Creativity In Language

Posted by anjila | Posted in | Posted on 7:25 PM

0

Recent experiments with chimpanzees suggests that certain animals cannot only learn individual symbols(in this case manual rather than vocal signs), but can also learn to combine them in ways reminiscent of sentences like Give me key. However, as far as we know, they cannot do certain things that all human beings can- they do not appear to be able to learn sign language without specific instruction, they cannot, on the basis of small number of elements and relations between them, create an infinite number of messages.

When linguists speak of the"creativity" of human language they are usually referring to these two characteristics. Anyone who knows a language is able, without specific instruction, to produce and understand utterances which have been heard before but which are possible within the system. You are using this ability wight now to read this blog, and you rely on it nearly every time you talk. Certainly, language does not include some fixed routines like greetings, farewells, and a wide variety of other relatively fixed utterances which function in society as gestures of group solidarity somewhat like mutual grooming of monkeys. But obviously human beings are not limited to such routines. The number of sentences possible in a human language is infinite in principle, for there is no limit on how long a sentence can be.

The creativity of language consists in this fact: The number of rules and elements in the system is finite, while the number and length of utterances the system can produce is infinite. In this respect, linguistic systems are somewhat like the number system. Given any number, one can always construct a larger number by addition or multiplication. In practice we are limited, of course, by space, time, memory, interest and many different factors, so that no actual sentence will ever be infinitely long. But what is important is that system has this potential.

Symbols In Language

Posted by anjila | Posted in | Posted on 6:47 PM

0

We know that language is symbolic. What exactly does it mean? First of all, it means that language involves sign. In language, the signs are sequences of sound, though these can be transferred to visual signs, as in writing or the gestural sign language of the deaf. According to one theory,the relationship between and object, whether real or imaginary, and the sign which stands for it can be of three types. If two are associated by a physical resemblance, like an object or photograph of it, the sign is called an icon. If the relation is one of the physical proximity, as between smoke and fire, thunder and lightening, spots and measles, then the sign(smoke, thunder, spots) is called an index. If the relationship is one of convention, that is, one has to be learned as part of the culture, like the relationship between black armband and mourning, then the sign is called a symbol.

No one knows how the symbolic linguistic code of humans came into being. Some have argued that the origin of language lies in onomatopoeia, that the people began talking by creating iconic signs to imitate the sounds heard around them in nature. This theory, sometimes called the bow-bow theory, is unlikely to be right, because language in fact makes very little use of iconic words.(Bow-wow itself is conventional. In French, dogs bark with oua-oua, pronounced "wa-wa.") Another theory is that language was originally indexical, arising out of cries of fear, pleasure, and so forth. This theory leaves signs came to be. We do not know that at this point in our biological history our ability to use symbols and learn language is genetically built in, an innate capacity of the human brain. But we know practically nothing about language over ten millennium ago, and very little indeed about language over five millennium ago. That is a tiny fraction of the biological history of man, and until we know far more about the neurophysiological aspects of language, we can only speculate about the origins of signs as symbols.