Unit 1

Exercises
1.
This sign is a symbol because its form and meaning (peacemaking after strife) are
purely related by convention; that is to say, the meaning given to this sign
is the result of an agreement between speakers of the akan tribes in the
western Africa country of Ghana.

This sign could be considered both, an icon and a symbol. Although

the sign does not resemble strictly a human face, you can tell -thanks
to some of its features- that what it is trying to convey, is the idea of a
person being happy. Due to these aspects, we could conceive this sign as an
icon. Having said that, this sign is also a symbol because the association of form
and meaning is not natural, as well as its configuration abides by an agreement
between speakers within a society.

This sign is clearly a symbol, given that the relation between

form and meaning (danger) is purely related by convention, as
well as the fact that the forms bears no apparent similarity to the
meaning, nor it is naturally associated with it. Having said that,
symbols bring about cultural nuances; that is to say, in our culture this sign
means danger, but in Mexico -for instance- this sign would be marking the
entrance to a place where you can buy candies.

This sign is a symbol, since its form and meaning (the concept of good
and evil) is purely related by convention. Besides, the form bears no
natural association to the meaning it is referring to.
 This sign is an icon because it has a form resembling its meaning. You can
perfectly perceive it is a wheel chair by merely looking at it.

This sign is an icon because it has a form resembling its meaning -the
figure of a man- and you can understand the message it is trying to
convey (Men´s rest room) by merely looking at it.

This is both, an icon and a symbol, given that you can identified the
form o a cigarette, but to comprehend its full meaning ‘smoking is
prohibited’ you must know what the sign means.

2. The system of traffic lights used in Spain consists of three colours -green, amber
and red- each with a particular meaning conveying either proceed (green),
proceed with caution (amber), or do not proceed (red). The shape of these sings
will vary depending on whom must abide by it; that is to say, traffic lights
referred to cars will have a rounded shape, whereas traffic lights referred to
people or bicycles will be normally square with the form of a person or a bicycle
within.

The combinations available would be for instance: the traffic light is red for cars,
so a pedestrian may cross the street and the same vice versa. However, if the
traffic light for cars happens to be amber, that will mean cars may proceed with
caution unless a pedestrian is crossing -given that the latter has priority-. These
signs conform a syntagmatic relation, since as a group they are coherent; that is
to say, Spanish traffic light system could not be conceived without its signs and
their meanings. For instance, without the red sign´s meaning “do not proceed”,
the green one -proceed- would have no purpose, or its meaning wouldn´t be
clear, making this group of signs incoherent. So, the syntagmatic relation is that
somehow these signs need each other in order to have a meaning.

Arbitrariness is a design feature which is present in this sign system, given that
form of the traffic light´s signs are not connected to their meanings by necessity,
but it´s been us, humans, whom have decided to give each sign a specific form
and meaning. Another design feature which is present in this sign system is
“Duality”; that is to say, in the signs conforming a traffic light we can identify
two different levels, the level of form and the level of meaning, and both of them
share a relation.
3. Given that we normally elevate the tone of our voices when we argue or when
we want to express firmness with regard to an idea, I would say loudness
conveys anger and in same case firmness. In the example given in the exercise,
loudness is of course iconic, since it conveys an information we perceive
auditorily. We identify a pattern in this information which resembles naturally to
a state of mood, anger in this case. Another iconic way of conveying anger
would be glancing at someone.

4. Research on a linguist.

5. When watching series, I have noticed that the characters, when in informal
conversations, sometimes omit the auxiliary verbs, specially in the past tenses.
So, for example, they would say: “I seen him at the mall”, instead of saying “I
´ve seen him” or “I have seen him”. Another example would be: “You
accompanied him?”, when the proper structure for a question would be “Did you
accompany him?”. These mistakes target grammar. The reason perhaps is that as
we tend to speak fast most of the time, we feel like omitting words that would
stop us when delivering our speech.

6. I think it does not show duality of patterning because, even though the final
mating song each lyre male bird delivers is composed of songs from other birds,
it puts them all together creating a new sign, in this case, with a specific
meaning and form (which would be the sounds composing the song) that of
course share a relation to that male bird. But of course, since every male bird
creates a unique song, it is impossible to identify any clear pattern that all male
birds shared in common.

7. Both Chinese and English writing show duality of pattering, but in different
ways. This is because written English employs alphabetic scripts, which
represent words by their sounds -although English have poor representation of
the spoken forms of words- whereas written Chinese employs a logographic
writing system where each symbol or character represents ideally a word or
meaningful unit. Both share a relation between meaning and form to the speaker
of each language.

8. Apart form the ones mentioned in the introductory chapter, I have found total
feedback and also broadcast transmission.

9. It depends on the content, and on the person who reads it aloud; I mean, you
might have written a text marvelously, but then, if you don’t read it properly, it
may not seem as good; that is to say, when delivering as peech the content is not
the only thing to take into account, you should also pay attention to your
intonation. Besides, normally when we write we tend to use more complex
 syntax and structures, but the reality is that when speaking we should make it all
simpler in order to appear more natural to the other person. The grammar too,
should be simpler, we can still use words that show a high level of the language
but the delivery of a speech should be more relaxed.

10. I wholeheartedly believe that written Spanish has influenced its oral
correspondent. For example, our tendency not to write so many comas, and our
preference to write shorter words have made us speak so fast.

11. A syllabary is a group of characters or symbols used to represent the

syllables. Sometimes, it may also function as an alphabet. Some languages, such
as Korean or Japanese employ syllabaries in their written language. Hiragana is
a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with
katakana, kanji. It is a phonetic lettering system.

12. Manually coded English, and in fact, any coded language, implies body
language as well as other visual effects that will indicate the different interveners
of the communicative situation what the other person is talking about. It differs
from ASL in the use of grammar and the order given to words. Normally, it is
easier in MCE. For an ASL speaker, it is normal to converse so MCE when
talking to someone whose dominant language is oral English. The invention of
these system goes back to late 1790s, when a French scientist would try to teach
some hints of the French language to deaf children by using his hands to refer to
words. Nowadays, its use in deaf people education is controversial, and it
frequently combined with sign languages and oralism.

13. Apart from all the Linguistic branches that we have been going over in
this introductory chapter, I would like to mention philology, since that is what I
am currently studying. Philology is the study of a language through its texts,
literary o r not, and the historical events involving them.