1

المرجع الالكتروني للمعلوماتية

Grammar

Tenses

Present

Present Simple

Present Continuous

Present Perfect

Present Perfect Continuous

Past

Past Continuous

Past Perfect

Past Perfect Continuous

Past Simple

Future

Future Simple

Future Continuous

Future Perfect

Future Perfect Continuous

Passive and Active

Parts Of Speech

Nouns

Countable and uncountable nouns

Verbal nouns

Singular and Plural nouns

Proper nouns

Nouns gender

Nouns definition

Concrete nouns

Abstract nouns

Common nouns

Collective nouns

Definition Of Nouns

Verbs

Stative and dynamic verbs

Finite and nonfinite verbs

To be verbs

Transitive and intransitive verbs

Auxiliary verbs

Modal verbs

Regular and irregular verbs

Action verbs

Adverbs

Relative adverbs

Interrogative adverbs

Adverbs of time

Adverbs of place

Adverbs of reason

Adverbs of quantity

Adverbs of manner

Adverbs of frequency

Adverbs of affirmation

Adjectives

Quantitative adjective

Proper adjective

Possessive adjective

Numeral adjective

Interrogative adjective

Distributive adjective

Descriptive adjective

Demonstrative adjective

Pronouns

Subject pronoun

Relative pronoun

Reflexive pronoun

Reciprocal pronoun

Possessive pronoun

Personal pronoun

Interrogative pronoun

Indefinite pronoun

Emphatic pronoun

Distributive pronoun

Demonstrative pronoun

Pre Position

Preposition by function

Time preposition

Reason preposition

Possession preposition

Place preposition

Phrases preposition

Origin preposition

Measure preposition

Direction preposition

Contrast preposition

Agent preposition

Preposition by construction

Simple preposition

Phrase preposition

Double preposition

Compound preposition

Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunction

Correlative conjunction

Coordinating conjunction

Conjunctive adverbs

Interjections

Express calling interjection

Grammar Rules

Preference

Requests and offers

wishes

Be used to

Some and any

Could have done

Describing people

Giving advices

Possession

Comparative and superlative

Giving Reason

Making Suggestions

Apologizing

Forming questions

Since and for

Directions

Obligation

Adverbials

invitation

Articles

Imaginary condition

Zero conditional

First conditional

Second conditional

Third conditional

Reported speech

Linguistics

Phonetics

Phonology

Semantics

Pragmatics

Linguistics fields

Syntax

Morphology

Semantics

pragmatics

History

Writing

Grammar

Phonetics and Phonology

Reading Comprehension

Elementary

Intermediate

Advanced

English Language : Linguistics : Phonetics :

The science of language

المؤلف:  David Hornsby

المصدر:  Linguistics A complete introduction

الجزء والصفحة:  2-1

2023-12-08

471

The science of language

It makes sense to start by asking what the term linguistics actually means. The following definition is taken from Collins English Dictionary:

Linguistics, n. (functioning as sing.) The scientific study of language’

As a working definition, ‘scientific study of language’ will probably do, but the word ‘scientific’ might appear problematic in this context, because language doesn’t seem to belong to the realm of science in its conventional sense. One certainly doesn’t imagine linguists in laboratories wearing white coats, and it isn’t immediately obvious how one could undertake experiments on language, something that resides ultimately in the head of a native speaker.

 

It might help if we construe ‘scientific’ here to mean something like ‘objective’, but achieving ‘objectivity’ in linguistics is far from a straightforward task, not least because speakers’ judgements about the same data can differ hugely, making reliable conclusions difficult to draw. For example, while most British English speakers would probably reject the sentence ‘I didn’t do it though but’, it’s perfectly acceptable in some British dialects. Likewise, many English speakers accept ‘innit?’ as a contraction of ‘isn't it?’ but reject it (often vehemently) as a tag question in sentences like: ‘We’re seeing him on Saturday, innit?’ – now commonly used in some varieties of British English. Even for a question as apparently innocuous as ‘Do you speak language X?’, native speaker intuitions may be contradictory or difficult to interpret: responses may be influenced by informants’ attitudes to the language in question (‘Do I approve of X, or even think of it as a proper language? Would I want people to think I use it?’) or to their understanding of the question, which might range from: ‘Do I speak this language every day?’ to ‘Can I understand it, even if I don’t speak it?’, or even ‘Can I manage a few words if the need arises?’ So linguists need to be especially careful when claiming ‘scientific’ objectivity for their findings.

To approach their subject matter objectively, linguists need first to shed a number of everyday assumptions, or ‘language myths’: we’ll be looking at some of these below. The good news is that learning to think like a linguist isn’t difficult: in a real sense, it’s a bit like releasing your inner child, as we’ll see later. A further piece of good news is that, as a native speaker of any language, you’re already in possession of some ‘expert knowledge’! But before you start, you need to grasp two fundamental principles that underpin everything linguists do and that go some way to explaining what ‘scientific’ means for the study of language.

EN

تصفح الموقع بالشكل العمودي