Linguistics For Dummies - Softcover

Burton, Strang

 
9781118091692: Linguistics For Dummies
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1118091698 ISBN 13: 9781118091692
Verlag: For Dummies, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

The fascinating, fun, and friendly way to understand the science behind human language

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics students study how languages are constructed, how they function, how they affect society, and how humans learn language. From understanding other languages to teaching computers to communicate, linguistics plays a vital role in society. Linguistics For Dummies tracks to a typical college-level introductory linguistics course and arms you with the confidence, knowledge, and know-how to score your highest.

  • Understand the science behind human language
  • Grasp how language is constructed
  • Score your highest in college-level linguistics

If you're enrolled in an introductory linguistics course or simply have a love of human language, Linguistics For Dummies is your one-stop resource for unlocking the science of the spoken word.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Strang Burton is a linguist with the Stolo nation and has taught linguistics at a number of universities. Rose-Marie Déchaine and Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson are professors of linguistics at the University of British Columbia.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Learn to:

  • The components of any language
  • Language's social dimensions
  • What language reveals about the human brain
  • How writing changes a language

Understand the science behind human language

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Whether you're currently enrolled in a course or just want to explore the subject, Linguistics For Dummies helps you understand some of the primary streams of linguistics: what language is for (communication), how language works (pattern formation), what language reveals about the mind (cognition), and how written language shapes society (technology).

  • Get to know the basics determine the traits that all languages share and get to know the design features which ensure that language can convey meaning
  • Discover the building blocks of language investigate how individual speech sounds combine to form words, which form sentences, and how those are strung together to make conversation
  • Explore the evolution of language consider how new languages are born, chart how language changes over time, and examine how languages are lost
  • Study the relationship between the human brain and language find out how children and adults learn language and how language activates your brain
  • Delve into the written word see how different writing systems develop, how writing a language down changes it, and how it changes you!

Open the book and find:

  • The architecture of words
  • How linguistics categorizes into grammatical categories
  • What makes a conversation tick
  • The social variables that affect language
  • How linguistic archeology connects Sanskrit and English
  • Why dying languages matter and how they can be saved
  • What brain damage does to language
  • How electronic writing streamlines language

Aus dem Klappentext

Learn to:

  • The components of any language
  • Language's social dimensions
  • What language reveals about the human brain
  • How writing changes a language

Understand the science behind human language

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Whether you're currently enrolled in a course or just want to explore the subject, Linguistics For Dummies helps you understand some of the primary streams of linguistics: what language is for (communication), how language works (pattern formation), what language reveals about the mind (cognition), and how written language shapes society (technology).

  • Get to know the basics — determine the traits that all languages share and get to know the design features which ensure that language can convey meaning
  • Discover the building blocks of language — investigate how individual speech sounds combine to form words, which form sentences, and how those are strung together to make conversation
  • Explore the evolution of language — consider how new languages are born, chart how language changes over time, and examine how languages are lost
  • Study the relationship between the human brain and language — find out how children and adults learn language and how language activates your brain
  • Delve into the written word — see how different writing systems develop, how writing a language down changes it, and how it changes you!

Open the book and find:

  • The architecture of words
  • How linguistics categorizes into grammatical categories
  • What makes a conversation tick
  • The social variables that affect language
  • How linguistic archeology connects Sanskrit and English
  • Why dying languages matter and how they can be saved
  • What brain damage does to language
  • How electronic writing streamlines language

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Linguistics For Dummies

By Rose-Marie Dechaine Strang Burton Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-1180-9169-2

Chapter One

Knowing a Language Versus Knowing What Language Is

In This Chapter

* Checking out what defines a language

* Approaching language from a scientific angle

* Having fun with the language game

* Changing who you are with language

You probably take your ability to use language for granted. Imagine what your life would be like if you could no longer use language: no more chit-chats over a cup of coffee, no more friendly greetings or sad goodbyes, no more arguments with your friends about which sports team is best. You couldn't explain the symptoms of an illness to your doctor. You wouldn't be able to warn someone across the street of a looming danger. No more e-mails or text messages. Not only is human language important to us as humans, it's a uniquely human ability. It's also part of our genetic endowment. For both of these reasons — human language is unique and humans seem to be pre-programmed for it — the study of language (linguistics) lies at the center of efforts to understand the nature of what it is to be human. For more than 2,000 years, linguists have been trying to understand how language works, and that's what this book is about.

This chapter gives you a quick and dirty introduction to linguistics, introducing you to the defining traits of human language, showing you how linguists approach the study of language, and giving you a quick tour of the rules of the language game, the players, and what they need to know to play the game.

Uncovering the Traits of Language

Linguistics is the study of language; it's not the study of languages. What's the difference? Although linguists look at individual languages, when they do, they have the big picture in mind. Their goal is to understand the nature of human language. Individual languages are like different models of cars. For cars, each model varies according to engine size, wheelbase, transmission, and passenger capacity, but they all share a common set of traits. Same thing with languages — each language varies according to sound inventory, vocabulary, sentence patterns, and so on, but they all have a common set of traits. Most linguists agree that all human languages have the following six traits in common:

  •   Language is used to communicate.

  •   Language is composed of arbitrary signs.

  •   Language is hierarchically organized.

  •   Humans produce and perceive language using auditory, visual, and even tactile modalities.

  •   Language is unique to human beings.

  •   Humans are genetically endowed for language.

    LINGUIST LINGO

    Individual linguists focus on specific language traits. A functionalist focuses on the communicative function of language. A formalist focuses on the organization of language. A speech scientist focuses on speech production and perception. A gestural analyst focuses on gesture production and visual perception. An audio-visual analyst focuses on the integration of speech with gesture and the integration of audition with vision. A biolinguist focuses on the biological foundations of language, while a psycholinguist focuses on the cognitive base of language.

    Trait 1: Language is used to communicate

    Language is used to communicate concepts and intentions. To do this, it uses a system of signs with assigned meanings that communicate messages from one person's mind to another. For example, when you say to your friend the words, "I'm going to pour a cup of coffee," your friend now knows that you're going to walk across the room to the coffee pot, grab a mug, and pour that brown liquid into the mug.

    LINGUIST LINGO

    A sign is a discrete unit of meaning. A convention is a set of agreed upon norms. A conventional sign is one that all members of a language community agree to use with a certain meaning. For example, the word cat is a sign that members of the English language community agree, by convention, to use for those fluffy pets that go meow. The more general study of signs is called semiotics, and it applies to any system where organisms use signs to learn about and navigate their environment — it includes linguistic communication, but it also extends to animal communication as well as to the communicative use of signals from body posture, facial expression, and tone of voice.

    Trait 2: Signs are arbitrary

    In language, the association of a conventional sign with meaning is arbitrary. For example, to describe the domesticated, carnivorous, canine mammal valued for its companionship and ability to guard, guide, haul, herd, hunt, search, track, or rescue, individual languages use different words: English has dog, French has chien, Icelandic hundur, Japanese inu, Mandarin gou, and Swahili mbwa. There's no intrinsic relation between these conventional signs and the concept of this carnivorous mammal — rather, the relation is arbitrary. Sometimes you'll hear linguists say "language has an arbitrary sound-meaning relation." Concretely what this means is that there's no intrinsic relation between a particular set of sounds and a particular meaning. The sound-meaning relation differs from language to language: that's a fancy way of saying that different languages have different words to express the same concept.

    LINGUIST LINGO

    Linguists call the lack of a connection between the form of a conventional sign and its meaning the principle of arbitrariness. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of arbitrariness. This is sometimes called Saussurean arbitrariness, after the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who drew attention to this aspect of human language.

    Trait 3: Language is hierarchically organized

    Language is composed of units that are assembled according to the rules of grammar. All languages systematically combine units to form larger units, arrange units in a particular order, and substitute units for each other.

    Combining units to form larger units

    Linguistic analysis identifies and assembles units of language and arranges them from smaller to larger:

  •   Sounds: These are the individual consonants and vowels of a language. For example, /p/, /t/, and /æ/ (this is the vowel of hat) are sounds of English.

  •   Syllables: Sounds combine to form syllables. For example, in English, /p/, /t/, and /æ/ can combine to form the syllables /pt/, /tp/, and /æpt/.

  •   Words: Syllables combine to form words. While some words are a single syllable (pat, tap, apt), many words contain two or more syllables (mo. ther, ba.by, pro.mo.tion, re.vo.lu.tion). (Here, the period (.) marks the syllable break.)

  •   Phrases: Words combine to form phrases. The word the combines with the word dog to form the phrase the dog.

  •   Sentences: Phrases combine to form sentences. The phrase the dog combines with the phrase ran away to form the sentence The dog ran away.

  •   Groups of sentences: The sentence The dog chased the squirrel can combine with the sentence He didn't catch it. You can do this in several ways, including simply stringing...

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    Verlag
    For Dummies
    Erscheinungsdatum
    2012
    Sprache
    Englisch
    ISBN 10 
    1118091698
    ISBN 13 
    9781118091692
    Einband
    Taschenbuch
    Auflage
    1
    Anzahl der Seiten
    384
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