Questions and tasks:

1) Some features common to all natural languages have been mentioned above.
Can you think of some additional properties that unite all languages?
Answer:

2) If a researcher decided to analyze the English language of the period when

Shakespeare wrote his most famous tragedies, would it be a synchronic or
diachronic linguistic analysis?
Answer:

3) Explain how you understand prescriptiveness in linguistics. In your opinion, is it a

positive or a negative approach?
Answer:

4) Give expressions both in English and Filipino, which would be examples of the
phatic function of language.
Answer:

5) Can you think of examples of utterances where the expressive function would be
much more prominent than the communicative one?
Answer:
 6) How do you understand innateness of language?
Answer:

Research the answers to the following study questions. Limit your answer in
one to two paragraphs only.

1. Why is it difficult to agree with Psammetichus that Phrygian must have been
the original human language?
Answer:

2. What is the basic idea behind the “bow-wow” theory of language origin?
Answer:

3. Why are interjections such as Ouch considered to be unlikely sources of

human speech sounds?
Answer:
4. Where is the pharynx and how did it become an important part of human
sound production?
Answer:

5. Why do you think that young deaf children who become fluent in sign language
would be cited in support of the innateness hypothesis?
Answer:

6. With which of the six “sources” would you associate this quotation?
“Chewing, licking and sucking are extremely widespread mammalian activities,
which, in terms of casual observation, have obvious similarities with speech.”
-(MacNeilage, 1998)
Answer: