Linguistic is the study of languages. This is an esoteric
knowledge of languages. The specialist of language refers to linguist. The
father of linguistic is Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). There are still many
other modern linguists beside de Saussure, one of the most popular is Noam
Chomsky with his phenomenal theory Universal
Grammar.
Due to the object of this discipline is language, therefore
scope of linguistics are very broad. Essentially, it is divided into two big
branches i.e. micro and macro linguistics. This article only
discuss about micro linguistic which will be explained generally. However,
writer will make an outline regarding both linguistics.
Micro Linguistic leads to the internal structure of
languages, hence it is a very basic study of linguistic. Otherwise, macro
linguistic refers to the external structure of languages. Micro linguistic
consists of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic, and pragmatic, meanwhile
macro linguistic includes sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistics,
stylistic, discourse analysis, computational linguistic, cognitive linguistic,
applied linguistic, historical linguistic, and many more.
Phonology is defined as study relates to the analysis
of speech sounds. Basically, it is composed of phonetic and phonemic.
Phonetic is the branch of phonology that study of how sounds are made via
articulatory and vocal tract by the speaker without concerning whether the
sounds distinguish the meaning or not. Three kinds of phonetics: articulatory, acoustic, and auditory. The most common studied by
language learners is the articulatory
phonetic since it relates to how humans produce speech sound. The other two
relate to field of physic and neurology. Unlike phonetic, phonemic is a phonology branch study that its object refers to phoneme, it is the smallest contrastive
unit in the sound system of language. The sounds that distinguish meaning is
defined as phoneme.
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Branch of Phonology |
Morphology is the study of word formation and
the structure of words in a language. Words in a language consists of one
element of meaning which are called morphemes.
It is the smallest unit of words that have a meaning that cannot be divided
further. One word can be consist of more than one morpheme. For instance: ‘Reconstruct’ is formed by two morphemes Re (morpheme) + Construct (morpheme) = Reconstruct
(word). Morpheme is divided into free
and bound morpheme. Free
morpheme (FM) can occur alone by
themselves meanwhile bound morpheme (BM)
must occur with another morpheme.
Examples:
FM = Girl Love Boy At The He
BM = -ly re- -ism
FM consists of open
class (lexical / content) i.e.
nouns, verbs, adjectives, and closed
class (functional / grammatical words) i.e. conjunctions, determiners,
prepositions, articles, and pronouns. BM
is contained in affixes and roots. The short explanation of both
are below:
According to Oxford Dictionary online affix is an addition to the base form or stem of a word in order to
modify its meaning or create a new word.
Therefore, the affixes may or may not change meaning and part of speech of
the words. It can be put in the initial (prefix), middle (infix), and in the
end (suffix). For example:
Prefix : inconvenient
Infix :
nowadays
Suffix : helpful
Affix is divided into derivational
(DA) and inflectional affixes (IA).
When DA is added to free morpheme, it commonly changes the part of
speech of the word, such as pay (v)
to payment (n). Otherwise, the
IA doesn’t change the word class e.g. writes
(v) wrote (v) written (v).
Roots are morphemes (not affixes) that may or may not stand alone.
Syntax is the study of sentence structure
i.e. how phrases, clauses, sentences are combined and constructed in particular
language. The structure refers to word order that consists of syntactic
categories i.e. parts of speech (open and closed class), phrase
structure grammars (Noun Phrase (NP), Adjective Phrase (AdjP), Verb Phrase
(VP), Adverb Phrase (AdvP), Preposition Phrase (PP)), and sentence, as
the essential point of the structure. The syntactic categories are illustrated
in a tree diagram called phrase
structure tree.
The phrase structure
tree is also commonly called as tree diagram which provides information
regarding syntactic categories in particular sentence. It is a formal device
for representing speaker’s knowledge about phrase structure. Therefore, if ones
want to make a tree diagram, they need to know phrase structure rules. These
rules define the following:
The parenthesis
signify the categories are optional. Nouns do not constantly have to be
preceded by adjectives and verbs do not always have to be followed by prepositional
phrase.
Semantic and pragmatic are defined as study of meaning. Semantic is internal,
meanwhile pragmatic is external. It means that semantic merely study the
literal meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, and sentences without
affected by context. It concerns with the relationships between signs or symbols,
concept, and what they represent, and it does not account for any implied
meaning.
Meanwhile, pragmatic refers to how context affects meaning.
It focuses on the use of language in particular situation. Thus, pragmatic
constantly concerns with factor outside (external) of language which speakers
communicate using language. For example, when you and your friend stay in a hot
temperature room, then your friend says, “It’s
really hot here”, that person may imply to “Open the window, please or turn
on the air conditioner, please.” Your friend does not merely express
her/his feeling about the real situation through a statement “It’s really hot here,” he/she implies
something else. Therefore, it is not a literal meaning.
Due to this post only aim to introduce linguistics
generally, there are still a lot of things to observe regarding linguistics. In
the following, there are some e-books, presentations, and videos about linguistics that are needed to
fulfill your further curiosity toward languages and linguistics. Break a leg!
Phonology
Morphology
Introducing Morphology, Cambridge University Press
Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure, Edinburg University Press
Morphology: The Words of Language
PPT Morphology
Video: Lesson of Morphology
Introduction to English Morphology: Words and Their Structure, Edinburg University Press
Morphology: The Words of Language
PPT Morphology
Video: Lesson of Morphology
Syntax
E-book: Androw Radford-English Syntax an Introduction
E-book: An Introduction to English Syntax by Jim Miller
E-book: A Modern Course in English Syntax By Wekker & Haegeman
PPT Syntax
Video: Syntax
E-book: Androw Radford-English Syntax an Introduction
E-book: An Introduction to English Syntax by Jim Miller
E-book: A Modern Course in English Syntax By Wekker & Haegeman
PPT Syntax
Video: Syntax
Semantic & Pragmatic
Ebook: Introducing English Semantics by Charles W. Kreidler
E-book: An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics
E-book: Pragmatics by George Yule
Ebook: Introducing English Semantics by Charles W. Kreidler
E-book: An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics
E-book: Pragmatics by George Yule
PPT: Semantics & Pragmatics
Video: Introduction to Semantics
Video: Why do semantics matter?
Video: Pragmatics - David Crystal
Video: Introduction to Semantics
Video: Why do semantics matter?
Video: Pragmatics - David Crystal
Depok, 30 April 2017
Lista
Rani
References
Andriyani, E. (2013,
April). Syntax. Retrieved from www.slideshare.net:
https://www.slideshare.net/Andriyanieka12/10-syntax-syntax-phrases-18509446
AR-Apps. (2015).
Basic Linguistic.
H.P, A., &
Abdullah, A. (2013). Linguistik Umum. Jakarta: Erlangga.
Introduction to
(Applying) Linguistics. (2007/2008). Retrieved from www.fb10.uni-bremen.d:
http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/ling/gk-lingintro07/org/ws0708/exam-answer-sheet1.htm
Leon, R. D. (2015,
July 30). Retrieved from www.slideshare.net: https://www.slideshare.net/renedictdeleon/morphology-linguistics-51088052
Nelson, B. (2016).
Retrieved from slideplayer.com: http://slideplayer.com/slide/6392679/
Online, O. D. (2017,
April 29). Retrieved from English Oxford Living Dictionaries: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/affix