English Grammar I Morphology

1. Introducing Language and Grammar. 1.1. Origins of Language. It is known by everybody that language is an essential tool for acquiring knowledge and although there is no record of a region that has served as a cradle of language from which it spread to previously languageless groups, many people have been interested in the origins of language. There are some theories that talk about the different possible origins of language. Firstly, we have the Divine Source Theory. According to that theory, a divine source provided humans with language. A second theory is based on the concept of natural sounds and is called The bow-wow theory. The suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sound which early men and women heard around them. There is also other theory based on the concept of natural sound which is the yo-heave-ho theory. According to that theory the sounds of a person involved in physical effort meant that several people were participating and had to be co-ordinated. Thirdly, we have the oral gesture theory, which promotes the idea that physical gesture, involving the whole body, could have been a means of indicating a wide range of emotional states and intentions. Finally, we can find the physiological adaptation theory which implies the assumption of an upright posture by humans moved the head forward and the larynx lower. When we are talking about physiological adaptation we have to consider the human brain. We have to consider that our brain is lateralised, that is to say, it has specialised functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those functions, which are analytic, are largely confined to the left hemisphere of the brain for most humans. In short, we can suggest that there may be an evolutionary connection between the tool using in language using abilities of humans, and both are related to the development of the human brain. In terms of linguistic structure, humans may have first developed the naming ability, producing a specific noise for a specific object. The crucial additional step, which was then accomplished, was to bring another specific noise into combination with the first to build a complex message.

ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

Divine source Natural sounds source

The bow-wow theory The yo-heave-ho theory

Oral gesture source Physiological adaptation theory

Interactional versus Transactional Communication. Interactional communication is based on a social exchange of information; speak in order to get information, whereas the transactional function of the language is based on giving and receiving information. 1.2. Language versus a language. Language is the faculty for communication by speech sounds, and is a universal characteristic of the human race while a language is a medium of communication specific to a society and it forms part of the culture of that society. Moreover, we have to add that language is inherited genetically whereas we acquire a language from the society in which we spend our first years.

English Grammar I Morphology

LANGUAGE A LANGUAGE - Faculty of communication by - Medium of communication speech sounds - Universal characteristic of the - Specific to a society and forms human race. part of the culture of that society. - It is inherited genetically - We acquire it from the society in which we spend our first years. 1.3. Properties of Human Communication. Human language has some properties that differentiate it from all other forms of signalling and which make it a unique type of communication. Firstly, we can talk about displacement. According to this property, human communication can refer to past and future time, as well as other locations and experiences and it allows the users of language to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment. Secondly, we have arbitrariness. It is generally the case that there is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. It seems that the set of signals for any animal is finite, used only in specific situations and at particular times. And this is in direct contrast with human language. Other property is what is called productivity. It is a feature of the languages of all the peoples of the world that novel utterances are constantly being created. Depending on new situations as they arise or new objects that have to be described, we, as language users, can manipulate our linguistic resources to produce new expressions and new sentences. The following property is called cultural transmission it means that, although humans have an innate disposition to acquire language, they are not born with the ability to produce utterances in a specific language. The general pattern of animal communication is that the signals used are instinctive and not learned. Moreover, we should take into account that cultural transmission of a specific language is crucial in the human acquisition. Other property is discreteness. It means that the sounds used in language are meaningfully distinct. For example, the difference between a b sound and a p sound is not actually very great, but when these sounds are used in a language, they are used in such a way that the occurrence of one rather than the other is meaningful. Another property is called duality and also double articulation. Language is organised at two levels simultaneously. In terms of speech production, we have the physical level at which we can produce individual sounds like n, b and i. When we produce those sounds in a particular combination, such as bin, we have another level producing a meaning which is different from the meaning of the combination in nib. So, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meanings.

PROPERTIES OF HUMAN COMMUNICATION

- Displacement. - Arbitrariness. - Productivity. - Cultural transmission. - Discreteness. - Duality or double articulation.

There are other properties of human language, but, generally speaking, they are not unique to it. We use the vocal-auditory channel, where linguistic communication is usually generated via the vocal organs and perceived via the ears, like other species such as dolphins. The following property is reciprocity where the speaker/sender of a linguistic signal can also be a listener/receiver.

English Grammar I Morphology

Moreover, we have the property of non-directionality where linguistic signals can be picked up by anyone within hearing, even unseen. To finish, we can say that we also have the feature of rapid fade where the linguistic signals are produced and disappear quickly. To sum up, we can say that human language has many properties although some of them are not unique to it. Moreover, we have to add that these are properties of the spoken language, not of the written language. 1.4. Communicative Signals versus Informative Signals. We should distinguish between communicative signals and informative signals. The communicative signals are those in which the speaker is intentionally communicating something to the listener. In contrast, informative signals the speaker can communicate something to the listener but unintentionally. E. g. we can think our listener is untidy because we see he has not brushed his hair before going to the office. This is an example of informative signals. In contrast, if we say somebody lets go to the library and do some study about flowers is an example of communicative signals. 1.5. Defining Grammar. Grammar is best defined as the mental system that allows human beings to form and interpret the words and sentences of their language. 1.6. Components of Grammar. Grammar consists of several components: - Phonetics: It studies the articulation of speech sounds. - Phonology: It studies the speech sounds in the context of languages and other speech varieties. - Morphology: It studies word formation and structure. - Syntax: It studies sentence formation. - Semantics: It studies the interpretation of words and sentences. Moreover, grammar makes possible the production and comprehension of a potentially unlimited number of utterances. We can establish that no language can exist without a grammar and no one can use a language without knowledge of its grammar. 1.7. A universal Grammar? We have to ask ourselves where this knowledge of grammar comes from. There are many theories, however, the most important is Chomskys theory. He proposed a universal grammar. He tried to explain how children acquire language; his theory tries to explain language acquisition in general. He proposed that the universal grammar is an innate, unconscious ability present at birth. Chomsky and his fellow linguists argue that universal grammar is innate in the mind of every human being, a part of our genetic endowment, like the basic structure of our lives or kidneys. Chomsky rejected Skinners theory. On the other hand, we have other theory by Skinner. He explained human behaviour in terms of psychological responses to external stimuli. According to his theory, when we are born, we are like a blank slate. Then, through the external stimuli of our environment, we learn to do different things including communicate via language.

CHOMSKYS THEORY

SKINNERS THEORY

- Language acquisition in general.

- Explains human behaviour in terms of psychological responses to external stimuli. 3

English Grammar I Morphology

- Innate, unconscious ability present at birth.

- Something we learn to do.

People such as Skinner can argue that the rules we learn when we are children are simply learnt through conditioning. There is what is called the poverty of the stimulus theory. That is that there is not enough of this kind of stimulus to learn from. However, with a universal grammar set in place at birth the child is able to take on whichever language he or she is exposed to, as all languages have common elements and are inter-translatable. Moreover, we should stress that all languages have common elements and are intertranslatable. According to Moreno Cabrera, all languages have mechanism to indicate possession, numerals and personal pronouns. 1.8. Properties of Grammar. A language cannot exist without a grammar and it has some properties we are going to describe. The first one is generality. It deals with the idea of all languages have a grammar. The second one is called equality. Contrary to popular belief, all languages have grammars that are roughly equal in complexity. In other words all languages have grammar and all grammars are equal. The third one is called changeability. That is to say that grammars change over time. The following property is called universality. The following property is called universality. It means that all grammars are alike in basic ways. Finally, the last one is called tacitness. It refers to the fact that grammatical knowledge is subconscious.

PROPERTIES OF GRAMMAR

- Generality - Equality - Changeability - Universality - Tacitness.

Prescriptive approach versus Descriptive approach. Grammarians tend to approach grammar in different ways. However, we can find two main ones. The first one is called the Prescriptive approach. They believe that no one can be trusted to use the language correctly. It was very typical of 18th century England where grammarians set out rules for the proper use of the language. We also should take into account that although it is a valuable part of our education to be aware of the linguistic etiquette, a descriptive approach to grammar is more useful. A descriptive approach, in contrast, describes the actual language in use, usually by considering the variety of the language we associate with people who speak the language natively and unselfconsciously. 1.11. Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives. We can study grammar from a diachronic perspective or from a synchronic perspective. The diachronic perspective describes language change, that is, the changes that grammar has undergone throughout time. E.g. Why a construction like I hym folwd (I followed him) were regularly found in the English of the 12th century, but is ungrammatical today. In contrast, the synchronic description focuses on what the Swiss linguistic Ferdinand de Saussure called an tat de langue. It means that the synchronic study of language is interested in a particular state, that is the language system as it presents itself at a particular time in its history. The label synchronic does no necessarily refer to the contemporary language, but it may also denote an

English Grammar I Morphology

earlier stage. A synchronic description of English could be a description of the language as it is spoken and written today or of the English of the time of Shakespeare or Wordsworth. Goals of Linguistic Description. Linguistic has roughly two goals. One is the description of human language in general and the other is the description of individual languages and each description of an individual language may be looked upon as a contribution to the study of language in general. 1.9.

1.10. Linguistic Competence versus Communicative Competence. We can define linguistic competence as the set of rules that enables a person to produce and to understand grammatically correct sentences. However, it is not enough and we need to know about the communicative competence. It is the ability to know when and where to use the different varieties of language and to whom.

1.11. Levels of Analysis. The levels of linguistic analysis help the linguistic to explain how speakers encode messages and how listeners decode these messages. Although there is no consensus of opinion on the number of levels to be distinguished, it has been the custom to set up at least four levels for English: the sound level, the morphological level, the syntactic level and the semantic level. The sound level is all to do with phonetics, the study of all speech sounds, and phonology, the study of the selection made by a particular language and the systematic functioning of the selected items in that language. Although they seem very similar, we should take into account that phonology differs from phonetics in that phonology is language specific and phonetics is language in general. The morphological level of analysis is concerned with meaningful units. These units are called morphemes, which may be defined as the smallest meaningful units of grammatical description. Morphology studies the internal structure of words, that is, the ways in which morphemes function as constituents of word structure, that is the way in which morphemes function as constituents of word structure. Moreover, we should point out that we can distinguish between free morphemes, morphemes that can occur on their own, and bound morphemes, those morphemes that must always co-occur with free morphemes. Since words combine to form larger units called phrases, the syntactic level is concerned with syntax. It establishes the set of rules that specify which combinations of words constitute grammatical strings and which will not. Finally, the semantic level is concerned with the study of meaning, semantics, since sentences have a meaning aspect which cannot be ignored.

Linguistic levels

Components in the grammar.

English Grammar I Morphology

Sound level Morphological level Syntactic level Semantic level

Phonetics and Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics GRAMMAR

1.12. Linguistic Units. Syntactic have traditionally taken the sentence as their starting point for linguistic analysis. However, smaller units exist within the sentence and they can be regarded as buildingblocks of sentence structure. The parts into which a sentence can be segmented are called the constituents of the sentence. The term immediate constituents refer to those constituents which together form a higher-order constituent. However, we should take into account that the whole sentence is not considered a constituent of anything, because the sentence is the largest unit of syntactic description. 1.13. Rankscale and Rankshift. We can establish a hierarchy of units of linguistic description morphemes function as constituents of words, words function as constituents of phrases, and phrases as constituents of sentences. This hierarchy has been called the rankscale. However, units are not always composed of units of the next lowest rank. Quite frequently, a unit of a given rank functions as a constituent of a unit of the same rank or even of a unit which is one step lower down the rankscale; this phenomenon has been called rankshift. Thus it is possible for sentences to function as constituents of other sentences and even as constituents of phrases. Apart from that, we have to take into account the difference between a phrase and a sentence. We should remind that constituents can also be considered not only as building blocks of sentences structure but as independent linguistic objects with their own characteristics and internal structure. From this point of view, they can be called phrases. Also, almost every phrase can be lengthened by adding more words. In doing so, we change the internal structure of the phrase, but not the structure of the sentence of which it is a constituent. Phrases are called by the name of the word class to which all their constituents belong, or by the name of the word class to which their most dominant constituent belongs. The following types of phrase are distinguished: noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase and prepositional phrase. E. g. Juliette 1.14. Functions and Categories. We can make a distinction between linguistic units as constituents of larger structures and linguistic units as objects in their own right. With the exception of the sentence, every unit, at every level of analysis, can be considered either as an element that plays a role in a larger structure, or as something that has its own individual characteristics. If we view a linguistic unit as an element that plays its role in a larger linguistic structure, we are concerned with its function. However, if we view it as something that has individual characteristics which it shares with other units of the same kind, we are concerned with the category or class to which it belong.

English Grammar I Morphology

E. g. Juliette saw a cat, we can look at the units Juliette and a cat individually and observe that they are both nouns and therefore belong to the same category or word class. However, if we look at Juliette and a cat as constituents of the sentence, we observe that their functions are different; Juliette functions as subject and a cat functions as direct object of the sentence.