An overview of the first four chapters

Chapter 1 Linguistics is the scientific study of language. “What makes a field a science is if it involves constructing theories that make testable predictions, and then testing those predictions and revising the theory if the predictions turned out to be wrong. Linguistics is a science.” What gives science its main character are the principles of objectivity, observation and experimenting. Linguistics utilizes those principles.

Chapter 1 Human language It is language that makes the human being a possible creature.For many Africans a newborn is a KINTU “thing”. It is not yet MUNTU “a person” until he/she talks. This means that it is language that gives a human his sane existence.

Chapter 1 The relation between sounds and meanings is not natural or straightforward. The relation is rather arbitrary. So that there is no relation between the word D O G in English, for instance, and this four-legged canine creature. “Animal languages in a sense have a limited list of ‘words’, like those Konrad Lorenz found in crows. In animal communication, a ‘word’ is an entity of its own. Each of the monkeys’ cries has a distinctive meaning, ‘snake’, ‘eagle’, and so on.

Chapter 1 They cannot be decomposed into a small set of meaningless components like phonemes. Animals have a dictionary consisting of a limited number of signs Creativity of the human language means the ability to invent combinations of words that you might not have heard before. It has been believed for long that a child acquires language only through imitation

Chapter 1 Origin of the Language According to Islamic, Jeudo-Christian view God gave Adam the power to name all things. Many myths believe that language is the gift of some gods, Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians Indians. James IV of Scotland replicated the same experiment and it was believed the language spoken by children is Hebrew.

Chapter 1 According to the Greeks (Socrates) there must have been a legislator who gave things their names and that there was a relation between the words and their meanings.

Chapter2

Chapter 3 Phonology Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language. It is, in effect, based on a theory of what every speaker of a language unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language.

Phonology Each one of these meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme When we have a group of several phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we refer to them as allophones of that phoneme.

Phonology Phonemic distinctions in a language can be tested via pairs and sets of words. When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.

Phonology Phonotactics : This type of exercise involving minimal sets also allows us to see that there are definite patterns in the types of sound combinations permitted in a language. English, does not include forms such as pfz or spv.

Phonology Suprasegmental Features A syllable must contain a vowel (or vowel-like) sound. The most common type of syllable in language also has a consonant (C) before the vowel (V) and is typically represented as CV. Stress : extra Emphasis given to certain syllables. It is phonemic : subject –subject

Phonology Intonation and tone Intonation languages : only grammar changes Tone languages : change in meaning Types of tone : level and contour

Phonology Rules of phonology Dissimilation : diphthong-----dipthong Feature addition: Aspiration Segment deletion: French Petit livre---petit oiseau Movement : ask ----aks