Talk:Linguistics

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I think this book is a great idea.

I'm currently studying for a BA in Linguistics at UCL. I'll try to contribute where I can.

--Frankie Roberto

Contents 1 Sections 2 Welcome 3 Historical linguistics 4 Language diversity 5 Syntax Trees 6 Page names 7 Keep it up 8 Style 9 Phonetics vs. Phonology

[edit] Sections

Does anyone have any thoughts about what sections there should be within this book?

I'm not convinced that Typoloy should be included. Also, perhaps Historical Linguistics should be part of History, not Linguistics? Frankie Roberto (changed due to mis-read)

Well typology is pretty important in modern linguistics -- if you believe that the goal of linguistics is to understand how the human language device works, then typology, as the basic tool of determining what can and can't be considered language, is pretty key. Additionally historical linguistics refers to how languages develop through time, not the history of linguistics per se. Mo-Al (talk) 20:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Hey, Frankie, welcome. I was beginning to think I was the only one who cared. Thank you for creating template:LinguisticsTOC. I'm not a big MediaWiki guru, so any help people can give improving the markup in ways like this will be really appreciated.

I'm new to wikis in general, so I'm not that good on the markup either. I took the idea from the Manual of Style. There doesn't seem to be a clear way to organise the books yet. Frankie Roberto

ACW 18:04, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I'm quite new to linguistics (and rather interested in reading this wikibook). Nonetheless, I do know something on the subject and would gladly aid in it's development if y'all'll have me. (My knowledge goes as far as my edits in the conworld wikibook.) - Ingolemo 19:25, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Historical linguistics

The term historical linguistics doesn't refer to the history of linguistic scholarship; discussion of that, I would agree, belongs to a history book, albeit a rather specialized one, and not to a linguistics book, especially a broad overview like this one.

Instead, historical linguistics is a branch of linguistics proper. It's the study of how languages change over time, and how those changes contribute to the way a language appears at any given moment. Sometimes it is called diachronic linguistics, as opposed to synchronic linguistics, which studies language at a particular point in time.

Historical linguistics uses a theory very similar to the theory of biological evolution (descent with modification). People are always accidentally changing their languages in little ways; those changes get passed to children when they are learning to speak; changes that hurt communication tend to be eliminated, while changes that help communication tend to spread.

Just as in biology there are families of organisms that were once single species, in historical linguistics we observe that there are language families which have descended from a single archaic language.

The most famous achievement of historical linguistics to date is the Indoeuropean theory, which shows that most of the languages in a wide band stretching from Europe through Central Asia to India are related, and are descended from a single ancestral language, called Proto-Indo-European. By careful comparative methods, linguists have been able to reconstruct much of the grammar and vocabulary of this extinct language, the common ancestor of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and all the Germanic and Slavic languages as well. It's a stunning achievement, and one that well deserves discussion in a linguistics textbook. Well, in my opinion anyway.

ACW 18:18, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

A historical linguistics section is also the best place to introduce dialectology, and demystify the whole notion of dialect.

ACW 18:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I agree; I really think the field ought to be called "Language Change", since it deals with the general theory of how language changes over time, not only with "historical" languages.

[edit] Language diversity

I feel funny that there seems to be no place in the current table of contents for discussing the current state of language on our planet. A lot of beginners' questions fall into this area. "How many languages are there?" "Which languages have the most speakers?" "What are American Indian languages really like?" "What about those weird clicks?"

So I think we should really have a section about that, where we can discuss the amazing variety of languages that exist, and give some handle on the most important languages and language families to be aware of, as well as their basic characteristics.

This kind of hooks into historical linguistics, since the historical viewpoint is the most useful way to understand how languages are distributed around the world today.

It also may be what I had in mind when I proposed a chapter on typology -- some place to show off some weird wonders, and show how wildly languages can vary from each other.

This proposed section would also be a good place to talk about language oppression, endangerment, and extinction.

ACW 18:27, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Syntax Trees

If we're going to go deep into generative grammar, we'll need to be able to draw lots of trees. See X-bar tree for an example. Anyone got any ideas on how best to do this? Frankie Roberto

OpenOffice.org's Draw program tends to work fairly well for these sorts of things. Then there's also Dia, or Microsoft Visio. That's also assuming that we get to the topic of generative grammar in this book. That subject is so large that it may be better to create a book covering just generative grammar to simplify things for the introductory book, and begin the generative grammar book with the assumption that the reader has a basic understanding of linguistics. NathanClayton

Frankie is right that we will need some trees when we get to talking about syntax. It's an iconography that everyone in the field uses, and we must at least talk about the basics even if we don't get into debated areas. So Nathan's suggestions of how to draw them will definitely be useful. Assuming we make any more progress on this book at all. ACW 22:00, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It may be worth noting that there are other, more text-friendly forms, like bracket notation that may be useful if we don't want to make large amounts of trees. Although, ACW is right - tree notation is used by just about everyone, so even if we don't use it through this wikibook we should at least include a few so that prospective students can understand how they work. -- Kirby1024 08:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page names

Just a quick note to say that I've moved the all the subpages from things like [[Linguistics: Hello]] to [[Linguistics/Hello]]. It's much easier to work with and seems to be the new standard in wikibooks. -- Kowey 13:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Keep it up

I have recently discovered the conlangs (constructed languages) (which I don't know if that's common among linguistics students and teachers) and joined the list, on which I don't know half (actually a lot more than that) the things they're talking about. It looks like this will help me (if it gets finished). So thanks and keep it up! Leon math 23:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Style

Reading the introduction I see that italics seem to be way overused. Does Wikibooks have a stylistic policy on this sort of thing? In my opinion italics should probably only be used for introducing new terminology and examples from languages, and bold text very sparingly. Mo-Al (talk) 20:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Phonetics vs. Phonology

I am concerned that the phonetics chapter contains too much information on phonology (e.g. phonemes and allophones). Also, the IPA is arguably more of a phonological tool than a phonetic one. Frankly, I don't even know whether the chapter on phonetics should really come before phonology. Mo-Al (talk) 21:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)