Knowledge About Language for IOL

If you’re preparing for the IOL, it would be helpful to know something about how languages work. Here are some leads for you to consider.

• How linguists divide the study of language structure:
  • Graphology (writing systems)
  • Phonology (sound systems)
    • built on phonetics:
      • articulatory phonetics (physiology: how sounds are produced, e.g. voiced/voiceless)
      • acoustic phonetics (acoustics: how sounds sound – probably not relevant to IOL)
  • Grammar
    • morphology (word structure; how word-parts combine)
      • inflection (same word, different grammar, e.g. singular/plural)
      • derivation (different words, e.g. farm – farmer)
    • syntax (sentence structure; how words combine)
  • semantics (meaning directly read off words)
  • pragmatics (meaning that we read between the lines)
  • lexis (vocabulary – really straddling all the above).
• Different ways of studying language structure:
  • Descriptive (how one language works)
    • Contrasted with ‘prescriptive’
  • Historical (how a language has changed)
  • Comparative (how languages are similar or different)
    • Typological (general ‘types’ of language)
  • Psycholinguistics:
    • Child language (how we learn language)
    • Production, perception (how we use language)
    • Neurolinguistics (language in the brain)
    • Language disorders
  • Sociolinguistics
    • Language variation (dialects, styles, etc)
    • Language interaction (politeness, etc)
    • Language and culture
  • Theoretical (main focus on general theory applying to all languages)
  • Applied linguistics
    • Linguistics applied, e.g. to education, language loss, …
• Useful source books:
  • David Crystal: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.
    • For example, the 2nd edition, 1997, has a useful summary of grammatical terms and categories on p. 93, in Chapter 16 on Grammar.
  • David Crystal: Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.