Relating to the great influence of Bloomfield's work, the school of American Structuralism Linguistics appeared. Leonard Bloomfield is considered as the founder of school of Linguistic in America. He sat up the basic methodological guidelines to follow. He described himself as a behaviorist. Bloch described Bloomfield's contributions as sophisticated and varied ones, With sample knowledge of the Germanic, Indic, Slavic, and Greek linguistic groups (1970)
Language can be seen as a major part of linguistic behavior in any community, which refers to a group of people which communicate together with the help of language. It is similar to a link or relationship that correlates non linguistic events with each other. So, we come across a general conclusion which says: studying a language leads to study the type of relation between linguistic forms besides using the features a physical situation.
In 1914, while Bloomfield was an instructor in Champaign, he published An Introduction to the Study of Language. This book laid out his basic ideas about the nature of language, following on basic Boasian outlines, which were becoming typical features of Linguistics in the U.S. He emphasized primarily on the spoken language and secondary on the written language. He also focused on the observation of language as a present-day reality to speakers, rather than from an external, historical point of view, and an interest in the variety of linguistic systems in the world
Since creativity allows language to differentiate from place to place, the differences in language have somehow gradually aligned in a hierarchy due to social influence. In “Nine Ideas about Language”, Daniels not only addresses that
Before 19th century scholars were not very much interested about historical linguistics and were remained unnoticed that language has gone through many changes. Since the starting of the 19th century, historical linguistics have undergone many changes with time it has led to major revisions and modifications to the theory and practice in this field. Historical linguistics investigates and describes the language change and how languages maintain their structure during the course of time. Those changes are still in progress and were noticed by the work of the William Labov who has dealt with the social, linguistic study of ‘New York City’ in 1966 where his investigation included 70 individual interviews- in the public places. These studies lead to the definition of the major phonological variables which were to be studied include (r) historical linguistics, the presence and the absence of the consonantal {r} in postvocalic position (as in car, card, four,
Firstly, historical linguistics deals with the arrival of language and how languages have altered and diverged overtime (Nzozo, 2013). Secondly, descriptive linguistic studies the sounds (phones) sound systems, grammar, syntax, and the meaning that are attached to words in specific languages (Nzozo, 2013). One might also describe it as an analytic and descriptive branch of how language was used in the past by a collective of people. Thirdly, ethno linguistic inspects the relationship between culture and language and how the two interact and influence each other (Nzozo, 2013). In addition, one could say it is the way different ethnic groups view the world and it is the mixture of ethnology and linguistics. Lastly, Sociolinguistics search relationships between language and social relations for example, a social linguist might want to study how one’s social standing affects his or her language usage (Nzozo,
b) with forms and the structure of words (morphology) and with their customary arrangement in phrases and sentences (syntax )
There are many ways in which the phenomena of language and culture are intimately related. Both phenomena are unique to humans and have therefore been the subject of a great deal of anthropological and sociological study. Language, of course, is determined by culture, though the extent to which this is
Language has different meanings and is used to describe something physically presented in the world. It is distinguished among terms such as oral language, written language, and language itself. Oral language is the primary form of language and written language comes second. An individual’s social class can influence the way language is written and spoken. Language is ideological, where an individual’s view of the world can be changed. Multi-literacies can influence the way texts are viewed and the child's access to it can shape their journey with language. Educators guidance on their students can affect the child's skills and learning of language. Language has its many purposes and forms in which are influenced by culture and religions.
The subtlety of language acquisition has been the most fundamental question in the study of linguistics and human development. From Bow-wow Theory to Yo-He-Ho Theory, major theories on the origins and learnability of language have emerged in mid-20th century and heavily debated ever since. Among them, the idea of universal grammar in which is usually credited to linguist Noam Chomsky, remains the most notable and controversial theory over time. He introduced and developed the theory from 1950s to 1970s, as he proposed and championed linguistic nativism in language acquisition. Chomsky supports that language mastery involves knowledge of linguistic rules and conventions, which he later named that as ‘cognizance’. He believes that cognizance
Among the most important concepts to emerge are those relating to dialects and language standards. Sociolinguists have documented the presence of dialects in every language. These dialects, all of which are legitimate, are associated with educational, economic, social and historical conditions. Hence, even if an individual scrupulously studies all the possible dictionaries of a random language, he would still be somewhat of a stranger to that language since he is unaware of all the dialectal changes.
Language is the universal connection that brings all humans together. We share this common ground to communicate. The three major points that I would like to focus on are: How does language influence our culture? Does it define us, or does it refine us? And lastly, the impact that language has on our societies.
Linguistics has impacted cognitive psychology as the quest to understand language acquisition and the structure of language itself is undertaken. Linguistics is a complex and multifaceted; it includes language structural patterns and language development (Barsalou, 2005). The process of language development is complicated and dense, as the study of language is examined; the role of cognition is inherently examined and analyzed. Sternberg (2006) also explores language as an innate process and presents the idea that humans are born ready for language as a biological and cognitive process.
Language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular country or region for talking or writing. It is considered as an art because when used it able to help a person develop or create a certain picture in the mind. Language being an artifact of culture means that it is an interesting thing that is created by the people. It is an aspect of their way of life of the people. It also helps in development of the people as writers and intellects. As a culture it is a people’s way of life and therefore the impact it has to human beings cannot be under looked.
Throughout the academic years, I took essential linguistic courses about language and language acquisition theories including Phonetics, Linguistics, Syntax, Language Acquisition and teaching, language the law, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and forensic linguistics field method. The linguistic courses that I have taken during the college years and Master’s program provided a strong foundation and motivation for me to further pursuit a linguistic expert in SLA and bilingual education. Moreover, throughout my academic experience
Modern day linguistics has seen the arrival of many different viewpoints of language. Beginning with Noam Chomsky, unquestionably one of the most influential figures in recent linguistics, new theories and ideas have been introduced at a rapid rate. In part due to his status as a revitalizer in the field, but also due to his often controversial theories, Chomsky maintains a place at the center of this discussion. His search for a universal grammar and criticism of pure descriptivism have informed generations of research. Much of this has been reactionary against him, but his influence can not be discounted. His theories of a universal grammar have inspired writers on both sides of the debate. Paul Hopper argues against this view, positing
In the field of linguistics language change may be credited to a variety to social, cultural and geographical factors. However, language also has a temporal variation, which can be either long-term or short-term. The study of language over time/history requires the analysis of a broad range of texts and linguistic aspects. In order to study the history of a language, it is useful to focus on a particular region.
Through looking at patterns of social interaction of different languages it is easy to predict the linguistic results of language contact. This could be seen through multilingualism which is a result of language contact between multiple different languages. Multilingualism can create diglossia which helps display the multilingualism of a country or community and helps show it is useful for predicting the results of language contact. Code switching in which people switch from one language to another depending on the situation, helps show how social interaction between speakers of different languages helps us predict the linguistic results of language contact. Then there is dialect levelling and language change which helps show the beginning