2 What is Linguistics?

Dr. Neeru Tandon

Learning Outcome: This Module ‘What is Linguistics’ will tell you about the key components of linguistics and various elements and theories. In a nutshell it will make you comfortable with key concepts of linguistics.

What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is a growing and interesting area of study, having a direct hearing on fields as diverse as education, anthropology, sociology, language teaching, cognitive psychology and philosophy. Fundamentally, it is concerned with the nature of language and communication. Some of the definitions of linguistics are as under:

“Linguistics observes language in action as a means for determining how language has developed, how it functions today, and how it is currently evolving.”

(G. Duffy)

“Linguistics is concerned with the nature of human language, how it is learned and what part it plays in the life of the individual and the community.”

(S. Pit Corder)

“Linguistics tries to answer two basic questions:

“The scientific study of human language is called linguistics”.

(Victoria A. Fromkin)

Again and again we hear that Linguistics is the scientific study of language. By this we mean language in general, not a particular language. If we were concerned with studying an individual language, we would say ‘I’m studying French… or English,’ or whichever language we happen to be studying. But linguistics does not study an individual language; it studies ‘language’ in general. That is, linguistics, according to Robins (1985):

It is concerned with human language as a universal and recognizable part of the human behaviour and of the human faculties, perhaps one of the most essential to human life as we know it, and one of the most far-reaching of human capabilities in relation to the whole span of mankind’s achievements.

Elements of General Linguistics

Linguistics is a scientific study of the systems underlying human languages. It studies language as a universal and recognizable part of human behaviour. In simple terms we can understand that linguistics studies the origin, organization, nature and development of language descriptively, historically, comparatively and explicitly. It also formulates the general rules related to language. We call linguistics a science and its working scientific because it follows the general methodology of science such as controlled observation, hypothesis formation, analysis, generalization, prediction, testing by further observation etc. It may be inductive or deductive but it is objective, precise, tentative and systematic. It is between natural and social sciences. According to Robins:

‘Linguistics is an empirical science and within the empirical sciences it is one of the social sciences because its subject matter concerns human beings and is very much different from that of natural sciences.’

Thus a linguist is a scientist who investigates human language in all its facets, its structure, its use, its history, and its place in society. But the field of linguistics is not limited to grammatical theory; it includes a large number of subfields, which is true of most sciences concerned with phenomena as complex as human language.

1.2 Historical evolution of Linguistics: Panini to Chomsky and After

The philosophers of ancient Greece argued and debated questions dealing with the origin and the nature of language. Plato, writing between 427 and 348 BC, devoted his Dialogue to linguistic issues of his day and Aristotle was concerned with language from both rhetorical and philosophical points of view. The Greeks and the Romans also wrote grammars, and discussed the sounds of language and the structures of words and sentences. This interest continued through the medieval period and the renaissance in an unbroken thread to the present period.

Linguistic scholarship, however, was not confined to Europe. In India the Sanskrit language was the subject of detailed analysis as early as the twelfth century BC. Panini’s Sanskrit grammar dated ca. 500 BC is still considered to be one of the greatest scholarly linguistic achievements. In addition, Chinese and Arabic scholars have all contributed to our understanding of human language. The major efforts of the linguists of the nineteenth century were devoted to historical and comparative studies. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), a Swiss linguist in this tradition, turned his attention instead to the structural principles of language rather than to the ways in which languages change and develop, and in so doing, became a major influence on twentieth century linguistics.

Scholars from different disciplines and with different interests turned their attention to the many aspects of language and language use. American linguists in the first half of the century included the anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884–1939, and Leonard Bloomfield (1887– 1949), himself a historical and comparative linguist, as well as a major descriptive linguist who emerged as the most influential linguist in this period. Both Sapir and Bloomfield were also concerned with developing a general theory of language. In Europe, Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), one of the founders of the Prague School of Linguistics, came to America in 1941 and contributed substantially to new developments in the field. His collaboration with Morris Halle and Gunnar Fant led to a theory of Distinctive Features in phonology, and Halle has remained one of the leading phonologists of the last decades. In England, phoneticians like Daniel Jones (1881–1967) and Henry Sweet (1845–1912) (the prototype for G. B. Shaw’s Henry Higgins) have had a lasting influence on the study of the sound systems of language. In 1957 with the publication of Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky ushered in the era of generative grammar, a theory that has been referred to as creating a scientific revolution. It is concerned with the biological basis for the acquisition, representation and use of human language and seeks to construct a scientific theory that is explicit and explanatory.

Aims of Linguistics:

Linguistics has two major aims: to study the nature of language and establish a theory of language and to describe a language and all languages by applying the theory established.

Types of Linguistics

Theoretical Linguistics often referred to as generative linguistics, has its basis in views first put forth by Chomsky’s The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. Its aim was to characterize the nature of human linguistic knowledge or competence (represented in the mind as a mental grammar); that is, to explain or account for what speakers know which permits them to speak and comprehend speech or sign (the languages of the deaf). The production and comprehension of speech is referred to as performance, distinct from competence but dependent on it.
Descriptive linguistics provides analyses of the grammars of languages such as Choctaw, Arabic, Zulu. ‘Indo-European-linguistics,’ ‘Romance linguistics,’ and‘ African linguistics,’ refer to the studies of particular languages and language families, from both historical and synchronic points of view.
Historical linguistics is concerned with a theory of language change – why and how languages develop. The comparative method, developed in the nineteenth century by such philologists as the brothers Grimm and Hermann Paul, is a method used to compare languages in the attempt to determine which languages are related and to establish families of languages and their roots.
Anthropological or ethno-linguistics and Sociolinguistics focus on languages as part of culture and society, including language and culture, social class, ethnicity, and gender.
Dialectology investigates how these factors fragment one language into many.
Applied linguistics also covers such areas as discourse and conversational analysis, language assessment, language pedagogy.
Computational linguistics is concerned with natural language computer applications, e.g. automatic parsing, machine processing and understanding, computer simulation of grammatical models for the generation and parsing of sentences.
Mathematical linguistics studies the formal and mathematical properties of language. Pragmatics studies language in context and the influence of situation on meaning. Neurolinguistics is concerned with the biological basis of language acquisition and development and the brain/mind/language interface. It brings linguistic theory to bear on research on aphasia (language disorders following brain injury) and research involving the latest technologies in the study of brain imaging and processing.
Psycholinguistics is the branch of linguistics concerned with linguistic performance – the production and comprehension of speech (or sign).
Ontogeny Linguistics deals with child language acquisition – how children acquire the complex grammar, which underlies language use.

The Basic Dimensions of Linguistics:

Modern linguistics has evolved as a discipline, which is more concerned with application of linguistic data, information and observations in various domains of human enterprise. Several new field of linguistics have been introduced such as computational Linguistics, Corpus linguistics, forensic linguistics etc. This has made it possible to look at the languages from different perspectives. Although the modern linguistics has been drastically different from the traditional linguistics in approach, attitude, methods, orientation, subject matters and focus, it has not yet succeeded to ignore the basic dimensions of linguistics. The basic dimensions are as following:

Descriptive linguistics and perspective linguistics: Descriptive linguistics or language description, in the study of language, is a kind of study that objectively analyses and describes how languages is used in all kinds of activity related to it and other things. It has been much dependent on a structural approach to language study, as shown in the works of Bloomfield, Hockett and others, which has given birth to a new idea known as descriptivism that argues that authentic description of a language and its properties is much more significant or important than prescribing it in case of understanding a language, teaching a language, and developing resources for language planning.

Perspective linguistics refers both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how the people of a particular speech community should use a language. An extreme version of prescriptivism can be found among the censoring authorities, which attempt to eradicate words (such as slang) and structures which they consider to be destructive to a society or culture, which eventually leads to the birth of purism in language use.

Theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics: Theoretical linguistics studies a particular language as well as a group of languages with a view for constructing theory of their structure and functions without regard to any practical applications that the investigation of language and languages might have Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that identifies, investigates and offers solutions to language.

Microlinguistics and Macrolinguistics: These familiar prefixes (micro=very small; macro=very large) differentiate two approaches to the study of languages. The micro-linguist is interested in how small changes in a distinct word or other linguistic element may offer clues to larger trends: for example, how did “thou thee thy thine” become “you, you, your, yours” in modern English? Or how did contractions form (wouldn’t, won’t, can’t, doesn’t, etc.) evolve? These shifts in specific areas might offer clues to how language works—what forces are at work?

The macro-linguist, on the other hand, studies major changes in language from outside forces—the Latin language influence on English came from the Roman Empire’s expansion, for example. Look at how these two approach work together: The macro-linguist notes that the Norman Invasion brought French to the English; the micro-linguist, wondering why cow- meat is called beef, sheep-meat is called mutton, pig-meat is called pork, etc., notes that the French word for cow is “boeuf,” the French word for sheep is “mouton,” the French word for pig is “porque.” Together the linguists realize that the French invaders, whose servants were the conquered English peasants, ordered their meals using the French words, so the food names that the servants got used to were the French terms, and entered the English language that way.

Micro linguistics deals with phonetics, grammar, etc. on the individual example level; Macro linguistics deals with comparative studies among languages, language families, and large influences on language development.

Synchronic linguistics and diachronic linguistics both study a language. Synchronic linguistics will be concerned with the logical and psychological relations that bind together co existing terms and form a system in the collective mind of speakers. Diachronic or historical linguistics studies the development of languages through time, for example, the way in which French and Italian have evolved from Latin or Hindi from Sanskrip. It also investigates language changes. Synchronic deals with systems and diachronic with units. Saussure considered synchronic linguistics to be more important.

Competence and Performance

Chomsky’s concept of Competence and Performance is somewhat similar to Saussure’s concept of Langue and Parole. Competence is the native speaker’s knowledge of his language, the system of rules he has mastered, his ability to produce and understand a vast number of new sentences. Performance is the study of actual sentences themselves, of the actual use of language in real life situation. The speaker’s knowledge of the structure of a language is his linguistic competence and the way in which he uses it, is his linguistic performance.

The competence is free from the interference of memory span, characteristics errors, lapses of attention etc. Competence in linguistics is the linguistic ability.-the ability to produce and understand. Saussure stressed the sociological implications of langue, while Chomsky stresses the psychological implications of competence.

Linguistic phylogeny

Russell Gray and his colleagues have taken powerful phylogenetic methods that were developed by biologists to investigate molecular evolution, and applied them to linguistic data in order to answer questions about the evolution of language families.

I-Language’ and ‘E-Language’

Chomsky (1986) introduced into the linguistics literature two technical notions of a language: ‘E-Language’ and ‘I-Language’. He deprecates the former as either undeserving of study or as a fictional entity, and promotes the latter as the only scientifically respectable object of study for a serious linguistics.

‘E-language’

Chomsky’s notion ‘E-language’ is supposed to suggest by its initial ‘E’ both ‘extensional’ (concerned with which sentences happen to satisfy a definition of a language rather than with what the definition says) and ‘external’ (external to the mind, that is, non-mental). The dismissal of E-language as an object of study is aimed at critics of Essentialism—many but not all of those critics falling within our categories of Externalists and Emergentists.

Chomsky therefore concludes that languages cannot be defined or individuated extensionally or mind-externally, and hence the only scientifically interesting conception of a ‘language’ is the ‘I-language’ view.

Grammar as the Representation of Linguistic Competence

Linguistic knowledge as represented in the speaker’s mind is called a grammar. Linguistic theory is concerned with revealing the nature of the mental grammar, which represents speakers’ knowledge of their language. If one defines grammar as the mental representation of one’s linguistic knowledge, then a general theory of language is a theory of grammar. A grammar includes everything one knows about the structure of one’s language –

Its lexicon (the words or vocabulary in the mental dictionary),
Its morphology (the structure of words),
Its syntax (the structure of phrases and sentences),
Its semantics (the meaning of words and sentences)
And its phonetics and phonology (the sounds and the sound system or patterns).

Types of Grammar: Grammar as viewed here are different from the usual notion of grammar. When viewed as the representation of a speaker’s linguistic competence, a grammar is a mental system, a cognitive part of the brain/mind, which, if it is one’s first native language, is acquired as a child without any specific instruction. The word grammar is often used solely in reference to syntax. But we use it to refer to all aspects of linguistic competence. In addition to its use as referring to the mental system, when linguists describe this knowledge shared by a language community, the description is also called the grammar of the language.

Mental Grammar: Of course no two speakers of a language have identical grammars; some may know words that others do not, some may have some idiosyncratic rules or pronunciations. But since they can speak to each other and understand each other there is a shared body of knowledge, which is what we are calling their mental grammars.

Universal Grammar: The more we look at the languages of the world, the more support there is for the position taken by Roger Bacon, a thirteenth century philosopher, who wrote: He that understands grammar in one language, understands it in another as far as the essential properties of grammar are concerned. The fact that he can’t speak, nor comprehend, another language is due to the diversity of words and their various forms, but these are the accidental properties of grammar. There is much evidence to support this view, which today is based on the recognition that there is a biological basis for the human ability to acquire language. The child enters the world with an innate predisposition to acquire languages which adhere to these universal principles, that is, genetically determined mental system which is referred to as Universal Grammar or UG.

Descriptive Grammars Descriptive grammars are thus idealized forms of the mental grammars of all the speakers of a language community. The grammars of all languages are constrained by universal ‘laws’ or ‘principles,’ a view which differs from that of many linguists in the pre-Chomsky period some of whom held that languages could differ in innumerable ways.

Prescriptive Grammars: Descriptive grammars aim at revealing the mental grammar which represents the knowledge a speaker of the language has. They do not attempt to prescribe what speakers’ grammars should be. While certain forms (or dialects) of a language may be preferred for social or political or economic reasons, no specific dialect is linguistically superior to any other. The science of linguistics therefore has little interest in prescriptive grammars.

Three Approaches to Linguistic Theorizing: Externalism, Emergentalism, and Essentialism

The names we have given these approaches are just mnemonic tags, not descriptions. If Leonard Bloomfield is the intellectual ancestor of Externalism, and Sapir the father of Emergentism, then Noam Chomsky is the intellectual ancestor of Essentialism. The researcher with predominantly Essentialist inclinations aims to identify the intrinsic properties of language that make it what it is.

The Externalists

If one assumes, with the Externalists, that the main goal of a linguistic theory is to develop accurate models of the structural properties of the speech sounds, words, phrases, and other linguistic items, then the clearly privileged information will include corpora (written and oral)—bodies of attested and recorded language use (suitably idealized).

The Emergentists

Emergentists aim to explain the capacity for language in terms of non-linguistic human capacities: thinking, communicating, and interacting. Edward Sapir expressed a characteristic Emergentist theme when he wrote:

Language is primarily a cultural or social product and must be understood as such… It is peculiarly important that linguists, who are often accused, and accused justly, of failure to look beyond the pretty patterns of their subject matter, should become aware of what their science may mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general.

The Essentialists

The idea that linguistic form is autonomous, and more specifically that syntactic form (rather than, say, phonological form) is autonomous, is a characteristic theme of the Essentialists. Rather than being impressed with language variation, as are Emergentists and many Externalists, the generative Essentialists are extremely impressed with the idea that very young children of almost any intelligence level, and just about any social upbringing, acquire language to the same high degree of mastery. From this it is inferred that there must be unlearned features shared by all languages that somehow assist in language acquisition.

The Subject Matter of Linguistic Theories

The complex and multi-faceted character of linguistic phenomena means that the discipline of linguistics has a whole complex of distinguishable subject matters associated with different research questions. Among the possible topics for investigation are these:

The capacity of humans to acquire, use, and invent languages;
The abstract structural patterns (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, or semantic) found in a particular language under some idealization;
Systematic structural manifestations of the use of some particular language;
The changes in a language or among languages across time;
The psychological functioning of individuals who have successfully acquired particular languages;
The psychological processes underlying speech or linguistically mediated thinking in humans;
The evolutionary origin of (i), and/or (ii). ‘

Linguistic Methodology and Data

The strengths and limitations of different data gathering methods began to play an important role in linguistics in the early to mid-20th century. Voegelin and Harris (1951: 323) discuss several methods that had been used to distinguish Amerindian languages and dialects:

Informal elicitation: asking an informant for a metalinguistic judgment on an expression. [E.g., “Is this sentence grammatical?” “Do these two sentences mean the same thing?”]
Corpus collection: gathering a body of naturally occurring utterances.
Controlled experimentation: testing informants in some way that directly gauges their linguistic capacities.

Whorfianism

Emergentists tend to follow Edward Sapir in taking an interest in interlinguistic and intralinguistic variation. Linguistic anthropologists have explicitly taken up the task of defending a famous claim associated with Sapir that connects linguistic variation to differences in thinking and cognition more generally. The claim is very often referred to as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis . The term “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” was coined by Harry Hoijer in his contribution (Hoijer 1954) to a conference on the work of Benjamin Lee Whorf in 1953.

The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language functions, not simply as a device for reporting experience, but also, and more significantly, as a way of defining experience for its speakers.

Whorf himself did not offer a hypothesis. He presented his “new principle of linguistic relativity” (Whorf 1956: 214) as a fact discovered by linguistic analysis:

‘No one is going to be impressed with a claim that some aspect of your language may affect how you think in some way or other; that is neither a philosophical thesis nor a psychological hypothesis. So it is appropriate to set aside entirely the kind of so-called hypotheses that Steven Pinker presents in The Stuff of Thought (2007: 126–128) as “five banal versions of the Whorfian hypothesis”:

Language affects thought because we get much of our knowledge through reading and conversation.”
“A sentence can frame an event, affecting the way people construe it.”
“The stock of words in a language reflects the kinds of things its speakers deal with in their lives and hence think about.”
“[I]f one uses the word language in a loose way to refer to meanings,… then language is thought.”
“When people think about an entity, among the many attributes they can think about is its name.”

These are just truisms, unrelated to any serious issue about linguistic relativism.

Linguistic nativism

General nativists maintain that the prerequisites for language acquisition are just general cognitive abilities and resources. Linguistic nativists, by contrast, claim that human infants have access to at least some specifically linguistic information that is not learned from linguistic experience. Table 3 briefly sketches the differences between the two views.

Table 3: General and linguistic nativism contrasted

Summary: Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. There are many subfields of linguistics. The interest in human language goes back as far as recorded history. The publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957 ushered in the current period of generative linguistics, the aims of which concern answers to three key questions: what constitutes knowledge of language (linguistic competence), how is the knowledge acquired, and how is this knowledge put to use in linguistic performance?

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