Language: We Are What We Speak

1. Language: We Are What We Speak “Language is the clearest evidence we have of the mind that exists within us.”

2. Edward Sapir… “…the “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The world in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.” Ludwig Wittgenstein… “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

3. Language is a completely symbolic system. There is no necessary connection between a sound (word) and the concept signified: different languages have different words (or sounds) for the same concepts. The !Kung San of South Africa and Botswana have 18 different varieties of clicks which have meaning in their language. It is almost impossible for a speaker of another language to hear the difference in the tone of the click sounds. San language Thinking is done with concepts or ideas. But ideas do not exist readymade before words – the words and the concepts coincide. Words unite “not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (Saussure, 1959). Not only does this challenge our commensense belief that words mean things, but also it should remind us that words are composed not of letters but of sounds.

4. The Sound and Shape of Language Phonology – study of sounds used in speech. In order to analyse any new language, an inventory of all its sounds and an accurate way of writing them down are needed. Phonological analysis would determine which sounds (phones) were present in the language being studied. Morphology – the study of meaningful sound sequences and the rules by which they are formed (study of how sounds combine to form morphemes) The word ‘cat’ has two morphemes ‘cat’ and ‘s’ Grammatical rules tell us which to use in what context we wish to use the word. “cats” not “scat”

5. How is language structured? How do we put sounds together to form meaningful statements? Phoneme - "the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances.“

6. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.

7. Deep structure - - - - - - - - -surface structure Phonosyntactics…how language uses phonemes to produce minimal meaningful units of sound. Morphosyntactics…uses phonemic minimal pairs and arranges them into meaningful parts of words. Sentential syntactics…arranges parts of words and words into meaningful phrases and sentences. Basic to this is understanding is the notion of language as structured (langue) and as spoken (parole).

8. Phonetics, phonemics…terms used in anthropological linguistics. Phonetics is concerned with speech and phonemics is concerned with underlying speech or rules of speech. Two anthropological terms are derived from these …emic and etic. …Etic approach in anthropology is observer-oriented; the anthropologists interpretations. …Emic approach is actor-oriented; the informants/speakers meanings.

9. Transformational-generative grammar… • Noam Chomsky “Syntactic Structures” (1959) • A language is more than surface phenomena (sounds, words, and word order) • The human brain contains a genetically transmitted blueprint, a basic linguistic plan, for building language a universal grammar • There is an inborn human language, which consists of a set of grammatical rules –universal grammar- that do not have to be learned and that guide children’s discovery and mastery of the grammar to which they are exposed at the proper time in their lives.

10. Children around the world show little variation in the rate at which they develop linguistic competence… 1. normal children learn language without formal instruction, for there is no one who is capable of teaching them which of all possible phonemes their language uses, nor the rules for how these phonemes can be combined into meaningful morphemes and sentences. 2. learn language in a remarkably short period of time that varies surprisingly little from language to language 3. learn language almost regardless of how ell they perform other mental tasks 4. Learn language by a process of deduction rather than by imitation and memorization Chomsky – universal grammar is the inherited genetic endowment that makes it possible for us to speak and learn human langauges.

11. Language, Culture and Reality… • Language (and culture) is what mediates between us and the world or ‘reality’; in other words, perception is not direct but always mediated. This is as true of the empirical sciences as it is for ordinary everyday perception. • “Observation has become almost entirely indirect; and readings take the place of genuine witness. The sense-data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. These data are empirical enough, but of course they are not themselves the phenomenon in question; the actual phenomenon stand behind them as their supposed causes.”

12. Different languages are different conceptual systems, and have characteristic ways of interpreting and expressing things which consequently have an impact on culture. Language enables the creation of a world to live in, that is, a culture.