Linguistics is a Science As you begin to think about your research topic, keep in mind that you will be conducting a scientific study. Whether you are building a perception experiment or addressing a core grammar theory, there is a prescribed that must be followed. Linguistic research can be quantitative or qualitative, depending on the nature of data you are gathering. In quantitative … [Read more...]
Writing Linguistic Research
Linguistics is the scientific approach to the study of language as a human biological system. The study of language as such is considered a science in a wide-ranging manner. Linguistic research can be based on theoretical features of grammar such as word/sentence structure, or on qualitative and quantitative aspects of linguistic data. Topics of research can range from ancient writing systems … [Read more...]
An Intro to Phrase Structure Rules
Speakers of any language have the ability to intuitively judge whether or not a sentence is grammatical, or well-formed. For example, speakers of English know that (1) is acceptable and (2) is not, even without necessarily understanding why. (1a) Wise teachers listen to their students. (1b)* Listen to their students wise teachers. This ability to make these judgments is based on the … [Read more...]
Verbal Morphology
Verbal Morphology - Tense, Mood, Aspect, and Voice In many languages, a number of different features are marked on the verb and serve to situate and contextualize its usage. Tense, mood, aspect, and voice are some of the most common of these types of features. Tense locates an event in time, while aspect refers to the way in which the event unfolds within a time frame. Mood signals the … [Read more...]
Affixation in English
Affixation is the morphological process in by which bound morphemes are attached to a roots or stems to mark changes in meaning, part of speech, or grammatical relationships. Affixes take on several forms and serve different functions. In this tutorial, we will be looking specifically at affixation in Standard English. Affixes An affix is a bound morpheme that attaches to a root or stem to … [Read more...]
Morphological Processes 101
Grammar or Meaning Morphological processes serve different functions. Some occur to alter meaning and/or part of speech (derivational), others show grammatical relationships between words (inflectional). In English, the attachment of ‘-ness’ to an adjective such as ‘faithful’ derives the noun ‘faithfulness’. Likewise, when ‘un-‘ is attached to ‘happy’, meaning is reversed (unhappy). In French, … [Read more...]
How to Master Morphology
Words are units of sound, meaning, and grammar that human beings use to communicate everything from basic needs to intricate explanations about the solar system. Babies start using them around nine months of age. Most adults know tens of thousands of them. We keep our words neatly classified and organized in our lexicon (mental dictionary) for easy access (word retrieval). Words can be … [Read more...]
Levels of Representation
What are UR and SF? Speakers in all languages possess abstract concepts about the sounds they articulate. In other words, they believe that they have an accurate awareness of speech sounds that they utter. Typically, though, there is a discrepancy between speakers’ own ideas about the sounds in their language use, and what they are actually articulating in practice. The underlying representation … [Read more...]
Features and Classes 101
Features Phonetic features The perception of natural speech sounds is based on phonetic features, the smallest units of distinction between any two phonemes. We use features such as voicing to differentiate between the words /kejm/ ‘came’ and /gejm/ ‘game’. The only distinguishing feature between these 2 sounds is that the vocal cords not do vibrate for during the articulation of /k/, and do … [Read more...]
An Introduction to Natural Classes
When studying phonology, it is fundamental to understand phonemes in terms of the features that they bear and share. Doing so allows us to group phonemes together into natural classes, which gives insight into how classes of sounds pattern together when undergoing various phonological processes. Natural classes are groups of phonemes that share one or a set of phonological features. Binary … [Read more...]
