What is Language?
When we study human language, we are
approaching what some might call the “human
essence” the distinctive qualities of mind that
are, so far as we know, unique to man. (Noam
Chomsky, Language and Mind)
What is language? (cont.)
Language distinguishes human from
animals. E.g. to some people of Africa, a
newborn child is a kintu, a “thing,” not yet
a muntu, a “person”.
 What does it mean to know a language?
--speak and be understood in the
language;
---this ability requires profound
knowledge
that speakers are not aware of.

Language (cont.)
E.g; Five year olds can function quite
proficiently.
 E.g. I went to school yesterday (past
tense)
 E.g. My son Ahmad Shafiq who was
born in England and who now lives in
San Francisco is an active rock climber.
(two relative clauses)

Knowledge of the sound system
Knowing sounds and (signs) in the
language
 Substituting your own native sounds to
the foreign language, e.g zis and zat
(French)
 Not only the inventory of sounds but the
sequence of sounds in the words, e.g
ngantuk,nyamuk (Malay); eschool, estop
(Spanish), Nekrumah or Enkrumah
(Ghanian)

Knowledge of words
Know the sound units that are related to
specific meanings.
 If you do not know the language, the
relationship between the speech sounds
and the meanings are arbitrary.
 E.g. house (E), jia (C), rumah (M), casa
(S), bait (A), maison (F),dom (R).

Knowledge of words (cont.)
Arbitrary relationship between form
(sounds) and meaning (concept) is also
true in sign language. E.g. CSL and ASL.
 Onomatopoeic words such as buzz and
murmur imitate the sounds associated
with the objects or actions they refer to.
turkey sound in Turkey (glu-glu)

The creativity of Linguistic
Knowledge
Knowledge of a language enables you to
combine words to form phrases, and
phrases to form sentences.
 Noam Chomsky refers to it as creative
aspect of language use.
 All human languages permit their
speakers to form indefinitely long
sentences; creativity is a universal
property of human language

Knowledge of Sentences and
Nonsentences
An inventory of vocabulary is finite, the
rules are finite, but the creation of
sentences using these vocabulary and
rules are infinite.
 Give examples from class.


Knowing the words and the rules for
forming sentences
What is language?

So when one knows a language, one
knows all of the sounds, words and the
rules of the combination.
Linguistic Knowledge and
Performance
There’s a big difference between having
the knowledge necessary to produce
sentences of a language, and applying
this knowledge
 Knowledge is linguistic competence
 Use of this knowledge in actual speech
production and comprehension is
linguistic performance.

Linguistic knowledge and
performance
Linguistic knowledge is not conscious
knowledge.
 The linguistic system-the sounds,
structures, meanings, words, and rules
for putting them all together– is learned
subconsciously with no awareness that
rules are being learned.

What is Grammar?
The grammar of a language consists of:
-- sounds and sound patterns
--- basic units of meaning such as words
--- rules to combine all of these to form
sentences with the desired meaning.
To understand the nature of language is to
understand the internalized, unconscious
set of rules that is part of every grammar
of every language

Descriptive Grammars
Linguists describe a language by
describing the grammar that exists in the
minds of its speakers.
 Shared knowledge—common parts of
the grammar—makes it possible to
communicate through language.
 It does not tell you how you should
speak;
it describes your basic linguistic
knowledge.

Prescriptive Grammars

Linguists in the past such as the Greek
Alexandrians in the first century or the
Arabic scholars at Basra in the 8th
century and English grammarians of the
18th and 19th centuries held the view of
language change is corruption and there
are a certain “correct” forms that all
educated people should use in writing
and speaking.
Language Universals
Phonology– the sound system
 Morphology– the word formation
 Syntax—the rules of sentence formation
 Semantics—the system of meanings
 Pragmatics– the rules of the appropriate
use of the language.
 Those laws representing the universal
properties of all languages constitute
universal grammar.

The development of grammar
Linguistic theory—describing adult
speaker’s knowledge of language but
also how normal children acquire the
language.
 Noam Chomsky proposes that human
beings are born with an innate “blueprint”
for language also referred as UG—
biological endowment.

Sign Languages: Evidence for
Language Universals
Deaf communities—proof that humans
are born with the ability to acquire
language.
 Sign language is human language
without the sounds.
 It is a visual-gestural system that uses
hand, body, and facial gestures as the
forms to represent words.

Animal “Languages”





“No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he
cannot tell you that his parents were poor but
honest.” (Bertrand Russell)
“Talking” parrots
The Birds and the Bees (Spider’s courtship
contain invariant gestures)
Birdcalls and bird songs (European robin, rival
robins paid attention to high and low pitched
notes)
Animals’ use of language to communicate is
limited and invariant.
Animal languages

Italian honey bee dancing behavior is
set to show distance;
--round (indicate locations near the hive)
-- sickle (20-60 feet from the hive)
---tail-wagging ( distance more than 60
feet)
What we know about language

1.
2.
Spoken language date back at least
1600 B.C.E in Mesopotamia.
Language exists where there are
humans.
There are no “primitive” languages. All
languages are equally complex and
capable to do their functions.
What we know about language

3. All languages change through time.
 4. the relationships between the sounds and
meanings of spoken languages and between
gestures and meanings of sign languages are
for the most part arbitrary.
 All human languages use a finite set of
discrete sounds or gestures that are combined
to form meaningful elements or words, which
themselves are combined to form infinite set of
possible sentences.
What we know about language
6. All grammars contain rules of a similar
kind for the formation of words and
sentences.
 7. All languages contain discrete sound
segments--vowels and consonants.
 8. All languages have similar
grammatical categories.
 9. Universal semantic properties such as
“male” or “female” or “animate” or
“human”

What we know about languages
11. Infinite set of sentences
 12. Any normal child anywhere in the
world can acquire language that is
exposed to them.
