Linguistics:
The
word Linguistics has been derived from Latin
“Lingua” (tongue) and “Istics”
knowledge or science. Therefore,
linguistic is the scientific study of language.
Linguistics is the scientific study of
language. It is a 'foundation'
discipline in the sense that it bridges the social sciences, the natural
sciences, and the humanities. Linguistics is an exciting field, not only
because of its own achievements, but also because of its contributions to other
fields. For example, linguistic anthropology is one of the four subdisciplines
of anthropology, and it has provided models of rigour in cultural anthropology.
Linguistics also has links with cognitive
science, computer science, education (through reading, child language
acquisition, and classroom interaction), geography (through linguistic
geography and dialectology), history (through historical linguistics),
literature (through stylistics, poetics, and critical theory), neurology
(through neurolinguistics, the study of how language functions in the brain),
philosophy (through the philosophy of natural language, semantics, and logic),
psychology (through psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and clinical
applications), sociology (through sociolinguistics and the sociology of
language), speech therapy, and zoology (through animal communication and the
evolution of language).
So Linguistics is the science which
strikes the origin, organization nature and development of language
descriptively historically, comparatively and explicatory and formulates the
general rules related to language.
Applied Linguistics
Applied
linguistics is the branch of linguistics
concerned with using linguistic theory to address real-world
problems. It has been traditionally dominated by the fields of language education and second language acquisition (SLA).
Applied linguistics is the application of
linguistic methods and findings to a number of areas. It is especially
associated with language teaching methodology and second-language acquisition,
but also involves language and the law, language and classroom education, child
development, language and reading, speech therapy, language and public policy,
translation, advertising, and the like.
Application
of linguistics:
A model of applied linguistics; the
application of linguistic language teaching is an indirect tone. It is not a
single stage operation. This is why many teachers when first introduced to
linguistic see no relevance in it for their work and conversely why linguistics
can have applications wherever language itself becomes matter of practical
concern.
Strictly speaking then the domain of
applied linguistic is not a single field or sub field but can rage from the
reassert on multi-lingualism the teaching and learning of foreign languages to
studies of neuro-linguistic disorders like aphasia and of various speech and
hearing defects. It includes work in the areas language planning like the
efforts to devise writing system for language s in the post colonial world and
the efforts to standardized terminologies for various technical domains or to
revitalize endangered language.
Examples of the applications of
linguistic can be multiplied indefinitely.
The techniques of discourse analysis have
been applied to the problems of avoiding air accidents due to miscommunication
and to the problems of communication between members of different ethnic
groups. And linguists are increasingly called on in legal proceedings that turn
on questions of precise interpretation a development that has given rise to
anew field of study of language and law by bilingualism poly-lingualism, etc.
Anthropologists can study a community better
if they know the language of the community.
Mathematicians are interested in the formal
properties of natural language and now meaning is mapped into sound. In
devising computer languages such information proves valuable.
Teachers of
composition
can easily diagnose the problems of their students and suggest quick and
effective remedies to improve their performance.
Engineers who know the properties of
speech can devise better telephone s that can operate when you dictate rather
than dial the number of subscriber. Instead of touch type write we can have
dictation typewriter and machine can do the translation work done by humans. we
can have better radios and better television receivers . it is believed that
each man’s voice print in unique as his thumb impression. It may be easier for
officers of the laws to apprehend criminals and bring them before the bar of
justice with the help of tapes of recorded conversation.
Philosophers can make a fresh look at some
of the unresolved controversies in their field with the insights gained by
their acquaintance with linguistic for example between the rationalist point of
view and the empiricists point of view about he nature of learning. They can
also study the structure of meaning and the validity of forming linguistic
universals.
Sociologists can take a look at the
interaction of social groups the role-played by languages and dialects in-group
dynamics the problems created.
Computational
linguistics: Many
areas of applied linguistics today involved the explicit use of computers
speech synthesis and speech recognition use phonetic and phonemic knowledge to
provide voided interfaces to provide voice interfaces to computers.
Applications of computational linguistic in machine translation, computer
assisted translation and natural language processing are extremely fruitful
areas of applied linguistics, which have come to the fore front in recent years
with increasing computing power. Their influence had a great effect on theories
of syntax and semantic is as modeling syntactic and romantic theories on
computers constrains and theories to compatible operations and provides a more
rigorous mathematic basis.
The
application of linguistics to the treatment of Aphasia in Clinical Aphasiology is
also an important field of applied linguistics.
Thus the study of linguistics quenches
linguistic thirsty gives the knowledge of the preparation and mysteries of
language illuminates ancient and prehistoric culture helps in improving and
reforming spelling vocabulary pronunciation, all aid the specialists in his
field
Above all the study of language satisfies
our intellectual urge and we derives satisfaction and pleasure when we come to
know about the mysteries of language. Finally the rhetorical question why
should any one want to study the work of Shakespeare, Picasso and so on? The
answer is for its own sake and so with language study.
LANGUAGE:
“A
language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and
constructed out of a finite set of elements.” (Noam Chomsky)
“Languages
are the principal systems of communication used by particular groups of human
beings within the particular society (linguistic community of which they are
members).” (John Lyons)
Language is both linguistic and
commutative competency:
A
language is an abstract set of psychological principles and sociological consideration
that constitute a person’s competence as a speaker in a given situation these
psychological principles make available to him an unlimited number of sentences
he can draw upon in concrete situations and provide him with the stability to
understand and create entirely new sensitive. Hence language is no just a
verbal behavior it is system of rules established or relations between meanings
and sounds sequences. It is a set of principle that a speaker masters it is not
anything a speaker does. In brief a language is a code, which is different from
the act of encoding it, is a speakers linguistic competence rather than his
linguistic performance. But mere
linguistic or communicative competence.
In
language teaching we ue such terms as second language foreign language
“bilingualism”, language learning and language acquisitions.
Second
language:
The term second
language is used to describe any language whose acquisition starts
after early childhood (including what may be the third or subsequent language
learned). The language to be learned is often referred to as the "target
language" or "L2".
We
start from the common sense distinction between mother tongue or native langue and
second language or foreign language. At a more technical level we also
find for the first two the terms primary language and L1 and for the second two
secondary langue and L2 We can tabulate the two sets of terms as follows:
L1 L2
First language Second language
Native language Non-native language
Mother language Foreign language
Primary language Secondary language
Stronger language Weaker language
These
two sets of terms like such words as lift and right, I/we and you or at home
and abroad – are always relative to person or a group of persons. They indicate
subjective relationship between a language and an individual or group. We can
never assign any particular language for example French, English, Arabic or
Japanese in any absolute way to one of the other set of terms.
There
is third set of terms which describes language objectively i.e. without
reference to the relationship of individuals to that language.
This
set refers to t the geographical distribution social function political status
origin type or importance of the languages so on; for example:
Language of wider communication
Standard
langue
\Regional
language
National
language
Official
language
Modern
langue
Classical
language.
Some
terms fall into more than one category. For example foreign language can be
subjectively a language, which is not L1, or objectively a language, which has
no legal status within the national boundaries. There is simply a semantic
confusion between the first two sets of terms and the third in the following
instance in which a certain French Canadian said.
Consequently
it would be best to reserve the term native language for the language of early
childhood acquisition and primary language for the language of dominant or
preferred us when this distinction has to be made with the terms first language
or L1 to cover both uses allowing the context to make clear the distinction.
The
concept of L2 (non-native language second language, foreign language) implies
the prior availability to the individual of an L1 in other words some form of
bilingualism. Again the use of the L2 set of whether the learning is formalized
in any way for example through a language course in school (L1) through private
study (L2) or is left informal (L3) in all three cases the language is learnt
as second language or foreign language that is to say it implies that French
(L1) Singhalese (L2) or English (L3) are learnt by these individual after they
have already acquired an L1.
Secondly
the L2 terms may indicate a lower level of proficiency in the language in
comparison with the primary language. The language is the individual’s weaker
or secondary langue. It feels less familiar new or strange.
The
distinction between L1 and L2:
Indistinguishing
the two sets of terms under L1 and L2 we have adopted the commonsense point of
view that this distinction can in practice easily and regularly be made. In
many instances especially in European counties it is indeed often white self
evident.
For
example many parts of Great Britain, France or Germany have homogeneously
English speaking French speaking or German speaking populations restively for whole English French and German
are native languages and languages of dominant and preferred use; in short the first langue in both senses can clearly
be identified. If in their different school systems English French or German
are language as second or foreign languages, the relative position of the
languages is not a simple. The languages of they home neighborhood school,
region or nation may form intricate patterns of bilingualism and
multilingualism. The language experiences of an individual these situations
make the boundaries between L1 and L2 presents no problem. But in many language
situations the relative position of the languages is not a simple. The
languages of the home neighborhood, school region or nation may form intricate
patterns of bilingualism and multilingualism. The language experiences of an
individual in these situation make the boundaries between L1 and L2 learning
far less definite. For example many European countries have accepted migrant
workers fro aboard. In Germany Gastarbeiter (migrant workers) have come from
Spain Italy or Turkey Great Britain
In
a country of immigration like Canada Africa
and Asia local dialects or languages are
interwoven with regional languages and one or two languages of wider
communication such as English French Swahili or Hindi. In these situations the
L1/L2 distinction is by no means easy to.
In
contracting second and foreign language there is today consensus that a
necessary distinctions to be made between anon native language learnt and used
within one country to which the term second language has been applied and a non-native
language learnt and used with reference to a speech community outside national
or territorial a boundaries to which the term foreign language is commonly
given. A second language usually has official status or a recognized function
within a country which a foreign language has not.
Language Acquisition is the process by
which the language
capability develops in a human.
Second language acquisition:
Second language acquisition, or SLA, is the process by which people learn
languages in addition to their native
language(s). The term "language acquisition" became commonly
used after Stephen Krashen contrasted it with formal and
non-constructive "learning."
Similarities and differences between L2 and L1
Acquisition
· Speed: Acquiring a second language can be a lifelong learning process for some; despite their best efforts, most learners will never become fully native-like in the second language. Children, however, by around the age of 5, have more or less mastered their first language, with the exception of vocabulary and a few grammatical structures.
· Stages: Acquiring a second language occurs in systematic stages. Much evidence has been gathered to show that basic sounds, vocabulary, negating phrases, forming questions, using relative clauses, and so on are developed. This development is independent from input (we do not hear nor read language in this order), independent from learning situation (in the classroom or on the street), and is generally applicable across a spectrum of learners (from different language backgrounds). This is similar to the learning stages that babies go through when acquiring the first language: babbling (bababa), vocabulary (milk then later milk drink), negation (no play), question forming (where she go), and so on.
· Correction: Error correction does not seem to have a direct influence on learning an L2. Instruction may affect the rate of learning, but the stages remain the same. Adolescents and adults who know the rule are faster than those who do not. In the first language, children do not respond to systematic correction. Furthermore, children who have limited input still acquire the first language.
· Depth of knowledge: Learners in the
first or second language have knowledge that goes beyond the input they
received, in other words, the whole is greater than the parts. Learners of a
language are able to construct correct utterances (e.g. phrases, sentences, and
questions) that they have never seen or heard before.
· Success: Success in language
learning can be measured in two ways: likelihood and quality. First language
learners will be successful in both measurements.
It is inevitable that all first language learners will
learn a first language and with few exceptions, they will be fully successful.
For second language learners, success is not guaranteed.
Finally, as noted elsewhere, L2
learners rarely achieve complete native-like control of the second language
Second language acquisition and
foreign language acquisition:
According
to the traditional definition, second language acquisition typically takes
place in a setting in which the language to be learned is the language spoken
in thelocal community. Therefore, a Persian speaker learning English in England
Foreign
language acquisition takes place in a setting in which the language to be
learned is not the language spoken in the local community. In most cases,
foreign language acquisition takes place in a setting with formal language
instruction.
Acquisition versus learning:
A
particularly tricky but also controversial distinction is the one between acquisition and
learning. Krashen and Terrell (1983) defined
‘acquisition’ as the product of a ‘subconscious’ process, very similar to the
one children use in learning their first language, and learning as the product
of formal teaching, which results in ‘conscious’ knowledge about the language,
but the distinction can not be as simple as that.
Schmidt
(1990) has pointed out that the term ‘subconscious’
may be misleading, and that is not use in a technical sense here as in
conscious research, where it would imply totally ‘without awareness’, an
unlikely proposition.
Second language teaching and cross cultural
linguistics:
In
the field of second language pedagogy new theatrical developments and changing
circumstances in which language teaching takes place have led to new foci of
research and directions of practice. Illustrative of these developments (but by
no means an exhaustive overview of them) are reconsiderations of the place of
grammar and lexicon respectively in the language teaching curriculum and new
applications of the communicative an social uses of language.
Drawing
on theory and research in psychology applied linguistic have revisited the
explicit teaching of grammar in second language classrooms by investigating the
facilitative role that noticing and conscious awareness play in enabling a
learners to acquire grammatical forms a second language (Schmidt 1990).This
research known as Focus on form (or FonF for short) has been applied to
questions of how and when grammatical instruction can be implemented for most
effective learning) e.g. doughty and Williams 1998.
A
different approach initially associated with work in Great Britain
The
emphasis in applied linguistics on language in context has converged wit the
social fact of large numbers of nonnative speakers of English as students in
north American schools and universities as a result an important trend in
recent yeas n the USA and Canada is content based instruction in which language
lessons derive from academic course content (Briton et al 1989 Snow 1998).
Accurate
description of language use with the ultimate goal of teaching has motivated
research in cross cultural discourse and pragmatics.
Concentration
on spoken language combined with speech act theory among others has engendered
numerous research project sin applied linguistic investigation.
LEARNERS’
CHARACTERISTICS:
Second-language
learners may have learned additional languages, may have started learning their
second language at different ages, may be more or less motivated, may be more
or less intelligent, and may have more or less aptitude.
Factors affecting language acquisition:
Age:
According to Critical
period hypothesis (Lenneberg, 1967), it
is not possible to acquire a native-like level of proficiency when learning the
second language starts after a critical period, normally associated with
puberty. This position is most strongly associated with acquiring the
phonological system of a second language.
Scovel (1988) for instance argues that late starters may be able to learn
the syntax and the vocabulary of a second language, but that attaining a native-like
pronunciation is impossible for them.
Motivation:
The role of motivation
in SLA has been the subject of extensive scholarship, closely influenced by
work in motivational psychology. There are many different kinds of motivation;
these are often divided into types such as integrative or instrumental,
intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation refers to the desire to do
something for an internal reward. Most studies have shown it to be
substantially more effective in long-term language learning than extrinsic
motivation, for an external reward such as high grades or praise. Integrative
and instrumental orientations refer to the degree that a language is learned
"for its own sake" (integratively) or for instrumental purposes.
Studies have not consistently shown either form of motivation to be more effective
than the other, and the role of each is probably conditioned by various
personality and cultural factors.
Some research has shown that motivation correlates
strongly with proficiency, indicating both that successful learners are
motivated and that success improves motivation. Thus motivation is not fixed,
but is strongly affected by feedback from the environment.
Aptitude and
Intelligence:
Regardless of all other factors like age and motivation,
some people happen to be better at learning a second language than others. A
person’s inherent capability of second-language learning is labelled language
aptitude. Aptitude can be seen as a characteristic that is similar to
intelligence, which can not be altered through training. As different skills
are involved in language learning, aptitude needs to include several factors.
Aptitude is usually described asaa combination of four factors:
§ The ability
to identify and remember sounds of the foreign language;
§ The ability
to recognise how words function grammatically in sentences;
§ The ability
to induce grammatical rules from language examples; and
§ The ability
to recognise and remember words and phrases.
Anxiety:
Although some continue to propose that a low level of
anxiety may be helpful, studies have almost unanimously shown that anxiety
damages students' prospects for successful learning. Anxiety is often related
to a sense of threat to the learner's ego in the learning situation, for example if a learner fears
being ridiculed for a mistake.
Socio-cultural factors:
An important research tradition in SLA has investigated
language learning as a form of language socialization. From this
perspective, the acquisition of linguistic features is a process of taking on
the habits and forms of a target culture. In other words, to acquire a language
is to acquire a culture.
This research, informed by the work of social
psychologists, has brought forward a number of important factors in
language learning. In particular, it has pointed out the importance of
attitudes toward the target language and its speakers. Students with negative
attitudes toward the target language community, as well as students with
negative attitudes toward their own first-language community, face particular
difficulties in acquiring that language.
Several studies have shown that older learners learn a
second language faster than younger learners do, given the same amount of time,
which may be due to their more fully developed cognitive skills. Younger learners have a greater chance of
attaining native-like proficiency in the L2, older learners may show faster
progress at the beginning, but are probably surpassed by the young ones in the
end, These observations have been made in all domains, but the phonology of a second language is beyond
doubt the most difficult area to master for late starters. It has proven to
be very difficult to point out the exect age at which the critical period ends
and to explain what causes a possible critical period for language acquisition.
So overall, the evidence for the existence of a critical period is not
convincing.
REFERENCES:
Books:
o
Introducing
Applied Linguistics – S.P. Corder
o Language and Linguistics - John Lyons
o
Fundamental
Concepts of Language Teaching – H.H. Stern
o
An
approach to the Study of Linguistics – New Kitab Mahal
o
Second
Language Acquisition: An advanced resource book – Kees de Boot, Wander Lowie and Marjolijn
Verspoor
Websites:
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