INNOVATIVE WORK
Innovative work on teaching prepositions.
"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." —Theodore Levitt
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Monday, November 30, 2020
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Basic concepTS in LinguisTICS
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study
of language, of the systems and principles underlying human languages. It is
called a scientific study because it follows the methodology of science, i.e.,
analysis of the data and formation of all theory to explain it. A linguist
studies his subject matter in all its aspects. Since language is made up of
speech sounds, words, and sentences used for meaningful communication and
expression, a linguist analyses linguistic data at all these different levels.
Level of linguistic analysis
●
Phonetics is the study of speech
sounds in general, the articulation, transmission and reception of speech
sounds.
●
Phonology is the study of the
selection and organization of speech sounds in a language
●
Morphology is the study of the
internal organization of words, the way morphemes are organized into words.
●
Syntax deals with the
organization of words into phrases.
●
Semantics is the study of meaning
in all its aspects.
Phonology
Phonology or phonemics deals with the
distinctive sounds and their specific patterning in a particular language,
i.e., their functional behaviours, their combinatory possibilities or syllabic
structure, and the nature and use of such prosodic features as stress, pitch,
intonation, etc. Each language has its own system of sounds and also its own
specific ways of organizing them into larger units, which together constitute
its phonology.
A phoneme is the smallest
distinctive unit of sound in the sound system of a language. The phonemes of a
language are distinctive or contrastive, they stand in contrast with one
another in the phonological system of that language. Units that can be
substitute for one another in the same environment are said to be in
contrastive or parallel distribution and those which do not occur in the same
linguistic environment are said to be in non- contrastive or complementary
distribution.
Allophones
Each phoneme may have a
number of variant forms called allophones, occurring in different contexts. The
allophones of a phoneme have considerable phonetic similarity between them as
well as differences and they do not occur in the same phonetic environment.
Example: pin -/p/ is
aspirated
: Spin-/p/ is unaspirated
The two /p/ are the
allophones of same phoneme /p/.
The Syllable
At a level higher than
individual sound segments or phonemes, we have the unit called syllable. In
every word made up of more than a single sound, at least one sound is heard to
be more ‘prominent' than the neighbouring sounds. If there is one such
prominent sound, the sequence is said to consist of one syllable. E.g.: tree,
hit, bell. They are called monosyllabic words. Words like calmer, letter,
sister have syllables each and they are called disyllabic words. Words with
more than two syllables are called polysyllabic. Examples are civilization,
cultivation, humanity, etc.
Suprasegmentals
Certain additional speech
features, such as stress, pitch, length, etc., affecting speech sounds which
may hence be called sound attributes or suprasegmentals.
Word Stress: All the syllables in a polysyllabic word in English are not
articulated with the same force. Some are uttered with greater force than the
others. Stress may be described as the degree of force with which a sound or
syllable is pronounced.
Rhythm: one of the important characteristics of stress in English is that it is
a language with a stress timed rhythm. This means that in English stressed
syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of time. Such a phenomenon of
certain features occurring at regular intervals of time is called isochrony.
Stress in English is isochronous.
Juncture or Transition: Juncture refers to the phenomenon of pauses in speech, the
pause that we make between two words to make out meaning.
Pitch and Intonation: The term intonation is used to cover both the pattern of
changes in the pitch of the voice and the terminal contour. Utterance bound
pitch is called intonation.
ASSIMILATION
The way in which sounds
influence each other is called assimilation. It is a process by which a certain
sound is replaced by another under the influence of a third one which is
adjacent to it.
/nju:z / + / print / - /
nju: sprint /
ELISION
When a sound which exists
in a word pronounced in isolation or in connected speech is dropped or elided
in a compound or connected phrase, it is called elision.
Eg: bed time = / betaim /
Last time= / la:staim /
MORPHOLOGY
The part of linguistics that deals
with the study of the structure of words is called morphology or morphemics. It
is the study of how morphemes are put together or organized to form words.
THE MORPHEME
The smallest unit of form that has
meaning in a given language is called a morpheme. Thus a morpheme may further
be described as a meaningful phoneme or series of phonemes which is not further
divisible without destruction or alteration of meaning in a given language.
ALLOMORPHS
An allomorph may be defined as a
variant concrete realization of a morpheme, which occurs in certain definable
environments.
CONDITIONING
A phenomenon is said to be
conditioned when it occurs in certain definable context or environments, i.e.,
when certain conditions are fulfilled. The occurrence of allomorphs is not always
phonologically conditioned; they may be morphologically conditioned also.
SYNTAX
The rules and principles governing
the arrangement of words into such higher units is technically called syntax.
Approaches to the Study of Grammar
●
The grammar of a language can be studied diachronically or
synchronically. A diachronic study deals with the evolutionary stages of
grammar. Synchronic study describes it as it exists at a point of time.
The term traditional grammar is
rather vague and it is difficult to pin point its definite features.
Traditional English grammars are mainly an inheritance from the Latin based
grammar of the 18 th century. But those early grammarians forgot that Latin is
Latin and English is English and tried to fit English grammar in the framework
of Latin grammar.
Structural/Descriptive Linguistics and Grammar
The most influential school of
linguistics from the early to mid-20th century was structural or descriptive
grammar. Structural grammar was in fact a reaction against notional grammar of
the traditional kind. The vagueness of the notions, the inexplicitness in the
criteria of definitions, and the use of meaning for the establishment of
grammatical categories were anathema to the structuralists of the time. They
vehemently opposed semantic criteria and concentrated on formal criteria.
Phrase Structure Grammar
A more sophisticated model of grammar
is called phrase structure grammar. Phrase structure grammar contain a set of
rules called phrase structure rules or rewrite rules. Rewrite rules are capable
not only of generating strings of linguistic elements, but also of providing a
constituent analysis of the string. They provide a set of directions, which, if
followed mechanically, will generate the abstract framework of Basic English
sentences. A rewrite rule is a replacement rule in which the symbol to the left
of the arrow is replaced by the expanded form written to the right of the
arrow. Phrase structure grammar have an advantage over IC model in that labels
are in built the rewrite rules, and the rules themselves can be arranged in a
sequence so that each rule can be used to rewrite the output of the previous
one.
Transformational Generative Grammar
Transformational generative grammar is one of
the most influential of modern linguistic theories, introduced through Noam
Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957. He questioned some
of the basic principles of the structural approach. Transformational generative
grammar comprises – syntactic, semantic, and phonological.
SEMANTICS
Semantics or semiotics is the
philosophical and scientific study of meaning in natural and artificial
languages. The word semantics has ultimately prevailed as a name for the
doctrine of meaning, of linguistic meaning in particular. Semiotics is still
used, however, to denote a broader field: the study of sign-using behaviour in
general.
The notion of linguistic meaning, the
special concern of philosophical and linguistic semantics, must be
distinguished from other common notions with which it is sometimes confused.
Among them are natural meaning, as in smoke means fire or those spots mean
measles; conventional meaning, as in a red traffic light means stop or the
skull and crossbones means danger; and intentional meaning, as in John means
well or Frank means business. The notion of linguistic meaning, in contrast, is
the one exemplified in the following sentences:
The words bachelor and unmarried man
have the same meaning (are synonymous).
The word bank has several meanings
(is ambiguous).
The string of words colourless green
ideas sleep furiously is meaningless (anomalous).
The sentence all bachelors are
unmarried is true by virtue of its meaning (is analytic).
The complex expressions generated by
these devices are not only grammatical (assuming that their constituents are
grammatical) but also meaningful (assuming that their constituents are
meaningful). An adequate semantic theory, therefore, must account for this
fact. In other words, it must explain how the meanings of complex expressions
are determined by and predictable from the meanings of their simpler
constituents. The fact that complex meanings are determined by the meanings of
their constituents is often referred to as the compositionality of natural
languages.
THEORETICAL BASE OF ENGLISH EDUCATION
Language is a source of
communication. We share our ideas and thoughts with others using languages.
There are thousands of languages in this world. Countries have their own
national languages in addition to a variety of local languages spoken and
understood by their people. Some languages are spoken by millions of people,
others by only a few thousand.
English was originally the language
of England. Due to historical reason it has become the primary or secondary
language of many former British colonies such as the United States, Canada,
Australia, and India. Now It is the language of Hollywood and the language of
international banking and business. As such, it is a useful and even necessary
language to know. There are several factors that make the English language
essential for communication. First of all, it is the most common foreign
language. When two people who come from different countries meet usually they
use English as a common language to communicate. That’s why everyone needs to
learn the language in order to get in touch on an international level. Speaking
it will help us to communicate with people from countries all over the world.
English enriches the field of
education. In many countries, children are taught and encouraged to learn
English as a second language. It is the dominant language in the sciences. Most
of the research and studies we find in any given scientific field will be
written in English. At the university level, students in many countries study
almost all their subjects in English in order to make the material more
accessible to international students. It is the application of an integrating
approach for the development of communicative skills in the classroom, in which
the four skills in the acquisition of knowledge of a foreign language can be
taught in a coherent way, and practiced together, with a distinction of the
importance of one upon the other.
Teaching English as a second or
foreign language (ESL/EFL) is possible when the instructor’s teaching style
address the learning style of the learner, the learner must be motivated, and
the setting must provide resources and values that strongly support the
teaching of the language. Four primary skills – listening, reading, speaking,
and writing also includes related skills such as knowledge of vocabulary,
spelling, pronunciation, syntax, meaning, and usage. English communication
improves when the skills are interwoven during instruction. This is known as
the integrated-skill approach.
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