An Introduction to Language and Linguistics

(b) The scientific study of language and its structure, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language as a system — how sounds, words and sentences are structured and how meaning works — rather than the prescriptive study of "correct" usage (a), etymology alone (c), or language teaching methods (d).

Language and linguistics are related but distinct concepts. Language is the object of study; linguistics is the systematic study of that object.

Examples showing the difference in scope and purpose:

1. Nepali verb endings. A speaker of Nepali uses the language when he says ma khānchu ("I eat") and hami khānchau ("we eat"), choosing the right ending automatically. A linguist, however, studies the language by describing the rule behind this pattern — that the verb agrees with the subject in person and number — and compares it with the same rule in Maithili or English. The speaker's purpose is communication; the linguist's purpose is explanation of the system.

2. Sound change in English. A modern English speaker simply speaks the word night with a silent gh. A historical linguist investigates why the /x/ sound in Old English niht disappeared, when the change took place, and what general principle of sound change it illustrates. The language is the raw material; linguistics is the analysis of that material.

In short, language is what people speak, while linguistics is what scholars write and theorise about that speaking.

The chapter discusses several defining characteristics that separate human language from the communication systems of animals. Any five of the following may be explained.

1. Arbitrariness There is no natural or logical connection between a word and the thing it stands for; the link is purely a matter of convention. The same animal is called dog in English, kutta in Nepali and chien in French. Since the sounds carry no inherent meaning, the relationship between form and meaning is said to be arbitrary. Onomatopoeic words like buzz or hiss are only partial exceptions.

2. Productivity (Creativity) Human language is open-ended. A speaker can produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences that have never been heard before, simply by combining a limited set of words according to rules. For example, the sentence "The tired astronaut sang a Nepali song on the Moon" is unlikely to have been uttered before, yet any English speaker can produce and understand it instantly. Animal communication, by contrast, is closed and fixed.

3. Displacement Language allows us to talk about things that are not present in the immediate here and now — past or future events, imaginary places, and abstract ideas. A speaker in Kathmandu can describe a battle fought two hundred years ago or a city that exists only in a novel. Animal calls, such as a monkey's alarm cry, refer only to what is happening at that moment.

4. Duality of Patterning (Duality of Structure) Language has two levels of structure. At the lower level, meaningless sounds such as /p/, /b/ and /t/ combine to form units; at the higher level, these units combine into meaningful words and sentences. The sounds /p/, /i/ and /t/ mean nothing alone, but rearranged they give pit, tip and pot — three different words from the same three sounds. This double layering makes language highly economical.

5. Cultural Transmission Language is not inherited biologically; it is passed down from one generation to the next through learning and social interaction. A child born in Nepal and raised in an English-speaking country will learn English, not Nepali. A child deprived of exposure to any language during the critical period fails to acquire normal language, which shows that language is culturally, not genetically, transmitted.

6. Discreteness The sounds of a language are discrete, separate units. Bit and bet differ only in one vowel sound, yet they are perceived as completely different words with no gradual blending between them. This sharp contrast makes precise communication possible.

7. Interchangeability Any member of the speech community can both send and receive the same messages. A man can say what a woman says, and a child can repeat an adult's sentence. In many animal species, by contrast, males and females produce different calls and cannot exchange roles.

8. Duality of Medium / Vocal-Auditory Channel Human language is primarily transmitted through the vocal-auditory channel, though it can be transferred to writing or sign. This channel allows communication while the hands and eyes remain free for other work.

Any five of these characteristics, each clearly explained and illustrated, would earn full marks.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It examines language not as a set of rules to be prescribed, but as a natural human phenomenon to be described and explained. A linguist observes how people actually speak, formulates hypotheses about the underlying system, and tests those hypotheses against data. The goal is to build a general theory of how language works — its sounds, its structure, its meanings, and its use in society. Linguistics is therefore descriptive rather than prescriptive, and it treats all languages as equally valid objects of study.

Because language is complex, linguistics is divided into several branches, each focusing on one level of organisation. These levels are not isolated; they form a hierarchy in which smaller units combine to build larger ones. The major branches are phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds as physical events. It deals with how sounds are produced by the vocal organs (articulatory phonetics), how they travel as sound waves (acoustic phonetics), and how they are perceived by the ear and brain (auditory phonetics). For example, phonetics describes the difference between /p/ and /b/ in terms of voicing — /b/ involves vibration of the vocal cords, /p/ does not. It also studies places and manners of articulation, such as bilabial, alveolar, plosive, and fricative. Phonetics gives linguistics its raw material: without a precise account of sounds, no further analysis is possible.

Phonology studies how speech sounds function as a system in a particular language. It asks which sounds are distinctive (phonemes) and which are merely variants (allophones), and how sounds may or may not combine. In English, /p/ and /b/ are separate phonemes because "pat" and "bat" are different words. In Nepali, aspirated and unaspirated stops are distinct: /kal/ (time) and /khal/ (skin) differ only in aspiration. Phonology also describes syllable structure and sound patterns, such as why English words may begin with /str/ but not /tsr/. Thus phonology turns the physical sounds of phonetics into the abstract sound system of a language.

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words. It examines morphemes, the smallest meaningful units. The word "unhappiness" contains three morphemes: un- (negation), happy (root), and -ness (noun-forming suffix). Morphology distinguishes free morphemes, which can stand alone, from bound morphemes, which cannot. It also explains processes such as inflection (book → books) and derivation (teach → teacher). In Nepali, ramro (good) becomes ramro-laai (to the good one) through case suffixation. Morphology shows how languages build words from smaller meaningful parts.

Syntax studies how words combine into phrases and sentences. It describes the rules that govern word order and grammatical relations. English is largely SVO: "The dog bit the man" differs in meaning from "The man bit the dog." Nepali is SOV: ma bhaat khaanchhu (I rice eat). Syntax also explains recursion — the ability to embed one structure inside another, as in "the man who stole the bike that belonged to my brother." Syntax thus accounts for the infinite number of sentences a speaker can produce from finite rules.

Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It deals with the literal meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. It examines sense relations such as synonymy (big/large), antonymy (hot/cold), and hyponymy (rose is a hyponym of flower). It also studies how meaning is composed from parts: the meaning of "The cat chased the rat" depends on the meanings of its words and their syntactic arrangement. Semantics explains why some sentences are ambiguous, such as "old men and women," and why some are contradictory, such as "a married bachelor."

Pragmatics studies how meaning depends on context and speaker intention. It goes beyond literal meaning to what is implied. If someone says "It's cold in here," the literal meaning is a statement about temperature, but the pragmatic meaning may be a request to close the window. Pragmatics deals with speech acts (promising, requesting, apologising), politeness, and implicature. In Nepali culture, indirect requests such as bhaat khaane belaa bhayo hola function pragmatically as an invitation or a hint. Pragmatics connects language to its social use.

These branches are interrelated because each depends on the level below it. Phonetics provides the sounds that phonology organises into a system. Phonology supplies the sound patterns that morphology uses to build words. Morphology supplies the words that syntax arranges into sentences. Syntax supplies the structures that semantics interprets. And semantics supplies the literal meanings that pragmatics interprets in context. A single utterance can be analysed at all six levels. Take the sentence "Can you pass the salt?" Phonetically it is a sequence of consonants and vowels; phonologically it follows English syllable rules; morphologically it consists of the morphemes can, you, pass, the, salt; syntactically it is an interrogative clause; semantically it asks about ability; pragmatically it is a polite request to pass the salt. The same words yield different meanings at different levels, which is why all branches are needed.

In short, linguistics is the scientific study of language, and its branches — phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics — each examine one level of language while remaining dependent on the others. Together they form a coherent, hierarchical science of human language.

(d) morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a word. For example, unhappiness has three morphemes: un-, happy and -ness. A phoneme is only a sound unit and has no meaning by itself.

(d) fourth

The word is divided as com-mu-ni-ca-tion, and the primary stress falls on the syllable before the suffix -tion: com-mu-ni-CA-tion. Counting the syllables, that is the fourth.

A phrase is a group of words that works as a single unit but has no subject and finite verb of its own. The main types, according to their function, are as follows.

1. Noun phrase. It has a noun or pronoun as its head and works as a noun, as a subject, object or complement. The old man with a stick is waiting. (subject) I like the red car. (object)

2. Verb phrase. It consists of a main verb with one or more auxiliary verbs. She has been waiting for an hour. They will have finished by noon.

3. Adjective phrase. It has an adjective as its head and describes a noun. The boy, very tall for his age, joined the team. She is full of confidence.

4. Adverb phrase. It has an adverb as its head or acts as an adverb, and tells how, when or where. He ran very quickly. We met in the evening.

5. Prepositional phrase. It begins with a preposition followed by a noun phrase and works as an adjective or adverb. The book on the table is mine. (adjective) She sat under the tree. (adverb)

6. Participial, gerund and infinitive phrases. These are built from verb forms (the non-finite verbs). Walking along the river, we saw a deer. (participial) Reading novels is my hobby. (gerund) He wants to become a doctor. (infinitive)

7. Absolute phrase. It is attached to the sentence without being connected to it by grammar. The work done, they went home.

Each phrase differs from a clause because it has no subject-verb structure of its own.