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What is Language? Everybody knows the answer to this guest ion but nobody has so far been able to come out with any standard definition that fully explains the term language. The term language can be understood better in terms of its properties or characteristics. Some linguists have been trying to define language in their own ways even though all these definitions far from satisfactory. Here are some these definitions: 1Language is a symbol system based on pure or arbitrary conventions.( Robens1985) 2. Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system on voluntarily produced symbols.(Sapir1921). 3. Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.
Characteristics of language 1.Language is a means of communication. 2. Language is arbitrary. 3. Language is a system of systems. 4.Language is primarily vocal. 5. Language differs from animal communication in several ways. 6. Language is a form of social behavior. 7.Language is symbol system.
An Introduction Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The word was first used in the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the difference between a newer approach to the study of language that was then developing and the more traditional approach of philology. The philologist is concerned primarily with historical development of language as it is manifest in written texts and in the context of the associated literate and culture. The linguist though may be interested in written texts and in the development of languages through time, tends to give priority to spoken languages and to the problems of analyzing them as they operate at a given point in time, without relevance to their history. “Linguistics is the scientific study of language”. The word language here des not refer to any particular language but can be any language in general.
Chapter OneThe origins of Language We don’t usually think of speaking as similar to chewing, licking and sucking, but, like speaking, all of these actions involve movement of the mouth, tongue and lips in some kind controlled way. It is an example of the type of observation that can lead to interesting speculations about the origins of spoken language. We simply don’t know how language originated. We suspect that some types of spoken languages developed between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, well before written language about 5,000 years ago.
The divine source: In the biblical tradition, God created Adam “whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof”. Alternatively, a Hindu tradition, language came from Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe. In most religions, there appears to be divine source who provides humans with language. In an attempt to rediscover this original divine language, a few experiments have been carried out, but with rather conflicting results. The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if human infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language around them, they would spontaneously begin using the original God-given language.
The natural sound source: A quite different view of the beginning of language is based on the concept of natural sounds. The suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations of natural sounds which early men and women heard around them. When an object flew by, making a CAW-CAW sound, the early human tried to imitate the sound and use it to refer to the thing associated with the sound. And when another flying creature made a coo-coo sound, that natural sound was adopted to refer to that kind of object. All modern languages have some words with pronunciations that seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In English, in addition to cukoo, we have splash, bang, boom, rattle buzz, hiss, and forms such as bow-bow. This type of view has been called the “bow-bow” theory of language origin. While it is true that a number of words in any languages onomatopoeic (echoing natural sound).
One other natural sound proposal has known as the yo-he-ho theory. The idea is that the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that physical effort involved several people and had to be coordinated. Apes and other primates have grunts and social calls, but they do not seem to have developed the capacity for speech.
The physical adaptation source: Instead of looking at types of sounds as the source of human speech, we can look at the types of physical features humans possess, especially those that are distinct from other creatures, which may have been able to support speech production. In the study of evolutionary development, there are certain physical features, best thought of as partial adaptations, which appear to be relevant for speech.
What are the human physical features that enable them to use languages? Teeth, lips, mouth, larynx, and pharynx: Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes, and they are roughly even in height. Such characteristics are not very useful for ripping or tearing food and seem better adapted for grinding and chewing. They also very helpful in making sounds as f or v. Human lips are more flexibility certainly helps in making sounds like por b. The human mouth is relatively small compared to other primates, can be opened and closed rapidly, and contains a smaller, thicker and more muscular tongue which can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds inside the oral cavity. The human larynx “voice box” differs significantly in position from the larynx of other primates such as monkeys.
The human brain: In control of organizing all these more complex physical parts potentially available for sound production is the human brain, which is usually large relative to human body size. The human brain is lateralized, that is, it has specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those functions that control motor movements involved in things like speaking and object manipulation are largely confined to the left hemisphere of the brain for most humans.
Facts about Languages: 1.Every language is good enough for its people. 2.Every language has consonants and vowels. 3.Every language has rule in any shape. 4.Every language has linguistics and non linguistics elements. 5. Every language belongs to a certain family. 6. Every language is subject to development. 7. Every language is uttered through organs of speech. 8. Language only exists in a community. 9. Every individual is capable of acquiring or learning a language. 10. Every language is loaded with its cultural aspects one cannot strip one of the other.
Special properties of human language: 1.Communicative and informative signals. 2. Displacement. 3. Arbitrariness. 4. Cultural transmission. 5. Productivity. 6. Duality.
Chapter Two Animals and Human Language There are a lot of stories about creatures that can talk. We usually assume that they are fantasy or fiction or that they involve birds or animals simply imitating something they have heard humans say. We know that creatures are capable of communicating, certainly with other members of their own species. Is it possible that a creature could learn to communicate with humans using language? Or does human language have properties that make it so unique that it is quite unlike any other communication system and unlearn able by any other creature? To answer these questions, we will first consider some special properties of human language.
Communicative and informative signals: We should first distinguish between specifically communicative signals and those which may be unintentionally informative signals. Someone listening to you may become informed about you through a number of signals that you have not intentionally sent. He may note that you have a cold (you sneezed). However, when you use language to tell this person, I’d like to apply for the vacant position of senior brain surgeon at the hospital, you are normally considered to be intentionally communicating something. Similarly, the blackbird is not normally taken to be communicating anything by having black feathers, sitting on branch and looking down at the ground, but is considered to be sending a communicative signals with the loud squawking produced when a cat appears on scene.
Displacement: When your cat comes home and stands at your feet calling meow, you are likely to understand this message as relating to that immediate time and place. If you ask your cat where it has been and what it was up to, you will get the same meow response. Animal communication seems to be designed exclusively for this moment, here and now. It cannot be used to relate events that are far removed in time and place. When your dog says GRRR, it means GRRR, right now, because dogs don’t seem to be capable of communicating GRR, last night, over in the park. In contrast, human language users are normally capable of producing messages equivalent to GRRR, last night, over in the park, and then going on to say in fact, I’ll be going back tomorrow for some more. Humans can refer to past and future time. This property of human language is called displacement. It allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment.
It has been proposed that bee communication may have the property of displacement. For example, when a worker bee finds a source of nectar and returns to the beehive, it can perform a complex dance routine to communicate to the other bees the location of this nectar. Depending on the type of dance ( round dance for nearby and tail wagging dance, for further away and how far). Bee communication has displace in an extremely limited form.
Arbitrariness: It is generally the case that there is no ‘natural’ connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. The connection is quite arbitrary. The relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the world is described as arbitrariness. For the majority of animal signals, there does appear to be clear connection between the conveyed message and the signal used t convey it. This impression we have of the non-arbitrariness of animal signal may be closely connected to the fact that, for any animal, the set of signals used in communication is finite. That is, each variety of animal communication consists of a fixed and limited set of vocal or gestural forms. Many of these forms are only used in specific situation (e,g, establishing territory) and at particular times.
Cultural Transmission: While we may inherit physical features such as brown eyes and dark hair from our parents, but we don not inherit language. We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes. An infant born to Korean parents in Korea, but adopted and brought up from birth by English speakers in the United States, will have physical characteristics inherited from his or her natural parents, but will inevitably speak English. This process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next is described as cultural transmission. It is clear that humans are born with some kind of predisposition to acquire language in a general sense.
Chimpanzees and Language: The idea of raising a chimp and a child together may seem like a nightmare, but this is basically what was done in an early attempt to teach a chimpanzee to use human language. In the 1930s, two scientists (Luella and Winthrop) reported on their experience of raising an infant chimpanzee together with their baby son. The chimpanzee, called Gua, was reported t be able to understand about a hundred words, but did not say any of them. In the 1940, a chimpanzee named Vikiwas reared by another scientist couple (Catherine and Kieth) in their own home, exactly as if she was a human child. These parents spend five years attempting to get Viki to say English words by trying to shape her mouth as she produced sounds. Viki eventually managed to produce some words, rather poorly articulated versions of mama, papa and cup. This was a remarkable achievement since it has become clear that non-human primates do not actually have a physically structured vocal tract which is suitable for articulating the sounds used in speech.
Human Language is differs from animal communication in several ways: 1Humans convey and receive an infinite number of messages through space whereas animal communication system is extremely limited and undeveloped. 2. Language makes use of clearly distinguishable, discrete, separately identifiable symbols, while animal communication systems are often continuous and non-discrete. 3. Animal communication systems are closed systems and permit no change whereas language is modifiable, extendable and open-ended. 4. Human language is structurally more complex than animal communication system.
Chapter Three The development of writing: It is important, when we consider the development of writing, to keep in mind that large number of languages in the world today are used only in the spoken form. They do not have a written form. For those languages that have writing system, the development of writing, as we know it is relatively recent phenomenon. The earliest writing system for which we have clear evidence is the kind that GeofferyNunberg is referring to as “cuneiform” marked on clay tables about 5000 years ago. An ancient script that has obvious connection to writing systems that use today can de identified in inscriptions dated around 3,000 years ago.
Pictograms and ideograms: When some of the pictures came to represent particular images, we can describe the product as a form of picture-writing , or pictograms.In this way, a shape of the sun might come to be used for the sun. In time, this picture might develop into more fixed symbolic form, and come to be used for heat and day time as well as sun. The symbol extends from sun to heat, it is moving from something visible to something conceptual. This type of symbol is considered to be part of system of idea writing, or ideograms. The distinction between pictograms and ideograms is essentially a difference in the relationship between the symbol and entity it represents. The more ‘picture-like’ forms are pictograms and the more abstract derived forms are ideograms.
Logograms: It is a symbol represents a word. A good example of logographic writing is the system used by the “Sumerians” in the southern part of modern Irag around 5000 years a go. Because of the particular shapes used in their symbols, these inscriptions are more generally described as cuneiform writing. → The relationship between the written form and the object it represents has become arbitrary and we have a clear example of word-writing or logograms. → A modern writing system that is based, to a certain extent, on the use of logograms or characters are used as representations of the meaning of word. 1. Picture-writing = pictograms ҉ sun. 2. Idea-writing = ideograms ʘ heat, daytime. 3. Word-writing = Ϫ fish.
Rebus writing: One way of using existing symbols to represent the sounds of language is through a process known as rebus writing. “Symbol represents the sound”. e.g. The sound of English word “eye”. We can imagine how the pictograms ʘ could have developed into the logograms.
The Sounds of Language Phonetics: The general study of the characteristics of speech sounds is called phonetics. Our main interest will be in articulatory phonetics, which is the study of how speech sounds are made, or ‘articulated’. Other areas of study are acoustic phonetics, which deals with the physical properties of speech as sound waves in the air, and auditory phonetics (perceptual phonetics) which deals with the perception, via the ear, of speech sounds. Voiced and Voiceless sounds: In articulatory phonetics, we investigate how speech sounds are produced using the complex oral equipment we have. We start with the air pushed out by the lungs, up through the trachea(windpipe) to the larynx. Inside the larynx are your vocal cords take two positions: 1. When the vocal cords are spread, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded.
Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless. 2. When the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes through creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced. Place of articulation:It is a point or place where the sounds are made they are: 1. Bilabials, sounds like /p, b, w, m/ 2. Labiodentals. /f, v/ 3. Dentals. /Ɵ, ð/. 4. Alveolars. /t, d, s, z, n/ 5. palatals. /∫, Ʒ, ʧ, ʤ/ 6. Velars. /k, g, ŋ/ 7. Glottal. /h/
Manner of Articulation: It means the manner in which the air passes through the vocal tract. That is by showing the way or how sounds are produced, they are: 1. Stops or plosives. /p, b, t, d, k, g/ 2. Fricatives. /f, v, Ɵ, ð, s, z, ∫, Ʒ, h/ 3. Affricates. /ʧ, ʤ/ 4. Nasals. /n, m, ŋ/ 5. Laterals. /l/ 6. Semi vowels. /w, j, r /
Words and word formation process There are some basic processes by which new words are created: 1. Etymology: The study of the origin and history of a word is known as etymology. This word comes to use through Latin, but it has origin in Greek. A term which like many of our technical words. e.g. handbook, aviation. 2. Coinage: One the least common processes of word formation in English is coinage. It is invention of totally new terms. Mostly trade names for commercial products. e.g. aspirin, nylon, Vaseline, sandwich, jeans, Fahrenheit. 3. Borrowing: It is the taking over of words from other languages. English language has adopted a vast number of words from other languages for Dutch): croissant (French), dope (Dutch), lilac (Persian), piano (Italian), sofa (Arabic), tycoon (Japanese).
4. Compounding: It is joining of two separate words to produce a single form. e.g. bookcase, sunburn, textbook, wallpaper, wastebasket. These are nouns. Adjectives: e.g. good- looking, low- paid. 5. Blending: The combination of two forms to produce a single new word. It is typically taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word. e.g. gasohol = (gasoline and alcohol). Smog = (smoke and fog). Brunch = (breakfast and lunch) Telecast = (television and broadcast). 6. Clipping: It is reduction or shorter form e.g. ad = advertisement. flu = influenza. exam = examination. prof= professor.
References 1. The study of Language George Yule. Cambridge University 2. An Introduction to Linguistics. Pushpindal. New Delhi 3. An Introduction to Linguistics. Dr. Muhammad Ali
