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What is Language? - Coggle Diagram
What is Language?
Language and Thought
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
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There are no “primitive” languages. All languages are equally complex and capable to do their functions
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What Is Grammar?
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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.
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Teaching Grammars
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To understand the nature of language is to understand the internalized, unconscious set of rules that is part of every grammar of every language
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Linguistic Knowledge
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Knowledge of words
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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).
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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)
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”.
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