MAKERERE UNIVERSITY

BED EXTERNAL

ELX 1101: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION

1. What is language?
- The expression of ideas by means of speech sounds combined into words. Words are
combined into sentences and ideas into thought. (Henry Sweet)
- A combination of arbitrary symbols by means of which a social group operates. (Bernard
Bloch and George Trager)
- The instrument of conveying to us things useful to be known. (John Milton)
- The instrument of science (knowledge) and words which are the signs of ideas. (Samuel
Johnson)
- A systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by use of conventionalised
sounds, gestures or marks having understood meanings. (Merriam Webster Dictionary)
- The method of human communication consisting of the use of words in a structured and
conventional way.

2. Characteristics of language
- Language is acquired by learning
- It is conventional
- It is systematic that is, it possesses structure.
- It is human specific
- It makes use of arbitrary symbols that is, there is limited connection between the sound
word and object
- Language is meaningful.

3. Functions of language
According to Yule (1996: 19) there are six features of language which are :
a) Displacement: this allows speakers of language to talk about things not present in their
immediate environment.
b) Arbitrariness: There is no connection between the linguistic form of a word and its
meaning except in onomatopoeic words.
c) Productivity: this is the creativity and open-endedness of the use of language. It facilitates
the creation of words and utterances. We can manipulate language to cope with new
situations. We can use language to talk about whatever we want to talk about.
d) Cultural transmission: language is a major index of culture and we can pass it on from one
generation to another. It is a means of transmitting cultural heritage.
e) Discrete: All language sounds are discrete. They are linguistically specific and meaningfully
distinct.
f) Duality: this deals with the distinct sound at one level and the distinct meaning at another.
When we combine specific sounds in another form, we get a different meaning e.g. nib
and bin.
 According to Roman Jakobson, Language functions in the following ways:
a) Emotive function. This emphasizes the emotions of the speaker.
b) Conative function; this is where the speaker directly addresses the listener e.g. the use of
‘you’.
c) The referential function: this has to do with referring to areas in the context of speech e.g. in
Kampala here
d) The phatic function: this is the mode of communication used to maintain politeness for
example, inquiring about health, weather etc
e) The metalinguistic function; this is the use of language to talk about language for example,
discussing the rules of past tense formation in English.
f) The poetic function: The uses of language for its beauty and to entertain e.g. aspire to inspire
before you expire.

Relationship between language and other disciplines

Language is related to literature and other subjects.

- The relationship between language and anthropology. Anthropology is the scientific study
of human kind and one of the most distinctive features of human experience is language.
- Language and history: As specialists of historical linguistics work to understand the
relationship between human languages, dialects and language families, there work
eventually overlaps with studies of human history and migration patterns.
- Language and politics: Because language can be politically charged, the language policy is
an important part of the language policy of many countries, especially when it comes to
language preservation and legislation involving majority and minority languages and
dialects in the world.
- Language and psychology: The main area language has in common with psychology is
language perception and language production from understanding sound systems to the
mistakes people make. Another are they share is child development and language
acquisition.
- Language and sociology: here, linguists focus on language variation in society between
different socioeconomic groups. Language variation can be at the level of gender, races,
education level, age and economic status.
- Language and music: Is music a form of language? What is the effect of music on language
acquisition? Does language have an effect on musical expressions? What about the
content common to music and language like rhyme and rhythm?
- Language and Physics: language and physics share the fact that they both study sound.

Questions for discussion:

1. What is the connection between language and your other subject of specialisation?
2. What are the implications of knowing the relationship between language and your subject
of specialisation for a language teacher?

Reasons for studying a new language

- You love the language you are studying
- To speak and understand other people regardless of their origin.
- To travel to new places around the world.
- To meet new people and discover new cultures
- To stand out from the crowd
- To increase your options for the future.
- To improve career prospects and compete overseas for study scholarships
- Learning a new language provides a sense of achievement.

Exercise:

What are the implications of knowing the reasons for learning a new language to you as a
language teacher?

Similarities and differences between human and animal communication

- In animal language, the signs for animal systems are inborn while in human language, the
capacity to be creative with signs is inborn but the signs are acquired naturally.
- Animal language is set responses to stimulus while human language is not limited to
stimuli.
- In animal language, each sign has only one function. Each meaning can only be expressed
in one way. In human language, signs have multiple functions. One meaning can be
expressed in many ways.
- In animal language, there is a limited inventory of signs. Only a set number of different
messages can be sent. Human language is open-ended and allows a virtually unlimited
number of messages to be sent.
- Both humans and animals use signs to communicate.
- They share sound, odour and body movement.
- The greatest similarity between human and animal language is the use of sound to
communicate.
- Researchers have found that odour communication in human language leads to family
recognition, mate selection and maternal bonding. In animals, it leads to marking
boundaries warning off intruders and to proclaim a readiness to mate.
- Body languages in both humans and animals resemble each other in certain situations for
example; both human beings and animals cower in fear.

THE LANGUAGE SITUATION IN UGANDA

According to worldatlas.com, there are 40 languages in Uganda. These are grouped into three
main language families: Bantu, Sudanic and Nilotic. Two additional languages in Uganda come
from the Kuliak family. These are Ik and So. The two official languages in the country are
English and Kiswahili. There is also a Ugandan Sign Language.
Geographical areas of the language families

- The Bantu speakers dominate the Southern part of the country. The Bantu languages are
Ganda, Soga, Nyankore, Nyoro, Toro, Gwere, Luyia, Kenyi, Lumasaaba, Kiga, Nyarwanda,
Konjo, Gungu etc.
- The Nilotic languages are: Teso, Adhola, Lango, Lendu, Alur, Elgon, Pokot, Karamajong and
Kumam. They dominate the Nothern part of the country.
- The Central Sudanic languages are mainly in the North Western part of the country. They
are: Lugbara, Ndo, Madi, Kakwa and Aringa.
- Kiswahili and English are the two official languages of the country. They are also widely
spoken in the country.
- Luganda is the most widely spoken local language in the country.

Exercise:

a) What is your society’s attitude towards the learning of Ugandan languages?

b) How can a language teacher improve the society’s attitude towards the teaching of local
languages?
c) What problems do different language groups face when trying to learn English?

LINGUISTICS

What is linguistics?

- Linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure.

- It’s the scientific study of language and involves the analysis of language, form, language
meaning and language in context.
- It is concerned with the nature of language and communication.

Levels of linguistic description and analysis

1. Phonetics: The science of speech sounds is called phonetics. The discrepancy between
spellings and sounds in English and other languages led to the development of phonetic
alphabets where one letter corresponds to one sound. The major phonetic alphabet in
use worldwide is the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic
Alphabet includes Roman letters and sounds by means of which all the sounds in the
human languages can be represented. To distinguish between sounds and words,
phonetic transcriptions are put in square brackets. All speech sounds are either vowels or
consonants. In many languages, the pitch of a sound or syllable is significant for example;
two words may contrast in meaning if one is produced with a high pitch and another with
a low pitch. Such languages are called tone languages.
2. Phonology: Part of knowing a language is knowing the sound system of that language.
Phonology is the inventory of ‘phones’, the phonetic symbols that occur in a language.
The phonology of a language also involves sound patterns, how they are organised and
how they are used to convey meaning. Phonology also deals with how sounds interact
 with each other for example, in some languages, there are sounds which do not begin
words.
3. Morphology: Words are not the most basic meaning units. The most basic are
morphemes. A morpheme is the minimal unit of linguistic meaning and grammatical
function. The study of word formation and internal structure of a language is called
morphology. Morphemes combine according to the morphological rues of a language. A
word consists of one or more morphemes. Some morphemes are bound in that they are
always parts of words for example, -dom in freedom, kingdom etc. Affixes (prefixes and
suffixes) are bound morphemes. There are two kinds of words: Lexical content words and
functional words. Lexical content words fall in the four major word classes that is, nouns,
verbs, adverbs and adjectives and they can be added on. Functional words are all the
words in the other classes that is, pronouns, articles and conjunctions. They form a closed
class of words meaning that they cannot be added to. Morphology also includes the
addition of words into a language. Words are added into a language through borrowing,
coinage, compounding, acronyms, blends, eponyms, backformations and abbreviations.
4. Syntax: Speakers of a language also recognise the grammatical roles of the language. They
know how words in a grammatical sentence must be ordered or grouped. They also
recognise ambiguities where the same sentence can mean two things. Knowledge of
sentence rules of a language is called syntax.
5. Semantics: Knowing a language is being able to produce and understand sentences with
particular meanings. The study of linguistic meaning is called semantics. Lexical semantics
is concerned with the meanings of morphemes and words. Phrasal semantics deals with
the study of meanings in phrases while the pragmatics deals with how context affects
meaning.
Homonyms are words with the same sound but different meanings. Heteronyms are
words spelt the same but with different meanings. Homographs have the same spelling
and pronunciation but different meanings. Synonyms are words with similar meaning but
different spellings and sounds.

LANGUAGE DIVERSITY

- All speakers of English can talk and understand each other yet no two speakers talk alike.
The unique nature of the language of an individual speaker is known as a speaker’s
idiolect. The language of a group of people may show regular variations from that used by
other speakers of the same language. When the languages spoken in different
geographical regions and social groups shows systematic variations, the groups are said
to speak different dialects of the same language.
- A language is different from a dialect in the sense that, for dialects to become languages,
they must be mutually unintelligible. However, linguists have failed to reach a consensus
on the definition of mutually unintelligible.
- Dialectical diversity occurs when people are separated from each other physically and
socially. Dialect differences increase in proportion to the degree of communicative
isolation between groups.
 - Regional and phonological differences are called accents. Accent refers to the
characteristics of speech that convey information about the speaker’s dialect which may
reveal information about country of origin, region of origin or social class. It can also be
used to refer to interference of a language at the phonological level
- Prescriptive grammarians or language purists usually consider the dialect spoken by
political leaders, the upper social classes, the dialect of literature and the dialect taught
in schools as the correct form of the language. This dialect is called the standard dialect
for example; we have American Standard English and British Standard English. A standard
dialect has some social functions: it binds people together and it provides a common
written form for multi-dialectical speakers.
- Many areas of the world are populated by people speaking different languages. In such
areas, where people desire for social or commercial communication, they resort to one
language which then becomes a lingua franca. English has been called the lingua franca of
the whole world while Kiswahili is the lingua franca of East Africa. Certain Lingua Franca
arise naturally while some are developed by government policy and intervention.
- A pidgin is a language formed when two or more groups of people use their native
languages to form a rudimentary less complex language. They are formed when groups of
mutually unintelligible languages need to interact e.g. the case of missionaries and
natives.
- One feature about pidgins is that no one learns it as a native speaker. When a community
adopts it and it becomes spoken as a 1st language, it becomes a Creole.
- Register is the variation of style according to the person one is speaking to e.g. varying
style according to job interviews, talking to a friend and talking to parents. Most people
vary between formal and informal English according to their audience.
- Informal style of communication involves the use of slang. Words are called slang when
they have not gained acceptability by a wide group of people. When they gain
acceptability, they are adopted into the language e.g. freshman and dwindle.
- Jargon refers to language specific to a particular profession or trade thus, linguistic jargon
includes words like phonology, lexicon etc. Like slang, many jargons eventually become
part of the official language.
- The rise of taboo words (words normally frowned upon) led to euphemisms. Euphemisms
are words used in the place of taboo words.

Coursework :

How is the knowledge of language diversities relevant to a language teacher?

Deadline: Day 1 of the face to face lectures(all assignments must be typed before submission.)