Linguistics and Sociolinguistics · A good grasp of Linguistics and Sociolinguistics and the way...

Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies

2017-2018

Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

WEEK 1 - LECTURE 1Dr. Margherita Dore

margherita.dore@uniroma1.it

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Who is the Course for?

ü LCLT Second Year Students (12 or 6credits; CANALE M-Z)

• Attendance is NOT compulsory but highlyrecommended

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When, where and how long for?

Second Semester (starting in February 2018)

Wednesday 09.00-11.00 T01 (Marco Polo)Thursdays 13.00-15.00 Aula Levi (Vetrerie)

36 hours in total (9 weeks)

Please note: NO lectures on 28-29 March 2018

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TextbookStudents who need to obtain 6 credits only, must study from:Brown, S, Attardo, S, Vigliotti, C. (2014) Understanding Language Structure, Interaction and Variation, 3rd edition, The University of Michigan Press (except chapters 11 and 12)

Students who need to obtain 12 credits only, must study from:Ø Brown, S, Attardo, S, Vigliotti, C. (2014) Understanding

Language Structure, Interaction and Variation, 3rd edition, The University of Michigan Press (except chapters 11 and 12)

Ø Simpson, Paul and Mayr, Andrea (2010) Language and Power, London and New York, Routledge (selected chapters only)

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Assessment 6 CFUThe exam is in ENGLISH and normally WRITTEN, but it canalso be ORAL if students enrolled are less than 10.

WRITTEN EXAM:• It lasts no more than 1 hours, it is divided into 2 parts• Part 1: Question on one of the topics covered during the course

“Sociolinguistics, Gender and Power”• Part 2: 10 multiple-choice questions on Sociolinguistics, Gender and

Power ORAL EXAM:• All the above in 2 or 3 OPEN questions.

You can use an English monolingual dictionary or thesaurus

IMPORTANTE: l’esame può essere sostenuto prima di averesuperato il lettorato, ma può essere verbalizzato SOLO una voltasuperato lo stesso (con giudizio riportato sul libretto giallo).

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Assessment 12 CFUThe exam is in ENGLISH and normally WRITTEN, but it canalso be ORAL if students enrolled are less than 10.WRITTEN EXAM:• It lasts no more than 2 hours, it is divided into 3 parts• Part 1: Question on one of the topics covered during the course “Sociolinguistics,

Gender and Power”• Part 2: Question on one of the topics covered during the course “Sociolinguistics,

Gender and Power”• Part 3: 10 multiple-choice questions on Sociolinguistics, Gender and Power ORAL EXAM:• All the above in 3 OPEN questions.

You can use an English monolingual dictionary or thesaurus

IMPORTANTE: l’esame può essere sostenuto prima di averesuperato il lettorato, ma può essere verbalizzato SOLO una voltasuperato lo stesso (con giudizio riportato sul libretto giallo).

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What will this course offer you?A general improvement of your language proficiency inEnglish and awareness of language in general

A good grasp of Linguistics and Sociolinguistics and theway language is used in connection to concepts such asGENDER and POWER

Understanding language variation

Expanding your creativity and self-expression in English

Improving your appreciation of language as a means ofsocial networking and social life

Course OutlineSociolinguistics• Language• The Building Blocks of Language• Communicating Meaning• Language Variation• Language and Social Groups• Multilingualism• African American Vernacular English• Language and Gender• First Language Acquisition• Second Language Acquisition Language, Gender and Power• Language and Power • Power and Talk• Language and gender• Language and race• Humour, language and power• Language in the new capitalism • Language and politics

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What is Linguistics?Linguistics is the science that studies language

The person who studies language is a Linguist (do notconfuse this with polyglot)

Languages share some general organizationalmechanisms that distinguish them from other forms ofcommunication (e.g. of animals)

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Eight Design Features of Languages – p.2

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Subfields of Linguistics• Phonetics deals with the sound of language• Phonology deals with how the sounds are organized• Morphology deals with how sounds are put together toform words

• Syntax deals with how sentences are formed• Semantics deals with the meanings of words, sentencesand texts

• Text Linguistics deals with units larger than sentences,such as paragraphs and texts

But remember: Linguistics is an interdisciplinary fielde.g. Sociolinguistics deals with language in society

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How to approach language?• Prescriptive approach

stating what is right or wrong in language. It passes judgment.It mainly seeks to impose rules but also try to protect thelanguage itself (language planning, campaign against sexistlanguage)

e.g. Postponed preposition:What are you looking at?What fine mess you got us into!He is impossible to work with (emphasis on “impossible”)

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Exercise 1• Identify what is grammatically wrong and correct:

The driver thought he had went the wrong way on the turnpike

Do you think there’s too many words on this page?

Me and her waited more than two hours for your plane to land

My clothes really need washed

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Exercise 1 - Keys

The driver thought he had gone the wrong way on the turnpike

Do you think there are too many words on this page?

She and I waited more than two hours for your plane to land

My clothes really need washing

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How to approach language• Descriptive approach

describes facts and draws conclusions (this does not

mean that this approach has no rules!). It tries to find the rules

that govern the languages spoken by people

Linguistic usage helps gather information about someone

e.g. The African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a

dialect but it is also considered as less prestigious for historical

reasons.

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What to focus on?• The diachronic view

studies how language changes through timetraces a word back to its origins (etymology)reconstructs languages that are no longer spoken

• The synchronic viewstudies how language functions at any given moment in timeis not concerned with the origin of words or languages

Remember both views can overlap!

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Competence vs Performance• Competence

the ability to produce a word (or a sentence) and what youknow about a word (or a sentence) (you want to be competentspeakers of your L1 or L2 or L3, etc.; language becomes partof you and it is in your brains)

• Performancethe way a word or a sentence is actually said (the sounds youactually articulate and make!)

Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies

2017-2018

Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

WEEK 1 - LECTURE 2Dr. Margherita Dore

margherita.dore@uniroma1.it

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Overview• Sounds and meanings• Morphemes and words• Types of Morphemes• Creativity in language• How sentences are formed• Immediate Constituents

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Sounds and Meanings• Phonemes are the mental representations of sounds(aka phones)Phonemes are pronounced differently depending on the positionin a word; the different ways a phoneme is articulated are calledallophones.

• Phonemes are (also) the smallest units of a languagethat help distinguish meaning, e.g. the dog [�� ���] can beseparate into each item which is a phoneme.

• Minimal pairs are two words of different meaning thatdiffer for just one phoneme dog [dɒɡ] vs doc [dɒk] (anyothers you can think of?)

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Morphemes and Words• Morphemes are made of phonemes; e.g. [dɒɡ]; it is thesmallest unit of language with a distinct meaning

So it can be also [dɒɡ] or [-z] for dogs as [-z] helps us distinguishbetween singular and plural so the word dogs is made of TWOmorphemes.

• Lexemes are entries in the lexicon (i.e. vocabulary) of aspeaker or language

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Types of Morphemes• Free Morphemes can occur alone in discoursee.g. god, cat, criminal, etc.

• Bound Morphemes they cannot stand alonee.g. s is a morpheme to make plurality: dogs, cats, criminals

• Affixes morphemes that are attached to the rootmorpheme1.prefixes if they occur before the root (un-believable)2.suffixes if they occur after the root (proud-ly; love-s)3.infixes if the occur in the middle of the root (un-f**king-believable)

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Inflectional vs Derivational Morphemes• Derivational Morphemes used to create new wordsfrom old ones (they change the meaning or part of speech)e.g. to buy -> buyer; to sell -> seller; quick -> quickly)

• Inflectional Morphemes mark grammatical categories(do not change the meaning or part of speech)e.g. tall -> taller; work -> worked

Creativity in language

In English, almost any noun can be verbedJ

By affixation:

She (Margaret Thatcher) handbagged her Europeancounterparts.

(The Guardian)

By functional conversion (e.g. From noun to verb):

I decided to toothbrush my way into the bathroom.

Exercise 2

Invent for yourself some sentences that provide functional conversions for the following words:

flower (convert it into a verb)

hear (convert it into a noun)

Exercise 2 - key

We were told to flower the whole garden.

Everyone was upset at school so we organised a group hear.

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Derivation

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CompoundingAvocado Pig

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ClippingCan you reconstruct the longer word?

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Acronyms

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Blends

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Backformation

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Invention

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Borrowing and calque

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Idioms

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How Sentences Are Formed• Double articulation of language is based on:

1. First articulation -> sentences are broken down intomorphemes

2. Second articulation -> morphemes are broken down intophonemes

• Syntax is based on grammaticality and allows secondarticulation:“the book is on the table” √ vs “Table the on is book” X

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How Sentences Are Formed• Immediate ConstituentsBob eats broccoliconstituent #1 constituent#2 constituent#3 of a sentenceNoun Phrase Verb Phrase direct Object

N V N (noun phrase)

Phrase: any group of words that functions as a constituentNoun Phrases: Mary; the woman; the smart woman; the very smart woman

Clouse: a full sentence that has a subject and a verbe.g. It rains

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How Sentences Are Formed

How Sentences Are FormedOne of the ways we can express complex ideas and sets of relations is to use sentences containing the major word-categories:

(Mary) (kissed) (John) (passionately)N V N ADV

(clause) (clause) (clause) (clause)

(Quickly) (Mary) (became) (amorous)ADV N V N

(clause) (clause) (clause) (clause)

How Sentences Are FormedHowever, in spoken language, sentences can be even more complex since clauses can be filled by groups of two or more words, which are called phrases (but they function exactly the same way as single words):

(The beautiful woman) (has kissed) (the hopeful man) (very passionately)NOUN PHRASE (NP) + VERB PHRASE (VP) + NOUN PHRASE (NP) + ADVERB PHRASE (AdvP)

(clause) (clause) (clause) (clause)

(Very quickly) (the girl) (was becoming) (extremely amorous)ADVERB PHRASE (AdvP) + NOUN PHRASE (NP) + VERB PHRASE (VP) + ADJECTIVE PHRASE (AdjP)

Note that the words in bold are defined as HEAD WORDS (they must be always present while the rest is optional)

How Sentences Are FormedWe have learned that phrases are groups of wordsthat go together and which are focused on aheadword that the rest of the words in the phrase

premodify (beautiful woman) or

postmodify (very small indeed) in some way.

Remember: possessive ‘s is a postmodifier

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What we covered so farBrown, S, Attardo, S, Vigliotti, C. (2014) Understanding LanguageStructure, Interaction and Variation, 3rd edition, The University ofMichigan Press

CHAPTER 1 p. 1-17So please make sure you revise and cover practice on p. 14-15.

CHAPTER 2 (Important: you can skip p. 18-27)Study p. 28-49.