Linguistics (chapter 1)
Linguistics is a systematic study of the manner in which language works. Language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular region/country for talking/writing in. PROPERTIES: Displacement: ability to refer to past and future time – to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment. Arbitrariness: the aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the world whereby there is no “natural” connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. Productivity: the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite – humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. (Fixed reference: animal communication has a fixed set of signals – each signal in the system is fixed as relating to a particular object or occasion and cannot be m...