GENERAL LINGUISTICS

DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS

Lecturer : Dr. Dwi Haryanti

Arranged by:

Novi Fitri Puspitasari

S200130048

MAGISTER OF LANGUAGE STUDIES

MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA

2015

DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS

Novi Fitri Puspitasari

S200130048

Graduate Program of Language Study, Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta, 2015, Surakarta novifitripuspitasari0808@gmail.comAbstract

Language is one of the most important and characteristic forms of human behavior. Language cannot be separated from humans live because it is used to connect society. One approach has, however, received little attention until very recently: descriptive linguistics. Descriptive linguistics provides analyses of the grammars of languages. In defining classes and assigning rules in language based on a structural analysis of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantic of a language, it proceeds objectively, showing how important features of language in relation to each other. The aim of this paper is to understand more about the descriptive linguistics and about how phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantic become the key to know how language works. Because of it, the writer has an eager to know why the descriptive linguistics is crucial in human behavior as it used to connect in the society. Keywords: descriptive linguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semanticA. Introduction

Language cannot be separated from humans live because it is used to connect society. People can also describe their ideas, feelings, and desire to other people using the language. Siahaan (2008:3) states that language is a unique human inheritance that plays the very important role in humans live, such as in thinking, communicating ideas, and negotiating with the others. One approach has, however, received little attention until very recently: descriptive linguistics.In writing this paper, the writer sees that descriptive linguistics is one of the important aspects in the linguistics field. Descriptive linguistics itself is a discipline in which the principles of linguistics, or the scientific study of language, are presented through description of one language. It is a required course for many disciplines, in that it combines understanding of the technical materials of language (phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantic, etc.) with critical thinking skills that are universally appreciated.

Descriptive linguistics aims to provide an understanding of language by analyzing it in its various uses. Descriptive linguists deal with one language at a time, such as contemporary English, Chinese, or Japanese (Lehmann, 1976:15). The aim of this paper is to understand more about the descriptive linguistics and about how phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantic become the key to know how language works. Because of it, the writer has an eager to know why the descriptive linguistics is crucial in human behavior as it used to connect in the society.

B. Descriptive Linguistics

Descriptive linguistics is one of the branches of micro linguistics that study on how to describe the language as it is at a certain time. Descriptive linguistics provides analyses of the grammars of languages. It also means by the study of how language is constructed. For example, the writer wants to go to China and people there instead of English, Chinese people usually speak Mandarin, so the writer needs to know about Mandarin so that the writer can understand what the Chinese people are talking about. According to Gleason (1961:11),

Using the phoneme and the morpheme as their basic units, linguists have been able to build a comprehensive theory of the expression side of language, and to make detailed and comprehensive statements about the expression systems of specific languages. This is what is ordinarily called descriptive linguistics.

Descriptive linguistics can be divided into four parts; phonetic and phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantic.1. Phonetics and PhonologyPhonetics and phonology are related, dependent fields for studying aspects of language. Phonetics is the study of sound in speech; phonology is the study (and use) of sound patterns to create meaning. Phonetics focuses on how speech is physically created and received, including study of the human vocal and auditory tracts, acoustics, and neurology. Phonology relies on phonetic information for its practice, but focuses on how patterns in both speech and non-verbal communication create meaning, and how such patterns are interpreted. Phonology includes comparative linguistic studies of how cognates, sounds, and meaning are transmitted among and between human communities and languages.

According to Hayes (2007:2), phonetics studies speech sounds in ways that are close to speech stream, focusing on production, acoustics, and perception. Phonetics is the study of actual sounds of human languages, their production and their perception. According to Weda (2012:23), one of things that everybody knows about language is that they have different accents. Languages have different accents: they are pronounced differently by people from different geographical places, from different social classes of different ages and different educational background (Roach, 1987:4). Phonology is simply the study of how the sounds in a language are used. Poole (1999:55) stated that phonology is concerned with which sounds a language uses and how it arranges them. It is concerned with the contribution of sounds to the task of communication. The difference is very important though often enough it is not evident whether a phenomenon is phonetic in nature or phonological. The field of phonetics is a multiple layered subject of linguistics that focuses on speech. In the case of oral languages there are three basic areas of study: Articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds by the articulatory and vocal tract by the speaker Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical transmission of speech sounds from the speaker to the listener Auditory phonetics: the study of the reception and perception of speech sounds by the listener

Phonology concerns itself with systems of phonemes, abstract cognitive units of speech sound or sign which distinguish the words of a language. Phonetics, on the other hand, concerns itself with the production, transmission, and perception of the physical phenomena which are abstracted in the mind to constitute these speech sounds or signs.1.1. IPA

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). In principle this alphabet is designed to give an accurate written transcription of sounds, one that is uniform for all languages. Since the IPA is an international standard, it is vital that one understands how it works (and can read or write using it). The complete set of symbols is rather complex, but luckily one does not have to know all of it (Kracht, 2003:13-14).Figure 1. The International Phonetic Alphabet (Consonant)

Figure 2. IPA consonant column labels.

Figure 3. IPA consonant row labels

Vowels:A speech sound created by the relatively free passage of breath through the larynx and oral cavity, usually forming the most prominent and central sound of a syllable. Vowels are distinguished on the basis of Height and Backness. The IPA diagram resembles the place of articulation of the vowels.

Figure 4. The International Phonetic Alphabet (Vowel)

Figure 5. IPA vowel row and column labels

1.2. The Phoneme

Phonology also takes a look at the rather abstract concept of a phoneme. A phoneme of a language or dialect is an abstraction of a speech sound or of a group of different sounds which are all perceived to have the same function by speakers of that particular language or dialect. Kenneth L.Phoneme is a sound or set of sounds that makes a difference in the meaning of a language. For example, the English word "through" consists of three phonemes: the initial "th" sound, the "r" sound, and an "oo" vowel sound. Notice that the phonemes in this and many other English words do not always correspond directly to the letters used to spell them. According to Gleason (1961:14), the first step studying any spoken language is to determine the phonemes. When speaking of phonemes, it's important to note that they do not stand alone as words. They are simply sounds that have no meaning on their own. For instance, the phoneme 'sh' in English has no meaning on its own. However, stick it in front of the letters 'oes' and you have the word 'shoes.'The phoneme paradigm constituting the phonological system of a given language makes part of the native speaker's competence. It makes it possible for him to expect certain types of constructions and recognize certain physical differences of sounds (Sajavaara, 2001:243).1.3. Phones and allophonesAccording to Yule (2006:45), phones are phonetic units and appear in square brackets. According to Radford (2009:77) said that the two variants [p ph] of the phoneme /p/ are allophones of the phoneme. In other words a phoneme may be realised by more than one speech sound and the selection of each variant is usually conditioned by the phonetic environment of the phoneme. The term allophone is based on Greek expression meaning different sound. For example:

1.4. Minimal pairs and setsPhonemic distinctions in a language can be tested via pairs and sets of words. When two word such as pat and bat are identical in form expect for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position the words are described as a minimal pair. Minimal pair is a set of two distinct words differing in only a single sound. The difference is only the stop but the speech environment is identical. Gleason (1961:18) also stated that it will be necessary to mark them as representations of phonemes, by enclosing phoneme symbols in / / (e.g. /t/ till, /d/ dill, /b/ bill, /p/ pill). A minimal set is when a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme (always in the same position in the word) (Yule, 2006:46). For example, one minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English could include feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot, and another minimal set based on consonant phonemes could have big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig.2. Morphology. Morphology is the study of how sound sequences have meaning. In other words, it's the study of how different languages give meaning to individual sounds or phonemes. 2.1. Morpheme Morley (2000:151) stated that the basic unit of grammatical meaning is the morpheme. It is the element, therefore, that is involved in the study of word composition/structure (e.g. prize; be, 1 morpheme; train/s; teach/er, 2 morphemes). According to Yule (2006:63) the definition of a morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. Units of grammatical function include forms used to indicate past tense or plural. For example, in the sentence The police reopened the investigation, the word reopened consists of three morphemes. One minimal unit of meaning is open, another minimal unit of meaning is re-(meaning again) and a minimal unit of grammatical function is ed (indicating past tense). The writer likes to remember it by just thinking it's how different morph together to make meaning sounds. With this in mind, a morph is the smallest unit of sound that has meaning. According to Kracht (2003:79), the first to notice is that words come in different classes. For example, there are verbs (/to imagine/) and there are nouns (/a car/), there are adverbs (/slowly/) and adjectives (/red/). From a morphological point of view, the three are distinct in the following way. Verbs take the endings /s/, /ed/, and /ing/, nouns only take the ending /s/. Adjectives and adverbs on the other hand do not change.According to Poole (1999:75), allomorph is the plural of morphemes. Thus morpheme may have different phonetic realisations. For example, /s/, /z/ and /iz/ are in complementary distribution.2.2. Free and bound morphemesIn morphology a basic word is defined as a free morpheme and the morpheme into the basic word it is attached is called as a bound morpheme (Siahaan, 2008:12). According to Yule (2006:63), there are free morphemes, that is, morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words and also bound morphemes, which are those forms that cannot stand alone and are typically attached to another form. For example, open and tour are free morphemes and re-, -ist, -ed, -s are bound morphemes. The broadest and most comprehensive classes of morphemes in English are roots and affixes. All affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English are bound morphemes (Gleason, 1961:58). For example, walk, talk, follow,etc are roots and ed, -s, -ing, etc are affixes. Two different types of affixes are prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are affixes which precede the root with which they are most closely associated. Suffixes are affixes which follow the root with which they are most closely associated (Gleason, 1961:59). For example, /in-/ in incomplete for prefixes and /-i/ in boyish for suffixes. The free morphemes can generally be identified as the set of separate English word forms such as basic nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc (Yule, 2006:63). When using free morphemes with bound morphemes attached are known as stems. For example:CarelessneesCare -less -ness Stem suffix suffix

(free) (bound) (bound)2.3. Lexical and functional morphemesFree morphemes fall into two categories; lexical morphemes and functional morphemes. Yule (2006:64) said that lexical morphemes is that set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs that people think of as the words that carry the content of the message people convey, and other types are called functional morphemes. The some examples of lexical morphemes are: girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow, sincere, open, look, follow, break. Some examples of functional morphemes are: and, but, when, because, in, near, above, in, the, that, it, them. So functional morphemes is a set consists largely of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns (Yule, 2006:64).2.4. Derivation and inflectional morphemesLehmann (1976:125) stated that,

In some languages parts of words belonging to one class, such as nouns or verbs, may be modified consistently according to sets. In English, for example, verbs may be modified by the addition of a suffix in the third singular present, for example, sees; by a change in the stem in the past, for example, saw; or by the addition of a suffix in the past participle, for example, seen, and in the gerund, for example, seeing. In this way English verb consists of sets of five forms, often called the infinitive; the third singular present, the past, the past participle, and the gerund.

Besides free morphemes, bound morphemes can also be divided into two types; derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes. According to Yule (2006:64), derivational morphemes are to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from the stem. For example, the addition of the derivational morpheme ness changes the adjective good to the noun goodness. And inflectional morphemes are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word (Yule, 2006:64). For example,

Jims two sisters are really different.

One likes to have fun and is always laughing.

The other liked to read as a child and has always taken things seriously.

One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quitter than a mouse.For example above, the writer can see that two of the inflections, -s (possessive) and s (plural), are attached to nouns. There are four inflection attached to verbs, -s (3rd person singular), -ing (present participle), -ed (past tense) and en (past participle). There are two inflections attached to adjectives:-est (superlative) and er (comparative). In English, all the inflectional morphemes are suffixes (Yule, 2006:65).2.5. Morphological descriptionThe writer can now take most sentences of English apart and list all the elements. For example, in sentence The childs wildness shocked the teachers, the writer can identify eleven morphemes.

The

child

-s wild

-ness

Functionallexical

inflectionallexical

derivational

shock

-ed

the

teach

-er

lexical

inflectionalfunctionallexical

derivational

-s

Inflectional

Morphology is intimately related to syntax. For everything that is larger than a word is the domain of syntax. So, the next topic is syntax.3. SyntaxWhen people concentrate on the structure and ordering of components within a sentence, they are studying the syntax. The word syntax comes originally from Greek and literally means a putting together or arrangement (Yule, 2006:86). Syntax determines how the chosen words are used to form a sentence. Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages" is the first sentence of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures. The study of syntax is a branch of the field of linguistics, which has as its main goal a characterization of human language. 3.1. Generative grammarYule (2006:87) stated that the mathematical perspective helps to explain the meaning of the term generative, which is used to describe this type of grammar. In basic algebra, there is an expression such as 3x + 2y, and give x and y the value of any whole number, then that simple algebraic expression can generate an endless set of values by following the simple rules of arithmetic. When x = 5 and y = 10, then the result is 35. The endless set of such results is generated by the operation of the rules. Such a set of explicit rules is generative grammar (Yule, 2006:87). Productivity of language is phrase structure rules and transformational rules.3.2. Syntactic structureA generative grammar defines the syntactic structure of a language. Yule (2006:87) said that the grammar will generate all the well-formed syntactic structure (e.g. sentence) of the language and will not generate any ill-formed structures. This has been called the all and only criterion, that is, all grammatical sentence and only the grammatical sentences will be produced.

3.3. Deep and surface structure

The deep structure is an abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining structural interpretation.

Sentences that have alternative interpretation

Sentences that have different surface forms but have the same underlying means

Surface structure means how the sentence is actually represented. For example:

Charlie broke the window.

The window was broken by Charlie.

Charlie who broke the window.

Was the window broken by Charlie?

From the example above they have difference in their surface structure, means difference in syntactic forms. But they have the same deep or underlying structure.

3.4. Structural ambiguity

How superficially similar sentences are different? It is multiple meanings. E.g. Annie whacked the man with an umbrella. Same surface structure but different deep structure. E.g. The boy saw the man with a telescope. The question is what is the scope of with the telescope? Does it modify only the man or does it modify saw the man?Structural ambiguity (1)

Structural ambiguity (2)

3.5. Recursion

Rules can be applied more than once in generating sentence. E.g. repeat prepositional phrase more than once. The gun was on the table near the window in the bedroom in the pink house. And put sentences inside sentences. This is the cat that ate the rat that ate the cheese that was sold by the man that lived in the city that was on the river .. No end to recursion-produce longer complex sentences.

3.6. Phrase structure rulesAccording to Yule (2006:91), phrase structure rules is the structure of phrase of a specific type will consist of one or more constituents in a particular order. Some words seem to belong together. For example, {The crazy man} {is jumping off the bridge}. Groups of words that belong together are called constituents. The component that determines the properties of the constituent is the head, and the constituent can be referred ro as a phrase (e.g. noun phrase).Yule (2006:92) said that,

The first rule in the following simple phrase structure rules stated that a sentence rewrites a noun phrase and a verb phrase. The second rules stated that a noun phrase rewrites as an article, an optional adjective and a noun or a pronoun or a proper noun.

S NP VPNP {Art (Adj) N, Pro, PN}

VP V NP (PP) (Adv)

PP Prep NP3.7. Lexical rules

Phrase structure rules generate structures. In order to turn those structures into recognizable English, lexical rules will be needed. It specifies which words can be used when we rewrite constituents such as N (Yule, 2006:92). The first rule in the following set states that a proper noun rewrites as Mary or George. Example in Yule (2006:92-93):

People can rely on these rules to generate the grammatical sentences 1-7 below, but not the ungrammatical sentences 8-10.

As a way of visualizing how the phrase structure rules form the basis of these sentences, can be draw the tree diagram for sentence 7.

3.8. Complement phrases

The word that as used in this example John believed that Catchy knew that Mary helped George, is called a complementizer (C). The role of that as a complementizer is to introduce a complement phrase (CP) (Yule, 2006:93). For example in the sentence Catchy knew that Mary helped George, the writer can identify one CP which contains that plus Mary helped George. It is obviously that Mary helped George is a sentence (S). So, the writer now in a position to define a CP in the following way: a complement phrase rewrites as a complementizer and a sentence, or CPC S. The writer can also see from the same sentence that the complement phrase (CP) comes after a verb (V) knew. This means that it is using the CP as part of a verb phrase (VP), as in knew that Mary helped George. So, there must be another rule that says: a verb phrase rewrites as a verb and complement phrase, or VPV CP (Yule, 2006:94).

3.9. Transformational rules

Phrase structure rules represent deep structure- always generates structures with fixed word order. Mary saw George recently Recently Mary saw George Transformational rules means take a specific part and attach it in another place. You will help Cathy Will you help Cathy?

4. Semantic

Semantics (as the study of meaning) is central to the study of communication. Semantics is also at the centre of the study of the human mind. Semantic is the study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. Semantics as one branch of linguistics parallels to and interact with syntax and phonology. If syntax and phonology study the structure of expressive possibilities in language, semantics studies the meanings that can be expressed. So, semantics is a fruitful and exciting point of departure of the current discussion. To understand language:

The meaning of words and the morphemes that compose them.

Words into phrases and sentences

Context in which determines the meaning (Pragmatics).

Lexical semantics is words and meaning relationship among words). Phrasal/ sentential semantics is syntactic units larger than a word). What a speaker conventionally means (objective or general meaning) not what he is trying to say (subjective or local meaning). Three types of semantic analysis:

Words as containers Semantic features roles they fulfill Semantic roles relationship with other words lexical relation4.1. Semantic features

Syntactically correct sentences but semantically odd.

The hamburger ate the man.My cat studies linguistics.The table listens to the radioThis relates to the conceptual components of the words hamburger, cat & table not human.

4.2. Semantic roles

Words are described according to the roles they fulfill with the situation described in a sentence.

The boy kicked the ball

Verb indicates action

Boy performs the action= agent Ball undergoes the action= themeThe NPs describe the role of entities (people or things) involved in the action, i.e. they have certain semantic (or thematic) roles.

Agent= the entity that performs the action

Theme= the entity that undergoes the action

Experiencer= one who perceives something

Instrument= an entity used to perform an action

Location= the place where the action happens

Source= the place from which an action originates

Goal= the place where the action is directed

John is writing with a penagent

instrument

Mary saw a mosquito on the wallexperiencer themelocationThe children ran from the playground to the poolagent

source goal

4.3. Lexical relation

Analysis in terms of lexical relations- explain the meaning in terms of the relationship with other words Synonymy: words that have the same meanings or that are closely related in meaning

Antonymy: words that are opposites in meaning, e.g. hot & cold.

Hyponymy: Words whose meanings are specific instances of a more general word, i.e. one thing is included (kind of) in another thing. E.g. cats and dogs are hyponyms of the word animal.

Prototype: Characteristic instance. E.g. furniture chair is a better example than bench or stool.

Homonymy: A word which has two or more entirely distinct (unrelated) meanings. E.g. Race: contest of speed or ethnic group

Homophony: Different words pronounced the same but spelled differently. E.g. two, to and too.

Polysemy: A word which has multiple meanings related by extension. E.g. bright: shining ; intelligent

Metonymy is "a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something." A short definition is "part for whole." E.g.,

He drank the whole bottle. (container-content)The White House announced. (king-crown)I gave her a hand. (whole-part)A word substituted for another word with which it is closely associated e.g. bottle is used for water.C. Conclusion

Descriptive linguistics is the study how language is constructed. Descriptive linguistics can be divided into four parts; phonetic and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic, and pragmatic.Phonetics focuses on how speech is physically created and received, including study of the human vocal and auditory tracts, acoustics, and neurology. Phonology is the study of how the sounds in a language are used. A phoneme is a sound or set sounds that makes a difference in the meaning of a language. Morphology is study of how sound sequences have meaning. With this, a morph is the smallest unit of sound that has meaning. Syntax is the way in which are arranged to form sentences and phrases. The last is semantic. Semantic is the study of meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.References

Gleason, Henry Allan. 1961. An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Siahaan, Sanggam. 2008. Issues in Lingusitics. Graha Ilmu, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Weda, Sukardi. 2012. Stress Shifts of English Utterances Made by Indonesian Speakers of English (ISE). http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijel/article/view/18221/12086 Accessed at 12.21 a.m. March, 22th 2015Roach, Peter. 1987. English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sajavaara, Kari. 2001. Finnish-English Phonetics and Phonology. IJES, vol. I, 2001, pp. 241-256. http://revistas.um.es/ijes/article/download/47781/45771. Accessed at 5.26 p.m. March, 22th, 2015

Morley, G. David. 2000. Syntax in Functional Grammar: An introduction to lexicogrammar in systemic linguistics. Continuum, London

Poole, Stuart C. 1999. An Introduction to Linguistics. Palgrave Publisher Ltd., New YorkLehmann, Winfred Philipp. 1976. Descriptive Linguistics. Random House Inc., Canada, TorontoYule, George. 2006. The Study of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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