General linguistics/Almen sprogvidenskab

SDU ENGELSK OG AMERIKANSKE
STUDIER
Hand out: 17. December kl. 9.00 – via Blackboard
Hand in: 17. December kl. 12.00 – via Blackboard
General linguistics/Almen sprogvidenskab
Winter 2019/2020

Part I: Fundamentals of Linguistics
1. Are language sounds or letters iconic or symbolic? Is it always a simple distinction? Explain
and provide examples.
Sounds are both ionic and symbolic. According to Tian et al., (2015), words are grouped in this two
forms to bear meanings. For instance, the front vowels E, I, YU are used to depict tender subjects
while back vowels such as O, U, and Y are used to describe things that may cause fear such as
anger, pain, envy, and sorrow. The researcher adds that sign is arbitrary to covey the meaning of
sound which brings the aspects of symbolism in sounds. He argues that the type of sounds that we
use to refer to different aspects could be the same but the difference is created by the symbols used.
This is based by the consensus agreed upon by the speakers. Finally, the researchers adds that, since
words are used arbitrary, they can have meanings in relation to others which brings about Iconism
in sounds. These ideas have been permeated to the study of words since the 19th century. There are
different forms of symbolism that are used to describe languages. The first form of symbolism is
Onomatopoeia. This is the imitative attribute of sound that suggest that somethings makes sound
such as ‘Whoosh’, ‘Bang’, and ‘Crash’. Clustering is the second form of symbolism. This involves
grouping together words that share certain factors in common. For instance, words that start with
same prefix or end with the same prefix can be grouped together. Words can also be grouped
together according to their meanings. On the other hand, iconsims becomes apparent when same or
referent words are compared. This involves analyzing a group of words that have the same meaning
but have different sounds. For instance, 'stamp', 'stomp', 'tamp', 'tromp', 'tramp', and 'step'. The /m/
which appears before the /p/ make the sound more powerful and in most cases audience will focus
on the sound rather than the meaning of the words. This type of iconim is used across all words.
Finally, this is not always a simple distinction since words differ in meaning and pronunciation
depending on the context that they are used.
2. Using linguistic terminology, explain briefly the following linguistic concepts and provide
an example of each:

In linguistics, the term complementary distribution refers to the relationship between two or
different elements of the same kind. However, in this case, one element is found in set of
environment while the other one is found in a non-intersecting or complimentary set of
environments. On the other hand, free variation is the relation between two phones. In this
case, the phones may substitute each other in the same environment without causing any
change in their meanings. The phones are interchangeable. Free variation mainly occurs due to
phonemes and allophones.
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is usually the elementary unit of morphosyntax. It only
appears as part of larger expressions. On the other hand, a free morpheme stands alone. In a
nutshell, it’s a type of free form morpheme.
Lastly, according to linguistics, inflectional morphemes never change the grammatical
category (part of speech) of a word. However, derivational morphemes often change the part
of speech of a word. Thus, the verb read becomes the noun reader when we add the
derivational morpheme -er. It is simply that read is a verb, but reader is a noun.
3. Below you find two language samples that demonstrate typical lexical processes.
A. This sample consists of four examples of Savosavo (a Papuan language).
In this sample, two lexical processes are of interest. Describe the two processes briefly and how
they function in Savosavo.
There are aspects of lexical processing which are specific to certain languages. They convey
more meaning than written words. For instance, most alphabetically written scripts tend to be
physical, hence altering their meanings is quite difficulty. Even after the words have been
separated within a sentence, their meanings still relation unchanged since boundaries to such
meanings are not defined. Therefore, in the recognition of spoken words there is no guarantee
that the sensory information being processed corresponds to a whole word. In fact the one may
process the beginning of a word while in real sense it’s the end of another word. This is known
as compounding. For instance, in the following Savosavo language based words, elu elu which
means to gather Ngali nuts in the Savosavo language, outlines that the words Ngali Nuts and