Unit 1:

Catalina Bal.

Guide for reading comprehension:

1)What is Linguistics and how are Phonetics and Phonology related to it?

Linguistics is the scientific study of a language, and Phonetics and Phonology are related to linguistics
because they are part of the study of language since they, too, overlap and inform other areas of
enquiry, such as morphology, syntax, pragmatics, semantics, sociolinguistics, etc.

2)What’s the difference between Phonetics and Phonology?

Phonetics studies the characteristics of speech sounds produced by the human speech-organs in
isolation (articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics), and Phonology is the study and description of a
language systems. Phonology draws upon the findings of phonetics but, unlike phonetics, it does not
deal with the phonic medium as such but to the relation between phonemes in connected speech and
the prosodic features of language.

3)What is Language? And how does it differ from 'a language'?

A language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires
by means of voluntarily produced symbols. And it is applied to particular languages like Spanish, English,
and Japanese. However, the term 'language' without the idefinite article refers to the inner human
capacity (genetic endowment) of acquiring and producing a language.

4)How many types of language are there? How do 'languages' and 'systems of communication' differ?
Illustrate with examples.

The term 'language' is applied to a variety of both, particular human languages like English or Spanish
and also to a variety of other systems of communication, notation and calculation which are not
'languages' in the proper sense of the word. Therefore we can distinguish two types of languages,
natural and artificial.

Examples of natural languages are: English, Spanish, Chinese, etc. And artificial languages are those
systems of notation and calculation used by computer, scientists, mathematicians, etc. One example of
this is sing language for people who cannot speak or hear.

A system of communication can be human like 'sign language' and 'body language'. And non-human
language like 'the dance language of the bees', the songs of whales, or when birds signal to each other
through singing.

5) Consider the different definitions of language given by different thinkers in the past. Read an compare
with Gimson’s.
They are all similar definitions. Thinkers agree that a language is a 'human system of communication'.

Some of the definitions are the following:

Acoording to Hall, language is “the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each
other by means of oral-auditory habitually, arbitrarily used symbols.

6)Who is Noam Chomsky and what important contribution did he make to the study of Language
learning? According to him, how do children learn to speak their mother tongue or L1?

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, scientist, historian, social critic and political activist.

He formulated a theory of grammar, what he called “transformational generative grammar”. He

explained that each natural language has “a finite number of sounds” in it and each sentence can be
represented as a “infinite sequence of these sounds” (or letters).

Chomsky realized that more than “reprodusing” children were “producing language”.

Language systems are “productive” and are free from stimulus-control and this feature of “productivity”
is closely related to the characteristics of “creativity”.

This “creativity” is unpredictable but he also says that this “creativity” is rule-governed, it means that it
has a grammatical structure; which is another characteristic of the language systems: their structure-
dependence.

7)Which are the Universal characteristics of language?

A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols. Humans communicate and interact with each other by
means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols. 'Oral-auditory' makes reference to the hearer
as well as to the speaker. Another characteristic of language is the emphasis on their flexiblity and
adaptability.

Chomsky added another characteristic, which is, the structure-dependence of the systems. It is a process
whereby sentences are 'constructed' in natural language.

Arbitrariness: There is no apparent connection between form and meaning. That is, it’s impossible to
predict the form from the meaning or the meaning from the form. Arbitrariness is also given in
grammatical structure; that’s why languages differ in grammar one from another. This feature makes the
systems more flexible but difficult to learn because we have to reply on memory.

Duality of structure: There is a finite number of sounds (or phonemes) which will arbitrarily combine to
produce an infinite number of utterances.

Discreteness: It is a property of the sounds (or phonemes). Their identity of form is absolute. This means
that, for example, the pair “bit” and “bet” differ both in written and spoken form. If we pronounce an
intermediate sound for the vowel in “bit or “bet” in the same context, we shall not have pronounced a
third word from either. We shall have pronounced something not recognised as a word at all, or else a
mispronounced version of one or the other.

Productivity: It makes possible the construction and interpretationof new signals. There is a finite
number of rules that enable us to produce an infinite number of sentences. This productivity is rule
governed. Children infer (or deduce) the rules from the surrounding utterance.

8)Are “Speech” and “Language” the same? Explain why.

They aren’t the same. Speech is a medium through which language is used and Language is independent
of the medium in which language-signals are realized, language has the properly of medium-
transferability. It is a property which, contributes to the flexibility and adptability of language-systems.
One can not speack without using language, but one can use language without speaking.

9)How is “Speech” prior to “Writing” or “written language”?

In all natural languages as we know them, speech is historically , structurally, functionally and biologically
prior to writing.

The historical priority of speech ovwe writing admits of little doubt, there is no human society known to
exist or to hava existed at any time in the past without the capacity of speech.

The structural priority: If we make the assumption that every acceptable spoken sentence can be
converted into an acceptable written sentence, and conversely, then we have no reason to think of
either as being derived, except as a matter of historical fact.

10)What is a “phoneme”? Why do we say it’s meaningful?

The phoneme is an entirely abstract entity. It is said to be the smallest meaningful unit of speech. It can
only be made actual through one of its allophonic manifestations. And provided ther appear in the same
context we can contrast them exchanging one for another, and as a result we would get a different lexical
item. This is how we prove it's meaningful, in relation to other phonemes in a string of sounds ( in
connected speech).