Human Language: Origins, Structure, and Meaning
The Origins of Language
Divine Source
The divine source theory posits that language is a gift from a deity. It suggests that a supernatural being gave language to humanity as a means of communication or as a fundamental aspect of human nature and consciousness.
Natural Sound Source
The natural sound source theory proposes that early human ancestors developed communication systems by mimicking sounds from their environment.
Social Interaction Source
The social interaction source theory suggests that as early humans lived in groups, they needed a form of communication and developed it through grunts and moans.
Physical Adaptation Source
The physical adaptation source theory argues that specific physical changes in early humans, particularly in the vocal tract and associated neural pathways, provided the biological foundation for speech. These features include the descent of the larynx, the repositioning of the hyoid bone, and the expansion and control of the articulatory apparatus.
Toolmaker Source
The toolmaker source theory links language development to the emergence and refinement of toolmaking abilities. It suggests that the need to communicate and coordinate complex toolmaking activities led to the evolution of language.
Genetic Source
The genetic source theory proposes that humans possess a “language acquisition device” or a specific genetic endowment that facilitates language learning and processing. This device is believed to be a specialized cognitive module that enables infants to acquire language rapidly and effortlessly.
Properties of Language
Displacement
Displacement refers to the ability of human language to express information about entities, actions, or events that are not present in the immediate context. Example: Yesterday, I went to the beach.
Arbitrariness
Arbitrariness refers to the lack of an inherent connection between the linguistic form (words or signs) and its meaning. The relationship between the sound or shape of a word and its referent is generally arbitrary. Example: pen, chair.
Productivity
Productivity is the ability of speakers to create and understand new words, phrases, and sentences. It is the capacity of language to generate an infinite number of novel expressions. Example: work, slay, she/he ate.
Cultural Transmission
Cultural transmission is the process through which language is acquired and passed on from one generation to another within a cultural or linguistic community. It involves the transfer of linguistic knowledge, communication skills, and cultural norms. Example: Parents or elders share stories with children, passing on cultural values, historical events, and wisdom.
Duality
Duality refers to the property of having two levels of structure: the surface level and the underlying level. It allows for the expression of complex meanings through the interaction of these two levels. Example: The root “cat” represents the concept of a small, domesticated feline animal, while the plural marker “-s” indicates that there is more than one.
Signifier and Signified
Signifier is the physical form, whether it is a spoken sound, a written symbol, or a gestural motion, that conveys meaning and represents a specific concept or word. Example: orange juice.
Signified refers to the mental or conceptual content that a signifier represents. It is the meaning or the idea associated with a particular signifier. Example: a bottle of orange juice, a glass with orange juice.
The arbitrariness of the sign means there is no logical or intrinsic relationship between the signifier (sound pattern) and the signified (concept).
Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics vs. Phonology: Phonetics is not specific to one language; it is descriptive of the production, transmission, and reception of sounds. Phonology is specific to one language and is theoretical, focusing on patterns of sounds.
When the vocal folds are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless.
When the vocal folds are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart, creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced.
Phonology is the scientific study of the sounds of a language.
Phoneme is the smallest sound that makes a difference in meaning. Example: Pat/bat.
Allophone is the variation of pronunciations a phone has. Example: kitten (glottal stop tt) / cat (just cat).
Phones are individual sounds that humans produce when speaking. They are the physical manifestations of speech sounds that can be heard or recorded.
Minimal pairs are when two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position.
Coarticulation Effects
Assimilation is a process in which a sound changes to become more like a neighboring sound in terms of pronunciation, to create a more natural speech pattern. Example: handbag -> hambag.
Elision is the omission of a sound or a syllable in speech. Example: interesting -> intresting. We drop some sounds to sound more natural.
Word Formation
Borrowing: Taking words from other languages. Example: croissant (French).
Coinage: Invention of new terms based on names or brands. Example: comfort.
Compounding: Joining two separate words to produce a single form. Example: textbook, wallpaper.
Blending: Blending two separate forms to create a new single term. Example: Spanglish, brunch.
Clipping: A word with more than one syllable is reduced to a shorter form. Example: doctor -> doc.
Back-formation: A new word is created by removing what appears to be a prefix or suffix from an existing word. Example: babysitter -> babysit.
Conversion: Changing the function of a word, such as a noun to a verb. Example: We bottled the milk.
Acronyms: New words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. Example: LOL, VCR.
Derivation: Adding affixes to words. Example: un- + acceptable. Prefixes, suffixes. Example: hallebloodylujah.
Syntax and Grammar
Syntax refers to the rules and principles that govern the structure and organization of sentences in a language.
Grammar refers to the system of rules and principles that governs the structure, formation, and usage of language.
Generative grammar suggests that language is governed by a set of innate principles and universal grammar shared by all humans. It seeks to uncover the deep structure of language and the underlying rules that generate surface-level structures.
Deep structure refers to the underlying, abstract representation of a sentence that captures its core meaning and syntactic relationships. It represents the basic structure of a sentence before any transformations or syntactic operations have been applied. Surface structure refers to the actual form or arrangement of words and phrases in a sentence as it is spoken or written.
Example: [John [often [helps [Mary [with [her homework]]]]]]
This deep structure shows the hierarchical relationships among the words and phrases in the sentence. The surface structure represents the actual form of the sentence, including word order, inflectional endings, and other surface-level linguistic elements. It is derived from the deep structure through transformations.
Structural ambiguity refers to a situation in which a sentence or phrase can be interpreted in multiple ways due to its structural organization. Example: Visiting relatives can be boring.
- Visiting relatives can be a boring activity. In this interpretation, “visiting relatives” is the subject of the sentence, and “can be boring” describes the nature of this activity.
- The relatives who are visiting can be boring. In this interpretation, “visiting relatives” is a noun phrase modifying the noun “relatives.” It suggests that the relatives themselves, who are doing the visiting, can be boring.
Recursion refers to the ability of a language to generate complex sentences or structures by embedding phrases or clauses within each other in a recursive manner. Example: The main noun phrase “I saw a man” is followed by a relative clause “who saw a woman.” Within that relative clause, there is another relative clause “who saw a child.” Each embedded relative clause follows the same structure, creating a recursive pattern of nesting noun phrases within each other.
Semantics
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences. It attempts to focus on what words conventionally mean. Sense (connotation) is what someone imagines when being spoken to (personal image). Reference (denotation) is the dictionary definition of words. Example: Paris.
Lexical semantics is the study of word meanings and how they contribute to the overall meaning of sentences.
Compositional is the process by which the meaning of a sentence is determined based on the meanings of its individual words and the rules for combining them.