The linguistics of English
The mechanisms of speaking and understanding the language
Everything we think or say to ourselves or to one or more others, with some sort of expression which may remain entirely within our minds, with some meaning is defined by linguistics – in the case of English, the linguistics of English.
Language may involve one person talking to one or more other people. But this is not necessarily so. Someone with a profoundly disabling condition, utterly unable to form even one comprehensible word, can yet conceive of meaningful sentences of exactly the same complexity as an able-bodied speakcr. The universality is in the fact that a sentence is meaningful rather than that it is actually uttered.
Word order
One particular characteristic of English is that the order of the words is more rigidly fixed than in many other languages. Take the sentence; “The British love their NHS”. Five words, and 120 logically possible orders, but only one makes sense. This is not a logical order. In many languages, the order would be “The English their NHS love”. That order is slightly commoner across languages than the English order. Many languages allow the word order to be varied more greatly. So the word order in a simple statement is one of the first things that children have to learn. But the way questions are asked or the truth of a statement is denied are quite complex in English, as in “Do the British like fried locusts?” or “The British do not love their weather.” These things are hard for children. Research shows that children’s questions, the way they are answered, and the way things are denied, are important aspects of their learning to talk.
FAQ: What difference does linguistics make?
A lot. Every normally speaking adult individual’s speech and language are unique to them. The differences between their speech and language and everyone else’s are small. But they exist. This is all the more the case when things are not going quite right. Linguistically informed speech and language therapy is focused on the individual in the most direct of ways. Linguistics makes a lot of difference.