DALIA MASAITIENĖ

Introduction into Linguistics:

A Teaching Guide

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas

Kaunas, 2009
Recenzent: doc. dr. Violeta Kaldait

Svarstyta Vytauto Didžiojo universiteto Angl filologijos katedros posdyje

2009 05 11 (protokolo Nr. 6); Humanitarini moksl fakulteto tarybos posdyje
2009 06 25 (protokolo Nr. 6) ir rekomenduota isleisti elektronin versij.

ISBN 978-9955-12-498-6 © D. Masaitien

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 © Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas

CONTENTS

Preface.......................................................................................................
Introduction...............................................................................................
Principles of Modern Linguistics..............................................................
Phonetics.................................................................................................12
Phonology...............................................................................................16
Morphology.............................................................................................18
Syntax......................................................................................................23
Semantics................................................................................................27
Sociolinguistics.......................................................................................32
Glossary..................................................................................................41
References...............................................................................................47

PREFACE

This teaching aid has grown out from the course Introduction into
English Linguistics which I have been teaching at Vytautas Magnus
University for a number of years. Its aim is to present students with a
concise and up-to-date discussion of some of the main topics that
modern linguistics addresses. The teaching guide is provided with
exercises for each topic (graded from less difficult to advanced), and

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questions for discussion. All the exercises have been tested in class. The
teaching guide also includes a glossary of the most important terms
which students have to know and be able to use not only in this course
but also in the other linguistic courses that they take in the programme
of English Philology.
Dalia Masaitien

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 INTRODUCTION

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Human language,

understood as a systematic use of speech sounds, signs, and written
symbols for communication among people, is a very complicated
system, which can be analysed on different levels and from various
points of view. Modern linguists often adopt different perspectives on
language depending on the goals of their research. It is common to
distinguish between language as an individual act of speaking or writing
in a particular context at a given moment or in a certain social context,
and language as the abstract linguistic system underlying the linguistic
behaviour of a whole community of speakers. In addition, a number of
separate, though often closely interrelated, branches of linguistics can be
distinguished.
General or theoretical linguistics tries to determine universal
principles for studying languages and to describe the general features of
language.
Contrastive linguistics concentrates upon the differences between
languages. Its findings are often applied in the context of language
teaching.
Comparative linguistics studies different languages looking for
similar characteristics. These languages may have common historical
origin though the main emphasis of the analysis is usually placed on the
structural correspondences between languages under investigation.
Historical linguistics analyses the development of language in
time, registering the changes that have taken place in it.
Applied linguistics is concerned with the application of linguistic
theories and their findings in solving various language problem, mostly
in the teaching of foreign languages, studying language disorders, in
translation, lexicography, and stylistics.
Sociolinguistics studies the relationship between language and
society, taking into consideration standard and non-standard forms of
language, regional and social varieties with reference to such concepts
as ethnicity, social status, sex, age, etc.
Psycholinguistics is a branch of linguistics which studies the
relationship between linguistic behaviour and the mental processes. It is

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interested in how mental processes influence the production and
perception of speech.
Computational linguistics uses computer techniques and applies
them in automatic translation and speech analysis using corpora for
large-scale statistical investigation and computational processing of
spoken and written texts.
Developmental linguistics is concerned with the study of the
acquisition of language by children, describing the stages and patterns of
development and explaining the typical features and variations.
Anthropological linguistics studies language variation and usage in
relation to culture. Emphasis is often placed on the analysis of the
socalled non-Western languages.
The above-mentioned branches do not exhaust all the approaches to
language that can be distinguished in modern linguistics, which is a
vigorously developing science.

Features Common to All Languages

There are a lot of questions that can be asked about language, some
scientific, some not. One such question is: Which is the oldest language
in the world? Several centuries ago, researchers were much concerned
with this question, however, it does not have a reliable answer, simply
because we cannot go so far into the history of humanity.
Another often asked question is about the features that all natural
human languages share. The American linguist Charles Hockett has
pointed out a number of such properties. Here are some of them:
a) all languages have vowels and consonants;
b) all languages have words;
c) all languages can create new words when required and modify
their meanings;
d) all languages are open-ended in the sense that they can produce
totally new utterances which are understood by the users of the
language;
e) all languages can form questions;
f) in all languages it is possible to talk about things and situations
that are removed from the immediate situation of the speaker
(this is called displacement);
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 g) in all languages we can use hypothetical, unreal, and fictional
utterances.

Thus, as we can see, human linguistic knowledge involves

numerous different aspects. People are able to produce sounds and to
understand the sounds produced by others, and those sequences of
sounds signify meanings. The relation between the linguistic form
(written or spoken word or expression) and meaning is arbitrary, i.e.
there is no direct physical correspondence between a linguistic
expression and the entity in the world to which that expression refers.
For example, there is no explicit relationship between the English word
window and the object itself. In other languages the same concept is
represented differently (e.g. langas in Lithuanian, okno in Russian, das
Fenster in German, etc.). There are certain words in most languages
whose pronunciation to some extent suggests their meaning. These are
onomatopoeic words that imitate the sounds associated with the things,
creatures or actions that they refer to. For instance, meow imitates the
sound made by a cat, splash imitates the sound of liquid hitting
something or being moved around quickly, whoosh means to move very
fast with a soft rushing sound. However, even onomatopoeic words are
not exact phonetic imitations of natural sounds. Therefore, their forms
often differ from language to language (compare the English bow-wow
and the Lithuanian au-au as imitations of dog barking).
All natural languages are creative, because they allow innovation in
response to new experiences, situations, and scientific discoveries.
Creativity is a very important feature of all natural human languages.
The human creative ability in language use is not just what we choose to
say at a particular moment in a particular situation but also includes our
understanding of a new sentence that we have never heard before.
According to Fromkin et al., the sentence “Daniel Boone decided to
become a pioneer because he dreamed of pigeon-toed giraffes and
cross-eyed elephants dancing in pink skirts and green berets on the
wind-swept plains of the Midwest” will be understood by the native
speakers of English. (2007: 9). Most likely, no one will believe the
sentence; its logic will surely be questioned; but everyone speaking
English can understand it, though it was probably never produced
before. Noam Chomsky was one of the first to speak about this human

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ability to understand new sentences as part of the creative aspect of
language use.
Another example of language creativity can be given on the lexical
level. Imagine that a new substance has been created that helps to
preserve food ecologically and for a long time. Imagine that this
substance has been called sperte; then the food preserved in such a way
would be spertical, and the process of preservation would be called
spertcalization. This example illustrates the possibility to create
completely new words but, on the other hand, the limitations of
creativity, since the derived words of the new coinage follow the already
established rules of affixation in English.
Natural languages are also often redundant, that is, the same
meaning may be signalled more than once. First of all, redundancy may
be external, i.e. indicated through gestures and facial expressions. If I
say: “He is my cousin” and at the same time point at the only man in the
room, I am using external redundancy of gestures. If I say: “I don’t like
the taste of this salad” and at the same time frown, I am indicating my
dislike through both my facial expression and the use of the words
“don’t like”. Redundancy may be internal, i.e. expressed just through
language. For example, in the sentence “John likes to check his e-mail
twice a day”, the information about the masculine gender of the agent is
given in the use of the personal name and in the pronoun his; singularity
is signalled through the subject and the verb form (likes) and the singular
form of the pronoun his.
All languages are systematic. In other words, they consist of
patterns, which recur in various combinations, and rules, which are
applied to produce these patterns. Without rules, it would be impossible
to learn and use languages. Every native speaker of English knows when
to use the alternative forms of the indefinite article a or an and uses
them without conscious effort. Similarly, a native speaker would use the
form could have been asked but would not say *been have could asked
because this is also a native speaker’s intuitive knowledge of the rules in
the language.
All languages change. Of course, they may change I different ways
depending on social, political and other circumstances. Thus their
histories are individual and different. English, for example, has
borrowed words, especially from French and Latin, to such an extent

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that purely native Anglo-Saxon words hardly constitute the majority of
present-day English.

Principles of Modern Linguistics:

Structuralism

Structuralism is a term used in linguistics referring to a theoretical

approach to the analysis of language that describes linguistic items in
terms of structures. The basic claim of structuralism is that language is a
structured system. Ferdinand de Saussure is known as the father of
structuralism. In 1916, his Cours de linguistique générale (Course in
General Linguistics) was published, where the main ideas of
structuralism were formulated. He argued that each element in a
language is defined by how it is related to other elements. He also
formulated several principles of linguistic analysis which have become
the tenets of modern linguistics. These principles are presented with
short explanations below.

Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive

It means that linguists describe the rules and facts of language
exactly as they find them without making judgements. They do not try to
impose norms of correctness and do not try to change the actual usage of
the language of the native speakers. This contrasts with the previous
view of traditional grammar which was very strongly prescriptive.
The principle of descriptiveness also reflects the present-day view
about language change. Before de Saussure, it was held that linguistic
change involves corruption and should be stopped. Modern linguistics
states that change is a natural process. The task of a linguist is to
describe the way people speak and write, not to tell them how they ought
to use language.

Priority of the spoken language

It is one of the main principles of modern linguistics that spoken
language is more basic than written language. For a long time only
written language was studied, and judgements about language on the
whole were based on the results of these studies. However, spoken
language is very different from written texts. There are great variations
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both in grammar and vocabulary choices which the written language
does not reflect. Therefore, for a full understanding of language use,
both spoken and written language should be studied.

Synchronic and diachronic description of language

Two basic principles can be applied to the study of language:
synchronic and diachronic. Diachronic linguistics is the study of
languages from the viewpoint of their historical development.
Synchronic linguistics studies languages at a single point of time. It may
be the present-day situation or any given period in the history of
language development.
Both ways of describing languages are important.
All languages are equal
For a linguist, all languages serve as the data for objective study.
Though it was common earlier to call certain languages “primitive” (in
relation to the cultural and economic development of certain societies),
it was determined that every existing natural language is a highly
developed system and its structure does not directly correlate with the
stage of social development of that speech community.

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of linguistic units

A linguistic unit enters into relations of two different kinds which
identify it in the language system. It enters into paradigmatic relations
with all the other elements of the same level which can also be used in
the same context. For example, in the phrase a…of milk; the missing
element could be glass, jar, mug, bottle (all these concrete countable
nouns stand in paradigmatic relationship).
A linguistic unit enters into syntagmatic relations with the other
elements of the same level with which it occurs and which make its
context. Syntagmatic relations for the phrase a glass of milk would be
between glass and a, of, and milk.

Functionalism:
The Prague School

Functionalism is represented mostly by the works of the Prague

School (established in 1926; the main representatives: V. Mathesius, R.
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Jakobson, N.Trubbetzkoj). In linguistics, functionalism is best seen as a
movement continuing the tradition of Saussurean structuralism. The
main claim of this approach is that language is a system of functionally
related units. The phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures of
a language are determined by the functions that they have to perform.
The main function of language is the communicative one, i.e. language
is used by people to communicate. Language also has the expressive
function – to convey the speaker’s feelings and attitudes. B. Maliowski
introduced the term the phatic function, claiming that language is often
used for maintaining social relations (e.g. greetings, leave-taking,
comments about the weather, etc.). The Prague School also emphasized
the distinction between the phonetic and the phonological analysis of
sounds, introducing the notions of phoneme and distinctive feature. Of
particular importance is also their formulation of the theory of functional
sentence perspective (FSP) – a theory that analyses utterances in terms
of the information they express.

Generativism (Generative grammar)

The term is used to refer to the theory of language developed by

Noam Chomsky. His language theory revolutionized linguistics in 1957,
when his book Syntactic Structures was published. He draws a
distinction between linguistic competence and performance. A speaker’s
linguistic competence is that part of his knowledge of the native
language system which enables him to make an infinite number of
sentences. Performance is linguistic behavior which is determined both
by the speaker’s linguistic competence and various non-linguistic
factors, such as social conventions, emotional attitudes, etc. Chomsky
claims that human language is innate: a child is born with a biological
predisposition to learn language. This feature is species-specific, that is,
it discriminates humans and other living creatures. Chomsky was
amazed at how rapidly a little child acquires language. On the whole, he
emphasized the role of language as a basic means to investigate the
human mind.

Questions and tasks:

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1) Some features common to all natural languages have be mentioned
above. Can you think of some additional properties that unite all
languages?
2) If a researcher decided to analyze the English language of the period
when Shakespeare wrote his most famous tragedies, would it be a
synchronic or diachronic linguistic analysis?
3) Explain how you understand prescriptiveness in linguistics. In your
opinion, is it a positive or a negative approach?
4) Give expressions, both in English and Lithuanian, which would be
examples of the phatic function of language.
5) Can your think of examples of utterances where the expressive
function would be much more prominent than the communicative
one?
6) How do you understand innateness of language?
7) Does synonymy illustrate paradigmatic or syntagmatic relations in
language?
8) Think about your usual working day. Do you speak more or do you
write more? In this connection, would you give priority to spoken or
written language?
9) (Advanced) If someone you know says to you over a glass of wine
on a Saturday evening “I love you”, how would you interpret the
utterance? In other words, can the utterance have other
interpretations apart from its direct meaning and how some
interpretations may depend on the context of the situation?

PHONETICS

Phonetics is the branch of linguistics which studies the

characteristics of speech sounds. Since in English and some other
languages there is a considerable discrepancy between spelling and
sound, phonetic alphabets have been created in which one letter
corresponds to one sound. The best-known and most widely used one is
the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The phonetic transcription
is given in square brackets, for example fee [fi:] or daytime [deitaim].
Phonetics is traditionally divided into articulatory phonetics,
which studies how speech sounds are produced, auditory phonetics,

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which studies how they are perceived by the ear; it investigates the
perception of pitch and loudness of sounds, and acoustic phonetics,
which looks at the physical characteristics of speech sounds.
Individual speech sounds are called segments. All the speech
sounds are classified into consonants and vowels. Vowels are
pronounced without or with very little obstruction in the vocal tract and
they make the nucleus of a syllable. Consonants are produced with some
constriction in the airflow through the vocal tract.
According to their place of articulation, the English consonants are
further classified into bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal,
velar, and glottal. According to the manner of articulation, they are
grouped into stops, fricatives, and affricates. In addition, consonants are
called oral, if the air escapes through the mouth; the majority of
consonants are oral. However, if the velum is lowered and the air
escapes through the nose, a nasal consonant is produced (e.g. the first
sound in new or mouse).
The English vowels are classified into simple vowels (or
monophtongs) and diphthongs. Diphthongs show a noticeable change in
quality during their pronunciation (e.g. the vowels in play and count).
The manner of the articulation of vowels depends on the position of the
tongue and lips. They are grouped into high, mid, and low; front, central,
and back, and rounded and unrounded. The distinction between lax and
tense vowels shows that the first are produced with relatively less
tension and are shorter than their tense counterparts, which show a
greater vocal tract constriction. The vowel in fit is lax and the vowel in
feel is tense.
Two speech sounds – [w] and [j] – are articulated with the tongue
like a vowel, yet they function like voiced consonants and are called
glides (sometimes the term semi-vowel is used).
Length, pitch, and stress are prosodic (or suprasegmental) features,
which means that they exist over the segmental values of the speech
sounds in a syllable. In English, the stressed syllables are louder, a bit
longer and higher in pitch. Pitch change in spoken language that is
related to differences in word meaning (i.e. change in pitch can show
differences in word meaning) is called tone. However, English is not a
tone language. It is intonation language, where the change in pitch
functions on the sentence level and its movement here shows an

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emotional meaning (anger, joy, irony, etc.) or grammatical meaning (e.g.
statements vs. questions).

Exercise 1

How many speech sounds are there in the following words? You can use
a dictionary to check your answers.

Example: cat – 3; book – 3; rattle – 4.

1) porch 9) universal
2) sculptures 10) group
3) cure 11) mathematics
4) surgeon 12) word
5) argue 13) wrap
6) sergeant 14) psalmist
7) mailbox 15) prudential
8) starring 16) snub

Question: What conclusion can you make about the relationship between
the number of letters and the number of speech sounds in the analyzed
English words?

Exercise 2

After each of the following articulatory descriptions, write in phonetic

brackets the sound described.
Example: voiced labiodental fricative – [v].

1. high back rounded lax vowel

2. voiced labiodental fricative
3. voiced palato-alveolar affricate
4. voiced palatal glide
5. voiced velar nasal
6. voiced interdental fricative
7. low front unrounded vowel

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 8. high front tense unrounded vowel
9. mid central lax unrounded vowel
10. mid-high front unrounded vowel

Exercise 3

Which of the following pairs of words show the same vowel quality?
Transcribe each word.

1) back – bake 11) hide - hid

2) pool – pull 12) least - leave
3) school – scope 13) grasp - grass
4) snug – snuff 14) howl - huff
5) cot – caught 15) dump - damp 6) bid
– bead 16) fight - flight
7) soap – soak 17) fiend - friend
8) luck – lick 18) key - kick
9) late – lake 19)number - numeral
10) fell - feel
Exercise 4

Mark stresses of the following words. Note that some words have
primary and secondary stress. If not sure, you can use a dictionary.

1) daylight 9) restaurant
2) day off 10) responsible
3) day-to-day 11) shoelace
4) day training 12) health club
5) monopolize 13) health centre
6) kangaroo 14) bacteriology
7) midstream 15) changeover
8) midsection 16) prosperity

Exercise 5

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Transcribe the following words, as you would pronounce them in
isolation. Mark the stresses. Then check your transcription with a
dictionary.

1) political 7) anguish
2) development 8) education
3) pearl 9) variable
4) English 10) saliva
5) comprehensible 11) component
6) miniature 12) predator

Questions and tasks:

1. What is the role phonetic transcription? Why is it important to have

a standardized phonetic alphabet like the International Phonetic
Alphabet?
2. Describe the sound producing system.
3. What is the main difference in articulating voiced and voiceless
speech sounds?
4. (Advanced) Diacritics are additional markings on the written sym-
bols in phonetic transcription. Why are they necessary?

PHONOLOGY

Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies the patterning of

speech sounds in languages. To a large extent, it is related to phonetics
but has a different focus. Whereas phonetics concentrates on the
physical articulatory and auditory aspects of speech sounds, phonology
investigates sound types that subsume all the variations of speech sounds
which we actually produce while speaking. For example, it gives
explanations why the consonant cluster [ps] is not pronounced word-
initially in English but is possible in Lithuanian or Russian, or why [p] is
aspirated in the words like put, pity, and rump, but is non-aspirated in
spite, splash, and spirit. It also concentrates on native speaker’s
linguistic knowledge about the sound arrangements in their language.
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This knowledge is mostly intuitive. Thus a native speaker of English can
recognize that a form like flib could be a possible English word, though
actually such a word does not exist. On the other hand, a native English
speaker can say that a form like ngick is simply not possible and “does
not sound English”. The task of a phonologist is to give objective
linguistic explanations for this phonological knowledge.
The central term in phonology is phoneme, which is defined as the
smallest meaning distinguishing sound unit. In other words, phonemes
can distinguish words with different meanings. For example, /p/ and /b/
are two separate phonemes because they can distinguish words (pit and
bit; pull and bull, etc.). However, aspirated and non-aspirated [p] never
distinguish words with different meanings and are just predictable
variants of the same phoneme. They are said to be predictable because
they occur in different environments - the non-aspirated [p] is used after
[s] and the aspirated one in all other positions. Such predictable phonetic
variants of a phoneme are called allophones.
Allophones never occur in the same phonetic environment and are,
therefore, said to be in complementary distribution. Phonemic
distinctions are checked using the minimal pair test. If a substitution of
one phoneme for another results in a word with a different meaning, we
have two different phonemes. Comparing the same phonemes /p/ and
/b/, we may notice that they are very similar in their articulation, only /b/
is voiced and /p/ is voiceless. Such distinguishing characteristics of
phonemes are called distinctive features. If the feature is present in a
phoneme, it is marked with a plus sign and if it is absent, it is marked
with a minus sign. Thus /b/ is presented as [+VOICE] and /p/ as [-
VOICE].
Each phoneme in a language can be described providing a set of features
for that phoneme. It is interesting to note that the inventories of
phonemes are different in different languages. For example, /l/ and /r/
are allophones in Japanese, and in Russian long and short vowels do not
differentiate words.
A distinction is made between phonetic and phonological
transcription. Phonetic transcription is given in square brackets, [ ], and
phonological transcription employs slashes, / /.
One more field of study in phonology is the possible patterning of
sounds and the constraints on the sequence, ordering or position of

17
phonemes in various languages. These possible sequential arrangements
of phonological units in a language are called phonotactics. In English,
for example, /spm-/ or /nb-/ are not possible initial phonotactic
sequences.

Exercise 1
Find minimal pairs of words that would contrast the following English
phonemes:
1) /f/ - /v/ 5) /i:/ - /i/
2) /t/ - /d/ 6) /i/ - /ai/
3) /m/ - /n/ 7) /u:/ - /u/
4) /s/ - /z/ 8 /au/ - /ai/

Exercise 2
Which of the following words could make minimal pairs?

flesh, map, park, tool, Ben, cut, tale, knack, pale, dark, screen, dare,
fleet, fresh, ban, nap, scream, cat, tail

Questions:

1. What is the difference between an allophone and a phoneme?

2. Why is aspiration not a distinctive feature in English?

Tasks:
1. Explain the difference between accidental and systematic gaps in
the inventory of possible English words. Think of your own
examples of accidental and/or systematic gaps both in English and
Lithuanian.
2. (Advanced) Contrasts of phonemes are language-specific. Find
examples of phoneme contrasts from different languages that are
not found in English.

MORPHOLOGY

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 Morphology is the branch of linguistics which studies the structure
of words and types of their formation. It is generally divided into
inflectional morphology (which studies inflections of a language) and
derivational morphology (which studies the types of word formation).
Morpheme is the basic unit in morphology. It is defined as a minimal
unit of meaning or grammatical function. Thus, the word unlocked in the
sentence “He unlocked the door” has three morphemes (un- is used to
show an opposite; lock – means to fasten with a key, and –ed indicates
past tense). There are morphemes that can be used as single words (e.g.
book, run, nice, one). They are called free morphemes. Others cannot
stand alone and have to be attached to another morpheme (e. g. un-, -
ment, -ed, -s). They are bound morphemes.
Words which consist only of one morpheme are called simple
words. Words consisting of two or more morphemes are called
complex. Complex words have a root and one or more affixes (prefixes
or suffixes). The form to which an affix is added is called a base (or a
stem). Thus in the word assertiveness, assert is the root and the base for
–ive and assertive is the base for –ness).
Derivation is one of the major types of word formation. Another
very productive type is compounding – the process of joining two or
more words to form a new word; e.g. raincoat, sky-blue, team-mate, or
talking head. As can be seen from the given examples, the spelling of
compounds varies. They can be written as one word, hyphenated or
written as two separate words. In the latter case they are treated as a
word and not a phrase because they represent a single unit of meaning.
In numerous cases the meaning of a compound can be deduced from its
constituent parts (e.g. a bookshelf is a shelf that you keep books on;
sunbeam is a beam of light from the sun). Such compounds are said to
be transparent from the point of view of their meaning. Yet there are
compounds whose meaning does not follow from the meanings of the
constituent parts (e.g. black sheep is not a sheep but a person who is
regarded by other members of their family as a failure; the grass roots
are the ordinary people in an organization, rather than the leaders).
Conversion is a type of word formation when the function of a
word changes (such as a noun to a verb or vice versa), e.g. butter (N) –
butter (V); walk (V) – walk (N) or open (Adj) – open (V).
Other types of word formation in English include clipping,
blending, backformation, initialisms (abbreviations and acronyms),
19
and onomatopoeia. In addition, words are borrowed from other
languages (which the English language has done extensively throughout
its history) or totally new words can be invented. The first are called
borrowings, e.g. the noun chef- “a skilled cook, especially the main
cook in a restaurant” - has been borrowed from French; the noun series
– “a number of similar things arranged in a row” – has come from Latin,
and the noun avocado –“ a type of fruit” - has come from Mexican
Spanish. The newly made words, often trade names, are called coinages.
They often become general words, e.g. xerox, teflon or aspirin.

Exercise 1
Say which of the given words are simple and which are complex.

1) moody 9) critical
2) glove 10) Arabic
3) engagement 11) ambulance 4)
enough 12) discuss
5) office 13) disconnect
6) off-duty 14) handbag
7) shoulder 15) needful
8) teacher 16) seasoned

Exercise 2

What parts of speech are formed with the following derivational affixes?
Give an example with each affix.

1) – ful 6) in -
2) – able 7) re - 3) – ize 8) ex - 4) – ly 9) im -
5) – en 10) un – Exercise 3
Indicate prefixes and suffixes in the given words.

1) implant (V) 9) controllable (Adj)

2) verbal (Adj) 10) preschooler (N)
3) thoughtful (Adj) 11) reschedule (V)
4) slowly (Adv) 12) thirsty (Adj)
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 5) co-star (N) 13) stuffing (N) 6) cookie(N) 14) disobey (V)
7) cooker (N) 15) underground (N)
8) cookery (N) 16) uncontrollable (Adj)

Exercise 4 (Advanced)

Draw a tree structure for the given words.

1) deafen 6) frightened
2) reread 7) economically
3) timeless 8) bumper car
4) interplanetary 9) anybody
5) stony-faced 10) optionally

Exercise 5

The given words can be either nouns or verbs (i.e. the process of
conversion can be applied). Find out whether the change of stress can be
used to make the distinction between some nouns and verbs.

1) work 7) convict
2) import 8) nail
3) love 9) play
4) retreat 10) record
5) imprint 11) knife
6) dust 12) outrage

Exercise 6

The following words have all been formed by compounding. Draw a tree
structure for each word. The head of the compound determines the part
of speech of the word, yet it is advisable to check the given words in a
dictionary.

1) light bulb 6) round-up

2) hard copy 7) grass roots
3) bitter-sweet 8) green card
21
 4) barking mad 9) stuck-up
5) round-table 10 shipshape

Exercise 7

The words in Column B have been created from the corresponding word
in Column A. Say what type of word formation has been used in each
case.

Column A Column B

govern government
international, police Interpol
babysitter babysit foot, step footstep
laboratory lab
Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome AIDS
influenza flu
fruit, juice fruice
drama dramatist
The National Health Service NHS

Exercise 8 (Advanced)

The following compounds are fully or partially idiomatic, i.e. their

meanings are not easily understood from the meanings of the constituent
parts. Try to guess their meanings and then check them in a dictionary.

1) bug-eyed 9)
touchstone 2) bluestocking 10)
tourist trap
3) Chinese whispers 11) playpen
4) trigger-happy 12) red-top
5) mystery shopper 13) red-letter day
6) surface mail 14) red giant
7) tearjerker 15) pepper spray
8) top dog 16) numbskull
22
Exercise 9

Say which initialisms are abbreviations and which are acronyms. For
what word does each letter stand for?
For example: the EEC (abbreviation) – the European Economic
Community.

1) UFO 7) THX 13) PDQ

2) BA 8) IED 14) H. E.
3) CD-ROM 9) GPS 15) N/A
4) CD-RW 10) GPA 16) OAP
5) PDF 11) GHQ 17) DIY
6) SWOT (analysis) 12) WC 18) R&R

Exercise 10

Say whether the words in the given sets are related to one another by the
process of inflection or derivation.

1) girl, girls, girl’s, girls’

2) play plays, played, playing
3) play, playful, player, playable
4) nice, nicer, nicest
5) friend, friendly, friendless, friendship

Questions and tasks:

1. Compare English and Lithuanian inflections. What can you say

about their numbers? What kinds of inflections exist in Lithuanian
but are absent in English?
2. Conversion is very productive in present-day English but not in
Lithuanian. Why?
3. Using a dictionary, find five examples of clipping and five
examples of blending and present them to the class.

23
4. Find five less known onomatopoeic words and ask your friends to
guess their meanings.

SYNTAX

Syntax is the branch of linguistics that studies sentence structure. In

his theory of generative grammar, Noam Chomsky has pointed out to the
astonishing fact that a speaker of any language can produce and
understand an infinite number of sentences. The inventory of phonemes
of a language is finite, the number of words may reach hundreds of
thousands, and it would very difficult to try to count all the existing
words of a language. However, to say how many sentences there are in a
language is really an impossible task. A speaker can create new
sentences by adding prepositional phrases, adjectives, clauses, etc.
The traditional grammar, which has its roots in the description of the
classical languages – Greek and Latin – provided the distinction and
description of the parts of speech: nouns (window, idea, Mary, milk),
verbs (give, play, believe, have, be), adjectives (nice, new, open),
adverbs (very, quickly, really), prepositions (on, of, without, despite)
pronouns (she, you, somebody), articles (a, the) conjunctions (and,
when, though), and interjections (oh, phew). Modern linguists, though
accepting this distinction, point out to some incompleteness of the
definitions of parts of speech. Thus, for example, nouns may be defined
as words referring to people, entities, qualities or abstract notions;
adjectives are words that modify nouns, expressing quality, property or
attribute of a person or entity, etc. In these definitions parts of speech are
presented including their essential meaning properties but not all their
functional properties are revealed. Yet the distinction of parts of speech
(or lexical categories) is of crucial importance because it helps to
classify the words of a language.
Using the rules of syntax, we combine words into phrases and
phrases into sentences. English has fixed Subject-Verb-Object (SVO)
word order. Therefore, the sentence The children took all the apples. is
correct (grammatical) but the sentence *Took all the apples the children.
is ungrammatical.

24
 Sentences are not just lineal strings of words – they may be
analyzed hierarchically into phrases. For example, the following
sentence contains three phrases, indicated by bracketing.
[The diligent students] [have completed] [the last task].
A phrase may consist of one word or a group of words. The
substitution test may be used to show the identity of a phrase, i.e. a
single word can often replace it. For example, the phrase the diligent
students can be replaced by the pronoun they. Another way to test the
reality of phrases is the movement test – a whole phrase can be moved
as a unit.
Compare the two sentences:
a) He put the cake on the kitchen table.
b) On the kitchen table, he put the cake.
The main types of phrases are: the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the
adjective phrase, the adverb phrase, and the prepositional phrase. Each
type of phrase has the head – the lexical category around which the
phrase is built. A phrase can contain only the head. Some examples of
noun phrases: a book, the book, people, these people, the red carpet.
Prepositional phrases consist of a preposition and a noun phrase: on the
table, with a spoon, in the crowded street, etc.
According to Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, a finite set of
formal rules project a finite set of sentences upon the potentially infinite
number of sentences of a language. To put it more simply, there are a
certain number of formal rules which explain the structure of the
sentences in a language. One of the main rules states that a sentence
consists of a noun phrase and a verb phrase. The hierarchical structure of
a sentence can be represented by tree structures, i.e. diagrams showing
the hierarchical organization of phrases. On the whole, the analysis of
sentence structure proceeds along a number of different lines, depending
on the linguistic school and model of analysis.
Sentences are classified into different types. The majority of
linguists make a distinction between functional and formal
classifications. From the point of view of their function, sentences are
divided into statements (She closed the window.), questions (Did she
close the window?), commands (Close the window!), and exclamations
(What a big window!). The formal classification makes a distinction
between declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative

25
sentences. One more categorization of sentences is into simple, complex
and compound. Simple sentences have one Subject – Verb unit, e.g. The
cat jumped on the couch. A compound sentence consists of two or more
main clauses, e.g. He is a busy man, but he promised to help me with
this problem. We have a complex sentence when one clause is used as a
main clause and another is added to express subordinate meaning,
developing some aspect of the main clause, e.g. When I first saw the
building, I was amazed by its size.

Exercise 1
Mark the grammatical sentences in each set. Determine why the other
sentences are not grammatical.

1) The girl put.

The girl put on the table.
The girl put carefully.
The girl put the apples on the table.
2) John slept the bed.
John slept.
John slept on the bed.
3) The children took.
The children took three.
The children took three books.
Three books took the children.

Exercise 2
Determine what part of speech each word in the given sentences
represents.

1) A woman was injured in the accident and was taken to hospital.

2) If you commit a serious crime, you could be sent to prison.
3) A couple were drinking tea at a table by the window.
4) Susan gave an amused laugh.
5) We got there at about five o’clock.
6) He got into the car quickly and drove off.
7) The tourists left the lake and climbed higher.

26
 8) The girl who came into the room was small and slender.
9) The older men couldn’t find a job if they left the village.
10) Stay with me until I go.

Exercise 3
Draw a tree structure for each phrase and determine the type of phrase.

1) the book
2) a new book
3) very intelligent
4) on the shelf
5) with the new binoculars
6) so stupid
7) ideas
8) the brilliant ideas

Exercise 4 (Advanced)

Draw tree structures for the following sentences.

1) A man entered the room.

2) Students must study.
3) The new students can bring their reports on Friday.
4) The players left the field without protest.
5) The clever dog found the meat in the kitchen.
6) The latest news was about politics.
7) Sharks may appear in this lagoon.
8) The girl took a bottle of milk from the fridge

Exercise 5

Indicate cases of coordination and subordination of clauses.

1) The girl who was injured in the accident is now in hospital.

2) She said you took her notes.

27
 3) More and more money is being given to social projects, and it is
reasonable to expect that this will become a common practice.
4) I asked if I could borrow his car but he refused.
5) The medicine, which is being tried at several medical
institutions, has already helped a number of patients who have
failed to respond to other remedies.
6) He was waiting for the girl, who was buying ice cream.
7) The woman who was driving the car was all dressed in black.
8) I try to ignore the noise they make in the kitchen but I simply
can’t.
9) One passenger was killed and another seriously wounded.
10) When I finish this project, I will go on a week holiday in
Bahamas.
11) When his assignment was finished, he returned home and spent
the evening watching TV.
12) Sarah got her BA diploma in English philology and now plans
to study management.

SEMANTICS

Semantics is the branch of linguistics that studies meaning in

language. It is generally accepted that words, phrases, and sentences
have meaning. Lexical semantics studies the meanings of words and
sense relations (such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy). Sentence
semantics (or sentential semantics) is concerned with the meaning of
sentences.
The meaning of words is part of human linguistic knowledge. The
meaning of the majority of words is conventional, i.e. all speakers of a
language intuitively agree on their meanings. If they did not, it would
not be possible for people to communicate with each other.
It is possible to analyze meanings of words decomposing them into
more basic semantic features. Thus the noun man can be described as
having the features [+ HUMAN], [+MALE], and [+ADULT].
Componential analysis helps to clarify how words relate to other
words. Comparing man and boy, it can be noted that the two words are

28
differentiated only by one semantic feature: boy is characterized as [-
ADULT].
Linguists acknowledge that it is difficult both to define and to
analyze the meaning of a word. One of the reasons is that word meaning
is not homogeneous. A distinction is drawn between denotation, which
is understood as the relationship between words and the entities in the
world to which they refer, and connotation, which is understood as the
additional (often emotional or evaluative) associations suggested by
words. Denotation is reflected in the dictionary definitions of words.
Thus the denotation of the word wolf is “a wild animal that looks like a
large dog and lives and hunts in groups” (Longman Dictionary of
Contemporary English 2007: 1897). However, for a lot of people the
word may arouse associations of danger and rapacity, and these
associations may be treated as the word’s connotation. The word home
has the meaning of a place (house or apartment) where you live, yet it
has additional associations of safeness and warmth. Denotations of
words are more stable and established, while connotations are less
determinate.
Within the vocabulary, words are semantically related to one
another in different ways. Sense relations are paradigmatic, i.e. they
reflect the choice and the substitution of one word for another in a
particular context.
One of the most widespread sense relations is synonymy, or
sameness of meaning. However, there are no strict or perfect synonyms,
i.e. two words usually do not have exactly the same meaning. Compare
the adjectives beautiful and pretty. Both mean someone or something
that is attractive to look at. Beautiful describes someone who is good-
looking in a very special and even exceptional way, whereas pretty
refers to someone or something that is pleasant to look at but not
impressive.
Antonyms are word that are opposite with respect to some element
of their meaning; for example, big and small both describe size, but
opposite in regard to the extent of the size. A large number of antonymic
pairs are adjectives, but this sense relation is also found among other
word classes. Three different types of oppositeness of meaning can be
distinguished: gradable antonyms (gradables), complementaries, and
converses. Gradable antonyms represent a more or less relation, i.e.
more of one is less of the other. For example, rich – poor, fast – slow,
29
tall – short. Complementaries represent an either/or relation, which
means that the negation of one is the meaning of the other. For example,
dead – alive, married – single. In a pair of converses, one describes a
relation between two objects and the other describes the same relation
when the two objects are reversed. For example, teacher – pupil, parent
– child, buy – sell.

Semantic relations among sentences

Three types of such relations can be distinguished – paraphrase,
entailment, and contradiction.
If two sentences have the same meaning, they are called
paraphrases of each other. For example, the sentence The cat chased
the mouse. is a paraphrase of the sentence The mouse was chased by the
cat.
Entailment is a semantic relation between two sentences when the
truth of one sentence implies the truth of another but not vice versa. For
example, the sentence Peter saw a fox. entails Peter saw an animal.
However, to say that Peter saw an animal does not mean that he saw a
fox – he might have seen a wolf, a lion, etc.
Two sentences are contradictory when they both cannot be true at
the same time. In other words, if one sentence is true, the other has to be
false. For example, Miranda is alive. is a contradiction to Miranda is
dead.

Exercise 1
Determine whether the given pairs of words represent synonymy or
antonymy.

1) long – short 6) lucky - fortunate

2) casual – informal 7) free - independent
3) instantly – immediately 8) promote - downgrade
4) rebellious – obedient 9) above - below
5) give – take 10) private - public

Exercise 2

30
Linguists say that synonyms are never completely equivalent in their
meaning. Check the definitions of the given synonyms in a dictionary
and determine their meaning differences.
1) look, watch, gaze, stare, scrutinize, peep
2) lazy, idle, sluggish, languid
3) clever, intelligent, intellectual, brainy, smart, bright

Exercise 3

Mark the following pairs of words as homophones, homographs or

homonyms. (Check the pronunciation of the words).

1) bat (animal) – bat (wooden implement)

2) route (a way from one place to another) – root (the part of a
plant under the ground)
3) bow (to bend the top part of your body) – bow (a weapon used
for shooting arrows)
4) rose ( a flower) – rose (the past tense of rise)
5) bear (an animal) – beer ( a drink)
6) bear (animal) – bear (to bravely accept a difficult situation)
7) race (running) – race (one of the main groups that people can be
divided into)
Exercise 4

There are several kinds of oppositeness of meaning. Indicate whether the

pairs of words are gradables, complementaries or converses.

1) expensive – cheap 6) father - son

2) husband – wife 7) in - out
3) soft – hard 8) buy - sell
4) pretty– plain 9) legal – illegal
5) false – true 10) deep - shallow

Exercise 5

Which of the three semantic relations (paraphrase, entailment and

contradiction) is represented in the given pairs of sentences?
31
 1) John is a bachelor.
John is married.
2) Mary gave me this book.
It was Mary who gave me this book.
3) My brother studies at Vilnius University.
My brother is a student.
4) Kate bought a chair.
Kate bought something.
5) My uncle built this house twenty years ago.
This house was built by my uncle twenty years ago.
6) Susan is the only child.
William is Susan’s brother.
7) My cat’s name is Socks.
I’ve got a cat.
8) He saw a big mouse.
He saw a big animal.

Exercise 6 (Advanced)

Using the definitions of the given words, carry out their componential
analysis. The definitions are taken from Longman Dictionary of
contemporary English. 2007.

Footwear
Shoe – something that you wear to cover your feet, made of leather or
some other strong material
Boot – a type of shoe that covers the whole foot and the lower part of
the leg
Sandal – a light shoe that is fastened onto your foot by bands of leather
or cloth, and is worn in warm weather
Sling back – a woman’s shoe that is open at the back and has a narrow
band going around the heel
Moccasin – a flat comfortable shoe made of soft leather
Platforms – shoes that have a thick layer of wood, leather, etc. under the
front part and the heel
Slipper – a light soft shoe that you wear at home
32
Clog – a shoe made of wood with a leather top that covers the front of
your foot but not your heel

Exercise 7 (Advanced)

Using the definitions of the given words, carry out their componential
analysis. The definitions are taken from Longman Dictionary of
contemporary English. 2007.

Hairstyles:
Bob – a way of cutting hair so that it hangs to the level of your chin and
is the same length all the way round your head
Braid – a length of hair that has been separated into three parts and then
woven together
Crew cut – a very short hair style for men
Dreadlocks - a way of arranging your hair in which it hangs in thick
pieces that look like ropes
Ponytail – hair tied together at the back of your head and falling like a
horse tail
Bun – if a woman’s hair is in a bun, she fastens it in a small round shape
at the back of her head
Mohican – a hairstyle in which the hair is cut off the sides of the head,
and the hair on top of the head is made to stick up and is sometimes
brightly coloured
Perm – straight hair made curly by using chemicals

Exercise 8 (Advanced)

Which of the given words, in your opinion have connotations? What

kind of associations do they arouse to you?

1) sea
2) school 3) table
4) candle
5) street
6) soup
7) train
33
 8) bear
9) pencil

Questions and tasks:

1. English is very rich in synonyms. The fact is related to the English
language history. Can you explain this relationship?
2. (Advanced) Componential analysis helps to analyze groups of
words with related meanings. But it is not easily applicable to all
kinds of words. What words would be difficult or even impossible
to analyze using this method? Why?
3. (Advanced) Using a dictionary of synonyms, choose a synonymic
set of four – five words and compare their meanings. Then check
their typical usage in a dictionary of collocations.
4. Sentence semantics is also called truth-conditional semantics. How
do you understand this term?

SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Sociolinguistics is a study of language in social contexts. There are

different areas of study within the field itself which range from
smallscale studies to very large ones. The field has its own terminology.
A speech community is a community of speakers who share some
characteristics of language use. It can vary in size but it has to be
identifiable on the basis of its linguistic and social characteristics, for
example, a speech community may be hip-hop fans or members of a
profession with their specialized vocabulary. Another tem in
sociolinguistics is speech variety – the form of language used by any
identifiable group of speakers. In modern societies, there is usually one
variety of a language that stands above the others because it is used in
writing, in the speech of educated speakers, in educational,
governmental institutions, and the media. This is the standard variety,
which is more fixed and less prone to change. It is a variety against
which the other varieties are measured. On the whole, speech varieties
are grouped into regional varieties, sociolects and registers.

34
 Regional dialects
The study of regional dialects is called dialectology. A dialect is a
variety which is associated with a particular geographic area and differs
from other varieties mostly because of its phonological and lexical
features. Dialect atlases (maps displaying dialect information within a
certain geographical area) are used to describe geographical dialects.
The boundaries between dialects are represented by lines called
isoglosses. They are drawn with respect to one linguistic feature. When
a number of isoglosses more or less overlap, a dialect boundary is
drawn. However, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish dialects because
one dialect merges into another. The result is dialect continuum, which
means that dialect boundaries are not marked sharply. The information
about the usage of particular linguistic units in a geographical area is
gathered using questionnaires. Informants are asked to indicate which
word or type of pronunciation they use. There are regional dialects both
in the United Kingdom and the United States.
In Britain, English English (or English spoken in England) includes
Southern English dialects, Midlands dialects, and Northern dialects,
which, together with the Scottish English, have preserved numerous
words from Old Scandinavian.
In the USA, the major dialect areas in the eastern part of the country
are the Northern, Midland, and Southern. Moving to the west, the
differences, both lexical and phonological, become less distinct. Still,
two more dialects – Western and General American can be
distinguished.

Sociolects
The social stratification of language reflects the way people speak
because of their membership in various social groups. Often the
socioeconomic status (SES), related to the income, occupation,
education, and housing, is used to determine the social group. Social
dialects are mostly investigated in urban areas. The task is usually to
determine the extent to which a linguistic variable (a linguistic unit
whose usage correlates with the social group of the speaker) is used by
members of this social group. For example, William Labov, in his New
York study, found that the use of final /r/ in certain words was

35
influenced by the socioeconomic group membership – the higher the
social status, the more likely were the informants to use /r/.

Language and gender

Differences in the use of language may depend on the sex of the
speaker. From the linguistic point of view, the analysis of language in
relation to gender focuses on two distinct fields of research: 1) the
investigation of differences in male and female language use; 2) the
study of language which is used to talk about men and women and how
it reflects social attitudes towards them.
In relation to the first issue, it has been noted that conversational
strategies may have different potential meanings for men and women. A
number of studies have been carried out showing that women tend to use
more polite expressions, tag questions, hedges, emotional vocabulary,
and minimal responses. They attach more importance to listening of
others and, therefore, use fewer interruptions than men. However,
women often can talk at the same time overlapping each other if they
find the topic interesting and exciting. Women use self-disclosure in
conversation, especially among female friends, i.e. they like to share
their experiences and problems with others. Women are also more
conscious of standard usages of language, while men give preference to
the so-called covert prestige of less formal expressions and slang, which
they use to establish contact and show solidarity.
The second topic is not only a linguistic issue – it has been widely
exploited in feminist debate with the claim that language is often
discriminatory against women. An example could be the use of the noun
man to refer to people in general and the pronoun he when the sex of the
referent is unknown or irrelevant. However, over the last two decades, a
number of changes have taken place in the English language. For
example, chairman has given way to chairperson and the noun fire
fighter changed the noun fireman. The usage of pronouns has also
changed considerably. It is now common to write he/she, s/he or use the
generic they.

Slang, jargon and argot

Slang is informal, nonstandard vocabulary used by a particular
group of people to establish contact, to mark their identity as a group, to

36
create an effect, etc. Slang usage is typical of teenage speech or other
speech communities that share interests and activities (e.g. music style,
sports, etc.). At present slang is an important object of sociolinguistic
studies as it reflects the values and interests of the social groups using it.
There are numerous slang words that are widely known and their usage
does not mark the group identity, e.g. cool (attractive, interesting,
fashionable, etc.). Some slang words are fashionable for just a short time
and reflect the usage of particular age groups, others may stay in the
language for a long time. Yet the majority of slang changes rapidly,
therefore, it can easily be used inappropriately.
Here are some examples slang words:
Expressions for money: bucks, dough, bread, beans, brass, cabbage.
Expressions for a stupid person: nerd, jerk, loony, boob,
nincompoop, jackass.
Expressions for drinking alcohol: to be on the booze, to hit the
bottle, to bend the elbow.
Jargon refers to words and technical terms used by specialists of a
profession or a group of people sharing a certain activity, hobby or
occupation. These terms are usually not understood by the non-
members. Practically every field of activity has its jargon. The excessive
use of jargon may cause irritation of the outsiders if they feel that they
have a right to understand the speech of the professionals (e.g. in law or
medicine).
Argot (or cant) is a special vocabulary used by a secretive social
group with the aim to protect its members from outsiders. Argot may be
a vocabulary of criminals, terrorists or street gangs. An interesting
example of secretive language is Cockney rhyming slang – the language
of East Londoners. Rhyming slang is created using certain rules and
applying them to general language with the aim to be unintelligible to
others. A phrase, usually two nouns joined with and, is used so that it
rhymes with the word it stands for but has no meaning connection with
it. The effect is often humorous. For example, rain – pleasure and pain;
stairs - apples and pear; believe – Adam and Eve; fork – Duke of York,
etc.

37
 Register
Register is a variety of language defined according to its use in
social situations and different contexts. A person’s choice of vocabulary
also reveals something about the relationship he or she has with the
person who is listening (or reading). The two sentences Stop talking,
please. and Shut up, will you? Have the same meaning. The first
sentence belongs to formal register – it is appropriate in formal or
neutral situations. The second sentence is impolite. It could be used in a
highly informal situation or, maybe, jokingly, talking with a friend.
Look at two more sentences: 1) It is important to determine a scheme
whereby such decreases can be checked. 2) We must decide on a plan so
that we can stop numbers going down. The first sentence has more
formal register. This means that it is appropriate when speaking or
writing in formal situations. It would hardly be used discussing the
situation with a friend over a cup of coffee. In monolingual dictionaries,
the words are often labeled formal or informal, and the speaker has to
be careful not to use such words in wrong contexts.

Exercise 1

Using a dictionary of slang, find out the meanings of the following

words.

1) gink 8) poker face

2) rumpot 9) soup
3) ginzo 10) wet
4) never-was (never-wuz) 11) cotton
5) jail bait 12) joy rider 6)
dizzy 13) D and D
7) frump 14) cool out

Exercise 2

In the following sentences choose a less formal word.

1) Tom and Jack (ascended/went up) the hill.

38
 2) He had great difficulty with his (breathing/respiration) as he
was lying on the grass.
3) I’ve decided to ask my (boss/manager) for a pay rise.
4) It is lunchtime. I feel rather (hungry/peckish).
5) Their (kids/children) are all really (clever/brainy).
6) The road conditions are always pretty (risky/dicey) after a
sudden frost.
7) I’m busy; please (go away/depart).
8) She’s just (nipped/gone) out to get some milk.
9) He is a very (faint-hearted/pusillanimous) person. 10) She is
(insane/nuts).

Exercise 3

Below are given two extracts from transcribed natural conversations that
took place in California in 2002. The first conversation is among women
friends who are also colleagues. They talk about a wedding ceremony.
The second conversation is among male colleagues who talk about
business matters. Can you find typical features of male and female
language use in them? In transcriptions, W stands for woman and M
stands for man.

Conversation 1

W 1: What were we talking about? The weekend stuff. So how was the
bride?
W 2: aaah – oh the bride was wearing this – her mom made her dress.
They only spent maybe like two thousand dollars ‘cause the wedding
was in the back yard. And… W 1: aha, for the whole wedding.
W 2: Yeah, I bet you, ‘cause my husband and I were trying to go…God,
how much did they spend? You know… W 1: Aha.
W 2: ‘Cause we spent a lot of money. But he was saying roughly they
probably spent about two thousand dollars because… W 3:
<ENTERING THE OFFICE> Just for the dress?
W 2: No, for the whole wedding.
W 1: For everything.
W 3: Oh, for everything?
39
W 2: Because…
W 3: That’s too good.
W 1: That’s good.
W 3: That’s not expensive.
W 1: Aha. That’s the cheapest wedding I’ve heard. Well, because it was
at her aunt’s house.
W 3: Aha.
W 2: They had a big back yard… W
1: Aha.
W 2: They had about a hundred and twenty five, sixty people, maybe.
W 3: Aha.
W 2: And her co-worker had a big tent that they lent her.
W 3: Aha.
W 2: And then her dress was made by her mom, her cake was made by
her mom…
W 3: Oh, yeah. Ahhh…
W 2: And then her food was made by her relatives like her aunts and
uncles. It was ah – it was Mexican food with beans, rice. Salsa.
W 3: Yeah…
W 1: So she didn’t have to pay for anything then.
W 2: No, not really. But her dress was really pretty, it was like… ahhh
cream satin and it’s like a (xxx) type and it’s really fitted.
W 1: Mhm.
W 2: It’s two pieces and the it’s like ahh – it was nice it had beaded
(xxx) W 1: Aha.
W 2: at front. It was really simple but very elegant and she had ahhh –
her son walked her down the aisle.
W 3: Her son?
W 2: Yes, she had a son.
W 3: How come(xxx)?
W 2: This is like her second marriage.
W 3: Oh, OK.
W 2: Her husband now, also this is his second marriage because his little
girl…
W 1: Mhm.
W 2: and her little boy, they are both now eight years old.
W 1: Wow!
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W 3: Oh.
W 2: Yeah, they are both the same age and they were both like taken
pictures together, you know <LAUGHS> ‘cause on older pictures
<LAUGHS> they were like close to each other, not touching each
other, like ’cause they had to take pictures <LAUGHS>.
W 3: <LAUGHS>
W 1: They don’t like each other? <LAUGHS>
W 2: At that age you don’t like boys or you don’t like girls ‘cause… W
3: Yeah, they gonna get along (xxx) yeah?
W 2: Yeah, later on…

Conversation 2

Note: 2.1 is a version of software that the men work on; 2.2 is the same
software upgraded (a more advanced version)

M 1: I mean you buy a car, there is always something wrong with a car
but they don’t tell you that. All you hear is what’s good about it.
M 2: I guess, I guess that’s true but it’s very sad because it was true.
M 3: And if you send…
M 2: It didn’t work with 2.1
M 1: Hopefully, we did have two point one system up there and they are
still running.
M 3: Yeah.
M 1: I mean there are still some sites there that are still running on two
point one.
M 3: But Nortech was not working.
M 2: Yeah, neither it was on two point two. And if we are, if we are
good, why doesn’t Daniel go there and try to make the two point
two work?
M 1: The… Who are you talking about?
M 2: The Nortech.
M 1: The Nortech?
M 2: Yeah.
M 1: Maybe… See, I don’t know why and what this is for. All I know is
that guy is a jerk. I mean I should have thrown him out of the office
when he came in here. I mean if I would have been here… M 2: Mhm.
41
M 1: Certainly, I should have kicked him and said I don’t wanna do
business with him.
M 2: Mhm.
M 1: I mean who came in there… You see and you say just get out.
And I gave him a discount, just for him to leave the office.
M 2: Mhm.
M 3: Or other people are not using reactions, I mean they are not trying
to do business with them. What those people are trying to do?
M 1: What are they trying to do?
M 3: Running reaction from one computer to another computer. I don’t
remember now, it was like half a year ago.
M 1: I know San Onofre is running reactions interfaced with the CCTV
system and it’s working M 3: In some cases it works.
M 2: It depends on your computer too. I mean once you are trying
reactions, it also has a lot to do with how big is the site or the
activity because… maybe San Onofre has a couple of cameras
that call their CCTV running, but the only thing running is a
reaction.
M 1: No, they don’t.
M 3: They are using reactions for masking and masking, and that was
not running
M 2: And the same problem with the guys in Spain with the reactions.
And masking and masking and trying to generate reports that their
system does not recognize if people are inside or outside, and this
is still a problem. They are still waiting to see maybe the external
report will be somehow better. I mean if we have an
improvement…
M 3: Is it that we should not tell the people that it’s not working even if
it’s not working?
M 1: No. You know we are out of businesses that day.
M 3: I think we are concentrating on the wrong things again.

GLOSSARY

abbreviation a shortened form of a word. There are several types of

42
 abbreviations (see: acronym, alphabetic abbreviation, blend,
clipping).

accidental gap non-occurring but possible word in a language (e.g. trook in

English).

acronym a word that is formed from the initial letters of other words and
can be pronounced as a whole word (e.g. NATO, UNESCO).

adjective (Adj) the lexical category of words that describe or give extra
information about nouns; they are typically used as modifiers
of nouns in noun phrases (e.g. a happy boy) but may be used
as complements of verbs (e.g. It is difficult.).

allomorph an alternative variant form of a morpheme (e.g. cats [s], dogs

[z]).

allophone a predictable realization of a phoneme which is in

complementary distribution with the other allomorphs of that
phoneme.

alphabetic abbreviation a word that is formed from the initial letters of

other words and pronounced letter-by-letter.

ambiguous a word, a phrase or a sentence that has more than one meaning.

antonymy the type of sense relationship expressing the meaning of

oppositeness (e.g. big – small). See also: gradables,
complementaries, converses.

aphasia language disorder which is the result of brain damage.

argot the words used by a group of people who want to conceal the
content of their communication from non-members.

asterisk the symbol [*] which is used to mark ungrammatical sentences

or phrases.

43
back formation a type of word formation where a new word is made by
removing an affix from an old word (e.g. edit from editor).

bilabial a sound articulated by both lips together.

blend a word made of the parts of two other words (e.g. smog from
smoke and fog; Eurovision from European and television).

borrowing the introduction of a word from one language into another; e.g.
English borrowed course from Old French.

clipping a type of word formation where a new word is made by shortening

another word. The meaning remains the same; e.g. exam from
examination, phone from telephone.
closed class a type of lexical category that has no new words added to it,
e.g. conjunctions.

complementaries antonyms related in such a way that the negation

of on is the meaning of the other, e.g. alive – dead; married –
single.

complementary distribution a situation when variants of the same

phoneme never appear in the same phonetic context. For
example, [l] is a voiced consonant but in the word please, after
the voiceless [p], it becomes voiceless. The different
environments create the situation of complementary
distribution of the two allophones of the phoneme /l/.
componential analysis the representation of a word’s meaning in terms of
smaller semantic components (or semantic features).

converses a sense relation between words with an interdependence of

meaning, such that one member of the pair presupposes the
other member, e.g. parent – child.

compounding a type of word formation where two or more free morphemes

are combined to make a new word; e.g. handbag, greenhouse.

44
connotation the affective meaning associated with a word; e.g. home.
consonant a speech sound that is produced with some constriction made in
the vocal tract.

consonant cluster two or more consonants in a sequence in a word or

morpheme.

creole a language that has developed from a pidgin and has become
established as a native language for some speech community.

derivation a type of word formation where an affix (prefix or suffix) is

added to a stem or root to form a new word; e.g. friendly from
friend, illegal from legal.

distinctive feature (in phonology) a feature that allows a phoneme to

contrast meanings of words; e.g. the feature [+voice] of the
phoneme /b/ in the word bit allows to distinguish the word
from the word pit where the phoneme /p/ is characterized by [-
voice].

distribution the total set of linguistic contexts in which a linguistic unit may
be used.

entailment a semantic relationship between two sentences, such that the

truth of the second necessarily follows from the truth of the
first, i.e. if the first sentence is true , the second one has to be
true too; e.g. I have eaten an apple entails I have eaten a fruit.

euphemism a milder or indirect expression or word used instead of a rude

or offensive one; e.g. powder my nose for go to the toilet.

gradables antonyms that have opposite meaning along a scale, as a rule,

adjectives, e.g. big – small.

Homographs words which have the same spelling but different

pronunciation and meaning; e.g. wind (vjas) and wind (prisukti
laikrod).

45
homonyms words which have the same form (spelling and pronunciation)
but unrelated meaning; e.g. bank (bankas) and bank (ups
krantas); seal (ruonis) and seal (antspaudas).

homophones words which have the same pronunciation but different

spelling and meaning; e.g. two and too, son and sun.

hyponymy a semantic relation between words with specific meaning and

words with general meaning, such that the former is included
in the latter. Both words, however refer to the same entity.
The more specific word is called hyponym and the more
general word is called superordinate; foe example, tulip is a
hyponym of flower or cat is a hyponym of animal. Hyponymy
relates words hierarchically.
idiolect a person’s individual way of speaking; the particular linguistic
features that a person shows a tendency of using.

intention (sense) the inherent part of the meaning of a word.

lingua franca a language used by speakers of different languages that can

be used for communication when they do not have a common
native language. For example, English is the lingua franca for
international airline pilots.

linguistic competence speaker’s ability to produce and understand an

unlimited number utterances, including many new ones.

morpheme the smallest unit of language that carries information about

meaning or function; e.g. table consists of two morphemes:
table and s.

nativism the view that certain grammatical knowledge is inborn.

neologism a lexical innovation.

noun (N) the lexical category of words that identify people or things and
46
 function as the head of a noun phrase; e.g. dog, window, Peter,
milk.
open class the class of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives or
adverbs); they can add new words to the same class (lexical
category)

phrase one or more words that act as a syntactic unit, e.g. the table, in
the room.

pidgin a speech variety that emerges when speakers of two or more

languages come into contact and do not know each other’s
languages. Pidgins have a very simple grammatical structure
and limited vocabulary. They do not have native speakers.

pitch (in phonetics) the result of the vibration in the vocal folds,
making the sound(s) lower, higher, rising or falling.

polysemy a situation when one word has two or more closely related
meanings; e.g. clash – (1) a short fight between two armies;
(2) an argument between people; (3) a sports event between
two players or teams that is expected to be very dramatic.

preposition (P) a word that typically goes before a noun phrase to form a
prepositional phrase (e.g. in the park, on the table).

primary stress the most prominent stress of a word.

prototype the best (most typical) example of a concept; e.g. a sparrow could
be a prototype of a bird; a table or bed could be a prototype of
furniture.

referent a thing or entity to which a word or expression refers.

register a speech variety appropriate to a particular speech situation.

root the morpheme of a word that carries its main meaning and
belongs to a part of speech (e.g. friend in the adjective
47
 friendly; courage in the verb encourage, ill in the noun
illness.).
standard language the superposed variety of a language that is em-
ployed by the government and the media, and taught in
educational institutions.

structurally ambiguous the relation between phrases or sentences in

which the meanings of their component words can be
combined in more than one way, e.g. French history teacher.
syllable a unit of sound containing a vowel and optional consonants that
precede of follow it; e.g. flashlight has two syllables. In
English some consonants are also syllabic; e.g. [l] in bottle or
[n] in sudden.

synonyms words that have the same or almost the same meaning in some or
all contexts; e.g. different, unlike, contrasting, disparate;
strength, power, force.

taboo (taboo language) words or expressions that are seen as rude and
offensive and should be avoided in speech.

verb (V) the lexical category of words that describe actions, states or
sensations. It expresses contrasts of tense, aspect, voice, mood,
person, and number and functions as the head of a verb phrase;
e.g. run, live, feel.

vernacular a sociolect spoken by a speech community having a lower

status; usually contrasted with standard language.

vocal folds (vocal cords) the two thin strips of muscle in the larynx, which
vibrate when the airflow passes them (creating voiced sounds)
or are kept open without vibration (producing voiceless
sounds).

voiced the glottal state in which the vocal folds are brought close
together, but not tightly closed, causing them to vibrate as air

48
 passes between them.
voiceless the glottal state in which the vocal folds are pulled apart
allowing air to pass directly through the glottis.

vowel a speech sound that is produced with very little obstruction in

the vocal tract.

word the smallest free form in language.

REFERENCES

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and E. Finegan 1999.
Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
Crystal, D. 1994. Dictionary of Language and Languages. Penguin Books.
Crystal, D. 1997. Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. (4th edition)
Blackwell.
Fromkin, V, Rodman, R. and Nina. Hyams. 2007. An Introduction to
Language. Thomson Wadsworth.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. 2007. (4th edition).
Longman.
O’Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M. and F. Katamba. 1999. Contemporary
Linguistics: An Introduction. London and New York: Longman.
Yule. G. 2006. The Study of Language. (3rd edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

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Masaitien, Dalia
Introduction into Linguistics: A Teaching Guide, metodin priemon / Dalia
Masaitien. – Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas, 2009. – 48 p.

ISBN 978-9955-12-498-6

Ši mokymo priemon skirta angl filologijos studentams, besimokantiems vadin

kalbotyros kurs. Joje glaustai pateikiamos pagrindins kurso temos, kiekvienai
temai skiriama praktini užduoi ir klausim, kurie padeda suprasti ir analitiškai
vertinti teorin medžiag. Metodins priemons gale pateikiamas pagrindini
lingvistikos termin žodynlis.

Dalia Masaitien

INTRODUCTION INTO LINGUISTICS: A TEACHING GUIDE

Metodin priemon

50
 Redaktor Irena Ragaišien
Maketuotoja Janina Baranaviien

2009-07-03
Išleido Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas
S. Daukanto g. 27, LT-44249 Kaunas

51