October 1, 2019 Language + communication – Lecture 4 Language - spoken symbol – system of symbols, exchanging meaning symbolically when we talk - transmitting info and sharing experiences Linguistics - modern scientific study of all aspects of language Phonetics - study of the production transmission and reception of speech sounds Adaptation – culture transmission - Language is one of the major tools that has allowed us to adapt - we can extend our memory back to many generations of knowledge to cultures back years ago such as written documents Symbol - a sound that has an assigned meaning that we agree upon – social agreement - eg. Dog, this is the word we chose to refer to this animal – there’s not natural relationship between the word and the thing it was just assigned - openness where they can be combined to have complex meanings – poetry/ music/ love songs, can combine clever words to explain a feeling Morphology Morpheme: smallest unit of sound that carry a meaning Grammar and Syntax frame and substitution - method used to identify syntactic units of language Syntax - rules or principles of phrase and sentence making Grammar - morphology and syntax Sounds arbitrary - no signifier / signified relation – we don’t know from a sound unless we’ve been taught its meaning, we don’t know what it means - eg. Bang simulates a loud noise Combine + recombine to alter meanings – eg. Music – always changing and different genres have their own codes to differ with one another but also have similarities Productivity – creative aspect – no end to possibilities – eg. Haven’t read every single book or listened to every single song in the world Displacement: displacing time, a human capacity, there is no past and there is no future, we live our lives between the past present and future because we talk about it that way, it’s not because it exists, all humans are in a flow of time, we are born we live then we die - capacity to pretend that the past still exists because we can access it through memories and photos – its tangible to us - we need the future to get up in the morning and keep going - we are a clock crazy culture where we have clocks all around us - time is the measurement of the rotation of the earth – time has a residence for us - abstraction – ideas – fiction - adoptive – pass on information – present + future generations learned + shared All human languages are equal - no superior or inferior - languages – all can adapt to new technology or circumstances phonology - discreet sounds: understanding the sound system of a language eg. Fly – if u slow it down there’s 3 distinct parts of the word which is called a phone – phone is the smallest discreet sounds that alter meanings - phoneme: the smallest sounds that can alter the meaning of a word eg. PIT , BIT , KIT - the first sound of the word is what alters the difference of the word NOT phonemes – BUTTER , BUDDER The Gesture-call system Kinesics - system of notating and analyzing postures, facial expressions, body motions Touch - involves physical contact that transmits messages verbally Proxemics - how people use physical space in interactions Paralanguage - cries, laughs, groans, etc - vocalizations - voice qualities – pitch, tempo, etc
