of
meaning. These can be grouped and re-grouped to generate further functional
constituents of the higher hierarchical order. We can produce sentences through this
process of combining units of a different order. Animal calls do not show such duality,
they are unitary.
Language is Non-instinctive and Conventional
Language is Systematic
Language is Unique, Creative, Complex & Modifiable
Language has a Duality
A speaker may say something that he has never
said before and be understood without difficulty.
Man uses the limited linguistic, resources in order
to produce completely novel ideas and utterances. Fairy tales, animal fables, narratives
about alien unheard of happenings in distant galaxies or nonexistent worlds are perfectly
understood by the listeners.
One can talk about situations, places and objects
far removed from one’s present surroundings and
time. We often talk about events that happened
long time ago and at a distant place; bombing incident in Ireland’s Londonderry twelve
years’ back, for instance; or the sinking of the Spanish Armada in the sixteenth century.
Bees, of course, perform dances about the source of nectar that is also removed from the
place of dance (beehive). But they cannot convey what happened in the previous season
through their dance features. Human beings, however, can narrate events in which they
were not involved.
A language is an
abstract set of
psychological
principles and sociological consideration that constitute a person’s competence as a
speaker in a given situation. “These psychological principles make available to him an
unlimited number of sentences he can draw upon in concrete; situations and provide him
with the ability to understand and create entirely new sentences. Hence language is not
just a verbal behaviour; it is a system of rules establishing correlations between
meanings and sound sequences. It is a set of principles that a speaker masters; it is not
anything that he does. In brief, a language is a code which is different from the act of
encoding; it is a speaker’s linguistic competence rather than his linguistic performance.
But mere linguistic or communicative competence is not enough for communication; it
has to be coupled with communicative competence. This is the view of the sociolinguists
who stress the use of language according to the occasion and context, the speaker and
the listener, the profession and the social status of the speaker and the listener. That
language is the result of social interaction established truth.
No species other than humans
has been endowed with
language. Animals cannot
acquire human language because of its complex structure and their physical inadequacies.
Animals do not have the type of brain which the human beings possess and their
articulatory organs are also very much different from those of the human beings.
Furthermore any system of animals’ communication does not make use of the quality of
features, that is, of concurrent systems of sound and meaning. Human language is
openended,
extendable and modifiable whereas the animal language is not.

Branches of Linguistics
The core of linguistic studies is the study of language structure at different levels as
discussed above. In the growth of modern linguistics as an autonomous field of
knowledge, it has been necessary to emphasize this aspect of linguistics, since no other
field of study describes language structure systematically and completely.
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However, there are many areas of human activity and knowledge in which language
plays a part and linguistics is useful in these areas. The study of language in relation to
the many areas of knowledge where it is relevant, has led to the growth of many
branches of linguistics. Thus the scope of linguistics has grown to include these branches.
Linguistics can be classified into two major branches according to language scholars:
Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with
developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered the
core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics.
Although phonetics often informs phonology, it is often excluded from the purview of
theoretical linguistics, along with psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Theoretical
linguistics also involves the search for an explanation of linguistic universals, that is,
properties all languages have in common.
Applied Linguistics the study of language-related issues applied in everyday life,
notably language policies, planning, and education. It is the application of linguistics
theories to evaluate the language problems arisen from other professions like sociology,
psychology, ethnology, geography, neurology, biology, and history etc.
Various branches of linguistics have grown because language is intimately related both to
the inner, world of man’s mind and to the outer world of society and social relationships.
Each of these aspects has led to the study of psycho-linguistics and sociolinguistics
respectively.
(a) Psycholinguistics
Since language is a mental phenomenon, it is mental processes which are articulated in
language behaviour. Psycholinguistics studies these mental processes, processes
of thought and concept formation and their articulation in language, which
reveal a great deal about the structures of human psychology as well as of
language. ‘Cognitive’ psychology is the area which explores how meanings are
understood by the human brain, how syntax and memory are linked, how messages are
‘decoded’ and stored. Psycholinguistics also studies the influence of psychological
factors such as intelligence, motivation, anxiety etc. on the kind of language
that is understood and produced. For instance, in the case of errors made by a
speaker, there may be psychological reasons which influence comprehension or
production that are responsible for the occurrence of an error. Our perception of speech
sounds or graphic symbols (in writing) is influenced by the state of our mind. One kind of
mental disability, for example, results in the mistakes made by children in reading when
they mistake one letter for another (Dyslexia). Psycholinguistics can offer some insights
and corrective measures for this condition.
Psycholinguistics is concerned with the learning of language at various stages: the
early acquisition of a first language by children and later stages in acquisition of
first and other languages. Psycholinguists attempt to answer questions such as
whether the human brain has an inborn language ability structured in such a
way that certain grammatical and semantic patterns are embedded in it, which
can explain how all human beings are capable of learning a language. This
exploration may lead us to determining whether all the languages in the world have
some ‘universal’ grammar that lies in the mind of every human being and is transformed
in particular situations to produce different languages. Psycholinguistic studies in
language acquisition are very useful in the area of language teaching because they help
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teachers to understand error production and individual differences among learners and
thus devise appropriate syllabi and materials for them.
One specialized area within psycholinguistics is Neurolinguistics that studies the
physiological basis of language and language disorders such as aphasia, loss of memory,
etc.
Another relation of language with mind is that of logic. It was held by some ancient
philosophers that the human mind is rational and capable of thinking logically and,
therefore, language too is logically ordered and rational. Others held that, just as
irrationality is present in the mind, irregularity or anomaly is present in human language.
Since then there has been a debate about the nature of language and the relation
between language and logic. One of the problems discussed by philosophers of
language is whether language can be an adequate medium for philosophical inquiry.
Since all our thoughts are known to us through language, we must examine the kind of
language we use when we approach philosophical issues and analysis.
(b) Sociolinguistics
The branch of linguistics that deals with the exploration of the relation between
language and society is known as sociolinguistics, and the sociology of
language. Sociolinguistics is based on the fact that language is not a single
homogeneous entity, but has different forms in different situations. The changes in
language occur because of changes in social conditions, for example, social class, gender,
regional and cultural groups. A particular social group may speak a different variety of a
language from the rest of the community. This group becomes a speech community.
Variation in language may occur because the speakers belong to a different geographical
region. Taking the example of English, we find that it is not a single language but exists
in the form of several varieties. One kind of English is called R.P. (or Received
Pronunciation). This kind of English is used in the south west of England and particularly
associated with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the BBC. It is an educated
and formal kind of English. But there are other varieties of English, such as the English
that is spoken in the north of England, in Yorkshire and Lancashire; in Scotland(Scottish
English); Wales (Welsh English), etc. A less educated variety of English is that spoken by
working class people in London often called Cockney English. Then there are the varieties
of English spoken by people of different countries around the world, e.g. American
English, and Australian English.
Sociolinguistics is the study of language variation and change–how varieties of
language are formed when the speakers belong to a geographical region, social
class, social situation and occupation, etc. Varieties of a language that are formed in
various geographical regions involve a change in the pronunciation as well as vocabulary.
Such changes result in the formation of a distinctly different variety of the language or
a dialect. Sometimes these changes may be present within the same geographical
region due to the social differences between different economic sections, e.g. working
class and aristocracy. These changes result in class-dialects.
In sociolinguistic studies, we consider the linguistic features of these dialects, e.g. syntax
variations such as ‘I’ve gotten it’ or ‘I ain’t seen nothing’ and lexical variations such as
‘lift’ (British English) to ‘elevator’ (American English). The study of the demarcation
of dialect boundaries across a region and of specific features of each dialect is
called dialectology. One dialect may be demarcated from another by listing a bundle of
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features which occur in a particular region. The point at which a certain feature (of
pronunciation or vocabulary) ceases to be prevalent and gives way to another feature is
a dialect boundary or ‘isogloss’. Dialects may acquire some importance and prestige and
evolve into distinct languages. This usually happens when they are codified, e.g. in
written and literary forms, and their grammar and lexicon is standardized. Usually this
happens when the dialect is given political and social importance. That is why it is said ‘A
language is a dialect with an army, and navy’. Sociolinguists chart the evolution of such
changes.
Variation in language may also be due to the specific area of human activity in which
language is used. Again taking the example of English, this language is used in different
fields—of law, religion, science, sports etc. In each of these areas there is a specific
vocabulary and manner of use of English, which defines the legal language, the scientific
language etc. This variety of language according to its use, is called register.
Sociolinguists examine the particular characteristics of different registers, i.e. legal
register, scientific register, etc., to see how these differ. This kind of study is useful
because it enables us to understand how language-use is tied to a social context. The
notion of register is important in showing that language use in communication is not
arbitrary or uncontrolled, but is governed by rules of situational and contextual
appropriateness.
The sociology of language includes the study of attitudes to language held by social
groups, for instance, they may consider some languages or dialects as more (or less)
important. It includes the planning of language education, e.g. which languages should
he the medium of instruction, which language should be taught as second language; and
language policy, i.e. which languages are legally and constitutionally recognised and what
status they are given. The sociology of language is thus linked with other aspects of our
social world, the political, economic, educational, etc.
(c) Anthropological Linguistics
The evolution of language in human society and its role in the formation of
culture; is another aspect of language society and culture, this is studied in
anthropological linguistics. The structure of language has a social and cultural basis in
the same way as other customs, conventions and codes such as those related to dress,
food, etc. Each culture organises its world its own way, giving names to objects,
identifying areas of significance or value and suppressing other areas. Language becomes
a way of embodying the world view and beliefs of a culture, and the things that culture
holds sacred; for example, a culture in which family relationships occupy the most
significant position will have many kinship terms in their language, with each relationship
specified by a particular term. If you compare the kinship terms in English such as
grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, etc. with kinship terms in Urdu, you will find that
there are many more such terms in Urdu specifying particular relationships such as a
paternal / maternal grand-father.
Similarly, terms specifying colours, emotions, natural phenomena, and so on are
differently organised in every culture, and reveal a great deal about that culture. The
study of these specific cultural elements is called the ethnography of a culture. A specific
way of communication in a culture is thus studied as the ethnography of communication.
Anthropological studies have explored the relation between language and
culture. Language is invented to communicate and express a culture. It also
happens that this language then begins to determine the way we think and see
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the world. Since this language is the means by which we understand and think about
the world, we cannot go beyond it and understand the world in any other way. This is the
view expressed by the linguist Whorf whose hypothesis is that we dissect nature along
the lines laid by our native language. There is still a debate about this, but it is true that
to some extent we are hound to see the world according to the terms specified by our
own language. These aspects of language and culture are still being discussed by
anthropological linguists, philosophers of language and ethnographers.
(d) Literary Stylistics
The study of variation in language and the use of language in communication
has also led to new ways of studying literary texts and the nature of literary
communication. If you consider again the notion of register discussed above, you may
realise that register is in fact a kind of language that is considered appropriate for a
particular subject matter, e.g. the style of a religious sermon, the style of sports
commentary. Similarly we may use this notion to describe the style of a literary work.
That is, we may describe its features at the levels of phonology, syntax, lexis, etc. to
distinguish it from other texts and to appreciate how it achieves some unique effects
through the use of language. This kind of study is called literary stylistics.
Literary writers use the system of language in their own way, i.e. they create a style.
This is done by deliberate choice (e.g. out of a whole range of words available, they
choose one which would be particularly effective), sometimes by deviation from or
violation of the rules of grammar (e.g. ‘he danced his did’ in Cummings’ poem). Poets
and even prose writers may invert the normal order of items in a sentence (e.g. ‘Home is
the sailor…’) or create a pattern by repetition of some items (e.g. the sound /f/ in ‘the
furrow followed free’). By these and other devices, they are able to manipulate language
so that it conveys some theme or meaning with great force and effectiveness.
In literary stylistics, we read the text closely with attention to the features of language
used in it, identifying and listing the particular features under the heading of ‘lexis’,
‘grammar’, ‘phonology’ or ‘sound patterns’. When we have obtained a detailed account of
all these features, we co-relate them or bring them together in an interpretation of the
text. That is, we try to link ‘what is being said’ with ‘how it is being said,’ since it is
through the latter that writers can fully express the many complex ideas and feelings
that they want to convey. Stylistic analysis also helps in a better understanding of how
metaphor, irony, paradox, ambiguity etc. operate in a literary text as these are all effects
achieved through language and through the building up of a coherent linguistic structure.

English Vowels Chart

Phonetic Transcription
Phonetic transcription is a device in which we use several symbols in such a way that one symbol
always represents one sound. It is also known as phonetic notation; it is an ‘attempt on paper, a
record of the sounds that speakers make.’ By looking at an English word in its written form one
cannot be sure of its pronunciation, whereas by looking at it in phonetic transcription one can
be.
Most of our phonetic transcriptions are phonemic transcriptions, that is, each symbol represents
a
phoneme, a distinct sound unit in language. A pair of square brackets [ ] indicates a phonetic
transcription: Phonemic transcriptions are enclosed within slant bars / /.
The Usefulness of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
The IPA gives us a uniform international medium of studying and transcribing the sounds of all
the
languages of the world. Many languages in the world have no orthographic (written) form at all.
It
has been made possible to study such languages with this alphabet. In other words, the IPA is ‘a
precise and universal’ means (i.e. valid for all languages) of writing down the spoken forms of
utterances as they are spoken without reference to their orthographic representation,
grammatical
status, or meaning.
As regards English, the IPA helps us in establishing and maintaining international intelligibility
and
uniformity in the pronunciation of English. With the help of the IPA we can easily teach the
pronunciation of English or of any other language. The IPA has contributed a lot in the teaching
and
description of language. The teachers and learners of English can improve, and standardize their
pronunciation and can overcome the confusion created by the spellings with the help of the
International Phonetic Alphabet.
Received Pronunciation (RP)
A pronunciation of British English, originally based on the speech of the upper class of
southeastern England and characteristic of the English spoken at the public schools and at Oxford
and Cambridge Universities. Until recently it was the standard form of English used in British
broadcasting.
RP as a Social Accent of English
Received Pronunciation, or RP for short, is the instantly recognisable accent often described as
‘typically British’. Popular terms for this accent, such as ‘The Queen’s English’, ‘Oxford English’
or
‘BBC English’ are all a little misleading. The Queen, for instance, speaks an almost unique form
of
English, while the English we hear at Oxford University or on the BBC is no longer restricted to
one
type of accent.
RP is an accent, not a dialect, since all RP speakers speak Standard English. In other words, they
avoid non-standard grammatical constructions and localised vocabulary characteristic of
regional
dialects. RP is also regionally non-specific, that is it does not contain any clues about a speaker’s
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geographic background. But it does reveal a great deal about their social and/or educational
background.
Well-known but not widely used
RP is probably the most widely studied and most frequently described variety of spoken English
in
the world, yet recent estimates suggest only 2% of the UK population speak it. It has a negligible
presence in Scotland and Northern Ireland and is arguably losing its prestige status in Wales. It
should properly, therefore, be described as an English, rather than a British accent. As well as
being
a living accent, RP is also a theoretical linguistic concept. It is the accent on which phonemic
transcriptions in dictionaries are based, and it is widely used (in competition with General
American) for teaching English as a foreign language. RP is included here as a case study, not to
imply it has greater merit than any other English accent, but because it provides us with an
extremely familiar model against which comparisons with other accents may be made.
What’s in the name?
RP is a young accent in linguistic terms. It was not around, for example, when Dr Johnson wrote
A
Dictionary of the English Language in 1757. He chose not to include pronunciation suggestions as
he felt there was little agreement even within educated society regarding ‘recommended’ forms.
The
phrase Received Pronunciation was coined in 1869 by the linguist, A J Ellis, but it only became a
widely used term used to describe the accent of the social elite after the phonetician, Daniel
Jones,
adopted it for the second edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary (1924). The definition of
‘received’ conveys its original meaning of ‘accepted’ or ‘approved’ — as in ‘received wisdom’. We
can
trace the origins of RP back to the public schools and universities of nineteenth-century Britain
—
indeed Daniel Jones initially used the term Public School Pronunciation to describe this
emerging, socially exclusive accent. Over the course of that century, members of the ruling and
privileged classes increasingly attended boarding schools such as Winchester, Eton, Harrow and
Rugby and graduated from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Their speech patterns -
based
loosely on the local accent of the south-east Midlands (roughly London, Oxford and Cambridge)
—
soon came to be associated with ‘The Establishment’ and therefore gained a unique status,
particularly within the middle classes in London.
Broadcaster’s choice
RP probably received its greatest impetus, however, when Lord Reith, the first General Manager
of
the BBC, adopted it in 1922 as a broadcasting standard - hence the origins of the term BBC
English. Reith believed Standard English, spoken with an RP accent, would be the most widely
understood variety of English, both here in the UK and overseas. He was also conscious that
choosing a regional accent might run the risk of alienating some listeners. To a certain extent
Reith’s decision was understandable, and his attitude only reflected the social climate at the
time.
But since RP was the preserve of the aristocracy and expensive public schools, it represented
only a
very small social minority. This policy prevailed at the BBC for a considerable time and probably
contributed to the sometimes negative perception of regional varieties of English.
There’s more than one RP
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A speaker who uses numerous very localised pronunciations is often described as having a
‘broad’ or
‘strong’ regional accent, while terms such as ‘mild’ or ‘soft’ are applied to speakers whose speech
patterns are only subtly different from RP speakers. So, we might describe one speaker as having
a
broad Glaswegian accent and another as having a mild Scottish accent. Such terms are
inadequate
when applied to Received Pronunciation, although as with any variety of English, RP
encompasses a
wide variety of speakers and should not be confused with the notion of ‘posh’ speech. The
various
forms of RP can be roughly divided into three categories. Conservative RP refers to a very
traditional variety particularly associated with older speakers and the aristocracy. Mainstream
RP describes an accent that we might consider extremely neutral in terms of signals regarding
age,
occupation or lifestyle of the speaker. Contemporary RP refers to speakers using features typical
of younger RP speakers. All, however, are united by the fact they do not use any pronunciation
patterns that allow us to make assumptions about where they are from in the UK.
RP today
Like any other accent, RP has also changed over the course of time. The voices we associate with
early BBC broadcasts, for instance, now sound extremely old-fashioned to most. Just as RP is
constantly evolving, so our attitudes towards the accent are changing. For much of the twentieth
century, RP represented the voice of education, authority, social status and economic power.
The
period immediately after the Second World War was a time when educational and social
advancement suddenly became a possibility for many more people. Those who were able to take
advantage of these opportunities — be it in terms of education or career — often felt under
considerable pressure to conform linguistically and thus adopt the accent of the establishment
or at
least modify their speech towards RP norms. In recent years, however, as a result of continued
social change, virtually every accent is represented in all walks of life to which people aspire —
sport,
the arts, the media, business, even former strongholds of RP England, such as the City, Civil
Service
and academia. As a result, fewer younger speakers with regional accents consider it necessary to
adapt their speech to the same extent. Indeed many commentators even suggest that younger
RP
speakers often go to great lengths to disguise their middle-class accent by incorporating regional
features into their speech.

Morphology and Linguistics

Morphology is the study of morphemes, which are the smallest significant units of grammar.
It is a level of structure between the phonological and the syntactic. It is complementary to
syntax. Morphology is the grammar of words; syntax is the grammar of
sentences. One accounts for the internal structure or form of words; the other describes
how these words are put together in sentences.
The English word unkind is made up of two smaller units: “un” and “kind”. These are
minimal units that cannot be further sub-divided into meaningful units. Such minimal,
meaningful units of grammatical description are generally referred to as morphemes. A
morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:
1. It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.
2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its meaning
or without meaningless remainders.
3. It recurs in differing verbal environments with a relatively stable meaning.
The word unlikely has 3 morphemes while the word carpet is a single morpheme. The words
car and pet are independent morphemes in themselves. The word carpet has nothing to do
with the meaning of car and pet. Carpet is a minimal meaningful unit by itself. Again, the
word garbage is a single morpheme while the words garb and age are independent
morphemes by themselves. A systematic study of morphemes or how morphemes join to
form words is known as morphology.
The definition of the morpheme may not be completely unassailable as will be evident from
the discussion that follows, but it is certainly a very satisfying definition applicable to a
majority of words in any language. The English word unassailable is made up of three
morphemes, un, assail, able, each one of which has a particular meaning distribution and a
particular phonological form or shape.
Some Basic Concepts of Morphology
Morpheme
The word is the basic unit which relates the grammar of a language to its vocabulary. Words
have internal structure which indicates their grammatical identity (e.g. that the word is
plural, or past tense) and their lexical identity (e.g. that the word unhappiness is a noun with
negative meaning referring to emotions). Words are composed of morphemes. A
morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. Some words consist of just one
morpheme; some consist of several.
We can easily recognise such constructions as mats, artists, artistic. national,
childishness, unmoved, denationalization, highway, footpath as words. Difficulty
arises when we try to define these constructions - but all the same they can be recognised.
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They have meaning which is independent of the meaning of other words. They convey the
meaning in the same way as the following words: Sky, water, hill, cousin, mango, walk,
sew, autumn and tap.
But the crucial difference between the first set of examples and the next is that while we can
break the items of the first set and still obtain smaller meaningful units we cannot break the
items occurring in the second set. If we do so we would be destroying their meaning. Let us
see how the items in the first group of examples can be split.
(a) mat + s (b) art + ist (c) art + ist + ic
(d) nation + al (e) child + ish + ness (f) un + move +d
(f) de + nation + al + ize + ation (g) high + way (h) foot + path
After having broken these words we are left with more particles with different meanings.
Attempts to break these nine words have not destroyed their meaning. We rather discover
that the words are composed of smaller particles. We also see that two types of meaning in
such constructions can be identified:
(i) Some particles refer to the external reality. (sky, dog, table, nation, child)
(ii) Others do not do so, but are to be understood in terms of their function within the
language.
Words of the former type are known as content words and their meaning as lexical
meaning; while words that are meaningful in terms of their structural significance are
called form words having structural, formal or grammatical meaning. Thus we
can see that the word child is content word whose meaning is referable to the external world
and is bound to be destroyed if we try to split it further: ch - ild, chi-Id, chil-d
But after breaking childishness into childish and ness we get two segments whose meanings
are independently contained in them. We cannot break -ness; but childish can be split into
child and -ish. Again we obtain such particles each one of which possesses meaning. Further
attempts to break them will, however, destroy their meaning. We will not get more particles
that can either be referred to the external reality or can be construed as having any
grammatical function. They are the minimal meaningful units. Such a particle is called a
morpheme. In the above examples, the particles that we have been able to obtain after
breaking the various sequences, are all minimal meaningful parts of the English language.
They are minimal since they cannot be broken down further on the basis of meaning. They
are meaningful because we can specify the kind of connection they have with the
nonlinguistic circumstances in which they are used.
Morpheme is, therefore, the minimal recurring unit of grammatical structure,
possessing a distinctive phonemic form, having a grammatical function and
may differ in its phonological manifestations.
Morpheme and Syllable: - A single morpheme may be made up of one syllable,
more than one syllable, or no syllable at all. Monosyllabic morphemes (those consisting of
one syllable) are tin, train, gold, pen, man, cat, dog. But words like station and teacher are
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composed of two syllables - sta-tion, tea-cher, Hyperion and introduction contain four
syllables; and chloromycetin contain five syllables. These are all single morphemes, though
their syllabic composition varies. On the other hand, there are morphemes that can be
marked to contain no syllable at all - the plural morpheme /-s/, the past tense morpheme /-
d/ are examples of this type. Though they are not syllabic, they are morphemes. In this
context, the case of zero allomorph is still more interesting.
Morph: - The concept of morph recognises that a morpheme has a phonetic shape. This
phonetic representation is called its morph. The word writer has two morphemes, write and -
er. These are realizable in the phonetic shapes as /rait/ and/-∂:/. These are two morphs of
the morpheme (or word in this case).
Allomorph: - In our discussion of morpheme we have noted that it sometimes
manifests itself in various phonetic shapes or forms. The plural morpheme can be realized as
/-s/ or /-z/ or /-iz/ and so on. Similarly, the past tense morpheme can appear as /-d/, /-t/, /-
id/, and /-q/. Each of these morphs belongs to the same morpheme. These are called
allomorphs.
The plural morpheme in English (which combines with a noun morpheme to form a plural)
is represented by three allomorphs /s/, /z/ and /iz/ in different environments (which are
phonologically conditioned).
Plural Morpheme
Allomorphs
{e(s)}:
/iz/ in the case of words ending in /s/, /z/, /ò/, / ʒ /, / ʧ/, / ʤ /
e.g. buses / bʌs ɪz /,rouges / ru:ʒ ɪz /
/s/ in the case of words ending in a voiceless consonant (other than ò, s, ʧ)
e.g cats /kæts/, caps /kæps/
/z/ in the case of words ending in voiced sounds (other than /z, ʒ, ʤ /)
e.g boys/ bɔɪz /, bags /bægz/
Similarly, the present tense morpheme {-e(s)} has three allomorphs /s/, /z/ &. /iz/, e.g.
packs /pæks/, digs /digz/, washes / wɒʃ ɪz /. The past tense morpheme of English, {-e(d}
has also three different (phonologically conditioned) allomorphs /t/, /d/ and /id/. The rule
that governs these allomorphs is as follows:
Past Morpheme
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{e(d)}
/t/ after morphs ending in voiceless sounds (except /t/)
booked / bʊkt /, pushed / pʊʃt /
/d/ after morphs ending in voiced sounds (except /d/).
loved / lʌvd /, bagged /bægd/
/id/ after morphs ending in /t/ and /d/ wanted /wantid/ wedded /wedid/
The relationship between the terms morph, allomorph and morpheme is similar to that
between phone, allophone and phoneme. The term ‘morph’ means shape.
Any minimal phonetic form that has meaning is a morph. Thus /bʌs/, /ɪz/, /kæp/,
/s/, / bæg/, /z/ are all morphs.
Those morphs which belong to the same morpheme are called allomorphs of
that morpheme. Thus /s/, /z/ and /iz/ are allomorphs of the plural morpheme {e(s)}.
Similarly, a phoneme is a minimal, distinctive unit in the sound system of a language.
A phoneme may sometimes occur in more than one phonetic form called
allophones. These phonetic forms have considerable phonetic similarity between them and
their phonological function is the same. They, however, never occur in the same phonetic
environment and are said to be in complimentary distribution.
Allomorphs, like allophones, are also in complimentary distribution. The phonemes /p/, /t/
and /k/ for example, have two phonetic forms each i.e. [p] and [ph], [t] and [th], [k] and [kh].
Here [p] and [ph] are the allophones of the phoneme /p/.
All the speech sounds (phonemes as well as allophones) are called phones.
It may be noted that in some languages words can generally he segmented into parts
(morphs) while it is not so in others. Similarly there are languages in which the morph tends
to represent a single minimal grammatical unit (a morpheme) while
Allomorphs of a morpheme may change their phonemic shapes due to two types of
conditioning:
(a) Phonological or phonemic conditioning
(b) Morphological conditioning
Phonological Conditioning {Plural Morpheme}
We shall first examine the following sets of words: