Introduction to Spanish/English Linguistics

By Dee L. Eldredge and Liesder Mayea

This textbook is for three groups of people involved with Spanish: first, for the students enrolled in Spanish/English linguistics courses; second, for college and university librarians; and third, for every Spanish language teacher/professor. We suggest that those who have courses of this type consider this book as a text for those classes. For those that do not have them, we recommend that you offer them and use this book. We also believe that it would also be an ideal book for libraries in which people interested in the topic can go to find out information, since there are no available texts as comprehensive as this one. It is also a book that all Spanish teachers/professors should have on their desks and shelves for reference purposes, being that it contains a lot of information about linguistics and grammar.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781503574502

Dee L. Eldredge

Professor Eldredge has taught beginning, intermediate, advanced, linguistics, literature, and folklore Spanish classes for about forty-five years. For his doctorate, he studied Spanish linguistics for his major, and literature and folklore classes for his minor. He has taught at many schools including UCLA, Universidad Iberoamericana, and University of Redlands. He has a great love for linguistics. Professor Mayea-Rodriguéz, a Cuban by birth, received his doctorate from UCR, and he currently teaches at the University of Redlands. He teaches advanced grammar and medieval literature Spanish courses. A few years ago, he became very fascinated with linguistics and began working with Professor Eldredge to write this textbook. He saw a great need for a book like this one.

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Copyright © 2015 by Dee L. Eldredge; Liesder Mayea.

Library of Congress Control Number:    2015908810

ISBN:  Hardcover  978-1-5035-7448-9

            Softcover   978-1-5035-7449-6

            eBook        978-1-5035-7450-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 12/09/2015

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Description, History, And Importance Of Linguistics

Chapter 2: General Linguistic Explanations

Chapter 3: Syntax (1): Sentences And Noun Phrases

Chapter 4: Syntax (2): Verb Phrases

Chapter 5: Syntax (3): Prepositional, Modifier, And Conjunction Phrases

Chapter 6: Lexicon

Chapter 7: Semantics

Chapter 8: Phonology

Chapter 9: Morphology

Chapter 10: Spelling

Chapter 11: Dialectology

Chapter 12: Philology

Chapter 13: Other Spanish Language Rules

Chapter 14: Usage Of Linguistics In The Classroom

References

PREFACE

This textbook is for three groups of people involved with Spanish: first, to the students enrolled in Spanish linguistics courses; second, to college and university librarians; and third, to every Spanish language teacher/professor.

Our aim in writing this book is for it to become a textbook or resource manual for potential Spanish teachers / professors. Some universities offer Spanish linguistic classes; others do not. We suggest that those who have courses of this type consider this book as a text for those courses. For those that do not have them, we recommend you start doing so and consider this textbook to utilize. Future teachers need to know most of the information afforded here to teach well, and right now there is not a good text for these types of classes.

We also believe that it would be an ideal book for libraries in which people interested in the topic can go to find out information. Since there are not any available texts as comprehensive as this one, it would be a good addition to their library.

It is also a book that all Spanish teachers / professors should have on their desks or shelves for reference purposes. Being that it contains a lot of information about linguistics and grammar, it should be a must for them.

There are a few Spanish linguistic texts. Some cover phonetics fairly well and not a lot about other branches of this discipline, especially syntax. This one covers syntax as well as other branches on an introductory level quite well. Phonetics can be very useful to teachers/professors, but knowledge of syntax is an even more effective tool. What is presented in this textbook is somewhat revolutionary, and learning this material will bring a lot of good results in the classroom. We have used most of the syntax rules and phonetical information in the classroom with great success.

Besides the linguistic material given, there are also two additional chapters: one about Spanish grammatical rules not usually taught to students, and another about how to use this information in the classroom. Memorizing the rules can be a great aid for teachers. One example is how to teach and use the diacritical markings — as for example, the written accent mark.

In about 1970, I (Eldredge) started studying Spanish linguistics. It was something that I fell in love with. Before the linguistics courses, I was wanting to become an architect. However, I changed my mind and wanted to know more and more about syntax. Over the years, I found myself engrossed with verbal and prepositional complementation. When there was spare time, I engaged in writing information in notebooks and reading the writings of other linguists.

Professor Mayea and I were working together at the University of Redlands when, one day, I asked him if he would like to participate in a project with me, to which he replied yes. He told me that prior to joining me, he had taken several linguistic courses in which the students did not have a good text. He became fascinated with linguistics as he worked with me, and as a consequence of this, he wanted us to write this textbook. He also has implemented most of what is found in the book in his classes and found that the information has made him a better teacher.

The first book Liesder and I published was called Teaching Spanish, My Way. About half of the information here is in TSMW. However, this one is designed as a textbook for classes. Both books are an introduction to some of the most important and general linguistic concepts, which we have presented in an accessible manner to the beginning student.

This text is meant to be used by both Spanish teachers/professors and their students. It begins with a general introduction of linguistics as a science, and then goes further into a discussion of some of the most important parts of linguistics — especially syntax, lexicon, morphology, semantics, phonetics, philology, and dialectology. The combination of these parts aids the teacher/student to develop better language skills.

We do not pretend to believe that this textbook is the ultimate guide for linguistics as a field. Such study would take many more years to complete and would require experts from all fields of linguistics to come together to create such a complex masterpiece.

This text aspires to introduce the students of Spanish and Spanish teachers/professors with a general guide to linguistics as a field, and then deepen their understanding of the different parts in this field. And even though it is not meant to be a dictionary of linguistics, it can be used as a reference book because general linguistic concepts are defined in it. It also clarifies specific principles that might become useful when writing or speaking Spanish.

It is our hope that this text will be helpful to you in furthering the study of the Spanish language. Thank you!

CHAPTER ONE

DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, AND IMPORTANCE OF LINGUISTICS

DESCRIPTION OF LINGUISTICS

The capacity to create language has made humans the dominant species on planet Earth. Human communication through language, both written, and spoken, has enabled the development of mathematics, religion, philosophy, and the sciences, as well as the ability to pass on knowledge from one generation to another. As a consequence, never before in the history of our species have humans acquired such collective knowledge as we have now. It would be somewhat innocent, to think that all the understanding we have acquired as a species has been created in a vacuum, or only in the last one hundred years or so. This collective understanding we have come to acquire at the beginning of the second millennia after the Common Era has been thousands of years in the making. This is true of scientific as well as technological development. Nevertheless, it is also true that over the last fifty years or so, this collective understanding has grown exponentially. Therefore, the study of linguistics can-not be undermined in today’s world, for it is not only the scientific study of language and the components in it that are used to communicate information, but also a way in which humans may understand themselves and the order of things, and our relationship to other members of our species.

A traditional definition of linguistics is that it describes and explains the nature of human language. Another term used as substitute for linguistics is linguistic science. Since linguistics is the study of language at a basic level, it is also concerned with the interrelation between sound and meaning. This implies that everything that can be known in nature and the universe must first have a name, and, second, meaning(s) that its name evokes in the listener. Some of these meanings may differ from language to language. For instance, in Germanic mythology, the moon is represented by a male deity, while in several other mythologies, it is female. This has to do with the fact that the word moon in German is masculine, while in other languages, such as Italian or Spanish, the word moon is feminine. What does not change in any of the languages is that when we refer to the moon we imagine the same object. What are different, are several other meanings we associate with the word, one of them being gender. Therefore, even though there are general paradigms for the study of languages as a whole, each language has its own set of characteristics, which must be studied independently.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its components which are used to communicate information. It describes and explains the nature of human language. Some of its parts include semantics, lexicology, morphology, phonetics, and syntax. There are two others that cover all five: dialectology and philology.

Semantics is the investigation of the meaning(s) of words. It breaks down into several branches, including formal semantics (studies of the logical aspects of meaning such as sense, reference, implication, and logic references), lexical semantics (studies of word meanings and word relations), and conceptual semantics (studies of the cognitive structure of meaning).

Lexicology is the study of the lexicon (dictionary) of a language / person. It is the meaningful groups of sounds that form words, their forms, meanings, and usage. The lexicon can be bigger in one language than another, and one person’s lexicon can be larger than another’s.

Morphology is the identification and description of a language’s morphemes or components of a word. It involves studying the prefixes, suffixes, and middle-fixes that make up words. Often, these fixes are inherited from other languages.

Phonetics is the examination of human sounds made in a language or languages. The sounds are either vowels, diphthongs, triphthongs, or consonants and consonant clusters. It involves the identification and description of the sounds made in a language. For example, /i/ is a high, front, closed vowel; /u/ is a high, back, closed vowel: and /B/ is a bilabial, fricative, voiced consonant. Some generative classifications are even more precise. Usually, the cataloging of the sounds involves the place of articulation, the method of articulation, and open/closed for vowels and voiced/non voiced for consonants.

Syntax is the analysis of the arrangement of words and phrases to generate well-formed sentences in a language. It studies the rules that are language universal (common to all languages) and language particular (only occurs in the target language) that are used to generate sentences in languages.

Dialectology is the study of the variations of a language in semantics, lexicology, morphology, phonetics, and syntax within a language. Almost every language has several to many dialects.

Philology in linguistics studies how one language becomes another or influences another. In Spanish’s case, it is how Latin and other languages became Spanish. It also analyzes how ancient languages influence modern ones, or how a modern one affects another existing one.

Some other studies combined with linguistics are sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical-comparative linguistics, applied linguistics, and anthropological linguistics. Also, many other occupations and professions require students to have a knowledge of some linguistics and languages.

HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

In the last two centuries, linguistics has evolved from being an anthropological description of language in the eighteenth century for many linguists and people, to being its own separate study. It has become very sophisticated to be almost a scientific combination in various ways of math, chemistry, and some other sciences in its makeup. For example, James Burnett and Lord Monboddo studied many languages and deduced in a very anthropological way components of how human language evolved, similar to a biological evolution. Today, some linguists use calculus-like formulations to explain some language rules, and most use syntactical notation to describe the make-up of sentences, a process quite similar to the chemists using metal symbols to describe chemical reactions.

The Earliest Grammars. From very early in our history, scientists and scholars have attempted to explain the nature of language and have created rules for the learning and teaching of it. The first grammars seem to have originated in India and China in about the fifth century BC. They studied consonants, vowels, and word classes such as nouns and verbs. In the fourth century BC the Greeks began to develop their own grammatical traditions, concentrating on morphology and a little bit of phonetics and semantics. Soon thereafter, the Romans began to formulate grammars, mainly through the influence of the Greek ones. The Arabs and Hebrews followed with their own grammars during the Middle Ages. For a long time thereafter, the Europeans primarily utilized Latin and Greek grammars in linguistic study. In 1492, Nebrija in Spain wrote the first modern grammar in Europe. Later, other European languages produced their own grammars.

In the nineteenth and part of the twentieth century many linguists would describe languages as they did the culture of any given people, especially those that did not have a literary tradition as American Indian languages. As part of the description of a people, they would catalog the language, indicating what the phonology, morphology, and lexicon was like, not writing or saying much about syntax. Some would make long lists of words and phrases, and make a comparison of them with the English equivalents. Many of the languages that did not have a literary tradition were formulated phonetically using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The IPA is made of symbols that reflect exact sounds so that the sound in any language will be well represented by these symbols. IPA allows a linguist to take an indigenous language without literature and write the words of that language using this alphabet. It also allows them to represent those sounds in any language that are not represented by letters.

Early Twentieth-Century Grammars. In the first half of the twentieth century, structuralism became common, lead by Ferdinand de Saussure in Europe, and Sapir and Bloomfield in the United States. The linguists would gather together a group of utterances in a language to classify all of the elements into a corpus of information of phonemes, morphemes, lexicon, and other items. During this time, diagraming of sentences was taught and utilized to illustrate and teach components of a sentence. Phonetics, morphology, and lexicon were studied quite well; however, syntax was not. Comparative linguistics (comparing one language with another) was also quite popular during this time. Some would examine languages of the past and compare them with modern languages. Some would compare one contemporary language with another.

The linguists of the early twentieth century believed at that time that children were born with a blank slate as far as any knowledge of language is concerned, except for the faculties that exist in a human mind. That means that the mind of a new-born baby had nothing in it to generate a language. Everything—as far as language is concerned—developed after birth for an individual. They believed that children input information as they hear sounds and sentences from others.

The Influence of Chomsky. In the 1960s, a generative grammar, with heavy emphasis on syntax, as a reaction to structuralism, became very wildly popular. It was Noam Chomsky, often called the father of modern linguistics, that began the movement, writing Syntactic Structures in 1957 and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax in 1966. For him, the most basic form of language is a set of syntactic rules that are universal for all humans and that is the basis of the grammar of all human languages. Disciplines like artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, programming, music theory, language theory, philosophy, logic, psychology, political science, education, and others began to use many of the facets of his transformational grammar. To the transformationalists, every sentence has a deep structure to which transformations— such as the passive, tough movement, question formation, reflexive formation, cleft sentence, identical verb phrase deletion, and many many more— were/are performed to arrive at the surface structure or the form used for communication. What fascinated so many in many other areas of study were the deep structure and universal grammar ideas. The basic types of transformations either added, substituted, or deleted something to the deep structure to arrive at the surface structure.

Linguists in this grammar began to use syntactical notation, phrase structure rules, and grammatical trees to show how one generates a given sentence. Syntactical notation uses symbols to represent different parts of a sentence [S = sentence, NP = noun phrase, VP = verb phrase, IP = infinitive phrase, GP = gerund phrase, PPP = participle phrase, PP = prepositional phrase, AUX = auxiliary, etc.]. Grammatical trees would begin with an S that is composed of an NP, representing the subject, and an VP, representing the conjugated verb plus the complements of the verb [S > NP + VP]. The NP is further divided into an N [=noun], and the other complements. The VP is composed of possibly an AUX [auxiliary], V [=verb], and its complements. [In the General Linguistics chapter, there is more information about this.]

He started the tradition of presenting arguments to incorporate new transformations. Consequently, linguists came up with a number of written demonstrations to indicate that a certain transformation should exist. For example, if a linguist came up with a certain idea for a transformation, he/she would provide a series of illustrations to show that his/her new idea explains a number of situations of data. If his/her series of explanations were accepted by the linguistic community, then his/her idea would become an accepted transformation.

Chomsky illustrated — again through a series of arguments — that a child is not born with a clean slate. He postulated that humans have an innate language faculty. He demonstrated that each new-born child has en elaborate system for language, especially for syntax, in his/her mind at birth. For the transformationalists the deep structure is those rules that a child is born with. Consequently, the deep structure is supposed to be the same for all languages for a given thought to be expressed. As transformations and lexical rules are applied, the information will be rendered in the surface structure according to the language being utilized. This is also an idea that interested many in other fields of study.

He has also shown that languages have more similarities than differences, an idea that lead to Universal Grammar, which postulates a set of rules universal for all humans and all their languages. For example, most sentences in most languages have this language universal phrase structure rule:

S > NP(subject) + VP(predicate)

which, through transformation could be

S > VP(predicate) + NP(subject)

representing some languages in which the subject almost always comes after the verb. This first rule is always the case in English; however, Spanish has some verbs that do not require a subject:

- Llovió toda la noche en mi pueblo.

A transformationalist would simply say that with this type of verb, there is a transformation that will delete the NP(subject). This would be a particular language rule for Spanish. Many of the same verbs in English do not have subjects like Spanish, like the following:

-It rained all night in my town.

To rain, like all climate verbs, does not have a subject, but the transformationalists would simply say that there is a transformation that inserts an it, often called the dummy it, because it has no meaning but automatically appears when there is no subject.

He also differentiated between competence (the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of the language) and performance (the actual use of language in a concrete situation). The grammar of the language is a speaker’s competence. He observed that while speaking people often make linguistic performance errors as for example, not completing a sentence they have started. Competence for him, means that every native speaker of a language has the ability to decide whether some utterance or written sentence is within the language boundaries. He also theorized that any grammar should be able to generate all well-formed sentences that can be produced by any speaker, and that a native speaker of a given language would know the rules of this grammar.

After Transformational Grammar. Years later, other types of grammars, a few being generative in nature, appeared that were a reaction to the transformational grammar theory. Deep structure ideas and transformations were deleted from them. Syntactical notation, grammatical trees, and in most cases, phrase structure rules, were not eliminated. There were some grammars that adapted the transformational trees to a new way of formulating the information (X-bar syntax).

Soon thereafter, many schools of linguistics began or gained in strength. It seems that from basically one main school (transformational grammar), there arose many, each stressing a different emphasis in the field of linguistics or a different way to explain syntax. Still today, there are many schools of thought studying syntax, including transformational grammar. Some others are X-bar syntax, juncture, cognitive, quantitative, historical, dialectology, comparative, sociolinguistics, applied, contrastive, anthropological, computational, evolutionary, forensic, graphemics, functional theories, Internet, language acquisition, and many more. Some of these fields of linguistic study have existed in the past and have continued on into the present.

X-bar syntax was started by Ray Jackendoff, who wrote X-Bar Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure in 1977. What he did was to allow more layers of structure to phrase structures. He changed the phrase structure formation to provide more levels of modification. As for example, instead of starting with

S > NP + VP

where a sentence breaks down into a noun phrase and a verb phrase-, he uses bars with single letters like

S(3), N(3), V(3), P(3)

[We use (3), (2), or (1) because we are unable to put bars on top of the letters.] The followers would have a phrase structure rule like

S(3) > S(2) > S(1)

Level (3) conjunctions of various types would be used like the following:

- I ate and then I studied.

So two sentences are combined together at level (3). At level (2), sentential adverbials would be attached:

- Sadly, I went home.

Sadly modifies the whole sentence. Also, at this level, topics would be put, which would be anything like que, antes de que, para que, etc. At level (1) the subdivide of the sentence occurs:

S(1) > N(3) + V(3)

They study what kind of items would be attached at what level.

Juncture grammar, another reaction to transformational grammar, describes the way language elements are put together, hence the word juncture. It was created to make a functional translation system implementing computers, and it was used as well in the area of language acquisition field. Work is still being produced using this grammar.

Cognitive linguistics, an enormous reaction to transformational grammar, has three main principles: one, there is no autonomous linguistic faculty in the mind; second, grammar is conceptualized; and third, language comes to children through usage.

Quantitative linguistics is a noteworthy new field. It investigates languages, using statistical methods. Its main objective is the formulation of interrelated language laws. In recent years, statisticians, through word count of small words, can determine many facts about some writing through the patterns of word usage. In some cases, they can find out who the writer was, or if a writer is the same author of two different writings. Apparently, no two people write the same in regard to the usage of the small words in the language.

Historical linguistics examines the changes that a language goes through during its history by examining languages that are similar in vocabulary, word formation, and syntax. It tries to classify the languages in the world by the languages they come from and trace their historical development. Philology, which is a sub-study of historical linguistics, examines the relationships of older languages with new ones. It is the study of how older languages have influenced one another. In the case of Spanish it is how Latin, Arabic, Greek, and other languages have influenced it.

Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with the relationship of languages through comparisons. It looks at their origins and tries to construct language families. It looks for those processes that occur in one language but not in another.

Dialectology is the study of the variations that occur within a given language. Speakers of a language may vary in the pronunciation, words that are utilized, how words are put together, and how words are spelled. One only needs to compare British English to American English to see the differences and comprehend that each is a different dialect of English.

Sociolinguistics looks at language through its usage in society. It examines the effect of language use on society. It investigates how language differs among ethnic, religious, and gender groups. In some ways it is close to anthropological linguistics and dialectology.

Applied linguistics became very popular with the teaching of English as a second language (TESL or ESL). Teachers started using some principles of linguistics, especially the transformational model, to teach foreign students English. We have used a lot of linguistics in the classroom to teach Spanish; and thus, we have, in some ways, implemented applied linguistics.

Contrastive linguistics tries to describe the differences and similarities between two languages. It is often called differential linguistics, and seeks to solve practical problems between languages. It is sometimes associated with applied linguistics, but it tries to help students avoid interference errors in the learning of foreign languages.

Anthropological linguistics studies the relationships between language and culture, human biology, and cognition. It analyzes the language of people through an anthropological lense.

Computational linguistics specializes in the use of computers to process natural language. It became a subdivision of artificial intelligence after failing to develop machine translation. Linguists discovered that human languages are far more complex than originally thought.

Evolutionary linguistics examines the origins, development, and cultural evolution of languages. Inspired by the natural sciences, August Schleicher began in the nineteenth century to compare languages to evolving species. It was abandoned and then started again in the 1980s and has since influenced other fields like psycholingustics and neurolinguistics.

Forensic linguistics, sometimes called legal linguistics, applies linguistic principles and knowledge to the forensic context of law and anything that has to do with it. In a sense, it is a branch of applied linguistics.

Graphemics studies writing systems and their basic components. It analyzes written texts in a given language and also the speech of its speakers. It tries to find regularities in written words to formulate rules for the language’s writing system. The rules can be used in education and computer linguistics.

Functional theories linguistics looks at the functions of language, which to them, is the key to understanding linguistic functions and structures. Those that follow this model of linguistics assume that language is best analyzed and comprehended by studying the functions of the structures. They study the way language is used in context.

Internet linguistics analyzes new language forms that have come about because of the Internet and other new media. Three items of interest are the short message composition, the abbreviations, and the spelling that participants use in sending e-mails.

Language acquisition linguistics concentrates on language assessment, language development, language education, neurolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. It examines the process by which humans acquire, produce, and comprehend language. It is usually involved with first-language acquisition.

All these schools of linguistics fall into basically four categories: theoretical, descriptive, applied and experimental, and language acquisition. It is my opinion that this field has become much more important over the last hundred years.

In spite of having many fields of study in linguistics, the most pronounced change that has occurred in the last hundred years is that syntax has become the dominant study over other components of linguistics. Although today phonology, morphology, and lexicology are studied a little, it is syntax that is the most analyzed currently. The first three are sort of finite, but syntax is infinite in the scope of possibilities of study.

IMPORTANCE OF LINGUISTICS

The principles and practices of linguistics are utilized in many fields because communication through the use of language occurs in most disciplines. Below are some examples of how it is implemented.

Foreign-language learning goes on all over the world. Applied linguistics can help the process by applying linguistics fundamentals and procedures to enhance the learning process. Phrase-structure rules and syntactic notation can be of great value in the teaching of a language. For example, showing the complements of verbs such as necesitar (to need) and dejar (to let) aids the students to know syntactically how to use the verb.

132526.png

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COMPLEMENTS OF THE VERB DEJAR (= TO LET)

[NP = noun phrase / que S-S = que + a sentence with a subjunctive verb in it / VP-S = verb phrase with a subjunctive verb in it / IP = infinitive phrase]

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Knowledge of phonemes, such as their place and manner of articulation and voicing, can be beneficial to teach students how to produce a given sound. Language teachers try to get students to mimic their words; however, if teachers can say that a sound is rendered on the alveolar ridge, that a sound is fricative, that another sound is an affricate, etc., and then explain what those items mean, students can duplicate the sounds much more easily and accurately.

The application of linguistics to language-related problems can be a big asset for other disciplines. In recent years, linguistics has been applied to include language assessment, language policy, as well as the acquisition of another language. In the applied linguistics studies, linguists try to apply solutions to real-world problems.

Ever since the handheld devices have come out with cellular telephones, new written languages are being used to communicate with others. For example, R = are, U = you, 2 = two in the new language. Also, we have seen several people that we know sign off with SYL = see you later. We are sure that, shortly, those that study Internet linguistics will be providing a dictionary to indicate what many abbreviations, letters, numbers, etc., mean for those people who text one another.

Almost everyone wants computer translation. It would be nice to be able to put in a sentence in a handheld device and ask for a translation in another language. This can be done with simple phrases and sentences. However, for the complicated sentences, it is not possible. For this to happen, there is need of a complete linguistic model that will generate sentences in the various languages. It does not exist yet. Those working in the field will make a lot of people happy when the model is finished. Since we have become a global economy, computer translation is very much needed.

It used to be that in high school English classes, morphology was studied. However, very few teach prefixes, suffixes, or middle-fixes today. It would be good if textbook writers would include a lot of morphology in their books. We are sure linguistics could be very beneficial in aiding teachers to teach the fixes, to be able to understand a lot of big words, and to expand the vocabulary of students.

Many children are born with speech, comprehension, production of words, and other language-related problems. What is studied and learned in neurolinguistics and other branches of linguistics is very helpful to these children in overcoming these problems. Speech therapists study a lot of linguistics, especially phonetics, to accomplish their tasks. The linguists in this field focus on how the brain can utilize the processes that theoretical and psycholinguistics produce in the production and comprehension of language. Another field of linguistics that is beneficial to helping these children is psycho-linguistics. Those people in this field try to view procedures and problems with a psychological viewpoint. Those neuro-linguists look more at sciences— like biology neuroscience, and cognitive science — to explain problems associated with linguistics.

Linguistics can help a person read and write better. If a person knows that the writer has included in his sentence a gerund phrase, a participle phrase, a relative clause, etc., he will be able to understand better what was written, and his mind will be able to follow what is written or said in an enhanced way. Some will say that this is grammar; however, grammar is part of linguistics.

Furthermore, knowing why some grammatical situation is like it is, makes a teacher look better to his/her students. Not knowing the whys and just saying that this is the way it is, makes the teacher not look as professional as he/she should be. Presented in this text are many whys that might be a big help for many teachers.

QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED ON CHAPTER ONE

1. What is linguistics?

2. What are the basic components of linguistics? Describe each of them.

3. How has the study of linguistics changed over the last 150 years?

4. What effect did Noam Chomsky have on the study of linguistics?

5. What are some of the differences between structuralism and transformational grammar?

6. What happened after transformational grammar ceased to have a large following?

7. What are syntactical notation and grammatical trees?

8. What is the problem with climatic verbs?

9. Which disciplines have been interested in linguistics and why?

10. What is the status of linguistics today?

11. Which of the different schools of linguistics is of interest to you and why?

12. What effects has Chomsky had with his models of linguistics?

13. What are the differences between applied linguistics and language acquisition linguistics?

14. What are some items that you have noticed that Internet linguists would be interested in?

15. Which type of linguistics would study computer languages?

16. Which discipline of linguistics studies aspects having to do with parts of the brain responsible for language production? Define it.

17. Which of the linguistic disciplines anglicizes the evolution of language? Define it.

18. In Spanish history, who is the author of the first grammar of the Spanish language and the first in Europe, and in what year was it published?

19. Describe X-bar syntax.

20. Describe quantitative linguistics.

21. Describe contrastive linguistics.

22. Describe historical linguistics and give a branch of this study.

23. Describe comparative linguistics.

24. What are dialects? How may one dialect of a language vary from another? What are some dialects of Spanish?

25. Name and describe five early world grammars.

26. What does generate refer to in lingustics?

27. What is the status of linguistics today?

28. How can the study of linguistics help you today?

29. How has linguistics changed over the last hundred years?

30. How can linguistics help a language teacher?

CHAPTER TWO

GENERAL LINGUISTIC EXPLANATIONS

WHAT ARE SYNTHETIC AND ANALYTIC LANGUAGES?

There are certain elements to help linguists label languages as being synthetic or analytic. Among these is the