#8 Oral Assignment / The study of Language/ Group Nº 1

CHAPTER 1 & 2

The origins of Language + Animals and Human Language 

Yule, G. (2010). The study of Language. U.K.: CUP.

Yesica Bogarin/ Karina Kusznieryk
 

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

We do not know how language originated because there is lack of written evidence. But we do know that we share the ability to produce sounds and vocal pattering with all vertebrates. Because of the lack of evidence, there has been many speculations about its origins.

Some of the hypothesis or theories are:

The Divine Source

The Natural Sound Source

The Social Interaction Source

The Physical Adaptation source

The tool-making source

The genetic source

1. The Divine Source

In most religions there appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language. The basic hypothesis seems to have been that if human infants were allowed to row without hearing any language around them, they would spontaneously begin using the original God-language.

The results of experiments were rather conflicting because children living without access to human language in their early years grow up with no language at all.

2. The natural Source

It is based on the concept of natural sounds, imitations of sounds which humans heard around them and used them to refer to the thing associated with that. This theory can be supported by the fact that all modern   languages have some words with pronunciation that seem to echo natural sounds (Onomatopoeia). That is to say that there are words in any language that are onomatopoeic. 

For instance  “The BOW-WOW Theory”  is an example. When a bird flew by making the “coo-coo” sound it would be called cooku sound. Other examples would be rattle, buzz, splash, etc.

It has also been suggested that the original sounds of language may have come from natural cries of emotions, (“The POOH-POOH Theory), such as pain, anger or joy. Some examples would be: Ooh, Wow, Yuck.

3. The Social Interaction

Another proposal involving natural sounds has been called “The YO-HE-HO Theory”. The sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that effort had to be coordinated.

The interaction with other humans places the development of language in a social context where groups necessarily need organization and organization requires communication.

4. The Physical Adaptation

Instead of looking at types of sounds as the source of human speech, we can look at the types of physical features humans possess which are different from other creatures. 

For example the upright posture in which humans evolved enabled us to produce clear sounds. The teeth, lips, mouth, larynx and pharynx suffered modifications and helped us in the development of speech.

5. The tool-making source

The outcome of manipulating objects and changing them by using both hands is evidence of a brain at work. The brain is lateralized, this means that has specialized functions in each hemisphere. This activity has been a crucial stage in the development of language, but it lacks structural organization and combination of sounds in specific arrangements. It may be that there was an evolutionary connection between the language-using and the tool-using abilities and both were involved in the development of human speech.

6. The genetic Source

Human offspring are born with a special capacity of language. It is INNATE, even children who are born deaf become fluent sign language users. This innateness hypothesis would appear as a crucial mutation in human genetic. We have a special language gene that no other creatures have because we can express thoughts, recognize tenses and this gives us and endless capacity to communicate by means of language.

ANIMALS AND HUMAN LANGUAGE

Communication

We must distinguish between specifically communicative signals, when you use the language to communicate intentionally, and unintentionally informative signals, when somebody infers the way you are or feel due to a number of signals that you have unintentionally sent.


Properties of Human Language

All creatures communicate, but only humans have the property of REFLEXIVITY or REFLEXIVENESS. This means that we can use language to think and talk about language itself. The Theory of reflexivity allows us to identify other properties of language:

DISPLACEMENT: This property allows us to talk about things and events that are not present in the immediate environment. Humans are the only creatures that can refer to present past and future events or actions. It seems that animal communication is designed exclusively for this moment.

ARBITRARINESS: It is the aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the world..Although there are some ONOMATOPOEIC WORDS that seem to have a less arbitrary connection, they are relatively rare.

PRODUCTIVITY: It means that the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite. Humans have the ability of describing new things or events. Animals lack this feature because thy have a fixed reference., each signal in the system is fixed.

CULTURAL TRANSMISSION: It is the process by which a language is passed on from one generation to the next generation.Cultural transmission is essential in the human language acquisition process, because humans acquire their first language as children in a culture.

Animals are born with a set of specific signals that are produced instinctively, even though they are not raised within their species.

DUALITY: Human language is organized in two levels simultaneously.At one level, we have distinct sounds, like p,t,f, which do not have any intrinsic meaning.on their own,At another level, we have distinct meanings.that are those sounds combined in different ways to produce meaning.We have a limited amount of sounds, but we combine them to form a great variety of sound combination called “words”

Among other creatures, each communicative signal appears to be a single fixed form that cannot be broken down into separate parts.


Chimpanzees and Language

Several experiments have been carried out trying to teach chimpanzees to communicate with human language or an arbitrary system of signs.

After training, a chimpanzee was able to understand a set of words but it was not able to produce any. The first founding was that they were not physically prepared to articulate the sounds of human language. Some more trials were made and there was a lot of controversy as to whether they were able to use language or not. Some experts said that they were just reproducing things without understanding the meaning of it.

We can say that they were able to use a set of signs so as to take part in interaction with humans, but clearly they did not go on to perform linguistically on a level comparable to a human child.


CHAPTER 11

Discourse Analysis

Yule, G. (2010). The study of Language. U.K.: CUP.

CHAPTER 17

Language history and change 

Yule, G. (2010). The study of Language. U.K.: CUP.

Claudia Dilella/ Analia Horvath
 

LANGUAGE HISTORY AND CHANGE

In chapter 17, Language history and change, Yule focuses on processes of change and variation that can be perceived diachronically. We are provided with an overview of the way in which different languages are thought to be related to each other, how this relatedness between them helped establish language families and reconstruct an original form from which these modern languages derive; and describes the process of evolution of the English language.

The chapter begins with a brief account of how terms such as Family tree model, Comparative method and Comparative reconstruction, all three of them concerned with finding earlier states and ancestry forms of languages, came into being. Principles and steps involved in the reconstruction of words are explained and illustrated through examples and exercises.

The chapter goes on with a short summary of the history of English, its four periods, the many sources and influences from the outside it has received. All these are known as external changes. The chapter concludes by enumerating the different processes of internal change - such as sound, syntactic and semantic changes- the English language went through within its historical development.

“Languages will not remain stable...change and variation are inevitable.”

CHAPTER 18

Language and regional variation 

Yule, G. (2010). The study of Language. U.K.: CUP.

Laura Costa/ Leticia Flocco
 

Language and regional variation

Every language has a lot of variation, especially in the way it is spoken. In fact, English has a widespread variation in the way it is spoken in different countries such as Australia, Britain, and the USA. Besides, we can also find a series of varieties in different parts of those countries. But first, we have to think what language geography is. They are aspects of language variation based on where that language is used. So, we should identify the particular  variety that we have normally assumed when we referred to a language as English, Spanish or any other language. Talking about the language, we must stop in what standard language is, which is concentrating on the features of only one variety. Actually, this is an idealized variety because it has no specific region. It is the variety associated with administrative, commercial, and educational centers, regardless of region.

Standard English

-Printed English in newspapers and books, is widely used in the mass media and is taught in most schools.

- English as a second or foreign language.

-Associated with education and broadcasting in public contexts.

- It is more easily described in terms of the written language than the spoken language.

General variety used in public broadcasting in the United States.

-Refer more specifically to Standard American English.

-In Britain, to Standard British English.

- In other parts of the world, we can talk about other recognized varieties:

*Standard Australian English.

*Standard Canadian English.

*Standard Indian English.

Accent and Dialect

Accent: we all speak with an accent. Some speakers have very recognized types of accent while others may have not, but every language-user speaks with an accent. The accent is the description of aspects of pronunciation that identify where an individual speaker is from, regionally, or socially.

Dialect: It describes features of grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of pronunciation.

Dialectology

It is the study of dialects.

* It is used to distinguish between two different dialects of the same language (whose speakers can usually understand each other)

* It is used to distinguish between two different languages (whose speakers cannot understand each other)

-It is important to recognize, from a linguistic point of view, that none of the varieties of a language is “better” than any other. They are simply different. From a social point of view, however, some varieties do become more prestigious.

-The variety that develops as the standard language has usually been one socially prestigious dialect, originally associated with a center of economic and political power. (e.g. London for British English and Paris for French) Yet, there always continue to be other varieties of a language spoken in different regions.

Isoglosses and Dialect boundaries:

Isoglosses: It represents a boundaries between the areas with regard to one particular linguistic item. Eg. paper bag - paper sack.

Dialect boundaries: Many Isoglosses come together in this way, a more solid line indicating a dialect boundary can be drawn.

The dialect continuum

One dialect or language variety merges into another.

There is a distinction among The Dialect continuum, Bidialectal, and Bilingual.

Dialect continuum: It is a Regional variation along a dialect continuum rather than as having sharp breaks from one region to the next.

Bidialectal: Speakers who move back and forth across this border area, using different varieties with some ease.  People who speak two dialects.  Most of us grow up with some form of bidialectalism, speaking one dialect “in the street” among family and friends, and having to learn another dialect “in school.

Bilingual: People who speak to distinct languages.

Individual Bilingualism: It can be the result of having two parents who speak two different languages.

Diglossia: A special situation involving two different varieties of language.

Low Variety:  Acquired locally and used in everyday situations.

High Variety: Learnt at schools and used for important matters.

Language planning: It is mainly the process  of adopting a language as OFFICIAL (standard language)

Stages of the language planning:

1- Selection

2- Codification

3- Elaboration

4- Implementation

5- Acceptance

Pidgin:

 A variety of a language that developed to a practical purpose, in this case, TRADING.

Pidgins are characterized by an absence of any complex grammatical morphology and limited vocabulary.  When a PIDGIN develops beyond its role as a trade or contact language of a social community, it is described as CREOLE.

CHAPTER 19

Language and social variation 

Yule, G. (2010). The study of Language. U.K.: CUP.

Paula Chapelet/ Marcela Mannella
 

Language and social variation

 This chapter is focused on variation in language use found in different geographical areas. However, not everyone in a single geographical area speaks in the same way in every situation. Certain uses of language are more likely to be found in the speech of some individuals in society and not others. 

Sociolinguistics: It is concerned with the study of the linguistic features that have social relevance for participants in those speech communities that is, the relationship between language and society. Social dialects: the study of social dialects has been mainly concerned with speakers in thousands cities.

Prestige: The direction in which certain individuals change their speech. When that change is in the direction of a form that is more frequent in the speech of those perceived to have higher social status, we are dealing with overt prestige, or status that is generally recognized as “better” valued in the larger community. There is, however, another phenomenon called covert prestige. This “hidden” status of a speech style as having positive value may explain why certain groups do not exhibit style-shifting to the same extent as other groups.

 African American English also known as Black English or Ebonics,is a variety used by many (not all) African Americans in many different regions of the USA. It has a number of characteristic features that, taken together, form a distinct set of social markers. Those different features have often been stigmatized as “bad” language, following a regular pattern whereby the social practices, especially speech, of dominated groups are treated as “abnormal” by those dominant groups who are in charge of defining “normal.”

In the social study of dialect, it is social class that is mainly used to define groups of speakers as having something in common. The two main groups are generally identified as “middle class,” those who have more years of education and perform non-manual work, and “working class,” those who have fewer years of education and perform manual work of some kind. Education and occupation: Although the unique circumstances of every life result in each of us having an individual way of speaking, a personal dialect or idiolect, we generally tend to sound like others with whom we share similar educational backgrounds and/or occupations. Speech style and style-shifting Formal style is when we pay more careful attention to how we’re speaking and informal style is when we pay less attention. They are sometimes described as “careful style” and “casual style.” A change from one to the other by an individual is called style-shifting.

Speech accommodation: It refers to our ability to modify our speech style toward or away from the perceived style of the person(s) we’re talking to. We can adopt a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance, described as convergence, and use forms that are similar to those used by the person we’re talking to. When a speech style is used to emphasize social distance between speakers, the process is called divergence. We can make our speech style diverge from another’s by using forms that are distinctly different. A register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context, which may be identified as situational (e.g. in church), occupational (e.g. among lawyers) or topical (e.g. talking about language).

Jargon is special technical vocabulary associated with a specific area of work or interest.

Slang, or “colloquial speech”,describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests.

METACOGNITIVE ANALYSIS

I believe language as a theme, is one of my favourites to deal with. I have found clear and interesting Linguist George Yule´s book. The way he introduces and develops each chapter is interesting in some way because his words are fresh and enthusiastic, reading his work arouses a feeling of “food for thought”.

Although we started reading this book last year, I do not get bored of the topics he comes up with. It has been very useful to understand many aspects of syntax, pragmatics, discourse, regional and social variations, and so on. You feel like there is always more to strengthen your knowledge and every word you learn adds up to your background.  

I must admit that giving an oral presentation is not my comfort zone at all, mainly because I am always worried about skipping main information or changing the structure of the sentences. Anyway, I consider it fundamental to communicate fluently and accurately. I know the clock is ticking and we have to gain confidence to express the contents and feelings our profession requires us, as nearly future teachers.