TOPIC 1: NATURE OF LANGUAGE

Constituency and recursion

Recursion
*allows grammatical processes to be applied repeatedly
* expand a short sentence into longer sentences

eg: '''He was tall and strong and handsome and thoughtful and a good listener and…

'''consistuency'''

* Allowing more complex units to enter structures where simpler ones are also possible.

* For example, we can say, ‘she sat down,’ ‘the smart woman sat down

Discreteness

* The range of sounds that human beings can make is continuous.
* The uniqueness of the sounds used in human languages.
* Every language use a set of different sounds.

Human language and animal language

The differences pronunciation of alphabets between English and Indonesia

Arbitrariness

find what's important

Necessary connection between a word's meaning and its sound or form.

example

Example, in numbers as well. They sound different in different language, though they mean the same

Subtopic

Universal properties of language

Modularity

Branches in linguistic

Regions of brain and language processing

A set of components subsystems in a coordinated way

Chomsky's modularity hypothesis

variability

FACTORS - regional (geographical), ethnic (national and racial), and social (class, age, gender, socioeconomic status and education).

The English language varies on individual, regional, national and global levels.

Reliance on context

crucial property of languages

EXAMPLE : by saying “it is cold in here” could imply a complaint, a request to close a window or even a compliment .

interpreting the meaning of entire utterances

Build knowledge webs

Productivity

definition

* Known as open-endedness
* That can be used to produce new instances of the same type, which closely connected to word formation.