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“LANGUAGE IS THE CLEAREST EVIDENCE WE HAVE OF THE MIND THAT EXISTS WITHIN US.” Language: We Are What We Speak

Language: We Are What We Speak

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Language: We Are What We Speak. “Language is the clearest evidence we have of the mind that exists within us.”. Edward Sapir…. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Language: We Are What We Speak

“LANGUAGE IS THE CLEAREST EVIDENCE WE HAVE OF THE MIND THAT EXISTS

WITHIN US.”

Language: We Are What We Speak

Page 2: Language: We Are What We Speak

Edward Sapir…

“…the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The world in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein…

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

Page 3: Language: We Are What We Speak

Language is a completely symbolic system. There is no necessary connection between a sound (word) and the concept signified: different languages have different words (or sounds) for the same concepts. The !Kung San of South Africa and Botswana have 18 different varieties of clicks which have meaning in their language. It is almost impossible for a speaker of another language to hear the difference in the tone of the click sounds.

San language

Thinking is done with concepts or ideas. But ideas do not exist readymade before words – the words and the concepts coincide. Words unite “not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (Saussure, 1959). Not only does this challenge our commensense belief that words mean things, but also it should remind us that words are composed not of letters but of sounds.

Page 4: Language: We Are What We Speak

The Sound and Shape of Language

Phonology – study of sounds used in speech. In order to analyse any new language, an inventory of all its sounds and an accurate way of writing them down are needed. Phonological analysis would determine which sounds (phones) were present in the language being studied.

Morphology – the study of meaningful sound sequences and the rules by which they are formed (study of how sounds combine to form morphemes) The word ‘cat’ has two morphemes ‘cat’ and ‘s’Grammatical rules tell us which to use in what context we wish to use the word. “cats” not “scat”

Page 5: Language: We Are What We Speak

How is language structured? How do we put sounds together to form meaningful statements?

Phoneme - "the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances.“

Examples (English): Minimal pair

  Here are examples of the phonemes /r/ and /l/ occurring in a minimal pair:

  • rip• lip

 

The phones [r] and [l] contrast in identical environments and are considered to be separate phonemes. The

phonemes /r/ and /l/ serve to distinguish the word rip from the word lip.

Page 6: Language: We Are What We Speak

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.

Examples (English)

 

• Unladylike• The word unladylike consists of three morphemes

and four syllables.• Morpheme breaks:

• un- 'not'• lady '(well behaved) female adult human'

• -like 'having the characteristics of‘

• None of these morphemes can be broken up any more without losing all sense of meaning. Lady

cannot be broken up into "la" and "dy," even though "la" and "dy" are separate syllables.

Page 7: Language: We Are What We Speak

Deep structure - - - - - - - - -surface structure

Phonosyntactics…how language uses phonemes to produce minimal meaningful units of sound.

Morphosyntactics…uses phonemic minimal pairs and arranges them into meaningful parts of words.

Sentential syntactics…arranges parts of words and words into meaningful phrases and sentences.

Basic to this is understanding is the notion of language as structured (langue) and as spoken (parole).

Page 8: Language: We Are What We Speak

Phonetics, phonemics…terms used in anthropological linguistics. Phonetics is concerned with speech and phonemics is concerned with underlying speech or rules of speech.

Two anthropological terms are derived from these …emic and etic.

…Etic approach in anthropology is observer-oriented; the anthropologists interpretations.

…Emic approach is actor-oriented; the informants/speakers meanings.

Page 9: Language: We Are What We Speak

Transformational-generative grammar…

Noam Chomsky “Syntactic Structures” (1959) A language is more than surface phenomena (sounds,

words, and word order)

The human brain contains a genetically transmitted blueprint, a basic linguistic plan, for building language a universal grammar

There is an inborn human language, which consists of a set of grammatical rules –universal grammar- that do not have to be learned and that guide children’s discovery and mastery of the grammar to which they are exposed at the proper time in their lives.

Page 10: Language: We Are What We Speak

Children around the world show little variation in the rate at which they develop linguistic competence…

1. normal children learn language without formal instruction, for there is no one who is capable of teaching them which of all possible phonemes their language uses, nor the rules for how these phonemes can be combined into meaningful morphemes and sentences.

2. learn language in a remarkably short period of time that varies surprisingly little from language to language

3. learn language almost regardless of how ell they perform other mental tasks

4. Learn language by a process of deduction rather than by imitation and memorization

Chomsky – universal grammar is the inherited genetic endowment that makes it possible for us to speak and learn human langauges.

Page 11: Language: We Are What We Speak

Language, Culture and Reality…

Language (and culture) is what mediates between us and the world or ‘reality’; in other words, perception is not direct but always mediated. This is as true of the empirical sciences as it is for ordinary everyday perception. “Observation has become almost entirely indirect; and

readings take the place of genuine witness. The sense-data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. These data are empirical enough, but of course they are not themselves the phenomenon in question; the actual phenomenon stand behind them as their supposed causes.”

Page 12: Language: We Are What We Speak

Different languages are different conceptual systems, and have characteristic ways of interpreting and expressing things which consequently have an impact on culture.

Language enables the creation of a world to live in, that is, a culture.