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| == '''[[Linguistics]]''' ==
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| ''by [[User:John Stephenson|John Stephenson]] <small>(and [[User:Gareth Leng|Gareth Leng]] and [[User:Stephen Ewen|Stephen Ewen]])</small>''
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| ----
| | ==Footnotes== |
| [[Image:Spoken-language-naples.jpg|right|thumb|175px|{{#ifexist:Template:Spoken-language-naples.jpg/credit|{{Spoken-language-naples.jpg/credit}}<br/>|}}Language is arguably what most obviously distinguishes humans from all other species. Linguistics involves the study of that system of communication underlying everyday scenes like this.]]
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| '''[[Linguistics]]''' is the scientific study of language. Its primary goal is to learn about the 'natural' language that humans use every day and how it works. Linguists ask such fundamental questions as: What aspects of language are universal for all humans? How can we account for the remarkable grammatical similarities between languages as apparently diverse as English, Japanese and Arabic? What are the rules of grammar that we language users employ, and how do we come to 'know' them? To what extent is the structure of language related to how we think about the world around us? A ''linguist'', then, here refers to a linguistics expert who seeks to answer such questions, rather than someone who is multilingual.
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| ''Theoretical'' linguists are concerned with questions about the apparent human 'instinct' to communicate,<ref>The view that language is an 'instinct' comparable to walking or bird song is most famously articulated in Pinker (1994).</ref> rather than authorising 'rules' of style or 'correctness' as found in grammar textbooks or popular guides.<ref>A popular recent example is Truss (2003).</ref> For example, *''dog the''<ref>An asterisk (*) indicates that what follows is unacceptable to speakers of that language.</ref> is unacceptable in English, but children recognise as much long before they receive any formal grammatical instruction. It is such recognitions, and the implicit rules they imply, that are of primary concern in linguistics, as opposed to rules as prescribed by an authority.
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| Although interesting in its own right as one of the directions we follow to learn more about ourselves and the world around us, the study of linguistics is also highly relevant to solving real-life problems. ''Applied'' linguists may bring their insights to such fields as foreign language teaching, speech therapy and translation.<ref>Increasingly, however, applied linguists have been developing their own views of language, which often focus on the language learner rather than the system itself: see for example Cook (2002) and the same author's [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA website].</ref> While in universities and research institutions worldwide, scholars are studying the facts of individual languages or the system of language itself to find evidence for theories or test hypotheses, applied linguists are at work in classrooms, clinics, courts and the highest levels of government. They use their knowledge to bridge linguistic divides, coax speech from the mouths of the disabled or abused, supply forensic evidence in courtroom trials, find out how language comes to children - in fact, they are everywhere people in need or in conflict over language are to be found.
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| In virtue of the fact stated in the first paragraph, that the primary goal of linguistics "is to learn about the 'natural' language that humans use every day and how it works", we recognize that core areas of linguistics qualify as biological science, a recognition reinforced by the kinds of questions studiers of linguistics ask and seek answers to, detailed in that first and the succeeding two paragraphs.<ref name=bioling>Di Sciullo AM, Boeckx C. (editors) (2011) ''The Biolinguistic Enterprise: New Perspectives on the Evolution and Nature of the Human Language Faculty''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199553270. | [http://books.google.com/books?id=aHbNVjpvqU4C&source=gbs_navlinks_s Google Books preview].</ref>
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| ''[[Linguistics|.... (read more)]]''
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| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[Linguistics#Footnotes|notes]]
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| {{reflist|2}} | | {{reflist|2}} |
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| | </small> |
Latest revision as of 10:19, 11 September 2020
1901 photograph of a stentor (announcer) at the Budapest
Telefon Hirmondó.
Telephone newspaper is a general term for the telephone-based news and entertainment services which were introduced beginning in the 1890s, and primarily located in large European cities. These systems were the first example of electronic broadcasting, and offered a wide variety of programming, however, only a relative few were ever established. Although these systems predated the invention of radio, they were supplanted by radio broadcasting stations beginning in the 1920s, primarily because radio signals were able to cover much wider areas with higher quality audio.
History
After the electric telephone was introduced in the mid-1870s, it was mainly used for personal communication. But the idea of distributing entertainment and news appeared soon thereafter, and many early demonstrations included the transmission of musical concerts. In one particularly advanced example, Clément Ader, at the 1881 Paris Electrical Exhibition, prepared a listening room where participants could hear, in stereo, performances from the Paris Grand Opera. Also, in 1888, Edward Bellamy's influential novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887 foresaw the establishment of entertainment transmitted by telephone lines to individual homes.
The scattered demonstrations were eventually followed by the establishment of more organized services, which were generally called Telephone Newspapers, although all of these systems also included entertainment programming. However, the technical capabilities of the time meant that there were limited means for amplifying and transmitting telephone signals over long distances, so listeners had to wear headphones to receive the programs, and service areas were generally limited to a single city. While some of the systems, including the Telefon Hirmondó, built their own one-way transmission lines, others, including the Electrophone, used standard commercial telephone lines, which allowed subscribers to talk to operators in order to select programming. The Telephone Newspapers drew upon a mixture of outside sources for their programs, including local live theaters and church services, whose programs were picked up by special telephone lines, and then retransmitted to the subscribers. Other programs were transmitted directly from the system's own studios. In later years, retransmitted radio programs were added.
During this era telephones were expensive luxury items, so the subscribers tended to be the wealthy elite of society. Financing was normally done by charging fees, including monthly subscriptions for home users, and, in locations such as hotel lobbies, through the use of coin-operated receivers, which provided short periods of listening for a set payment. Some systems also accepted paid advertising.
