Introduction to the Science of Linguistics

Posted on Oct 11, 2024 in Social sciences

What is Communication?

Dubois defines communication as the exchange of verbal language by a speaker who produces an utterance for another speaker. He adds that communication is the process during which the significance that one partner associates with certain sounds is the same significance that the listener associates with those same sounds.

Quilis stated that communication is the discriminatory response of an organism to a stimulus.

Communication has six basic elements:

Issuer: The person giving the message. It is worth noting the essential work of the brain involved in the consolidation and selection of extra-linguistic phenomena. The issuer is also responsible for transmitting nerve impulses to the phonating organs to produce the desired message. After this, the muscles that produce sound waves go into action, carrying the message not only to the recipient but also to the ear of the issuer.
Receiver: Can be one or several. The receiver first hears the message, which is caught by the ear and transmitted to the organ of Corti, then to the brain, which decodes the information that arrives through the airwaves. This process is not only passive; the receiver also analyzes, decodes, and encodes the message and prepares to send other messages that may reach the sender. Only 40% of what we hear is language.
Channel: The means by which we hear sound waves. Typically, this is the air.
Code: The language we use to encode and decode the message. All phonetic rules and patterns appear simultaneously. It is the social part of language. It is potentially placed in our brain, and we update it every time we receive or send messages. Everything else is individual and depends on each person, except the code. It is an unambiguous set of rules.
Message: This is what we want to convey. It must be neat; small lexical items (monemes, morphemes, etc.) are key. These form phrases, and these phrases form a meaningful statement.
Extralinguistic Phenomena: These are all acts or elements that are part of the experience of each individual, and of the community as a whole. The greater the number of extralinguistic keys known by the partners, the simpler the decoding and encoding of the message will be. Examples include looks and intonation.

There are major communication phases: two psychic phases and two physiological phases. These are set out in the articulators of the speaker and the listener’s body. These are the production phase and the reverse phase, called auditory phonetics. There is also an acoustic stage, which consists of various complex sound waves that make up each of the sounds.

The Linguistic Sign

Saussure established the foundations of modern linguistics. He said that human languages are systematic sets of signs that allow communication.

Characteristics of the linguistic sign:

The first and most important is its arbitrary nature. There is no logical relationship between concepts and the words we use for them.
Linear character of the lexicon. You cannot change the word order; it follows the order of nature and linear acoustics. This feature is best seen in writing.
Immutability of the sign. The sign, once chosen, cannot change. It is immutable with respect to the community that uses it and is countersigned by the competent authorities.
Mutability of the sign. Diachronic change occurs over time, and the sign is altered. It is this same passage of time that ensures the continuity of language, which makes the language mutable. For example: Lactuca became Lettuce.
Substance and form. Saussure divided the sign in this way. It is about the difference between language and speech. Hjelmsler divided this into two levels: the expression or significant (phonic content management) and the level of content or meaning. Both planes have form and substance.
Form is the abstract relational structure that each language requires of the same substance.
Substance is all that is not form, i.e., matter. What matters in language is the form, not the substance, because the latter is shared.
What makes each language original is its form.

Difference Between Communicative and Linguistic Competence

Language proficiency means knowing a language. It has phonological, syntactic, semantic, lexical, and morphological components. According to Gambert, there are some distinct areas in each competition area: the metaphonological area (analysis and synthesis of phonological components of words), the metasemantic area, which is the same but for meaning, the metasyntactic area, which is the analysis for the correct word order, and the metapragmatic area, which is knowing when something is understood and when it is not, and if production is tailored to the situation and appropriate for the context. In short, language competence is knowing the language at all levels.

Communicative competence is defined as the sum of a set of skills: grammatical competence, or the ability to upgrade the units and rules of language; socio-linguistic competence, or the ability to produce consistent statements to the communication situation; discursive competence, or the ability to use different types of speech; and strategic competence, or the ability to communicate effectively. It is much more complete than language competence because language is only a part of communication.

The key is knowing how to adapt communication skills to the public discourse that is being addressed.

Functions of Language

First of all, we must clarify that language is the human ability to communicate through a system of articulated sound signals.

The first function is the representative function, which is used when we wish to send a report without making judgments or demanding a reaction from our interlocutor. For example: “It’s raining,” or “The capital of Morocco is Rabat.” This function focuses on the message within the elements of communication, although there are linguists who argue that it focuses on the outdoor unit or referent.
The expressive or emotive function is used when the issuer, which is the element that this function focuses on, seeks to give an account of their physical or psychic state.
The appellate or conative function is used when we intend to provoke a reaction in the recipient. That is the key; we want them to do something or stop doing something. For example: “Open the window.”
The phatic or contact function is used to check that the channel, which is the key element, remains open, namely whether communication is physically possible. For example: “Can you hear me?”
The poetic or aesthetic function is used when trying to create beauty in the language. Like the representative function, the key element is the message, but while this function is fixed in form, it is not fixed in substance. Examples include novels and poems.
The metalinguistic function is used when using language to speak about the same language or another language. The core of this function is the code, i.e., the respective language being spoken.

The first three functions are very common in any act of conversation. The last three are called language functions. Almost any act of communication contains more than one function.

Pre-language and Language

Pre-language is a rudimentary form of communication that occurs in infants and forms the basis of language.

Pre-language is a set of qualities, which are also neurophysiological capabilities: perception, motor skills, imitation, and memory. Language is a highly developed ability in humans, which has a more specialized communication system than that of animals. It is an ability that is both physical and psychological, belongs to both the individual and the social domain, and enables human beings to abstract, conceptualize, and communicate. In this sense, language consists of both language and speech. Ultimately, we will think better if our language is better, and speak better if our language is better. If we are not fluent in the language, we cannot think clearly, nor can we express what we think.

Language is essentially oral; however, to be perpetuated by writing, it becomes a language for communication among the literate, and marginalizes the illiterate. Language enables communication between members of a linguistic community, which may or may not coincide with the geographic or political boundaries of a state.

Speech is the individual use that each person makes of the language. It involves characterization, including age, sex, mood, occupation, and other factors. There are significant differences between the speech of a man and a woman, and so on.

We must distinguish the individual component of speech and the social component of language, and you cannot conceive of one without the other.

Language vs. Dialect vs. Language

Language: According to the DRAE in its 23rd edition, language is the system of verbal communication and expression peculiar to a people or nation or common to many. For the usual Spanish dictionary of Mexico, it is the system of phonic or graphic signs with which the members of a human community communicate.

Language: A language that has a body of literature or is used in national and international forums. It has a large number of speakers or has been formally standardized. It is also about the difference between language and the language concepts of nation or people.

DRAE: Language of a people or nation or common to many.

Dialect: A derivative of another linguistic system, normally with a specific geographical limit, but with sufficient differences from other common sources. The usual Spanish dictionary in Mexico defines it as the way of speaking a language by a group of people, community, or speakers of a region. For example, the speech of Mexico City or the Bajio are dialects of Spanish.

Speech: According to the usual Spanish dictionary of Mexico, it is a complete manifestation of a language, by an individual or a community. According to the DRAE, it is a linguistic system of a district, town, or community, with distinctive features within a larger system.

According to linguists, a language is a language system that is characterized by being fully defined, having a high degree of liberation, being the vehicle of a different culture, and sometimes having been imposed on other language systems.

Types of Language in Nature

Tactile language: It develops through the hands and feet and occurs mainly in primates. Its functions include calming, showing friendship, etc.
Chemical language: It depends on the sense of smell and taste. Chemical sensations can travel far by wind. These chemicals are pheromones. The main function of chemical language is sexual attraction.
Acoustic language: It consists of the emission of sound waves, which vary in pitch and intensity. They are very useful since they have the ability to travel in all directions, and the receiver can be easily located. Examples include howler monkeys and frogs. Low-frequency sounds travel farther than high frequencies.
Visual language: This is when animals change color according to their primary needs; they can even turn colors on or off.
Vibration language: These signals act only over very short distances and are used by animals like spiders or crocodiles.
Electrical language: Especially used by fish, with some exceptions. Electrical signals can pass through solid objects and are used for defense, direction, and courtship.

Oral vs. Written Language

Oral language has a limited number of receivers. It allows immediate change of message and is subject to interruptions. This is due to feedback. Oral language is reinforced by pauses, rhythm changes, etc., and uses many extralinguistic codes. It does not demand excessive grammatical organization and always takes place in a situational context. Between context and extralinguistic codes, much of the message would be added (60%). Spoken language is much more dynamic and innovative than written language (although written language does incorporate neologisms). Oral language does not allow us to self-examine our own thinking.

Written language is not a substitute for spoken language. It is acquired through special training and requires a long process of education, training, and practice. It is an artificial process, so there is no way to write “naturally.” Written language has defined rules and is therefore definable. It requires planning and consideration of not only what is going to be said, but how, why, and to whom it is going to be said. This is what is technically called the phases of invention, drafting, evaluating, revising, and editing. Therefore, it is better structured than spoken language. So no one can claim to write as they speak. It is much more conservative, less dynamic, and more selective in introducing neologisms. The most important aspect of written language is its ability to allow us to analyze our own thoughts. And so it leads us to conquer our own selves. Writing has much to do with the liberation of man; without it, he is an outcast.

The Pre-Roman Period in Spain

The Iberians spoke a language that had much to do with Basque and were located in the east and on both sides of the Pyrenees. It is believed that their culture comes from Africa.

The Tartessians were more civilized and were more influenced by Eastern culture. They were located in the south of Portugal and lower Andalusia and survived longer than the Iberians.

The Phoenicians came from Carthage and founded their first settlement in the 12th century BC. They founded Gadir (Cadiz) and Malaka (Malaga). The Phoenicians defeated the Greeks, who were forced to go east, where they founded Lucentum (Alicante). They shaped Iberian art.

The Ligurians were left with a space in the center and northwest of the peninsula. It is believed that they came from Provence in Italy because their suffixes were found in various place names in different parts of Spain. For example: Barcelona.

The Celts invaded the peninsula in the seventh century BC. They came from southern Germany and settled in Galicia, northern Portugal, and Sierra Morena. Later, they conquered lower Aragon. They mixed with the Iberians, forming the so-called Celtiberian race, which gave rise to many place names. Almost all of them have a warrior’s name. Sego means victory, hence Segovia.

We cannot speak of a linguistic unit before the Romans.

The only survivor is Basque, whose origin is disputed:

It is of African origin because it presents important similarities with Berber, Cushitic, or Sudanese.
It originated in the Caucasus region. Its syntax has some similarities with the languages of the Caucasus today.
It has a mixed origin: On the one hand, it has a Caucasian phonetic structure and Hamitic features that incorporate many elements of the Iberian languages, as well as abundant Celticism and Latinisms.

The Roman Period in Spain

From the third century BC, the Romans undertook the conquest of Spain. By 206 BC, although years before, they had Roman territory to attack from, the pacification was complete when Augustus subdued the Cantabrians and Asturians. What Rome achieved was to avoid a struggle between territories in what they called Hispania. It imposed its culture, bringing the concepts of law and citizenship. They were the masters of administration. They transformed the lifestyle of the people, bringing the Latin lifestyle, which in turn was inherited from the Greek. Of course, they brought Latin, which quickly established itself as a communication tool throughout the empire. Toponyms reveal a mixture between Latin, Celtic languages, and Basque.

Latin is a clear, precise, energetic, practical, and efficient language. It acquired beauty when it came into contact with the Greek language. Hispania witnessed the flowering of Latin literature, which adapted the models of the Greek masters, making them its own. So many words of Greek origin have passed into our language through the imposition of Latin, including words related to poetry, philosophy, and so on. Latin comes from European languages such as Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Slavic, and Scandinavian. Non-Indo-European languages come from Finnish, Etruscan, Lapp, Estonian, Hungarian, and Basque.

There are two types of Latin: Vulgar Latin and Cultured Latin. The latter was used by writers, while the former was used by the ordinary people of Rome. Finally, it was the common language that was imposed on the colonies. Each province had different forms of language, depending on their proximity or distance from the metropolis.

Vulgar Latin was also influenced by Basque (farina became flour), the Germanic languages (Burgos), and above all, by Arabic (mayor, culverts). The Arabs were major influences, replacing the s with j (soap) and adding the final t to form nouns.

The Development of the Spanish Language

The first name of the language was Castilian because it was born in Castile. The controversy began in bilingual areas of Spain, whose inhabitants say that their language is part of Spanish. Political correctness favors the term “bilingual communities” instead of “Castilian Spanish.”

The development of Spanish can be grouped into three stages:

Medieval Spanish (10th – 15th centuries): By the tenth century, there were four language domains that could be identified by the behavior of the Latin stressed short vowel. For example, Porta became puerta in Castilian, puorta in Leon and Aragon, and puelta in Mozarabic. In general terms, Latin was maintained in the language of the western tip of the peninsula, as is the case with Galician-Portuguese, and it also remained in Catalan, which exerted its influence on all the Mediterranean lands as a result of political expansion. The first written documents (glosses from the Emilianenses and Silos glosses) belong to the tenth century. These are marginal notes in Romance languages found in Latin texts that were no longer understood. The former were written in the monastery of Silos, and the latter were written in the monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla. In the south, people still spoke Mozarabic, which was spoken by Hispanic families who remained in this territory and inherited the language. It was maintained without major changes, either as a cultural statement to mark the difference between Arabs and Jews, or due to the lack of contact with the developments that were taking place in Christian lands. The first lyric poems in Romance languages (the jarchas, which are compositions written in the Arabic or Hebrew alphabet but are transcribed into an Arabic-Andalusian language) were written in Mozarabic. The first step in converting Castilian into the official language was taken by Alfonso X the Wise, who commanded that all major astronomical, legal, and historical works be written in Castilian rather than in Latin, so that they could be disseminated. Gallicisms entered the language because of the Way of St. James.
Modern Castilian (16th – late 17th centuries): This period begins with the publication of the first grammar of Castilian in 1492 by Antonio de Nebrija. The consonant changes that altered and strengthened the Spanish phonological system belong to this period. The church at this time had more power than the state itself. The system of sibilants (s, c, ç, z) was stabilized. The h sound disappeared, as did the distinction between the x and j sounds. The distinction between b and v was eliminated. The verb haber became an auxiliary, the syntax began to have a particular order, and many neologisms were created due to the growing Spanish empire. It was during this time that the Alcalá dictionary was published at the Complutense University, and the Minerva, a normative and descriptive grammar by Francisco de las Brozas, also appeared. 1611 saw the publication of The Treasure of the Spanish or Castilian Language by Sebastián de Covarrubias, which was the first dictionary to contain all the synchronous and historical information available at the time of publication. Everyone wanted to speak Spanish; it was the diplomatic language of the time until the 18th century. It reached its literary splendor during the Golden Age. Although it was the dominant language, words were taken from other languages, especially Italian, French, and those of the Americas.
Contemporary Spanish (from 1713 to the present): This period begins with the founding of the Royal Academy. In the 18th century, phonetic and phonological changes, including the current verbal system, were made. The Academy’s role was to fix the language, so that there would be no more hesitation. To do so, it published a spelling guide, which was first published in 1743. It remained unchanged until the first half of the twentieth century, when, under the influence of the Generation of ’27, a neoclassical taste appeared in writing that violated some established syntactic orders. Today, the Royal Spanish Academy agrees with all other language academies. The most noticeable feature of this stage is the replacement of many tenses by periphrases (e.g., “I am going”), providing semantic nuances. Another important change has been the introduction of neologisms related to technical innovations and scientific advances. Except for neologisms from before the first half of the twentieth century, which contain classic roots from Latin or Greek, these tend to be little Hispanicized; they tend to be carbon copies of English. In addition, acronyms are excessively used. One challenge for Spanish is to ensure that the discovery or dissemination of any research carried out by the Hispanic world is disseminated in Spanish, not English, as is currently done. We are the third language in terms of the number of speakers, and the second in terms of the number of scientific publications, behind English.

Variations of Language

There are several specific types of variations of language:

Diatopic Variety: These are all those variations that relate to the speaker’s territorial origin.
Diastratic Variety: This is related to the distribution and social stratification of speakers. They are also called sociolects and are motivated by a variety of factors:
1. Habitat: A distinction is made between rural and urban habitats. Rural speech is much more relaxed in intonation, cares less about pronunciation, and is much more conservative in its lexicon. Urban speech is characterized as being more innovative and standardized.
2. Age: Older people do not speak like younger people.
3. Sex: It is not that men and women speak in different ways, but society has established some lexicons as being more appropriate for one sex than the other. Men know more words related to sports, and women know more words related to feelings.
4. Profession: Different professions contribute to differentiating the use of language, especially at the lexical and semantic levels.
5. Sociocultural level: The speaker’s sociocultural level is the largest contributor to different uses of language.
Diaphasic Variety: These have to do with the individual and are determined by the way the speaker uses their language under different circumstances, either by adopting a linguistic register or by other factors:
1. Channel used: The issuer does not express themselves orally in the same way as they do in writing.
2. Topic of speech: An exposition of poetic or philosophical content is not the same as a discussion of sports news.
3. Relationship between sender and receiver: This also determines the linguistic register that will be used. A formal register will be used when the relationship between the sender and receiver is one of respect, and an informal register will be used when the relationship is one of trust.
4. Personality of the speaker: Their training and culture help or hinder the adoption of a linguistic register. Keep in mind that only people with an acceptable command of the language are capable of changing idiomatic code registers.

Levels of Language

Cultured Level: At this level, speakers can express any content correctly, with precise vowels, correct intonation, coherence in discourse, and a rich vocabulary. The cultured level is the register that allows for unity and uniformity of language.
Standard Level: A variant of the cultured code that respects the rules correctly but may sometimes violate the code. For example, not everyone knows how to use attributives correctly… the violations are minor.
Ordinary Level: This is used when the speaker, due to poor schooling, violates the code or is not able to change registers. It often coincides with a lower class or rural people. The peculiar characteristics of this level are slang, short sentences, and a general poverty of vocabulary.