Linguistic

Chapter 6 (word-formation)
 Etymology
- The study of the origin of the word.
- Etymology comes from Latin but has Greek roots (etymon ‘original from’
+ logia ‘study of’).
Types of Word Formation:
1. Coinage
Invention of totally new words. E.g. aspirin, Vaseline, nylon and zipper.
Eponyms: words based on a name of a person or a place. E.g., sandwich, jeans.
2. Borrowing
Taking over of words from another language. E.g. Piano (Italian), Sofa (Arabic).
Arabic also borrowed words from English, e.g. television, radio, and
supermarket.
Loan translation or calque: A phrase that is introduced into a language through
translation
3. Compounding
Two or more words joined together to form a new word. E.g., Home + work
(homework) finger + print (fingerprint).
4. Blending
Similar to compounds, but in blending only parts of the words are combined.
E.g., Breakfast + lunch (Brunch), Smoke + fog (smog).
5. Clipping
Shortening a word by deleting (reduction) one or more syllables. E.g., Hamburger
(burger) Gasoline (gas).
6. Backformation
A word of one type (usually noun) is reduced to form a word of another type
(usually verb). E.g., babysitter (babysit) editor (edit).
7. Conversion
Assigning an already existing word to a new syntactic category.
E.g., empty (A) -> (V) to empty the litter-bin, butter (N) -> (V) to butter the bread.
8. Acronyms
Words derived from the initials of several words. E.g., CD (compact disk).
9. Derivation
The most common word formation process (affixes) E.g., happy -> unhappy

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Chapter 7 (Morphology)

 Morphology Definition:

- Is the study of internal structure of the words.

 Morpheme Definition:

- Is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.

Morpheme consist of (Free morpheme and Bound morpheme):

Free morpheme: can stand by themselves as single words such as play, open, work, etc.

Bound morpheme: can’t stand alone and they attached to another form like re-, -ed,-
est, etc.

First. Free morpheme:

1. Lexical (open):

 Set of adjectives, nouns, and verbs that is carry the content of the message such
as girl, house, yellow, etc.
 They are treated as open lexical morpheme because we can add new ones.

2. Functional (close):

 Set of pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and articles such as but, above, him,
etc.
 They are treated as close functional morpheme because we rarely ever add new
ones.

Second. Bound morpheme:

1. Derivational

It’s to make new words from the stem. For example, -ness change the adjective good to
the noun goodness.

2. Inflectional

It’s to indicate aspects of grammatical functions of a word. And they has only 8
inflectional morpheme and they are:

 Plural or singular
 Past tense, progressive, past participial.

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  Comparative, superlative, and possessive

noun -‘s, -s
verb -s, -ing, -ed, -en
adjective -est, -er

The different between Inflectional and derivational morpheme:

An inflectional morpheme never changes the grammatical category of a word.

A derivational morpheme can change the grammatical category of a word.

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Chapter 8 (Grammar)

 What is grammar?

- The process of describing the structure of phrases and sentences

Traditional grammar:

It has its origins in the description of languages such as Latin and Greek.

A. Part of speech:

1. Nouns
2. Articles
3. Adjectives
4. Verbs
5. Adverbs
6. Pronouns
7. Preposition
8. Conjunctions

B. Agreement

1. Number
2. Person
3. Tense
4. Voice
5. Gender

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  Grammatical gender:

- Is based on the type of noun (Masculine and Feminine)

The difference between Prescriptive and Descriptive approach

 Prescriptive approach: It is the traditional approach of grammar that tells people

how to use the English language, what forms they should use, and what
functions they should serve.
 Descriptive approach: It is an evidence-based approach to language that
describes, in an objective manner, how language is being used.

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Chapter 9 (Syntax)

Deep and Surface structure

 Surface structure: Is an actual form of a sentence, which provides the input to

the phonological component of the grammar.
 Deep structure: The Underlying structure of a sentence that conveys the
meaning of a sentence.

Tree Diagrams

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Chapter 10 (Semantic)
Conceptual and associative meaning
Conceptual Meaning (Denotation): covers these basic, essential components of
meaning which are conveyed by the literal use of a word.
Associative Meaning (Connotation): is the idea, connection what that specific word
brings to you.
Semantic rules
1. Agent
The entity that performs the action.
2. Theme
The entity that is involved in or affected by the action.
3. Instrument
The entity used to perform an action.
4. Experiencer
The entity that has a feeling, perception, or state.
5. Location
Where an entity is.
6. Source and goal
Source: an entity moves from.
Goal: where an entity moves to.

Lexical relations
Mention them with examples
1. Synonymy
e.g. Quick-fast, large-wide.
2. Antonymy
e.g. small-big, fast-slow.
3. Hyponymy
e.g. rose - flower, carrot - vegetable.
4. Prototypes
Like “bird” features (e.g. has feather, has wings)
5. Homophones and Homonymy
Homophones: e.g bear - bare, meet - meat.
Homonymy: e.g bank ( bank - of a river ) ,(bank - financial institution).
6. Polysemy
The verb “get” it can mean "procure," "become," or "understand."

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Chapter 11 (Pragmatic)

 Pragmatic Definition

- Pragmatics is the study of “invisible” meaning, or how we recognize what is meant

even when it is not actually said or written

Context

There are different kinds of context:

1. Linguistic context (co-text)

 The co-text of a word is the set of other words used in the same phrase
or sentence.
 The surrounding co-text has a strong effect on what we think the word
probably means.
 E.g., Bank (a homonym) has two meaning:
a) I need to withdraw some cash from the bank.
b) Most of Ancient Egypt's historical sites are located along the banks of
the Nile River.

2. Physical context
 The physical location will influence our interpretation.
 If we see the word Bank on a wall, it will be obvious.

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Deixis

 Some very common words cannot be interpreted unless the physical context of
the speaker is known.
E.g., here and there, this or that, now and then, yesterday, today or tomorrow,
as well as pronouns such as you, me, she, him, it, them.
 Some sentences are impossible to understand if we do not know who is
speaking, about whom, where and when.
E.g., you will have to bring it back tomorrow, because she is not here today.
Out of context, this sentence is vague.
 It contains a large number of expressions that rely on knowledge of the
immediate physical context for their interpretation
These expressions are technically known as deictic expressions, from the Greek
word deixis, which means, “pointing” via language.

Deixis (deictic expressions):

- Using words such as this or here as a way of “pointing” with language.

We use deixis to point to:

 Things (it, this, these boxes)

 People (him, them, those idiots) [Person deixis]
 Location (here, there, near that) [Spatial deixis]
 Time (now, then, last week) [Temporal deixis]

Reference

- an act by which a speaker/writer uses language to enable a listener/reader to identify

someone or something.

We can use:

 Proper nouns: (Chomsky, Ahmed)

 Nouns in phrases: (the cat, a writer, my friend, the war)
 Pronouns: (he, she, it)

We refer to things we are not sure what to call them:

 That blue thing

 That icky stuff

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Inference

- Depends more on the listener's ability to recognize what we mean than on the
listener’s dictionary’s knowledge of the word we use.

We can use names associated with things to refer to people:

 Where’ s the caesar salad sitting?

 He’s sitting by the door.

We can use names associated with people to refer to things:

 Can I borrow your Chomsky? Sure it’s on the table .

 We saw Shakespeare in London.

Anaphora

- A subsequent reference to an already introduced entity

We usually make a distinction between:

 Introducing new referents (a puppy)

 Referring back to them (the puppy, it)
a) The 1st mention is called antecedent. (a puppy/ a boy, a small bath)
b) The 2nd (subsequent) referring expression is an example of anaphora
("referring back"). (the puppy/ it/ the boy/ he/ the bath).
 The connection between antecedents and anaphoric expressions is often based
on inference.

Presupposition

- What a speaker assumes is true or known by the listener.

Why did you arrive late?

 Presupposition = you arrived late.

When did you stop smoking?

 Presupposition 1 = the speaker supposes that you used to smoke.

 Presupposition 2 = the speaker supposes that you no longer smoke.

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Speech acts

- The action performed by a speaker with an utterance.

Speech acts such as (requesting/ commanding/ questioning/ informing)

E.g.:

 I’ ll be here at five.
You are not just speaking, you are performing the speech act of ‘promising’.

Direct and indirect speech acts

 Consider the following scene. A visitor to a city, carrying his luggage, looking lost,
stops a passer-by.
VISITOR: Excuse me. Do you know where the Ambassador Hotel is?
PASSER-BY: Oh sure, I know where it is. (and walks away).
 The passer-by is acting as if the utterance was a direct speech act instead of an
indirect speech act used as a request for directions.

Politeness

- Showing awareness of and consideration of another person’s face.

 If you say something that represents a threat to another person’s self image,
that is called a face-threatening act.
 If you say something that lessens the possible threat to another’s face, it can be
described as a face-saving act.

Negative and positive face

1. Negative face: the need to be independent, free from imposition.

 A face-saving act that emphasizes a negative face will show concern about
imposition.
2. Positive face: the need to be connected, to be a member of the group.
 A face-saving act that emphasizes a person’s positive face will show solidarity
and draw attention to a common goal.

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Chapter 12 (Discourse analysis)

 Discourse analysis Definition

- Discourse is verbal or written communication between people that goes beyond a

single sentence.

Interpreting discourse

- Are the key elements investigated in the study of discourse.

 To make our messages interpretable, we certainly rely on what we know about

linguistic form and structure.

Cohesion

- The ties and connections that exist within texts.

 The conventions of cohesive structure differ from one language to the next and
may be one of the sources of difficulty encountered in translating texts
 It is quite easy to create a highly cohesive text that has a lot of connections
between the sentences, but is very difficult to interpret.

Coherence

- The key to the concept.

 To create meaningful connections that are not actually expressed by the words
and sentences.

Speech events

 We would have to specify the roles of speaker and hearer (or hearers) and their
relationship(s).
 We would have to describe what the topic of conversation was and in what
setting it took place.
(E.g. debate, interview, various types of discussions).

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Conversation analysis

- An activity in which, for the most part, two or more people take turns at speaking.

 Only one person speaks at a time and there tends to be an avoidance of silence
between speaking turns.
 Participants wait until one speaker indicates that he or she has finished, usually
by signaling a completion point.

Turn-taking

There are different expectations of conversational style and different strategies of

participation in conversation:

 The source of what is sometimes described by participants.

 “Long-winded” speakers: to avoid having normal completion points occur.
 “Keep the turn”: to avoid having those two markers occur together.

The co-operative principle

 An underlying assumption in most conversational exchanges seems to be that

the participants are co-operating with each other.
 The co-operative principle is stated in the following way: “Make your
conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs,
by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged”
This principle, together with four maxims (Gricean maxims):
1. The Quantity maxim: Make your contribution as informative as is required, but
not more, or less, than is required.
2. The Quality maxim: Do not say that which you believe to be false or for which
you lack adequate evidence.
3. The Relation maxim: Be relevant.
4. The Manner maxim: Be clear, brief and orderly.

Hedges

- Words or phrases used to indicate that we are not really sure that what we are saying
is sufficiently correct or complete.

We can use sort of or kind of as hedges on the accuracy of our statements

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Implicatures

- When we talk about speakers implying something that is not said.

(An additional conveyed meaning).

Background knowledge

- Provide us with some insight into the ways in which we “build” interpretations of what
we read by using a lot more information than is presented in the words on the page.

Schemas and scripts

A schema: is a general term for a conventional knowledge structure that exists in

memory.

 If you hear someone describe what happened during a visit to a supermarket,

you do not have to be told what is normally found in a supermarket. You already
have a “supermarket schema”

A script: is essentially a dynamic schema.

 A script has a series of conventional actions that take place.

 Crucial information is sometimes omitted from important instructions on the
assumption that everybody knows the script.

Good Luck!

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