What is the aspect of the theory of morphology (AMT): A conceptual system for linguistics morphology

What is Morphology?

As a meaning, morphology learns about morphemes and words in combination with others. We can understand that morphology discusses part of the language structure that including words and morphemes. Before we know more about morphology, we should understand the term first. Geert booij (2005), said that the term of morphology has been taken from biology where it is used to donate the study of the forms of plants and animals. Its first recorded use in writings by the German poet and writer Goethe in 1796. It was first used for linguistics purposes in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher (Salmon 2000), to refer to the study of the forms of words. In present-day linguistics, the terms of morphology refer to the study of the internal structure of words, and the systematic form-meaning correspondences between words.

After we know the term of morphology, we will understand that morphology is one of the conceptual centers of linguistics. It is not because morphology is a dominant subdiscipline, but it is the study of words structure, and words are at the interface between phonology, syntax, and semantics. Words have phonological properties, they can articulate together to form phrases and sentences, their form often reflects their syntactic function, and their parts are often composed of meaningful smaller pieces. It is one of the reasons why should a linguist must know all about morphology.

 

What are the goals to learn morphology? 

If you are a student of linguistics department or English student department, you will realize that how meaningful you must learn morphology. Here we will discuss the goals to learn morphology.

Why does a linguist want to do morphology?

The first reason is the linguist task to describe and analyze the language of the world as accurately and as insightfully as possible. Hence, they have to deal with morphological phenomena of a language, and therefore need a set of tools for descriptions. 

The second goal of the linguist is developing a typology of language, here the linguist will learn what are the dimensions along which language differs, and how are these dimensions of variation related and restricted? Do all languages have morphology, and of all possible kind? and is there an explanation for the morphological similarities and differences between languages?

The third, morphology is a probe into the nature of the linguistics system, and hence into a human, natural language. 

Finally, morphology can be used to get better insight is to how linguistic rules function in language perception and production, and how linguistic knowledge is mentally represented. Thus morphology can give us a contribution to the wider goals of cognitive science that explore the cognitive abilities of human beings.

What is the morpheme in morphology?

Morpheme is the smallest bit of language that has its meaning, either a word or a part of a word. Such as the word 'worker' contains two morphemes 'work' and 'er'. We can say also that morpheme has a meaning as the component of words and has the smallest meaning unit in a language. Such as the word "unfreezable", it consists of three morphemes. We can see that it can be reduced to three identifiable units of meaning (un-), (freeze), and (-able).

Even if we have never heard the word “unfreezable”, it has a meaning that can be inferred from the meaning and function of its component morphemes "freeze" is a verb which means "to become congealed into ice by cold". The suffix (-able) changes this verb into an adjective meaning “able to be frozen”. The prefix (un-) negates the adjective, creating a word which means “not able to be frozen”.

Kind of Morphemes (Free vs Bound)

 As we know about the understanding of morphemes and its example above, here we can say that every word can consist of at least one morpheme or many morphemes can be words.

The morphemes that can stand alone as a word are called free morphemes. Its example below;

·         Table

·         Person

·         Sad

·         Hungry

·         Run

·         Swim

The free morphemes are usually content, corresponding to concepts denoted by the major lexical categories of noun, verb, and adjective.

The morpheme that can not stand alone is called bound morphemes. Its example below;

·         (un-), (pre-), (dis-), (-ment), (-ity), (-ing), (-ed)

The bound morphemes can be content or function morphemes.

Roots, Bases, and Stem

Not all morphemes are equally central to the formation of a word. But we turn to our attention first about roots. The root of a word is its most basic form. It is at the center of the word derivation process. It also carries the basic meaning from which the rest of the sense of the word can be derived.   

Morphemes such as chair, green, father, America, they are roots. These roots happen to be a free word or independent words. But more often, roots are like seg in the segment, gen in genetics, card in cardiac, sequ in sequence, brev in brevity, these can not stand alone as a word. They are called bound roots morphemes, as distinct from free root morphemes. 

A base is anything that an affix attaches to. Here is the example of a base, in the word unlovable, love is the base for loveable, and loveable is the base for unlovable.

A stem is a base to which affixes attach. It is also has a meaning as the part of a word that is left after you take off the part which changes when forming a plural, past tense, etc. here is the example of the stem, in the stem ‘sav-‘ you will get the word ‘saves’, ‘saved’, saving, and ‘saver’.

Affixes; Prefixes and Suffixes

Affixes carry very little of the core meaning of the word. Mainly affixes have the effect of slightly modifying the meaning of the stem. A stem is either a root or a root plus an affix, or more than one root with or without affixes to which more affixes can be attached.

All morphemes which are not roots affixes. Robert and Donka (2001) say that tt after roots in three ways.

1.    They do not form words by themselves, they have to be added on to a stem.

2.    Their meaning, in many instances is not as clear and specific as is the meaning of roots and many of them are almost completely meaningless.

3.    Compared with the total number of roots, which is very large (thousands or tens of thousands in any language), the number of affixes is relatively small(a few hundred at most).

Affix is a little or a group of letters that are added to the beginning or end of a word to make a new word. English affix as an umbrella term for prefixes and suffixes. Only root morphemes can free, so affixes are necessarily bound.

Subsequently, we know what is the affix. Now, we will discuss prefixes and suffixes.

Prefixes

Prefixes are a letter or group of letters added to the beginning of a word to make a new word. Here are some examples of common prefixes where the meaning is clear.

·         Co + occur                  “occur together”

·         Mid + night                 “middle of the night”

·         Mis + treat                  “treat badly”

·         Peri + meter                “measure around”

·         Re + turn                     “turn back”

·         Un + filled                  “not filled”

 

Suffixes

Suffixes is a letter or group of letters added at the end of a word to make a new word, and here are examples of common for suffixes where the meaning is also clear.

·          Act + ion                    “state of acting”

·         Act + or                       “person who act”

·         Act + ive                     “about being action”

·         Child + ish                  “like a child”

·         Child + hood               “state being a child”

·         Child + less                 “without a child”

 

Conclusion

 As we have shown above, basically I am just saying that morphology is really important for a linguist. It because the goals of the theories of morphology can give the linguist illustration the understanding that the speaker possesses about morphological structure and relatedness of the word as well as to define the type of word formation which occurs cross-linguistically. The knowledge of a language allows a speaker to understand and create new words composed of familiar parts.

Why should the linguist care about morphology? This is because of the linguist’s task to describe and analyze the language of the world as accurately and as insightfully as possible. It is important because morphology deals with both the form and the meaning of linguistics expressions. Hence, one might qualify morphology as word grammar that part of the grammar that accounts for the systematic form-meaning relations between words. In other words, it is a set of correspondence rules between forms, and the meaning of words. The nation “word grammar” stands in apposition to "sentence grammar", the grammar which describes the systematic relations between form and meaning at the sentence lever.

References

Geert Booij. (2005). The Grammar of Words; An Introduction to Linguistic Morphology. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Robert Stockwell and Donka Minkova. (2001). English Words; History and Structure. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Corpus Analysis and Linguistics Theory by Charles F. Meyer. (2004)

When the first computer corpus, the Brown Corpus, was being created in the early 1960s, generative grammar dominated linguistics, and there was little tolerance for approaches to linguistic study that did not adhere to what generative grammarians deemed acceptable linguistic practice. As a consequence, even though the creators of the Brown Corpus, W. Nelson Francis and Henry Kuˇcera, are now regarded as pioneers and visionaries in the corpus linguistics community, in the 1960s their efforts to create a machine-readable corpus of English were not warmly accepted by many members of the linguistic community. 

W. Nelson Francis (1992: 28) tells the story of a leading generative grammarian of the time characterizing the creation of the Brown Corpus as “a useless and foolhardy enterprise” because “the only legitimate source of grammatical knowledge” about a language was the intuitions of the native speaker, which could not be obtained from a corpus. Although some linguists still hold to this belief, linguists of all persuasions are now far more open to the idea of using linguistic corpora for both descriptive and theoretical studies of language. 

Moreover, the division and divisiveness that has characterized the relationship between the corpus linguist and the generative grammarian rests on a false assumption: that all corpus linguists are descriptivists, interested only in counting and categorizing constructions occurring in a corpus, and that all generative grammarians are theoreticians unconcerned with the data on which their theories are based. Many corpus linguists are actively engaged in issues of language theory, and many generative grammarians have shown an increasing concern for the data upon which their theories are based, even though data collection remains at best a marginal concern in modern generative theory.

sussy_corpus linguistics

To explain why corpus linguistics and generative grammar have had such an uneasy relationship, and to explore the role of corpus analysis in linguistic theory, this chapter first discusses the goals of generative grammar and the three types of adequacy (observational, descriptive, and explanatory) that Chomsky claims linguistic descriptions can meet. Investigating these three types of adequacy reveals the source of the conflict between the generative grammarian and the corpus linguist: while the generative grammarian strives for explanatory adequacy (the highest level of adequacy, according to Chomsky), the corpus linguist aims for descriptive adequacy (a lower level of adequacy), and it is arguable whether explanatory adequacy is even achievable through corpus analysis. 

However, even though generative grammarians and corpus linguists have different goals, it is wrong to assume that the analysis of corpora has nothing to contribute to linguistic theory: corpora can be invaluable resources for testing out linguistic hypotheses based on more functionally based theories of grammar, i.e. theories of language more interested in exploring language as a tool of communication. And the diversity of text types in modern corpora makes such investigations quite possible, a point illustrated in the middle section of the chapter, where a functional analysis of coordination ellipsis is presented that is based on various genres of the Brown Corpus and the International Corpus of English. Although corpora are ideal for functionally based analyses of language, they have other uses as well, and the final section of the chapter provides a general survey of the types of linguistic analyses that corpora can help the linguist conduct and the corpora available to carry out these analyses. (P. 1 – 2)

REFERENCE
Charles F. Meyer. (2004). English Corpus Linguistics An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Linguistics Theory and Description by Charles F. Meyer. (2004)

Chomsky has stated in a number of sources that there are three levels of “adequacy” upon which grammatical descriptions and linguistic theories can be evaluated: observational adequacy, descriptive adequacy, and explanatory adequacy.

sussy_Linguistics Theory

If a theory or description achieves observational adequacy, it is able to describe which sentences in a language are grammatically well formed. Such a description would note that in English while a sentence such as He studied for the exam is grammatical, a sentence such as *studied for the exam is not. To achieve descriptive adequacy (a higher level of adequacy), the description or theory must not only describe whether individual sentences are well formed but in addition specify the abstract grammatical properties making the sentences well formed. Applied to the previous sentences, a description at this level would note that sentences in English require an explicit subject. Hence, *studied for the exam is ungrammatical and He studied for the exam is grammatical. The highest level of adequacy is explanatory adequacy, which is achieved when the description or theory not only reaches descriptive adequacy but does so using abstract principles which can be applied beyond the language being considered and become a part of “Universal Grammar.” At this level of adequacy, one would describe the inability of English to omit subject pronouns as a consequence of the fact that, unlike Spanish or Japanese, English is not a language which permits “pro-drop,” i.e. the omission of a subject pronoun that is recoverable from the context or deducible from inflections on the verb marking the case, gender, or number of the subject.

Within Chomsky’s theory of principles and parameters, pro-drop is a consequence of the “null-subject parameter” (Haegeman 1991: 17–20). This parameter is one of many which make up universal grammar, and as speakers acquire a language, the manner in which they set the parameters of universal grammar is determined by the norms of the language they are acquiring. Speakers acquiring English would set the null-subject parameter to negative, since English does not permit pro-drop; speakers of Italian, on the other hand, would set the parameter to positive, since Italian permits pro-drop (Haegeman 1991: 18). 

Because generative grammar has placed so much emphasis on universal grammar, explanatory adequacy has always been a high priority in generative grammar, often at the expense of descriptive adequacy: there has never been much emphasis in generative grammar in ensuring that the data upon which analyses are based are representative of the language being discussed, and with the notion of the ideal speaker/hearer firmly entrenched in generative grammar, there has been little concern for variation in a language, which traditionally has been given no consideration in the construction of generative theories of language. This trend has become especially evident in the most recent theory of generative grammar: minimalist theory.

In minimalist theory, a distinction is made between those elements of a language that are part of the “core” and those that are part of the “periphery.” The core is comprised of “pure instantiations of UG” and the periphery “marked exceptions” that are a consequence of “historical accident, dialect mixture, personal idiosyncracies, and the like” (Chomsky 1995: 19–20). Because “variation is limited to nonsubstantive elements of the lexicon and general properties of lexical items” (Chomsky 1995: 170), those elements belonging to the periphery of a language are not considered in minimalist theory; only those elements that are part of the core are deemed relevant for purposes of theory construction. This idealized view of language is taken because the goal of minimalist theory is “a theory of the initial state,” that is, a theory of what humans know about language “in advance of experience” (Chomsky 1995: 4) before they encounter the real world of the language they are acquiring and the complexity of structure that it will undoubtedly exhibit.

This complexity of structure, however, is precisely what the corpus linguist is interested in studying. Unlike generative grammarians, corpus linguists see complexity and variation as inherent in language, and in their discussions of language, they place a very high priority on descriptive adequacy, not explanatory adequacy. Consequently, corpus linguists are very skeptical of the highly abstract and decontextualized discussions of language promoted by generative grammarians, largely because such discussions are too far removed from actual language usage. Chafe (1994: 21) sums up the disillusionment that corpus linguists have with purely formalist approaches to language study, noting that they “exclude observations rather than . . . embrace ever more of them” and that they rely too heavily on “notational devices designed to account for only those aspects of reality that fall within their purview, ignoring the remaining richness which also cries out for understanding.” The corpus linguist embraces complexity; the generative grammarian pushes it aside, seeking an ever more restrictive view of language.

Because the generative grammarian and corpus linguist have such very different views of what constitutes an adequate linguistic description, it is clear why these two groups of linguists have had such a difficult time communicating and valuing each other’s work. As Fillmore (1992: 35) jokes, when the corpus linguist asks the theoretician (or “armchair linguist”) “Why should I think that what you tell me is true?”, the generative grammarian replies back “Why should I think that what you tell me is interesting?” (emphasis added). Of primary concern to the corpus linguist is an accurate description of language; of importance to the generative grammarian is a theoretical discussion of language that advances our knowledge of universal grammar.

Even though the corpus linguist places a high priority on descriptive adequacy, it is a mistake to assume that the analysis of corpora has nothing to offer to generative theory in particular or to theorizing about language in general. The main argument against the use of corpora in generative grammar, Leech (1992) observes, is that the information they yield is biased more towards performance than competence and is overly descriptive rather than theoretical. However, Leech (1992: 108) argues that this characterization is overstated: the distinction between competence and performance is not as great as is often claimed, “since the latter is the product of the former.” Consequently, what one discovers in a corpus can be used as the basis for whatever theoretical issue one is exploring. In addition, all of the criteria applied to scientific endeavors can be satisfied in a corpus study, since corpora are excellent sources for verifying the falsifiability, completeness, simplicity, strength, and objectivity of any linguistic hypothesis (Leech 1992: 112–13).

Despite Leech’s claims, it is unlikely that corpora will ever be used very widely by generative grammarians, even though some generative discussions of language have been based on corpora and have demonstrated their potential for advancing generative theory. Working within the framework of government and binding theory (the theory of generative grammar preceding minimalist theory), Aarts (1992) used sections of the corpus housed at the Survey of English Usage at University College London to analyze “small clauses” in English, constructions like her happy in the sentence I wanted her happy that can be expanded into a clausal unit (She is happy). By using the London Corpus, Aarts (1992)was not only able to provide a complete description of small clauses in English but to resolve certain controversies regarding small clauses, such as establishing the fact that they are independent syntactic units rather than simply two phrases, the first functioning as direct object and the second as complement of the object.

Haegeman (1987) employed government and binding theory to analyze empty categories (i.e. positions in a clausewhere some element is missing) in a specific genre of English: recipe language. While Haegeman’s investigation is not based on data from any currently available corpus, her analysis uses the type of data quite commonly found in corpora. Haegeman (1987) makes the very interesting claim that parametric variation (such as whether or not a language exhibits pro-drop) does not simply distinguish individual languages from one another but can be used to characterize regional, social, or register variation within a particular language. She looks specifically at examples from the genre (or register) of recipe language that contain missing objects (marked by the letters [a], [b], etc. in the example below):

(1) Skin and bone chicken, and cut [a] into thin slices. Place [b] in bowl with mushrooms. Pur´ee remaining ingredients in blender, and pour [c] over chicken and mushrooms. Combine [d] and chill [e] well before serving. (Haegeman 1987: 236–7)

Government and binding theory, Haegeman (1987: 238) observes, recognizes four types of empty categories, and after analyzing a variety of different examples of recipe language, Haegeman concludes that this genre contains one type of empty category, wh-traces, not found in the core grammar of English (i.e. in other genres or regional and social varieties of English).

What distinguishes Haegeman’s (1987) study from most other work in generative grammar is that she demonstrates that theoretical insights into universal grammar can be obtained by investigating the periphery of a language as well as the core. And since many corpora contain samples of various genres within a language, they are very well suited to the type of analysis that Haegeman (1987) has conducted. Unfortunately, given the emphasis in generative grammar on investigations of the core of a language (especially as reflected in Chomsky’s recent workin minimalism), corpora will probably never have much of a role in generative grammar. For this reason, corpora are much better suited to functional analyses of language: analyses that are focused not simply on providing a formal description of language but on describing the use of language as a communicative tool. (P. 2 – 5)

REFERENCE   
Charles F. Meyer. (2004). English Corpus Linguistics An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.
   

Developmental Linguistics in Language

Readers familiar with small children will know that they generally produce their first recognizable word (e.g. Dada or Mama) round about their first birthday; from then until the age of about one year, six months, children’s speech consists largely of single words spoken in isolation (e.g. a child wanting an apple will typically say ‘Apple’). At this point, children start to form elementary phrases and sentences, so that a child wanting an apple at this stage might say “Want apple”. From then on, we see a rapid growth in children’s grammatical development, so that by the age of two years, six months, most children are able to produce adult-like sentences such as “Can I have an apple?”

sussy_linguistics

From this rough characterization of development, a number of tasks emerge for the developmental linguist. Firstly, it is necessary to describe the child’s development in terms of a sequence of grammars. After all, we know that children become adults, and we are supposing that, as adults, they are native speakers who have access to a mentally represented grammar. The natural assumption is that they move towards this grammar through a sequence of “incomplete” or “immature” grammars. Secondly, it is important to try to explain how it is that after a period of a year and a half in which there is no obvious sign of children being able to form sentences, between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half years of age there is a ‘spurt’ as children start to form more and more complex sentences, and a phenomenal growth in children’s grammatical development. This uniformity and (once the ‘spurt’ has started) rapidity in the pattern of children’s linguistic development are central facts which a theory of language acquisition must seek to explain. But how?

Chomsky maintains that the most plausible explanation for the uniformity and rapidity of first language acquisition is to posit that the course of acquisition is determined by a biologically endowed innate language faculty (or language acquisition program, to borrow a computer software metaphor) within the human brain. This provides children with a genetically transmitted set of procedures for developing a grammar which enables them to produce and understand sentences in the language they are acquiring on the basis of their linguistic experience (i.e. on the basis of the speech input they receive). 

Children acquiring a language will observe people around them using the language, and the set of expressions in the language which the child hears (and the contexts in which they are used) in the course of acquiring the language constitute the child’s linguistic experience of the language. This experience serves as input to the child’s language faculty, which provides the child with a set of procedures for analyzing the experience in such a way as to devise a grammar of the language being acquired. Chomsky’s hypothesis that the course of language acquisition is determined by an innate language faculty is known popularly as the innateness hypothesis. 

Invocation of an innate language faculty becoming available to the child only at some genetically determined point may constitute a plausible approach to the questions of uniformity and rapidity, but there is an additional observation which suggests that some version of the innateness hypothesis must be correct. This is that the knowledge of a language represented by an adult grammar appears to go beyond anything supplied by the child’s linguistic experience. A simple demonstration of this is provided by the fact that adult native speakers are not only capable of combining words and phrases in acceptable ways but also of recognizing unacceptable combinations. The interesting question this raises is: where does this ability come from? An obvious answer to this question is: that the child’s linguistic experience provides information on unacceptable combinations of words and phrases. But this is incorrect. Why do we assert this with such confidence?

Obviously, when people speak, they do make mistakes (although research has shown that language addressed to children is almost completely free of such mistakes). However, when this happens, there is no clear signal to the child indicating that an adult utterance contains a mistake, that is, as far as the child is concerned, an utterance containing a mistake is just another piece of linguistic experience to be treated on a par with error-free utterances. Furthermore, it has been shown that adults’ ‘corrections’ of children’s own speech do not take systematic account of whether children are producing syntactically acceptable or unacceptable combinations of words and phrases; parents do ‘correct’ their children, but when they do this, it is to ensure that children speak truthfully; grammatical correctness is not their target. Overall, there is compelling evidence that children do not receive systematic exposure to information about unacceptable sequences, and it follows that in this respect the child’s linguistic experience is not sufficient to justify the adult grammar. From this poverty of the stimulus argument it follows that something must supplement linguistic experience and the innate language faculty fulfils this role.

Now, it is important to underline the fact that children have the ability to acquire any natural language, given appropriate experience of the language: for example, a British child born of monolingual English-speaking parents and brought up by monolingual Japanese-speaking parents in a Japanese-speaking community will acquire Japanese as a native language. From this it follows that the contents of the language faculty must not be specific to any one human language: if the language faculty accounts for the uniformity and rapidity of the acquisition of English, it must also account for the uniformity and rapidity of the acquisition of Japanese, Russian, Swahili, etc.; and if the language faculty makes up for the insufficiency of a child’s experience of English in acquiring a grammar of English, it must also make up for the insufficiency of a child’s experience of Japanese in acquiring a grammar of Japanese, for the insufficiency of a child’s experience of Russian in acquiring a grammar of Russian, for the insufficiency of a child’s experience of Swahili in acquiring a grammar of Swahili, etc. This entails, then, that the language faculty must incorporate a set of UG principles (i.e. principles of Universal Grammar) which enable the child to form and interpret sentences in any natural language. Thus, we see an important convergence of the interests of the linguist and the developmental linguist, with the former seeking to formulate UG principles on the basis of the detailed study of the grammars of adult languages and the latter aiming to uncover such principles by examining children’s grammars and the conditions under which they emerge.

In the previous paragraph, we have preceded ‘language’ with the modifier “human”, and genetic transmission suggests that a similar modifier is appropriate for ‘language faculty’. The language faculty is species-specific and the ability to develop a grammar of a language is unique to human beings. This ability distinguishes us from even our nearest primate cousins, the great apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas, and in studying it we are therefore focusing attention on one of the defining characteristics of what it means to be a human being. There have been numerous attempts to teach language to other species, and success in this area would seriously challenge the assertion we have just made. Indeed, it has proved possible to teach chimpanzees a number of signs similar to those employed in the Sign Languages used as native languages by the deaf, and it has been reported that pigmy chimpanzees can understand some words of spoken English, and even follow a number of simple commands. Such research arouses strong emotions, and, of course, we are not in a position to assert that it will never produce dramatic results. At the moment, however, we can maintain that all attempts, however intensive, to teach grammatical knowledge to apes have been spectacular failures when the apes’ accomplishments are set alongside those of a normal three-year-old child. As things stand, the evidence is firmly in favors of the species-specificity of the language faculty.  (Page. 6 - 9)   

REFERENCES

Andrew radford, Martin atkinson, David britain, Harald clahsen and Andrew spencer. (2009). Linguistics an Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Understanding of Phonology

  Trevor Harley (2001)

1. Phonology describes the sound categories each language uses to divide up the space of possible sounds. (p. 28) 
2. Phonology is the study of phonemes. (29) 
3. Phonology describes the sound categories each language uses to divide up the space of possible sounds. (p.46) 
4. Phonology is the study of sounds and how they relate to languages; phonology describes the sound categories each language uses to divide up the space of possible sounds

sussy_phonology

Parviz Birjandi & Mohammad Ali Salmani-Nodoushan (2005)

1. Phonology is the study of all aspects of the sounds and sound system of a language. It includes two major sub-branches: (a) phonetics, and (b) phonemics. (p.6) 
2. The abstract nature of phonology implies firm boundaries to the segment, and a straightforward conversion from abstract to concrete (phonemic representation to phonetic representation) as phonetics realizes phonology. (p.143) 
   

    

    Joan Bybee (2003)

1. The goal of phonology as conceived by generative theory is to describe the following phenomena: (i) the relations among similar but physically distinct sounds that are nonetheless taken to be ‘the same’ in some sense (allophonic relations), (ii) the relations among variants of morphemes as they occur in different contexts, (iii) phonological units of various sizes -features, segments, syllables, feet, and so on, and (iv) language-specific and universal properties of these relations and units. (p. 19)   
   
   

   Linda Shockey (2003)

   
   
   1. One could take the stance that phonology deals only with the relationship between sound units in a language (segmental and suprasegmental) and meaning (provided you are referring to lexical rather than indexical meaning). Truly phonological events would then involve exchanges of sound units which made a difference in meaning. (p. 4) 
   2. Phonology could be seen as the study of meaning-changing sound units and their representatives in different environments, regardless of whether they change the meaning, and with no constraints on the relationship between the abstract phoneme and its representatives in speech: anything can change to anything else, as long as the change is regular/predictable, that is, as long as the linkage to the underlying phonemic identity of each item is discoverable. (p.4) 
   3. .Phonology could be seen as the study of meaning-bearing sound units and their representatives in different environments, regardless of whether they change the meaning, with the addition of constraints as to what sorts of substitutions are likely or even possible. (p.5) 
   4. Phonology is the systematic study of the pronunciation/perception targets and processes used by native speakers of a language in everyday life. (p. 10)

   
   REFERENCES

   Joan Bybee. (2003). Phonology and Language Use. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.
   
   
   Linda Shockey. (2003). Sound Patterns of Spoken English. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.
   
   
   Parviz Birjandi & Mohammad Ali Salmani-Nodoushan. (2005). An Introduction to Phonetics. Iran: Zabankadeh Publications.
   
   
   Trevor Harley. (2001). The Psychology of Language from Data to Theory. New York: Psychology Press.
   
   

What Kind of Linguistics

Some descriptive linguists define basic linguistic documentation as reflecting the very essence of the discipline of linguistics, which they regard as taking precedence over all other areas of linguistic activity: 

sussy_What Kind of Linguistics

The ideal apprenticeship (for a linguist) is to undertake fieldwork on some previously undescribed (or scarcely described) language-recording, transcribing and analyzing texts; observing how people use the language in the daily round; writing a grammar and phonology; compiling a dictionary; and publishing a volume of annotated texts. (Dixon 2001)

There are probably as many different ways of describing the phonology, morphology, and syntax of a language as there are linguists, though different approaches can often be gathered roughly under a variety of different theoretical labels. Linguistic descriptions that are rigidly bound to particular theoretical constructs do not tend successfully to outlast the theories which spawned them. Grammars that are written, for example, according to the strict structuralize formulae that were in vogue up to the early 1960s, or according to the transformational model which became all the rage immediately after this, are often extremely difficult for people to read today. Similarly, descriptions that are expressed exclusively in terms that derive from some of today’s theoretical traditions are often equally unreadable to those who hail from other traditions. 

The most readable and arguably, therefore, the most valuable-accounts of languages seem to be those which are relatively open to theoretical eclecticism. By this, I mean that a linguistic description should set out to allow the linguistic data to govern the form of the description, rather than requiring a single theoretical model rigidly to dictate the shape of the entire grammar. Some would argue that there is a single theory-neutral model for grammatical description which can be used for any language, as implied by Dixon’s (1997: 128–38) use of the expression

 Basic Linguistic Theory. While it would perhaps be nice if this were the case, any linguistic description is in reality going to exhibit certain kinds of theoretical biases, many of which may be implicit. The most important consideration in producing a good linguistic description is that the writer’s particular theoretical assumptions should be clearly recognizable to the reader, that any terminological conventions should be clearly explained, and that the grammar should be richly exemplified with natural data so that readers coming from other theoretical persuasions are able to make sense of your discussion. With new technological tools it is possible to create rich contextual data in a media corpus for which your analysis provides a gateway (e.g. Thieberger 2004) and which allows others to confirm and extend your analysis.

Linguistics is a hugely diverse discipline, and Weld linguists can contribute to our knowledge in a wide variety of ways. While most linguists are primarily interested in matters of phonology, morphology, and syntax, the ways in which language is used ‘in the daily round’ noted by Dixon seldom receive more than passing mention. Only a minority of linguists-better, perhaps, linguistic anthropologists-have shown themselves to be interested in documenting how language functions as a ‘mode of social interaction [which] provides the material out of which a group of people recognize themselves as a community’ (Duranti 1997: 99). Such accounts cannot be based on the traditional direct ‘elicitation’ of language data from ‘informants’; rather, the fieldworker must become a long-term participant observer, recording extensive collections of both audio and video data of natural language use between different individuals within the community.

At the same time, it is clear that Duranti’s (1994) discussion of the ways in which grammatical constructions in Samoan are used to achieve socio-political goals depends crucially on a prior analysis of the language in a traditional descriptive account such as that of Mosel and Hovdhaugen (1992). Even the title of Duranti’s linguistic anthropological field account-From Grammar to Politics-implies this priority. Similarly, Schieffelin and Ochs (1986) show how language acquisition by children is related to socialization into different cultures using the same kinds of basic linguistic information. Traditional descriptive accounts, then, should be promoted as an essential stepping stone for bigger-and some would no doubt argue, better-things.

The goals of fieldwork can sometimes be much more limited than a full published grammar or dictionary, or a detailed ethnographic account of the communicative strategies that are used by people in a particular society. Sometimes, previously published materials may spark the interest of specialists who return to somebody else’s previous Weld site in order to analyze some particular features of the language in more detail. For instance, in some of the languages of Vanuatu, there are phonemically contrastive linguo-labial consonants in which nasals, stops, and fricatives are produced with the tip of the tongue touching the upper lips. Ian Maddieson undertook a fieldtrip from the United States to Vanuatu in the 1980s simply to study these speech sounds in detail in a number of languages in which they are found. A guide that is specifically geared towards instrumental phonetics is beyond the scope of this volume, though Ladefoged (2003) andMaddieson (2001) provide a great deal of very readable material.

Published grammars concentrate for the most part on regular patterns, resulting in a lack of attention devoted to the study of patterns of variable data. There is absolutely no reason why the kinds of corpus-based statistical studies that have been carried out extensively on different varieties of English could not be carried out in other languages as well, e.g. Dorian’s (2001) work on Gaelic. However, in order to do this, a linguist would need to pay close attention to a much wider range of sampling and data gathering issues than is commonly done in order to ensure that statistically representative samples of different categories of speakers have been recorded. While I have also decided to exclude sociolinguistic studies from the scope of this volume, readers who are interested in an up-to-date guide to data-gathering of this kind could consult Milroy (1987).

REFERENCE
Terry Crowley. (2007). Field Linguistics; A Beginner’s Guide. New York: Oxford University Press.

Language Teaching Methodology

The aims of this topics is language teaching methodology, which has to do with methods, techniques, and procedures for teaching and learning in the class room. Methodology fits into the large picture of curriculum development. There are three sub-components to curriculum development: syllabus design, methodology, and evaluation. All of these components should be in harmony with one another: methodology should be tailored to the syllabus, and evaluation/assessment should be focused on what has been taught.

Language Teaching methodology

Nunan (2015: 6), said syllabus design focus on content, which deals not only with what we should teach, but also the order in which the content is taught and the reasons for teaching this content to our learners.

According to Rhicard et al (1987) in Nunan (2015: 6), methodology is “the study of the practices and procedures used in teaching, and the principles and beliefs that underline them”. Unlike syllabus design, which focuses on content, methodology focused on class room techniques and procedures and principles for sequencing these. And assessment (Nunan: 2016: 6) is concerned with how well our learners have done, while evaluation is much broader and is concerned with how well our program or course has served the learners.

The implementation of the learning process is always tied to the existence of three important elements that are mutually sustainable with each other, namely the approach, method, and technique. These three aspects have a fundamental relationship in the implementation of the learning process that will be carried out by a teacher as explained by Edward Anthony (in Brown, 2000: 14) said:

“An approach was a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning, and teaching. Method was described as an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based upon a selected approach. Techniques were the specific activities manifested in the classroom that were consistent with a method and therefore were harmony with an approach as well”.

The same explanation come from Richard & Rodgers (2001: 19) stated that:

 “Approach is the level at which assumption and beliefs about language and language learning are specified; method is the level at which theory is put into practice and at which choices are made about the particular skills to be taught, the content to be taught, and the order in which the content will be presented; technique is the level at which classroom procedures are described”

And Brown (2000: 14):

"An approach defines assumptions, beliefs, and theories about the nature of language and language learning. Design specify the relationship of those theories to classroom materials and activities. Procedures are the techniques and practices that are derived from one’s approach and design”.

Based on description above, it can be understood that the approach is a series of theories that underlie language and language teaching which is then poured into the form of method. This is because the method is understood as a procedure from one or several theories that form the basis for learning process in the class room. While technique is understood as a tool used to get goals faster. So it is concluded that form both terms the approach is the core of learning, in which the chosen approach will influence the methods and techniques used in language teaching.

In language teaching theory, a distinction is often made between teaching approaches and teaching methodologies. For ease of understanding, I will summarize to all the following as methods. 

1. Luccy Polard (2008: 19-24)

a. Grammar translation method

This method was prevalent in schools throughout the beginning of the 20th century; its use continued long afterwards and many cultures still expect language to be taught using this method. The method consists of studying written texts, translating them into the students’ own language and carrying out a study of grammar. There is little attention given to the use of the spoken language. I learnt French through this method and whilst I was able to read and translate complicated texts, I was unable to buy a loaf of bread when I went on holiday to France. It has been replaced by methods that focus on spoken language and I advise you to familiarize yourself with these newer methods and to use them. However, if you’re going to teach in a traditional culture that values the grammar-translation method, you could do the occasional activity of that type just out of respect for students’ preferences.

b. Audio-lingual method

This method grew out of behaviorist psychology. It involves providing a stimulus to which students respond; if the response is correct, the students are praised in order to reinforce the correct use of language and ultimately to reinforce learning. Language is presented in a very controlled way; i.e. one language point at a time is studied and worked on. Grammar explanations are kept to a minimum and progress is made through repetition.

In a typical lesson, the teacher might show pictures of people in various situations: for example 3 people with their possessions; one woman has got a big house, a beautiful car, etc; one man has a small house and an old car and one man has nothing.

The assumption is that the students know the words: house, car, some and any. The teacher shows a picture and says “she’s got a big house”, the teacher repeats the phrase and invites students to repeat. Students are praised if they get it correct. If they get it wrong, the teacher repeats and asks students to say it again. The teacher then moves onto the next picture and says, “ he’s got an old car” this is repeated by the teacher and then students are asked to repeat. The teacher continues with the third person and the phrase “he hasn’t got any money”. The teacher continues until all forms have been presented and practiced. The teacher might then show pictures randomly (known as a prompt) and invite students to say what possessions the characters have

got.

Oral prompts can also be given and students are invited to make sentences with the

prompts. For example:

Teacher (T) says: she / big house

Students (Ss) say: she’s got a big house

T: he / old car

Ss: he’s got an old car

T: she / old car

Ss: she hasn’t got an old car

Such exercises are known as drills and are used to encourage automatic use of language; i.e. students respond automatically without stopping to think about what they’re saying. When students have mastered the structure (in the same lesson or in the following lesson) the teacher might present the question form by showing the picture of the woman and saying “big house; has she got a big house?”. The lesson will continue in the same way as above. This description of a lesson has been adapted from the course book “Streamlines”.

Lessons in this approach are very predictable but at lower levels they provide a familiar environment where students at least get the chance to produce the phrase orally and correctly. This method has been criticized for not being communicative; i.e. there is no real communication; there is no need to say ‘she’s got a big house; everybody can see she has!

c. Communicative approach

This approach developed out of a need to have students communicating for real. It is based on the theory that children acquire language rules by using language rather than through the study of grammar. It involves creating situations where the students have a genuine need to say something, just as children do. I’ll illustrate this by describing two approaches to the same activity.

Let’s say you’ve set up an activity where your students are planning a dinner party. They’ve decided what food to cook and serve and have the recipes as well as ingredients and quantities required. They’re about to go shopping and are writing up their shopping lists. You could give each student the list of ingredients and quantities and tell them to perform the following dialogue:

Ingredients and quantities:

1kg lamb

1 kg potatoes

500g tin of tomatoes

50g butter

500g apricots

1 pot of yoghurt

Conversation:

How much lamb do we need to buy?

1 kilo will be enough.

Do we need any butter?

Yes, 50g will be enough.

This will provide speaking practice but will not create a real need for communication; students already know what they need to buy from the shops because they all have the list.

 If you prepare 2 lists – each contains all the ingredients needed but on one list the quantities for some items are noted and the other list contains the quantities needed for the remaining items. Thus:

List A List B

1kg lamb lamb

1 kg potatoes potatoes

500g tin of tomatoes tomatoes

Butter 50g butter

Apricots 500g apricots

Yoghurt 1 pot of yoghurt

You can now give list A to one student and list B to another student and instruct them to carry out the dialogue below in pairs:

How much lamb do we need to buy?

1 kilo will be enough.

Do we need any butter?

Yes, 50g will be enough.

There will be a real need for communication because the student with list A doesn’t know how much butter is required. Similarly, the student with list B doesn’t know how much lamb is needed. Such activities are called information gaps because there is a gap between the various bits of information the students have.

The communicative approach often refers to speaking activities, however the other skills can also be practiced in a communicative way. The essential element is to ensure that there is a reason for carrying out the task other than just practicing language.

d. PPP

PPP stands for presentation, practice, and production. It is a fairly traditional way to structure a lesson that was popular throughout the 1980’s. It proved to be beneficial at lower levels and is still widely used today. 

Presentation involves, as the name suggests, presenting a language point. This is usually done by the teacher. Presentation might be similar to the audio-lingual approach through the use of pictures and focused learning. It can also be achieved through explanation and demonstration (for definitions, see Chapter 3). Practice refers to controlled practice (see Chapter 1); it involves students using the target language in a controlled way. This might involve drills, controlled written and speaking activities, and repetition. Production refers to freer practice; students use the target language in sentences of their own. They might also combine it with other language they know. It is not the same as free speaking practice. For example, after studying “have you ever” question forms to talk about experiences (e.g. have you ever been to Mexico? Have you ever eaten snails?) students work in pairs to ask each other about their own experiences. The structure “have you ever” will be the same throughout, but the vocabulary will vary. This is known as freer practice.

e. Task-based learning

In a task-based lesson, the teacher sets a task for students to do that involves the use of language not yet studied in class or language studied previously that the teacher wishes to revise. The language point chosen is known as target language. The task might be an activity from the course book that was intended as practice of a language point or an activity from a supplementary source. The teacher sets up the task and observes students as they get on with it. The teacher pays particular attention to the students’ performance with the target language. The teacher should note down errors but not correct them during the activity. For example in an exercise to check students’ knowledge of prepositions of time, the teacher might set up an activity which involves students deciding when and where to meet. While students are speaking, the teacher might note the use of prepositions (both good and poor use): on Monday, in the afternoon, at 5pm, etc.

Depending on how well (or how badly) students performed, the teacher will decide whether to conduct thorough presentation and practice of the language or whether to revise and practice it briefly. The decision is made according to performance on the task. This can then be followed up with a repetition of the original activity or one that is similar. You and your students can compare performance on the original and final task.

I am outlining the structure of a task-based lesson but I do not advise its use if you are very new to teaching. It requires thorough knowledge of the language point and an ability to handle unexpected questions about the language. You will need to know about it because some course books (e.g. Cutting Edge) follow this format. You can experiment with this approach when you are more experienced and with a language item you know well.

f. ESA

ESA stands for engage – study – activate. Let’s take a look at each individual component. Engage involves getting the students’ attention or interest, getting them involved. You could achieve this through the use of a personal story told by the teacher, a picture that stimulates discussion or anything else that awakens students’ interest. The idea is that if students are involved or engaged, they are more open to the learning process.

Study as the name suggests involves focus on a language point. This could be grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or how a written text is organised. The possibilities are endless. It can involve the teacher explaining or students working out the rules for themselves using examples as a basis.  Activating involves having students use the language, preferably in a realistic context that is as close to real life as possible. Try to incorporate activities that have students using any language they know and not just focused on one structure (controlled language use).

You can use all three ESA stages in one lesson but not necessarily in that order. You could engage the students, then activate language through a speaking activity and then study language difficulties arising from the activity. You might also have a lesson devoted wholly to the skill of speaking; in which case students would be engaged and language activated. Language study could take place in the previous lesson. I particularly like this method because it highlights the necessity of engaging students in what they are doing.

g. Humanistic

The involvement of the whole person in the learning experience is central to the humanistic approach. A supportive atmosphere is encouraged in the classroom where students are listened to, their comments accepted without judgement and they are encouraged to share their feelings and experiences. Activities are used that involve students talking about their feelings and experiences. Students may be involved in fixing the aims for the course or for one lesson. A teacher may enter the classroom with no plan and just ask students what they want to do that day and the teacher goes with the flow (maybe not an approach to be adopted by a very new teacher).

Speaking as a Psychology graduate, I think care is needed in this type of approach; some people or some cultures might be uncomfortable unveiling their feelings in front of people they might not know well. However, I fully agree with the advantages of creating a supportive, non-judgmental learning environment.

h. Lexical approach

The underlying principle of this method is that grammar and vocabulary cannot be strictly divided as is often the case in traditional teaching methods. A further notion is that language is made up of lexical items using grammar to support them rather than being made up of grammatical structures incorporating lexis. Lexical items are words or chunks of words, which have their own meaning. For example, the following combinations of words have different meanings to the individual elements that make them up: by the way, look into, video recorder. Longer structures are also considered to be lexical items, e.g. I just wanted to say that.

The theory is that we learn a language by learning lexical items and not by learning grammar. Accordingly, the main focus of the work is lexical items rather than syntax or grammatical rules. Critics have said that it difficult to know in which order lexical items should be taught. Proponents of this method counter this by saying that the syllabus is organized according to collocation. Collocation refers to words that are frequently used together, e.g. make a phone call, make an appointment, heavy rain, by accident.

A further principle of this method is to teach through: observation, hypothesis and

experimentation. The observe phase involves being exposed to language, for example a text to be read. Students are encouraged to deduce the meaning of unknown language.

i. A final word on teaching methods

Of course there are other approaches to teaching, however, the above are the main ones you should be aware of. I suggest you look at any course book you’re about to use and see whether it favors one of the approaches above. You will find that after some time teaching, you will have a preference for one (or more) approach over the others. You might also find that different approaches work well with different students and with different levels. Don’t worry too much about methodology at the beginning; just do what feels right to you and what you see produces results in your classes.

2. Rhicard & Rodger

a. The Grammar-Translation Method

Rhicard & Rodger (1986: 3), As the names of some of its leading exponents suggest (Johann Seidenstiicker, Karl Plotz, H. S. Ollendorf, and Johann Meidinger), Grammar Translation was the offspring of German scholarship, the object of which, according to one of its less charitable critics, was "to know everything about something rather than the thing itself" (W. H. D. Rouse, quoted in Kelly 1969: 53). Grammar Translation was in fact first known in the United States as the Prussian Method. (A book by B. Sears, an American classics teacher, published in 1845 was entitled The Ciceronian or the Prussian Method of Teaching the Elements of the Latin Language [Kelly 1969J.) The principal characteristics of the Grammar-Translation Method were these:

1). The goal of foreign language study is to learn a language in order to read its literature or in order to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign-language study. Grammar translation is a way of studying a language that approaches the language first through detailed analysis of its grammar rules, followed by application of this knowledge to the task of translating sentences and texts into and out of the target language. It hence views language learning as consisting of little more than memorizing rules and facts in order to understand and manipulate the morphology and syntax of the foreign language. "The first language is maintained as the reference system in the acquisition of the second language" (Stern 1983: 455).

2). Reading and writing are the major focus; little or no systematic attention is paid to speaking or listening.

3). Vocabulary selection is based solely on the text reading texts used, and words are taught through bilingual word lists, dictionary study, and memorization. In a typical Grammar-Translations text, the grammar rules are presented and illustrated, a list of vocabulary items are presented with their translation equivalents, and translation exercises are prescribed.

4). The sentence is the basic unit of teaching and language practice. Much of the lesson is devoted to translating sentences into and out of the target language, and it is this focus on the sentence that is a distinctive feature of the method. Earlier approach to foreign language study used grammar as an aid to the study of texts in a foreign language, But this was thought to be too difficult for students in secondary schools, and the focus on the sentence was an attempt to make language learning easier (see Howatt 1984: 131).    

5). Accuracy is emphasized. Students are expected to attain high standards in translation, because of "the high priority attached to meticulous standards of accuracy which, as well as having an intrinsic moral value, was a prerequisite for passing the increasing number of formal written examinations that grew up during the century" (Howatt 1984: 132).

6). Grammar is taught deductively  that is, by presentation and study of grammar rules, which are then practiced through translation exercises. In most Grammar-Translation texts, a syllabus was followed for the sequencing of grammar points throughout a text, and there was an attempt to teach grammar in 3n organized and systematic way.

7). The student’s native language is the medium o f instruction. It is used to explain new items and to enable comparisons to be made between the foreign

language and the student's native language.

References

Brown, H. D. (2000). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. New York: Longman.

David Nunan. (2015). Teaching english to speakers of other languages; an introduction. New York: Routledge.

Luccy Polard. (2008). Lucy pollard’s guide to teaching english: A book to help you through your first two years in teaching.

Rhicard & Rodger . (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching. UK: Cambridge University Press. 

Richard, J. C. & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching. New York: Cambridge university press.