After today’s class, write at least 250 words summarizing the important points from the reading and lecture. Copy-and-paste your writing (saved elsewhere) into a comment made to this blog post. If you are not yet on OpenLab, email your work to me.
Write about what you found the most significant or interesting. Write about how what you learned in the reading and lecture relates to something you know or have experienced. These writing assignments constitute a log of the readings and are designed to do these things: give you regular writing practice, summarization practice, and make the lessons meaningful to you by putting what you have learned into your own words.
In regards to your grade for these assignments: I am looking for your best effort–as the semester progresses, you will see these assignments get easier to do and your level of writing will improve.
If you are not yet a member of OpenLab and joined our class, you need to speak with Prof. Ellis after Thursday’s class.
This piece, an excerpt from An Introduction to Language, breaks down the fundamentals of what language is and how its rules are defined. Language, according to this essay, is a form of symbology that represents meaning but is arbitrary in how it represents, ordered by a vast, complex set of rules, and yet somehow all of this is learned and understood by children all over the world as if this skill was as natural to learn as walking. The essay takes great pains to define language, grammar, and the components therein in such a way as to cover spoken, written, and sign languages, identifying the common underlying basics that unite all languages.
Language has six basic characteristics. It’s used by all humans around the world. All languages are equally complex and expressive. There’s no relationship between things and the language used to refer to them. Even though languages are built from a small number of sounds or signs, they can be combined into a possibly infinite number of sentences. All languages have a set of rules, called grammar, that allow for understanding and communication. Finally, all languages evolve over time, changing based on how they’re used and adapting to new ideas.
Fromkin makes several distinctions as language is defined. The essay shows how animal communications, no matter how convincing, aren’t true language, either due to their simplicity or because they’re simply mimicry of human language. She distinguishes between three types of grammar: mental grammar, which are the rules inside a person’s head; descriptive grammar, which is an attempt to codify the rules inside people’s heads; and prescriptive grammar, which is when people impose rules on grammar based on what they believe is right or wrong.
An interesting point that Fromkin makes is that, no matter what language, spoken or signed, is used around children, it seems to be a natural ability of young children to learn the complex lexicon and grammar of that language in certain predictable steps until they’re capable of near-adult communication without any formal learning. In class we discussed how in certain famous cases, children who had no exposure to language were then unable to learn language naturally as adults.
While analyzing Fromkinās reading with the class I learned about the six characteristics of language. Itās unique to only humans and every language used on the planet is equally elaborate. I did not realize the elasticity of language is truly special until I discovered that 50 distinctive sounds created an infinite amount of words that can create an infinite amount of sentences. While that is just on the one end of the spectrum, I realized that grammar was unique to us as well. Despite even though different languages have different rules of grammar we use it for the same purpose. To present accurate context in our sentences so others do not get confused. As a class we gained insight on how children are very impressionable because they pick up on the habits of the adults around them. This includes language, and if you teach a child more than one language the benefits lasts a lifetime.
I was impressed by Fromkin and the class breaking down the six characteristics of language. However, what really opened my eyes was how she made a connection between words and the 5 senses of the body. On page 7 she related words beginning with gl to sight. For example, she used glare glossy, and glaze are all words attributed to sight in different context. It got me thinking about how the beginning of words can relate to the five senses. For example, words that start with ch can be things you can feel. Chimney, chromium, chlorine.
Jaclyn Valentin
Fromkinās An Introduction to Language, expanded on the dynamics of language. The phenomenon of sound conversion to create words never occurred to me until I read the first page. Language has been a means to survival for so long. It was understood that the possession of language can express wants and needs. The text explains how language comprehension is also a natural instinct. My appreciation of language usually comes to life when I learn a new word along with its meaning. It not only builds my vocabulary but it stimulates my brain. Growing up around Spanish speaking relatives, I am able to understand the meaning and correct pronunciation of Spanish words. Yet in school, I was not in a bilingual class. I was strictly taught English. As well as speaking only in English. Learning Spanish was done sparingly. When I spoke to my grandparents, I would mostly reply in English and they would talk to me in Spanish. Communication was never an issue. We maintained interesting conversations. My grandmother could speak about novelas as my grandfather could speak about wrestling. When my friends would come over, they could not understand the flow of our discussions. It was a spectacle performance to them. They would often ask āhow you do that?ā At first, I lacked the understanding that not everyone communicates between two languages. Yet this was normal to me.
According to our class discussion, language is the use of sounds and signs to signify meaning. It is also important to understand the sounds produced by others. Conversations with my grandparents could seem like speech errors to others. Yet if we were able to understand each other, it fits the description of language. We always understood the sounds and the meanings behind each others words. I was more comfortable speaking in English while my grandparents found the ease in speaking Spanish.
In addition to class discussion, we were introduced to the six characteristics of language which included speech production and speech processing that occurs in our brain. The first characteristic is the universality of language. Language is used by everyone no matter what tongue is used. Whether you live in the United States or Antarctica, some form of language is used. The complexity of language is another characteristic in which each form is complex and expresses equal power. An interesting characteristic of language is the use of arbitrariness. This is when the sound of the word has no real connection to its meaning. For example, why is a fish a fish and not a bomchickawowow? A unique characteristic of language also includes infinite meanings with finite signs. In the English language, there are 50 different sounds yet only 26 letters. The number of combinations to create a dialogue can go on forever. Grammar is one characteristic that was always drilled in my head. Constantly using both English and Spanish to speak to my grandparents became an habit. In school, I was made to focus on English constantly. I needed to detect the differences to ensure that people who only spoke English could understand me. Overtime, I began forgetting Spanish words. It is important to maintain language skills to avoid occurrences like this. The last characteristic is the evolution of words. Meanings of words change constantly as well as new words being introduced. Ultimately, language is a complex concept as well as an interesting one.
An Introduction to Language; Fromkin gave a very detailed outline of how we as humans use language. For humans itās easier because according to Fromkin, it is an instinct done out of knowledge without thinking, otherwise known as mental grammar. As opposed to babies, they are taught how to speak from their parent depending on the language that they are being spoken to. Like for example, I am a substitute and have been working with young children for a couple years now. Some children that do not have any hispanic background have picked up a few spanish words because of certain activities that we have done with them. I did find interesting how Fromkin explained the way animals use language. Even though we are aware that they do not speak nor think, animals still have a very unique way in order to communicate with one another. While reading, Fromkin introduced the American Sign Language (ASL). I remember trying to teach myself sign language and many say it is both easy or difficult, depending on the person. However, in the lecture I was intrigued by our brain elasticity and how the brain over time tries to remember events that have happened in the past. The brain is a fascinating tool in our bodies that is remarkable.
An introduction to language published by Fromkin elaborates the details inside of the language characteristics; those fundamental characteristics are the structure of the language definition. It’s a source of human life and system; it also refines humanity itself. The passage connects with the consensus of different language express capabilities to signification, arbitrariness to the importance of grammar and elasticity with our brain ultimately.
Languages contain six different characteristics. All languages have equal expressive abilities to communicate. The signification is the term to rewind the word with an image in our mind, but there is no relation between the reference and the language used to refer them. However, that isn’t the case for Mandarin from my own experiences. In words of Chinese, you can see through the words which look similar to the reference itself even though you haven’t learned. For instance, these mountain (å±±) and three (äø) Chinese words seem identical to the object itself. You can see how does the letter structures out the image of the object or the reference to signify. Grammar plays a massive role in the language structure. All languages have a grammar to connect people to take a next step of deciphering meaning from new sentences. Grammar can be the regulation of the language structure, but we can use languages to interpret our meaning without grammar. All words have a common point; it upgrades all the time, it involves cultural diffusion, fast forward society, and idioms. In class, we discussed how children learn new languages more efficient compared to adults. When the brain structure Wernicke and Broca gets developed over a long-term, it will reshape our language learning ability. Therefore, it’s hard to learn a new fluent language afterward.
In the essay, An Introduction to Language, we see a vast array of parts pertaining to language being discussed. One of the parts that stuck out to me was the creativity of linguistic knowledge. We all have the capability to form a litany of sentences from an even bigger selection of words however which way we want. Weāll almost always be forming or viewing new sentences, since the options to construct them are more or less limitless. The only thing holding us back is our creativity with language. So it doesnāt seem to far off to say that the more intellectually inclined one is, the more creatively the sentences and their complexity becomes. Another part that stuck out to me was perspective grammar. With perspective grammar , there’s the evident example of language evolving with culture. With this evolution, a lot of words that previously only held one usage become broadened to conform to the evolution of said cultureās language. This was a point raised during the lecture where language evolves, and words and their meanings change. In the essay we see how perspective grammar gave rise to the prestige dialect, a perfect example of language evolving. In this case, though, prestige dialect was used as a means to draw a clear line between classes. An interesting thing we discussed during the lecture was infinite meaning āfinite sounds.ā It astounds me how with only 44 sounds, in English, we can form hundreds upon hundreds of words and an infinite amount of sentences from them.
Upon reading Victoria Fromkinās, āAn Introduction to Languageā, I have learned that there is more to language than we know as well as grammar. Not once have I stopped and asked what is language? In class, the definition of language that was given to us is ālanguage is a system of speech and a mutual understanding of that speech by others who use that language.ā It is a system of communication that we use when we talk to our families, our friends, when we argue, etc. āWherever humans exist, language exists.ā Language does not only include words, but includes āa finite set of discrete sounds or gestures that are combined to form meaningful elements or words, which themselves may be combined to form an infinite set of possible sentences.ā The reading also goes in depth about grammar and how it can be used in different ways. The first is called descriptive grammar, where it describes your basic linguistic knowledge. It describes the possibility of how we can speak and understand, and what we know about sounds, words, phrases, and sentences of our language. You have mental grammar where grammar is stored in our brain where it allows us to produce language that others can understand. When someone tries to establish how your grammar should be, that is called prescriptive grammar. āIt prescribes. It does not describe, except incidentally.ā The chapter goes on talking about teaching grammars which are written to help people learn a different language or dialect of their own language. Something new and interesting I learned in class were the 6 characters of language and where in our brains language is being processed. You have the Wernicke which is the language input and you have the Broca which is the language output.
Victoria Fromkin was a linguist who was educated at the University of California in Los Angeles, and later got the opportunity to teach there as well. In her contribution of “An Introduction of Language,ā she discusses the complex question: What is language? Fromkin goes on to speaking about several aspects of language. She starts off by stating that even a five year old holds the capacity and proficiency to speak and understand language like their parents do, but aren’t capable of the level of conversation that their parents might have. She also mentions that “deaf persons produce and understand sign language just as hearing persons produce and understand spoken languages.” Now, this is interesting because it was discussed in class that āā¦by knowing a language, you have the capacity to produce sounds that has certain meanings and understanding to interpret the sounds by others.ā Since deaf people cannot hear the sounds that many of us can, they have their own āspokenā language. They use their body parts such as their hands, and their facial appearance to make gestures. This is very interesting because they do not communicate with sounds. Instead, they work with what they have. In a way, this is very universal and complex. Everyone in the world has reacted facially to something, whether itās something good they heard or something bad they heard. If you think about it, facial expressions are another way of language. We can communicate across a classroom with just a blink of an eye or a raise of an eyebrow. Although, this does have some negative effects to it. There is no grammar when we facially communicate, and there could be infinite signs to a raise of an eyebrow or blink of an eye. As discussed in class though, there is a general agreement we share over given signs of language.
Language is a system of speech and mutual understanding of that speech by others who use that same language. Basically by knowing language you have the capacity to produce sounds that signify certain meaning and you have the ability to understand or interpret the sounds of others. As we learned from our lecture and reading, āAn Introduction to Language by Victoria Fromkinā By Victoria Fromkin, language has six defining characteristics. The first one being that language is universal. All humans have language. According to the philosophy expressed in the myths and religions of many peoples, languages is the source of human life and power. A second characteristic of all language is complexity. All languages are equally complex amd have equal expressive power. No language is inferior to any other language. A Third component of language is the pure arbitrariness of it. The connection between signifiers and the things they signify is completely random. There is no real connection between a word and the thing or concept that it represents. In Shakespeareās Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says:
Whatās in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Sounds of words are given meaning only by the language in which they occur. You could call a rose a Savan, yelsh, or a whosahasit. The sound is irrelevant to what it represents. Language has infinite meanings but a finite amount of sounds. There is only about fifty meaningless sounds that when put together form words and those words can form sentences which in turn have an infinite amount of meanings. A fifth characteristic of language is grammar. All languages have a certain grammar or code that their users understand. Using that grammar they are able to create and decipher meaning from sentence constructions and form new sentence constructions. The final defining characteristic of language is change. All language changes in the course of time and words change meaning.
Humans are consistently communicating, whether it be through spoken word, our devices, or formal writing. It is part of our humanity to do so, not only for our mental wellbeing but for our survival. These few pages have given me a deeper appreciation to language as a whole. The textbook was so fascinating, I loved seeing the difference in how people speak, pronounce and use grammar based on where they lived. I have to give major props to the Author for the intriguing text, quotes, and illustrations that made the pages a pleasant reading experience. The information was consistently relevant and eye-opening, definitely giving me a broader understanding of linguistic language and how people wrote and speak. I never dedicated thinking about how different cultures process grammar, or the development of the human brain in language (which in itself was intriguing). The development of Language in Children was my favorite example of how a human can unconsciously installed some form of communication/language from their environment. It definitely gave me a deeper understanding of language acquisition that I didnāt know existed or bothered to analyze. The pages were easy to follow, and the author did a great job of covering grammar (syntax, semantics, morphology), giving me an opportunity to do a real-world connection with the text. I quickly realized how coding is so similar to language, it in itself is a form of human language that follows the same universal guidelines and procedures. If we didn’t communicate or comprehend each other, there would not be anything separating us from being newborn babies or animals. The survival of our species is dependent merely on language. As, someone who as a child, had a speech impairment, I can first hand advocate the difficulty of survival and life in general without the ability of communication.
I just noticed a major grammar error. Instead of consistently, it was meant to be constantly, flew right by me. It won’t let me edit my comment.
Victoria Fromkin was a professor of linguistics and language who both graduated from and taught at UCLA. Her research into the mind, our mental dictionaries, our lexicons, how we perceive and store information, speech errors and mistakes as well as aphasic language informed her teaching and writing on linguistics. Her piece entitled, āAn Introduction to Languageā delves into human language, what it is, what makes it unique to us as a species as well as what is universal in all languages. She discusses the elasticity of the brain, especially in children: they are able to learn (multiple) languages very easily and do so in the much the same ways whether that language is Farsi, English or ASL, e.g. Conversely, if children do not receive adequate stimuli to Brocaās area (where grammatical speech production occurs) and Wernickeās region (where language comprehension occurs) when they are growing, they will never be master language and grammar as those parts of the brain will atrophy and never be able to make those synaptic connections/maps. Adults are still capable of learning new languages and should try to do so to keep their brains active and stimulated; still, the āteaching grammarā used to learn another language is not as easily acquired as in the brain of a child. Human language is unique to humans; animals, while they might be able to repeat language or understand a verbal command, do not have the capacity to create and understand language as we do; however, our language is not necessarily superior to that of other animals- it is just different. Speech and the mutual understanding of speech by others who use our language is fundamental to language; moreover, we must be able to understand sound systems and that certain sound sequences signify certain concepts or meanings to be able to master language and to understand and interpret othersā language.
We discussed six characteristics of language in class. One is that language is universal: all humans use language. The second is that all languages are equally complex and have equal expressive power (there are no āprimitiveā languages). Third is that language is inherently arbitrary: that the connection between a word (the āsignifierā) and the sound it makes (the āsignifiedā) is totally arbitrary until we assign a meaning to it. Signification is how a sound or word signifies something tangible or creates meaning out of an abstract concept. Fourth is that in language, there can be infinite meanings out of a group of finite signs; e.g. there are about 50 finite sounds in English but may be grouped into words to form an infinite number and length of sentences. The fifth characteristic is that of grammar: all languages have a grammar that their users create and understand in order to create and decipher meaning from sentence construction as well as to create sentence constructions. This includes mental grammar, what is in our minds, as well as descriptive grammar, our linguistic capacity. Lastly, all languages are malleable and change over time.
Jessica L. Roman
ENG 1710
2/8/2018
Chapter one of Dr. Virginia Fromkin’s work, “An Introduction to Language”, breaks down the units of language and explores why and how it is the great divider of human and animal communication. Language is a system of speech and interpretation of that speech by any who use the same language. The basal of spoken language are sounds. There are six main characteristic of language: it is universally used by all people, all forms of human language are equally complex and capable of expression, the relationship between the sounds that form words and their meaning are fabricated in every language, there are limited number of sounds and signs but with them we are able to create an unending variety of sentences, all languages have rules that their speakers understand and can interpret meaning from, and lastly all languages change over time.
Knowing a language means being able to produce and understand new sentences. Three unique facets of human language that allow this are creativity, displacement and discreteness. Creativity allows us to understand novel speech or works, such as Lewis Carrollās Jabberwocky, even though it is comprised of nonsense words. Interestingly enough some words have been adopted over time. This further demonstrates the characteristics that language is always changing. One could also posit the development and acceptance of prescriptive grammar could be one of these evolutions: instead of language existing as something to create community, it was changed to create division.
One of the most interesting parts of this chapter is how we all attain language in the same manner and we use our own language grammar to learn or teach different languages. Universal grammar is part of what allows us as children to have such an innate capacity for language. As children we all learn language the same way, through exposure no matter if it is through vocal speech or gestural signs. Even more amazing is that during the development of language children of either modality go through the same stages, such as babbling.
Humans have a biological capacity for language, unlike writing it is innate. The areas of the brain responsible for language, the Broca area and Wernicke region govern our capacity for grammatical speech production and comprehension. Feral children, as we discussed in class, are one of the few exceptions to language development in humans. If there is no exposure to language as children the language centers of the brain essentially ādry upā and lose the capacity to use and understand grammatical language.
The chapter ends with discussions how language might influence our thought. Even though the hypotheses presented have been largely weakened this section offered some interesting information, particularly in regards to how words can be gendered. This is something I struggle with as someone of Hispanic descent who is trying to learn Spanish in her 30ās. As I continue to try to develop my communication and increase my vocabulary I constantly mix up the gender marking for a word because gendered of words is not part of my mental grammar.
In todayās class, we talked about Victoria Fromkinsā and her writing. She was a writer and also studied linguisticsā. She was interested in studying the human brain. The ability to process language and how humans remember words that they learn. āIntroduction to Languageā by Fromkin was the reading for todayās class. The writing explained what really language is and how sign language can be classified on the same level as spoken language. She explained that knowing language people can produce sounds that have meaning which later can be interpreted by others. What was interesting to me from the reading was when she mentioned that when we know language and we see an image we are able to refer to what this image is automatically. How the word is the āsignifierā and the image is āsignifiedā, which gives us āsignificationā. Signification refers to the connection between the thing that we are seeing and the sound.
In addition, in class we also talked about the six characteristics of language. The universality which all means that all people use some type of a language. The complexity meaning that all languages are equally complex and have the same expressive powers. The arbitrariness which was defined as the connection between the signified and signified is arbitrary and that there is no connection between sound and image. The fourth characteristic was the infinite meanings, finite site making the language be finite. The fifth was of course grammar, which is important because all languages have grammar, we need grammar to create out sentences. And last but not least, all languages change over time, whether we like it or not there is always change. New words come up or the usage of old words decreases, all languages evolve and change.
ENG 1710
From the Fromkinchās reading I found the section on Animal “languages” because it reminded me of when I was studying in Anthropology and Linguistics. Fromkinch explains in this section that animals can pick up on phrases and some auditory cues from human language, however they can not grasp the meanings of the words and phrases. She further states that birds that can mimic the human language canāt comprehend what they’re saying. My Linguistics class had spent an amount of time discussing why language and communication aren’t mutually exclusive. We debated whether or not the communication amongst animals could actually be more complex than our system of speech. With the section ā āTalkingā Parrotā sparking the idea to potentially debate whether or not animals can understand language or if they have an understanding of a language of their own which we do not comprehend. āThis is more than simple imitation, but it is not how children acquire the complexities of the grammar of any language. It is more like a dog learning to associate certain sounds with meanings, such as heel, sit, fetch, and so on.ā The previous line made me question the similarities of an anime learning to associate sounds with meanings to that of a human adult learning a new language, as discussed in class. Because learning a new language is essentially associating new sounds to words you are familiar with, without necessarily grasping the grammatical rules of the language. For after all learning that new language is not instantaneous. I would like to further examine the dual perspective of whether or not animals can understand and use language, because if it is rather the grammar system they cannot grasp but can understand words. This question then it brings me to incorporate another work by Ted Chiang āStory of Your Lifeā in which it is questioned whether Language necessarily needs to be Sequentially or Teleology. The Fromkinch reading is great for sparking ideas for further study and potential debate.
Victoria Fromkin`s āAn Introduction to Languageā showed just how complicated language and how unique they are. For example, not all language is spoken through the mouth, there are special languages like sign languages that help Deaf people understand and communicate with us and one and other. Fromkin also says that the chirping of birds, dancing of bees, etc is not language. However, animals that imitate human speech also donāt speak a language. I found this interesting because they say the same words as we do but they carry no meaning, theyāre just simple imitations. One more thing I found interesting is her 12 facts on language toward the end. They were highlighted a lot of what she said, and we even discussed some of them in our notes
In class we learned that all humans use language and where thereās people thereās language. Fromkin said that there are no primitive languages and in class we learned that each language is equally complex and equally powerful. All languages have a grammar that the users could decipher and use to create sentences. One thing that fromkin said that I found interesting that I donāt think we covered in class was any child born anywhere from any dissent can learn any language if he/she chooses so. Also, the biggest I feel we covered in class was the fact that all languages change over time, new words with different meanings and old words meaning something new. I really enjoyed this classes reading because it gave me a new insight on language and now I feel like learning a second language isnāt just learning a second language any more, its opening new doors
TO: Professor Jason Ellis
FROM: Ronald C. Hinds
DATE: February 08, 2018
SUBJECT: Summary of āAn Introduction to Languageā
All humans use language to communicate and this differentiates us from others in the animal kingdom. This technology, language, which is used for the transmission of information and data, changes over generations. The deaf and hearing impaired use sign language and facial gestures to communicate and, like the spoken language, āsigningā changes over time. The English language has approximately fifty (50) sounds and/or gestures but all languages possess these which, when combined with meanings, may be mutually shared to form an infinite set of possible sentences. Language, therefore, can be described as a system that relates sounds and gestures to meanings. Homo sapiens, who know a particular language, can use dexterity to create new sentences when communicating and also have the ability to understand new sentences that others create.
Languages have a grammar which, once its relevance users understand, can inculcate and decipher meanings via the rubric of sentence construction. The way that words are ordered in a given sentence governs the meaning that the speaker wants to convey. This applies to English, French, Greek, Russian and all other languages; they are all complex, but not archaic, and can be equally used to express knowledge and convey data. French is the lingua franca of cuisine. English is the worldās lingua franca but this designation does not mean that it is superior to other languages. Thatās why I found it pretty galling when backward chauvinist bosses, at my former place of work, ordered foreign born workers to speak English only.
While a grammatical category, whether nouns or verbs, is found in all languages, another distinctive similarity of languages is that the connection between words and objects is arbitrary. But all of these rules are taken in stride by children who are excellent language learners and seem to have an āinnate blueprintā for language. Linguists are really interested in these remarkable cognitive achievements that allow children to excel.
Except for Doctor Doolittle, humans cannot communicate with animals. Dogs can obey commands, parrots can recite words after repetition and reinforcement but humans can use linguistic knowledge creatively rather than exclusively in response to external stimuli. An exhibit at the 1967 Expo, held in Quebec, Canada was pulled by the Guyana ambassador to Canada. The offending party was a macaw called Millie who swore in both English and French to the embarrassment of the Guyanese officials. Millie was unceremoniously deported to Guyana.
It seems that, and I am included, many people refrain from speaking on the telephone. Texting appears to be the new way that we ātalkā to each other on the telephone.
Reference
Fromkin, V., Rodman R., & Hyams (2003). What is language? An introduction to language (pp. 3-28). Downloaded on February 06, 2018 from
Key words
Arbitrary
Linguistic
Onomatopoeic
Phonology
Victoria Fromkin in chapter one of her book āAn Introduction to Languageā explain what is language. Chapter one started by stating that all human use language and everybody knows at least one language. By knowing a language we learn words and we connect the sound of those words to represented the meaning for each of them. Furthermore, knowing a language allows you to connect those word and form phrases and those phrases to sentences. Grammar is mentioned as well. Grammar shows how much we know a language. In class we discussed this chapter and learned a little more about language and its importance. We learned that language at an early age is beneficial for memory and to help with dementia and Alzheimer. Also, we learn a little more about Victoria Fromkin. We learned that she was a professor at UCLA and studied the brain language, slip of tongue, mishearing and the speech errors. We saw York, the skull, to learn about the front lope, the brain CEO. We saw York Broca and Wernicke part of the brain. These are the areas for language. Broca is the area for language output and Wernicke is the area for language input. If language is not introduced at an early age, the Broca and Wernicke areas donāt develop. We learned that the Plasticity of the brain is the ability of the brain to change throughout. Also, we learned about the signification; the signifier and signified. The Signifier is the word we use for a thing and the signified is the thing. We used the example of the word āTreeā as the signifier and the drawing of a tree and the signified.
In Victoria Fromkinās āIntroduction to Languageā we learn the importance of studying language and linguistics. Language allows people to use a system of speech and gestures to share common understanding and be able to communicate. She even mentions how in some cultures, a baby who has yet to learn how to speak is referred to as a āitā and is considered a human only after they learn how to communicate. Language has six keys of characteristics which include universality, complexity, arbitrariness, infinite meanings and signs, grammar, and change. Each one of these keys play a crucial role in explaining what language is and understanding it.
All humans interact using language, whether it be English, Korean, or Spanish. However, many bilinguals will agree the fact that not one language is more complex than another. Each language uses their own grammar and therefore may also have some cultural differences in the way we speak or use gesture. Grammar also helps a person to detect a language that they may not speak. Fromkin mentions how there are a finite number of 50 sounds we can make but an infinite number of sentences that can be made from those sounds. As we also discussed in class, children seem to be more absorbent when it comes to learning a new language which is why Iām thankful that my parents never stopped speaking to me in Korean as a child even after we immigrated to America from Korea. From cool new phrases to confusing new slangs, we cannot change the fact that language will continue to evolve over time. Every human being who uses language are living proof.
Tyne Hazel
En1710
Professor Ellis
After Class Writing: Fromkin, An Introduction to Language
After reading āAn Introduction to Languageā by Fromkin I always knew but never realized how prominent language is throughout the world although language is just sounds that signify certain meanings. Language is defined as a system of speech and mutual understanding of that speech by other who use that language. Language is universal, everyone(mostly) speaks a language. Said language is complex, all are and have a equal expressive power. Itās arbitrary. There is no necessary connection between the sound and the thing itself, nor concept. Itās a connection between the signifier and signified. An infinite number of finite sounds make infinite meanings. All languages have grammar that their users understand to create and decipher meanings from sentence construction to creating sentence construction. All language endure change and evolve overtime.
Language is a utensil for all. Like how a deaf person produce and to sign language, a blind person resorts to brail, even a lie detector resorts to boy demeanor, which isnāt a verbal language but more of a physical one. Itās interesting how natives in African tribes donāt consider infant as human until they actually learn a language. Itās also uncanny knowing, āfive-year-old children are nearly as proficient a speaking and understanding as their parents. Yet the ability to carry out the simplest conversation requires profound knowledge that most speakers are unaware of.ā Kids would be able to carry out conversations like full grown adult if they didnāt the lack the vocabulary, the correct terms of conversation. Fromkin basically means everything stems down to linguistics, how people write and how people perceive the writing and how people process language. We perceive, take note and store the language in our brains unconsciously.
Tyne Hazel
En1710
Professor Ellis
After Class Writing: Fromkin, An Introduction to Language
After reading āAn Introduction to Languageā by Fromkin I always knew but never realized how prominent language is throughout the world although language is just sounds that signify certain meanings. Language is defined as a system of speech and mutual understanding of that speech by other who use that language. Language is universal, everyone(mostly) speaks a language. Said language is complex, all are and have a equal expressive power. Itās arbitrary. There is no necessary connection between the sound and the thing itself, nor concept. Itās a connection between the signifier and signified. An infinite number of finite sounds make infinite meanings. All languages have grammar that their users understand to create and decipher meanings from sentence construction to creating sentence construction. All language endure change and evolve overtime.
Language is a utensil for all. Like how a deaf person produce and to sign language, a blind person resorts to brail, even a lie detector resorts to boy demeanor, which isnāt a verbal language but more of a physical one. Itās interesting how natives in African tribes donāt consider infant as human until they actually learn a language. Itās also uncanny knowing, āfive-year-old children are nearly as proficient a speaking and understanding as their parents. Yet the ability to carry out the simplest conversation requires profound knowledge that most speakers are unaware of.ā Kids would be able to carry out conversations like full grown adult if they didnāt the lack the vocabulary, the correct terms of conversation. Fromkin basically means everything stems down to linguistics, how people write and how people perceive the writing and how people process language. We perceive, take note and store the language in our brains unconsciously.