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What is a Language?
Language = A system that uses some physical sign
(sound, gesture, mark) to express meaning.
We are Uniquely Language-Users
Other Animals Communicate
Cats arch their back to scare the neighbor cat
Bees tell each other when they have found food
Chimpanzees can be taught to use primitive sign
language to communicate desires.
We are Uniquely Language-Users
We Use Language
We can separate our vocalization from a given
situation (cats only arch their back in the
appropriate situation).
We can lie (animals only report)
4 Parts to Language/Grammar
Grammar
Phonology – Rules concerning sound system
Morphology – Rules governing word structure.
Syntax – Rules governing the structure of sentences
Semantics – Rules concerning meaning.
Phonological Rules
Language consists of a fairly small set of sounds
(phonemes).
There are about 40 in English.
Most have no meaning in themselves; rather we
string them together to form meaningful bits and
pieces.
Example:
Rules - E.g., an English word can end, but not begin, with
an -ng sound
Morphology
The study of the form of words:
how groups of words share related meanings through
regular patterning: what links "like", "likes", "liked",
"likeness", "likely", "likelihood"?
Language is made up of morphemes. Many are words
Example:
“Papers” has 2 morphemes (paper & s)
Do sentences grow on trees?
Yes
sentences grow on trees
sentences grow trees on
trees on grow sentences
The string of words „Sentences grow on trees‟ is
recognisable as a well-formed sentence of English.
By contrast „sentences grow trees on‟ or „trees on grow
sentences‟ are simply ungrammatical.
One way to show that sentences have structure is
to identify which words go together to form units.
„on trees‟ is a unit (Where do sentences grow?)
„grow on trees‟ (What do sentences do?)
„sentences‟ (what grow on trees?).
However, the strings „sentences grow‟ or „grow on‟
do not relate to sensible questions and are not
units in this sentence.
Syntax
The relations of words in sentences is from a branch of Linguistics called ‘Syntax’
S
NPN
V VP
PPP
Sentence
Noun PhraseNoun
Verb
Preposition Preposition Phrase
Verb Phrase
Key
Semantic
Arbitrariness of the Sign - Sounds of words bear no
relationship to meaning (except for onomatopoeia).
the use of words that sound like the thing that
they are describing, for example click' or 'boom'
-بيصوصو –بيهوهو
In Philosophy we often distinguish between
denotation and connotation.
Can you answer this question?
Q. Can colourless green ideas sleep
furiously?
A. Yes and no!
Why yes?
because this sentence is grammatically correct –
that is the nouns, verbs, adjectives are in the right
place for an English sentence.
Q. Can colourless green ideas sleep furiously?
A. Yes and no
Why no?
No…because you can’t make sense of it in the ‘real
world’. This demonstrates that it is not grammar alone
that makes a sentence sensible, but the context in
which it is created. In the ‘real world’ a colour can’t be
colourless and an idea can’t be green.
The world of the imagination is another matter, however!
Can you answer this question?
Can you answer this question?
Q. Who taught you to speak?
A. You did
Why?
You might think that it is your parents who taught
you how to speak, but you have really taught
yourself. Certainly your parents offer you the ‘model’
of the language or languages you are going to learn
but you came into the world equipped with a kind of
ready-made language processor that helped you to
sort out how the language you were hearing actually
worked.
Working out the rules
Have you ever heard a child say ‘I dided it’ or‘I bringed it’?
What do you think is going on here?
They won’t have heard their parents saying these words, so where did they come from?
Language Acquisition
This is the branch of Linguistics that studies the
ways in which children learn language.
When Linguistics looks at how we learn a
second or foreign language this is called Second
Language Acquisition.
Language?
Linguistics- Internal Knowledge of Language.
Knowledge of sound system
Knowledge of words
Knowledge of sentence
Definitions
Applied linguistics: practical applications of language studies
communicative functions of language: lexicography, terminology, general or technical translation
language teaching
first and second language acquisition and bilingualism.
Psycholinguistics
The study of the mental processes by which sentences are constructed and decoded by human beings.
Sociolinguistics
The study of how language variation is related to its use in society to form groups of geographical region, economic class or ethnicity.
Computational linguistics
The study of how computers can be used to analyze and generate sentences