Just a bit of language
Binoy Barman gets entangled in a linguistic enterprise and assesses its value
7 September 2007, 18:00 PM
The Study of Language
George Yule
Cambridge University Press
A book on linguistics -- the scientific study of language, as it is commonly defined -- should not put you off. It may be intriguing and claim your attention in its own right. It can make you aware of your own existence. After sometime, you feel you are a human being because you can speak. That is, in your most prominent identity you are 'homo loquens' -- speaking man, not simply 'homo sapiens' -- wise man. Many other animals have intelligence, albeit to a lesser degree, but it is only humans that have language to its fullest potential. Humans are uniquely distinguished from other animals with the language they use. Stripped of your language, you are nothing but an animal, mere flesh without thought and meaning. You talk in words, think in words and even dream in words. Human life is composed of words. Human history is accumulated in words. Human civilisation has been built upon language, the symbols we meet in books and tongues.
The Study of Language is an interesting book. It is excellent as an introduction to linguistics. It touches on the entire gamut of linguistic phenomena -- from sound to sentence, from the historical to the contemporary, from theory to application. The book has been primarily designed for academic purposes. And it hits the target. It has been immensely popular with students and teachers of linguistics. In fact, its demand has been so overwhelming all over the world that the publisher had to go for a third edition. A low priced edition is also available for countries in Africa and for Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in Asia. The first edition came out in 1985, the second edition in 1996 and the third edition in 2006. The publication has been gradually improved with the incorporation of new sections on current issues.
Language can be analysed at different levels, say, sound, word, sentence and meaning levels, which give rise to distinct branches of linguistics. The analysis of sound has two aspects. When we analyse the physical properties of sounds, we are concerned with phonetics; but when we focus on the arrangement of sounds in a language we are concerned with phonology. Morphology is the study of morphemes (smallest meaningful units of grammar) -- how they come to form words. It is concerned with word structure and is distinct from lexicology, which is rather interested in the history of words. The study of how words are put into sentences is called syntax. If morphology is called word grammar, syntax should be called sentence grammar. Semantics is the study of meaning. When we specifically refer to how speakers and hearers convey meaning to each other we extend the field to what is called pragmatics. Language can also be analysed at text level, which will lead to text analysis or discourse analysis. All these aspects of language analysis have found their due place in the work.
Linguistics interacts with other disciplines in its course of investigations, out of which many interdisciplinary subjects emerge. We should notice when we are engaged in verbal communication, our brain/mind processes language for us. In this sense the study of language entangles psychological processes; as a result we get psycholinguistics. In recent times psycholinguistics has branched into a more biologically focused subject called neurolinguistics, which brings the psychology of language down to neuronic functions. In a similar vein, language is used in society and is closely associated with social and cultural norms. The study of language from social perspectives is called sociolinguistics. We can consider how languages evolve or change over time. The study of language from the historical point of view will be termed historical linguistics. Computers use programming language to interact with human users. This man-machine interaction has given rise to computational linguistics. The book has skillfully captured all these interdisciplinary subjects.
We should not lose sight of the fact that language is employed by its users, especially the writers, for various stylistic purposes. Stylistics is the subject which deals with style matters and this is where linguistics and literature find an interface. However, Yule is reluctant to include the subject in his universally acclaimed book. We find no justification for this. In its tight-knit scope the book could not also accommodate some other interdisciplinary subjects such as clinical linguistics, forensic linguistics, biolinguistics, ecolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, anthropological linguistics and evolutionary linguistics, many of which are very recent developments. We can hope these topics will be properly addressed in some later edition of the book.
Notwithstanding the scope void, The Study of Language gives much more than just the description of different branches of linguistics. For example, it familiarises readers with gestures and sign languages (in chapter 16). It explains the forms and functions of American Sign Language (ASL), a special language which is widely used by the deaf in the US and elsewhere. In chapter 2 the book investigates the properties of human language and animal language. The writer recounts how different chimpanzees and other animals were taught language (in a very primitive sense) and how it greatly differs from the natural language used by humans. In the first two editions the properties of human and animal language were treated in two separate chapters which were integrated into one in the third edition. Another conspicuous change which might be noticed is the treatment of meaning. In the first edition semantics and pragmatics were in one chapter (chapter 11). But in view of burgeoning importance, the two concepts were dealt separately in two different chapters in the second (chapter 11 & 12) and third editions (chapter 10 & 11). It is often convenient to discuss a topic dividing into two chapters as has been done particularly with psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Psycholinguistics is divided into 'First language acquisition' (chapter 14) and 'Second language acquisition/learning' (chapter 15); and sociolinguistics into language and regional variation' (chapter 19) and Language and culture' (chapter 20).
Since the time of Sir William Jones, an 18th century linguist who initiated a new trend in comparative linguistics, the subject has advanced a long way with numerous ramifications. At the beginning of the 20th century Ferdinand de Saussure made a clear distinction between diachronic (historical) and synchronic (contemporary) study of language, putting more emphasis on the latter, which paved the way for structural linguistics. Leonard Bloomfield was a great structuralist and, influenced by logical positivism, presented a behaviourist explanation of language. B. F. Skinner followed in his footsteps and attempted to explain verbal behaviour with operant conditioning, an improvement over Pavlov's classical conditioning. In the middle of the century appeared Noam Chomsky, who revolutionised the study of language, setting up a separate paradigm called generative linguistics, which again is embedded in the larger branch of cognitive linguistics. Mentalist in essence, his theory stood face to face with behaviourism. Consequently it revived in history the old philosophical debate between empiricism and rationalism, which still continues in full vigour.
The analysis of language is a multifaceted enterprise and dichotomy in it may be established on various lines. For example, taking a line of theory/application, we may get theoretical and applied linguistics. Some linguistic investigations have implications for practical fields. For instance, psycholinguistic theories are applied to language teaching; and findings in computational linguistics are utilised in artificial intelligence. Similarly, we can make a dichotomy on historical/contemporary line. The historical account of language is termed diachronic linguistics and the account of language at a particular point of time is termed synchronic linguistics (recall Saussure).
If a book of linguistics is written on general purposes incorporating all the essential aspects of the subject it will be labelled general linguistics (as the book we are reviewing at the moment); but if the book emphasises a particular aspect it will come out as a special category (there is unfortunately no generic term for this), such as phonetics and syntax, or psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. The dichotomy may also go through the line of intra-disciplinary/inter-disciplinary treatment. Discourse analysis is intra-disciplinary as its inquiry is confined to a particular subject area, but philosophy of language is inter-disciplinary as it combines linguistic explanations with philosophical doctrines.
The Study of Language is copious and authentic. Teachers and students of linguistics can reliably follow the book. It is useful not only for academics people but also for general readers who have an interest in language. The book is easily accessible for its lucidity; it is valuable for informative richness; and it is remarkable for a balanced combination of breadth and depth of the subject matter in question.
Dr Binoy Barman is a writer and Assistant Professor at Bangladesh University.
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