The beginnings of language are shrouded in mystery

While many languages can be traced back to a time

thousands of years before the invention of writing,
the language of our earliest ancestors eludes scientists
Some anthropologists are using physiology to at least
determine when language was physically possible
Some place that date with the origins of H. sapiens,
others push it back to australopithecine days 2 million
years ago.
Charles Hockett’s theory of how humans developed
language is one of the most widely accepted
He theories that humans first produced new calls by
combining two old ones in a process known as
blending
 Example: combine breakfast and lunch to get brunch
This is known as prelanguage
The next step is duality of patterning where the
blended sounds are rearranged in an infinite number
of combinations
 Example: take the sounds in breakfast and lunch and
make lots of new words like fun, bench, chest, etc.
 Human language has three main characteristics
1. Conventionality: this means that words are arbitrarily
connected to the things they stand for. A dog is only
called a dog because all English speakers agree it’s
called a dog
2. Productivity: this is the ability of humans to create
new words or sentences that they have never heard
before
3. Displacement: this is the ability to describe things
which are not in the present

My dog, named:
Answer: WE’RE NOT SURE!
However, the evidence does indicate that while
language is a cultural construction, our bodies and
brains are biologically designed to learn and use
language
Every human child, regardless of the language they
learn, goes through the same stages in the same order
As early as six months old, babies are babbling in the
sounds and sequences of their parents’ language
Babies don’t just imitate sounds, but create new
combinations instinctively which follow the rules of
their languages
Noam Chomsky, the most famous linguist in the
world, theorizes that all human children are born
with a basic blueprint for grammar in their brains
This simple grammar is the scaffolding upon which
the complexities of the full grammar of their language
are built
This theory accounts for why all 6,809 known human
languages share the same basic rules and principles
 Descriptive Linguistics is the study of how a
language is structured
 These linguists break languages down into 4
subsystems
1. Phonology: the system of sounds used in a language
2. Morphology: the way a language uses sounds to make
words
3. Syntax: the rules for arranging words in a sentence
4. Semantics: the relationship between words and
meaning
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was
designed to accurately record the sounds of every
human language
These sounds are known as phones
Phones which can change the meaning of a word are
called phonemes
 Example: den and then are different words. Why?
Because the /d/ changes to a /th/. Thus /d/ and /th/
are phonemes because they can change the meaning of
words.
Xhosa is an example of a Bantu language found in South
Africa
This language includes clicks, the most common of which
are represented by the letters x, q, and c in written
speech
The language is also tonal, which means that the
meaning of a word can change depending on its pitch
8 million people speak Xhosa and it is one of the official
languages of South Africa
Nelson Mandela is a famous amaXhosa
Here’s an example of the language
This is the study of how phonemes are put together to
make words
A morpheme is the smallest unit of language which has
meaning
 Example: -s means “plural” or –er means “one who does”
Morphemes which cannot stand alone (like –s or –er) are
called bound morphemes
The opposite of a bound morpheme is a free morpheme
(like dog or giraffe)
A word is the smallest part of sentence which can stand
alone
This is also known as grammar
It’s the arrangement of words to create sentences
Each language is different in its syntactical structure
 Example: word order is important in English. “The boy
sees the girl” is NOT the same as “the girl sees the boy”
 In Latin, word order is not important. “puer videt
puellam” and “puellam videt puer” both mean “the boy
sees the girl”
Grammar is what lets us turn a meaningless string of
words into a meaningful sentence.
Semantics is the relationship between words and
what they stand for.
All the words of language form its lexicon.
By studying what people have words for, we can see
what’s important to them
This is one of the clearest connections between
language and culture
 In Munich, there are 70 words to describe beer.
 Eskimo people have over 11 words for snow
 Classical Greek has three words for love
Language and culture are intimately connected,
affecting one another
Sapir-Whorf theorized that the language you speak
affects the way you see the world
Sociolingistics is a study which focuses on speech
performance
 Example: some languages have a formal and informal
way of speaking that is used when talking to either
elders or peers (as in Spanish tú vs. usted)
Dialects are grammar constructions which deviate
from the those of the dominant social group
While dialects are often considered inferior to the
dominant form, there is actually no linguistic basis for
this assertion. This is belief is social.
 Examples of English Dialects: Appalachian English,
Pennsylvania Dutch, Spanglish, and Ebonics
 More examples: ya’ll (Southern), yins (West
Pennsylvania/Ohio), yous guys (Jersey/New York)
 Still more examples: pop (Midwest), soda (Jersey/New
York), coke (South)
Pidgins are languages of trade the develop when two
cultures make contact and develop a trade
relationship. They are NOT first languages
Over time pidgins can develop into creoles
Creoles are first languages that are a blend of more
than one language
The most famous and widely spoken creole in the U.S.
Haitian or French Creole
 Example:
http://www.radio-canada.ca/url.asp?/nouvelles/regardi
nteractif/haiti-creole/index.html
African American Vernacular English, or Ebonics, is
one of the most stigmatized English dialects in the
U.S. today
Objectively speaking, Ebonics is NO DIFFERENT than
any other language. Its negative connotations are a
social construction
The use of AAVE to assist in the teaching of Standard
American English has been approved in some school
districts, but not with out vehement opposition
Often time, students who speak AAVE at home must
code switch when they come to school
When looked at as a whole, what we do with our bodies
during speech conveys 55% of the total message
The study of nonverbal communication is divided into 5
areas
 Haptics: the study of touch
 Chronemics: the study of a culture’s understanding of
time
 Proxemics: the study of interpersonal space
 Kinesics: the study of movement during speech
 Artifacts: the study of clothes and body modifications and
what they communicate
This is the study and analysis of touch
Touch can be used to communicate a variety of things
 Americans often judge a person by the quality of their
handshake
 In the Middle East the left hand is seldom used in social
interaction because it is viewed as unclean
Touch can also indicate status
 In business environments, it is often acceptable for
bosses to touch their employees, but not vice versa
Contact vs. Noncontact Cultures
 America and Japan are two examples of noncontact
 Mexico and Jordan are two examples of contact
Choronemics seeks to understand a culture’s
perception of time
In America, precise measurement of time is extremely
important
 Notice that clocks are everywhere and on everything,
from your iPod to your microwave
Being late in America means something very different
than being late in Latin America
Monochronic vs. Polychronic Cultures
 America is an example of Monochronic
 Puerto Rico is an example of Polychronic
This is the study of space and its use
There are three types of space
 First is Fixed-Feature: arrangement of buildings, homes
and parks
 Second is Semi-Fixed-Feature: arrangement of
furniture, decoration, equipment etc.
 Third is Non-Fixed-Feature: your personal space
“bubble”
Each one of these varies widely from culture to
culture
Language Change
If a language is viable and in use, it will change over
time
If groups of people who speak the same language are
spread out, over time they will come to speak
different languages
Historical linguistics studies how languages change
over time
Changes can be something as small as pronunciation
to things as profound as changes in grammar or rules
or meanings of words
Changes in Sound and Meaning
In English, we already discussed how the Great Vowel
Shift of the late Middle Ages radically changed
English pronunciation
However, many words have changed not just how
they’re said, but what they mean
 In the King James Bible, there is a verse which says
“And the Lord prevented me”
 To most people today this means, “And the Lord
stopped me” or “And the Lord refused to let me”
 But in England in the 16th century it meant “And the
Lord went before me”
Languages often borrow words from one another
English, especially after it was reduced to a peasant
language, borrowed literally thousands of words
Words like, rendezvous, paparazzi, barbeque, auto,
senate are all borrowed words
Words are also invented to deal with new
technologies and discoveries
 Often times, these words are new combinations of old
ones (ex: email = electronic mail)
 Or another language is used to create a word like as in
science or medicine (ex: dog = canis domesticus =
domesticated dog in Latin)
This is the study which groups languages into families
and charts the times of their separations from one
another
These linguists first identify a languages core
vocabulary
These are words which are common to all human
languages
By then using a statistical technique called
glottochronology they can estimate when various
languages branched off from their earlier forms