UNDERSTANDING LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGEDefinition Of

Language

Communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary sounds in conventional ways with conventional meanings.

It is also the system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract ( as opposed to speech).

It is any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another.

Also any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures conceived as a meaning of communicating thought, emotion,

Concept Of Language

Transformational Genetive Grammara theory developed by Noam Chomsky contains the idea that a sentence has

two meanings within it.

The two include a deep structure and a surface

structure.

He believed that language did not have the same deep structure in all languages but rather languages had

similarities of structure.

In the 1990s, Chomsky suggested that sentence

structure included Logical Form and Phonetic Form.

This help children understand that speech can come in the form of writing.

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS Communication is a process of exchanging verbal and non verbal messages. It is a continuous process. Communication is a two way process and is incomplete without a feedback from

the recipient to the sender on how well the message is understood by him.

COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATION PROCESS

1. Context - Every communication proceeds with context

- This context may be physical, social, chronological or cultural.

- The sender chooses the message to communicate within a context.

2. Sender / Encoder - The Sender / Encoder is a person who sends the message.

- A sender makes use of symbols (words or graphic or visual aids) to convey

the message and produce the required response.

- Sender may be an individual or a group or an organization.

3. Message - Message is a key idea that the sender wants to communicate.

- Communication process begins with deciding about the message to be

conveyed.

- It must be ensured that the main objective of the message is clear.

4. Medium - Medium is used to exchange / transmit the message.

- The sender must choose an appropriate medium for transmitting the message

else the message might not be conveyed to the desired recipients.

- The choice of appropriate medium of communication is essential for making the

message effective and correctly interpreted by the recipient.

5. Recipient / Decoder - Recipient / Decoder is a person for whom the message is intended / aimed /

targeted.

- The degree which message the decoder can understands is dependent upon

various factors such as knowledge of recipient, their responsiveness to the message, and the reliance of encoder on decoder.

6. Feedback - Feedback is the main component of communication process as it permits the

sender to analyze the efficacy of the message.

- It helps the sender in confirming the correct interpretation of message by the decoder

Components of language

• Human language involves both receptive and productive use

Receptive language use occurs during the comprehension or understanding of words and sentences.

Productive language use involves idea generation and the articulation of words in speech.

Semantics

The system of meanings that are expressed by words and phrases.

Semantics refers to the ways in which a language conveys meaning.

each new word is a major learning task for children

Phonology

The system of the sound segments that humans use to build up words.

Each language has a different set of these segments or phonemes, and children quickly come to recognize and then produce the speech segments that are characteristic of their native language

Morphology

Moving to the next level of language, we find the study of the smallest units of meaning, morphemes.

Morphemes include base words, such as “hat,” “dog,” or “love,” as well as affixes, such as “un-,” “re-,” the plural “s” or “es,” and the past tense “ed.”

Knowledge of the morphology of our language is critical to vocabulary development and reflects the smallest building blocks for comprehension.

Syntax

The study of how individual words and their most basic meaningful units are combined to create sentences is known as syntax. As words are grouped together when we communicate, we must follow the rules of grammar for our language, in other words, its syntax. It is the knowledge of syntax that allows us to recognize that the following two sentences, while containing different word order and levels of complexity, have the same meaning. The boy hit the ball.The ball was hit by the boy. Syntax also allows us to accept “I went to the store” as a meaningful (grammatical) sentence while “To store went I” would not be acceptable English.

Pragmatics

The system of patterns that determine how humans can use language in particular social settings for particular conversational purposes.

Children learn that conversations customarily begin with a greeting, require turn taking, and concern a shared topic.

They come to adjust the content of their communications to match their listener's interests, knowledge, and language ability.

“‘Pragmatics’ refers to the ways the members of the speech community achieve their goals using language.” The way we speak to our parents is not the same as the way we interact.

Factors affecting language learning /

acquisition

Internal factors

Externall factors

Age

Personality

Motivation

Experiences

Cognition

Native language

Internal factors

External factors

Curriculum

Instruction

Culture and statusMotivation

Access to native

speakers