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Ling 100 Final Exam study guide
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LING 100 FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDEINTRODUCTION Chapter 1 TEXT
● Definition(s) of language and communication
Language:
LANGUAGE is at the heart of all things human. We use it when we’re talking, listening, read- ing,
writing—and thinking. It underpins social relationships and communities; it forges the emotional bond
between parent and child; it’s the vehicle for literature and poetry. Language is not just a part of us;
language defines us. All normal human beings have at least one lan- guage, and it is difficult to imagine
much significant social, intellectual, or artistic activity taking place without the opportunities for
communication offered by language.
What, precisely, is language? What does it mean to know a language? To answer these ques- tions, it is
first necessary to understand the resources that a language makes available to its native speakers, those
who have acquired it as children in a natural setting (say, a home rather than a classroom).
The breadth and diversity of human thought and experience place great demands on language. Because
there are always new things to say, new experiences to report, and new challenges to confront, language
has to be creative, giving us the freedom to produce and understand new words and sentences as the need
arises.
The creativity of language goes hand in hand with a second defining characteristic—the presence of
systematic constraints that establish the boundaries within which innovation can occur. We can be
innovative in our use of language, but there are rules to the game—and those rules are an integral part of
our knowledge of language. As a preliminary illustration of this, con- sider the process that we use to
create verbs from nouns in English, as shown in table 1.2. (For now, you can think of verbs as words that
name actions and nouns as words that name things.)
As we have just seen, speakers of a language are able to produce and understand an unlimited number of
utterances, including many that are novel and unfamiliar. At the same time, they are able to recognize that
certain utterances are not acceptable and do not belong in their language. Knowledge of this type, which
is often called linguistic competence, constitutes the central subject matter of linguistics and of this book.
1.Language as the most human quality (this really distinguishes us as humans)
2.Language as a (social) tool
3.Language has structure
•All human societies have complex language, even societies living in remote parts of the world (All
human societies have complex languages, language is universal).
•Many languages of societies without writing and modern technology are much more complex than ours
,•More accurately, it is hard to say languages are more or less complex overall
•Some may be more complex in one aspect, but less complex in another
Communication:
● While communication refers to the interchange of message or information from one person to
another, either verbally or non-verbally. On the other hand, language is a human communication
method or the system through which two people interact. It is used in a particular region or
community, for imparting a message, to each other, with the use of words.
The points given below presents the differences between language and communication in detail:
1. The system of communication which relies on the verbal or non-verbal codes, used in transferring
information, is called Language. The way of interchanging message or information between two
or more people is called communication.
2. A language is a tool of communication, while communication is the process of transferring
message to one another.
3. Language focuses on the signs, symbols and words. Communication lays emphasis on the
message.
4. Before the invention of written words, language was confined to the auditory channels. However,
it can occur in visual, tactile and other sensory channels too. On the other hand, communication
occurs in all the sensory channels.
5. The basics of communication do not change at all. Conversely, daily new words are added to the
dictionary of the language, so it changes every day.
● Language structure
•Phonetics
•Physical nature of speech sounds
•Articulation, acoustic properties, perceptual characteristics
•Phonology
•Characteristics of the sounds in a language’s sound system
•Morphology
•How words are formed
•Syntax
•Sentence formation and rules of grammar
•Semantics
•Interpretation of words, phrases and sentences
•Discourse/pragmatics
, •Language in context
Making sentences out of words
•Sentences are formed by putting words together
•But not all combination of words make a sentence that is acceptable to speakers of the language
•Language has structure
•Almost all sentences that a person utters are new to them
Summary, Language Properties:
•Generality
•All languages have a grammar
•Parity
•All languages are equal (equally complex)
•Universality
•Languages all follow similar principles
•Mutability
•Language changes over time
•Inaccessibility
•Native speakers do not have direct access to their linguistic knowledge
● Language origin
With no fossils of speech, the origin of language remains “a mystery with all the fingerprints wiped off,”
says brain scientist Terrence Deacon of the Uni- versity of California, Berkeley.
As for actually producing the sounds of words, or phonemes, skeletal studies re- veal that by about
300,000 years ago, our ancestors had become more or less “modern” anatomically, and they possessed a
larynx located at the top of the trachea, lower than in other primates (see diagram). This posi- tion
increases the range of sounds humans can make, although it also makes it easier for food going down the
esophagus to be misdirected into the windpipe, leaving us more vulnerable than other mammals to
choking. Such anatomy could have de- veloped for no other purpose than speech, says Deacon.
The origin of language (sound and written), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences,
have been a centuries-long subject of study for the human race. The topic is difficult to study because of
the lack of direct evidence. Consequently, scholars wishing to study the origins of language must draw
inferences from other kinds of evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary
, language diversity, studies of language acquisition and comparisons between human languageand systems
of communication existing among animals(particularly other primates). Many argue that the origins of
language probably relate closely to the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement
about the implications and directionality of this connection.
Language evolved out of a capacity for symbolic thinking
- The hypothesis is that symbolic communication originated in evolutionary pressure to maintain a
large social group through hunting
•It seems that early societies had a division of labour: the males went out to hunt, and the females stayed
behind to look after the young
•A male will typically prefer to provide for his own offspring. This guarantees that his gene pool will
survive.
•Then, the group establishes permanent or semi-permanent couples, or ‘families’, where the male hunts
and provides food for the female and his offspring.
•The male needs a guarantee that the female is going to bear and feed his offspring, and nobody else’s. He
wants a guarantee that she will not cheat (and vice versa).
•The couple can make a promise, a contract, that they will enter this agreement. But other members of the
group also need to know about this agreement, so that they will stay away from the couple and not try to
mate with either of them. They need a social contract.
•The only way of explaining this contract, making sure it holds not just in the present, but also in the
future, is to express it in a form of symbolic communication.
● Language as unique to humans
•Language makes possible all the characteristics that make us different
•Social organization, tool making, technological advances, establishment and enforcement of social and
moral laws, art, …
•If we follow evolutionary theory, then language must have evolved at some point, making us different
from other primates
•But, there is an enormous gap between our closer relatives, our chimpanzees, and us
● At some point in the tree, there must have been language development.
Possible explanations:
•Two basic explanations for language evolution
•Language evolved from an existing communication system
•Language arose as a different system from any other pre-existing communication system
Evidence for first Hypothesis:
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