CRITICAL THINKING

Tutor/a: Cristian Felipe canon

Estudiante: lida xiemena bolaños anacona

Código: 1004269505

Grupo: 518017_62

Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia UNAD

Escuela Ciencias de la Educación

Licenciatura en lenguas extranjeras con enfasis en ingles

Introduction to linguistics

Pitalito- Huila

Febrero 2019
 ACTIVITIES TO DEVELOP

Task 1: individual activity

1. Read the following two documents “An Introduction to Linguistics and Language

Studies” pages 1-13, by McCabe A, and “Linguistics”; and also, read the document

‘Linguistics’ by Bauer, Laurie. Pages 10-18, found in UNIT 1, in the Knowledge

Environment.

2. Based on the first document, do Exercise 1.4 in page 13. You have six phrases and

you have to identify them to whom the phrases might belong, “Attribute each of

the…phrases to Ferdinand de Saussure, Noam Chomsky, or Michael Halliday. What

motivates, in each case, your response according to the text? What does the quote

tell you about their perspective on the study and analysis of language?”

EXERCISE 1.4
Attribute each of the following phrases to either Ferdinand de Sausurre, Noam Chomsky, or

Michael Halliday. What motivates your response? What does the quote tell you about their

perspective on the study and analysis of language?

1. If we could embrace the sum of word-images stored in the minds of all individuals,

we could identify the social bond that constitutes language. It is a storehouse filled

by the members of a given community through their active use of speaking, a

grammatical system that has a potential existence in each brain, or, specifically, in

the brains of a group of individuals. For language is not complete in any speaker; it

exists perfectly only within a collectivity. (Ferdinand de Saussure)

What motivates my response according to the text is that the importance of linguistics

belongs to a certain society through the use of sonar images or linguistic signs, and they are

also important for understanding your vision of language in the first place and the

relationship between a certain meaning and its signifier is arbitrary.

According to the quotation, the perspective I have about language is the study of the system

of a language to articulate the elements that distinguish one functional form from another

through oral practice in languages that are in the same community, which exists in the mind

of each speaker and that belongs to all of us, since it is a collective social product.

2. It seems clear that we must regard linguistic competence – knowledge of a language

– as an abstract system underlying behavior, a system constituted by rules that

interact to determine the form and intrinsic meaning of a potentially infinite number

of sentences. (Noam Chomsky)

What motivates my response according to the text is that we do not need to be experts in

language to determine the intrinsic form and meaning of a potentially infinite number of

sentences, since all this knowledge is what we will acquire in the course of our lives and /

or cultures.

Consider that this quotation according to language is that each of us has an infinite mental

number of the rules by which our language or dialect organizes linguistic elements; that is,

each of us has in mind the syntactic experience in terms of a set of finite rules that allows

us to generate an infinite number of sentences, many of which we had never heard before.

3. Every text – that is, everything that is said or written – unfolds in some context of

use; furthermore, it is the uses of language that, over tens of thousands of

generations, have shaped the system. Language has evolved to satisfy human needs;

and the way it is organized is functional with respect to these needs. (Michael

Halliday)

What motivates my response according to the text is that all languages and dialects have the

resources necessary to create new meanings in a systematic way, in order to meet the

communicative needs of the community that speaks the language or dialect, that is, point of

view linguistic and linguistic

According to the quotation, the perspective I have about language is a system of elections at

different levels, and each election provides an aspect of meaning, that is, in a particular
situational context, sensitive people and creating specific meanings for the situation through

lexical language related grammatical choices, that is, choices related to both vocabulary and

grammar.

4. Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-hearer, in a

completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and

is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations,

distractions, shifts of attention and interest, errors (random or characteristic) in

applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. (Noam Chomsky)

What motivates my response according to the text is the ideal hearing speaker of their

language and mental reality that is responsible for all aspects of language use that can be

characterized as linguistic.

According to the quotation, the perspective I have about language is that the speaker who

listens is not affected by grammatically irrelevant conditions, such as memory limitations

and distractions, and performance will be a direct reflection of the competition.

5. Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term

results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others ... [for example]. To

determine what a five-franc piece is worth one most know: (1) that it can be
 exchanged for a fixed quantity of a different thing, e.g. bread; and (2) that it can be

compared with a similar value of the same system, e.g. a one-franc piece, or with

coins of another system (a dollar, etc.). In the same way a word can be exchanged

for something dissimilar, an idea; besides, it can be compared with something of the

same nature, another word. Its value is therefore not fixed so long as one simply

states that it can be ‘exchanged’ for a given concept. (Ferdinand de Saussure)

What motivates my response according to the text is that the most important skills of the

human species is the ability to speak and build signs with their own meaning.

According to the quotation, the perspective I have about language is that language is both a

social product of the faculty of language and a set of necessary conventions, it can be

affected by the social body to allow the exercise of this faculty among individuals that is, a

system of different signs, corresponding to different ideas.

6. Spoken and written language, then, tend to display different KINDS of complexity;

each of them is more complex in its own way. Written language tends to be

lexically dense but grammatically simple; spoken language tends to be

grammatically intricate but lexically sparse’ ... ‘The value of having some explicit

knowledge of the grammar of written language is that you can use this knowledge,

not only to analyze the texts, but as a critical resource for asking questions about

them. (Michael Halliday)

What motivates my response according to the text is that, in a particular situational context,

people sensitive to creating meanings affected by the situation through affected lexical-

grammatical choices, that is, choices related to both vocabulary and grammar.

According to the quotation, the perspective I have about language is that the writer is the

one with historical information that the reader presumably does not know but needs to learn

and the language depends on the social context.

3. Based on the second text ‘Linguistics’ in “Bauer, Laurie; The Linguistic Student's

Handbook” Answer the following question:

 Why Linguistics is definitely considered a science? In your answer, involve the

other language areas such as semiotics, philology and literature.

Linguistics is considered a science because it tries to observe and classify natural

phenomena, something that involves careful observation of relevant real-world phenomena,

the classification of these phenomena and the search for useful patterns in observed and
classified phenomena. It is considered science because it is about seeking explanations for

the phenomenon of language and building theories that help explain why observed

phenomena occur, while phenomena that are not observed without problems. In other

words, these phenomena are data that are compiled, analyzed and classified to know how

language has advanced or works in the different years of humanity,

But linguistics is not only science for these phenomena, there are also different patterns that

can help data analysis, since semiotics studies the quality of the different signs present in

language and analyzes the presence of sensors in society, an example very clear are the

hieroglyphs used in ancient times, and in everyday life they are images without texts, on the

other hand, philology and literature analyze language

4. In the following two questions you have to consult and then explain:

 The concept of ‘double articulation’ is a classic one at identifying language, please,

explain it, and give examples.

The double articulation refers to how the language is organized, which also makes the

decomposition of the linguistic sign (verbal communication), divided into two levels.
The first level consists of:

Monemas: it is the unit of the first articulation, minimum unit of a word capable of

expressing a grammatical meaning. Higher linguistic units are obtained: words, phrases and

sentences, that is (they are minimal units with meaning)

But to invent a word monemas we need:

Lexema: is the root of a word.

Morphemes: this is linked to the lexeme to complete the grammatical meaning of a word.

Example:

Lexema: green

Morpheme: house

Monemas: greenhouse

Lexema: bath

Morpheme: room

Monemas: bathroom
Lexema: dining

Morpheme: room

Monemas: diningroom

The second level is composed of:

Phonemes: are the units of the second articulation, the minimum phonological unit that in a

linguistic system can oppose another unit in contrast to the meaning. That is (minimum

sound units without meaning by themselves)

The phonemes emitted by the sounds in the writing are represented by letters, speech

sounds that allow to differentiate between the words of a language.

Example:

L/o/s/e: l/o/o/s/e

P/l/a/n/e: p/l/a/n

B/a/l/l: b/a/w/l
 Human language is different from other semiotic systems, explain at least three

characteristics that according to Linguistics, are unique to human language (give

references).

For there to be human language, there must be a series of higher cognitive abilities that

allow us to classify and structure the world in terms of a complex network of cognitive

categories and relationships, typical and exclusive to the structure of the human mind.

In other words, we have to be human with mental capacity to classify different objects

in a given class, making them equivalent, as members of the same category.

According to linguistics, the association between mental concepts, ideas or scenarios

with abstract linguistic forms constituted and produced mainly by a lexicon and

combination rules.

In other words, knowing the language is knowing that there are multiple rules, such as

knowing the lexicon very well, knowing how to speak it, also knowing and knowing

how to use it.

According to linguistics, the association between mental concepts, ideas or scenarios

with abstract linguistic forms constituted and produced mainly by a lexicon and

combination rules.
 In other words, knowing the language is knowing that there are multiple rules, such as

knowing the lexicon very well, knowing how to speak it, also knowing and knowing

how to use it.

Human language is carried out in the linguistic activity and that the formal linguistic

component is only one of the gears of that activity that in itself lacks operability and

utility, given that it is ultimately nothing more than the bridge that unites the cognition

with the material expression of that cognition.

Language is a human activity that is born with man, that only belongs to him and that

allows him to communicate and relate to express and understand messages.

(Give references).

JuanCarlosMorenoCabrera.EuphoniaEdiciones.El lenguaje humano y la actividad

lingüística http://www.euphoniaediciones.com/plataforma/libros/el-lenguaje-humano-y-

la-actividad-linguistica-29-250-1-2-1

5. Check your partners’ posts and make comments about them in order to discuss their

ideas.

Task 2: Collaborative activity

6. Create an online collective magazine and answer the questions on it.

To create the online magazine, it is necessary to upload a PDF document; therefore,

you can create this document in word or in power point.

Use the tool flipsnack to make your group’s online magazine. This website let you

create online magazines by using pdf documents. Visit the website at

https://www.flipsnack.com/es/digital-magazine/
 Bibliographic references

Manuel Casares Vidal, (2011). La doble articulación del lenguaje [en línea]. Disponible en

Revista Vinculando

http://vinculando.org/microblogging/la_doble_articulacion_del_lenguaje.html

JuanCarlosMorenoCabrera.EuphoniaEdiciones.El lenguaje humano y la actividad

lingüística http://www.euphoniaediciones.com/plataforma/libros/el-lenguaje-humano-y-la-

actividad-linguistica-29-250-1-2-1

EcoDiarios.es(7/11/2016)losMorfemas.

https://ecodiario.eleconomista.es/ciencia/noticias/7942897/11/16/Los-morfemas-tiene-mas-

importancia-en-la-formacion-de-palabras-en-espanol-que-en-ingles.html

DanielSandoval (Enero 5. 2018).OpenEnglishBlog.LosFonemas.

https://blog.openenglish.com/fonemas-en-ingles/