Language: Its Structure and Use (4^th Edition) by Edward Finegan

Part One: Language Structures

Part Two: Language Use

Part Three: Language Change, Language Development, and Language Acquisition

Chapter 1: Language and Linguistics

What is human language? Finegan (2004, p. 7-8)

Three faces of language: meaning, expression, context

Language: Mental and Social Finegan (2004, p. 8)

Language

Language is often viewed as a vehicle or thought, a system of expression that mediates the transfer of thought from one person to another. In everyday life, though, language also serves equally important social and emotional functions.

Linguists are interested in models of how language is organized in the mind and how the social structures of human communities shape language, reflecting those structures in expression and interpretation.

Language—A System of Arbitrary Signs

Despite occasional iconic characteristics, human language is basically and essentially arbitrary.

Language as Patterned Structures

If languages were not pattern to the way speakers voiced their thoughts and feelings, listeners would face an insurmountable task in trying to unravel arbitrary signs for the meaning they encode.

The observable patterns that languages follow are called “rules.”

The rules are based on the observable regularities of language behavior and the underlying linguistic systems that can be inferred from that behavior. They are the “rules” that even children have unconsciously acquired and use when they display mastery of their native tongue.

A language is a set of elements and a system for combining them into patterned expressions that can be used to accomplish specific tasks in specific contexts.

The mental capacity that enables speakers to form grammatical sentences is grammatical competence. It enables speakers to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences that they haven’t seen or heard before.

Discreteness

It is a structural feature of language that words are made up of element sounds.

Duality

Another characteristic is that human languages can be analyzed on two levels, one that carries meaning and one that does not. At the higher level, languages can be divided into meaningful units, into words such as bookshops and into meaningful word parts such as book and shop and the s that marks bookshops as plural. At the lower level, though, these meaningful units comprise elements or segments that do not carry meaning by itself, e.g. [b],[ u],[ k].

The Origin of Languages: Babel to Babble

Prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar

Linguists’ View about the Multiplicity of Languages

Linguists take the multiplicity of languages as resulting from national change over time, the inevitable product of reshaping speech to meet changing social and intellectual needs, reflecting contact with people speaking other languages.

As more languages are analyzed, what is more striking than the differences among them is the extent of their similarity. The differences are all too apparent, the similarities more subtle.

Languages and Dialects

A language can be thought of as a collection of dialects. Speakers of a language are separated by geographical or social distances.

Social Dialects

Language varieties differ across age groups, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic boundaries.

Different Dialects or Different Languages?

Whether two varieties are regarded as dialects of one language or as distinct languages is a social matter as much as a linguistic one.

What is a Standard Variety?

Typically, varieties that become standardized are the local dialects spoken in centers of commerce and government.

A standard variety does not differ in character from other varieties.

Is There a right and a Wrong in English Usage?

Because language relies essentially on arbitrary signs to accomplish its work, there is no justification for believing that there is only one right way of saying something. From a linguistic point of view, there is no basis for preferring the structure of one language variety over another.

Modes of Linguistic Communication

Speaking

The most common vehicle of linguistic communication is the voice, and speech is thus a primary mode of human language, with some advantages over other modes.

Writing

If icons come to be associated not with the objects they represent but with the words that refer to the objects, we have a more sophisticated system. Written representation becomes linguistic when it relies on language for its organization and communicative success.

Signing

There are two primary kinds of signing. One consists of spelling out words by “drawing” with the hands the shape of written signs (such as letters) that are used in writing to represent sounds. A common kind of signing is independent of the written and spoken word and can be used cross-linguistically, provided users understand the code.

Do Animals Have Language?

How do the forms of communication used by animals differ from human language?

How Animals Communicate in Their Natural Environment

Bees do not use their communicative system to convey anything beyond a limited range of meanings. The same lack of creativity characterizes communication between other animals. Whatever animals express through sounds seems to reflect not a logical sequence of thoughts but a sequence accompanying a series of emotional states. The communicative activities of most animals thus differ from human language in that they do not consist essentially of arbitrary signs.

Can Chimpanzees Learn a Human Language?

What is Linguistics?