TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DIVISION OF LINGUISTICS, LITERATURE & CULTURAL STUDIES

INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE - 001164

CHAPTER 1: What is language?

Lecturer: Le Thi Phuong

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 CHAPTER 1 CONTENTS

I. Linguistic knowledge
II. What is grammar?
III. What is not (human) language?

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 KNOWING A LANGUAGE?

• Language distinguishes humans from other animals

• Understanding the nature of language makes us human

• In myths and religions, language is the source of human

life and power

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 KNOWING A LANGUAGE? (CONT.)

• Learning language  child becoming human (Africa)

• We all become “human” because we all know at least

one language

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 LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE

1. Knowledge of the sound system

2. Knowledge of words

3. Knowledge of sentences and nonsentences

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 KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOUND SYSTEM

• Knowing what sounds are in that language and

what sounds are not
E.g: English: /tʃ/, /ʃ/ ≠ Vietnamese

• Knowing which sounds may start / end a word,

and follow each other
E.g: In Ghanaian, Nk can begin a word: Nkrumah
≠ not in English
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 KNOWLEDGE OF WORDS

• Knowing that certain sequences of sounds signify

certain concepts or meanings
E.g: boy: not girl
• Knowing which sequences of sounds are related to
specific meanings and which are not
E.g: boy, toy: words ≠ moy: not a word

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 THE ARBITRARY RELATION OF
FORM & MEANING

• The relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they

represent is arbitrary
E.g. In English, house signifies the concept
In French, maison
In Russian, dom
In Vietnamese, nhà
=> The words of a particular language have the meanings, they
do only by convention.

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 THE ARBITRARY RELATION OF
FORM & MEANING (CONT.)

• Some sound symbolism in language: words whose

pronunciation suggest the meaning

=> onomatopoeic words

E.g: Buzz – sound of bee

Cock-a-doodle-doo: sound of a rooster

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 THE ARBITRARY RELATION OF
FORM & MEANING (CONT.)
• Some particular sound sequences seem to relate to a
particular concept.
E.g.: gl (related to sight): glare, glint, gleam, glitter, glaze,
glimpse …
ÞWords like that: a small part of any language and not
always the case
E.g: gl: globe, glucose …

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 THE CREATIVITY OF LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE

• Knowing a language -> combine sounds to form words,

words to form phrases, and phrases to form sentences
=> infinite/ limitless number of possible sentences
-> Creativity: being able to produce new sentences and to
understand sentences never heard before.
=> Creative aspect of language use
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 THE CREATIVITY OF LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE
(CONT.)

• Creativity is a universal property of

human language.

Avram Noam Chomsky,

American linguist (age 86)
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 KNOWLEDGE OF SENTENCES &
NONSENTENCES
• Knowledge of words is not enough
E.g:
a. John is difficult to love.
b. It is difficult to love John.
c. John is anxious to go.
d. It is anxious to go John.

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 KNOWLEDGE OF SENTENCES &
NONSENTENCES (CONT.)

• Linguistic knowledge also includes rules for forming

sentences => permit us to form and understand an
infinite set of new sentences

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 KNOWLEDGE OF SENTENCES &
NONSENTENCES (CONT.)

• Our knowledge of language allows us to separate

possible sentences from nonsentences

E.g: What he did was climb a tree.

What he thought was want a sports car.

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 KNOWLEDGE OF SENTENCES &
NONSENTENCES (CONT.)

• A language then consists of all the sounds, words,

and infinitely many possible sentences

• When you know a language, you know the sounds,

words, and the rules for their combination

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 LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE & PERFORMANCE
• Knowledge: what we know about a language (linguistic
competence)
-Mostly unconscious knowledge about sounds, structures, meanings,
words, and rules for combining linguistic elements
• Performance: how we use this knowledge in actual
speech production and comprehension
- We can theoretically create an infinitely long sentence but
physiological and psychological constraints make this impossible

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 WHAT IS GRAMMAR?

• Grammar = the knowledge speakers have about the

units and rules of their language. These rules include:

Phonology Rules for combining sounds into words

Morphology Rules of word formation
Syntax Rules for combining words into phrases and
phrases into sentences
Semantics Rules for assigning meaning

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 WHAT IS GRAMMAR? (CONT.)

• Descriptive grammar is a set of rules about language based

on how it is actually used
- A descriptive grammar describes the linguistic rules that people
use when they speak their language
- There is no right or wrong language
- Grammars from every language and dialect are equal

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 WHAT IS GRAMMAR? (CONT.)

• Prescriptive grammar: a set of rules about language

based on how people think language should be used.
• In a prescriptive grammar there is right and wrong
language.
• The view of a prescriptive grammarian is that some
grammars are better than others

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 WHAT IS GRAMMAR? (CONT.)

•  During the Renaissance, a middle class of English

speakers wished to talk like the upper class, so they
started buying handbooks that told them how to speak
“properly”
–  Bishop Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English
Grammar with Critical Notes (1762)

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 WHAT IS GRAMMAR? (CONT.)

“I don’t have none.” vs. “I don’t have any.”

• Lowth decided that “two negatives makes a
positive,” therefore people should not use
double negatives
–  Despite the fact that everybody was already using
double negatives in English (and communication was
just fine)
–  Despite the fact that many languages of the world
require the use of double negatives

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 WHAT IS GRAMMAR? (CONT.)

In this book, from linguistic perspective:

• All languages and dialects are rule-governed, whether
spoken by the rich or poor, powerful or weak, learned or
illiterate
• No languages and dialects are superior or inferior

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 WHAT IS NOT (HUMAN) LANGUAGE?

2 fundamental properties that distinguish human language and

animal communication:

• Discreteness

• Displacement

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 WHAT IS NOT (HUMAN) LANGUAGE? (CONT.)

#1: Discreteness
+ discrete units- sounds, words, phrases that are combined to
make infinite set of expressions.
i.e. the word top => pot, opt
The cat on the mat => the mat on the cat.
=> Discreteness => creativity of human language

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 WHAT IS NOT (HUMAN) LANGUAGE? (CONT.)
• Some species communicate vocally, i.e. Birds:
+ Birdcalls (one or more short notes) –danger, feeding, nesting,
…
+ Birdsongs (more complex pattern of notes) – stake out territory,
attract mates …
• No evidence of internal structures to these songs (can’t broken
into discrete meaningful parts and rearranged to encode
different messages)
=> The message conveyed by these songs and calls are limited.

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 WHAT IS NOT (HUMAN) LANGUAGE? (CONT.)
#2.Displacement:
• Human can talk message that are unrelated to here and now.
Our words & sentences: not simply responses to internal and
external stimuli
E.g: When tired -> yawn, say I’m tired, I’m going to bed …
-> Or you can stay silent, or talk about things
completely unrelated to your physical state – weather, movie you
saw last night …
• Human can talk about things far away in the past, on the moon,
abstract things they have never seen or will never see.
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 HOMEWORK

• Complete all the tasks in Further practice (Handout

Chapter 1)
• Do Assignment 1 (TDT E-Learning System)
• Have the assigned reading materials read:
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N., [2014], An
Introduction to Language, Tenth Edition, Cengage
Learning, New York.
Pages: 35-49; 56-60

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