INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE

STUDIES
WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
Language is a scientific study of human language.
LANGUAGE ORIGIN:
The origins of human language will perhaps remain forever
obscure. ... Languages are linked to each other by shared words or
sounds or grammatical constructions. The theory is that the members of
each linguistic group have descended from one language, a common
ancestor.
• No one knows exactly
• Hypothesis that language begins 100,000 and 50,000 years ago,
with the advent of modern man.
• This is well before the invention of the written language, about
5,000 years ago
LANGUAGE AS A DIVINE GIFT:
• In most religions, it is believed that language is a God-given gift to
human species. 
• People tried to discover the original divine language which was
spoken by our most ancient ancestors. They assumed that if a child
was brought up without hearing any language, the first word the
child would utter would be in this divine language.
• Christianity. Islam and Hinduism
NATURAL SOUND SOURCES THEORIES:
 Language emerges from natural sounds.
• Primitive words
 • Natural sound of birds
• The fact that in many languages there are words such as drip, click,
meow and honk that sound like what the mean supported this
claim.
THE BOW-WOW THEORY:
• According to this theory, language began when our ancestors
starting imitating the natural sounds around them. The first speech
was onomatopoeic, marked by echoic words such as moo, meow,
cuckoo etc.
YO-HEA-HO THEORY:
• The According to this proposal, early human beings used some
sounds when they were doing some collaborative work. For
example, when they were lifting a huge animal that they hunted,
they used sounds to do their task for physical coordination and to
reach their message to their friends that they share the burden of
their job. It is claimed that these sounds eventually turned out into
a language.
THE ORAL GEASTURE SOURCE:
• Unlike human beings, no other species can use language because
other animals have a very different physiology than human beings.
Modern human beings have vocal tract for speaking. Human
mouth is small, which makes it easier to open and close for fast
speech production. People use some nonverbal communication
when they speak. For example, we wave hands to say good-bye;
we nod our heads to show our approval or to mean ‘yes’, we
produce a sound by our tongue when we mean ‘no’. The oral-
gesture source suggests that language started with the gestures that
we use by our mouth and other speech organs.
PHYSIOLOGICAL ADAPTION:
• Unlike human beings, no other species can use language because
other animals have a very different physiology than human beings.
Modern human beings have vocal tract for speaking. Human
mouth is small, which makes it easier to open and close for fast
speech production.
GENETIC SOURCE:
• Our ancestors became bipedal (standing and walking on their two
legs) about 3.5 million years ago. When these humans could stand
on their two legs, their larynx (a speech organ behind Adam’s
apple in the human throat) changed in a way to allow humans to
produce vowel and consonant sounds in human languages. Human
language developed as a result of this evolutionary change.
SPEECH:
Speech is human vocal communication using language. Each language
uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form
the sound of its words, and using those words in their semantic
 Language is primarily a speech. Speech is the representation of the
experiences of the mind (Aristotle). 
WRITING:
"Writing" is the process of using symbols (letters of the alphabet,
punctuation and spaces) to communicate thoughts and ideas in a
readable form. "Writing" can also refer to the work/career of an author,
as in: "Shakespeare didn't make much money from writing."
 Writing is not language. Language is a complex system residing in
our brain which allows us to produce and interpret utterances.
SPEECH VS WRITING:
Words spoken are symbols of affections or impressions of the soul;
written words are symbols of words spoken. And just as letters are not
the same for all men, sounds are not the same either, although the
affections directly expressed by these indications are the same for
everyone, as are the things of which these impressions are images.
(Aristotle, 1938)
PRIMACY OF WRITING:
Primacy of speech above writing. Would be an approximate
"translation" Thus in a hierarchy or another, the speech is
superior/above writing.
ORIGIN OF WRITING:
 Speech goes back to human beginnings, perhaps a million years
ago. Writing is relatively recent, however it was first invented by
the Sumerians, in Mesopotamia, around 3200 B.C. Since then, the
idea of writing has spread around the world and different writing
systems have evolved in different parts of the world.
TYPES OF WRITING SYSTEM:
Writing systems can be divided into two main types: those that represent
consonants and vowels (alphabets), and those which represent syllables
(syllabaries), though some do both. 
LANGUAGE AS HUMAN FACULTY:
 Human Language VS animal communication
 What are the properties of human language? 
 What is the difference between language and communication?
 What is cultural transition?
  Can other species acquire language?
 Can animals use human language?
PROPERTIES OF HUMAN LANGUAGE:
 Reflexive
 Displacement
 Arbitrariness
 Productivity
 Cultural transmission
 Duality
REFLEXSIVE:
 Humans are able to reflect. They are able to talk about, or reflect
on language itself.
 Without this ability, we could not even talk about the other
properties of language. 
 Dogs are able to bark at each other, but they are probably not
barking about barking itself.
DISPLACEMENT:
 Humans can talk about the past, present and future
 Human can talk about things that don’t exist or we can’t see. 
ARBITRARINESS:
 There is no natural connection between a words form and its
meaning. 
 A written word doesn't look like its meaning EXAMPLE star.
PRODUCTIVITY:
  Human vocabulary and sentences are infinite, open-ended.
 We can create new words in our LEXICON, like texting, googling,
new slang…
 We have a morphology (word forming rules) and a grammar (with
sentence structure rules) which allow us to combine new words in
new structure.
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION:
 We acquire our speech from the environment we are raised in, our
culture, which includes our language, our accent, our expression. 
 Meow is a meow, wherever, it is instinctual, inborn. 
 Some birds both are born with some calss and songs instinctually
and some are learned.
DUALITY:
 Human language is organized at two levels:
 Phonetics.
 Phonology.

LANGUAGE FAMILY
WHAT IS LANGUAGE FAMILY?
 Language family is a group of languages related through descent
from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. 
WHAT ARE LARGEST LANGUAGE FAMILIES?
The six largest language families by language count are 
 Niger-Congo
 Austronesian
 Trans-New Guinea
  Sino-Tibetan
  Indo-European
 Afro-Asiatic.
 142 different language families, these six stand out as the major
language families of the world. They can be found throughout the
world, spreading uniquely to different regions and countries.
 Each of these families has at least 5% of the world’s languages,
and together account for two-thirds of all languages. Niger-Congo.
Each of these families has at least 5% of the world’s languages,
and together account for two-thirds of all languages. Niger-
Congo and Austronesian are the two largest from this perspective.
 These six families also make up five-sixths of the world’s
population. Based on speaker count, Indo-European and Sino-
Tibetan are the largest two language families, with over 4.6 billion
speakers between them. The two most spoken languages are in
these families – English is classified as Indo-European, and
Mandarin Chinese is classified as Sino-Tibetan.

HISTORICAL LANGUAGE
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS:
Historical linguistics studies how languages change or maintain their
structure during the course of time. Diachronic literally means,
“History calling”. That is why this field of linguistics has been named
as diachronic linguistics
DEFINETION:
 Brian D. Joseph ( ) defines historical linguistics as:
Historical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is concerned
with language change in general and with specific changes in languages,
and in particular 
a: With describing them 
b: With cataloging them 
c: And ultimately with explaining them.
LANGUAGE CHANGE:
Everything in the human affairs change. It would be a surprise if
languages do not change. A basic assumption in historical linguistics
is that languages are constantly changing. It is not something static or
non-changing. It is one of the most dynamic areas of culture. 
GENERAL CHANGE:
1. Old English: 449-1066
2. Middle English: 1066-1500
3. Early modern English: 1500-1957
4. Modern English: 1957- ?

WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the systematic study of the structure and evolution of
human language, and it is applicable to every aspect of human
endeavor.
LINGUISTIC IN EVERYDAY LIFE:
 Whether it’s telling a joke, naming a baby, using voice recognition
software, or helping a relative who’s had a stroke, you’ll find the
study of language reflected in almost everything you do. Linguists
 study meaning, discourse, and many other language aspects that
you have always wondered about.
STUDING LINGUISTIC:
When you study linguistics at any level, you gain insight into one of
the most fundamental parts of being human- the ability to
communicate through language. You can study every aspect of
language from functional theory to language acquisition, and
computational linguistics to psycholinguistics. Studying linguistics
enables you to understand how language works, and how it is used,
developed and preserved over time.
WHAT IS HISTORICAL LINGUISTIC?
Historical linguistics—traditionally known as philology—is the
branch of linguistics concerned with the development of languages
over time (where linguistics usually looks at one language at a time,
philology looks at them all).
THE NATURE AND CAUSE OF LANGAUAGE CHANGE?
 According to William O'Grady et al., historical language change is
distinctly human. As society and knowledge shift and grow, so,
too, does communication. "Historical linguistics studies the nature
and causes of language cause. The causes of language change find
their roots in the physiological and cognitive makeup of human
beings.
WHAT DOES HISTORICAL LINGUISTIC STUDY?
Historical Linguistics explores different aspects of language change.
The most commonly studied areas in historical linguistics are:
1. Etymology: Studying the reconstruction and origin of words.
2. Analysis and description of multiple speech communities.
3. Tracing (as far as possible) the history of language. This includes
Sanskrit, Latin, Old English, and also modern languages, such as
German, Italian and Japanese. This process also involves grouping
languages into categories, or “families”, according to the extent to
which those languages are similar to each other.
4. Describing and analyzing changes of any type which have occurred
cross-linguistically and within a language itself. Languages can
change in any area of language; phonology, syntax, morphology and
orthography are only a few of the areas which could be considered.
5. The construction of a framework of theories which can account for
how and why languages change.
 Sound change: phonemic and phonetic change
• Morphological change: changes in affixing systems 
• Syntactic change: ergativity, constituent order • lexical change: new
words appear or replace old words 
• Semantic change: words acquire different meanings.

Lecture No: <6>

PHONOLOGICAL:
Phonology concerns the study of the sound systems which exist (or
have existed) in a specific language. Studies in phonology can also
concern comparative approaches to language studies between
different time periods, dialects and languages
MORPHOLOGICAL;
The study of changes in inflection and word formation is referred to
as diachronic morphology, or morphological change. Such changes
are the effects of various form of language behaviour (such as
acquisition, processing, variation, storage, and lexicalization) or of
language contact.
English (OE) dōm ‘judgment, rule, power’, hād ‘person, rank,
Modern English -dom, -hood, -ship are distressed forms of Old
station (in life)’, scipe ‘state, condition’ (the first surviving also as the
noun doom). The shift from major lexeme to suffix did not happen
directly. The following stages of development can be distinguished
(see Meid 1967: 218–21).
Fully transparent compounds were formed; at this stage OE wīsdōm,
for instance, still meant ‘wise judgment’ or ‘discretion’, cynedōm
‘royal authority’, and so on.
Methods of language Reconstruction
RECONSTRUCTION:
The comparative method allows us to reconstruct that shared
ancestor, and works as long as we have a principled account of how
the descendent languages evolved from the ancestor language.
INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION:
Internal reconstruction allows us to reconstruct an ancestor in the
absence of related languages for comparison, but requires
morphophonemic alternation.
QUANTATIVE APPROACHES:
Quantitative approaches allow us to infer complex familial
structures without reconstructing proto-forms.
RECONSTRUCTION IS COMPLICATED BY SEVERAL
PHENOMENON:
 Drift: certain traits could be shared among languages just by
Chance.
 Semantic changes make cognates difficult to detect.
 Lexical changes reduce the number of useable cognates for
analysis.
 Conditioning in changes and irregular (word-by-word) reanalysis.
 Analogical changes linguistics areas may obscure the boundaries
between language families
But we would not know about any of this without comparative and
internal reconstruction!!!
SUBGROUPING:
Enough careful comparative analysis allows us to establish more
complex relationships among 3 or more related languages. Lexical
changes can actually be used to the same end.
Observing language change
Variation: multiple forms for same concept
Lexical diffusion: progression of innovation differs across words of a
language. Same applies to variation.
Why do languages change?
BECAUSE?
 Arbitrariness.
 Variation.
 Polysemy.
 Simplification.
 Structural pressure.

 Arbitrariness: sound (form) and meaning (function) are arbitrarily

linked
  Variation: change requires variability in sound or meaning
 Phonetic or phonemic change: o at some point, the old and new
variants are both available: o same function, different form

 Morpho-syntactic change: o at some point, the old and new

structures are both available: o same function, different form
 Reanalysis: o same function and form, but different abstract
structure
 Remantic change: o at some point, the old and new meanings are
both available: o same form, different function variability (and
change) diffuses through a population and through the lexicon.
SIMPLIFICATION:
 Lenition, assimilation, fusion, deletion etc; analogy
 but: no single ‘simplicity’ metric
 simplification along one dimension usually precipitates
complexity somewhere else
Chain shifts: first step may be ease-driven, but consequent steps are not
Syncopation: deletion, but clusters result some ‘lenited’ sounds can still
be phonetically challenging.

• Agglutination → inflection: o fewer morphemes per word, but

individual morphemes carry more functions
• Inflection → isolation: o words are even shorter, but syntax becomes
more complex
• Isolation → agglutination: o phonological reduction, but morphology
becomes complex
STRUCTURAL PRESSURE:
Balancing phonemic inventories
But, gaps still exist even so - some such “gaps” are principled ŋ, p/g:
languages with voicing contrast.
LANGUAGE GENIES AND COVERGENS:
Languages in contact may precipitate new languages pidgins and
creoles: borrowed lexical items, but new phonology and morph syntax.

Lecture No: <7>

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Famous Work
A course in general linguistics (1913)
Compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye

Important terms:
 Synchronic vs. Diachronic study
Particular Historical

 Langue and Parole

Universal Individual

ARBITRARINESS:
 Sign
 Signifier
  Signified

SYNTAGMATIE AND PRAGMATIC;

DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN LINGUISTICS;

11: Modern Linguistics
-Emergence of modern linguistics: Saussure
-Structuralism
-America Structuralism
-The Prague school
MODERN LINGUISTICS:
STRUCTURALISIM
Saussure introduced Structuralism in Linguistics, marking a
revolutionary break in the study of language, which had till then been
historical and philological. In his Course in General Linguistics (1916),
Saussure saw language as a system of signs constructed by convention.
Understanding meaning to be relational, being produced by the
interaction between various signifiers and signified, he held that
meaning cannot be understood in isolation. Saussure illustrated this
rationality of language, with the terms paradigmatic axis (of selection)
and the syntagmatic axis (of combination), and with the example of 8.25
Geneva to Paris express.