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September 18, 2005
Language
What is and what is not language. Why make a distinction?
Language refers to the ability to express oneself in response to both internal and external stimuli and creatively, and is the means by which one can be understood by others who share the same language. As such we learn to recognize, understand and reproduce at will the building blocks that make meaning or that we associate with things and concepts, namely words/signs. We possess the ability to know how our language is constructed, how we string words/signs together to understand and communicate ideas and thoughts, always making new phrases and sentences depending on what we want to express.
Language is not a particular number of expressions or learnt responses that can be elicited only by stimuli either external or internal. While animals clearly communicate and display an often-unexpected ability to learn and comprehend, they do not posses language. They cannot, that we know of, take previously learnt expressions and combine them or develop them to express new ideas. They cannot learn the grammar or structure by which language is built and through which ever-changing thoughts and ideas are conveyed. There is therefore a distinction between this communication and the concept of language.
You might say that you learned a new word today, but not “I learned a new sentence today.” Why?
It is far more probable that someone would say they have learnt a new word. If indeed someone learns a whole sentence, perhaps to imitate a humorous movie character or a role model, they would still have memorized it by learning the combination of the words with which they associate certain meanings.
We associate meaning with words and thereby with sentences. We learn the rules or grammar of our language only once, after which we understand how to combine words into phrases and sentences and can do so without consciously thinking about it.
The beauty of language is that each individual chooses to combine different building blocks – words – to create sentences that express exactly what that person wishes to describe at that time. The ability to combine words into any number of sentences of any length gives us infinite possibilities especially because we are continually adding new words to our language and modifying existing ones.
~ Nanette Savides
Posted by lcissavides at September 18, 2005 05:40 PM
Comments
I thought you made a good point about how sometimes people do actually learn new sentences in the form of quoting a line from a movie, play, etc. Such an instance shows that it is not impossible to learn a new sentence, but it is only done when one makes a conscious effort to memorize the combination of words, as you said. We don't by any means go around in search of sentences to memorize, but it is important to not say that "it is impossible to learn a new sentence" because, as you pointed, out it can be done.
Posted by: Brenna S. at September 22, 2005 09:28 AM