Language Origins, Functions, and Evolution: A Comprehensive Analysis
Origins of Language
Origins of Language: Communication (animal-innate-specialized), Human Language (abstract and symbolic).
Core Aspects of Human Language
CARTS human language: sign language arbitrariness, displacement, dual articulation, productivity, prevarication, reflexivity, discrete units, creativity.
Language Functions
Representative: statements assertive, indicative mood, denotative language, 3rd person. Predom context.
Conative: hortatory statements, the imperative or subjunctive second person verbal, vocative, predom receiver.
Emotion: exclamatives statements, as indicative or subjunctive, 1st person, interjections, diminutive, augmentative, connotative language, predom issuer.
Poetic: literary language, literary devices, predom the message.
Rhetorical Appeals
Ethos, Pathos, and Logos: factors contributing dialogue verisimilitude: Ethos (moral aspect has to communicate confidence to the receiver), Pathos (emotional aspect, is to inspire certain emotions in the receiver) , Logos (rational aspect has to be based on the reasoning to be convincing).
Historical Perspectives
18th Century
S XVIII: Reflection language (relation between language and thought influence empiricist and rationalist philosophy, discards), imperfections of natural language (Francis Bacon), Illustration and Encyclopedism encounter with the grammar of Sanskrit, William Jones brings the grammar of Panini
19th Century
S. Europe XIX: Studies of Franz Bopp: genetic unit of language, Brothers Grimm and historical grammar, Humboldt linguistic idealism and Vossler: positivism and linguistic idealism.
Saussurean Linguistics
Saussure (LANGUAGE): general model common to all speakers, social, stable and fixed (or is modified so slow), organized in a system of signs.
Linguistic Signs
(SIGNS LING): Significant (mental image), meaning (concept), the relationship between the two occurs: arbitrariness (sign unmotivated) and linearity (affects the pronunciation and spelling two phonemes). discontinuity (if linguistic signs are formed by delimiting the binding of a particular sound No Computer), immutability (in a synchronous state), Mutability (in time alter the linguistic signs.)
Prague School of Linguistics
PRAGUE SCHOOL : The speaker and the expression of emotion: when speaking is expressing an attitude toward what is being said, and produces in the listener an impression of a certain emotion.
The listener and conative expression: The listener receives the message and must respond, if indifferent no communication (messages imperative and vocative).
The context and the reference function: the referential function has to do with the context, a message in itself does not reference information.
The message and the poetic function: speech well organized when we select and combine the words correctly.
The code and the metalinguistic function: communication only occurs if you use the same code metalinguistic expressions, typical of language learning situations.
Contact and factual basis: contact refers to initiate, maintain or disrupt communication, f. factual basis is the first acquired by children.
Contextual Functions
CRTs. of duties in connection with context: “Any linguistic expression has more than one function. “There’s always a function that dominates the others, and the verbal structure of the message depends on that function.