Assignment Code: MEG-04/ 2021-22

Course Code: MEG-04

Assignment Name: Aspects of Language

Year: 2021-2022

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

Q1. Write short notes on the following: (4 x 5=20)

Q1. i) Langue and parole

Ans) We arrive at the key antagonism between langue and parole by distinguishing between the language system and its concrete expressions. Lungtie refers to a language's system or structure, whereas parole refers to the act of speaking 1n.a language or actual speech. According to Saussure, we should distinguish between the language system - langue and speaking or writing the language - parole within the broader area of linguistic activity.

The following is an explanation of the three-way distinction:

1. larrgage-as a general ability that separates humans from animals.

2. Iarzgue-as has a language structure that includes vocabulary, construction principles, idioms, and pronunciation norms, among other things.

3. parole-as a type of language that can be utilised in a variety of situations, including speech and writing.

   
   

For Saussure, langue is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions adopted by a social body to allow individuals to exercise that faculty: "It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions adopted by a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty." The former implies that it is in the property of the community of speakers, but the latter implies that it is fixed. Parole, on the other hand, is the realm of liberty: "It is a deliberate and intellectual act committed by an individual." The contrast between langue and parole has served as the foundation for all subsequent structuralist language models.

Q1. ii) Types of Negation and its interaction with Scope

Ans) Negation is one of the few linguistic phenomena that appears to be universal in a very simple sense: all human languages have the ability to explicitly "deny the truth of a statement." As a result, it's no surprise that negation has piqued interest in recent linguistics from a variety of angles. The semantics and syntax of sentence negation, particularly the phenomena known as negative concord, were extensively researched in the 1990s. Special instances like as presuppositional negation and expletive negation have sparked some interest.

Negation is a one-place operator in logic that turns a true proposition to a false proposition and a false proposition to a true proposition. Any of the components no, not, -n't, never, neither....nor, nowhere in English grammar, while Scope is a semantic characteristic that specifies the interpretation domain of an expression, such as an adverb or a quantifier, generally in relation to another expression of the same type; scope is resolved at the LF level ( Logical Form).

Negation in English is an interesting subject to research since it has such a large impact on both the structure and the overall meaning of a phrase. The words no, not, and the contraction -n't, as well as the negative indefinite pronouns nothing, nobody, the adjectives no (as in no one or no money), the adverbs nowhere, never, and the conjunctions neither...nor, are all considered negation.

Q1. iii) Code mixing vs code switching

Ans) The differences between code mixing and code switching are as follows:

1. Code switching is a universal language-contact phenomena that occurs when both languages' grammars are active at the same time.

2. Code mixing is another example of a language contact occurrence that does not represent the grammars of the two languages that are being used at the same time.

3. Although the terms code switching and code mixing are sometimes used interchangeably, when used correctly, code switching refers to performance, whereas code mixing refers to (in)competence. Code swapping is intentional, whereas code mixing is not.

4. Because of the language contact, code switching, and code mixing are fairly widespread nowadays. Code switching and mixing are two linguistic strategies that might be thought of as various manifestations of each other.

5. To begin, code switching refers to the capacity to swap or modify elements between languages. In an English discourse, for example, the speaker may switch from English to Spanish. Depending on the function or circumstance.

6. Code mixing, on the other hand, is the process of shifting linguistic units from one code to another. This data is being transferred in order to create a new language interaction code.

Q1. iv) Generative grammar

Ans) Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that views linguistics as the study of an innate grammatical structure that has yet to be discovered. It is a biological or biologistic adaptation of earlier structuralist language ideas, eventually stemming from glossematics. Grammar, according to generative grammar, is a set of rules that generates the exact word combinations that make up grammatical sentences in a given language. In generative grammar, the object is base created within the verb phrase, as opposed to structural and functional models. This ostensibly cognitive structure is hypothesised to be a component of a universal grammar, a syntactic structure created by a human genetic mutation.

To make the NP VP (NP) analysis work in natural language description, generativists have devised a slew of theories. That is, the subject and verb phrase are separate elements, with the object contained within the verb phrase. How to properly analyse Wh-movement and other circumstances where the subject appears to detach the verb from the object remains a major source of concern. Despite the fact that generativists declare it to be a cognitively actual structure, neuroscience has discovered no evidence for it. To put it another way, generative grammar incorporates hypothesised models of language cognition, but there is still no conclusive evidence that they are true.

Q2. Languages enrich and evolve through borrowings. Discuss the various borrowings in English language by giving examples.

Ans) Language borrowing has been an interest to various fields of linguistics for some time. In the study language borrowing, loanwords are only one of the types of borrowings that occur across language boundaries. The speakers of a language have various options when confronted with new items and ideas in another language. The English language has continuously adopted terms from many sources throughout the course of its 1500-year history. The primary reasons for adopting terms from different sources have been contact with foreign civilizations through conquering and cooperation, socio-political conditions, and the desire to convey new concepts.

The numerous foreign borrowings that helped to shape the English lexicon are as follows:

Celtic Borrowings:

The Teutons’ conquest over the Celts led in the mixing of these two races, as well as their languages. The place-names are the most visible consequence of the interaction between these two languages. For example, the Celtic term Canti or Cantion, whose meaning is unclear, gave its name to the Kingdom of Kent. Devonshire, Cornwall, and Cumberland, for example, all have Celtic roots. Even the name London is most likely derived from a Celtic word. In England, not only place names but also hill and river names have Celtic roots. Avon, Dover, Wye, and other Celtic river names have been retained in the names of Avon, Dover, and Wye, among others.

Latin Borrowings:

1. Latin borrowings in the Old English Period

2. Borrowings from the Latin Language during the Middle English Period.

   
   

Borrowings from Latin in the Modern Period:

During the Renaissance, several French terms were redesigned to be more similar to their Latin counterparts. For example, while Chaucer uses the term “describe,” the form describe does not exist until the 16th century. Due to Latin influence, “perfet” and “parfet” also became flawless.

Borrowings from the Greek:

Greek borrowing is often learned in the nature and are found in many disciplines such as poetics (such as comedy, tragedy, disasters, dialogue, peripety, prologue, the stage and many more), natural science ( zoology, bacteriology, botany, histology, physics, etc).and in physics such as (proton, atomic, meson, cyclotron, isotope etc.)

Borrowings From French:

Despite the fact that Latin and Greek effects on English started far earlier than those on French, they remained minor until the Middle Ages. French, on the other hand, had a late start but grew quickly, and by the 13th century, it had infiltrated the English language much more deeply than Latin or Greek. Today, French terms are an integral component of the modern English language. Scholars remind out that these French phrases were “popular words,” while the Latin and Greek ones were more “learned.”

Borrowings from Scandinavia:

The language of the people known as “Danes” in Scandinavia, in addition to Greek, Latin, and French, is the only one that has made a really significant contribution to the English language’s lexicon. It may be extremely difficult to determine if a particular word in Modern English is a native word or a borrowed word since Old English and the language of the Scandinavian invaders are so close to each other. In nouns such as man, wife, father, folk, mother, house, life, winter, and summer; and verbs such as “will,” “can,” “meet,” “bring,” “hear,” “see,” “think,” “smile,” “ride,” and “spin,” as well as adjectives and adverbs such as full, wise, better, best, mine, over, and under, have all their origins related to Scandinavian Borrowings.

Q3. How is inflectional morphology different from derivational morphology? Discuss by giving examples.

Ans) Inflectional morphology is the study of the modification of words to fit into different grammatical contexts whereas the derivational morphology is the study of the formation of new words that differ either in syntactic category or in meaning from their bases. This is the key difference between inflectional and derivational morphology.

A morpheme is the smallest, meaningful, morphological unit in a language. This unit cannot be further divided or analyzed. Inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes are two main types of morphemes. Thus, inflectional and derivational morphology concern the study of these two types of morphemes, respectively.

Inflectional Morphology

Inflectional morphology is the study of the processes that distinguish the forms of words in certain grammatical categories. This includes processes such as affixation and vowel change, which create inflectional morphemes.

An inflectional morpheme is a suffix that’s added to a word to assign a particular grammatical property to that word, such as its number, mood, tense, or possession. However, an inflectional morphology can never change the grammatical category of a word. You can add an inflectional morphology to a verb, noun, adjective, or an adverb. For example, adding a ‘-s’ to the verb plural verb ‘run’ can make this verb singular. Similarly, adding ‘-ed’ to the verb dance creates the past tense of the verb (danced).

Some more examples are as follows:

• Cat à Cats

• Teach à Teaches

• Clean à Cleaned

• Prettyà Prettier

  
  

As evident from the above examples, inflectional morphemes usually produce different forms of the same word, instead of different words. In addition, inflection does not generally change the basic meaning of a word as they only add specifications to a word or emphasize certain aspects of its meaning. Thus, words under inflectional morphology are not found as separate entries in dictionaries.

Derivational Morphology

Derivational morphology is the study of the formation of new words that differ either in syntactic category or in meaning from their bases. Thus, a derivational morpheme is an affix we add to a word in order to create a new word or a new form of a word. Moreover, a derivational morpheme can either change the meaning or the grammatical category of the word. For example,

Change in Meaning:

• Leaf → Leaflet

• Pure →Impure

Change in Grammatical Category:

• Help (verb) → Helper (noun)

• Logic (noun) → Logical (adjective)

As seen from the above examples, derivational morphemes change either the meaning or the category of the original words, forming new words. These words are, thus, found under new entries in dictionaries.

Difference between Inflectional and Derivational Morphology

Inflectional morphology is the study of the modification of words to fit into different grammatical contexts whereas derivational morphology is the study of the formation of new words that differ either in syntactic category or in meaning from their bases. Therefore, this is the principle difference between inflectional and derivational morphology.

Moreover, in usage, the difference between inflectional and derivational morphology is that the inflectional morphemes are affixes that merely serve as grammatical markers and indicate some grammatical information about a word whereas derivational morphemes are affixes that are capable of either changing the meaning or the grammatical category of the word.

Besides, the key difference between inflectional and derivational morphology is that while inflectional morphemes create new forms of the same word, derivational morphemes create new words.

Q4. Discuss case, thematic roles and theta theory by citing relevant examples?

Ans) The comprehension of NP situations is critical to the comprehension of semantic characteristics and rules. Because 'he' is the subject, 'HE' is in nominative case in the line "He is intelligent."

The Notion of a Thematic Role

You're probably unfamiliar with the concept of thematic roles or thematic relationships. In some ways, thematic roles are closer to the actual meanings of noun phrases than grammatical functions or Cases. Consider the following pair of lines to demonstrate what we mean by thematic roles:

• The door opened.

• The security guard opened the door.

The noun phrase the door is the subject in sentence (a), yet it is the direct object in sentence (b). The entity that is most immediately affected by the action of opening is the same in both statements. As a result, in both (a) and (b), the door has the thematic role THEME (often called PATIENT), whereas the noun phrase the security guard in (b) has the thematic role AGENT, as the creature that knowingly executes the action of opening the door.

EXPERIENCER, INSTRUMENT, GOAL, BENEFICIARY/RECIPIENT, SOURCE, and LOCATION are some of the other theme roles. The lexical items (roughly, separate "dictionary words") used in a given language are believed to be listed as discrete lexical entries in a big Lexicon for the language in generative grammar. The thematic roles borne by the subject, direct object,..., etc. are indicated in each individual lexical entry for many of these lexical items, especially verbs.

Thematic Role and the Theta Theory

Theta Theory (sometimes spelled as "θ - theory") is the component of generative grammar that deals only with theme roles: thematic roles are also known as θ = roles or theta roles for short.

Thematic Roles and Case

As you can see, there is a lot of overlap between certain Cases and thematic roles: for example, an argument NP in the Nominative Case typically has the thematic role AGENT or EXPERIENCER, whereas an argument NP in the Accusative Case that is not a prepositional object typically has the thematic role TI-IEME (or PATIENT), and an argument NP that is the object of a preposition like in or on typically has the thematic role The match between Cases and thematic roles, on the other hand, isn't always ideal. Argument NPs, for example, can have the same thematic role but different Cases, as shown in the following set of sentences:

• They often like amusing toys.

• Amusing toys are often liked by them.

The subject pronoun they in (a) is in the Nominative Case -form, whereas the object of the preposition by pronoun them in (b) is in the Accusative Case -form; yet, they have the same theta role, that of EXPERIENCER, in both phrases.

Q5. Fill in the blank spaces in the following sentences:

1. A consonant during the articulation of which the vocal cords vibrate is called a ________________ consonant.

Ans) voiced

2. A consonant during the articulation of which there is no velic opening or the oral cavity is closed then it is called a ____________________ consonant.

Ans) voiceless

3. The difference between a plosive and an affricate is that during the articulation of plosives the release of air is __________________ and during the articulation of affricates the release is __________________.

Ans) blocked, open

4. Allophones are __________________of the same __________________.

Ans) sounds, set of sounds

5. Vowels are more _________________ than consonants. There is little or no __________________in the production of vowels.

Ans) sounds, construction

6. ________________ is a sound which is present in your mother tongue but not in English. (use IPA to indicate the sound)

Ans) Jargon

7. __________ is a voiceless bilabial plosive and ___________ is a voiced alveolar lateral phoneme in English. (use IPA to indicate the phoneme)

Ans) The voiceless bilabial plosive is represented by the IPA symbol /p/.

The voiced alveolar lateral phoneme is represented by the IPA symbol /l/.

8. A speech sound which patterns like a consonant but is phonetically a brief vowel such as /w/ in win is called a _____________.

Ans) syllabic speech sound

9. Fricatives are produced by a ________________ in the vocal tract so as to ______________.

Ans) blissing, produces sound

10. The _______________ vowels serve as points of reference for identifying real vowels in actual languages.

Ans) cardinal