Semantics and Vocabulary

Workshop # 2  Identifying key concepts dealing with linguistics

“The limits of my language mean the limits of  Identifying Language and culture relationships and
my world” its importance

Linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and communication. It is the is the systematic study of the
nature, structure, and variation of human. It deals both with the study of particular languages, and the search for
general properties common to all languages or large groups of languages. It includes the following subareas:
Microlinguistics

 Phonetics (the study of the production, acoustics and hearing of speech sounds) is concerned with how
people speak and understand speech, and with speech sounds themselves.
 Phonology (the patterning of sounds) identifies the sound-units of a language and describes aspects of
their combination
 Morphology (the structure of words) describes the building of words from components such as roots and
suffixes;
 Syntax (the structure of sentences) describes the combination of words to form sentences
 Semantics (meaning) the study of meaning in language
 Pragmatics (language in context) deals with the ways in which the meaning of an utterance depends on
the context of its use
Macrolinguistics
It also includes explorations into the nature of language variation (i. e., dialects), language change over time,
how language is processed and stored in the brain, and how it is acquired by young children.

 Sociolinguistics studies the relation between language and all aspects of society, from the way social
groups mark themselves linguistically, to the dynamics of conversations. 
 Psycholinguistics is concerned with how language is represented and processed in the mind, and how it
is acquired. 
 Historical linguistics reconstructs earlier forms of a language, and seeks general trends in the ways
languages change; explanations for changes may draw on social and psychological aspects of language
use.
 Neurolinguistics is the study of how language is represented in the brain: that is, how and where our
brains store our knowledge of the language (or languages) that we speak, understand, read, and write,
what happens in our brains as we acquire that knowledge, and what happens as we use it in our everyday
lives. 
 Computational Linguistics: discipline between linguistics and computer science which is concerned
with the computational aspects of the human language faculty. 
 Applied Linguistics: is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that addresses a broad range of language-
related issues in order to understand their roles in the lives of individuals and conditions in society.
Other definitions:
Grammar is the system of a language, “it is the structural foundation of
our ability to express ourselves. The more we are aware of how it works,
the more we can monitor the meaning and effectiveness of the way we
and others use language.” David Crystal
Exercise:
Read the following conversation between two people, A and B, at a bus stop one morning. (The lines are
numbered for reference.) Then answer the questions (1)–(8).
1 A: ‘Nice day’
2 B: ‘Yes, a bit warmer than yesterday, isn’t it?’
3 A: ‘That’s right – one day fine, the next cooler’
4 B: ‘I expect it might get cooler again tomorrow’
5 A: ‘Maybe – you never know what to expect, do you?’
6 B: ‘No. Have you been away on holiday?’
7 A: ‘Yes, we went to Spain’
8 B: ‘Did you? We’re going to France next month’
9 A: ‘Oh. Are you? That’ll be nice for the family. Do they speak French?’
10 B: ‘Sheila’s quite good at it, and we’re hoping Martin will improve’
11 A: ‘I expect he will. I do hope you have a good time’
12 B: ‘Thank you. By the way, has the 42 bus gone by yet? It seems to be late’
13 A: ‘No. I’ve been here since eight o’clock and I haven’t seen it’
14 B: ‘Good. I don’t want to be late for work. What time is it now?’
15 A: ‘Twenty-five past eight’
(1) Does speaker A tell speaker B anything he doesn’t already know in lines 1, 3, and 5? Yes / No
(2) Does A’s statement in line 7 give B any new information? Yes / No
(3) When B says ‘Did you?’ in line 8, is he really asking A to tell him whether he (A) went to Spain? Yes / No
(4) Is there any indication that A needs to know the information that B gives him about travelling to France? Yes
/ No
(5) Does A’s ‘That’ll be nice for the family’ in line 9 give B any information? Yes / No
(6) Do A’s statements in lines 13 and 15 give B any information that he (B) needs? Yes / No
(7) At what point does this conversation switch from an exchange of uninformative statements to an exchange of
informative statements? ..........................................................................................................................
(8) At what point does the information exchanged begin to be of a sort that one of the speakers actually needs for
some purpose in going about his everyday
business? ..........................................................................................................................
Task: Read about Language and Speech according to Saussure´s point of view. Consult Saussure´s biography.
(https://archive.org/stream/courseingenerall00saus/courseingenerall00saus_djvu.txt)
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922)