Defining Stylistics

Stylistics is the study of devices in language that are considered to produce expressive or literary style. This
discipline of Linguistics is closely related to Literary Criticism but encompasses liturgical, contemporary,
modern and even pop culture domain of literature and goes beyond classical, formal and rhetorical literatures
(high literatures).

While literary criticism focuses on style as the proper adornment of thought, Stylistics approaches literature
with formal linguistic analysis to evaluate printed texts, explaining the particular choices made by individuals
and social groups in their use of language.

Generally, Stylistics also discusses which type of language is appropriate or inappropriate base on the various
circumstantial elements like time, purpose or intention, style, recipient, etc. – in modern times, this addresses
what is considered to be 'politically correct' in writing. 

Since language is distinctive to its user, Stylistics discusses form and meaning in reference to its ‘register’
(style) particular to a certain variety of language, thus, providing an insight to the process within the language
used.
Stylistics: Scope and Object of Study
Using a wide-range of 20th century literary works, modern and pop-culture examples; this subject serves as an
introduction to the technique of stylistic analysis that generally tackles descriptive grammar from clause to text
structure in an attempt to understand and appreciate style.
Aside from the descriptive discourse of the subject, Introduction to Stylistics will also provide refreshers for the
following topics:
1. Structure of the noun phrase
2. Premodification
3. Postmodification
4. Articles
5. Pronouns

Stylistics: Related Discipline

Phonology - the study of the physical properties of speech (or signed) production and perception
Morphology - the study of internal structures of words and how they can be modified
Semantics - the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations (phraseology),
and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences
Pragmatics - the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations
(phraseology), and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences
Anthropological Linguistics - the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations
between human biology, cognition and language.
Language Development - a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to
acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. 
Language Education - is the teaching and learning of a language. It can include improving a learner's
mastery of her or his native language, but the term is more commonly used with regard to second language
acquisition, which means the learning of a foreign or second language.
Linguistic Anthropology - an interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life.
Sociolinguistics - a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a      particular social setting

Review: Noun Phrase

The Noun Phrase
The discussion of the choice of language noted that a single concept is often signaled by a variety of words,
each word possessing slightly different connotations. We can indicate that people are less than content by
saying they are angry, irate , incensed , perturbed , upset ,furious , or mad. The broader our vocabulary, the
greater our options and the more precisely we can convey our meaning.
And yet no matter how wide our vocabulary may be, a single word is often insufficient. A single word, by itself,
can appear somewhat vague, no matter how specific that word might seem. The term “dog” may be specific
compared to “mammal,” but it is general compared to “collie.” And “collie” is general compared to “Lassie.”
Then again, many different dogs played Lassie!
Suppose you want to indicate a female person across the room. If you don’t know her name, what do you
say?   
That girl.
If there were more than one, this alone would be too general. It lacks specificity.
                      The girl in the blue Hawaiian shirt…
                      The taller of the two cheerleaders by the water cooler…
When a single term will not supply the reference we need, we add terms to focus or limit a more general term.
Instead of referring to drugs in a discussion, we might refer to hallucinogenic drugs. We might distinguish
between hard drugs and prescription drugs. In so doing we modify the notion of a drug to describe the specific
one, or ones, we have in mind. (Then again, at times we are forced to use many words when we cannot recall
the one that will really do, as when we refer to that funny device doctors pump up on your arm to measure
blood pressure instead of a sphygmomanometer).
This section examines how we construct full and specific references using noun phrases. An ability to
recognize complete noun phrases is essential to reading ideas rather than words. A knowledge of the various
possibilities for constructing extended noun phrases is essential for crafting precise and specific references.
Nouns
To begin our discussion, we must first establish the notion of a noun.   
English teachers commonly identify nouns by their content.    They describe nouns as words that "identify
people, places, or things," as well as feelings or ideas—words like salesman, farm , balcony , bicycle ,
and trust.    If you can usually put the word a or the before a word, it’s a noun. If you can make the word plural
or singular, it's a noun. But don't worry...all that is needed at the moment is a sense of what a noun might be.
   
Noun Pre-Modifiers
What if a single noun isn't specific enough for our purposes?      How then do we modify a noun to construct a
more specific reference?    
English places modifiers before a noun.    Here we indicate the noun that is at the center of a noun phrase by
an asterisk (*) and modifiers by arrows pointed toward the noun they modify.
white   house
>>>>>  *
large     man
>>>>>   *
Modification is a somewhat technical term in linguistics. It does not mean to change something, as when we
"modify" a car or dress. To modify means to limit, restrict, characterize, or otherwise focus meaning. We use
this meaning throughout the discussion here.
Modifiers before the noun are called pre-modifiers.    All of the pre-modifiers that are present and the noun
together form a noun phrase .
NOUN      PHRASE
pre-modifiers noun
>>>>>            *
By contrast, languages such as Spanish and French place modifiers after the noun
casa blanca       white house 
*    <<<
homme grand       big man 
*       <<<
The most common pre-modifiers are adjectives, such as red , long , hot . Other types of words often play this
same role.    Not only articles
the       water
>>>         *
but also verbs
running      water
>>>               *
and possessive pronouns
her      thoughts
>>            *
Premodifiers limit the reference in a wide variety of ways.   
                          Order:                            second, last
                          Location:                        kitchen, westerly
                          Source or Origin:            Canadian
                          Color:                            red, dark
                          Smell:                             acrid, scented
                          Material:                         metal, oak
                          Size:                               large, 5-inch
                          Weight:                          heavy
                          Luster:                            shiny, dull
A number of pre-modifiers must appear first if they appear at all.
                          Specification:                              a, the, every
                          Designation:                                this, that, those, these
                          Ownership/Possessive:               my, your, its, their, Mary’s
              Number:                                     one, many
These words typically signal the beginning of a noun phrase.   
Some noun phrases are short:
                                      the table
                                            *            
Some are long:
the second shiny red Swedish touring sedan
---------------------------------      *
a large smelly red Irish setter
---------------------      *
my carved green Venetian glass salad bowl
------------------------------------      *
the three old Democratic legislators
------------------------         *
Notice that each construction would function as a single unit within a sentence.    (We offer a test for this
below,)

The noun phrase is the most common unit in English sentences.    

To appreciate the rich possibilities of pre-modifiers, you have only to see how much you can expand a
premodifier in a noun phrase:

the book 
the history book 
the American history book 
the illustrated American history book 
the recent illustrated American history book 
the recent controversial illustrated American history book 
the recent controversial illustrated leather bound American history book

Noun Post-Modifiers
We were all taught about pre -modifiers: adjectives appearing before a noun in school.    Teachers rarely
speak as much about adding words after the initial reference.    Just as we find pre -modifiers, we also
find    post -modifiers—modifiers coming after a noun.
The most common post-modifier is prepositional phrases:
the book on the table
    *       
civil conflict in Africa
        *      
the Senate of the United States
       *        
Post-modifiers can be short
a dream deferred
      * 
or long, as in Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to
a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
     *     
and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together
 
at a table of brotherhood.
What does King have?    A dream?    No. He has a specific dream. Once we are sensitive to the existence of
noun phrases, we recognize a relatively simple structure to the sentence.   Here we recognize a noun phrase
with a very long post-modifier—thirty-two words to be exact.

We do not get lost in the flow of words, but recognize structure. At the point that we recognize structure within
the sentence, we recognize meaning. (Notice also that post-modifiers often include clauses which themselves
include complete sentences, as in the last example above.)

Post-modifiers commonly answer the traditional news reporting questions

of who , what , where , when , how , or why .    Noun post-modifiers commonly take the following forms:
prepositional phrase                the dog in the store
               *    
_ing phrase                              the girl running to the store
               *    
_ed past tense                          the man wanted by the police
               *    
wh - clauses                              the house where I was born
                 *       
that/which clauses                  the thought that I had yesterday
                *        
If you see a preposition, wh - word ( which, who, when where ), -ing verb form, or that or which after a noun,
you can suspect a post-modifier and the completion of a noun phrase.  
The noun together with all pre- and post-modifiers constitutes a single unit, a noun phrase that indicates the
complete reference. Any agreement in terms of singular/plural is with the noun at the center.
The boys on top of the house    are .............
      *    
Here the noun at the center of the noun phrase is plural, so a plural form of the verb is called for (not a singular
form to agree with the singularhouse) .

The Pronoun Test

In school, we were taught that pronouns replaced nouns .    Not so.    Pronouns replace complete noun
phrases .    Pronoun replacement thus offers a test of a complete noun phrase. Consider:
The boy ate the apple in the pie.

What did he eat?   

                          The boy ate                the apple in the pie.
               *       
Want proof? Introduce the pronoun “it” into the sentence.    If a pronoun truly replaces a noun, we’d
get                                  
*The boy ate                  the it in the pie.

No native speaker would say that!    They’d say

              The boy ate               it.

The pronoun replaces the complete noun phrase, the apple in the pie .
This pronoun substitution test can be particualrly useful. Not all prepositional phrases after a noun are
necessarily part of the noun phrase – they could be later predicate or sentence modifiers. In other words, we
must not only identify noun phrases, we must parse out other material, and in that act recognize broader
aspects of sentence structure.
The web page on distinguishing sentence and predicate modifiers
(www.criticalreading.com/sentence_predicate_modifiers.htm) discusses the three sentences:
1. 1. The boy ate the apple in the pie.
2. 2. The boy ate the apple in the summer.
3. 3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry.
Only the first includes a noun phrase longer than two words: the apple in the pie.

Boxes Within Boxes: Testing for a Complete Noun Phrase

The goal of reading, we noted above, is not to recognize grammatical features, but to find meaning.    The goal
is not to break a sentence or part of a sentence into as small pieces as possible, but to break it into chunks in
such a way that fosters the discovery of meaning.   
Consider one of the examples above of a prepositional phrase as a post-modifier:
                          the book on the table
Book is a noun at the center of the noun phrase.    But table is also a noun.    If we analyze the noun phrase
completely, on all levels, we find:
                          the book on the table
              *     
on the table
            *
We can have prepositional phrase within prepositional phrase within prepositional phrases:
                          …the book on the table in the kitchen…
               *      
                                           on the table in the kitchen…
              *    
                                                                 in the kitchen …
                         *
We don't want to recognize every little noun phrase.   We want to recognize the larger ones that shape the
meaning.     The book is not "on the table."    The book is "on the table in the kitchen."
The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislators from each State.
Question: Who is in the Senate?   
          a) two legislators
           b) two legislators from each State?
The answer is b). The full Senate consists of two from each state (100 people), not simply two! We read the
sentence as
The Senate of the United States         is composed of          
two legislators from each State.
     *          
If we read the sentence as
The Senate of the United States         
is composed of two legislators            
from each State.
we miss the meaning.

Earlier we noted that pre -modifiers in noun phrase can be expanded to significant length. For the most part,
we increased the length of the pre-modifier by adding additional adjectives, a word or two at a time.    Noun
phrase post -modifiers can be expanded to much greater lengths.    We can add long phrases which
themselves contain complete sentences.
              the park where I hit a home run when I was in the ninth grade .     
      *    
The sentence within the post-modifier is printed in boldface.
The following sentence indicates something was lost.    What was lost?
He lost the book by Mark Twain about the Mississippi that he took out of the library on Sunday before the
game so that he could study during half time when his brother was getting popcorn.
The answer is the complete phrase
……… the book by Mark Twain about the Mississippi that he took out of the library on Sunday before the
game so that he could study during half time when his brother was getting popcorn.
The base term book is modified as to author (Mark Twain), topic (about the Mississippi), as well as intent or
purpose (that he took out of the library on Sunday before the game so that he could study during half time
when his brother was getting popcorn.)    We assume that he has another book by Twain about the Mississippi
that he did not lose.    Want proof?    What would be replaced by “it”?   
The full reference of a noun phrase is often “conveniently” ignored in movie advertisements. Janet Maslin,
movie critic for The New York Times , complained when an advertisement for the video tape of John Grisham’s
"The Rainmaker" quoted her as describing the movie as director Francis Ford Coppola’s “best and sharpest
film,” when, in fact, her review stated:
John Grisham’s "The Rainmaker" is Mr. Coppola’s best and sharpest film in years.
The original quotation does not refer to the “best and sharpest film” of Coppola’s career, but to his “best and
sharpest film in years.”

Noun Phrases: The Dominant Construction

Finally, the degree to which noun phrases are the dominant construction within texts can be seen in the
opening paragraph of the Text for Discussion: Annotation - Needle Exchange Programs and the Law - Time for
a Change. The complete noun phrases appear within square brackets and appear in red.
(1) In [ his social history of venereal disease ], [ No Magic Bullet ], [ Allan M.   Brandt ]describes[ the
controversy in the US military about preventing venereal disease among soldiers during World War I ].  

Should there be [ a disease prevention effort that recognized that many young American men would succumb

to the charms of French prostitutes ], or should there be [ a more punitive approach to discourage sexual

contact ]?    Unlike[ the New Zealand Expeditionary forces ], which gave[ condoms ]to[ their soldiers ],[ the

United States ]decided to give [ American soldiers ][after-the-fact, and largely ineffective, chemical

prophylaxis ].  [ American soldiers ]also were subject to [court martial ] if they contracted[ a venereal

] [ ] [ ] [
disease  .    These measures   failed.     More than 383,000 soldiers  were diagnosed with venereal

diseases ]between April 1917 and December 1919 and lost [ seven million days of active duty ].  [ Only

influenza ], which struck in [ an epidemic ], was [ a more common illness among servicemen ].  

Implications For Reading and Writing

The above discussion introduces a number of concepts crucial to effective reading and writing.   
 We do not read texts word by word, but chunk by chunk.    We must read each grammatical
construction as a single unit. Deciphering sentences involves isolating phrases within a sentence and
recognizing where long phrases begin and end.
 To write well is not to string words together, but to string together larger phrases, to create full
references that carefully distinguish one idea from another, going beyond talking in vague generalities.    We
can increase the clarity and sophistication of our thought by using extended phrases instead of single words.
Sophisticated thought is qualified thought. Intelligent discussion goes beyond either/or or black-or-white views
of the world to recognize nuances and distinctions.
Remarks can be
 extended (made broader or more general) ,
 qualified (restricted in some way), or
 limited (made more specific or less encompassing).
We don’t really make sentences longer by adding at the end so much as expanding each chunk
Good writers carefully distinguish between all, most, many , some, few, and one. They specify the specific
time, condition, or circumstances an assertion is true. Some claims are made for certain, some "in all
probability" or "within a specific margin of error," some for given conditions.

Good writers carefully distinguish between all, most, many, some, few, and one. They specify the specific time,
condition, or circumstances an assertion is true. Some claims are made for certain, some "in all probability" or
"within a specific margin of error," some for given conditions.

When drawing careful distinctions, authors are not being wishy-washy or nit picking. They are simply being
precise. They are saying exactly what they want to say or feel secure in saying based on the available
evidence. Weak writers can achieve an immediate gain in the level of thought of their writing by taking
advantages of the opportunities for adding pre- and post-modifiers.

For writers, this model is a reminder of the opportunity to extend, limit, or otherwise shape a specific idea. You
can greatly increase the sophistication and depth of thought of your work by taking advantage of these pre-
and post-modifier "slots". Having written a statement, you might go back in editing to see how you can further
shape your thoughts by making use of these slots.
The Constitution is the nation’s charter, and lawmakers should resist the temptation to push for amendments
every time an election year rolls around.
Notice how much richer the next sentence is (additional modifiers in bold face) .
The Constitution of the United States is the nation’s bedrock charter,
and devoted lawmakers sworn to uphold it should resist the dangerous temptation to push
for pandering amendments every time an election year rolls around.

 History of Stylistics
Practical and New Criticism
*Stylistics explores how readers interact with the language of text in order to explain how we understand and
are affected by text when we read them.

*Grew up in the 2nd half of the 20th century as a logical extension of ‘movement’ within Literary Criticism to
concentrate on studying texts rather than authors. This approach is called Practical Criticism.

*As Practical Criticism dawned in Britain a new movement also rouse in United States and called New Criticism

Practical Criticism New Criticism

Originated in Britain Originated in United States

Focuses on psychological aspects in a Focused exclusively on the description of

reader interacting with a literary piece literary works as independent aesthetic
object
Emphasis on the language of the text Emphasis on the aesthetic structure of the
rather than its author work

Assumes that what critics needed was Pay attention to the internal characteristics
accounts of important works of literature of the text itself and dissuades external
bases on the intuitional reading outcomes evidence
of trained and aesthetically sensitive critics

Critics did not analyse the language of Uses formal aspects as rhythm, meter,
texts but rather paid very close attention to theme, imagery, metaphor, etc. The
the language of the text when they read interpretation of a text shows that these
them and them described how they aspects serve to support the structure of
understood them and were they affected meaning within the text.
by them

Advocates “claim and quote” approach to Same

criticism

Formalist vs Structuralist
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a
particular text.
Formalism rose to prominence in the early twentieth century as a reaction against Romanticist theories of
literature, which centered on the artist and individual creative genius, and instead placed the text itself back
into the spotlight, to show how the text was indebted to forms and other works that had preceded it. Two
schools of formalist literary criticism developed, Russian formalism, and soon after Anglo-American New
Criticism. Formalism was the dominant mode of academic literary study in the US at least from the end of the
Second World War through the 1970s, especially as embodied in René Wellek and Austin Warren's Theory of
Literature (1948, 1955, 1962).
Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure. De Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916, stressed examining
language as a static system of interconnected units.
Structural linguistics are now overwhelmingly regarded by professional linguists as outdated and as
superseded by developments such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar
The foundation of structural linguistics is the idea that the identity of a sign is determined by its existence in a
state of contrast with other signs that is either syntagmatic or paradigmatic. This idea contrasted drastically
with the idea that signs can be examined in isolation from a language and stressed Saussure's point that
linguistics must treat language synchronically.
Paradigmatic relations are sets of units that exist in the mind, such as the phonological set cat, bat, hat, mat,
fat, or the morphological set ran, run, running. The units of a set must have something in common with one
another, but they must contrast too, otherwise they could not be distinguished from each other and would
collapse into a single unit, which could not constitute a set on its own, since a set always consists of more than
one unit.
Syntagmatic relations are temporal and consist of a row of units that contrast with one another, like "the man
hit the ball" or "the ball was hit by the man". What units can be used in each part of the row is determined by
the units that surround them. There is therefore an interweaving effect between syntagmatic and paradigmatic
relations.

Formalism Structuralism
Refers to critical approaches that analyze, Structural linguistics thus involves
interpret, or evaluate the inherent features collecting a corpus of utterances and then
of a text. These features include not only attempting to classify all of the elements of
grammar and syntax but also literary the corpus at their different linguistic levels:
devices such as meter and tropes. The the phonemes, morphemes, lexical
formalist approach reduces the importance categories, noun phrases, verb phrases,
of a text’s historical, biographical, and and sentence types
cultural context.
New Criticism is an approach to literature which was developed by a group of American critics, most of whom
taught at southern universities during the years following the first World War. The New Critics wanted to avoid
impressionistic criticism , which risked being shallow and arbitrary, and social/ historical approaches which
might easily be subsumed by other disciplines. Thus, they attempted to systematize the study of literature, to
develop an approach which was centered on the rigorous study of the text itself. They were given their name
by John Crowe Ransom, who describes the new American formalists inThe New Criticism (1941).

New Critical formalism

New Criticism is distinctly formalist in character. It stresses close attention to the internal characteristics of the
text itself, and it discourages the use of external evidence to explain the work. The method of New Criticism is
foremost a close reading, concentrating on such formal aspects as rhythm, meter, theme, imagery, metaphor,
etc. The interpretation of a text shows that these aspects serve to support the structure of meaning within the
text.
The aesthetic qualities praised by the New Critics were largely inherited from the critical writings of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge was the first to elaborate on a concept of the poem as a unified, organic whole
which reconciled its internal conflicts and achieved some final balance or harmony.

In The Well-Wrought Urn (1947), Cleanth Brooks integrates these considerations into the New Critical
approach. In interpreting canonical works of poetry, Brooks constantly analyzes the devices with which they set
up opposing these and then resolve them. Through the use of "ironic contrast" and "ambivalence" , the poet is
able to create internal paradoxes which are always resolved. Under close New Critical analysis, the poem is
shown to be a hierarchical structure of meaning, of which one correct reading can be given .

The heresy of paraphrase

Although the New Critics do not assert that the meaning of a poem is inconsequential, they reject approaches
which view the poem as an attempt at representing the "real world." They justify the avoidance of discussion of
a poem's content through the doctrine of the "Heresy of Paraphrase," which is also described in The Well-
Wrought Urn. Brooks asserts that the meaning of a poem is complex and precise, and that any attempt to
paraphrase it inevitably distorts or reduces it. Thus, any attempt to say what a poem means is heretical,
because it is an insult to the integrity of the complex structure of meaning within the work.

The intentional and affective fallacies

In The Verbal Icon (1954), William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley describe two other fallacies which are
encountered in the study of literature .

The "Intentional Fallacy" is the mistake of attempting to understand the author's intentions when interpreting a
literary work. Such an approach is fallacious because the meaning of a work should be contained solely within
the work itself, and attempts to understand the author's intention violate the autonomy of the work.
The "Affective Fallacy" is the mistake of equating a work with its emotional effects upon an audience. The new
critics believed that a text should not have to be understood relative to the responses of its readers; its merit
(and meaning) must be inherent.

The New Critics' preference for poetry

The New Critics privileged poetry over other forms of literary expression because the saw the poem as the
purest exemplification of the literary values which they upheld. However, the techniques of close reading and
structural analysis of texts have also been applied to fiction, drama, and other literary forms. These techniques
remain the dominant critical approach in many modern literature courses.

Possible critiques and responses

Because New Criticism is such a rigid and structured program for the study of literature, it is open to criticism
on many fronts. First, in its insistence on excluding external evidence, New Criticism disqualifies many possibly
fruitful perspectives for understanding texts, such as historicism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. Since New
Criticism aims at finding one "correct" reading, it also ignores the ambiguity of language and the active nature
of the perception of meaning described by poststructuralists. Finally, it can even be perceived as elitist,
because it excludes those readers who lack the background for arriving at the "correct" interpretation.
However, defenders of New Criticism might remind us that this approach is meant to deal with the poem on its
own terms. While New Criticism may not offer us a wide range of perspectives on texts, it does attempt to deal
with the text as a work of literary art and nothing else.
Register in Stylistics Language Registers
Register in linguistics refers to the patterns of communication used in particular settings and for specific
purposes. It is often an indicator of the formality or official nature of an occasion, or a mark of authority.
Linguists make the distinction that register varies with use, rather than with the user. For example, most
people's speech contains pointers, lexical, syntactical, and phonological, of their class or social status. Such
speech changes register when it is altered to fit an occasion, such as appearing in court or speaking to
a bureaucrat, writing a scientific paper, making a business presentation, or interacting with an older relative or
small child.
Register is marked by changes in syntax, accent or phonology, vocabulary, morphology. The study of register
is commonly thought of as sociolinguistics, though it is also studied by other disciplines such as pragmatic
grammar and stylistics.  
Register is also identified by non-linguistic markers, such as body language and attire, The term has been
used since the 1960s, when linguist Michael Halliday identified three variables or types of factors that affect
register: Tenor, Field and Mode
·         Tenor: The relationship between the speakers matters, such as when a student is talking to a teacher,
an offender to a police officer, an office worker to a superior, or a parent to an infant (baby talk). Here register
is generally a marker of formality or intimacy, and commonly affects phonology, pragmatic rules, and accent.
·         Field: The subject of conversation or discourse matters, as particular situations call for particular kinds
of vocabulary, mood etc. These variations are often called jargon, but are sometimes simply the form of a
particular profession. For instance, priests use liturgical language, lawyers use 'legalese'. Philosophers use the
language of subjectivity or rationality, while programmers have their own lexicon.
·         Mode: The medium of communication matters, such as whether it is spoken or written, and if either, on
the level of formality or professionalism needed to be conveyed. Instant messaging, for example, is less formal
than a handwritten letter, and a professional presentation is different from a coffee shop conversation. Here
and in register determined by field, authority and expertise is being conveyed as much as formality.
There are five language registers or styles. Each level has an appropriate use that is determined by differing
situations. It would certainly be inappropriate to use language and vocabulary reserve for a boyfriend or
girlfriend when speaking in the classroom. Thus the appropriate language register depends upon the audience
(who), the topic (what), purpose (why) and location (where).
You must control the use of language registers in order to enjoy success in every aspect and situation you
encounter.
1.      Static Register
This style of communications RARELY or NEVER changes. It is “frozen” in time and content. e.g. the Pledge of
Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer, the Preamble to the US Constitution, the Alma Mater, a bibliographic reference,
laws .
2.      Formal Register
This language is used in formal settings and is one-way in nature. This use of language usually follows a
commonly accepted format. It is usually impersonal and formal. A common format for this register are
speeches. e.g. sermons, rhetorical statements and questions, speeches, pronouncements made by judges, 
announcements.
3.      Consultative Register
This is a standard form of communications. Users engage in a mutually accepted structure of communications.
It is formal and societal expectations accompany the users of this speech. It is professional discourse. e.g.
when strangers meet, communications between a superior and a subordinate, doctor & patient, lawyer & client,
lawyer & judge, teacher & student, counselor & client,
4.      Casual Register
This is informal language used by peers and friends. Slang, vulgarities and colloquialisms are normal. This is
“group” language. One must be member to engage in this register. e.g. buddies, teammates, chats and emails,
and blogs, and letters to friends.
5.      Intimate Register
This communications is private. It is reserved for close family members or intimate people. e.g. husband &
wife, boyfriend & girlfriend, siblings, parent & children.
Rule of Language Use:
One can usually transition from one language register to an adjacent one without encountering repercussions.
However, skipping one or more levels is usually considered inappropriate and even offensive. 

Dialect
Dialect refers to a variety of language that is a characteristic of a particular group or in a certain geographical
area and has complete system of verbal communication, with its own vocabulary, speech pattern, accent,
grammar and syntax.
A variety of language associated with certain social class is called ‘sociolect’ such as a socioeconomic class,
an ethnic group, an age group, a working sector, etc. On the other hand, if a variety of language is identified
with regional characteristics it is termed as ‘topolect’ or ‘regiolect.’
Since a dialect has a whole set of communication system, if the difference between two dialects are only in
tonal patterns and pronunciations, the distinction is called ‘accent’ instead of dialect differences.
Moreover, social subordination is also being applied in defining dialect. If a language is supported by an
institution, usually a cognate to country’s history, a certain language variety is then designated as the standard
language and consequently minimizes the significance of other variety of languages. The latter are then
termed as non-standard dialects.

Diatype
Diatype:

Diatype is a term first used by the

linguist Michael Gregory to describe a
Diatype vs. dialect
type of language variation which is
determined by its social purpose. In his
Diatype Dialect
formulation, language variation can be
divided into two categories: dialect, for
Defined by use Defined by user
variation according to user (eg. African
American Vernacular English),
Intra-speaker variation Inter-speaker variation
and diatype for variation according
to use (eg. the specialised language of
Discourse community Speech community
an academic journal).
Field, tenor, mode Geographic, social, temporal
The distinction between the terms is
not always clear; in some cases a language variety may be understood as both a dialect and a diatype. The
term register is often used in place of 'diatype'. The terms style and genre can also overlap in meaning.
Three variables of dialect are:
 Geographical: Where the speech community is based.
 Social: What social group/s the speech community belong to.
 Temporal: In what time (present or historical) the speech community exists.
Diatype is usually analysed in terms of:
 Field: The subject matter or setting.
 Tenor: The participants and their relationships.
 Mode: The channel of communication, such as spoken, written or signed.
The term diatypes has been defined as varieties of language within a community which are specified according
to use. Depending on the nature of the community, a diatype could be a register or variety of the same
language or a different language altogether. The only requirement is that the diatypes are different but
constitute parts of the same verbal repertoire.
The use of any given diatype of such verbal repertoire is usually determined. The form of verbal code in use
depends on the person/s to whom the individual is speaking, their roles and status relative to each other, the
place in which the encounter occurs and the verbal function (reason) for the encounter.

Semiotic Structure
Field refers to the subject matter or topic. Field answers the question: "What is happening?" "What is the
activity?" We examine language project to find out its content and aims. The description of the content should
be clear and detailed enough to give readers a sense that they have explored the site themselves. At this
juncture we can begin to suggest how the content affects the vocabulary used. The field of a text tells you
which domain of experience the text is about: family life, religious observance, law enforcement, medicine,
etc. Field is an element of the experiential metafunction of a text.When analyzing a text for its field, you will
want to examine:

• The lexical items. 

The field of a text can easily be determined by examining the lexical words in the text, or even just the nouns.
You will want to find and answer to these two questions:
Semantic domains: Which discipline do the lexical words refer to? Certain words are more common in one
discipline than in another. You could prove this by corpus research, otherwise use your own intuition,
specialized dictionaries, etc.
Because semantic domains are inherently hierarchical and overlapping, we may make a very general
pronouncement (“this text is about science”) or a very specific one (“this text is about particle physics”). A text
may also refer to more than one semantic domain.  
Specialization: How well known are the lexical words to a general audience and to a specialized audience?
• The process and circumstance types. For example, in a news text ‘about’ a terrorist attack, a large proportion
of the participants will refer to terrorists and a large proportion of the processes will refer to acts of terrorism.

Tenor
Tenor refers to the roles of the participants in an interaction. Tenor answers the question: "Who are
participating and what is their relative status or power?" 

The tenor of a text tells you:

• What kind of person the author is, or is presenting himself/herself to be.
• What kind of people the expected audience are. 
• What the relationship between them is, or what relationship the author is presenting it as.

Tenor is easiest to analyze in spoken conversations when all speakers are present and participating. Tenor is
more difficult to analyze in written texts when the author is anonymous and when the recipients are not
present.

Tenor is a component of the interpersonal metafunction of a text.

Map of tenor
In interactive texts (typically spoken), we typically analyze tenor into:
• Relative status (equality, inequality), for example we look the terms of address used, who gets to choose the
topic of conversation, who gets to choose who speaks, and so on.
• Social distance (familiarity, friendliness), expressed for example by the presence of formal or informal
vocabulary, slang, etc.
In non-interactive texts (typically written), we analyze tenor into:
• Personalization (how much attention is drawn to the writer or to the reader) and also the related technique of
deliberate impersonalization.
• Standing, or how much the author comes across as possessing expertise and authority on the subject.
• Stance, or how much the author allows the reader to disagree with the content. Stance breaks down further
into:
o Attitude, revealing whether the meanings communicated come across as negative or positive. Also the topic
of agency and affectedness is mentioned here as a technique used to trigger attitudes.

                        o Modality, which breaks down into:

Epistemic modality (how much the content comes across as being true).
ƒ                                   Deontic modality (how much obligation to do something the text seems
to                                                       put on the reader).

Tenor in interactive texts

Interactive texts are usually spoken and include a face-to-face conversation, a telephone conversation, but not
a prepared lecture. Some written texts are also interactive, for example a real-time Internet chat. To a lesser
extent, written texts directed at a single participant known to the writer (as opposed to those directed at the
public) are also interactive.

Relative status (equality, inequality)

When analyzing an interactive text for its tenor, you will be interested in the status of the participants to each
other. Are they equal, or is there some amount of equality between them? This will typically be reflected in the
choices the speakers make while speaking.

Speech acts
We recognize the following speech acts:

Information Goods and Services

Offer Statement: (offer of Offer (of goods and
information),   prototypically services), usually realized
realized by a declarative by an interrogative clause.
clause. Ex. Sally made this Ex. Would you like me to
coffee. make coffee?
Request/ Demand Question (request for Command (request for
information), prototypically goods and services),
realized by an interrogative prototypically realized by an
clause. Who made this imperative clause. Make
coffee? coffee.
You will want to find out who has access to what type of speech acts. 
• Those who mostly ask questions come across as needing or lacking information. They are also causing those
the questions are directed at to come across as having the information.
• Those who mostly provide statements come across as possessing   information worth communicating. They
are also making others come across    as needing or lacking the information. 
• Those who mostly give orders (sentences in the imperative) are making themselves come across as seeking
to or being able to control the behaviour of others. They are also making others appear as providers of the
actions or services required.

In each of the above cases, the way a participant comes across may be:
• Determined by the context. For example, an exchange between a customer and a shop assistant pre-
positions the customer as giving orders and the assistant as provider of service.
• Deliberate. For example a shop assistant may want to resist the pre-positioning by deliberately speaking to
the customer in the imperative, attempting to reverse the equality/inequality aspect of the relationship.

Turn management
Those who control who speaks and when come across as more powerful than others.

Terms of address
What terms of address are present and who uses them?
For example, if person A addresses person as “Mister so-and-so” and person B addresses person A with their
first name, then the tenor of the conversation is such that person B is superior to person A.

This may be a reflection of the actual relative status of the participants (for example a teacher and a student),
or it may be a deliberate attempt to overcome the actual status.

For example a teacher and a student each titling themselves “Mister” may be a deliberate attempt to pretend
equality and mutual respect. A Practical Guide for

Evaluation, assessment
Those who pass judgements or make assessments come across as superior in their ability or competence to
judge or assess.

Topic choice
Those who choose or change the topic of the conversation come across as superior to the other participants.

Social distance (familiarity, friendliness)

The degree of distance between participants can usually be detected from the presence or absence of informal
language. For example:

• Use of colloquial vocabulary: “I’ve got a lump” (colloquial) instead of “I’ve developed a lump” (formal).
• Use of a dialect: “We’ve had us jabs for flu” (dialect) instead of   “We’ve had jabs for flu” (standard).
• Use of terms of address: given names, nicknames, pet names indicate closeness, formal names indicate
distance.
            • Presence of contractions: “I’ll” (informal) instead of “I will” (formal).
• Presence of ellipsis: deliberately failing to mention something out of shared knowledge means presuming that
both parties know it. People who are close have shared knowledge (shared experiences in the past, etc.).
These features may be an indication of actual social distance or closeness between theparticipants, or they
may be deliberate attempts to make the writer appear closer to his/her intended readers, perhaps to persuade
them for something. This is a common technique in tabloid journalism where it is known as synthetic
personalization.

Tenor in non-interactive texts

Non-interactive texts are (usually) written texts directed at the public, as opposed to texts directed at a single
person known to the author. Some spoken texts are also noninteractive, such as lectures and rehearsed
speeches. When analyzing a non-interactive text for its tenor, you want to find out how the personality of the
author (or of the institution the author belongs to) is projected in the text. This projection is called a persona. 

Personalization
Personalization of a text refers to whether the speaker is revealed in the text and drawn attention to, such as
by the use of the personal pronoun “I”, or whether he/she is obscured and underplayed. Personalization also
refers to whether the audience is referred to and drawn attention to, such as by the use of the personal
pronoun “you”. Finally, the personal pronoun “we” is also an example of personalization, referring to both the
author and the audience.

Personalization is usually achieved with these techniques:

• Personal pronouns.
• Directives (“Click here to…”, “Don’t panic”)
• Rhetorical questions (“What’s a girl to do?”)
• Questions seemingly coming from the reader or from another, imagined participant.

Personalization can be used for many purposes:

• To position the audience as agreeing, thereby making it difficult for them to disagree.
Example: “Surely you of all people see that Darwin’s theory of evolution cannot explain human nature.”
• To create a feeling of solidarity between the author and the audience (“we”).
• To create a feeling of intimacy.
• To create an impression of the interactivity of a one-to-one conversation (“pseudointeractivity”)
• To make the reader feel like they are physically present in a situation. This is often achieved in literature by
referring to an assumed shared context, such as “here” or “this year” to draw the reader in.

Impersonalization
The opposite of personalization is impersonalization. Strongly impersonalized texts are meant to create a
feeling of objectivity, of being free of personal biases. This is a common technique in scientific texts an can
often be detected by the presence of the “anticipatory it”:
“It is disappointing that…” (instead of “I’m disappointed that…”)
“It is necessary that you …” (instead of “You should…”)

Standing
Standing tells you how much of a claim the author lays to expertise and authority. To evaluate the standing of a
text, you will be interested to answer these questions:

• Does the author refer to external, (seemingly) respectable, sources?

“According to the majority of Nobel prize winners” is an example of the author constructing a strong standing,
“only a few experts agree” is an example of the author constructing a weak standing.

• Does the writer come across as possessing expertise?

Writers achieve this by demonstrating their expertise, in other words by providing information of a factual
nature in the text. This is common in journalistic reporting where it is to be expected because of the situation.
In other situations it may be also be an attempt by the writer to present themselves as possessing expertise
when they don’t actually possess any.

• Does the writer come across as being in a position to criticise or give praise?
Writers achieve this by actually doing it (criticising or giving praise), and this can be detected by the presence
of evaluative expressions. Evaluative expressions are such expressions which go beyond describing
undisputable facts and express an opinion on facts.

For example:
o Sometimes, when describing an existing state of affairs, there is a choice between a neutral expression (e.g.
“feature”) and an evaluative one (e.g. “weakness”).
o An adjective may be inserted into an otherwise neutral expression to make it evaluative, for example “the
fragile bond of trust with the mainland” instead of just “the bond of trust with the mainland”.
Criticism and praise my be given in less obvious ways as well and when that happens, it is an example of the
tenor being manipulated deliberately.
• Does the writer come across as being in a position to tell other people what to do?
Writers achieve this position by doing it (telling or recommending people what to do). This can be detected by
the presence of imperative sentences (very obvious) and the presence of meanings involving obligation and
necessity (less obvious), for example “will have to”, “can no longer afford”, “should”, “must”.

Note that instructions can be given in less obvious ways as well. When people do that, they deliberately
manipulate the tenor of their writing to appear less “bossy”.

Stance
Stance refers to the space the author seemingly allows you to argue with the experiential content, to agree or
disagree. The stance encoded in a text also expresses the author’s commitment to the experiential content:
how certain (they want us to believe) they are that what they are saying is true.
Stance is further subdivided into Attitude and Modality.

Attitude
The attitude of a text tells you whether positive, negative or neutral meanings are expressed. Attitude is
typically realized in text by:

• Lexical choices. For example “peril”, “lost” and “feared” carry negative meanings for most people, the author
knows this, and is using them to construct a negative attitude in the text.

• Evaluative expressions, that is expressions which go beyond describing undisputable facts and express an
opinion on facts.

For example:
o Sometimes, when describing an existing state of affairs, there is a choice between a neutral expression (e.g.
“feature”) and an evaluative one (e.g. “weakness”).
o An adjective may be inserted into an otherwise neutral expression to make it evaluative, for example “the
fragile bond of trust with the mainland” instead of just “the bond of trust with the mainland”.

Attitude can be more or less explicit, and therefore more or less easy to detect:

• Asserted attitudes are attitudes which are mentioned quite openly, a typical reader is aware of them and is
free to disagree with them: “The government’s behaviour was disgraceful.”

• Assumed attitudes are attitudes which are mentioned as if they were truths accepted by everyone on which
another argument can be built: “After nine years of the government’s betrayal, …” (Main argument follows.) A
typical reader will feel less free to disagree with assumed attitudes.

• Triggered attitudes aren’t mentioned at all, but a typical reader will imply them.
Example: “Even though Fred’s father is very old, Fred only visits him once a year”.

This triggers a negative attitude to Fred. Even though the facts that Fred’s father is old and that Fred visits him
once a year are objective facts, the syntax employed (“even though … only”) encourages a typical reader to
imply from the facts a negative attitude to Fred.

One way of triggering attitudes is the manipulation of agency and affectednessin a text: wording material
processes in such a way that certain entities appear as actors (and therefore come across as responsible for
what happened) while others appear as goals (and therefore come across as more or less victims of what
happened).

Agency and affectedness

When analyzing a text for agency and affectedness, we typically only look at the material processes in the text,
disregarding other process types, because material processes have the most impact on the world.

The main idea of agency and affectedness analysis is that if a certain event is constructed with a certain
attitude by a text, then the participants who have the most agency in the event also tend to be viewed with the
same attitude by a typical reader. In other words, the attitude of a process “rubs off” onto the agent.

• Those entities which often appear as transactional actors (= actors who have a goal at the other end of the
process) have the most agency.
For example in “demonstrators were shot at by the police”, “the police” have agency.

• Those entities which appear as non-transactional actors (= actors who do not have a goal at the other end of
the process) have less agency because they are constructed as not influencing anybody. For example in
“shots were fired by the police”, “the police” have some agency but not as much as in the previous example.

• Entities who do not appear as actors are not constructed by the text as having agency at all.
The agency of a participant can be further manipulated in a text by:
• Shot passives, e.g. “shots were fired” (as opposed to “shots were fired by the police”).
• Nominalizations, e.g. “the 1970s saw several factory closures” (as opposed to “in the 1970s, the company
management closed several factories”).
• Ergatives, e.g. “several mines closed” (as opposed to “several mines were closed”).  Of secondary
importance to the issue of agency is the issue of affectedness.

Entities who are often presented as affected in material processes can potentially be constructed as victims
and attract sympathy. However, it has been observed that attitudes “rub off” onto the affected less easily then
they do onto the agent.

Modality
The modality of a text is an aggregate of various meanings relating to permission, ability, obligation, necessity,
volition, and prediction. Modality is usually expressed by:

• Modal verbs. There are nine of these in English: “can”, “could”, “may”, “might”, “shall”, “should”, “will”, “would”,
“must”.

• Semi-modals, for example “had better”, “have (got) to”, “ought to”, “be supposed to”, “be going to”.

• Various lexical word classes expressing modality, for example the verbs “need to”, “be obliged to”, the
adjectives “definite”, “possible” and the nouns “certainty”, “likelihood”.
There are two kinds of modality: epistemic and deontic.

Epistemic modality
Epistemic modality of a text tells you the likelihood that the experiential content is (believed by the author to be)
true. Typical indicators of epistemic modality are:

• Modal verbs:
                        1. “will” = certainty (strong epistemic modality)
2. “would” = probability based on a hypothetical condition
                        3. “must” = deduced to be fairly certain
                        4. “may”, “might”, “could” = possibility (weak epistemic modality)
• Modal adverbs (“definitely” = strong epistemic modality, “possibly” = weak epistemic modality)

• Modal adjectives, often used in the pattern “It is definite/possible that…”.

Writers who say their message with a high epistemic modality may appear as dogmatic, while authors who
give their experiential content low epistemic modality may appear as open to negotiation or even uncertain.

Deontic modality
The deontic modality of a text tells you the amount of obligation, permission or necessity conveyed by the text.
Typical indicators of deontic modality are modal verbs, and other expressions conveying meanings of
obligation, permission or necessity:
                        1. “have to”, “must”, “had better” = strong obligation
                        2. “ought to”, “should” = obligation
                        3. “need to” = necessity
                        4. “be supposed to” = weaker obligation
Modes
Mode
The mode of a text tells about the method the text appears to have been produced in. 

Mode is an element of the textual metafunction of a text. 

Axes of the Mode continuum 

The Mode of a text can be modelled as a point in a continuum defined by axes such as these: 

• The spoken/written axis: some texts are prototypical spoken texts (such as a faceto-face
conversation) and display signs of high interactivity, others are prototypical written texts (such as a
scientific journal article) and display no signs of interactivity at all. Between them there is a continuum
of texts which carry characteristics of both, such as radio programmes and personal letters. 

• The action/reflection axis: depending on how close in time a text is to the events it describes, it may display
signs of spontaneity. For example a dialog during a sports match is bound to be more spontaneous than a
newspaper report on the same match the next day. 
Interactivity
You will want to find out if the text was constructed in an interactive process. Typical indicators of an
interactively produced text are: 

• The presence of terms of address. 

• The presence of attention attracting words, such as “look”. 

• The presence of questions and answers. 

   
Further indicators may help you determine the precise nature of the interaction: 

• Face-to-face conversations. These are usually indicated by: 

o Turn-taking.

o Interruptions.

o Overlaps.

o Hesitators.

o Supportive feedback (“right”, “OK”, “yep”, “really?”).

o Deictic references to the shared physical environment (“Could we move that into this corner here?”).

o Intentionally vague language if the vagueness concerns information which can be found in the shared
environment. Example: “this thing” instead of “this chair” because the speakers are in the same environment,
which gives them shared knowledge, which gives them enough context to figure out what “thing” refers to.

o Discourse markers, for example:

ƒ                 “Anyway” to indicate that the speaker wishes to return to another topic. “Right” to indicate that the speaker
is ready to move to another topic.

o The thematic organization of the text is such that:

ƒ                The experiential themes are often pronouns (“I”, “you”).
                The interpersonal themes are often interrogative words (“how”, “when”).

• Oral/aural conversations when the participants can’t see each other, such as a telephone call. 
These are indicated by the same features as face-to-face conversations but usually lack the deictic references
and the intentionally vague language (although there are exceptions, such as when both participants are
looking at a copy of the same document). 

• Written exchanges. 

o Synchronous, e.g. Internet chat. Even though these are written rather than spoken, they usually bear the
same characteristics as oral/aural conversations.

o Asynchronous, e.g. e-mail discussions. These usually involve repetition or quoting of what others have said
in preparation for a response.

These indicators may be a reflection of the way the text was actually produced, or they may be a deliberate
attempt to make the text appear interactive, typically with the intention to make the audience feel involved.
Typical techniques are:

• Apparently direct address to the audience: “You can bet that…”.

• Use of (rhetorical) questions: “Just how much damage can they do?”.

• Responses to an imagined contribution from the audience or from another speaker/writer: “Sure, we all
know…”.

Spontaneity 
As part of analyzing a text for its mode, you will want to answer: 
• Whether the text seems to have been produced on the spot/on the fly/in real time/on-line, that is without an
opportunity to edit or correct it. 

• Or whether it seems to have been produced off-line, in a situation when it is possible to edit and correct it
before it is finally presented to the audience. 

Note that this distinction refers to spoken as well as to written texts. Spoken texts can also be prepared and
rehearsed before delivery. 

These are the indicators of spontaneous text: 

• There are pauses and hesitators. 

• There are mid-utterance corrections and reformulations. 

• There is qualification of what has been said before. 

• There are mid-utterance changes of syntax. 
• There is repetition. 
• There are abrupt changes of topic. 
• Clauses have heads, e.g. “The white house on the corner, is that where she lives?”. 
• Clauses have tails, e.g. “It can leave you feeling very weak, shingles, can’t it?”. 
• Adverbials are placed arbitrarily, in places where they would not occur in a preplanned text. Example: “I was
worried I was going to lose it and I did, almost”. 

• There are chains of clauses connected with coordinating conjunctions, typically “and”: “… and … and … and
…”. 

• Subordinate clauses are used as if they were coordinate clauses. Examples: 

o A: “Well actually one person has applied.”

B: “Mm.”

C: “Which is great.” [Would be “(And) that is great” if not spontaneous.]

D: “Though it’s all relative, of course.” [“Though” would be omitted if not spontaneous.]

o “Melanie is still a student and she works in McDonald’s cos she needs the money and…”
“Cos” here has the function of a coordinating conjunctions, simply connecting two phrases together (=“and
that’s because”) rather than a subordinating one.

• There is low lexical density. 

• There isn’t much nominalization (or other examples of grammatical metaphor). The more nominalization
occurs, the less spontaneous a text is because nominalized expressions are less congruous (“in sync with
reality”) then unnominalized ones. 

• Noun phrases are simple and short. Long and complicated noun phrases are the sign of an un-spontaneous
text because they require planning. 

As for lexical density, there is an opinion that less lexically dense texts are easier to follow – perhaps because
they appear to be more interactive, and therefore more “gripping” – and this has been exploited in a number of
genres, such as tabloid journalism and popular science.

 Levels of Language
Intro to Stylistics: Linguistics of Meaning
Lexis – this linguistic category falls under word construction and meaning and generally defined as the total
word stock and usage that depends on choice and appropriateness. The presence of multi-word lexical items
in the lexis is what differentiates it from vocabulary - the collection of only single words.

Example:
traffic light, take care of, by the way and don't count your chickens before they hatch. 

Lexis means the vocabulary of a language as opposed to other aspects such as the grammar of the text. Lexis
is clearly an important aspect of creating a suitable style or register (i.e. when choosing language and
language features to suit a particular genre, context, audience and purpose).

Lexis and semantics are very close and often used interchangeably.

Lexical cohesion occurs when words have an affinity for each other as in collocations.Many words are
habitually put together - or collocated. A collocation is any habitually linked group of words - a kind of lexical
partnership, e.g. 'fish and chips', 'salt and pepper', 'don't mention it', 'it's nothing...', 'Oh well!', 'bangers and
mash'... and so on.

Semantics is a branch of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words, phrases and sentences, however,
contrary to pragmatics it does not analyze the intended speaker meaning, or what words denote on a given
occasion, but the objective, conventional meaning. Additionally, it is concerned with the conceptual meaning
and not the associative meaning. The conceptual meaning is what a word in fact denotes, as for example
Friday the 13 th is a day between Thursday the 12 th and Saturday the 14 th, and that is the conceptual
meaning of the phrase Friday the 13 th. Yet, for many people the idea of that day brings to mind thoughts of
bad luck and misfortune, which is the associative meaning.

The meaning of words is analyzed in several different ways in order to account for as many aspects of
meaning as possible. First of all, words are analyzed in terms of their semantic features that is basic elements
which enable the differentiation of meaning of words.

A semantic feature is a notational method which can be used to express the existence or non-existence of
semantic properties by using plus and minus signs.

Man is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [+ADULT]

Woman is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [+ADULT]
Boy is [+HUMAN], [+MALE], [-ADULT]
Girl is [+HUMAN], [-MALE], [-ADULT]

Intersecting semantic classes share the same features.

Some features need not be specifically mentioned as their presence or absence is obvious from another
feature. This is a redundancy rule.

Apart from the semantic features of words also semantic roles (sometimes called ‘thematic roles’) are
examined. Semantic roles describe the way in which words are used in sentences and the functions they fulfill.
Thus, the entity that performs an action is known as an agent, while the entity involved in an action is called the
theme (or ‘patient). When an agent uses an entity in order to do something this entity is called an instrument.
However, when a person in a sentence does not perform any action, but only has a perception, state of feeling
then the role is described as experiencer. Finally there are roles connected with motion or position of entities.
So, the location is where an entity is, the source is the initial position of the entity, the place where it moves
from and the goal is where the entity moves to.

One other issue investigated by semantics is the relationship between words, some of which are known to
almost every language user, others very abstract and vague for a common speaker. To begin with the simplest
relationship between words let us have a look at synonymy. Synonyms are two words with very similar, almost
identical meaning, such as buy and purchase, or cab and taxi. In some cases however, although the meaning
seems nearly identical there is a difference in the word usage or the level of formality and therefore the words
can not always be substituted. 

The next relationship between words is the case when two words have opposite meanings, the words such as
male/female, old/new, interesting/boring are antonyms. What is interesting is that antonyms are divided into
gradable and non-gradable antonyms. Gradable antonyms are opposites along a scale in that when someone
says ‘I am not high’ it does not necessarily mean ‘I am short’. Non-gradable antonyms do not present such
flexibility: when we say ‘I am married’ the only antonym available in this sentence would be ‘I am single’.

Sometimes the meaning of one word is included in the meaning of another, broader term. Then the relationship
between words can be described as hyponymy as in the case of words: vegetable andcarrot. A carrot is
necessarily a vegetable, therefore the meaning of the word vegetable is included in the word carrot, so carrot is
a hyponym of vegetable. In this relation the word vegetable is the superordinate (higher level term) of the word
carrot.

A very common word type in the English language is that of homophone. Homophones are words which have
different written forms, but the same pronunciation such as: right/write, to/too/two, bear/bare. Homophones are
often mistaken for homonyms, but homonyms are words which have the same written or spoken forms and
unrelated meanings, as for example: bat (flying creature) and bat (used in baseball), race (contest) and race
(ethnic group). Still when a word has multiple related meanings then linguists speak of polysemy as with head
for instance: head as a part of body; mind, or mental ability; a person in charge.

Another interesting relation between words is that of metonymy which is based on close connection of certain
entities in everyday experience. The connection can be that of container-content, whole-part, or others. It is
clearly visible in the following example ‘he drank the whole bottle’ when it is obvious that he did not drink the
container, but the content of the bottle.
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek σύνταξις "arrangement" from σύν syn, "together", and τάξις táxis, "an
ordering") is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages.
Languages have rules. The rules of a language are called the grammar. The reason for these rules is that a
person needs to be able to speak an indeterminately large number of sentences in a lifetime. The effort would
be impossibly great if each sentence had to be learnt separately.
By learning the rules for connecting words it is possible to create an infinite number of sentences, all of which
are meaningful to a person who knows the syntax. Thus it is possible to construct many sentences that the
speaker has never heard before.
A finite number of rules facilitates an infinite number of sentences that can be simultaneously understood by
both the speaker and the listener.
In order for this to work with any degree of success, the rules have to be precise and have to be consistently
adhered to. These rules cover such things as: the way words are constructed; the way the endings of words
are changed according to context (inflection); the classification of words into parts of speech (nouns, verbs,
pronouns, etc.); the way parts of speech are connected together.

The rules of grammar do not have to be explicitly understood by the speaker of the language or the listener.

The majority of native speakers of a language will have no formal knowledge of the grammar of a language but
are still capable of speaking the language grammatically to a great degree of accuracy. Native speakers of a
language assimilate these rules subconsciously while the language is being learned as a child.

The Components of Grammars 

The grammar of a language has several components. These can be described as follows:
a) The phonetics that governs the structure of sounds;
b) The morphology that governs the structure of words;
c) The syntax, which governs the structure of sentences
d) The semantics that governs the meanings of words and sentences.
We are concerned here primarily with the syntax of the structure of sentences.

The Representations of Syntax 

In Linguistics, the syntax of sentences can be described by different methods, for instance, for the following
sentence:

"The boy kicked the ball"

The syntax can be described, by the following methods:

1. A statement of the correct sequence of the parts of speech (or Syntactic Categories):

Subject is followed by verb is followed by object.
In the above example,
subject = "The boy" (article followed by noun)
verb = "kicked"
object = "The ball" (article followed by noun)

2. by a series of transformational rules

For example:
Where in the above example,

3. By parsing diagrams
Here, the parts of a sentence are shown in a graphical way that emphasises the hierarchical relationships
between the components of a sentence. For example:

Where:
Subject = “the boy” (article + noun)
Verb = “kicked”
Object = “the ball” (article + noun)

The above structure is the basic syntactic structure for a sentence in the English language. As more complex
sentences are considered, it is easy, by this method, to see how these different structures relate to each other,
by further breaking down the branches of the structure. The syntax of the language contains the rules which
govern the structure of phrases and how these can be joined together. The structures and associated rules
vary from one language to another.

Parsing diagrams are capable of representing not just one particular language’s grammar but are capable of
representing any kind of grammar. For instance, they can be used to represent the rules of invented languages
such as computer programming languages.

This method of representation is the one that I will use to represent musical structures because of the graphic
nature of the representation and the flexibility of the approach. By this method, we can show the types of
syntactic structures in music and show how they relate to each other by expending or contracting branches of
the structure.

Examples of More Complex Syntactic Structures in language

1. Embedding
It is possible to construct sentences which are more complex than the example above. This is done by
embedding further phrases within the basic structure. For example, in the sentence:
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball."
"with red shorts" is a prepositional phrase that further describes “the boy” .
This can be represented, within the basic sentence structure, as follows:
Here we can see how the Prepositional Phrase (PP) “with red shorts” is embedded within the subject Noun
Phrase (NP) so that the subject is subdivided into a Noun Phrase and Prepositional Phrase (PP). The
Prepositional Phrase itself contains a further Noun Phrase. The parsing diagram clearly shows the hierarchical
relationship between the sentence and its components. There are many other ways of extending this structure
by embedding subordinate phrases at different parts of the basic structure.

2. Conjoining.
It is also possible to extend sentences by joining together complete structures or complete and incomplete
structures, for example:
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball and scored a goal"
The conjunction “and” joins together the complete sentence:
"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball"
and the verb phrase:
“scored a goal"

This could be represented as follows:

Morphology
Morphology is the study of morphemes, obviously.  Morphemes are words, word stems, and affixes, basically
the unit of language one up from phonemes. Although they are often understood as units of meaning, they are
usually considered a part of a language's syntax or grammar.  It is specifically grammatical morphemes that
this chapter will focus on.

It is in their morphology that we most clearly see the differences between languages that are isolating (such
as Chinese, Indonesian, Krewol...), ones that are agglutinating(such as Turkish, Finnish, Tamil...), and ones
that are inflexional (such as Russian, Latin, Arabic...).  Isolating languages use grammatical morphemes that
are separate words.  Agglutinating languages use grammatical morphemes in the form of attached syllables
called affixes.  Inflexional languages may go one step further and actually change the word at the phonemic
level to express grammatical morphemes.

All languages are really mixed systems -- it's all a matter of proportions.  English, for example, uses all three
methods:  To make the future tense of a verb, we use the particlewill (I will see you); to make the past tense,
we usually use the affix -ed (I changed it); but in many words, we change the word for the past (I see
it becomes I saw it).  Looking at nouns, sometimes we make the plural with a particle (three head of cattle),
sometimes with an affix (three cats), and sometimes by changing the word (threemen).  But, because we still
use a lot of non-syllable affixes (such as -ed, usually pronounced as d or t, and -s, usually pronounced as s or
z, dependeing on context), English is still considered an inflexional language by most linguists.

Affixes

Most languages, but especially agglutinating and inflexional ones, differentiate between the stem of the word,
which carries the basic meaning, and various affixes or attachments that carry additional, often grammatical,
meanings.  There are several kinds of affixes:
 Suffixes are attached to the end of the stem;
 Prefixes are attached to the front of the stem;
 Infixes are put in the middle of the word;
 Ablaut is a change in a vowel that carries extra meaning;
 Reduplication is a matter of doubling a syllable to do the same.
Suffixes are the most common, and English uses them.  For example, the past tense of most verbs is a matter
of adding -ed to the stem; the present participle is made by adding -ing; the plural of a noun is made by
adding -s.

Turkish is an example of an agglutinating language that makes extensive use of suffixes.  One example I found
on the internet (Learning Practical Turkish) is the wordterbiyesizliklerindenmis:
good manners terbiye
without good manners, rude terbiyesiz
rudeness terbiyesizlik
their rudeness terbiyesizlikleri
from their rudeness terbiyesizliklerinden
I gather that it was from their rudeness terbiyesizliklerindenmis

Note that a language doesn't necessarily need to be agglutinating to have long words.  German, for example,
has Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, and English has
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!

Although prefix languages are a bit rarer, they can be every bit as expansive.

Ablaut is common in English and its Germanic cousins.  For example, the past tense of sing is sang, and the
past participle is sung.  The plural of goose is geese.  Ablaut seems to come from former suffixes that
influenced the pronunciation of the vowel, then disappeared over time.  Goose-geese was once gos-gese, and
before that gos-göse, and before that gos-gose.  The plural suffix -e caused the fronting of the vowel o to ö and
then e.

Infixes are best illustrated by the Semitic languages, such as Arabic.  Many words in Arabic are composed of
three consonants, and many of the grammatical variations are produced by altering the vowels between and
around them.  For example, the root for writing is ktb:

to write kataba
writing kaatib
a book kitaab
books kutub
author kattaab

Perhaps, thousands of years ago, some people began generalized from ablauts -- as if we were to start saying
pan-pen (rather than pan-pans), following the pattern of man-men.

Irish (and other Celtic languages, such as Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton) are unusual in that it is the consonants
that change in various situations, rather than the vowels.  Note that th is pronounced h, dt is
pronounced d, ea is a, ch is as in loch, and bh is v.
house flat
teach árasán
my mo mo theach m'árasán
your do do theach d'árasán
his a a theach a árasán
her a a teach a hárasán
our  ar ar dteach ar n-árasán
your bhur bhur dteach bhur n-árasán
their a a dteach a n-árasán
Nouns

Nouns are words that name or denote a person, thing, action, or quality.  They are “thing” words -- although
“things” can include all sorts of abstract ideas that might otherwise look more like verbs or adjectives.  In
various languages, they are marked, by affixes or particles, as to their number, gender, definiteness, and
especially cases.

Definiteness concerns the extent to which we are talking about a specific thing or event, one that is known to
the speakers, or about something less well defined, such as any old thing, or something not specific.

In English, the definite is marked by the article the.  It can also be marked by other words, such as this, that,
my, yours, and so on.  The indefinite is marked by the article a oran, as well as the plural without an article, or
words such as one, two, some, any, etc.  On the other hand, many languages don't use articles at all -- Latin,
Russian, Hindi, and Chinese come to mind!

In a number of languages, the definite is marked with a suffix.  This is true of Swedish, Danish, Norwegian,
Icelandic, Rumanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian, among others.  The Scandinavian languages are, of course,
closely related, so we would expect them to share a feature like this.  But Rumanian, Bulgarian, and Albanian
are only distantly related. It seems that they influenced each other, or perhaps there were people living in the
Balkans in ancient times who influenced them all.

Number, of course, refers to how many of the item we are talking about.  There are three common
numbers:  Singular, meaning one; plural, meaning more than one; and somewhat rarer, the dual, meaning
two.  You can see the significance of the dual in our own use of words such as couple, pair, and so on.  Again,
many languages do not mark the plural, much less the dual.

The most complex aspect of nouns is cases, also known as declensions.  Philosophers in ancient Greece and
India were already discussing this as much as 2500 years ago!  Much of the terminology we still use today was
invented during the Roman Empire, and reflects the cases used in Latin.

The first case is the nominative, roughly the subject of the sentence.  In many languages, it is the basic form,
sometimes represented by the bare stem.  A second case is thevocative, which is the form used when calling
out to someone, sort of like “Oh, Claudius!”  The rest of the cases are referred to as oblique or objective. 
Languages that make many distinctions among the oblique cases use them in the same way that other
languages use prepositions or postpositions.

 Accusative -- the direct object of the verb:  He threw the ball.

 Dative -- the indirect object:  He threw it to John.
 Ablative -- expressed in English with the preposition from: He threw from first base.
 Locative -- expressed in English with prepositions such as at or in:  We were at the hotdog stand in the
stadium.
 Genitive -- the possessive form, often expressed in English with the word of, but also with the case
suffix ‘s:  It was John’s ball.
 Instrumental -- expressed in English with prepositions like with:  He hit it with a bat.
 Sociative -- also expressed in English with with, but now referring to people:  I went out with her.
There are many others.  A language in the Caucasus Mountains called Tassaran has 48 noun cases! 
However, many linguists point out that cases should only refer to inflexional languages such as Latin. 
Agglutinative languages such as Finnish can be better thought of as having postpositions that are attached to
the noun, since they are very consistent and easy to recognize, unlike the cases in Latin.Here is an example of
the Russian word for country, singular and plural:
singular plural
nominative strana strany
accusative stranu strany
genitive strany stran
dative strane stranam
instrumental stranoj stranomi
locative strane stranax

This wouldn’t be such a strain, until you realize that there are several different declensions, and quite a few
exceptions as well.

Compare that with an example of the word for man in Tamil, a Dravidian language of southern India:
singular plural
nominative manitan manitarkal
accusative manitanai manitarkalai
dative manitanukku manitarkalukku
sociative manitanotu manitarkalotu
genitive manitanutaiya manitarkalutaiya
instrumental manitanal manitarkalal
locative manitanitam manitarkalitam
ablative manitanitamiruntu manitarkalitamiruntu

Although there are even more cases, these endings are the same for all other nouns! And notice how the plural
is just a matter of sticking kal inbetween the stem and the affix.

One interesting side issue: In most languages, the subject of an intransitive verb (he sits) is in the same form
(i.e. the nominative) as the subject of a transitive verb (he sees him), and the object of a transitive verb is
different (i.e. the accusative).  These languages are known as nominative-accusative languages. But there
are also languages where the subject of an intransitive verb is in the same form as the object of a transitive
verb (i.e. the absolutive), and the subject of a transitive verb is different (i.e. theergative). In these languages,
it would be as if we said he sees him but then him sits!  These are called ergative-absolutive languages.

Among the ergative-absolutive languages are Basque, the northern Caucasian languages, many Australian
aborigine languages, Eskimo-Aleut, and many other languages of north and central America. They are all verb-
first or verb-last languages.

Gender is perhaps the oddest noun variation.  It is called gender because it is -- loosely -- tied to the physical
sex of people and animals.  Many languages differentiate between masculine nouns and feminine nouns,
with different endings for each, and requiring different articles and adjective forms along with them.  French,
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese are examples.

Other languages, such as German, count three genders:  Masculine, feminine, and neuter.  Neuter
presumably refers to things that don’t have a gender, but there is little consistency there.  In Dutch, there are
two genders, but they are neuter and common, common deriving from what was originally masculine and
feminine.  English nouns have no gender.

Many languages outside the European sphere differentiate between animate and inanimate, one referring to
people, animals, and spirits, the other to things.  And there are many languages that make many
differentiations:  Bantu languages, for example, have many noun categories, such as "long, thin things," "body
parts," "places," and so on.

In Chinese, there is a strong isolating (non-affix) version of this:  When you want to indicate more than one of
something, you must use a special word called a classifierbetween the number and the object.  
This is analogous to the way we might say three head of cattle.
There are still more examples of noun variation:  Diminutives express smallness (dog becomes doggy, for
example), and augmentatives express largeness.  Diminutives are often also used to express affection, and
augmentatives sometimes express danger or evil.

Some languages have a variety of honorifics, often suffixes or prefixes that indicate status.  The Japanese -
san is a well known example.  There are also affixes that indicate lowly status, and in some languages several
different degrees of status!

Pronouns

Pronouns are words that serve as place-holders for nouns.  Instead of referring to a person by his or her
name, we use he or she; instead of naming something repeatedly, we refer to it as it.  Pronouns have many of
the same variations as nouns, including gender, number, and case.  There are also three persons that are
differentiated in most languages:  First refers to the person speaking or his/her group (I, me; we,
us); Second person refers to the person spoken to or his/her group (you); And the third person refers to other
people outside the conversation or to things (he, him, she, her, it, they, them). In English, for example...

nominative oblique possessive possessive

(adjective) (pronomial)
first person singular I me my mine
second person singular you your yours
third person singular male he him his
third person singular female she her hers
third person singular neuter it its
first person plural we us our ours
second person plural you your yours
third person plural they them their theirs

("Oblique" is the name for a case that covers the objects of a verb or any preposition.)
For comparison, here's the Icelandic declension of the pronoun anyone:
masculine feminine neuter
singular
nominative nokkur nokkur nokkurt
accusative nokkurn nokkra nokkurt
dative nokkrum nokkurri nokkru
gentive nokkurs nokkurrar nokkurs
plural
nominative nokkrir nokkrar nokkur
accusative nokkra nokkrar nokkur
dative nokkrum nokkrum nokkrum
genitive nokkurra nokkura nokkura

In some languages, there are two forms of the third person plural:  One is inclusive, and refers to the speaker
and the listener together (Why don’t we go have a drink together sometime?); the other is exclusive, and
refers to the speaker’s group distinct from the listener (We are going to beat your team!).

There are also pronouns that reflect the action back onto the subject -- appropriately
named reflexive pronouns.  In English, they are often nicely marked with -self (myself, yourself, himself, etc.). 
In many languages, there is a generic reflexive for the third person singular or even third person singular and
plural.  In Spanish, for example, that function is performed by the single word se.

Politeness is often an issue with pronouns.  In many European languages, there is a distinction made between
a familiar and a formal version of the second person singular.  In French, for example, you call your
friends tu and your parents, teachers, or boss vous.  You don’t switch to tu until it is subtly agreed between the
two of you that it is okay to “tutoyer.”  In some Asian languages, there is considerably more detail involved.

There are other kinds of pronouns besides the personal ones.  Demonstrative pronouns include this, that,
these, and those.  Many languages have three sets of these, one for things nearby the speaker, one for things
nearby the listener, and one for things away from either.

Indefinite pronouns include words such as someone, anyone, many, and so on.  Like the indefinite article,
they don’t indicate precisely whom are what we are talking about.

Interrogative pronouns are used to ask question:  Who is that man?  Relative pronouns are used to connect a
noun with a clause that gives more detail about the noun:  He is the one whom you saw yesterday.  As you can
see, in English, these two groups of pronouns are often the same!

Verbs
Verbs are words which express action taken by something, the state something is in or a change in that state,
or an interaction between one thing and another.  Like nouns, there are many variations of verbs.
Transitive verbs are ones that have both a subject and an object: John hit the ball.  John is the subject and
ball the object of the verb hit.  Intransitive verbs are ones that only have a subject: I laughed.  

There is nothing that is laughed (except, I suppose, the laugh itself.)  Many verbs have an intermediate form
called the reflexive, meaning that the subject is also the object:  I hurt myself.  As the example shows,
reflexive verb forms often take a reflexive pronoun as their object!  But there are reflexive verbs that
don’t: They got married.

The biggest issue with verb forms is conjugation.  In some languages, it is a fairly simple matter; in others,
there are a huge variety of affixes.

Most familiar to Europeans are tenses.  Many languages differentiate between the past tense,

the present tense, and the future tense.  Some languages also differentiate various details of timing, such as
an immediate form, a proximate form (near in time), and a distal form (the distant past or future.)  Quite a few
languages (Russian and Japanese included) only distingish past from "non-past."
In French, I sing goes through the following changes:

past (definite) chantai

present chante
future chanterai

Aspect is actually much older, and seems to tie into our psychology as human beings.  The perfect aspect (as
well as the similar completive or aorist) tells us that the action is finished, completed, “perfected.”  In English,
it is represented by various forms of the word to have, followed by the past participle:  I have said (past perfect,
aka pluperfect), I had said (present perfect), I will have said (future perfect).  As the last one suggests, by the
time we reach a particular point in the future, my saying something will be over and done with.

There is a passive version of the perfect called the effective.  In English, an example might be He got seen.

The imperfect (aka durative or continuative) has an ongoing tone to it:  The action continues through the
moment.  In English, we use a form of the verb to be followed by the present participle:  I was saying, I am
saying, I will be saying.

There are a number of variations on the imperfect aspect.  The progressive -- I have been saying -- suggests
that the action started a bit earlier and continues through the present.  The iterative (aka repetitive) -- I keep
saying -- indicates that a single action is repeatedly performed.  And the inceptive (aka commencement)
-- Let’s get going-- says to us that the action should get started.

Finally, there is the simple (or indefinite) aspect.  This includes the usual tenses used as is:  I said, I say, I
will say.  The simple past is often called the preterite.

Next up is mood or mode.  The basic form is the indicative:  We are saying something that happened, is
happening, or will happen.  A version of the indicative is the stative, which indicates that someone or
something is in a particular state, as opposed to taking a particular action:  He sits.

The next three are used when there is a degree of unreality involved, and are often blended together. 
The optative (aka desiderative) indicates a desire or wish for something to happen.  In English, this is usually
expressed with auxiliary (helper) verbs such as should or would, as well as with expressions such as I wish....

The conditional mood is used when the reality of one event depends on the reality of another:  I will go if you
go.  English has the remnants of a conditional:  We say If Iwere to go... rather than If I was to go....  But it is
rapidly going the way of the who-whom distinction!
The subjunctive mood is used when there is some doubt or uncertainty about the event.  Many languages
have entire conjugations of subjunctive, in various tenses and aspects.  It was the bane of my high school
French class.

There are other moods.  In Japanese, for example, there are provisional and tentative versions of verbs. 
And many languages have the imperative: Do this!  In English this is expressed by leaving out the
subject (you).
In French, the aspect and mood variations on I sing look like this:
imperfect chantais
conditional chanterais
present subjunctive chante

Next, we have various voices.  The active voice is the basic one.  It is used when the subject performs an
action.

The passive voice is used when the subject of the sentence is actually the object of the action.  In English, we
use a form of to be with the past participle:  I was hit.

The causative is a voice used when the subject causes the object to perform an action, as in He made me do
it.

When the causative is combined with the reflexive, it is called the dynamic: They married themselves!
Person is an aspect of verb forms in many languages.  Most commonly, there is an ending or other affix that
indicates something about the subject (such as first, second, or third person, gender, and singular or plural).  In
English, the only person ending left in almost all verbs is the -s in the third person singular of the present tense
(he does, vs I, you, we, he, she, it, or they do).

There are languages (Basque comes to mind) where the direct object and even the indirect object is also
included in the verb form.  Dakarzkizu, for example, means he brings them to
you, while Zenekarzkidan means you brought them to me. (Kar is the piece of these words that is the
equivalent to bring in English)

Here's a simple French conjugation, in the present tense, showing person:

singular plural
first person chante chantons
second person chantes chantez
third person chante chantent

In addition, some languages have variations that express various levels of politeness.  In Japanese, for
example, Hon o katta means I bought a book -- but in a sort of abrupt, no nonsense way. Hon o
kaimashita means I bought the book, but more politely expressed.

Another common verb variation is the negative.  In English, we use the word not after one of several auxiliary
(see below) verbs.  There is a tendency, however, for many verbs to change in the negative, by combining with
the not:  I can’t, I won’t, I don’t, I ain’t....  Although we can still see where they come from (and the apostrophe
reminds us),  they are well on there way to becoming separate forms.

There are other languages where the verb changes when it is a part of a question.  In Irish, for example tá (to
be) becomes an bhfuil in questions.

I can't move on without mentioning that in Hausa (a language of Nigeria), tense, aspect, etc., are indicated with
variations of the subject pronoun, not the verb, as in these example of the word for he:
perfect kin
future záaki
predictive kyâa
habitual kíkàn
subjunctive kì
continuous kínàa

(It might surprise you to know that we are moving this way in English, too:  I'd, I've, I'll, etc.)
In isolating languages such as Chinese, or in languages moving strongly in that direction, such as English and
French, many of the preceding variations are not done by adding endings or changing the verb.  They are done
with auxiliary verbs.  In English, for example, we say He will sing, rather than Il chantera as in French.  In
French, on the other hand, we often say Il a chanté instead of He sang.  These particular examples are
called compound tenses, but they can also involve aspects and moods and so on.

Participles are forms of the verb that are often used in such compound verbs.  In English, we have two:  
The past participle (which usually ends in -ed, just like the past tense) and the present participle (which ends
in -ing).  Participles are also used as adjectives: He is a dancing fool.  He was a beaten man.  And they can
even be used as nouns:  Help the down-trodden.  Winning is everything.  Note that the past participle is often
referred to as the passive participle, and the present participle as the activeparticiple.

Another form of the verb often used in compound verbs is the infinitive.  In English, we don't have a real
infinitive form -- we just put to in front of it:  To sleep, perchance to dream....  And so we say He wants to run, a
compound made with wants plus the infinitive of run.  In many languages, there is a special form.  In French,
for example, it usually ends in -r, and is used as the dictionary form.

There are many forms of verbal nouns (gerunds) -- i.e. verbs used as nouns, with or without special endings. 
The infinitive and the participles are examples.  But we can also use the verb as is in many languages --
English being the best example, since we do it all the time:  I dance and I go to the dance and I do a
dance and I devote my life to the dance!

Other Parts of Speech

Adjectives are words which modify nouns.  In many languages, adjectives have affixes that must agree with
their nouns in case, number, gender, etc.

One peculiar feature of adjectives in many language is comparison:  There may be special forms of the
adjective when you are using it to say that a noun is more or less of whatever quality the adjective expresses
(the comparative form), or that is is the most or least of that quality (the superlative form).  

In English, we still see special words like good/better/best, regular endings such as big/bigger/biggest, and

analytic forms such as significant/more significant/most significant.

Adverbs are words or phrases which modify verbs, adjectives, or even other adverbs.  There are often special
endings that differentiate adverbs from similar adjectives:  In English, adverbs often end in -ly; In French, they
often end in -ment.

Sometimes, adverbs are used to ask questions or to introduce certain kinds of subordinate clauses which tell
more about such things as when, where, and how the action will happen.  For example, when will you be
going? and I will go when I am good and ready.

Numerals (or just numbers) often come in both adjective and adverbial forms.  In Shakespeare's time, we
said three men, but it was done thrice.  Today, of course, the latter is analytic: It was done three times.

The simple form of numerals is the cardinal number, which indicates a certain quantity of something.  There is
also the ordinal number, which indicates the position of something in a sequence: He was the third man.  We
see a analytic construction more and more frequently today:  He was her number one man, or she was
bachelorette number three.

Prepositions are words which can allow a noun to qualify another noun or a verb in a way that parallels
adjectives or adverbs:  The man in the yard ran into the house.  Many languages -- Japanese, for example --
have postpositions instead of prepositions, but they serve the same purpose.  Noun cases are often a
substitute for prepositions or postpositions, and may in fact have developed out of them.
Irish is interesting in that its prepositions ofen vary by person, just like verbs:  Here is the "conjugation" of the
preposition roimh (before) (mh is pronounced w):

before me romham
before you (singular) romhat
before him roimhe
before her roimpi
before us romhainn
before you (plural) romhaibh
before them rompu
Conjunctions are words that connect two parts of a sentence. There are two kinds of conjunctions.  The most
familiar are the coordinating conjunctions, such as and, or,and but.  The second kind are the subordinating
conjunctions (sometimes just called subordinators) such as if, because, so that, that, etc. These introduce
certain kinds of subordinate clauses, such as I work so that I can feed my children and I think that she is
lovely.

Finally, there are interjections.  Interjections are expressions of emotion -- not true words but rather vocal
noises that reflect the feelings of the speaker:  Oh!  Huh?  Hey!  Shit!  The last one is, of course, also a regular
word, but its use in this case has nothing to do with what it literally refers to.

Stylistics: Phonology
What is phonology?
Phonology is the study of the sound system of languages. It is a huge area of language theory and it is difficult
to do more on a general language course than have an outline knowledge of what it includes. In an exam, you
may be asked to comment on a text that you are seeing for the first time in terms of various language
descriptions, of which phonology may be one. At one extreme, phonology is concerned
with anatomy and physiology - the organs of speech and how we learn to use them. At another extreme,
phonology shades into socio-linguistics as we consider social attitudes to features of sound such
as accent and intonation. And part of the subject is concerned with finding objective standard ways of
recording speech, and representing this symbolically.
For some kinds of study - perhaps a language investigation into the phonological development of young
children or regional variations in accent, you will need to use phonetic transcription to be credible. But this is
not necessary in all kinds of study - in an exam, you may be concerned with stylistic effects of sound in
advertising or literature, such as assonance, rhyme or onomatopoeia - and you do not need to use special
phonetic symbols to do this.  
The physics and physiology of speech
Man is distinguished from the other primates by having the apparatus to make the sounds of speech. Of
course most of us learn to speak without ever knowing much about these organs, save in a vague and general
sense - so that we know how a cold or sore throat alters our own performance. Language scientists have a
very detailed understanding of how the human body produces the sounds of speech. Leaving to one side the
vast subject of how we choose particular utterances and identify the sounds we need, we can think rather
simply of how we use our lungs to breathe out air, produce vibrations in the larynx and then use our tongue,
teeth and lips to modify the sounds. The diagram below shows some of the more important speech organs.
This kind of diagram helps us to understand what we
observe in others but is less useful in understanding
our own speech. Scientists can now place small
cameras into the mouths of experimental subjects,
and observe some of the physical movements that
accompany speech. But most of us move our vocal
organs by reflexes or a sense of the sound we want
to produce, and are not likely to benefit from
watching movement in the vocal fold.
The diagram is a simplified cross-section through the
human head - which we could not see in reality in a
living speaker, though a simulation might be
instructive. But we do observe some external signs of
speech sounds apart from what we hear.

A few people have the ability to interpret most of a speaker's utterances from lip-reading. But many more have
a sense of when the lip-movement does or does not correspond to what we hear - we notice this when we
watch a feature film with dubbed dialogue, or a TV broadcast where the sound is not synchronized with what
we see.
The diagram can also prove useful in conjunction with descriptions of sounds - for example indicating where
the airflow is constricted to produce fricatives, whether on the palate, the alveolar ridge, the teeth or
the teeth and lips together.
Speech therapists have a very detailed working knowledge of the physiology of human speech, and of
exercises and remedies to overcome difficulties some of us encounter in speaking, where these have physical
causes. An understanding of the anatomy is also useful to various kinds of expert who train people to use their
voices in special or unusual ways. These would include singing teachers and voice coaches for actors, as well
as the even more specialized coaches who train actors to produce the speech sounds of hitherto unfamiliar
varieties of English or other languages. At a more basic level, my French teacher at school insisted that we (his
pupils) could produce certain vowel sounds only with our mouths more open than we would ever need to do
while speaking English. And a literally stiff upper lip is a great help if one wishes to mimic the speech sounds of
Queen Elizabeth II. 
So what happens? Mostly we use air that is moving out of our lungs (pulmonic egressive air) to speak. We may
pause while breathing in, or try to use the ingressive air - but this is likely to produce quiet speech, which is
unclear to our listeners. (David Crystal notes how the normally balanced respiratory cycle is altered by speech,
so that we breathe out slowly, using the air for speech, and breathe in swiftly, in order to keep talking). In
languages other than English, speakers may also use non-pulmonic sound, such as clicks (found in southern
Africa) or glottalic sounds (found worldwide). In the larynx, the vocal folds set up vibrations in the egressive air.
The vibrating air passes through further cavities which can modify the sound and finally are articulated by
the passive (immobile) articulators - the hard palate, the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth - and
the active (mobile) articulators. These are the pharynx, the velum (or soft palate), the jaw andlower teeth,
the lips and, above all, the tongue. This is so important and so flexible an organ, that language scientists
identify different regions of the tongue by name, as these are associated with particular sounds. Working
outwards these are:
 the back - opposite the soft palate
 the centre - opposite the meeting point of hard and soft palate
 the front - opposite the hard palate
 the blade - the tapering area facing the ridge of teeth
 the tip - the extreme end of the tongue
The first three of these (back, centre and front) are known together as the dorsum (which is Latin for
“backbone” or “spine”)

Phonology, phonemes and phonetics

You may have known for some time that the suffix “-phone” is to do with sounds. Think, for instance,
of telephone, microphone, gramophone and xylophone. The morpheme comes from Greek phonema, which
means “a sound”.
 Telephone means “distant sound”
 Microphone means “small sound” (because it sends an input to an amplifier which in turn drives
loudspeakers - so the original sound is small compared to the output sound)
 Gramophone was originally a trade name. It comes from inverting the original
form,phonograph (=sound-writing) - so called because the sound caused a needle to trace a pattern on a wax
cylinder. The process is reversed for playing the sound back
 Xylophone means “wood sound” (because the instrument is one of very few where the musical note is
produced simply by making wood resonate)
The fundamental unit of grammar is a morpheme. A basic unit of written language is agrapheme. And the basic
unit of sound is a phoneme. However, this is technically what Professor Crystal describes as “the smallest
contrastive unit” and it is highly useful to you in explaining things - but strictly speaking may not exist in real
spoken language use. That is, almost anything you say is a continuum and you rarely assemble a series of
discrete sounds into a connected whole. (It is possible to do this with synthesised speech, as used by
Professor Stephen Hawking - but the result is so different from naturally occurring speech that we can
recognize it instantly.) And there is no perfect or single right way to say anything - which is just as well,
because we can never exactly reproduce a previous performance.
However, in your comments on phonology, you will certainly want sometimes to focus on singlephonemes
or small sequences of phonemes. A phoneme is a sound segment of words or syllables. Quite a good way to
understand how it may indicate meaning is to consider how replacing it with another phoneme will change the
word - so if we replace the middle sound in “bad” we can make “bawd”, “bed”, “bid”, “bird” and “bud”. (In two
cases here one letter is replaced with two letters but in all these cases it is a single vowel sound that changes.)
 The first people to write in English used an existing alphabet - the Roman alphabet, which was itself adapted
from the Greek alphabet for writing in Latin. (In the Roman empire, Latin was the official language of
government and administration, and especially of the army but in the eastern parts of the empire Greek was
the official language, and in Rome Greek was spoken as widely as Latin, according to F.F. Bruce, in The
Books and the Parchments, Chapter 5). Because these first writers of English (Latin-speaking Roman monks)
had more sounds than letters, they used the same letters to represent different sounds - perhaps making the
assumption that the reader would recognize the word, and supply the appropriate sounds. It would be many
years before anyone would think it possible to have more consistent spelling, and this has never been a
realistic option for writers of English, though spelling has changed over time. And, in any case, the sounds of
Old English are not exactly the same as the sounds of modern English.
As linguists have become aware of more and more languages, many with sounds never heard in English, they
have tried to create a comprehensive set of symbols to correspond to features of sound - vowels, consonants,
clicks and glottalic sounds and non-segmental or suprasegmental features, such as stress and tone. Among
many schemes used by linguists one has perhaps more authority than most, as it is the product of the
International Phonetic Association (IPA). In the table below, you will see the phonetic characters that
correspond to the phonemes used in normal spoken English. To give examples is problematic, as no two
speakers will produce the same sound. In the case of the vowels and a few consonants, the examples will not
match the sounds produced by all speakers - they reflect the variety of accent known as Received
Pronunciation or RP. Note that RP is not specific to any region, but uses more of the sounds found in the south
and midlands than in the north. It is a socially prestigious accent, favoured in greater or less degree by
broadcasters, civil servants, barristers and people who record speaking clock messages. It is not fixed and has
changed measurably in the last 50 years. But to give one example, the sound represented by θ is not common
to all UK native speakers. In many parts of London and the south-east of England the sound represented by f
will be substituted. So, in an advertisement, the mother-in-law of Vinnie Jones (former soccer player for
Wimbledon and Wales; now an actor) says: “I fought 'e was a big fug” (/aɪ fɔət i: wɒz ə bɪg fug/).
You may also wonder what has happened to the letter x. This is used in English to represent two consonant
sounds, those of k and s or of k and z. In phonetic transcription these symbols will be used.
“Consonant” and “vowel” each have two related but distinct meanings in English. In writing of phonology, you
need to make the distinction clear. When you were younger you may have learned that b,c,d,f and so on
are consonants while a,e,i,o,u are vowels - and you may have wondered about y. In this
case consonants and vowels denote the letters that commonly represent the relevant sounds. Phonologists are
interested in vowel and consonant sounds and the phonetic symbols that represent these (including vowel and
consonant letters). It may be wise for you to use the words consonant and vowel (alone) to denote the sounds.
But it is better to use an unambiguous phrase - and write or speak about consonant or vowel
sounds, consonant or vowel letters and consonant or vowel symbols. In most words these sounds can be
identified, but there are some cases where we move from one vowel to another to create an effect that is like
neither - and these are diphthongs. We also have some triphthongs - where three vowel sounds come in
succession in words such as “fire”, “power” and “sure”. (But this depends on the speaker - many of us alter the
sounds so that we say “our” as if it were “are”.) For convenience you may prefer the term vowel glides - and
say that “fine” and “boy” contain two-vowel glides while “fire” contains a three-vowel glide.
IPA symbols for the sounds of English
The examples show the letters in bold that correspond to the sound that they illustrate. You will find guidance
below on how to use these symbols in electronic documents. The IPA distributes audio files in analog and
digital form, with specimen pronunciations of these sounds.
A phoneme is a speech sound that helps us construct meaning. That is, if we replace it with another sound
(where this is possible) we get a new meaning or no meaning at all. If I replace the initial consonant (/r/)
from rubble, I can get double or Hubble (astronomer for whom the space telescope is named) or meaningless
forms (as regards the lexicon of standard English) likefubble and wubble. The same thing happens if I change
the vowel and get rabble, rebel, Ribble(an English river) and the nonsense form robble. (I have used the
conventional spelling of “rebel” here, but to avoid confusion should perhaps use phonetic transcription, so that
replacements would always appear in the same position as the character they replace.)
But what happens when a phoneme is adapted to the spoken context in which it occurs, in ways that do not
alter the meaning either for speaker or hearer? Rather than say these are different phonemes that share the
same meaning we use the model of allophones, which are variants of a phoneme. Thus if we isolate
the l sound in the initial position in lick and in the final position inball, we should be able to hear that the sound
is (physically) different as is the way our speech organs produce it. Technically, in the second case, the back of
the tongue is raised towards thevelum or soft palate. The initial l sound is called clear l, while the
terminal l sound is sometimes called a dark l. When we want to show the detail of phonetic
variants or allophones we enclose the symbols in square brackets whereas in transcribing sounds from a
phonological viewpoint we use slant lines. So, using the IPA transcription [l] is clear l, while [ɫ] is dark l.
If this is not clear think:
 Am I only describing a sound (irrespective of how this sound fits into a system, has meaning and so
on)? If so, use square brackets.
 Am I trying to show how the sound is part of a wider system (irrespective of how exactly it sounds in a
given instance)? If so, use slant brackets.
So long as we need a form of transcription, we will rely on the IPA scheme. But increasingly it is possible to
use digital recording and reproduction to produce reference versions of sounds. This would not, of course,
prevent change in the choice of which particular sounds to use in a given context. When people wonder
about harass (hærəs) or harass (həræs) they usually are able to articulate either, and are concerned about
which reveals them as more or less educated in the use of the “proper” form. (For your information, the stress
historically falls on the first syllable, to rhyme with embarrass - thus in both Pocket Oxford [UK, 1969] and Funk
& Wagnalls New Practical Standard [US, 1946]. The fashion for hu-rass is found on both sides of the Atlantic
and we should not credit it to, or blame it on, US speakers of English.)
Phonologists also refer to segments. A segment is “a discrete unit that can be identified in a stream of speech”,
according to Professor Crystal. In English the segments would correspond to vowel sounds and consonant
sounds, say. This is a clear metaphor if we think of fruit - the number of segments varies, but is finite in a whole
fruit. So some languages have few segments and others many - from 11 in Rotokas and Mura to 141 in !Xu.
The term may be most helpful in indicating what non-segmental or supra-segmental (above the segments)
features of spoken language are.
The sounds of English
Vowels
Front vowels | Central vowels | Back vowels
English has twelve vowel sounds. In the table above they are divided into seven short and fivelong vowels. An
alternative way of organizing them is according to where (in the mouth) they are produced. This method allows
us to describe them as front, central and back. We can qualify them further by how high the tongue and lower
jaw are when we make these vowel sounds, and by whether our lips are rounded or spread, and finally by
whether they are short or long. This scheme shows the following arrangement:
Front vowels
 /i:/ - cream, seen (long high front spread vowel)
 /ɪ/ - bit, silly (short high front spread vowel)
 /ɛ/ - bet, head (short mid front spread vowel); this may also be shown by the symbol /e/
 /æ/ - cat, dad (short low front spread vowel); this may also be shown by /a/
Central vowels
 /ɜ:/- burn, firm (long mid central spread vowel); this may also be shown by the symbol /ə:/.
 /ə/ - about, clever (short mid central spread vowel); this is sometimes known as schwa, or the neutral
vowel sound - it never occurs in a stressed position.
 /ʌ/ - cut, nut (short low front spread vowel); this vowel is quite uncommon among speakers in the
Midlands and further north in Britain.
Back vowels
 /u:/ - boob, glue (long high back rounded vowel)
 /ʊ/ - put, soot (short high back rounded vowel); also shown by /u/
 /ɔ:/ - corn, faun (long mid back rounded vowel) also shown by /o:/
 /ɒ/- dog, rotten (short low back rounded vowel) also shown by /o/
 /ɑ:/ - hard, far (long low back spread vowel)
We can also arrange the vowels in a table or even depict them against a cross-section of the human mouth.
Here is an example of a simple table:
Front Central Back
High ɪ    i: ʊ    u:
Mid ɛ ə    ɜ: ɔ:
Low æ ʌ ɒ    ɑ:

Diphthongs
Diphthongs are sounds that begin as one vowel and end as another, while gliding between them. For this
reason they are sometimes described as glide vowels. How many are there? Almost every modern authority
says eight - but they do not all list the same eight (check this for yourself). Simeon Potter, in Our
Language (Potter, S, [1950] Chapter VI, Sounds and Spelling, London, Penguin) says there are nine - and lists
those I have shown in the table above, all of which I have found in the modern reference works. The one most
usually omitted is /ɔə/ as inbored. Many speakers do not use this diphthong, but use the same vowel
in poured as in fraud - but it is alive and well in the north of Britain.
Potter notes that all English diphthongs are falling - that is the first element is stressed more than the second.
Other languages have rising diphthongs, where the second element is stressed, as in Italian “uomo” (man)
and “uovo” (egg).  
Consonants
Some authorities claim one or two fewer consonants than I have shown above, regarding those with double
symbols (/tʃ/ and /dʒ/) as “diphthong consonants” in Potter's phrase. The list omits one sound that is not
strictly a consonant but works like one. The full IPA list of phonetic symbols includes some for non-
pulmonic consonants (not made with air coming from the lungs), click and glottal sounds. In some varieties of
English, especially in the south of Britain (but the sound has migrated north) we find the glottal plosive or glottal
stop, shown by the symbol /ʔ/(essentially a question mark without the dot at the tail). This sound occurs in
place of /t/ for some speakers - so /botəl/ or /botl/ (bottle) become /boʔəl/ or /boʔl/.
We form consonants by controlling or impeding the egressive (outward) flow of air. We do this with
the articulators - from the glottis, past the velum, the hard palate and alveolar ridge and thetongue, to
the teeth and lips. The sound results from three things:
 voicing - causing the vocal cords to vibrate
 where the articulation happens
 how the articulation happens - how the airflow is controlled
Voicing
All vowels must be voiced - they are caused by vibration in the vocal cords. But consonants may be voiced or
not. Some of the consonant sounds of English come in pairs that differ in being voiced or not - in which case
they are described as voiceless or unvoiced. So /b/ is voiced and /p/ is the unvoiced consonant in one pair,
while voiced /g/ and voiceless /k/ form another pair.
We can explain the consonant sounds by the place where the articulation principally occurs or by the kinds of
articulation that occurs there. The first scheme gives us this arrangement:
Articulation described by region
 Glottal articulation - articulation by the glottis. We use this for one consonant in English. This is /h/ in
initial position in house or hope.
 Velar articulation - we do this with the back of the tongue against the velum. We use it for initial hard /g/
(as in golf) and for final /ŋ/ (as in gong).
 Palatal articulation - we do this with the front of the tongue on the hard palate. We use it for/dʒ/ (as
in jam) and for /ʃ/ (as in sheep or sugar).
 Alveolar articulation - we do this with the tongue blade on the alveolar ridge. We use it for /t/ (as
in teeth), /d/ (as in dodo) /z/ (as in zebra) /n/ (as in no) and /l/ (as in light).
 Dental articulation - we do this with the tip of the tongue on the back of the upper front teeth. We use it
for /θ/ (as in think) and /ð/ (as in that). This is one form of articulation that we can observe and feel ourselves
doing.
 Labio-dental articulation - we do this with the lower lip and upper front teeth. We use it for /v/ (as
in vampire).
 Labial articulation - we do this with the lips for /b/ (as in boat) and /m/ (as in most). Where we use two
lips (as in English) this is bilabial articulation.
Articulation described by manner
This scheme gives us a different arrangement into stop(or plosive) consonants, affricates, fricatives, nasal
consonants, laterals and approximants.
 Stop consonants (so-called because the airflow is stopped) or plosive consonants(because it is
subsequently released, causing an outrush of air and a burst of sound) are:
 Bilabial voiced /b/ (as in boat) and voiceless /p/ (as in post)
 Alveolar voiced /d/ (as in dad) and voiceless /t/ (as in tap)
 Velar voiced /g/ (as in golf) and voiceless /k/ (as in cow)
 Affricates are a kind of stop consonant, where the expelled air causes friction rather than plosion. They
are palatal /tʃ/ (as in cheat) and palatal /dʒ/ (as in jam)
 Fricatives come from restricting, but not completely stopping, the airflow. The air passes through a
narrow space and the sound arises from the friction this produces. They come in voiced and unvoiced pairs:
 Labio-dental voiced /v/ (as in vole) and unvoiced /f/ (as in foal)
 Dental voiced /ð/ (as in those) and unvoiced /θ/ (as in thick)
 Alveolar voiced /z/ (as in zest) and unvoiced /s/ (as in sent)
 Palatal voiced /ʒ/ (as in the middle of leisure) and unvoiced /ʃ/ (as at the end of trash)
 Nasal consonants involve closing the articulators but lowering the uvula, which normally closes off the
route to the nose, through which the air escapes. There are three nasal consonants in English:
 Bilabial /m/ (as in mine)
 Alveolar /n/ (as in nine)
 Velar /ŋ/ (as at the end of gong)
 Lateral consonants allow the air to escape at the sides of the tongue. In English there is only one such
sound, which is alveolar /l/ (as at the start of lamp)
 Approximants do not impede the flow of air. They are all voiced but are counted as consonants chiefly
because of how they function in syllables. They are:
 Bilabial /w/ (as in water)
 Alveolar /r/ (as in road)
 Palatal /j/ (as in yet)
Syllables
When you think of individual sounds, you may think of them in terms of syllables. These are units of
phonological organization and smaller than words. Alternatively, think of them as units of rhythm. Although they
may contain several sounds, they combine them in ways that create the effect of unity.
Thus splash is a single syllable but it combines three consonants, a vowel, and a final consonant /spl+æ+ʃ/.
Some words have a single syllable - so they are monosyllables or monosyllabic. Others have more than one
syllable and are polysyllables or polysyllabic.
Sometimes you may see a word divided into its syllables, but this may be an artificial exercise, since in real
speech the sounds are continuous. In some cases it will be impossible to tell whether a given consonant was
ending one syllable of beginning another. It is possible, for example, to pronounce lamppost so that there are
two /p/ sounds in succession with some interval between them. But many native English speakers will render
this as /læm-pəʊst/ or/læm-pəʊsd/.
Students of language may find it helpful to be able to identify individual syllables in
explainingpronunciation and language change - one of the things you may need to do is explain which are the
syllables that are stressed in a particular word or phrase.
Suprasegmentals
Prosodic features | Paralinguistic features
In written English we use punctuation to signal some things like emphasis, and the speed with which we want
our readers to move at certain points. In spoken English we use sounds in ways that do not apply to individual
segments but to stretches of spoken discourse from words to phrases, clauses and sentences. Such effects
are described as non-segmental orsuprasegmental - or, using the adjective in a plural nominal (noun) form,
simplysuprasegmentals.
Among these effects are such things as stress, intonation, tempo and rhythm - which collectively are known
as prosodic features. Other effects arise from altering the quality of the voice, making it breathy or husky and
changing what is sometimes called the timbre - and these areparalinguistic features. Both of these kinds of
effect may signal meaning. But they do not do so consistently from one language to another, and this can
cause confusion to students learning a second language
Prosodic features
 Stress or loudness - increasing volume is a simple way of giving emphasis, and this is a crude measure
of stress. But it is usually combined with other things like changes in tone and tempo. We use stress to convey
some kinds of meaning (semantic and pragmatic) such as urgency or anger or for such things as imperatives.
 Intonation - you may be familiar in a loose sense with the notion of tone of voice. We use varying levels
of pitch in sequences (contours or tunes) to convey particular meanings. Falling and rising intonation in English
may signal a difference between statement and question. Younger speakers of English may use rising
(question) intonation without intending to make the utterance a question.
 Tempo - we speak more or less quickly for many different reasons and purposes. Occasionally it may
be that we are adapting our speech to the time we have in which to utter it (as, for example, in a horse-racing
commentary). But mostly tempo reflects some kinds of meaning or attitude - so we give a truthful answer to a
question, but do so rapidly to convey our distraction or irritation.
 Rhythm - patterns of stress, tempo and pitch together create a rhythm. Some kinds of formal and
repetitive rhythm are familiar from music, rap, poetry and even chants of soccer fans. But all speech has
rhythm - it is just that in spontaneous utterances we are less likely to hear regular or repeating patterns.
Paralinguistic features
How many voices do we have? We are used to “putting on” silly voices for comic effects or in play. We may
adapt our voices for speaking to babies, or to suggest emotion, excitement or desire. These effects are familiar
in drama, where the use of a stage whisper may suggest something clandestine and conspiratorial. Nasal
speech may suggest disdain, though it is easily exaggerated for comic effect (as by the late Kenneth Williams
in many Carry On films).
Such effects are sometimes described as changing timbre or voice quality. We all may use them sometimes
but they are particularly common among entertainers such as actors or comedians. This is not surprising, as
they practise using their voices in unusual ways, to represent different characters. The performers in the
BBC's Teletubbies TV programme use paralinguistic features to suggest the different characters of Tinky-
Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po.
Accent
Everyone's use of the sound system is unique and personal. And few of us use sounds consistently in all
contexts - we adapt to different situations. (We rarely adapt our sounds alone - more likely we mind our
language in the popular sense, by attending to our lexical choices, grammar and phonology.)
Most human beings adjust their speech to resemble that of those around them. This is very easy to
demonstrate, as when some vogue words from broadcasting surf a wave of popularity before settling down in
the language more modestly or passing out of use again.
This is particularly true of sounds, in the sense that some identifiable groups of people share (with some
individual variation) a collection of sounds that are not found elsewhere, and these are accents. We think of
accents as marking out people by geographical region and, to a less degree, by social class or education. So
we might speak of a Scouse (Liverpool), Geordie(Newcastle) or Brummie (Birmingham) accent. These are
quite general descriptions - within each of these cities we would differentiate further. And we should also not
confuse real accent features in a given region with stereotyped and simplified versions of these which figure in
(or disfigure) TV drama - Emmerdale, Brookside, Coronation Street and Albert Square are not reliable sources
for anything we might want to know about their real-world originals. And the student who hoped to study the
speech of people in Peckham by watching episodes of John Sullivan's situation comedy Only Fools and
Horses was deeply misguided.
Thinking of social class, we might speak of a public school accent (stiff upper lip and cut glass vowels). But we
do not observe occupational accents and we are unlikely to speak of a baker's, soldier's or accountant's accent
(whereas we might study their special uses of lexis and grammar).
This is not the place to study in detail the causes of such accents or, for example, how they are changing.
Language researchers may wish to record regional variant forms and their frequency. In Britain today (perhaps
because of the influence of broadcasting) we can observe sound features moving from one region to another
(like the glottal stop which is now common in the north of England), while also recording how other features of
accent are not subject to this kind of change.
Studying phonology alone will not answer such questions. But it gives you the means to identify specific
phonetic features of accent and record them objectively.
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (or RP) is a special accent - a regionally neutral accent that is used as a standard for
broadcasting and some other kinds of public speaking. It is not fixed - you can hear earlier forms of RP in
historical broadcasts, such as newsreel films from the Second World War. Queen Elizabeth II has an accent
close to the RP of her own childhood, but not very close to the RP of the 21st century.
RP excites powerful feelings of admiration and repulsion. Some see it as a standard or the correct form of
spoken English, while others see its use (in broadcasting, say) as an affront to the dignity of their own region.
Its merit lies in its being more widely understood by a national and international audience than any regional
accent. Non-native speakers often want to learn RP, rather than a regional accent of English. RP exists but no-
one is compelled to use it. But if we see it as a reference point, we can decide how far we want to use the
sounds of our region where these differ from the RP standard. And its critics may make a mistake in supposing
all English speakers even have a regional identity - many people are geographically mobile, and do not stay for
long periods in any one place.
RP is also a very loose and flexible standard. It is not written in a book (though the BBC does give its
broadcasters guides to pronunciation) and does not prescribe such things as whether to stress the first or
second syllable in research. You will hear it on all the BBC's national radio channels, to a greater or less
degree. On Radio 3 you will perhaps hear the most conservative RP, while Radio 5 will give you a more
contemporary version with more regional and class variety - but these are very broad generalizations, and refer
mainly to the presenters, newsreaders, continuity announcers and so on. RP is used as a standard in some
popular language reference works. For example, the Oxford Guide to the English Language (Weiner, E [1984],
Pronunciation, p. 45, Book Club Associates/OUP, London) has this useful description of RP:
“The aim of recommending one type of pronunciation rather than another, or of giving a word a recommended
spoken form, naturally implies the existence of a standard. There are of course many varieties of English, even
within the limits of the British Isles, but it is not the business of this section to describe them. The treatment
here is based upon Received Pronunciation (RP), namely 'the pronunciation of that variety of British English
widely considered to be least regional, being originally that used by educated speakers in southern England.'
This is not to suggest that other varieties are inferior; rather, RP is here taken as a neutral national standard,
just as it is in its use in broadcasting or in the teaching of English as a foreign language.”
Accent and social class
Accent is certainly related to social class. This is a truism - because accent is one of the things that we use as
an indicator of social class. For a given class, we can express this positively or negatively. As regards the
highest social class, positively we can identify features of articulation - for certain sounds, upper class
speakers do not open or move the lips as much as other speakers of English. Negatively, we can identify such
sounds as the glottal stop as rare among, and untypical of, speakers from this social class.
Alternatively we can look at vowel choices or preferences. For example, the upper classes for long used the
vowel /ʌ/ in some cases where /ɒ/ is standard - thus Coventry would be/kʌvəntri:/. C.S. Lewis in The Great
Divorce depicts a character who pronounces “God” as “Gud”-“ 'Would to God' he continued, but he was now
pronouncing it Gud...”
We may think of dropping or omitting consonants as a mark of the lower social classes and uneducated
people. But dropping of terminal g - or rather substituting /n/ for /ŋ/ was until recently a mark of the upper
class “toff”, who would enjoy, for example, huntin', fishin' and shootin'. The British actor Ian Carmichael did this
in playing the part of Dorothy L. Sayers' detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. In writing the dialogue for her novels
Miss Sayers indicates Lord Peter's dropping of the terminal g by the use of an apostrophe:
“It's surprisin' how few people ever mean anything definite from one year's end to another...”

Gaudy Night, Chapter 4

Among real life speakers in whom I have observed this tendency I would identify the late Sir Alf Ramsey. (I do
not know whether Alf Ramsey was brought up to speak in this way or acquired the habit later.)
Investigating the connection can be challenging, however, since social class is an artificial construct. Assuming
that you have found a way to identify your subjects as belonging to some definable social group, then you can
study vowel choices or frequencies. Even the most cursory attention tells us that the Queen has distinct
speech sounds. But can we explain them in detail? Does she share them with other members of her family?
Do other speakers share them?
Pronunciation and prescription
The English Language List is an Internet discussion forum for English language teachers. Recently (2001) a
student, not a native speaker but clearly a very competent writer of English, asked where he could get help to
learn to speak in a standard British accent. Many of the responses came from people who were not answering
his question but trying to persuade him to stick with his current accent (which he felt would disadvantage him in
his business career). Yet we are not disparaging regional accents when we try to learn the neutral and
prestigious standard form. (What the discussion never really revealed was how many of the list members
would identify themselves as RP speakers.)
The prescriptive tradition in English grammar was unscientific and perhaps harmful. But setting down
authoritative standard forms is not always so unwise. In spelling they are useful, and the same may be true of
pronunciation. Dictionaries do not compel the reader to learn and use the pronunciations they show - but they
do give a representation of the pronunciation according to RP. Some show variant pronunciations as well as
the principal RP form.
If you are a student (or even a teacher) you may find RP an unfamiliar accent - maybe you can see that the
phonetic transcription indicates a pronunciation different from the one you normally use. No one is forcing you
to change your own speech sounds, in which your sense of identity may be profoundly located. But you can
become aware that the local norm is not the universal standard.
Now that English is an international language, its development is certainly not controlled by what happens in
the UK. So British RP may cease to be a useful standard for learners of English. Increasingly, language
learners favour a mid-Atlantic accent, which shares features of British RP and the speech of the eastern USA.
Language acquisition
Very young children do not produce the sounds they will use as adults partly because they are unable to form
them (physically their speech organs have not developed fully) and partly because they may not know exactly
what the sound is that they wish to produce. Children may also be less subtle in controlling the flow of
egressive air, so that they will continue speaking, rather than pause briefly, while drawing more air in.
Young children may have a sense of stressed syllables as more important - so they may omit unstressed
elements before or after. So, for example, a child may ask for a 'nana rather than abanana. (Alternatively, the
child may know that there is some repetition of sound here, but limit it to two syllables.) I am supposing that the
non-standard form is spoken by a child, but perhaps repeated back by adults. But one often observes adults
(unhelpfully) using what they suppose to be an easier form of a word and offering the child a  'nana. On the
other hand, some children have resisted this tendency. Though they may not articulate a word in full or exactly,
they can recognize it as an incomplete or mistaken form when an adult repeats it back to them. We see this in
this exchange between an adult and a four year old, recorded by George Keith and John Shuttleworth:
Adult: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Child: A dowboy.
Adult: So you want to be a dowboy, eh?
Child: No! Not a dowboy, a dowboy!
The child cannot articulate the /k/ initial sound but knows that what he hears from the adult is not the form of
the word he is used to hearing, so protests.
Since children learn by imitation of examples it may be helpful when they begin formal education to give them
such examples, but not by continually rebuking them for saying things “wrongly”. Children do not learn to
articulate all sounds at the same stage in their development. Teachers of children in early years (nursery and
reception) classes should be able to identify the few cases where there is a disorder or problem for which
some specialist intervention is appropriate.
Language change
Change happens in language - and the sounds of English are not exempt. Of course, basic sounds do not
change in the sense that the phonemes represented in the IPA transcription will not go away. And it is rare, but
not impossible, for speakers of a given language to begin to use phonemes they did not use before. Thus,
most English speakers faced with French -ogne (as inBoulogne or Dordogne) anglicise to Buloyn (/bəlɔɪn/).
And Welsh double l in initial position (as in Llanfair and many other place names) they sound simply as /l/
rather than a voiceless unilateral l.
What does change is the choice of which sound to use in a given context - though choice may suggest that this
is voluntary whereas the change normally happens unnoticed. At a very simple level we can see, from rhymes
in poetry that no longer work, that one or more words has acquired a new standard pronunciation. So John
Donne writes (1571-1631) “And find/What wind/Serves to advance an honest mind”. We have retained the
vowel sound in wind (verb, as in wind up) but not in wind (noun, as in north wind). We can still observe vowel
change. In my own lifetime envelopewas pronounced with the initial vowel /ɒ/ (as if it were onvelope). This
pronunciation is becoming more rare, and persists mostly among older speakers. Turquoise was once
commonly sounded as in French /tɜ:kwæz/ - but now it is more or less
uniformly /tɜ:kɔɪz/ or /tɜ:kɔɪs/ (perhaps by analogy with tortoise).
Far more common are changes in stress patterns. So research (more or less universal in the UK when I was a
child) has given way to re-search. In the case of harass the stress has shifted the other way, giving harass. We
cannot sensibly say that the new form is “wrong” or “bad English” (even if we prefer the older form). But we can
observe the frequency with which the new form occurs, and see if it does come to supplant the older form or
whether both forms persist.
Change happens within regional varieties, too - so the glottal stop has moved its way northwards from London
and southwards from Glasgow (where it has been found for 150 years). This is one feature of what Paul
Kerswill calls dialect levelling. Similarly use of /f/ or /v/ in place of /θ/ and /ð/is spreading north from London.
Perhaps the most well documented change occurring now is in sentence intonation. This is especially common
among younger people, but not exclusively so. The change lies in a tendency to use rising (question)
intonation more frequently. What is not clear, in contexts that allow either, is whether the speaker intends to
ask a question or means to make a statement. We cannot be sure if the rising intonation conveys meaning, or
is habitual.
One common way for pronunciation to change is by elision - compressing the word to remove a syllable. Once
it was common to sound the -ed ending on past tense verbs, whereas now these verbs end with a /t/ sound.
We do still sound the -ed ending on adjectives, even when these are formed from the past tenses - as
in naked, wicked and learned. We can contrast the learnedprofessor with what her pupils learned in the
lecture. (The first has two syllables, the second only one.)
Police is often pronounced as a monosyllable /pli:s/ for example by the newsreader Sue Lawley. Recently I
have observed several newsreaders eliding the middle syllable of terrorist, producing the form /tɛrəɪst/ or
sometimes /tɛrɪst/. On the other hand, literacy may alter pronunciation. The n in column is silent, and in the
Second World War, people would often speak of the Fifth Columnist (/kɒləmɪst/). But now broadcasters
speak of those who write columns in newspapers as /kɒləmnɪsts/ - thereby sounding what was silent /n/.
Phonology for exam students
Phonology as an explicit subject of detailed study is not compulsory for students taking Advanced level
courses in English Language. But it is one of the five “descriptions of language” commended by the AQA
syllabus B (the others are: lexis, grammar, pragmatics and semantics). In some kinds of study it will be odd if it
does not appear in your analysis or interpretation of data.
In written exams, you may want to comment on some features of phonology in explaining example language
data - these may be presented to you on the exam paper, or may be your own examples, which illustrate, say,
some point about language change, language acquisition or sociolinguistics. You may wish to use diagrams,
models or the IPA transcription - and if you are able to do so, this may be helpful. But if you do not feel
confident about using these, you can still make useful points about phonology - you can show stress simply by
underlining or highlighting the stressed syllable. And you can show many aspects of phonology by using the
standard Western (Roman-English) alphabet appropriately - as in contrasting pronunciations of “harass”as:
 ha-russ (first syllable stressed, vowel is a; second syllable unstressed vowel is neutral) or
 huh-rass (first syllable unstressed, neutral vowel; second syllable stressed, vowel is a)
Phonetic symbols and electronic documents
Representing phonetic symbols in electronic documents can be a challenge, unless you have the right
software. Assuming that you have a word-processing program, you need to use special fonts that will represent
the IPA symbols. These are either the SIL IPA fonts (such asSILdoulosIPA) or Unicode fonts (like Lucida Sans
Unicode, which I have used in this document).
If you do find a way to reproduce the symbols you need, it may make sense to paste them all at the end of the
document on which you are working. Then, you can copy and paste as you need to use them. If you do not do
this, then you will have to use the Alt key and the numeric keypad, since the keys on the normal keyboard will
only give you the symbols that resemble ordinary letters.
Different ways of representing sound
Conventions of language science and lexicographers
If you study reference works you may find a variety of schemes for representing different aspects of phonology
- there is no single universal scheme that covers everything you may need to do.
And many dictionaries may not even use the IPA alphabet, for the very obvious reason that the reader is not
familiar with this transcription and can cope without it.

Literary models
In representing speech - for example in drama, poetry or prose fiction - some authors are interested not merely
in the words but also in how they are spoken. One of the most familiar concerns is that of how to represent
regional accents. Here is a fairly early example, from the second chapter of Wuthering Heights (1847), in which
the servant Joseph refuses to admit Mr. Lockwood into the house:
“'T' maister's dahn I't' fowld. Goa rahnd by the end ut' laith, if yah went to spake tull him”
Tennyson (1809-1892) has a similar approach in his poem, Northern Farmer, Old Style:
“What atta stannin' theer fur, and doesn' bring me the aäle?
Doctor's a 'toättler, lass, and 'e's allus i' the owd taäle...”
Joseph comes from what is now West Yorkshire, while Tennyson's farmer is supposedly from the north of
Lincolnshire. Here is an earlier example, from Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian(1830), which shows some
phonetic qualities of the lowlands Scots accent. In this passage the Laird of Dumbiedikes (from the country
near Edinburgh) is on his deathbed. He advises his son about how to take his drink:
“My father tauld me sae forty years sin', but I never fand time to mind him. - Jock, ne'er drink brandy in the
morning, it files the stamach sair... ”
George Bernard Shaw, in Pygmalion (1914), uses one phonetic character (ə - schwa) in his attempt to
represent the accent of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl:
“There's menners f' yer! Tə-oo banches o voylets trod into the mad...Will ye-oo py me f'them.”
However, after a few sentences of phonetic dialogue, Shaw reverts to standard spelling, noting:
“Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be
abandoned as unintelligible outside London”.
In Pygmalion Professor Higgins teaches Eliza to speak in an upper-class accent, so as to pass her off as a
duchess. In the course of the play, therefore, her accent changes. The actress playing the part, however, may
have a natural accent closer to that with which Eliza speaks at the completion of her education, so in playing
the part she may doing the reverse of what Eliza undergoes, by gradually reverting to a natural manner of
articulation. (Eliza's pronunciation improves ahead of her understanding of grammar, so that at one point she
says memorably: “My aunt died of influenza: so they said. But it's my belief they done the old woman in.”)
In PygmalionShaw does not merely represent accent (and other features of speech) but makes this crucial to
an exploration of how speech relates to identity and social class.
Charles Dickens is particularly interested in the sounds of speech. He observes that many speakers have
difficulty with initial /v/ and /w/. Sam Weller, in The Pickwick Papers, regularly transposes these:
“ 'Vell,' said Sam at length, 'if this don't beat cock-fightin' nothin' never vill...That wery next house...' ”
Mr. Hubble, in Great Expectations does, the same thing when he describes young people as “naterally
wicious”. Joe Gargery, in the same novel, has many verbal peculiarities, of which perhaps the most striking is
in his description of the Blacking Warehouse. This is less impressive than the picture Joe has seen on bills
where it is “drawd too architectooralooral”.
In Chapter 16 of Our Mutual Friend, Betty Higden is proud of Mr. Sloppy (an orphan she has fostered) not only
because he can read, but because he is able to use different voice styles for various speakers.
“You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”
Dickens also finds a way to show tempo and rhythm. In Chapter 23 of Little Dorrit (and elsewhere in the novel),
Flora Finching speaks at length and without any pauses:
“Most unkind never to have come back to see us since that day, though naturally it was not to be expected that
there should be any attraction at our house and you were much more pleasantly engaged, that's pretty certain,
and is she fair or dark blue eyes or black I wonder, not that I expect that she should be anything but a perfect
contrast to me in all particulars for I am a disappointment as I very well know and you are quite right to be
devoted no doubt though what am I saying Arthur never mind I hardly know myself Good gracious!”

Graphology
Handwiting analysis is refered to as Graphology. Handwriting may also be regarded as "brainwriting". It is an
expression of the whole personality. Writing is expressive movements and these movements have there
meanings and interpretations. Graphology is the study of handwriting and the connection it has to a persons
behavior. 

There are three main systems of graphology. In Holistic Graphology a persons profile is formed on the the
basis of Form, Movement and Space. Integrative Graphology is constructed on the basis that specific stroke
formations relate to personality traits. Symbolic Analysis is based on the analysis of symbols seen in the
handwriting. Every system of graphology has its own vocabulary that makes the meaning those words
different. 

Graphology has been activley used in compiling profiles for Employment, Business Partnerships and Marital
Compatibility. In Switzerland, approximately 80 percent of large corporations use graphology in their hiring
procedures. Forensic document examination is not Grapholohy as it is only used to determine whether or not a
document was written by the person concerned.

History of Graphology:
Most of what we know about Graphology dates back over the last few hundred years. The first known book
about Graphology was published in 1622 by Camillo Baldi, an Italian doctor of medicine and philosophy. In
1872, Jean Michon published his book on Graphology which became the Authoity on the subject at that time.
Soon, European universities started to offer a Ph.D. or Master's degree in graphology. With the advancement
of psychology as a profession so did the study of Graphology advance. 

Conducting a Graphology Analysis:

You will need a sample of spontaneous handwriting written on plain paper using a ballpoint or fountain pen of
not less than 12 lines long with a signature. The age and sex of the writer. Graphology instruments needed are
a magnifying glass, plastic ruler showing millimeters and a protractor for assessing the slant of the writing. 

How accurate is Graphology? A lot depends on the ability of the person doing the Graphology analysis. As an
indicator of personality and behavior, Graphology is around 80-90% accurate. 

Example of analysis:

DIRECTION OF LINES

Instruction in writing has usually insisted in writing in straight lines. When we buy writing paper it is ruled in a
straight line. But even after years of practise the reality is that few people write in a straight line.

Deviations from writing in a straight line are not the exception but more the norm. In some cases fatigue can be
considered a reason for a descending line.

Generally speaking descending lines may be caused by depression or pessimism. Experience shows that
people in a mood swing may temporarily write in descending lines.

On the other hand ascending lines may indicate optimism. When we write we move from left to right, in other
words we progress.
The activity of writing may therefore be interpreted as a movement toward the future. It may be said it
represents our hopes and dreams.

A person who writes a straight line may also go straight toward his daily aim. If a person writes in a precisely
straight line we may say that person is unyeilding.

People who write in convex lines (a line that ascends then descends) start their project with ambition and
enthusiasm only to lose interest and give up before the task has been completed.

People who write with concave lines (a line that descends than ascends) approach their task with little
optimism but gain self confidence as the task nears completion. Out of a sample of 1,000 people only 3 people
were found to write concave lines.

Lines that are ascending steps are often found in people who have little stamina. Descending steps are often
found in writers who bravely fight off depressive moods. Wavy, meandering lines may be indicative of
moodiness. 

SPACE BETWEEN WORDS

Space between the words is non-deliberate. When we write the words follow one another as they do in speech.

When a person speaks with pauses it may be because they are accustomed to pondering and considering
before they act. It may also be because the person wants to let the words sink in to the audiences
consciousness.

However, on the other hand if the pauses outweigh the importance of the speech, then we may conclude the
speaker is conceited. If there is no pause between the writers words then we may say this is a person of
action. This person may also be impulsive.

Sometimes writers words are widley spaced and at other times narrowly spaced. We may say that this writer is
unstable in both thinking and emotions. 

SPACE BETWEEN LINES

The space between the lines is most probably deiberately planned. The space between the lines can be
described as the picture of the writers mind.

A person who writes with wide space lines may live a life of order and system. These people have executive
ability and reasonableness. But if the space between the lines becomes too wide it may indicate a person who
likes to keep their distance.

Small spaces between the lines may indicate a person who likes to be around other people. Overlapping lines
may indicate a person who suffers from an emotional or mental disorder. If the lower zone descends in the
following lines upper zone it may indicate a person who has strong sexual impulses.