AMU Entrance Exam Syllabus for M.A. in Linguistics

FACULTY OF ARTS

M.A. (Linguistics)

Language and Linguistics :

• Speech and writing.
• The key properties of language.
• Functions of language.
• Modern Linguistics.
• Describing Language I : Phonology and morphology
• Syntax and semantics.
• Language, Context and Communication – pragmatics and its scope.
• Applied Linguistics : Translation and Lexicography; Language disorder;
forensic linguistics.
• Language and mind.
• Language and artificial intelligence – computational linguistics
• Major language families of the word.
• Language diversity in India – Language familities represented in India.
• Languages specified in the VIII Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

General Phonetics

• Branches of phonetics; use of phonetics.
• The Anatomy and Physiology of Speech : The organs of speech.
• Initiation of Speech : Pulmonic, glotallic, velaric.
• Phonation : Voiceless; voiced; whisper; glottal closure.
• Speech Articulation : Consonant and vowel; State of velum; direction of air flow;
force of articulation; Prolong ability; manner of articulation; place of articulation.
• Description and Classification of Consonants – Place of Articulation; Manner of
Articulation.
• Vowels – position of the tongue and position of the lips.
• Cardinal vowels – primary and secondary; diphthongs.
• Suprasegmental (or Prosodic) aspects of Speech
• Syllable and its structure – on set, peak, coda
• Sounds in Connected Speech : Assimilation and dissimilation; elision.
• Transcription – Phonemic (broad) and phonetics (narrow); diacritics.

Phonology :

• Phonemics and phonology
• Phone, allophone and phoneme
• Segmental or linear phonemes
• Complementary distribution of allophones; free variation.
• Phonemic Analysis : Preliminary procedures.
• Supra – segmental or non – linear phonemes – stress, pitch, juncture
• Phonotactics : The study of the distribution of phonemes.
• Distribution of English consonantal phonemes.

• English vowel phonemes in word initial, medial and final positions.
• English diphtongs – closing and centering.
• The theory of `distinctive features.
• The concept of `neutralization’ and `archiphoneme’

Introductory Morphology :

• Morphology – its definition and scope.
• Morph, allomorph and morpheme
• Morpheme and word
• Conditioning of allomorphs.
• Affixes – prefixes, suffixes and infixes.
• Base, root and stem.
• Inflection and derivation.
• Word formation – compounding
• Mophological Process : Affixation, internal change, reduplication, suppletion
and zero modification.
• Morphophonemics – the phonological structure of morphemes.
• Morphemic Analysis – Segmentation and grouping; Nida’s principles for
identification of morphemes.
• Identifying plural morphemes of English and Identifying past tense morphemes
of English.

Introductory Syntax :

• Syntax and morphology
• Modern approaches to syntax
• Constituent and construction
• Types of construction – endocentric and exocentric
• Immediate constituent analysis.
• Syntactic Devices : Coordination or conjoining, subordination or embedding,
substitution.
• Function words and content words :
• Grammatical categories and parts of speech.
• Models of Grammatical Description : Item and arrangement; item and process;
word and paradigm.
• Aims of grammer
• Levels of grammatical adequacy
• Phrase structure Grammar : Context free and context sensitive phrase structure
grammer.
• Introduction to transformational generative grammar.

Basic Elements of Semantics

• Semantics and its scope.
• Types of Meaning
• Componential Analysis
• Semantic Oppositions

• Sense Relations : Synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and incompatibility; part –
whole relations.
• Homonymy and Polysemy.
• Semantic Structure of Sentences : Arguments and predicates – predication
analysis.
• Selectional restrictions.
• Figurative use of language.
• Approaches to the study of meaning.
• Semantics and pragmatics.

Historical Linguistics :

• Historical linguistics – its definition and scope.
• Historical Linguistics versus descriptive linguistics.
• Genealogical classification of languages.
• Major language families of the world.
• Languages of the Indo-European family.
• Typological classification of language.
• Phonological change : Phonetic and phonemic change.
• Types of sound change – assimilation, dissimilation and some other types of
sound change.
• Types of semantic change – narrowing and widening of meaning.
• Analogical change.
• Borrowing I : Lexical and phonological
• Borrowing II : Cultural and intimate.

Language Teaching :

• Linguistics and language teaching – role of linguistics in language teaching.
• Principles of language teaching.
• Native and Foreign language teaching.
• Language skills.
• Methods of Language teaching.
• Selection, graduation and presentation of the teaching materials.
• Contrastive analysis.
• Contrasting languages at phonological, grammatical and lexical levels.
• Error Analysis : Mistakes, lapses and errors; transfer errors and analogical
errors.
• Stages in Error Analysis : Recognition, description and explanation of errors.
• Language Testing : Subjective and objective tests; types of objective tests;
open ended and multiple choice tests.
• Audio visual aids in language teaching.
• The language laboratory and language teaching.

Language and Literature

• Characteristics of the language of literature.
• Linguistics and critical approaches to the study of literature.

• The term `stylistics’ – its definition and scope.
• The Term `Style’ : Various senses and definitions of the term `style’ – linguistics
and non linguistics definitions of style.
• Style as the choice between alternative expressions.
• Style as deviation from the norm.
• Phonological Analysis of Poems.
• Stylistic Devices I : Alliteration, Consonance, assonance, rhyme.
• Stylistic Devices II : Foregrounding, parallelism, repletion, antithesis.
• Phonological and lexical cohesion.

Language and Society :

• The relationship of language and Society – Sociolinguistics and its scope.
• Alternative approaches to the social study of language.
• The concept of speech community; verbal repertoire.
• Language variation – describing the varieties of language.
• The social parameters of variation.
• Ethnography of communication; communicative competence.
• Language diversity – bilingualism and multilingualism.
• The concept of `diglossia’.
• Languages in contact – borrowing
• Pedgin and creole; code switching and code mixing.
• Language policy and language planning.
• Corpus and status planning.
• Language standization and modernization.
• Language diversity in India – issues and problems.