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September 12, 2005
What is language?
First off, chapter one was very interesting and definitely broadened my idea of what language truly is. Language is the source of life and power. Language is the ability to communicate (speak) and be understood by others that know the language. This means that we have the capacity to produce sounds that signify certain meanings and to understand or interpret the sounds produced by others. Part of this interpretation of sounds has to do with the sound system and being able to differentiate the sounds that are produced in our own language. This is an unconscious knowledge and is evident in the way Americans pronounce some foreign words with English sounds (instead of French, for example). There are also some things that do not qualify as language. For example, most animals do not have language skills but have some sort of "signaling" communication system which is basically a limited and fixed response to both internal and external stimuli. Since there is usually only one meaning in the gestural languages of animals, it is not language.
It is more probable to say that a new word was learned because we are constantly learning new words and implementing them into our vocabulary. Also, according to the text, we have all the tools we need to create sentences although we may not always hear or use them. Knowing a language means being able to produce and understand new sentences that have never been heard before. The linguistic capabilities of the brain is expansive, and the knowledge enables us to combine words from our vocabulary to form phrases and vice versa.
Posted by lcissearls at September 12, 2005 10:34 PM