EM 2: Activity Sheet 2

Macro-linguistics
Macro-linguistics takes a broad view of linguistic phenomena, studying language in different contexts and its
development over time. It focuses on the social, cultural, psychological, and neurological factors and how they're
connected to the language and its structure.

Micro-linguistics
Micro-linguistics is the study of the small ways a language is structured. It looks inward and focuses on the details of
language itself such as how it sounds (phonetics and phonology) , grammatical structures (morphology), syntax, and
meanings (semantics) in context (pragmatics).

Branches of Macro Linguistics

Sociolinguistics

- the study of language in relation to social factors, including differences of regional, class, and occupational
dialect, gender differences, and bilingualism.

Psycholinguistics

- the discipline that investigates and describes the psychological processes that make it possible for humans
to master and use language.
Neurolinguistics

- Neurolinguistics deals with the study of how language is represented in the brain, how and where a brain
stores knowledge of a language that we speak.
Computational linguistics

- concerned with the rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. It is the
branch of linguistics that deals with the techniques of computer science that are applied to the analysis and
synthesis of language and speech.

Branches of Microlinguistics

Phonetics

- Examines human sound production and sound classification. Concerned with the creation, transmission,
and reception of sound than it is with the meaning of sounds.
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a. Articulatory Phonetics
- Concerned with articulating or moving and/or positioning the vocal organs,to describe the spoken
sounds. Focuses on the physical characteristics of the speech sounds,particularly how the human
vocal tract produces these sounds.
b. Acoustic Phonetics
- Focused on the acoustic characteristics of speech sounds, or the physical characteristics of sound
waves generated in a speech.
c. Auditory Phonetics
- Focuses on how the human ear and brain perceive and process speech sounds.
Phonology

- spoken language is broken down into speech sounds.

- phoneme is the smallest unit of sound, These sounds combine to make other sounds, which in turn combine
to make words.

Morphology

- study of how parts of words, called morphemes, create different meanings by combining with each other or
standing alone.

Define morpheme

"morpheme" is a short segment of language

- word or a part of a word that has meaning

- cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its
meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder.
- relatively the same stable meaning in different verbal environments.

a. Derivational morphemes

- type of morpheme in linguistics that is used to create new words or alter the meaning of
existing words by adding prefixes, suffixes, or infixes.

ei. Adding the derivational suffix "-er" to the word "teach" creates the word "teacher,"
changing the verb into a noun.

b. Inflectional morphemes

- Inflectional morphemes change what a word does in terms of grammar, but does not
create a new word.

ei. Adding “ed” to walk (walked) makes the verb past tense.
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c. Free morpheme

- is a word element that can stand alone as a word. Words that can occur in isolation and
cannot be divided into smaller meaning units.

ei. Pretty

d. Bound morpheme

- morphemes that cannot stand alone and only occur as parts of words. It cannot
stand alone with meaning. Bound morphemes must be connected to another
morpheme to create a word.

ei. '-er' in faster

Different ways of forming new words

a. Compounds

- a word that combines two or more different words.

ei. Bus stop (bus + stop)

b. Acronyms

- is a word or name consisting of parts of the full name's words.

ei. Calabarzon – Region; Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon

c. Back-formations

- creating a new word via inflection, typically by removing or substituting actual or

supposed affixes from a lexical item.

ei. babysit from babysitter

d. Abbreviations

- are shortened forms of words/phrases used in place of the full word.

ei. Oct. - October

e. Eponym

- a word or name (could be a person, place or thing) after which something is

named.
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ei. America - named after the Italian Map Maker, Amerigo Vespucci

f. Blending

- combining the beginning and end of two words to create a new term and a new
meaning.

ei. brunch = breakfast + lunch

Syntax

- rules and structure that govern how words and phrases are organized in a language to create sentences
- helps us put words together in a way that makes sense to others.

List all the topics that syntax covers. Search them on the internet. Simply write them down.

1. Word Order: The rules governing the sequence of words in a sentence, including subject-
verb-object (SVO), subject-object-verb (SOV), and other word orders in different
languages.
2. Phrases: The formation of phrases, such as noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP),
prepositional phrases (PP), and more.
3. Constituency: The identification of constituents or groups of words that function as single
units within a sentence.
4. Sentence Types: The different types of sentences, including declarative, interrogative,
imperative, and exclamatory sentences.
5. Clause Structure: The structure of clauses, including main clauses and subordinate
(dependent) clauses.
6. Grammatical Relations: The relationships between words in a sentence, including
subjects, objects, and modifiers.
7. Grammatical Functions: The roles that words and phrases play in a sentence, such as
subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object, and more.
8. Syntactic Trees: The graphical representation of sentence structure using tree diagrams
to illustrate phrase and clause hierarchy.
9. Tense and Aspect: The expression of time and temporal relationships through verb
forms and auxiliary verbs.
10. Agreement: The agreement of verbs with subjects and other elements in terms of tense,
number, gender, and person.
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11. Mood and Voice: The expression of the speaker's attitude or the voice of the verb, such
as active or passive voice.
12. Modifiers: The placement and function of adjectives, adverbs, and other modifiers within
a sentence.
13. Coordination and Subordination: The ways in which sentences and clauses are
combined using coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
14. Ellipsis: The omission of words or phrases that can be inferred from the context.
15. Ambiguity: The potential for multiple interpretations of a sentence due to different
syntactic structures or word meanings.
16. Word Classes: The categorization of words into parts of speech, including nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.
17. Transformational Grammar: The analysis of how sentences can be transformed or
changed to convey different meanings or structures.

Semantics.

- studies the meaning of words, phrases and sentences.

- examines how language users give meaning to linguistic expressions and how they interpret and
understand each other's messages.

18 examples of semantics

1. Slang: form of creative and informal language that includes words, phrases, and acronyms used
in a particular context. It often has multiple meanings and can carry underlying connotations based
on the context in which it is being used.
2. Idioms: Idioms are expressions whose literal meaning diverges from what they mean when used in
common speech.
3. Metaphors: Metaphors are figures of speech that compare two things without using comparison
terms such as like or as.
4. Irony: Irony refers to when someone says one thing but means another, often conveying implied
criticism or sarcasm
5. Jargon: Jargon refers to specific terminology used within a particular field .
6. Everyday expressions: They consist primarily of short set phrases that convey shared thoughts
between people,
7. Hyperbole: Hyperbole is a figure of speech that deliberately exaggerates something beyond reality
for effect. It is typically used to emphasize a point or make an impression
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8. Emojis: Emojis are small symbols used to replace words inside digital conversations.
9. Sarcasm: Sarcasm is a type of irony where the speaker intends to convey the opposite meaning of
what is said.
10. Euphemisms: A euphemism is a more polite or indirect expression used in place of a word or
phrase considered harsh or unpleasant.
11. Colloquialisms: These are words or phrases used in informal conversation
12. Synonyms: These are different words with the same or similar meanings.
13. Antonyms: These are words that have opposite meanings.
14. Homonyms: These are words that are spelled and pronounced the same way but have different
meanings.
15. Homophones: These are words that sound the same when pronounced but have different
meanings and may have different spellings. Examples include “two,” “too,” and “to” or “there,”
“their,” and “they’re.”
16. Polysemy: words that have multiple related meanings.
17. Analogy: comparison between two things for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
18. Puns: form of word play that exploit multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for
an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.
19. Taboo Language: words and phrases that are generally considered inappropriate or offensive in
certain contexts.
20. Connotation: the emotional or cultural associations that a word carries with it, beyond its dictionary
definition.

Pragmatics

- how context contributes to meaning.

- how context influences how we interpret and make meaning of communication.
- deals with the meaning of language but it focuses on meaning in context rather than individual word
meanings.

Differentiate the terms related to pragmatics in terms of context:

a. Linguistic context - is information within a conversation text that helps us understand the
meaning of specific words, phrases or sentences.

Ex. 1. "Lexical Ambiguity" - In the sentence " She saw a bat" , the meaning of "bat" depends
on the linguistic context. If the previous sentence was about animals, it likely refers to the flying mammal, if it
was about sports, it might refer to a baseball bat.
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2. Syntastic Ambiguity - This arises from sentence structure. In the sentence " I saw the
man with the telescope", the linguistic context helps decide whether the man where you had a
telescope.

3. Pronouns like "he", "she", "it" rely on linguistic context to refer back to two previously
mentioned nouns.

b. Situational context - non-verbal cues and external factors that influence interpretation. Relates
to the physical, social, or environmental factors that influence communication and meaning.

1. Non- Verbal Cues - two people having a heated argument with raised voices and
clenched fists. The situational context of their body language suggests tension and anger, even if
their words are not explicitly hostile.

2. Cultural Norms -. The situational context of nodding varies based on cultural norms.
Impacts the interpretation of this nonverbal cue.

3. Tone of voice - The way someone says "Wow" can convey enthusiasm or sarcasm,
and situational context (tone) plays a crucial role in understanding the intended meaning.

Prescriptive Grammar

- concerned with norms of correct usage of language/grammar.

- emphasizes on correct and incorrect norms of governing how sentences should/should not be formed
- concerns what grammarians think is right or wrong.

Descriptive Grammar
- focuses on describing the language as it is actually used
- concerned the use of language without reference to noms
- non-judgmental description of the grammatical constructions in a language.
Synchronic linguistics
- also known as descriptive linguistics
- study of language at any given point in time, usually at present
- can also be a specific point in the past.
- attempts to study the function of language without reference to earlier or later stages
- analyzes and describes how language is actually used by a group of people in a speech community
Diachronic linguistics
- study of language through different periods in history
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- studies the historical development of language through different periods of time

- Describing and accounting for observed changes in particular languages
- Reconstructing the pre-history of languages and determining their connection, grouping them into language
families
- Developing general theories about how and why language changes
- Describing the history of speech communities
- Studying the history of words