Riri2

• LING 153: INTRODUCTION TO GENERAL LINGUISTICS
• Lecturer: Dr. (Mrs) Faleke Victoria Ogunnike
• Course Outline


  • Language and linguistics
  • Languages and Dialects
  • Modes of Linguistic Communication: speaking/writing/signing
  • The Aim of the Course
  • Course Objectives
  • The Origin of Language
• Language


  A purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols
• Linguistics


  The scientific study of language
• Language and linguistics have a relationship
• The origin of language: Babel to Babble
• Human language


  Three faces of a language system: mental, social, and physical
• Signs


  Arbitrary and non-arbitrary: arbitrary signs, representational signs, language- a system of arbitrary signs
• Languages


  Patterned structures: discreteness & duality
• Types of languages


  • Official language
  • Social dialects
  • Standard Variety
• There is no right and wrong English usage
• Animals do not have language, they communicate in their natural environment</b>
• Project Nim failed to teach a chimpanzee a human language
• The course aims to introduce students to linguistics as a scientific study of language
• The course objectives are to expose students to linguistics as a scientific discipline and explain the various domains of linguistics
• Speculations on the origin of language

  • The divine source
  • The natural-sound source
  • The oral-gesture source
  • Glossogenetics source
  • Physiological adaptation source
  • Interactions and transactions source
• Divine source


  Language is a gift that God bestowed on humanity
• Experiments to rediscover the original divine language failed
• Natural-sound source


  Primitive words could have been imitations of natural sounds
• Oral-gesture source


  Origins of language involve a link between physical gesture and orally produced sounds
• Glossogenetics


  Focuses on the biological basis of the formation and development of human language
• Physiological adaptations for speech

  • Upright posture and bipedal locomotion
  • Revised role for the front limbs
  • Reconstructed vocal tract of Neanderthal
  • Flexible lips and tongue
  • Lowered larynx
  • Lateralized brain
• Interactional function of language


  How humans use language to interact with each other socially and emotionally
• Transactional function of language

  How humans use language to communicate knowledge, skills and information
• All natural languages, either spoken or written, are considered languages
• Linguists are concerned primarily with natural languages
• Functions of language


  • To direct superfluous nervous energy
  • To direct motor activity
  • To communicate information
  • To influence the behaviour of others
  • To express the speaker's feelings and attitudes
  • To establish and maintain social relationships
• Linguistics is concerned primarily with natural languages
• What the linguist wants to know


  Whether all natural languages have something in common not shared by other systems of communication, human or non-human
• Task of the linguist describing a particular natural language


  Determine which finite sequences of elements are sentences and which are non-sentences
• Task of the theoretical linguist

  Discover the structural features that distinguish natural languages from non-natural languages
• There is no human society known to exist or to have existed at any time in the past without the capacity of speech
• Functions of language (Quirk 1968)

  • To direct superfluous nervous energy
  • To direct motion in others
  • To communicate ideas
  • To set matter in motion (as in charms and incantations)
  • To give delight merely as sound
  • As a means of expression
  • As an instrument of thinking
  • For the purpose of record
• Functions of language (Halliday 1970)

  • Ideational
  • Interpersonal
  • Textual
• Functions of language (Jakobson and Hymes)


  • Expressive/emotive
  • Directive/conative/persuasive
  • Poetic
  • Contact (physical or psychological)
  • Metalinguistic (focusing on meaning)
  • Referential
  • Contextual/situational
• Ideational function


  Language used to express the user's experience of the real world, including the inner world of their own consciousness
• Interpersonal function


  Language used to establish and maintain social relations, achieve social cohesion
• Textual function


  Language used to construct situationally relevant texts, establish cohesive relations between sentences in a discourse
• Expressive/emotive function


  Language used to express the speaker's inner feelings or state of mind