Reading Log for Chapter 6, 7 & 8

After reading chapters 6, 7 & 8 in Yule's book, I have learned many new things about language. For example, I learned that the study of the origin and history of a word, is known as Etymology. Also, in chapter 6, I learned about words and word formation processes. I have learned that the least common processes of words formation in English is Coinage. The term Coinage means the invention of completely new terms and Borrowing means taking over words from another language. I have also learned in this chapter, the differences between compounding and blending. Compounding is the joining of two separate words to produce a single form. On the other hand, the term Blending is the combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term. Along with these processes, I have also learned about many others such as clipping, backformation, conversion, acronyms, derivations and many other ones.

In chapter 7, I learned about Morphology. The term Morphology is better known by scientists as "the study of forms." In chapter 7, Yule teaches the basic elements in a language, which are known as Morphemes. In this chapter he talks about the types of morphemes used in English, which are "Free and Bound Morphemes." The "Free Morphemes" are separated into two different sections, which are the Lexical Morphemes and the Functional Morphemes. On the other hand, the "Bound Morphemes" are broken down into Derivational Morphemes and Inflectional Morphemes.

Lastly, in chapter 8, I learned about Grammar phrases and sentences. I have learned that Grammar is basically, the correct use of language. In this chapter, Yule’s talks about grammar and it's many parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns and many other. He explains little by little the meaning of each of the parts of speech and he uses examples to get his point across. He also talks about different approaches, that we have somewhat spoken about in class, which are the prescriptive and descriptive approach. The Prescriptive Approach to grammar is a grammar that tries to legislate what our grammar should be, while the Descriptive Approach to grammar represents the unconscious linguistic knowledge or capacity of it's speaker, meaning us.