Linguistics & ELT

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) is the founder of modern linguistics, and the langue/parole distinction is his most fundamental contribution. Langue (French for 'language') refers to the abstract system of rules and conventions that a speech community shares — the grammar, the vocabulary, the sound patterns that all speakers of a language know, even if they could not state them explicitly. It is a social fact, not a personal one: no individual speaker owns it or controls it. Parole (French for 'speech') refers to the actual, concrete use of language by individual speakers in specific situations — what you and I say when we open our mouths. Every sentence you speak is parole; the underlying system that makes it possible to understand that sentence is langue. Think of langue as the rules of chess and parole as the actual game being played. Saussure argued that linguistics should study langue — the system — rather than parole — the infinite variety of individual utterances. This focus on the underlying system rather than actual usage was enormously influential on structuralism in literature and anthropology.

Noam Chomsky introduced the competence/performance distinction in his 1965 book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. It is structurally similar to Saussure's langue/parole distinction but philosophically different. Competence refers to the ideal speaker-listener's knowledge of their language — the internalized grammatical system that allows a native speaker to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences, most of which they have never heard before. Performance refers to actual language use in real situations — which is always imperfect: we hesitate, make mistakes, start sentences we do not finish, mishear things. Chomsky argued that linguistics should study competence — the ideal underlying system — rather than performance. This led to the concept of Universal Grammar: the claim that all human languages share a common deep structure because all humans are born with an innate language acquisition device (LAD) that is pre-wired for language learning. A key implication: children do not learn language purely by imitation and reinforcement (as behaviourists like Skinner argued) — they acquire it by activating innate grammatical principles.

Linguistics analyses language at several distinct levels, each dealing with a different aspect of the system. Phonetics and Phonology deal with sounds: phonetics describes the physical production and acoustic properties of speech sounds; phonology studies how sounds function systematically within a particular language — which distinctions matter, which do not. Morphology studies the structure of words — how they are built from smaller meaningful units called morphemes. Syntax studies the structure of sentences — how words combine into phrases and clauses according to grammatical rules. Semantics studies meaning — what words and sentences mean, independently of context. Pragmatics studies meaning in context — how meaning is shaped by the situation, the speaker's intentions, and the listener's background knowledge. Discourse analysis studies language above the sentence level — how texts and conversations are organised. For UGC NET, it is essential to know these levels in order and to be able to give examples of each.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. In English, /p/ and /b/ are different phonemes because they distinguish 'pin' from 'bin' — minimal pairs that differ only in that one sound. Phonemes are abstract units — they are categories of sound, not specific physical sounds. An allophone is one of the actual, physical realisations of a phoneme. A single phoneme may be pronounced slightly differently in different environments — these variants are its allophones. In English, the /p/ phoneme has at least two allophones: the aspirated [pʰ] (a puff of air accompanies it) in 'pin,' and the unaspirated [p] in 'spin.' Native English speakers do not notice this difference — to them, it is the same sound — but in other languages (like Thai or Hindi), this distinction is phonemic: aspirated and unaspirated stops are different phonemes that distinguish different words. The key rule: allophones of the same phoneme never occur in the same environment (they are in complementary distribution) and native speakers perceive them as the same sound.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) emerged in the 1970s as a response to the perceived failure of earlier methods to produce learners who could actually communicate in the target language. Earlier methods — the Grammar-Translation Method and the Audio-Lingual Method — focused on accuracy: learning rules and practising patterns until they were automatic. Students might be able to conjugate verbs perfectly but unable to ask for directions in a real situation. CLT shifts the focus from accuracy to communicative competence — the ability to use language appropriately in real social situations. This concept was developed by Dell Hymes, who argued that knowing the grammar rules of a language is not enough; a speaker also needs to know when to speak, what to say, and how to say it appropriately for the context. In a CLT classroom, activities are designed to involve real communication: information gaps (where one student has information another needs), role plays, problem-solving tasks, discussions. Errors are not immediately corrected if they do not impede communication. The teacher's role shifts from authority to facilitator. CLT became the dominant paradigm in ELT from the 1980s onwards.

Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis (part of his Monitor Model, developed in the late 1970s and 1980s) is one of the most influential — and controversial — theories in second language acquisition. The hypothesis states that learners acquire language by understanding input that is slightly beyond their current level of competence. Krashen uses the formula i+1: if a learner is at level i, the ideal input is at level i+1 — just above what they can already do, but comprehensible with context and effort. The learner acquires language not by consciously studying rules (that is learning, not acquisition, in Krashen's distinction) but by being exposed to comprehensible input in low-anxiety situations. This has clear implications for teaching: provide lots of meaningful, comprehensible input; do not force premature production; create a relaxed, supportive classroom environment (reduce what Krashen calls the affective filter — anxiety, low motivation, and low self-confidence all raise the filter and block acquisition). Critics argue that comprehensible input alone is insufficient — learners also need output practice and form-focused instruction — but the Input Hypothesis remains the starting point for all discussions of second language acquisition methodology.

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in language — smaller than a word. Some words consist of a single morpheme: 'cat,' 'run,' 'blue' — these cannot be divided without losing meaning. Other words consist of multiple morphemes: 'cats' = 'cat' + '-s' (plural); 'unhappy' = 'un-' + 'happy'; 'teachers' = 'teach' + '-er' + '-s.' A free morpheme can stand alone as a word: 'cat,' 'teach,' 'happy.' A bound morpheme cannot stand alone — it must be attached to another morpheme: '-s' (plural), '-ed' (past tense), '-er' (agent), 'un-' (negation), 're-' (again). Bound morphemes are divided into prefixes (attached before the base: un-, re-, pre-) and suffixes (attached after the base: -ness, -er, -tion, -ed). Inflectional morphemes change the grammatical form of a word without changing its basic meaning or word class: '-s' (plural), '-ed' (past tense), '-ing' (progressive). Derivational morphemes create new words, often changing the word class: 'teach' (verb) → 'teacher' (noun); 'happy' (adjective) → 'happiness' (noun); 'quick' (adjective) → 'quickly' (adverb).