Linguistics - Unit 2: The Evolution of Language

Human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication. It is a signaling system which uses sounds, a characteristic shared by a large number of animals.

• LANGUAGE

• DISPLACEMENT

• PATTERNING

The form of an expression is generally independent of its meaning except for the associations established by convention.

• LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

• NEED FOR LEARNING / CULTURAL TRANSMITION

• DUALITY

It is a speaker's actual use of language in real situations; what the speaker actually says, including grammatical errors and other non-linguistic features such as hesitations and other disfluencies.

• STRUCTURE DEPENDENCE

• DESCRIPTIVISM

• PRESCRIPTIVISM

The organization of language into two layers: a layer of sounds which combine into a second layer of larger units. Each phoneme is meaningless in isolation, but in the proper combination it can perfectly become meaningful.

• PATTERNING

• ARBITRARINESS

• DUALITY

How many cats does the teacher have?

• 4

• 7

• 6

It allows language users to communicate about events or things that are absent from the current environment. It can cope with any subject no matter how far away the topic of conversation is in time and space.

• DISPLACEMENT

• DUALITY

• STRUCTURE DEPENDENCE

Every language has a specific set of sound combinations possible. Humans do not juxtapose sounds and words in a random way. Instead, they ring the changes on a few well- defined patterns.

• PATTERNING

• LANGUAGE

• PATTERNING

The arrangement and the

form of words. It includes

the structure of phrases and

sentences and the

constraints on well-

formedness of sentences.

• SEMANTICS

• SYNTAX

• MORPHOLOGY

When was Harvard founded?

• 1747

• 1936

• 1636

How speakers use language in ways which cannot be predicted from linguistic knowledge alone.

• PRAGMATICS

• SEMANTICS

• SYNTAX