Language and its Functions
When we are little kids we perceive the world around differently than older people do. This is mainly because we see everything as a sort of learning experience. There’re loads of various things around and we want to know all of them.
Shortly after we can read, write, listen and speak grammatical
sentences using relative clauses, noun phrases, verbs and adverbs
without even knowing what they are but instinctively knowing if there
usage is correct or not. All seems so simple being language is a daily
requirement and only when a foreign language is taught (or visa versa)
we become aware of languages complexities.
To know a language is more than to recite words with correct
pronunciation but more a matter of word association, can you match a
word with the concept behind it (its meaning). For example, if a song
is performed in English (a trend in Europe) the band knows the words
and how to pronounce them but may have no idea what they have just
said, although we will. A foreigner might associate the word ‘car’
with the concept of a ‘dog’ meaning when they point at an animal with
four legs, a tail and a mouth that barks and say ‘car’, they will know
what they are expressing, but we won’t. In both instances the
communication is one-way, to know a language is not only for you to
understand but to be understood, ‘two-way traffic’.
For this to happen the lexicon (entire vocabulary) has to link each
word with its ’semantic property’, meaning in the second example when
the speaker says ‘car’ they should know that word’s ’semantic
features’ are ‘wheels, automobile, machine’ and should know not to
point to a ‘dog’ whose ’semantic features’ are ‘four legs, tail,
animal, non human’. Another basic example is ‘father’, semantic
features are as follows ‘parent, male, human’.
Even when semantics becomes more complex English natives should have
no trouble comprehending meaning, this is usually where a foreigner’s
knowledge will falter (and visa versa overseas). When you start to get
into the realm of:
‘homographs’ (same spelling/different meaning)
‘homonyms’ (same pronunciation/different meaning)
‘heteronyms’ (same spelling, different pronunciation, different
meaning)
An Indian boy in my class (secondary school) made the mistake of doing
a two-page paper on a bath when the rest of came to the understanding
the teacher meant Bath; the place. A true story and a example to
demonstrate the difficultly of words with multiple meaning (in this
case a homograph), not only that but when does the other meaning(s)
’situational context’ figure?
A commendable ‘linguistic competence’ level of semantics certainly
brings us a step closer to knowing a language, the bad news is after
achieving all this we only have one word to show for it, most
sentences and conversations are considerably longer.
The part of the grammar that represents a speaker’s knowledge of
sentences and their structures is called syntax. Syntactic structure
is equally as important as accurate semantics. Grammatical judgments
can be made from our wealth of unconscious knowledge, instantly
knowing the correct interpretation of a sentence with multiple meaning
(hierarchical structure) and who/what are the ’subject’ and ‘object’
in a sentence (grammatical relations).
Steve (the subject) smacked Phil (the object) in the mouth. Phil (now
the subject as) has a sore mouth (his mouth is now the object).
But the foreign speaker may have trouble as languages may have
different word orders within phrases and sentences. Saying something
simple in English may mean rewording it for correct translation in
Japanese, German, Dutch, etc. The way some French phrasings were
ordered baffled me in school. A good example found in An Introduction
to Language (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams) is the English would say: how
many students does Els teach? But the German way would be: how many
students teach Els?
The function for language is simple; communication, lions roar, dogs
bark and humans speak. There the parallels end, as animal systems are
limited in how they express themselves controlled by stimulus and
ritual. For example; an agitated lion is limited in ways to express
him/herself, most likely a roar, whereas if a human is agitated he/she
has many ways to express the feelings and have control over every
element; what words to use, tone, volume and explicitly what they wish
to express. Unlike the bees that can only indicate via dancing they’ve
found food, but cannot inform other bees the food is miles away like a
human with extended tools (words) at their disposal with a choice to
be vague or detailed (creative aspect). Our language system is not a
preset program where meaning is objective, words contain ambiguity and
rely on other words with their ’semantic features’ to form acute
understanding, and this carried out by structure as words rearranged
can ‘mean’ all the difference, ‘this is good!’ He answers. ‘Is this
good?’ He asks.
The article was produced by the member of masterpapers.com.
Sharon White has many years of a vast experience in Essay Writing and custom essays writing consulting. Get free samples of essays and courseworks and buy essays .
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