Yesterday, in an international meeting, I had a presentation on linguistics. The title is "Introduction to Linguistics."
Since the purpose of the meeting is to share each student's major field, I created an easy overview of linguistics.
Actually, my major is not linguistics (it is ESL), so there might be some mistakes, but it is I have learned so far as linguistics.
Here's the script of my presentation.
~First Slide~
Today, I'm going to introduce the very basics of linguistics. I think many of you might not have studied linguistics, so I would like to start with a very easy but important question. What is a linguistics?
~Second Slide~
What is your image of linguistics? Maybe some of you imagine a lot of old people when you hear linguistics.
~Third Slide~
And, you may think that those old people have studied linguistics. Well, that's true. Linguistics is a very old study. But if you think that linguistics is very hard to study, boring, and maybe a dead area, it is totally wrong. Linguistics is not hard to study. It is actually easy, and it is very interesting, and, it is alive. It is not dead at all. So, the purpose of this presentation is to have an easy overview of linguistics.
Linguistics is a study of language. We study and research over language. Well, here, I would like to ask one question. What is language? What is language in linguistics?
It is, a symbol.
~Fourth Slide~
Well, what do I mean by symbol? Look at the picture in the next slide.
~Fifth Slide~
What do you call this?
Of course, in English, it is called "sky". In Japanese, it's "sora". And in Chinese, it's "tiengkong(?)", and in Spanish, it's "cielo", and in Korean, it's "hanel(?)".
As you can see, each language has different writing system, and even though some of them have the same writing system, they have different symbol to show the meaning. Of course, sound system is different in each language. In order to show the meaning, each language has its own symbol. In linguistics, we decode and study the symbols in each language.
To overview the symbols, let's start with sound system.
~Sixth Slide~
In linguistics, there are two areas where we study sounds. One is called phonetics, and the other is called phonology.
Phonetics is a study of each sound in each language. For example, in English, we have /l/ sound and /r/ sound, but in Japanese, we don't have these sounds. Instead, we have /ɹ/ sound as a counterpart of either /l/ or /r/ in English. In phonetics, we study how to produce (pronounce) each sound in each language.
Phonology is a study of sound system. In each language, there are some rules to form sounds. For example, in Japanese, we of course have /n/ sound, but it never occurs at the beginning of a word. Similarly, in Spanish, there is a rule that /sp/ sound cannot occur at the beginning of a word. So, in Spanish, we don't say "spaghetti", but we say "espagueti". Phonology is a study of the rules of sounds in each language.
Next area is about words.
~Seventh Slide~
There are also two areas of words study in linguistics. One is morphology, and the other is semantics. Actually, semantics is a study of meaning, not only words, but here, I would like to focus on word meaning.
Morphology is a study of word structure. Please look at some words here. Language, bilingual, linguistics, somehow these words all look similar. But how? Well, it's because of these parts; "ling/lang" parts. These parts are both related to language, so we find similarity in these three words. In morphology, we break down each word and study the structure of them; we study how words are structured.
In semantics, we study the meaning of each word; how they get meanings. The meaning of "ling/lang" part in the previous example is also a part of semantics.
We come so far, from sounds to words, and now, we are going to see sentences.
~Eighth Slide~
The same as the two symbols: sounds and words, there are also two areas in study of sentences. One is called syntax, and the other one is semantics again.
Syntax is a study of sentence structure. Let me give you an example.
"Tom saw a man with a telescope."
This sentence is grammatically perfect. It's a perfect English. However, there is an ambiguity in this sentence. From this sentence, we cannot say if Tom used a telescope to see the man or he saw a man having a telescope. In syntax, we break down each sentence and find the structure of it. In other words, we try to find rules of structuring a sentence.
Semantics in this part, is a study of sentence meaning. Let me give you another example.
"Do you have a pen?"
This sentence is also grammatically perfect, and it seems that it does not have any ambiguity in it. But let's think with two situations. When you go to primary school, and your teacher asks you "Do you have your bag? Do you have your lunchbox? Do you have your pen?" In this situation, "Do you have a pen?" means "Do you have a pen or not?". It's very simple. You will simply answer yes or no.
Let me give you another situation. Now you're in a classroom, and today is an exam day. It starts in 1 minute. You looked into your pen case, and found that you don't have a pen. You ask the person who is sitting next to you "Do you have a pen?" How will he answer? You'll get mad if he answers "Yes, I have mine. Thanks for confirming." In this case, "Do you have a pen" means, "Can I borrow your pen?"
Sentences change meaning according to the situation. In semantics, especially in pragmatics, we study the meaning of each sentence.
*I thought pragmatics is a part of semantics, but after the presentation, I got a feed back that semantics and pragmatics are different areas. Pragmatics is a study of the sentence meaning according to the situation, while semantics is a study of the sentence meaning without situation.
~Ninth Slide~
So far, we have looked over linguistics. We have phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. These are the basic areas in linguistics, but there are also some areas which are related to linguistics. Let me go over these areas a little bit.
In sociolinguistics we study how languages associate with our society. Over time, our language has been changed with influenced with other languages. Even in one language, one dialect has influenced by other dialects and changed. Study of this change is a part of sociolinguistics.
In psycholinguistics, we study the relationship between our language and our mind. How do we feel when we speak a language, and how it is different from the feeling we have when we speak in another language. This is a part of psycholinguistics field.
And, we also study language acquisition. Actually, this is my major. My major is ESL or EFL, English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, and in that, we study how we learn or acquire our second or foreign language. And, t is closely related to linguistics.
There are some more areas which are related to linguistics, but I didn't include them because I haven't learned them yet.
So, this is a quick and easy over view of linguistics. I hope you all get a better image on linguistics. Thank you.
