Modern Tools of Linguistic Analysis - Coursework Example

MODERN TOOLS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS by Sur 12 May The development of modern linguistic science has introduced new tools of linguistic analysis which contribute to better understanding and investigation into the linguistic issues. The new elements are based on the previous developments and knowledge, and application of progressive consideration of linguistic issues determines direction of evolution of the linguistic thought today. Introduction The theory and practice of the linguistic analysis is an important part of development of the linguistic science and determination of the most progressive directions which will facilitate understanding of certain linguistic phenomena. This paper will consider such Indo-European languages as Sindhi and Turkish and the sound phenomena of the mentioned languages in order to investigate into phonetic and morphological issues. The sound system The sound system is a linguistic concept which may be referred to as “…the way they are as the result of balancing sufficient acoustic/auditory contrast for a listener and articulatory economy for a speaker under varying conditions of speech communication: they both tend to be maximised in the pursuit of communicative goals…” (Kohler, K., 1998, 1). In this regard, the two concepts, the phonological process and the phonological rule, are very important and need to be revealed for further understanding of the problem. The phonological process is a pattern of the errors in the speech which are possible to be referred to as normal provided that they are not persistent. This phenomenon is characteristic of the children at the stage of their language skills acquisition, and it is normal to hear, for example, from a 2-year-old child ‘nana’ instead of ‘banana’ when this child simplifies the word for its easier perception and articulation. If such phenomena last longer than the stage of a child’s language mastering, then this is a point of concern. (Chatterbox, 2014). The phonological processes can be classified into three classes: the processes of substitution, when the change is replacement of the sound classes between one another; the processes of the structure of the syllables, when the changes are conditioned by reduction, omission or repetition of the syllables; the processes of assimilation character, when one of the sounds becomes sound similarly to the other surrounding one. (Yeh, K., 2011, 1). The processes of the first class are subdivided into five categories: backing, that is, when the back mouth produced sound changes the one produced in the front, for example, pronunciation of ‘cop’ when ‘top’ is meant; fronting, which is, as it is obvious from its name, the opposite side of the first process, for example, ‘doat’ is said when ‘goat’ is meant; gliding, when a liquid sound is used instead of a gliding sound, for example, ‘pway’ is an attempt to say ‘play’; stopping, that is, substitution of the stop sounds by the affricative and fricative ones, for example, ‘tope’ is said when ‘soap’ is meant; vocalization o vowelization, when liquid sounds are substituted by vowel sounds, for example, when ‘peopo’ is said instead of ‘people’. (Yeh, K., 2011, 1). The second group of the phonological processes is divided into categories as well, but their number is four. Reduction of cluster is a phenomenon when consonant clusters are reduced to single sounds, for example, ‘tuck’ instead of ‘truck’. Deletion of a final consonant is, apparently, when a word’s final sound is deleted: ‘cuh’ instead of ‘cup’. Deletion of an initial consonant is, obviously, an opposite process to the previous one: ‘up’ instead of the mentioned ‘cup’. Deletion of a syllable which is unstressed is when a syllable which is unstressed is deleted: the above mentioned ‘nana’ instead of ‘banana’. (Yeh, K., 2011, 1). The third group of phonological processes is subdivided into four categories. The first one in this group is assimilation, when certain sound becomes to sound similarly to the surrounding one: ‘beb’ instead of ‘bed’. The second process is coalescence, “Substitution of a phoneme that is different from the two adjacent phonemes yet takes on features of the target” (Yeh, K., 2011, 1), for example, ‘foke’ as ‘smoke’. The third process is devoicing or voicing: the devoicing means that a voiceless consonant sound is substituted by a voiced one: ‘back’ instead of ‘bag’; voicing is a substitution of a consonant which is voiced by an unvoiced one, which typically takes place in the word’s beginning: ‘gup’ instead of ‘cup’. (Yeh, K., 2011, 1). The phonological process, in other words, is a deviation from traditional canons of the language which are observed at the initial stage of its acquisition and due to this, and also because of their elimination at the end of the mentioned stage, are affordable. In case of their prolongation there is a point of concern which demands taking measures on their treatment. Phonological rule is another very important concept in the linguistic science. The phonological rule is the way the phonemes are translated into the real phones, or sounds. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 3). The word ‘rule’ in this concept means that this is an obligatory attribute of the phonology of a certain language for all the speakers that use it. The real state of affair, however, is that some rules are indeed shared by all the language speakers, some of the rules may be only used by few speakers. Some of the phonological rules may always occur, whereas come are present in certain speech rates and other characteristics. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 4). There are many languages in today’s world, which reasonably means that all they have different phonological rules. There are, however, certain rules that can be referred to as the common ones to a significant extent for all the languages. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 4). The thing that should be mentioned in this regard is that the mentioned rules may be strictly obligatory, that is, followed by all the language speakers, and optional, when only some language speakers use it in their speaking activity. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 5). These rules include: assimilation, dissimilation, insertion, deletion, and metathesis. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 5). It is necessary to define them and provide examples for better perception of the essence of a phonological rule. Assimilation is a process when some sound becomes similar to a sound nearby in its sounding. Assimilation may be voicing, when a certain consonant must follow the voicing of the next sound; caused by place: in a word ‘comfort’ the sound ‘m’ sounds like [ɱf] because of its proximity to the sound ‘f’. The cause of the process of assimilation is its making the speakers’ pronunciation easier. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 5). The process of dissimilation, as it is clear from its name, is an opposition to assimilation, when the two sounds located nearby are less similar, for example, in the suffixes -al, -ar: anecdot-al, angul-ar. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 5). The process of insertion is when the phenomenon of new sounds insertion occurs: for example, in a word ‘prince’ which is usually pronounced as /phrɪns/ a sound /t/ is sometimes inserted. The reason for this phenomenon is variation of the positions of different organs of speech. The process of deletion is when a certain sound may deleted: okay [okey] may be reduced to [’key]. This is done for faster and easier pronunciation. The process of metathesis is when two adjacent sounds interchange their locations. (Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010, 5). The Sindhi language provides an issue for linguistic analysis. This is the issue of distribution of the phonemes [p], [b] and [ph], which is possible to be studied on such examples: 1.
[pәnu] ‘leaf’ 5.
[dәru] ‘door’ 9.
[bәdʒu] ‘run’ 2.
[vәdʒu] ‘opportunity’ 6.
[phәnu] ‘hood
of
snake’ 10.
[bәnu] ‘forest’ 3.
[ʃeki] ‘suspicious’ 7.
[tәru] ‘bottom’ 11.
[bәtʃu] ‘be
safe’ 4.
[gәdo] ‘dull’ 8.
[khәto] ‘sour’ 12.
[dʒәdʒu] ‘judge’ The distribution of the phonemes [p] and [ph] is contrastive, whereas distribution of the phonemes [p] and [b] is contrastive. These phonemes are separate because it is possible to provide a minimal pair or set of the words with these phonemes: [p]: 1. [pәnu]; [b]: 10. [bәnu], 11. [bәtʃu]; [ph]: [phәnu]. They are also not allophones because the latter are the different forms of one sound, which is not the case in the example above. (Nordquist, R., 2015 [allophone]). Morphology Word tree structure. Morphology is another important sphere of the linguistic science. This is a study that deals with the structure of the word. (Nordquist, R., 2015 [morphology]). The words’ structure may be described as the morphological trees, for example: Password Sprayable Childhoods Autobiography V N V Suffix N N Prefix N Suffix | | | | | | | | | Pass word Spray able Child hoods Auto biograph y Co-educational Indifferent Importable Impervious Prefix N Suffix Prefix Adjective Prefix V Suffix Prefix Adj. Suffix | | | | | | | | | | | Co- education al In different Im port able Im perv ious Turkish language morphology. The peculiarity of morphology of the Turkish language is that “The distinction between derivational and inflectional morphemes is not clearcut in Turkish”. (Fokkens, A., Poulson, L., Bender, E., 2009, 3). It is, however, possible to trace inflectional morphology in the following Turkish data: deniz an ocean evden from a house denize to an ocean evimden from my house eldein hand lokantaya to the restaurant denizin of an ocean denizimde in my ocean bankadan from the bank lokantada in the restaurant eve to a house eldein a hand kitaptain the book koltukta at the armchair randevudan from a meeting randevuda at a meeting In this case, the examples of inflectional morphology will be: deniz-e, deniz-in, ev-e, ev-den, randevu-dan, ev-im-den, lokanta-ya, lokanta-da. The allomorphic element here will be the morpheme –im-, which denotes the person, and it may vary depending on which person is related to the object. The environmental conditioning is that this morpheme is located between the root and the preposition in the words ev-im-den and deniz-im-de. Based on the information given in this section, the Turkish word combination ‘from an ocean’ will be ‘denizden’. The Turkish word ‘denizimde’ has three morphemes: deniz-im-de. The Turkish word ‘evimde’ has three morphemes as well: ev-im-de. Sentences Structure. An important issue regarding the sentence structure from the point of view of linguistics is its ambiguity. Ambiguity of the sentence is “the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words.” (Nordquist, R., 2015 [ambiguity]). The sentence ‘Jack saw the people with his binoculars’ is ambiguous because it is possible to understand it either as Jack saw people with the help of his binoculars or he saw them having his binoculars with them. The structure of the sentence would be as follows: S NP VP | | [Pronoun] Jack V NP | | Saw [det.] the people P | With his binoculars This means of the sentence representation contributes to its better understanding and avoiding misunderstanding because this clearly illustrates the relations of the sentence elements and their functions and meaning. Substitution test. The matter of making constituent is solved with application of a substitution test on the basis of the following material: a.[The tragedy] upset the entire family. = It upset the family. b.They hid [in the cave]. = They hid there. c.The [computer was very] expensive. = substitution is impossible. The two first sentences, thus, formulate constituents, whereas the second one does not because of impossibility of application of substitution in it. Movement test. Movement test is another means to clarify whether the sentences formulate constituents. The material for this will be given below. a.We ate our lunch [near the river bank]. = Near the river bank we ate our lunch. b.Steve looked [up the number] in the book. = Up the number in the book Steve looked. c.The [island has been] flooded. =Flooded island has been the. This test demonstrates that the only sentence, the first one, makes constituent because the paraphrase is possible and the sentence makes sense, whereas the two remaining ones do not. Sentential and Lexical Meaning A linguistic issue of fuzzy concept is a point of significant concern. Any word has its concept it is elated to, but there is often a case when the firm meaning of the word is not fixed and it may be perceived in different ways. The words ‘food’ and ‘soft’, for example, are representatives of such phenomenon. The prototype of the concept of food is, apparently, food in its physical essence, that is, the things that living organisms eat in order to support their being alive. The element of this concept which is close to the concept boundary is its figurative meaning: there is, for example, an expression ‘food for thought’, which means nourishment for human mind. Another example of fuzzy concept is taking one’s activity of living earning as one’s food: this is done because the result of this activity leads to securing one’s food in its initial sense. The prototype of the second concept, soft, is physical peculiarity of a thing or an object, that is, its being soft tactile: soft silk, soft skin, soft bed. The boundary concept of this word is, for example, an attribute which it has gained within the process of technical progress: soft is also used as a definition of the programmes used in computers. This is because there exists a traditional division of computer technology into ‘hard’ element, that is, physical objects – computer details, and ‘soft’, that is, something that is not felt physically, but seen and giving results. Excerpts interpretation. The excerpt A of the assignment contains misinterpretation of entailment, when the attorney did not follow the entailment of the doctor that the patient was already dead as his brain was in front of the doctor but the attorney still asked about the opposite. The example B provides a case of presupposition misinterpretation, as the person cannot live with the relatives longer that his or her age. The example C demonstrates the entailment failure, as it is improper to expect an answer from a person about what he or she forgot when this information was forgotten – this contradicts to logic and sense. (Sevilla, C., 1999). Conclusion Taking the information given above into consideration, it is necessary to admit that linguistic science has such vital spheres of its activity as phonology and morphology both of which contribute to complex understanding of the problem of the language development and essence. The sound system of the language is the sphere of linguistics which needs permanent attention from the researchers’ side because the phonological rules, though they are called rules, may be optional, and there is a question whether they are rules. The morphological component of the language study promotes perception of the sense of its sentential elements because there are some cases, such as ambiguity, when linguistics help comprehend the correct sense. References Chatterbox, 2014. What are Phonological Processes? [Online] (updated 25 Sep. 2014) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Fokkens, A., Poulson, L., Bender, E., 2009. Inflectional Morphology in Turkish VP Coordination. [Online] (updated 2009) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Kohler, K., 1998. The Development of Sound Systems in Human Language. [Online] (updated 1998) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Nordquist, R., 2015. Allophone. [Online] (updated 2015) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Nordquist, R., 2015. Morphology (Words). [Online] (updated 2015) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Nordquist, R., 2015. Syntactic Ambiguity (Grammar). [Online] (updated 2015) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Panenova, J., Hana, J., 2010. Intro to Linguistics – Phonology. [Online] (updated 2010) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Sevilla, C., 1999. Disorder in the Court: Great Fractured Moments in Courtroom History. W. W. Norton & Company, 1-255. Yeh, K., 2011. Common Phonological Processes. [Online] (updated 2011) Available at: [Accessed 12 May 2015]. Read More