Language Detectives
What do linguists study?
Human language.
What's the difference between these two words?
PIN — BIN
The first sound.
Linguists can study individual speech sounds. This is phonetics.
Look at this word:
UNHAPPY
Can you find two meaningful pieces?
UN + HAPPY
"The dog chased the boy."
Now change the order:
"The boy chased the dog."
Did the meaning change?
Yes!
Word order matters.
What are the two possible meanings of:
"I saw a bat."
True or False: You have to speak 5 languages to be a linguist.
False!
Which branch of linguistics is mainly interested in speech sounds and how they are physically produced?
A. Syntax
B. Phonetics
C. Morphology
D. Semantics
B. Phonetics
How many meaningful pieces can you find?
UNHAPPINESS
UN + HAPPY + NESS
Which sentence sounds more natural?
A. The cat chased the mouse.
B. Chased mouse the cat the.
A. The cat chased the mouse.
Languages have rules about how words can be arranged.
What does the word "bank" mean?
"I sat beside the bank."
Could it have more than one meaning?
Yes!
It could be a financial institution or the side of a river.
A. Why people say "gonna" instead of "going to"
B. Why babies say "wabbit" instead of "rabbit"
C. Why people from different places pronounce words differently
D. All of the above
D. All of the above!
Two students pronounce the word "water" differently.
One says something closer to "water" and another says something closer to "wader."
Is one automatically "wrong"?
No!
Break this word into its meaningful parts:
REUSABLE
RE + USE + ABLE
What's wrong with this sentence?
"The pizza ate Ibrahim."
The word order makes Ibrahim sound like the pizza-eater's meal rather than the eater.
Syntax affects meaning.
What does this sentence mean?
"The boy saw the man with the telescope."
Who has the telescope?
We don't know for sure!
It could mean:
Language can sometimes be ambiguous.
A researcher wants to know why children say things like "I goed to school" instead of "I went to school."
Which field of linguistics could help explain this?
A. morphology
B. semantics
C. language acquisition
D. phonology
C. Language Acquisition
Which question sounds more like phonology?
A. "How does your tongue physically make this sound?"
B. "Why can some sounds occur together in a language while others cannot?"
B. "Why can some sounds occur together in a language while others cannot?"
Phonology looks at how sounds function and pattern within a language.
What do we call the smallest meaningful unit of language?
A. Phoneme
B. Morpheme
C. Sentence
D. Accent
B. Morpheme
Put these words in the correct order:
yesterday / Sara / to the library / went
Sara went to the library yesterday.
Which branch of linguistics focuses mainly on meaning?
A. Semantics
B. Syntax
C. Phonetics
D. Morphology
A. Semantics
Which statement is closest to what linguistics is?
A. Learning how to speak perfect English
B. Memorising difficult grammar rules
C. Studying how human language works
D. Learning as many languages as possible
C. Studying how human language works.
Your friend says:
"I don't think I have an accent."
What would a linguist probably say?
Everyone has an accent!
Search Dialect and Idiolect
Which word contains the most morphemes?
A. Cat
B. Cats
C. Unhappiness
D. Unhappier
C. Unhappiness
UN + HAPPY + NESS
A linguist wants to understand how words combine to form sentences.
Which branch should they study?
A. Phonetics
B. Morphology
C. Syntax
D. Pragmatics
C. Syntax
Is this sentence always true?
"Every student in the room is studying."
What would a linguist ask?
They could ask what exactly the sentence means and under what circumstances it is true or false.
Semantics examines how meaning is constructed and interpreted.