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English Linguistics |
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Diachronic Linguistics
Diachronic linguistics recognizes four stages of English: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and present-day English. Although this division is somewhat arbitrary and idealized, each of these stages is characterized by certain phonological, morphological and syntactic features peculiar to the epoch, whereas the next stage shows distinct changes in these features. Language change comes about through gradual and continuous processes which transform one stage into another.
For research on present-day English, it is not necessary to have active command of these language stages, since their study in Bayreuth will only have introductory character. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that the historical study of English can be useful to explain synchronic irregularities. On the one hand, the student will gain easier access to the medium in which English literature is transmitted; on the other hand, s/he will gain interesting insights into cultural history. Students of English are likely to come across the fact that the English equivalents of German words with initial pf or z have p and t. This can be traced back to the so-called High Germanic sound shift, when p changed to pf and t to z. That is why English pepper and German Pfeffer are related, and English town corresponds to German Zaun.
Synchronic Linguistics
In Bayreuth, synchronic linguistics is given greater emphasis than diachronic linguistics. Synchronic linguistics examines all aspects of linguistic communication as well as the rules that are known to and used by all members of a language community.
The traditional areas of synchronic linguistics taught in Bayreuth are phonetics, which deals with the physical aspects of sounds (their formation in the speaker's mouth, their acoustic qualities, and their perception by the listener), and phonology, which describes the phonological system of distinctive sounds common to all members of a speech community. Morphology, which is concerned with the structure of words, and syntax, which focuses on a language's sentence patterns, are also taught in Bayreuth.
Greater emphasis, however, is placed on the other modern areas of synchronic linguistics. These are pragmatics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, and the branch of synchronic linguistics that deals with the varieties of English. Furthermore, corpus linguistics has a major significance.
Whereas phonology, morphology, and syntax study the system of language, the other areas mentioned focus on the use of language in concrete situations. They recognize that texts, written or spoken, cannot be adequately described in linguistic terms without considering speaker, listener, and context.
Pragmatics investigates a linguistic utterance as a communicative action. It can be aptly described by John Austin's statement "To say something is to do something." In contrast to semantics, which studies the meaning of words and sentences without focusing on the extra-linguistic situation, pragmatics considers a statement's specific meaning and effect in a particular language situation. Thus, an important part of pragmatics is the analysis of conversations and, in addition, the attempt to decode the norms and rules guiding us when we encode and try to understand meanings that are related to context.
Another aspect of pragmatics is the comparative study of communicative conventions in different societies, e.g., ways to express politeness. What is considered polite in German could be regarded as impolite in English.
Sociolinguistics studies the influence of social variables on language usage. Social variables are, for instance, socioeconomic or ethnic group, age or sex. Isoglosses as used in dialectology are replaced by a social stratification profile of the kind developed by William Labov in examining the pronunciation of /r/ in words like hard or car in New York City.
In the United States, the pronunciation of postvocalic /r/ at the end of a word and before consonants (e.g., in far, dark) is national standard, its absence being a regional dialect feature around New York City. Labov observed that the upper classes kept to the national standard, while the lower classes used the regional dialect. This was complemented by a gender distinction: lower-middle-class women took their orientation from the higher social strata, while men took theirs from the lower social strata.
Text linguistics or discourse analysis deals with the question of how single words and sentences combine to form texts, and what linguistic elements are responsible for a text's constitution. It starts from the premise that not every arbitrary stringing together of single remarks will result in a complete text. This means that written and spoken texts cannot simply be described as chains of sentences, but are structured in a more complex way.
Text linguistics is concerned with adequate formal combinations of individual text elements, which make up what is called cohesion. This can be achieved by using adverbs, conjunctions, and pronouns. Moreover, text linguistics examines the general logical connection within a text, which is called coherence.
An example of a seminar dealing with this topic is:
In contrast, corpus linguistics is no specific discipline of linguistics but a particular method that can be used in all branches of linguistics (e.g., in pragmatics, sociolinguistics and text linguistics). Its aim is to gain insight into language in all its aspects by using corpora which are both representative of actual language use and as comprehensive as possible (e.g., the British National Corpus, which can be used in Bayreuth). An important corpus is the Bank of English, which is being developed at our partner university in Birmingham. Besides synchronic corpora, diachronic corpora are also available in Bayreuth (e.g., the Helsinki Corpus). For further corpora, see Yukio Tono's survey.
The branch of synchronic linguistics that deals with the varieties of English includes diachronic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, dialectological, and sociolinguistic issues. On the one hand, it is concerned with regional varieties of English such as British English, American English, or Scottish English. It also examines the use of English as an official or second language in many former colonies, e.g., in Nigeria, as well as Creolized forms of English. Moreover, this branch of linguistics studies social varieties of English which depend on education, age, sex, or ethnic group. An example of this is Black English Vernacular as spoken in the United States.
An example of a seminar dealing with this topic is:
Before the 20th century, English linguistics had a historical orientation, i.e., it examined the development of the language and its position within the Indo-European language family. Since the beginning of this century, it has furthermore emphasized the synchronic study of language, i.e., the analysis of language as a system at a particular time. Linguistics thus distinguishes between the historical (diachronic) and the systematic (synchronic) study of language.
Text Linguistics and Discourse Analysis: A Survey
Text linguistics as well as discourse analysis are disciplines that describe the language system above the level of the sentence. Text linguistics mostly examines written texts, especially their grammatical and semantic connection (cohesion and coherence). Discourse analysis studies the conversation of two or more participants, to find structures and strategies of conversation.
Major Varieties of English
The seminar will start by giving a survey of the five major types of variation discussed in the CGEL (Quirk et al. 1985). These are
We will then lay particular emphasis on regional dialects and, among these, on phonological, lexical, syntactic, and orthographic differences between British and American English.
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