THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE
The divine
source: in the most religions, there appears
to be a divine source that provides humans with language. The basic hypothesis
is that if infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then
they would spontaneously begin using the original god given language.
The natural
sound source: the suggestion
is that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which
early men and women heard around them. All modern languages have some words
with pronunciations which seem to echo naturally occurring sounds.
Bow wow theory: it is a view of echoing natural sounds such as
splash, bang, boom, buzz.
Yo heave ho
theory: the sounds of a person involved in
physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that
physical effort involved several people and had to be coordinated.
Oral gesture
source: it is claimed that originally a set
of physical gestures was developed as a means of communication. The a set of
oral gestures, specifically involving the mouth, developed, in which the
movements of the tongue, lips and so on were recognized according to patterns
of movement similar to physical gestures.
Gloss genetics: there is a concentration on some of the physical
aspects of humans that are not shared with any other creatures. Our human
ancestors made the transition to an upright posture, with bipedal locomotion
and a revised role for the front limbs. In the evolutionary development, there
are certain physical features that appear to be relevant speech.
Physiological
adaptation: human’s teeth, mouth, larynx,
pharynx and brain went through a evolution process which helped to making a
wide variety of sounds or with development of tools using and language using
ability.
Interactions: one of the major functions of language is
international function, which is mainly a social function of language.
Transactions: one of the major functions of language is
transactional function which is mainly a function involving the communication
of knowledge and information.
THE
PROPERTIES OF LANGUAGE
Communicative signals: when you use
language to tell something, you are considered to be intentionally
communicating something
Informative signals: the signals that you have not intentionally sent may
inform a person. He may note that you have cold as you sneezed.
Displacement: it allows the users of language to talk about things
and events not present in the immediate environment but also past and future
time and other locations.
Arbitrariness: it is generally the case that there is no natural
connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. They do not in any way
fit the objects they denote
Productivity: human language is quite capable of producing new
expressions and new sentences when it faces new situations or new objects. The
potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.
Cultural transmission: the process whereby language is passed on from one
generation to the next is described as cultural transmission. Human infants,
growing up isolation, produce no instinctive language. Cultural transmission of
a specific language is crucial in the human acquisition process.
Discreteness: the sounds
used in language are meaningfully distinct. When we articulate a single sound
there is no different actually, but when they occur in a word combination, they
make a meaningful difference even if the changes only one sound as in back and pack.
Duality: there are two levels of language. The level of
producing individual sounds and level of producing meaning as individual sounds,
none of these discrete forms has any intrinsic meaning. At one level we have
distinct sounds and at another level we have distinct sounds. Using the same
sounds we could have different words in different meanings such as act
and cat.
Vocal auditory channel: human linguistic language is typically generated via the vocal organs
and perceived via the ears.
Reciprocity: any
speaker/sender of a linguistic signal can also be a listener/receiver.
Specialization:
linguistic signals do not normally serve any other type of purpose such as
breathing and feeding
None directionally: linguistic signals can be picked up by anyone
within hearing, even unseen.
Rapid fade: linguistic
signals are produced and disappear quickly.
www.iolpgalerisi.com by Mustafa Baran