INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND THE THEORY OF PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETER

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND THE THEORY OF PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETER

Likewise, though there are many linguists who strongly agree with Chomsky's universal grammar, however, put forward several conflicting positions, depending upon the linguistic and social context, especially the way universal grammar evolved over the time. For example, Steven Pinker, brings a new adaptationist theory that significantly abdicates from the theory/idea proposed by Chomsky. However, Chomsky's theories have great impact on modern linguistics. He made study of linguistics thoroughly a scientific one. He is also onsidered as father of modern linguistics. His theory of Universal Grammar provides a path breaking idea that substantiates as how languages work and how do they constitute certain components, how are they so innate in every human brain and how does this innateness bring out certain principles and parameters in language acquisition of children.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR AND THE THEORY OF PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETER

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SPEECH ACT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SPEECH ACT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Learning to communicate in a language involves more than acquiring the pronunciation and grammar. We need to learn how to ask question, make suggestion, greet and thank other speakers. In other words we need to learn the uses to which utterances are conventionally put in the new language community and how these uses are signaled. The terminology of such function of language is called speech acts.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – SPEECH ACT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – CHANGES IN MEANING OF WORDS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – CHANGES IN MEANING OF WORDS

E.B. White wrote "The language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting changing, receiving new strength from a thousand ributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time. It is observed that words change or develop under the influence of various factors. There seems to be a logical route from meaning X to meaning Y and sociolinguists have forwarded theories attempting to explain it. When one gives a sufficient amount of thought it is noticed that many meaning changes which, at first, seem baffling can be sourced quite easily and understood very logically. The passage of time, socio-cultural conventions, and technological developments provides plenty of opportunity for the semantic change to take place, both consciously and unconsciously. The above module attempted to explain this phenomenon of changes in meanings of words along with an overview of its types and causes and its consequent outcomes.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS – CHANGES IN MEANING OF WORDS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - AMBIGUITY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - AMBIGUITY

Thus Ambiguity is a vast area in Linguistics, which has many types according to many critics and schools. But all those could be exhausted in the three discussed above. Those are: 

Lexical, Syntactic and Semantic Ambiguity

Lexical: Any ambiguity resulting from the ambiguity of a word which has multiple parts of speech. 

Syntactic: Structural or syntactic Ambiguity refers to the situation in which a sentence may have different meanings because; the words of a sentence are related to each other in various ways, even though each word is clear and unconnected.

Semantic: Semantics is nothing but "Meaning". If a word or phrase is Ambiguous in its meaning then we call it as Semantic Ambiguity. That is even after the syntax and the meanings of the individual words have been resolved, there are two ways of reading the sentence. 

And as it was discussed above, Ambiguity is much helpful in Language and literature, which in literature is used by the author with an intention to grasp the readers towards the text. 

Also look at the videos above to learn much about IC analysis and its role in Linguistics. Thus, everything in the creation has both positive and negative side. So does Ambiguity. It depends on the context in which it is used.

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - AMBIGUITY

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - SEMANTICS OF WORDS AND SENTENCES

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - SEMANTICS OF WORDS AND SENTENCES

Idiosyncratic semantic constraints in the grammar result in reference being made using one form instead of another. Logical constraints result in reference not being made at all. Meaning is not merely a reference to concepts in the real world. It depends on linguistic factors in part unique to each individual language; meaning depends not only on the logical combination of real world concepts. The system of language cannot be described only in terms of extra-linguistic logic.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - SEMANTICS OF WORDS AND SENTENCES

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - SEMANTICS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PRAGMATICS

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - SEMANTICS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PRAGMATICS

The Module has tried to analyze the basic concept of Semantics and Pragmatics. It has presented various types of semantics on the basis of the occurrence of the meaning. The module has also tried to bring out various types of meaning in various context and the formation of meaning in the sentence. It has discussed the term Pragmatics and several types of contexts in which meaning is formed in regard to the pragmatics. It has also presented different Clements of pragmatics such as Entailment, Presupposition and Implicature. The study has broadly come up with the study of relationship between Semantics and Pragmatics.

 
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS - SEMANTICS AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH PRAGMATICS