Resources

Meet the Linguist in You

Introduction

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It studies language at various levels such as:

1) phonetics: study of sounds
2) phonology: study of interaction of sounds with each other
3) morphology: study of word structure
4) syntax: study of sentence structure
5) semantics: study of sentence meaning

However, these are very rudimentary definitions of only some subdisciplines of linguistics, and you will understand them better as you read more about linguistics and its subdisciplines. This resource contains three exercises, one each on phonetics, morphology, and syntax respectively.

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What are the objectives of this resource?

The activities below have been designed to familiarize you with three important subdisciplines of linguistics. The modules on phonetics and morphology will help you to prepare yourself to independently learn about introductory phonology, and the syntax exercise lays the foundation for the primary study of semantics.

The activities will support your skills of logical reasoning and critical analysis in the arena of linguistics. The activity on phonetics instructs you to organize sounds as per their phonetic characteristics by means of practical application and with the help of hints. The second activity requires you to have some basic knowledge of grammatical categories and initiates them into the world of suffix addition and, to some extent, more complex morphological processes as well. The third activity teaches you the basics of syntactic categories and then invites you to analyse and construct phrase structures.

Audio Resource

Resource activities

Articulatory Phonetics

This is an exercise on articulatory phonetics, which is one of the three main branches of phonetics. This activity is designed to be read in conjunction with the audio resource.

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Morphology

What is morphology? Morphology is the study of words. This activity will take you through some examples.

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Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language. This activity will take you through ten syntactic categories.

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Reflective questions

To answer and record these questions you will need to have an account and be logged in.

Task 1

What are the key arguments, concepts, points contained within it?

Task 2

What are you struggling to understand?

What could you do to improve your understanding of these concepts/terminology etc.?

Task 3

What further questions has this resource raised for you?

What else are you keen to discover about this topic and how could you go about learning more?

Can you make any links between this topic and your prior knowledge or school studies?

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Further reading

  • Recommended Reading

    You will find three important reading recommendations here (under ‘For offer holders’).