Introduction to Linguistics Essay Example for Free

Introduction to Linguistics Essay What is meant by the field of linguistics? This introductory chapter concerns some dimensions of linguistics, which give us a general idea of what linguistics is, including the history of linguistic, grammar, and other disciplines of linguistics study. What does grammar consist of and what are the relationship between one and another? How many languages do human beings have the capacity to acquire? What other studies are made in recent centuries? Each of these aspects are clearly described, and other chapters will go into further details. While in this chapter we will provide some less detailed information on the various aspects of linguistics mentioned so far. 1. 1 Defining Linguistics There is nothing that can be said by mathematical symbols and relations which cannot also be said by words. The converse, however, is false. Much that can be and is said by words cannot successfully be put into equations, because it is nonsense. C. Truesdell Linguistics is a study to describe and explain the human faculty of language. There is no doubt that linguistics has changed through human development. 1. 1. 1 History of linguistics See more: how to write an introduction The history of linguistics can be divided into three periods: antiquity, middle ages and modern linguistics. 1. 1. 1. 1 Antiquity Dating back to earlier period of linguistics, linguistics is often associated with a need to disambiguate discourse, especially for ritual texts or in arguments. Ancient Indians made a big contribution to linguistics development. Similarly, ancient Chinese played a key role in improving linguistics development. Around the same time as the Indian developed, ancient Greek philosophers were also debating the nature and origins of language. During this period, syntax and the use of particles developed fast. In addition, scholars proposed that word meanings are derived from sentential usage. 1. 1. 1. 2 Middle Ages In Middle East, in terms of expanding Islam in 8th century, a large number of people learn Arabic. Because of this, the earliest grammar came to being gradually. At the same time, Sibawayh, a famous scholar, wrote a book to distinguish phonetics from phonology. In the 13th century, Europeans introduced the notion of universal grammar. 1. 1. 1. 3 Modern Linguistics Modern linguistics beginning can date back to the late 18th century. With time passing by, the study of linguistics contains increasing contents. Meanwhile, it is used in other fields, computer, e. g. , has come to be called computational linguistics. The study of applications (as the recovery of speech ability) is generally known as applied linguistics. But in a narrower sense, applied linguistics refers to the application of linguistic principles and theories of language teaching and learning, especially the teaching of foreign and second language. Other related branches include anthropological linguistics, neurological linguistics, mathematical linguistics, and computational linguistics. However, linguistics is only a part of a much larger academic discipline, semiotics. It is the scientific study of language. It studies not just one single language of any one society, just like Chinese or French, but the language of all human beings. A linguist, though, does not have to know and use a large number of languages, but to investigate how each language is constructed. In short, linguistics studies the general principles whereupon all human languages are constructed and operated as systems of communication in their societies or communities. 1. 1. 2 An Interesting Comparison. Linguistics is a broad field to study, therefore, a linguist sometimes is only able to deal with one aspect of language at a time, and thus various branches arise: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, applied linguistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, lexicology, lexicography, etymology and so on. Suppose that the study of linguistics can be considered to be a computer, so linguistics is equal to the CPU, which supports all the other parts. Moreover, sound card would stand for phonetics and phonology, and then morphology and semantics are like the memory of the computer. Whats more, syntax plays as an important role to translate single words to a whole sentence which is full of meaning, just like a graphics card, which uses picture to make sense of the idea of memory stick. Finally, everything is ready, it s time to use computer and the same goes for language acquisition. Very interestingly, the properties of computer are amazingly similar to human language. from www. iflytek. com/english/Research-Introduction%20to%20TTS. htm Above all, linguistics is concerned with the study of verbal language particularly speech and written language. Whats more, language is a system and there is a set of options of which one must be chosen depending on the purpose and context. (Marie E. John P. , 1991, p. 64). 1. 2 The broad study of language Language is a highly complex system of communication, so it sometimes will be called a ‘system of systems’. It is used to construct, exchange, express, and record information and ideas. It performs these functions effectively because it is based upon systems that are understood by those using the language. In this chapter, four topics will be concerned. They are phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. In this section, some overall definitions and interactions among the four parts will be talked about. 1. 2. 1 Phonology In order to assist learners at the early stages of literacy, it is very important to understand the relationship between sounds and letters. The sounds of speech are studied in phonetics and phonology. (Marie E. John P, 1991) 1. 2. 1. 1 Definitions of phonology and phonetics Phonology is the study of sound systems- the invention of distinctive speech sounds that occurs in a language and the patterns wherein they fall. In other words, we study the abstract side of the sounds of language, a related but different subject that we call phonology (Peter, 2000). In short, it is about patterns and roots. On the other hand, it is more strict linguistics. Phonetics is the science which studies the characteristics of human sound-making, especially sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription. In common, speech sound is used everywhere, and it can be divided into three parts: articulatory phonetics, auditory phonetics, and acoustic phonetics. 1. 2. 1. 2 The difference between phonology and phonetics It seems that phonology and phonetics are similar. That is why both of them make learners confused. In fact, they have great difference. Phonology pays attention to how speech sounds of a language pattern are put together according to regular rules. On the contrary, phonetics focuses mainly on description of how speech sounds are made. For instance, if someone says â€Å"we should get our two lips close together and then push them open with a strong air†, that means he or she is relevant to phonetics field. Another example is â€Å"no words should begin with the ‘ng’/N/ sound, the sound only occurs at the end of words†, and this concerns phonology area. Plenty of terms are used to describe different patterns of letters and sounds. Some of the common used terms are blend, digraph, schwa, syllable and phonics, which are widely and frequently applied. 1. 2. 2 Morphology Morphology has been regarded as a necessarily synchronic discipline. That means the rules focusing on the study of word structure instead of the development of words (Katamba, 1993, p.3). It is the basic element used in a language, and the concept of morphemes is one of the main aspects in the study of morphology (Yule, 2006, p. 66). Basically, it is the branch of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words. In morphology, morphemes are the minimal units that have semantic meaning. It is the linguistic term for the most elemental units of grammatical form (Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams, 2006, p. 77). 1. 2. 2. 1 The classification of morphemes Morphemes are composed of free and bound morphemes. Free morphemes are the morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words, while bound morphemes are those that can not normally stand alone, but that can be attached to affixes (Yule, 2000, p. 75). Free morphemes contain lexical and functional morphemes. The first category, free morphemes, is the set of ordinary nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs which carry the content of the conveyed messages (Yule, 2000, p. 76), and most English words refer to this category. The functional morphemes consist largely of the functional words, including conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns (Yule, 2000). Bound morphemes can also be divided into two categories. They are derivational and inflectional morphemes. Derivational morphemes are those which make new words in the language and make words of a different grammatical category from the stem (Yule, 2000, p. 76), which means that it can change the meaning or the word class, whereas the inflectional morphemes are used to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word (Yule, 2000, p. 77). 1. 2. 2. 2 The interaction with other aspects Morphology has interactions with phonology. The selection of the form that manifests given morpheme may be affected by the sounds that realize neighboring morphemes (Katamba, 1993). For example, prefixes and suffixes will normally affect the stress. Meanwhile, there is interaction between morphology and syntax. The form of words may be influenced by the syntactic construction in which the word is used (Katamba, 1993, p. 13). 1. 2. 3 Syntax So far in our study of language, we have made studies of phonetics, phonology and morphology. We have analyzed the structure of sounds and words. Therefore, we have been concentrated on the level of small units of language. After our analysis of words, we move to the consideration of larger structural units of language: phrases and sentences. If we concentrate on the structure and ordering of components within a sentence, we are studying what is technically known as the syntax of a language (Yule, 2000, p. 100). Syntax can be simply defined as the scientific study of sentence structure. According to Geoffrey (2005), syntax is a term used for the study of the rules governing the way words are combined to form sentences. The origin of this word is from Greek and it means a setting out together or arrangement (Yule, 2000). In the sentence The boy hits the door, we can discover that the words are related to each other in this order that it only has one meaning. If we change the order of the words The door hits the boy, the sentences meaning has totally changed and it is nonsense. The reason is that the parts of the sentence are structurally related to each other, and this structure is reflected in the word order. In English, the word order is very necessary and important for the meaning of the sentence according to linguistic rules. In some languages, word order plays a less important role. The meaning of the sentence depends more on the form of the words themselves. In such cases, it is possible for sentences with totally different word order to have the same meaning. English used to be one of these languages. The following examples are taken from Old English: Se cyning metech thone biscop-The king meets the bishop Thone biscop meteth se cyning-The king meets the bishop Although the words are arranged differently, they still mean the same. However, nowadays, the word order is very crucial for meaning. As a consequence, there is a great need for us to explore syntax. Some important concepts are included in the study of syntax. 1. 2. 3. 1Complex and compound sentence Three sentence types are basic in the syntax. There are simple sentence, compound sentence and complex sentence. A simple sentence includes one word. However, in some situation, the simple sentence contains two words. A compound sentence contains at least two simple sentences. The sentences are linked with a conjunction. A Complex sentence composes of at least one main clause and one subordinate clause. 1. 2. 3. 2 Syntax Analysis The following example is provided for syntax analysis. The football team won the match last year. S NP VP NP Det N Vt Det N Adv Ext(time) The football team won the match last year. The chart above is called tree diagram. The letters above each indicate: S = sentence, NP = noun phrase, VP = verb phrase, N = noun, V = verb, and so on. The syntacticians use this method to analyze the sentences. 1. 2. 3. 3 Basic Syntactic Structure In English, the structure of sentence depends heavily on word order. The four basic structures are listed as follows: SNP + Vc + NP ( NPN, NP Det + N) SNP + VP ( NPN, VPVc + Adj) SNP + VP ( NPN, VPV) SNP + VP (NPN, VPVt + NP, NPDet + N) 1. 2. 3. 4 Basic Syntactic Generative Process. There are four basic syntactic generative processes: substitution, expansion, extension, transformation. Take the following sentence as an example to clarify these three concepts. Ken is a policeman. Substitution: Ken is a policeman. Tom is a policeman. Expansion: Ken is a policeman. Ken is a bad policeman. Extension: Ken is a policeman. Ken is a policeman at that time. Transformation: Ken is a policeman. Is Ken a policeman? 1. 2. 4 Semantics Semantics, a subfield of linguistics, is the study of literal meaning. It is the recent addition to the English language. (Palmer, 1976, p. 1). According to Matthews (2007), during the early years the study of meaning focused on the lexicon alone. The scope of the study has expended since 1960s to include both semantics and pragmatics (analyzed in 1. 3), which come to the main fields of the study of linguistic meaning(Katamba, 2000 Matthews, 1997). Semantic meaning is fixed and abstract. It can be understood by surface. However, it is de-contextualized. In another word, it is easily subverted by different gestures or intonations. Semnatics interacts with other aspects of linguistics. For example, when synonyms are used, they can be understood, so it fits the rule of syntax. However, synonyms are used to describe something similar. In a sentence, a synonym can be substituted by another synonym. However, the meaning of synonyms speaker or writer determines or predicates have different degrees, which indicates the meaning is actually different (Alan, 2004). Thus, it is the interaction between syntax and semantics. As for the interaction with phonology, the term tonic syllable in phonology has three kinds of functions. The first one is the accentual function, which is to indicate the focus of the information. The second one is the attitudinal function that is to indicate the speakers attitude. And the last one is grammatical function. If speakers use these functions, the same sentence will turn out to have various meanings. To conclude, in this section, linguistics is analyzed from the aspects of sounds, word structure, grammatical rules and meaning. Each of them is in charge of a certain system. Thus linguistics can help people to communicate, to express, and to be understood. 1. 3 Other disciplines Apart from the core subparts of linguistics, which we have demonstrated before, for further reading, we introduce some other exciting aspects in the field of linguistics. There are a lot more to discover than those areas. 1. 3. 1 Sociolinguistics People may know something about you through the way you speak, for example, where you come from, where you spend most of your life time, your social identity and so on. Two people growing up in the same geographical area, at the same time, may speak differently owing to a number of social factors (Yule, 2000). Consequently, it’s very important to consider the social aspects of language. It’s because speech is a form of social identity and is used, consciously or unconsciously (Yule, 2000). The study of the social aspect of language is known as sociolinguistic. â€Å"Sociolinguistic is concerned with investigation of the relationship between language and society† (Ronald, 2006, p. 13). It consists of cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used. The first linguists who studied the social aspect of language are Indian and Japanese in the 1930s. Another person called Gauchat who came from Switzerland had a analysis of this in 1900s as well. However, these three people didn’t receive much attention in the West. Until the late 19th century, the study of social aspects of language laid its foundation. Sociolinguistics gradually appeared in the 1960s in the West. Linguistics such as William Labov in the US and Basil Bernstein in the UK first brought out this concept and explored it. (Wikipedia, 2007, para. 1) 1. 3. 2 Neurolinguistics Though the neural structures of most animal species are very distant from man, there are still resemblances between human and animal languages (Marler, 1981; Nottebohm, 1970), since neurons work in both. Human brain contains billions of neural cells, and so far, the exact number of those so-called neurons is still to be defined (Fabbro, 1999, p. 21). These teeny tiny neurons have close link with the production of language. There can be innate or learnt vocal utterances. Oral language can be the innate property of the human brain, written language, however, is an invention of humankind. Dogs can bark, cats can miaow, and man can cry even after the removal of the midbrain, whereas parrots cannot imitate human sounds, and we cannot produce human language (Fabbro, 1999, p. 21). Therefore, the neural center of our brain is playing an irreplaceable role in the production of language. How does the main cerebral structure serve the production of human  vocalizations? The study of neurolinguistic rely on the study of neurology and neurophysiology, and in these fields, all parts of the nervous system, each having different functions in generating language, are discovered. Theories are found based on lots of experiments concerning the removals of different sections of the brain. The destruction of different language areas destroys language distinguishingly. 1. 3. 3 Historical linguistics Historical linguistics definitely is not concerned with the history of linguistics, though historical linguistics has played an important role in the development of linguistics. It is the main kind of linguistics practiced in the 19th century (Campbell, 1998, p. 5). Historical linguistics concerns the investigation and description of how languages change or maintain their structure in the course of time. Language change can be easily proved by documents written in the same language but at different periods of history. The differences of wording and structure of sentences can reflect the historical development of language. From series of datable documents, Lord’s Prayer widely recorded the history of mankind, and different versions help us analyze the language of each period (Bynon, 1978, p. 7). Meanwhile we can also discover that certain structure rules are still used in current language. There are some constructs and rule that link the grammars of two different but related languages, which descend from a single original language, sharing a common ancestor. More accurately, historical linguistics deals with the kinds of changes, and the techniques and methods we have use to discover history, rather than the origin of words themselves (Campbell, 1998, p. 5). 1. 3. 4 Anthropological linguistics Anthropological linguistic is the study of relations between language and culture. It is related to human biology, cognition and language. It belongs to the field of linguistic anthropology, which is a branch of anthropology that studies human-beings through the language they use(Wikipedia, 2007, para. 1). Some Linguists who explore theanthropological linguistics consider these topics such as chimpanzee communication, pidgins and creoles, structural linguistics,total languages, whorf hypothesis, etc. 1. 3. 5 Pragmatics According to Kate (2000), pragmatics is one of the two main fields in the study of linguistic meaning. Pragmatics deals with natural language, while language is always used in context for an intended purpose. The listeners must try to grasp the meaning implied, enrich the ideas, and finally make out the opinion that what the speakers meant when talking about a particular expression (Kate, 2000). According to Yule (1996), ‘pragmatics studies the context in which the utterance is produced as well as the intention of language user. ’ That means pragmatic meaning depends on context or situation. Without context, meanings can be vague and may be misunderstood by people. Two of the branches are: speech acts that cover ‘requesting’, ‘commanding’, ‘questioning’ and ‘informing’, and politeness that shows the awareness of another person’s face. In short, sociolinguistics is the analysis of interrelationship of language and society. Neurolinguistics is the study of the brain and how it functions in language. Historical linguistics is the consideration of language change and how different languages are related to each other. Anthropological linguistics is the study of language and culture. There are some other disciplines in linguistics. Pragmatics deals with the speakers meaning. The five mentioned above are some main disciplines in linguistics. Different disciplines of linguistics enrich the content of linguistic. The study of linguistics tends to be more and more detailed and completed. 1. 4 Language Acquisition This chapter began with a general introduction to language study. It ends with a consideration of the acquisition of language, containing first, second and foreign language, which is affected by the relationship between teacher and learner. Some experienced educators advise that it is only through learning to speak a language that you can fully analyze it (Everett 2001). Acquisition is described as occurring in spontaneous language contexts (Krashen, 1982), is subconscious, and leads to conversational fluency. 1. 4. 1 First language acquisition For a child, learning first language is automatic, not after starting school, not in specific circumstance and not by great efforts (Yule, 2006). It requires only basic physical capability of sending and receiving sounds directly or indirectly, and interaction with others using this language. Children are brought up in particular environments, being affected by different surroundings, especially by those people whom they spend most of their time interacting with. Infants start express themselves through some simple utterance, such as some vowel-like sounds. Children gain increasing abilities at different development stages, from producing single-unit utterance to producing speech by communicating through expressions (Yule, 2006), since they are able to understand what others said. This a big step forward, like quitting toddling and being capable of walking steadily, forwards, or backwards. As children are being increasingly exposed to communication and interaction, their language skills are developing rapidly because of the expansion of vocabulary. They are never forced to speak first language and seldom be corrected by others, but they correct themselves through interactions every day. Then children learn to use verbs in different sentences, and how to use different words to form a sentence (Yule, 2006). They gradually learn to ask questions correctly and how to use the word no in their speeches to express negative meanings. The last stage of first language acquisition is the ability of making meaningful sentence (Yule, 2006). There is massive variation in the rate at which features of ones first language are acquired. 1. 4. 2 Second language acquisition  Being able to speak first language is one of the basic skills of second language acquisition. Except for the minority of people who are bilingual speakers, most of the learners have no access to a second language until our late childhood. Actually most of the Chinese learners are now learning English as a foreign language, because it is immediately back to Chinese speaking time out of the classroom. But later on they may have the chance of learning it as a foreign language in a native speaking environment, during immersion semesters, when they will acquire this second language in circumstances similar to those of Chinese acquisition. There are obviously differences in foreign language achievement, sometimes related to differences in aptitude (Carroll, 1982), sometimes to affective factors (Gardner Lambert, 1972), sometimes to learner strategies (Naiman, Frohlicn, Stern Tedesco, 1978), sometimes to environmental factors such as opportunities for language use or instructional conditions (Long, 1982), and sometimes simply to time (Carroll, 1975). Human beings have the ability to learn more than one language all through ones live. Farwell (1963) (cited in Taylor, 1976) reports that a British explorer in the 19th century claimed to have spoken more than 40 languages and dialects. Usually, however, after the age of 10, the acquisition of second language is very different from the way one acquired his first language, which is relatively slower and cannot achieve native-like proficiency. 1. 4. 3 Educational factors Most of us begin learning second language in teenage years, spending only few hours on it every day and for most of the daily activities we use our mother tongue. Accordingly, we will encounter lots of difficulties in learning second language without enough exposure to it. Therefore, the largely distinguished part of acquiring first and second language should be language teachers. In order to learn a second language, we must learn from a teacher, or at least follow their guidance. The classroom is a very powerful instrument of instruction and it can control language learning in a very direct way (Richard, T. Roger,H. ). As language teachers, we should focus on students requirements and follow learner-centered approaches. We should impart knowledge in a more practical way so the students can receive easily. Keep the class disciplined and orderly so that students can learn most effectively from the lessons. There are often the situations that the students seldom volunteer answers, and the teacher sometimes has to call on someone and wait for a long time before a response is forthcoming. Why not try breaking away from typical Hong Kong classroom practices in class? Like, students do not have to stand up to greet teachers, and they do not have to raise their hands or stand up when they answer questions. In a relaxed classroom atmosphere, students will feel free to interact. They will not fall silent when the teacher enters the room, then stand up and chant a choral greeting. If the pupils are put in this position in the classroom, they can be more effectively kept in their place in social life. During the class, we teachers should never say like this: I am your teacher. By the authority vested in me I have the right to ask you to behave in a certain way, whether you like it or not. And you, in your role have the obligation to obey (Widdowson, H. G. ). Whereas, we should say that in another way: Do this because I am the teacher and I know whats best for you, but not Do this because I am telling you and I am the teacher. This difference has the advantage of largely increasing participation in the use and practice of language. 1. 4. 4 Summary Approaches to the acquisition of language account for different backgrounds of learns first language, and different conditions of exposure. In acquiring language, learners often go through transitional stages of development, which is at distinguished rates. References Cruse, A. (2004). Meaning in language : an introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Bynon, T. (1983). Historical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, L. (1998). Historical Linguistics-An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dechert, H. W. (1990). Current trends in European second language. Great Britain: WBC Print, Bristol. Fabbro, F. (1999). The Neurolinguistics of Bilingualism. Psychology Press Ltd. Fromkin, V. , Rodman, R. , Hyams, N. (2006). An introduction to language (8th ed. ). Boston, MA: Heinle Heinle. Palmer, F. R. (1976). Semantics: a new outline. Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press. Geoffrey, F. (2005). Key Concepts In Language And Linguistics. USA: Palgrave Macmillan. Kate, K. (2000). Semantics. Basingstoke, England, Macmillan. Katamba, F. (2006). Morphology. Basingstoke : Macmillan Press. Marie E. John P. (1991). Language and Learning. Melbourne: Oxford University Press O Mally, J. M. , Chamot, A. U. (1990). Learning strategies in second language acquisition. Cambridge University Press. Matthews, P. H. (1997). Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford. University Press, USA. Peter, R. (2000). English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge University Press. Ronald, W. (2006). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. USA: Blackwell Publishing. Widdowson, H. G. (1990). Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford University Press. Wikepedia: Sociolinguistics (n. d. ). Retrieved 30 October 2007 from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sociolinguistics Wikepedia: Anthropological linguistics (n. d. ). Retrieved 30 October 2007 from http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Anthropological_linguistics Yule, G. (2006). The study of language (3rd ed. ). Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Indentity Loss Essay -- essays research papers

In The Odyssey and The English Patient the main character, Odysseus and Almasy, suffer from a form of identity loss and try to regain it. They both regain their identity through the help of other people. Every person that stumbles across a piece of their past helps them regain a piece of their identity. Because he cannot remember Almasy must get help remembering his past from the people around him. One of his first memories came from the book â€Å"he brought with him through the fire- a copy of the Histories by Herodotus† (Ondaatje pg 16). Hana reads some of the notes that he had written in the book; she reads of the different winds â€Å"the ---, the secret wind of the desert, whose name was erased by a king after his son died within it. And the nafhat—a blast out of Arabia† (Ondaatje pg16-17). Before Hana had read this passage Almasy couldn’t tell her the name of the tribe that had helped him after his plane crashed. â€Å"The Bedouin were keeping me alive for a reason†(Ondaatje pg 18); Almasy was able to recall what had happened to him and who had helped him. Hana had stumbled on a passage that helped Almasy remember what had happened. Odysseus comes across a piece of his identity in a different way. He goes to the island of Kalypso and she promises him that she will make him a god. The challenge that she put on Odysseus was to go to the island of the dead. Once he was at the island of the dead Odysseus realized that he did was not dead and he wasn’t a god, this meant he was somewhere ...

Happiness and Love: Pursuits of Ancient Literature Essay

Based on the Chinese poems and excerpts from â€Å"The Canterbury Tales,† the driving forces of early and middle cultures are simple human desires- happiness and love. Characters in â€Å"The Canterbury Tales,† nevertheless, have different ideas of happiness and love. Chinese poems, in general, have their happiness hinged on honor, family, and nature. These differences in thinking of these ancient and middle-period authors lead them to make different decisions and have diverse experiences in life. What aided or guided decision making in the middle age were honor and love. In â€Å"The Knight’s Tale,† Arcite and Palamon set aside their friendship, so that they can fight for love and honor. On the other hand, â€Å"The Wife of Bath’s Tale† and â€Å"The Clerk’s Tale† demonstrate opposite views of a wife’s role and position in the family. These stories underscore different ideas of love, wherein â€Å"The Wife of Bath’s Tale† defines love as gender quality, while â€Å"The Clerk’s Tale† interprets love, as a wife’s complete submission to her husband. A number of stories also demonstrate happiness that comes from tricking the trickster, such as in â€Å"The Reeve’s Tale† and â€Å"The Pardoner’s Tale.† Several poems in early Chinese also describe the beauty of preserving honor and love. The family is presented ideally in early Chinese poetry, as a source of honor and happiness. Other poems illustrate Chinese reflection on nature. Tao Quian’s poems, for instance, are poems about nature. In one of â€Å"Returning to Live in the South,† he says: â€Å"My nature’s basic love was for the hills.† Early Chinese literature remarks of honorable driving forces that concentrate on bliss and love. â€Å"The Canterbury Tales† also represent characters that have noble ideas of love and pleasure, although pervading senses of trickery and justice are also dominant themes. Hence, the middle-period literature adds a sarcastic and comic twist to the dignified pursuit of human happiness. Work cited Quian, Tao. Returning to Live in the South. Web. 16 July 2010 .

Determinants Of Corporate Dividend Policy Within Pakistan Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 16 Words: 4779 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Argumentative essay Did you like this example? This research examines different factors that determine cross sectional variations in corporate dividend policy such as profitability, growth opportunities and riskiness. Another aim of this is to check the significant relationship between losses and dividend cuts. Manages cater to investors by paying them dividends when investors put a stock price premium on payers. To test this prediction, I used companies that are listed on Karachi Stock Exchange (Pakistan) and test there are three stock price based measures of investor demand for dividend payers to check if catering theory of dividend exits in Pakistan. INTRODUCTION They are many reasons for the existence of dividend payments, but Miller and Modigliani (1961) prove that dividend policy is irrelevant to share value in the perfect and efficient capital markets. Which means there was no preference between the dividend payment or the capital gains. Arbitrage ensures that dividend policy is irrelevant. But in reality this doesnt happens. Firms cater investor needs to fully increase the share price, ownership and become a high profitable firm. Management make dividend policy with the consent of their investors. The determinant of dividend policy helps to predict the future growth and the stability of the firm; it also caters to the best interest of the investors. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Determinants Of Corporate Dividend Policy Within Pakistan Finance Essay" essay for you Create order The aim of this paper is to find the determinant of dividend policies in Pakistan, and check whether these determinants have some impact of significance in the share value. And also check whether these determinants are same as in other under developed countries. the corporate sector of Pakistan is going to a bad phase these days due to the terrorism and internal imbalance political situations , so I want to check if Pakistani companies still giving the dividends to their investors and if not then what is the main reason for this and how will they cater new investors. And how this will affect the share price of that company in the stock market. All the regulations have been signal out concerning dividend payments, in effort to compare the results with those from previous research. Although there is no such research has been conducted in Pakistan, all the research related to dividend policy is done in India and other developing country unlike Pakistan. But this study will play an important role in determining the factors which influence the dividend policies of the country and the impact of these policies on the share value of the firm. Institutions have preference for dividend paying companies but there is little evidence that they prefer higher payout ratios or dividend yield. Lintners model (1956) of partial adjustment works reasonably well for the large number of companies. Mostly there is a negative relationship between the growth and the dividend payout and leverage and the payout. So this will also be tested in this paper. Companies having a higher growth opportunity are less likely to have free cash flow; if they dont have a free cash flow then they are unable to give dividends which give a bad signal to the market. Mostly managers are reluctant to cut dividends and that they will not increase dividend unless they are reasonably sure that they will not have to reverse this move soon. Basically managers want to carter the needs of the investors in their best interest so they hesitate to cut their dividend because this will discourage the investor. The cutting of dividend is a bad move as this gives negative signal to the market about the firm and also tells that the firm is full of risks. There is no proper cash flow coming into the firm so the person who has invested in the firm has greater risk of losing their money. So this also a very important determinant of dividend policy making. Managers hesitate to reduce the dividend because they want to play safe to not to repeat this move again. As dividend increases signal a reduction in risk because this shows that the managers are confident enough about the stability of future earnings. This also includes the agency theory which tells that dividends can be used as a means to control firms management. Distributing dividends reduces the free cash flow problem and increase the managements equity stake. Another agency problem that affects the dividend policy is between shareholders and debt holders. The risk that shareholders will expropriate debt holders by paying themselves excessive dividends has led to the often encountered covenants restricting dividend policy in bond contracts. So this is another determinant of dividend policy which helps to cut down the dividend. Catering theory also plays an important role in determining the dividend policy. Baker and Wurgler proposed the decision to pay dividends is driven by prevailing investor demand for dividend payers. Some investors have an uninformed and perhaps time varying demand for dividend paying stocks. Arbitrage fails to prevent this demand from driving apart the prices of payers and non payers. Managers rationally cater to investor demand, they pay dividends when investors put higher prices on payers and do not pay when investor prefer nonpayer. The propensity to pay dividends depends on a dividend premium in stock prices. This is will be tested using the time varying variables or proxies for dividend premium. Testing catering theory using Pakistani data is an objective of this research. This kind of study has not been done in Pakistan before, the determinant of dividends of corporate companies establish their policies according to these. The catering theory plays an important role in this. I will test the BW(2004) model of catering theory on Pakistani companies related to oil and gas, beverages, pharmaceuticals, fertilizer, financial, textile and FMGC etc sectors. All the companies register on Karachi Stock Exchange who pays dividend for that specific year is taken as the sample. The catering theory of dividends suggests that real financial markets are imperfect and inefficient, and corporations decide their dividend initiation and continuation decisions by catering to investors demands for dividends. LITERATURE REVIEW A test of the catering theory of dividends of Japanese electric appliances industry was done by Chikashi Tsuji (2010) all the sample they took was Japanese firms, they studied the affect of catering theory on the valuation of stock price. They replicate the methodology used by Baker and Wurgler to test whether the results holds true in Japan as they indicated. They concluded that corporate managers do not consider catering behaviour in either their dividend initiation decision or their continuation decision. These results were different from existing evidence for U.S market. They took dividend initiation as value weighted dividend yield where as Baker and Wurgler used equally weighted. So they conclude that value weighted dividend yield declines, when Japanese firms tend to initiate dividend payments. Catering theory of nominal share prices by Malcom Baker, Robin Greenwood and Jeffrey Wurgler (2009) suggests that typically the supply of different stocks cater to different incentives of investors. Manager increase the low priced securities supply that investors are willing to pay premium for it. So this existing literature is dealing with stock splits which eventually decrease the value f the stock price but this increased the supply which leads to high valuation for the firms rather than high priced and large firms. Many board of director chooses to split their shares to manage the nominal value and increase the number of outstanding shares but this doesnt help them to change the overall market value of the firm. This only done to cater the needs of investors and initiate their paying power of premium for even through that their fundamental values dont increase. Manager increase the supply of low priced shares for which the investors are paying premium for them. So the splits increases and help them to increase the valuation of the firm as the low priced firm are more attractive to investors then high priced firms. Catering theory also affects the post split prices for the large capitalization firms rather than small firms, according to the author that is also telling the reason that why firms initiate to go for the share splits. Price management appears to over valuate the low priced firms so the more often firms go for splitting shares they often end up with low returns. According to Jain, Shekhar and Torbey (2009) study, they evaluated the economics of the choice of form of payout initiation mechanism adopted by IPO firms. Their results suggest that IPO firms demonstrate preference for repurchases over dividends as the specific form of payout initiation mechanism. They compared the results of pre IPO and post IPO announcements, and found out that the market views post IPO payout initiation favourably then pre IPO. But the market was in different to the specific form of payout initiations adopted. The model they introduced in this study was the test the dividends and repurchases represent distinct payout mechanism adopted by IPO firms with fundamentally different characteristics and motivation to initiate payouts during post IPO phase. The conclusion they drawn was that the dividend initiation are primarily driven by life cycle and catering theory considerations. So the signalling theory provides accurate explanation for the payout initiations through share repurchases. The study for the international presence of dividend catering across a sample of twenty three countries was done by Ferris, Jayaraman and Sabherwal (2009) these firms incorporated in common law not the civil law nations. They conclude that when legal regime and its accompanying set of investor protections permit, investors force dividends from managers but they also attempt to extract such payouts indirectly by placing a high value on dividend paying firms. The variables they took were size, premium, operating income and book to market. This will give a the determinants of dividend will leads to the increase in stock price. In 2008, Polk and Sapienza came up with the corporate investment decisions which will eventually leads to discover the impact on stock market. Catering theory plays a major role in this, as mispricing might influence individuals firms decisions. For this purpose they used discretionary accruals as the proxy for mispricing. They conclude that there was a positive relationship between abnormal investment and discretionary accruals. The firms who have high RD or share turnover are more sensitive to discretionary accruals. And whereas the firms with high abnormal investment have low stock returns. In the theoretical model tested by Aghion and Stein (2008) explained the revenue catering theory. They proposed that investors have time varying demand for revenue growth and manager will cater to this demand by offering higher revenue on which investors are putting premium on the revenue. They took the sample from high tech and health sectors. Firms in these sectors are more likely to meet analyst forecasts of revenue when previous years revenue premium is high. Catering theory of dividends also involve a big cost, these cost involves cost of premium tax , cost of risk and opportunity cost, all these costs were studied by Cohen and Yagil (2008). The main issue addressed by their model was the negative relationship between the expected dividend per share and the ratio of information about the cost of the dividend held by category investors and arbitrageurs. The cost of dividend has been shown in to three types: premium tax, risk and investments. So in this article the author conclude that there is a linkage between investment, financing and dividend polices decisions, and this is mainly affected by the catering theory which was proposed by Baker and Wurgler. The risk premium consists of two components, first is the increase in financial leverage resulting from dividend payment and the second is the semi contractual obligation of dividend paying firm to maintain the dividend payment. So the model predicts that there is negative relationship between these three premiums and expected dividend per share. This also predicts that if the firm is operating in financially risky environment prior to dividend payment, then it will be negatively related to financial leverage. Researchers came up with this conclusion that the dividend sum depends on its short term and long term impact on the stock price and also depends on the financial leverage and investment opportunities. A study on dividend policy and the behaviour of investors, Sabur Mollah and Asma Mobarek (2007) came up with the satisfactory explanation of the firms who is catering investors sentiments on this. They suggested that mostly dividend decision is governed by those managers who have somewhat their personal interest involved in. The findings also suggests that the investors are willing to invest in those firms who has enough cash flow to pay out the dividends, as cash flow is a better measure of the companys capacity to pay out dividends and profitability. Dividend policy, risk and catering have a positive relationship; this was found out by Hoberg and Prabhala (2006). They reported that risk is significant determinant of propensity to pay dividends and explains up to 40% of the disappearing dividends puzzle. The second thing they found out was that the catering in insignificant once there is an account for risk. Share holder rights also play an important role in dividend policy. This was studied by Jiraporn and Ning (2006) agency costs as a determinant of dividend policy. They determined that how dividends are related to the strength of share holder rights so they found out that firms which plays higher dividends their share holder rights are more suppressed. So they studied the impact of share holder rights on dividend policy of a firm. As a result, dividend acts as a substitute for share holder rights. So the evidence is there that the regulations influence the relationship between dividends and the share holders rights. Another aspect of catering theory by Richard and Zhang (2005) is given by comparing the share repurchase with giving out dividends and what is the impact of mangers and investors in this. They discussed that market immediately react to the dividend announcements rather than repurchase, but mangers decision is based on his time horizon and his own incentives attached to it. Investor does positively react to dividend news but mostly managers discourage this due to the signalling hypothesis. They consider that it will incorporate the firms news immediately into the market. So when making decision of dividends the firm caters to investor demands. So according to these researchers they cater to investor demands by paying dividends and repurchasing shares. Also they found that firm free cash flow is reinvested in new NPV projects impact on the investors and the valuation or their share prices. So they concluded that catering through dividend and repurchases is inefficient though it has strong reaction from the market but the managers are more willing to invest in positive NPV projects. Determinant of dividend policy have a great impact on stock price of the firm. This eventually affects the value of the firm. Mostly investors invest in those firms who have a regular pattern of giving dividends. Bogdan Stacescu (2004) examined dividend policy for a sample of Swiss companies. They came up with determinants which affect the dividend policy, such as profitability, growth opportunities and riskiness. Past and present income growth is more relevant then the future growth of dividend changes. Price volatility seems the most significant factor in these changes. They also determined the relationship between losses and the decrease in dividends, when the firms dont give dividends they occur losses as in investors are reluctant to invest in those firms whose cash flow is not certain. So managers hesitate to cut out the dividends as it gives negative informational signal to the Swiss market and to dividend changes. According to Malcom Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler (2004) came up with the explanation of dividend payment. They proposed that dividend payment is done on the basis of investors demand. Mostly managers cater to investors by giving them incentives such as dividend premium. By putting a premium non payer is initiated when the demand is high, there is expectation of future earnings, whereas when there is no premium that implies that more investment is done and is discouraging for the investors as psychological point of view. They constructed four stock price based measure for the investor demand, the broadest one was about to check average between market-to-book ratio, second one was checking the difference between the cash dividend and stock dividend share classes, third one was related to dividend initiations this will affect the stock price of company, and lastly future stock returns of payer and non payers. Some investors have time varying demands for dividend payments and if its not fulfilled then essentially it effects the value of the stock prices. So dividend initiations and omissions is connected with the value of share prices. According to this article, when managers pay a dividend premium only then investors are ready to invest and for that reason they studied what sentiments of investors are attached with this time varying dividends premium and what is the most they are interested in. So they came up with the explanation that when dividend premium is high, investors are seeking firms that depicts safety, security in the long run and excess of cash, whereas firm with no dividends means increase in capital and future earnings expectations. So sentiments have a strong correlation between dividend premiums and investors expectations. The relationship between initiations and omissions of dividend premium is apparent to clientele demands. So by concluding these author came up with the result that managers only cater those investor by paying dividends when the investors is willing to put a stock price premium on payers not by when they actually doesnt want it. This is due to the initiation of the high and low demand of dividends. Baker and Wurgler (2003) came up with the appearing and disappearing dividends and they linked this with catering incentives. They used the methodology of Fama and French (2001) to identify a total of four distinct trend in the propensity to pay dividend between the period 1963 and 2000. The propensity to pay dividends increases when a proxy for the stock market dividend premium is positive and decreases when it is negative. They conclude that dividend tends to disappear during pronounced booms in growth stocks and reappears after crashes in such stocks. 3. METHODOLOGY The methodology used for testing different determinants of dividend which has an impact on the profitability, growth and riskiness on Pakistani firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange for the year 2010. The test will also be constructed to find the relationship between share price reactions to the announcement of divined changes. Another methodology will be used to check the catering theory of dividend and its impact on the investors demand for the certain premium stock on payers. This will follow Baker and Wurgler model (2004), so the existing theory of BW (2004) is used to check whether catering theory exists in Pakistani companies or not. No one has ever done this kind of research in Pakistan before, so this will help in understanding the behaviour of investors towards the premium stocks and will also help us to identify which determinants have more predictive power to explain the changes in dividend policies. So there is theoretical contribution in this research as the theory deve loped is unique, the sample which is to tested is also recent observations so it will give the clear view about todays market. 3.1 Economic model: For testing the major determinants of dividend policy in Pakistan which affects investors perception about the firms value and the affect of the catering theory on this will be done by using the economic model Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). As the data is cross sectional so it will be useful to test through OLS model. The coefficient will be also of OLS. 3.2 Variables: The variables used to test the factors that influence the payout ratio and the dividend yield were ROA, Capital gearing ratios, Price volatility, TA, voting rights and market-to-book ratios. All these values can be taken from the annual report. A firm-year observation is called as a payer if it has positive dividend per share by the ex date, else it is a non payer. The variables taken are : PayersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ = New PayersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ + Old PayersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ + List PayersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ Old PayersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ = PayersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼-1 New Non payersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ Delist PayersÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ The first identity defines the number of payers and second describes the evolution. Payers is the total number of payers. New payers is the number of initiators among last years non payers, Old payers is the number of payers that also paid last year, List Payers is the number of payers this year that were not in the sample last year, New payers is the number of omitters among last years payers and Delist Payers is the number of last years payers not in the sample this year. Note that Lists and Delists refer to companies added to and removed from the Karachi Stock Exchange first section. But this will include the data for the previous years too, so this will be difficult eventually to find list payers as the data we will cross sectional. Note that the new lists include the IPOs firms. Below are the three variables defined to capture dividend payment dynamics as in BW (2004) : InitiateÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ = ContinueÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ = List PayÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ = In words, the rate of initiation (Initiate) is the fraction of surviving non payers that become new payers. The rate at which firms continue paying is the fraction of surviving payers that continue paying. It can also be taken as one minus the rate at which firms omit dividend. The rate at which new lists in the sample pay List pay is the payers as percentage of new list at time t. These variables capture the decision whether to pay dividends, not how much to pay. The investors categorize shares based on whether they pay dividends as it could be taken as safety. Another reason for this is the payout ratio is sensitive to profitability and dividend yield is sensitive to changes in share prices. The decision to initiate or omit is always a policy decision. 3.3 Hypothesis: The hypothesis to be tested states that there is no difference in the dividend premium determinants which can cause the dividend policies to change. And the second hypothesis states that there is no impact of catering theory of dividends that exists in Pakistan. To test the propensity to pay dividends depends on dividend premium in stock prices, use time variation in three proxies. The first is the stock market dividend premium variable, which is the difference between log average market-to-book ratio of dividend payers and non payers. The market-to-book ratio is book assets minus book equity plus market equity, all divided by book assets. This could be taken as equal and value weighted averages of market-to-book ratios separately for payers and non payers in each year. The second measure of the relative stock market valuation of dividend payers is the difference between the future value-weighted returns of payers and non payers. According to BW (2004) model, managers rationally initiate dividends to exploits an apparent market mispricing. The high rate of initiations should forecast low returns on payers relative to non payers as the relative overpricing of payers reverses. Market valuation of dividend premium and the future returns is the difference between future returns on value weighted index returns of payers and non payers. The third measure is the difference in the prices of Citizen Utilities (CU) cash dividend and stock dividend share classes. This can be calculated as the difference in the log price of the cash payout share and the log price of the stock payout share. CU dividend premium doesnt reflect anything about investment opportunities. This an advantage over the broader dividend premium variable. And if we talk about the disadvantage of CU dividend premium it is only one, which is stock payout share is more liquid than cash payout class. 3.4 Regression: To examine this relation between dividend premium and the rate of dividend initiation (continuation) formally, the estimates are as follows: InitiateÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ = a + + + ContinueÃÆ' ¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ µÃƒâ€šÃ‚ ¼ = a + + + whereas the dividend premium and Citizen Utilities dividend premium is denoted by this . DATA Sample criterion This proposal includes the data of Pakistani companies which are listed on Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). The companies which had paid the dividends in 2009-2010 year are included in the sample. The main data will be collected by the annual reports. Every company has reported dividend paid to the shareholders in their annual reports so this is easy to gather information through this. Foreign companies and the financial companies listed on KSE are also included as the sample criterion. Pakistani firms pays dividend once a year unlike the American companies who pays quarterly. So the Ex dividend days are usually in June and July. So the analysis of this research is based on yearly observations. The sample collected includes all the firms in the fertilizer industry, transportation industry, textile industry, financial institutions, FMGC, oil and gas industry and pharmaceutical sector which are listed on KSE and pays dividend for the year 2010. The following data which is being collected through KSE from the annual reports are : Total assets, stock Price and share outstanding at the end of fiscal year, income before extra ordinary items, interest expense, cash dividend per share ex date. The firms with book equity below Rs. 250,000 or assets below Rs. 500,000 are excluded. To calculate the impact of firm characteristics and dividend yield and the payout ratio we need the data of market -to-book ratio, return on equity, return on assets, sales, capital gearing ratio and the previous dividend yield and the payout ratio is also needed. This will tell what factor causes the change in dividend policy and which has more significance on these that will affect the value of the firm. Approximately all the firms who have given the dividend in the year 2009-2010 are included in the sample. Econometric Limitations There are some limitations and assumptions related to our research. Only those firms are included in the sample who has paid dividend in year 2009-2010 The population is assumed to be normal. All samples are Pakistani companies which are listed on only Karachi Stock Exchange. The sample is taken for the one year so the delist companies is not included The sample is random and is a true representative of the population. The firm which has assets below Rs. 500,000 is not included in the sample. The sum of the OLS residual is zero, while the sample average is also zero. The sample covariance between the independent variable and the error term is zero. Other variables were not included due to the non-availability of data. CONTRIBUTION The contribution of this research has realistic impact on the corporate dividend policies of Pakistan. This research will eventually help to determine the main determinants of dividend policy and the impact of that on stock prices. Catering theory of dividends is also another important determinant which influences the policies made for the dividends. This will tell how managers cater to their investors interest and how can they charge a premium for their stock prices. This has not been tested in Pakistani firms data yet, so this is also another contribution that this theory is been tested. The time period is also latest so that will also give a recent view about the todays market and todays investors interests. All the firms that are listed in KSE index and who gives dividend for the specific year are included, and the reasoning of those firms which are not giving dividend that year will also be tested. There will be the comparison between the different corporate sectors of Pakistan who pays dividend and due to this, what is the impact on their share price will also be tested. For example fertilizer sector vs. car industry, how managers cater their investors interest in both. And how can this influences the decision of dividend policies that to be made of that specific industry. Although there is no such research has been conducted in Pakistan, all the research related to dividend policy is done in India and other developing country unlike Pakistan. So this will give new horizon in this field of corporate finance. The basic model presented by Baker and Wurgler (2004) of catering theory of dividends will be tested on Pakistani companies (which are listed on KSE). Baker and Wurgler proposed the decision to pay dividends is driven by prevailing investor demand for dividend payers. Some investors have an uninformed and perhaps time varying demand for dividend paying stocks. . Managers rationally cater to investor demand, they pay dividends when investors put higher prices on payers and do not pay when investor prefer nonpayer. This will be tested that the propensity to pay dividends of corporate sector of Pakistan depends on a dividend premium in stock prices.