What is linguistics?
I think that what should we realize is the fundamental things of linguistics about is that language is more than just a big bound of words. It’s easy to think that what are we doing, what are we speaking, is producing words that we learn when we were kids and now we know them, and now we string them together and found some sort of ways. Maybe there were some wrong ways to string them together, you learn at school. But basically what we doing is using big bound of words.
Now if you really think about it. Words alone can’t be even most of what using a language in terms of what we are interested about using languages. And that’s because you think about it. Imagine if you in heeled a Russian dictionary, that’s say that you for all the attendance purpose knew every single word in the language. If you think about it really, even then you would be unable to have any kind of meaning for conversation of language. And 3 and 4 years olds would like be the years hard of you and that’s because obviously, there is also an issue how you put the words together in order to convey meaning. There’s also a said say, if a language is more than just a big bucket of words, then as Saussure’s grammar’s concern, it’s the matter of setting whether the words fit into one of a part of speech. So the idea is that when you got these parts of speech, then
you’ve got what there is besides the big collection of words. But actually the part of speech that you learn in school const to a very a proximate sense of what a language is actual, structural system is . For example, “She kept on popping in and out of office all afternoon. Now first of all, if it’s really just all about the parts of speech. What’s the verb? “kept”or “popping”, or you may have learned “ have” and “be”. Or we talk about what part of speech is on in this case? Is it a preposition? Obviously it’s a different kind of “on”. So clearly the part of speech the wonderful school house rocks segment on TV, those thing were only take so far, linguistic shows that there’s more than net.
Namely, linguistic is a scientific analysis of language. We all use language all the time. The idea is to find system in what appears to be, or just such as the fact that big bucket of words in the part of what a language is. So what are mean by scientific? Tell you, for example, here’s one example of how linguistic scientific? There is a science of how words work in languages. So for example, we can say “singin’, we can say “singing”, and we often say “singin’is shorter than “singing”, the “g”has been robbed. But if you think about it, actually, there’s nothing drubbed at all in “singing”. Nothing has been left off, because the final sound of “singing” is not 2 sounds, just one sound. Here, 2 words, “ singer” and “finger”, the
different is in one of those cases, you are announced “n”and “g”, that “?” is a separate sound in English, and that’s the sound in the end of “singin’, not “singing”, which was something somebody would say.
And so there’s a system, there’s a sound system of language, which is very different from the way language happens to be spelled. And so, one they we’d gonna to learn again and again, is we have to get pass letters, languages about sound. In fact, the way that language is represented on page, is very similar to how people are drown on the same things. Well, letters are to spoken language as same things are to relive the way at actually looks. So there’s a science of sound which is very different from that we diligently learned. Or there is a science, the scientific prospective on what concepts are called to language. So for example, in the west majority of the worlds’ languages, there are no words for “the”and “a”. We can’t think it’s necessary to distinguish, “the soap that we slipped on this morning from a turtle that mysteriously popped in living room, we mentioned right now. But actually, there’s a very fine sheet of meaning, that many languages completely do without in any fashion. And it’s not something that is typical of language to have 2 words with those meaning. Or most languages in the world do not have a
verb “to have”, and we think it’s the most ordinary thing in the world to say, like I do. “I have a cat.” But why would you put it that way? It’s interesting. If you talk about verbs, it could be I own a cat, and there’s a financial of arrangement. I think am I cost 100 dollars? Or it can be I grasp a cat. But to say , I have a cat. What am I doing? I’m really specify a kind of relationship between me and my cat, not something that I do. I don’t walk around having, it’s really a kind of state.
And so actually, I agree many languages the way you say, you have something, it’s say that thing is to you. Those of you who happens to be rushed or familiar with this is very common around the world. To say “ have”, it’s kind of European faddish for the most part, most of the languages in the world have some other way of dealing with “have”, when using mutual senses. Or this business of “do” in English, we use do funny, and so you say “ I do not walk quickly.” What’s the “do”?
Can you just say I walk not quickly? And if you’ve learned another language, your another, that’s the way to say either“I not walk quickly,”“ I walk not quickly” But what just “ I do not walk quickly”? We just get used to about their. Or when you ask question “ Do you walk quickly?” Do what? You know, what’s the do doing? If you are an English speaker, that just seems like
a natural thing. But notice it, you don’t find anyone put it the other. Language that you may happen to have learned why don’t you just say “walk you”, that’s the way would be in many languages. And in fact, if you look the languages of the whole world, I mean really, then as far as this kind of little “do” usage, that’s in one English, that’s in two some Celtic languages, like Welsh and Brankang, and then as far as I know, when I have checked every language in the world. I have believed that one of the only other places where do is used in that way, is way up in some mountains, in Italy, and its villages real like 6000 of people live. And their dialects when they use “do” of that kind, only in questions. Those are only languages in the world, and this case is just dialects of Italian than use it in that way. And so linguistic actually found a lot of aspects for language, they might feel essential for the speaker, one of them are actually incidentals than the incidental features tend to appear in the language only of other ones do in certain orders. And the orders that they think appearing just my have something to do with how are brings to learn language when we are in fence.
And so, when comes to the language, the proper energy could be seen to be food preparation, and so are there also lots of ways preparing food around the world, but when you really
think about it, all food preparation is based on certain basic principles, involving temperature, and whether or not how you aged the food and question. There’s also lots of things is not based on those fundamental elements. Now, of course, in some regions, some items of more easier valuable than others. Their traditions have decided what you eat and what you don’t eat. But all cooking is automate based on the certain fundamental chemical principles, might could be taught those and come up with the kind of food would make a certain basic sense or most anywhere in the world. And so, we are looking for in the way as linguist, what the universals of cooking, except supply to language. So Thai food is great, but we won’t want to say that the essential of cooking are chilly or particular things they do, those are variations on something much more general. And linguistics we are looking for the general. Another example of science verses in pression. There’s a natural sense that anybody has, when they are speaking a language, that something are wrong over there, none is right is other things in terms of how you might put things. And as a result, we and this is most people, thoughtful, reason people have sense, for example, English is a language with popular walking around making mistakes all the time. There’s just way of speaking, that’s proper you learn at
school. And then all these people running around making errors.
I knew a wonderful person, who was not a man years ago, and she talked to me about how she had had to end it, and one of the main reason was that he just walking around making too many grammatical errors. That’s so sad. And the fact of matter is that look dead in abroad of you, look dead in terms of a perspective wrong language as something that happens and find its way it is. We say that, a lot of things in fact really most or even all of things, that are considered wrong or errors. I really just issues of its steadies and that we really deal with the kind of fashion, the changes very much, like clothes,too. For example, it used to be that where I was born, I would say that I was born at Philadelphia, that’s what I supposed to say. If were a person that is ordinary people, I was not born in Philadelphia, I was born at Philadelphia. If I say I was born in Philadelphia, that sounds ridiculous thing. Now that’s seems ordinarily arbitrary. Used to be talk about lighted something, you didn’t lit it. I lit the candle. That seems like you are untutored or something. And you have to say lighted before I told. Now if you said lighted, somebody would probably take you to the hospital or they might think you make a grammatical error. And that’s because these things change, and a very arbitrary way used to be, you supposed to
say “stack-ed”instead of “stacked”some books. It was considered little vulgar to live out the “e”to speak. This is changed. And these things are not based on a scientific prospective of language. Even we are all human, there’are things I don’t like, too. Like this, one day, probably I heard one day, “ Can I get a cock?” a person say in the restaurant. What do you mean “ Can I get a...?” It’s not about “can you get it”, it’s about whether they’re going to give it to you, and so you should say “ May I have a...?” or “ I would like a ...”. But “Can I get a hamburger” it’s just robs in a wrong way for all sorts of reasons.
I just don’t happen to like it. Same things of a lot of things that we are taught are wrong, which are really just there.
So linguistics is not about translation, that is a not something we do. The word linguistics occasionally used indicate translator. But that’s not what and academic linguist is. And we are also not language police, so the view of language that Henry Hagen has, and Peg Millions, is very amusing even more so said to music. But that is not something that any linguist would agree with. So we study language rather than teaching or fixing. And I’d like to show you how to do thing. So, first, we are gonna look at how linguist analyze the building blocks of languages. So we’d gonna start with “the study of
sounds” and we’re going to go on to “how words are formed”, and that is quite counter to different in many languages that we’ll do it. Here in English, there are many native American languages. For example, where many of senses I have said so far in this lecture would all actually be one word. And so what is the word is a question, then you might think. Then we’ d gonna talk about the structure of sentences. In fact, the person who has really set the tone in terms of how that kind of senses analysis is down in linguistic today, has been known Noam Chomsky. Who’s known, I think to most of people as a political figure. But he’s also the grandfather of how mother linguistic analyze center structure as well. And then of course, we also express meaning, there’s a different sense of meaning than just what happens when you put sense together. There’s many slips between sentence construction and what we mean, and how our language is something can be seen as universal across all languages. So we’d gonna look at the basic building blocks, how you go from seeing something you want to say something about it, thinking about it you want to say something about it. Another works, we’ll see semantics and pragmatics. You see what those things mean, when we get to them. Then we’re gonna look how these basic tools are used by people and various sub-fields of
linguistics.
So we’d gonna look at how language changes over time. So we gonna study “Historical Linguistics”as it is called. We’d gonna look at “how children learn to speak”, “Language Acquisition”. Language is about more than words, there’s also grammar. Then we’re going to look at “Sociolinguistics”, and that’s about how language varies. V ocabulary usually used, but the structure of your language. Varies systematic ways according to race, class, gender, or education level. Then we’d gonna look at “Philosophy of Language” and that is looking at the nature of human language, what it is in terms of psychology and philosophy. What it is that is different in us as supposed to the way languages used by other beings. And then we are going to take a brief look at the “evolution of writing”. And then in the 2 lectures near the end, try to figure out the language from the ground. And then we will end by looking at current theories about how language involved in our spaces, in first place. Now any case, you may remember my course in 2004, “The story of human language.”The story of Human Language was a very different course than this one. It was about how one original language became several, and how they mixed together. Here, this is more scientific course, this is based on showing how we
identify the system of language on the surface. The scientific post language has really only existed since the early 19 century. And before that there was a rather rich tradition of the study of language. But now in the sense, we call linguistic today. Did the examine the relationship between speech and thoughts, they’d communicated. They have terms for language logos--reason, plan. All of those are very interesting, but it’s more kind of thing classify the philosophy of language. That sort of thing, such as grammatical descriptions of languages. That’s something they goes back, some one were sitting down and describe the rules of language. Nevertheless, when people started writing grammars was back 2000 years ago. Indian person “Panini”. And then there’s a “ Techne Grammatike” by Dionysus the Thracian, and that’s the description of Greek. But the problem with a for example, if you are a great person in the ancient world, because travel was so difficult. And many cases is impossible. There was a sense among Greek thinkers. That’s the best that you could do with the limit preview of these very brilliant people had. Now as Europeans started in countering the people in the world. They were quite different what you might think language is, if you spend you entire life around the military and sea. And there’ s a language heading every crowd, so there’s always somebody who
would write description of the local language. That was encounter. Basically, the way languages are supposed to go is like European language. So you find, whether queen make mistakes. John Wilkins, and he made a very noble effort to the writing system that would express human thought, even the respective of the difference between languages. But its problem is that, he didn’t understand different languages convey. So for example, in Japanese, to say a sentence like, “ I like Pam.” The ordinary you would say is “Pam ga suki. And so here’s that sounds. Now what that means? Basically is Pam likeableness. That’s how it indicate that. So you could get the I pardon, you could say “ as for me, Pam like a woman. But in Japanese, you can live that I to context. That’s how different languages give. I say I like Pam, a Japanese person would say pen I’m like a womans. And that’s ordinary Japanese. Now Wilkins didn’t know thing like this. And so his version, Wilkins did not have linguists mine sense in the modern sense. So for example, “I like Pam.”has 3 concepts. There’s “I”who speaking. There’s the issue of the liking. And then there’s Pam. Now it’s a feature of language. So you gonna have subject, but in some languages, the subject of concepts express you say “ I like Pam.” would be “I”. But notice in Japanese, the subject is “Pam”. And then, as
far as liking, we think, well, “like” is gonna be a verb. But no, not necessarily, because we see in Japanese it’s a noun. You talk about “ likeability. And of course, that gets in concepts that does have to be a verb. A language might have a prefix or a suffix, or a little bit of staff to show, there’s something is subject, keep the traffic going. Japanese has ,English does not. And then, even the “I” can be left the context, like in Japanese. We have to say “I”, but Japanese just leave it out. That’s not on common. Language is different in terms of what they have to put in, what they can leave out, and what they have to leave out. In any case, I’m hoping that when we were finished, you find yourself looking at and listening to language the ways that never occur to you before. And most importantly, I want you to come away understanding that the conception of language as the words, and the way they’re spelled, and little things that you should do with the words in terms of putting them in order. I hope that conceptions of language will be one that would play less of role and how you think about language. For me, the kind of bucket of words conception of languages, is kind of like the first 15 minutes of the film with of us.
My opinion:
From the video, I realized that linguistics is usually defined as the science of language or , alternatively, as the scientific study of language. Linguistic is a rich and exciting field. Now linguistics has firmly established its place as a major branch of humanities and social sciences as well.
Language is so valuable to the individual, so critical to the efficient functioning of human societies, and in itself on impressively intricate and profound in structure, that it is bound to attract a great amount of intellectual attention.
As a science, linguistics now has a set of established theories, methods and sub-branches. As for its data, now the argument over intuition or corpus also fades as people realize the advantages of both and as corpus linguistics develops rapidly with the advent of computer technology.
Nowadays, we are expecting the qualitative and quantitative research approaches to take an even divide and be more complementary in linguistic studies.