1.

1 Language

Human beings can communicate with each other. We are able to exchange
knowledge, beliefs, opinions, wishes, threats, commands, thanks, promises,
declarations, and feelings only our imagination sets limits. We can laugh to express
amusement, happiness, or disrespect, we can smile to express amusement, pleasure,
approval, or bitter feelings, we can shriek to express anger, excitement, or fear, we can
clench our fists to express determination, anger or a threat, we can raise our eyebrows
to express surprise or disapproval, and so on, but our system of communication before
anything else is language. In this book we shall tell you a lot about language, but as a
first step towards a definition we can say that it is a system of communication based
upon words and the combination of words into sentences.

Language is an exclusively human property. Languages consist of tens of

thousands of signs, which are combinations of form and meaning. Form in spoken
languages is a sequence of sounds, in written languages for example a sequence of
and in the sign languages of the deaf a certain combination of gestures. Language is
primarily an auditory system of symbols. In so far as it is articulated it is also a motor
system, but the motor aspect of speech is clearly secondary to the auditory. In normal
individuals the impulse to speech first takes effect in the sphere of auditory imagery
and is then transmitted to the motor nerves that control the organs of speech.

In addition, Bloomfield argued that linguists must concentrate on the structure

of overt behavior, since we cannot speculate on the underlying processes out of lack
of the necessary knowledge of physiology and psychology.

Saussure refers to the system of language as a whole as language and to

individual utterances as parole. It takes a community to set up the relations between
any particular sound image and any particular concept in order to form specific
paroles. An individual cant fix the value for any combination. Value is the collective
meaning assigned to a sign on the basis of the difference with all the other signs in the
signifying system. Saussure distinguishes between value and signification. Value, by
contrast, is the relation between various signs in the signifying system (which are all
interdependent). Everything in the system is based on the relations between its
units.The most important of them, according to Saussure, is the syntagmatic one (axis
of contiguity) as opposed to a paradigmatic relation (axis of substitution).

Jakobson, on the other hand, had come into contact with the work of Ferdinand
de Saussure, and developed an approach focused on the way in which language
structure served its basic function - to communicate information between speakers. He
was one of the founders of the "Prague school" of linguistic theory. According to
Jakobson, language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions. An outline
of those functions demands a concise survey of the constitutive factors in any speech
event, in any act of verbal communication. Thus Jakobson distinguishes six
communication functions, each associated with a dimension of the communication
process:
Dimension:
1. context
2. message
3. sender
4. receiver
5. channel
. 6 code
Functions:
1. referential (= contextual information)
2. aesthetic (= auto-reflection)
3. emotive (= self-expression)
4. conative (= vocative or imperative addressing of receiver)
5. phatic (= checking channel working)
6. metalingual (= checking code working)
Jacobsons three main ideas in linguistics play a major role in the field to
this day: linguistic typology, markedness and linguistic universals. The three concepts
are tightly intertwined: typology is the classification of languages in terms of shared
grammatical features (as opposed to shared origin) markedness is (roughly) a study of
how certain forms of grammatical organization are more "natural" than others, and
linguistic universals is the study of the general features of languages in the world.

The view that a language consists of a set of thing-like products is a recurrent

theme in the linguistic literature. One of the most well-known definitions belongs to
Chomsky. He claims that he will consider a language to be-a set (finite or infinite) of
sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements. An
alternative, and intuitively more satisfactory, view would be that a language consists
of all the units and rules which make up the system underlying the products. However,
Humboldt's proposal that language should be regarded as an activity (and an ability to
act linguistically) (energeia) rather than as a set of products (ergon). Chomsky was not
the first person to suggest that all languages had certain fundamental things in
common, but he helped to make the innateness theory respectable after a period
dominated by behaviorist attitudes towards language. He goes so far as to suggest that
a baby need not learn any actual ''rules'' specific to a particular language. All
languages are presumed to follow the same set of rules, but the effects of these rules
and the interactions between them vary depending on the values of certain universal
linguistic ''parameters''. This is a very strong assumption, and is one of the reasons
why Chomsky's current theory of language differs from most others.

In the 1980s, Chomsky proposed a distinction between ''I-Language'' and ''E-

Language'', similar but not identical to the competence/performance distinction. I-
Language is the object of study in syntactic theory; it is the mentally represented
linguistic knowledge that a native speaker of a language has, and is therefore a mental
object. E-Language includes all other notions of what a language is, for example that
it is a body of knowledge or behavioral habits shared by a community. Chomsky
argues that such notions of language are not useful in the study of innate linguistic
knowledge, i.e. competence.

Another linguist, Holliday, like Saussure, sees language as a social and cultural
phenomenon as opposed to a biological one, like Chomsky. Some of Hollidays early
work involved the study of his son's developing language abilities. Holliday
identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years. Children
are motivated to acquire language because it serves certain purposes for them.

The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and
social needs. Holliday calls them:

Instrumental: when children use language to express their needs (e.g.

Want juice')
Regulatory: where language is used to tell others what to do (e.g. 'Go
away')
Interactional: where language is used to make contact with others and
form relationships (e.g. 'Love you, mummy')
Personal: This is the use of language to express feelings, opinions and
individual identity (e.g. 'Me good girl')
The next three functions help the child to come to terms with his or her
environment:
Heuristic: This is when language is used to gain knowledge about the
environment.
Imaginative: Here language is used to tell stories and jokes, and to create
an imaginary environment.
Representational: The use of language to convey facts and information.

To summarize, language is the most important means of human communication.

It is used to: convey and exchange information (informative function); prompt actions
(appellative function); commit oneself to do something (obligatory function); open,
hold and end social contact (contact function); convey and exchange artistic/ aesthetic
creations (poetic function). According to Saussure, no ideas preexist language, it
shapes ideas and makes them expressible. Language is not a substance, but a form and
a structure.

1.1. Speech

In a normal speech communication situation, a speaker tries to exert an

influence on a listener (or a group of listeners) by making him (or them) perceive,
understand, feel or do something particular. The speaker guides the listener into doing
this by exposing a linguistically structured speech behaviour, which operates together
with non-verbal signals, various kinds of background knowledge that the speaker and
the listener have, the listener's responses and other characteristics of the physical and
social context in which the communicative activities are embedded. The various
behavioral and information-processing operations involved in both the production and
comprehension of speech are transient events which, in addition, partially overlap and
occur at very high rates. There is often a frequent exchange of turns (i.e. speaking vs
listening turns) between the communicating parties. All in all, this brings about a very
intricate and rapidly evolving social interaction between the parties.

Therefore, in order to briefly state some of the most important features of speech
communication in the following points:

1. Speech is a dynamic, ephemeral behavior distributed in time; it proceeds

continuously and its inherent dynamics, the changes at various levels, must be subject
to on-line monitoring and analysis by both communicating parties; as one goes on,
one can no longer observe that which was produced earlier. The products of the
speaker's activities (behavioral movements and sound waves) fade rapidly over a
period of time, and the same applies to the listener's activities. (I disregard here the
fact that some types of "products" remain in short-term memory for certain limited
periods of time.) This naturally leads to focusing on the dynamic behavior as such
rather than on some persistent products (such as those in writing).

2. Speech behavior has many features of continuous movements (rather than a

chain of successive states).

3. The whole interaction between speaker and listener is dependent on the

situation (context) in many extremely important ways.

Therefore SPEECH is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to

define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it
needs but a moments reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but
an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly
different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter
function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously
brought into play. Language is primarily an auditory system of symbols. In so far as it
is articulated it is also a motor system, but the motor aspect of speech is clearly
secondary to the auditory. In normal individuals the impulse to speech first takes
effect in the sphere of auditory imagery and is then transmitted to the motor nerves
that control the organs of speech. The motor processes and the accompanying motor
feelings are not, however, the end, the final resting point. They are merely a means
and a control leading to auditory perception in both speaker and hearer.
Communication, which is the very object of speech, is successfully effected only
when the hearers auditory perceptions are translated into the appropriate and intended
flow of imagery or thought or both combined. Hence the cycle of speech, in so far as
we may look upon it as a purely external instrument, begins and ends in the realm of
sounds. The concordance between the initial auditory imagery and the final auditory
perceptions is the social seal or warrant of the successful issue of the process. As we
have already seen, the typical course of this process may undergo endless
modifications or transfers into equivalent systems without thereby losing its essential
formal characteristics.

According to the 5 theories from The Danish Linguist Otto Jespersen:

1. Speech arose through Onomatopoeic words but few of these exist in language

2. Speech arose through people making instictive sounds caused by pain, anger or
emotions. For ex. nterjections

3.Universal use of sounds for words of a certain menaing-sound symbolism- For

example mam is supposed to reflect the movement of the lips as the mouth
approaches to the food. And bye-bye or ta-ta show the lips and tongue respecitively
waving good-bye.

4. Speech arose as peole worked together, theirphysical efforts produced communal,

rhythmical grunts which in due course developed into chants, and thus language.
5.If any single factor was going to initiate human language , it would arise from the
romantic side of life-sounds associated with love, play, poetic feeling, perhaps even
song.

In conclusion Bloch and Trager (1942): A language is a system of arbitrary

vocal symbols by means of which a social gorup co-operates while Noam Chomsky
claims that: Language is a set of finite number sentences, each finite in lingth and
constructed out of a finite set of elements .Michael Halliday contributes to defining
languaneg by saying that: A language is a system of meaning- a semiotic system.
Also, Muharrem Ergin mentions that: Language is a natural means to enable
communication among people, a living entity that it has its own peculiar laws, by
means of which alone can it develop, a system of contracts whose foundation was laid
in times unknown, and a social institution interwoven with sounds.

Language has as its main features the use of sound signals, arbitrarines the need
for learning dualtiy of patterns, displacement creativity (productivity)p atterning,
structure dependence. Other minor features of language are language reveals patterns
of how mind works; is a means for mental and social development; language is a
property of the individual as well as of the society;it is a predictor of social identity.
Also, language is a predictor of social identityand it is used for cultural preservation
and transmission. Language can be used by some to exert their power over others.
The direction of changes in language is not predictable. Language is not monolithic
but varied. It exhibits variatiosn (e.g.Dialects). Self-talk can be regarded as a form of
language; we talk in our minds: inner speech. using language for thinking. We cannot
help but to process and understand what we hear. Language, unless recorded, flies
away the moment we speak it. All the language have the same potential for
development. Language facilitates abstract thought (i.e. Thinking) Language is
adaptable & flexible to accommodate new communicative needs.