without considering to what use these can be put. General linguistics A broad term for investigations which are concerned with the nature of language, procedures of linguistic analysis, etc. Figurative usage is the source of the second meaning of polysemous words.įormalist An adjective referring to linguistic analyses which lay emphasis on relatively abstract conceptions of language structure. at the foot of the mountain where foot is employed figuratively to indicate the bottom of the mountain. An extralinguistic reason for a linguistic feature would be one which is not to be found in the language itself.įigurative Any use of a word in a non-literal sense, e.g. every postulated rule or unit must be justified linguistically by capturing a generalisation about the language being analysed, if not about all languages.Įxtralinguistic Any phenomenon which lies outside of language. Equally all sentences consist of structures from a small set with different words occupying different points in the structures allowing for virtually unlimited variety.Įconomy A principle of linguistic analysis which demands that rules and units are to be kept to a minimum, i.e.
For instance all words consist of combinations of a limited number of sounds, say about 40 in either English or German.
I studied linguistics in London when I was in my twenties.ĭuality of patterning A structural principle of human language whereby larger units consist of smaller building blocks, the number of such blocks being limited but the combinations being almost infinite. This is one of the major structural distinctions introduced by Saussure and which is used to characterise types of linguistic investigation.ĭisplacement One of the key characteristics of human language which enables it to refer to situations which are not here and now, e.g. This can apply to sounds as well, for instance /p/ and /b/ contrast in English as minimal pairs such as pin /pɪn/ : bin /bɪn/ show.Ĭonvention An agreement, usually reached unconsciously by speakers in a community, that relationships are to apply between linguistic items, between these and the outside world or to apply in the use of rules in the grammar of their language.Ĭreativity An accepted feature of human language - deriving from the phenomenon of sentence generation - which accounts for speakers' ability to produce and to understand a theoretically infinite number of sentences.ĭescriptive An approach to linguistics which is concerned with saying what language is like and not what it should be like (prescriptivism).ĭiachronic Refers to language viewed over time and contrasts with synchronic which refers to a point in time. Forms which contrast are called distinctive. the different inflectional forms of verbs contrast in both English and German. The distinction between the two forms arises from the fact that these can occupy one and the same slot in a syntagm, i.e. We are knowing German is not well-formed in English.Ĭontrast A difference between two linguistic items which can be exploited systematically. */sri:n/ is not phonotactically permissible in English 2) the progressive form cannot occur with stative verbs, e.g. The context may determine what elements may be present, in which case one says that there are 'co-occurrence restrictions' for instance 1) /r/ may not occur after /s/ in a syllable in English, e.g. Bear in mind that competence also refers to the ability to judge if a sentence is grammatically well-formed it is an unconscious ability.Ĭontext A term referring to the environment in which an element (sound, word, phrase) occurs. These latter phenomena are entirely within the domain of performance which refers to the process of applying one's competence in the act of speaking. The competence of a speaker is unaffected by such factors as nervousness, temporary loss of memory, speech errors, etc. Other examples are psycholinguistics which is concerned with the psychological and linguistic development of the child.Ĭompetence According to Chomsky in his Aspects of the theory of syntax (1965) this is the abstract ability of an individual to speak the language which he/she has learned as native language in his/her childhood. objects in the outside world.Īreas of linguistics Any of a number of areas of study in which linguistic insights have been brought to bear, for instance sociolinguistics in which scholars study society and the way language is used in it. Applied linguistics The application of insights from theoretical linguistics to practical matters such as language teaching, remedial linguistic therapy, language planning or whatever.Īrbitrariness An essential notion in structural linguistics which denies any necessary relationship between linguistic signs and their referents, e.g.