...language universals as proposed by two scholars, Noam Chomsky and Joseph H. Greenberg. Both of these scholars bring in their different points of view concerning their understanding of language universals and they stipulate the rules underlying their proposals. In the last part of this term paper we try to show the relationship between language universals and language acquisition. Language universals are a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages potentially true for all of them. For instance, all languages have verbs and nouns and they have phonological aspects such as consonants and vowels The research in this area of linguistics is nearly connected to the study of linguistic typology and also intends to portray generalizations across languages such as cognition and perception of the mind. Noam Chomsky His arguments on language universals were mainly on grammar. He proposed that if human beings are brought up under normal conditions, then they will always develop language with a certain property e.g. distinguishing function words from lexical words. As a result this property, it is considered to be a property of universal grammar in the most general sense. He argued that there are theoretical senses of the term universal grammars well. The most general would be that universal grammar is whatever properties of a normally developing human brain cause it to learn languages that conform to the universal grammar. Using the notion above, universal grammar would...
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...American Experience: SAT Style Argument Essay | Task: | Suggested Engagement Scenario: In order to be well-prepared for the SAT that you will take this year, it is important to practice the essay component of the exam. That is what you will do today.Part 1: Compose a 25- minute timed SAT style argument essay. Use the rubric to guide your response to this prompt: Is the American Dream possible for all people? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your position on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.Part 2: Review anchor papers with rubric, then determine your own score. (This does not replace teacher evaluation)Part 3: (optional follow-up) Compose a diary entry focused on the American Dream from the perspective of a Colonial Era immigrant. (W.# Narrative Task) | Standards: | RI.11.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information in order to address a question or solve a problem.W.11.1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.L.11.3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening. | Materials: | Teacher Materials: * Teacher directions * Rubric | Student Materials: * SAT Style Essay prompt sheet * Rubric | General Notes:...
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...September 20, 2013 Essay 1: The Code Talker Paradox In the chapter “The Code Talker Paradox” by Mark Baker, he argues that language is surprisingly complex and paradoxically simple. This claim backed by evidence of similarities and differences between languages has also lead Baker to conclude that grammar is universal among children. He arrived at this concept because of the easiness for children to pick up language while the smartest of adults struggle endlessly to learn. When one looks at how complex language is, the only proof that can explain this phenomenon is that any child with a healthy brain must have an innate universal grammar that must coincide with all languages. One difference between the languages of Navajo and English is the that while in English the direct object of a sentence goes after the verb, in Navajo the direct object is before the verb. So if in English one were to say, “Boy saw girl”, even if the Navajo knew the word translation they would have no idea what you were saying. While vice versa in Navajo if one were to say that it would read to an English person Boy girl saw, which wouldn’t make any sense in English. Even if one can understand the translation of words, to make sense of a sentence is incomprehensible. Another example showing the complex differences between the two languages having to do with word order is the Navajo’s primal importance placed on nature in their tongue. In a Navajo sentence humans are placed at the top of the...
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...INTRODUCTION Based on the discussion of the validity of Noam Chomsky’s perception of Universal Grammar (UG), some past & current researches which maintain & contest Chomsky’s UG from different areas are represented. The essay focuses on: 1) Chomsky’s Universal Grammar in brief, in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) context; 2) Evidences supporting Chomsky’s UG - views offered by linguists such as Williams and White, etc, to provide arguments to support UG pertaining to first language acquisition and second language acquisition; 3) Evidences refuting Chomsky’s UG - according to Piaget and Haspelmath, etc, based on the insufficient assumption of SLA and also biological evolutions; 4) UG and language teaching; 5) and in the conclusion, I shall add my two-cent worth of perspective as a language teacher. 1) Chomsky’s Universal Grammar in Brief Universal Grammar is the brainchild of Noam Chomsky, adopting the cognitive approach. Human beings have implicit knowledge of grammar but may not be able to explain how they get this ability. This is because they have no conscious awareness of the processes involved. 1) Universal grammar is a theory of knowledge: It is mainly concern with the internal structure of the human mind, suggesting that the speaker knows a set of principles that apply to all languages, and parameters that vary from one language to...
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...Discussion Reflection English grammar is the body of rule that describes the structure of expressions in the english language – a system- rule – governed. Hence, universal grammer the scientific study and the order of sentences ,is a theory of linguists that manifests itelf without being taught. The English language development offers a wide range of courses for me to succeed on my degree. It is open to anyone and particularly useful for me as a student . An English for academic purposes – I have learned about generative formal characteristics , the rules that are governed to it such as SBO pattern , comples and compound sentences these are the functional context in grammar. Morphology has been introduced ,the study of tha smallest meanungful unit of language that refers to the study of the internal structure of words and of the systematic form- meaning correspondencesbetween words. In addition there are some role reference grammar that analyzes the language.Firstly, Pragmatics – the study of practical aspects of human action and thought by linguistic signs ,(words and sentences) in actual situations. Secondly, Syntaxis the study of the principles and processes by which sentences constructed in particular languages .Thirdly, Sematics denotes a range of ideas – and focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrases, signs, and symbols. It is also the study of meaningthat is used for human expression through language. Fourthly, Phonology, it is concerned with the...
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...types of consonant clusters and she is consistent within each type. Michael seems to have followed a similar system to Sarah. This can be observed when the consonant clusters “st”, “sp” and “pl” are compared. d) Based on my observations, I think Michael would pronounce the word “blame” as “bame” and the word “scale” as “tale”. The “k” sound conversion would likely still hold true in this case. Essay 2 1) a. hand motion b. palm orientation c. hand position d. hand shape 2) Duality of patterning is demonstrated here because the pairs of sign show their ability to give individual and different messages. Duality of patterning refers to the ability of human language, both signed and spoken, to form discrete meaningful units. In other words, individual hand signals develop intrinsic meaning when combined in certain ways in situational contexts. 3) The principle of universal grammar holds that all languages must have an underlying, common structure corresponding to the innate language processing abilities of human beings. Linguists do not all agree on what exactly defines a universal grammar, but can identify many traits that all languages have in common. Sign language is acquired naturally by children who are exposed to it, without any further instruction. It also fulfills the mental and social functions that a spoken language would. In fact, informal sign language, outside the American Sign Language structure, naturally arises in interactions between people who do not share a spoken...
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...Theories Of First Language Acquisition English Language Essay Imagine a blank template, a white sheet of paper, thats how human being starts off. From a crying baby in a cradle, to babbling, to simple single words, slowly progressing into two-words, then finally a complete sentence, ever wonder how one acquires the ability to produce the language? Linguists throughout the ages have tried to find out how does one ACQUIRE a language, is it a deep structure as claimed by Kimball? Or is it an innate ability, a build-in human capacity propagated by Chomsky? Various theories have arose since language studies came to fore, and the ability to acquire language has interested various parties since the dawn of man. From the dunes of Egypt, Psammeticus, the Pharaoh during the 7 th century BC, believed language was inborn and that children isolated from birth from any linguistic influence would develop the language they had been born with. Fast forward to the 15th century,King James of Scotland performed a similar experiment; the children were reported to have spoken good Hebrew. Akbar, a 16th century Mogul emperor of India, desired to learn whether language was innate or acquired through exposure to the speech of adults. He believed that language was learned by people listening to each other and therefore a child could not develop language alone. So he ordered a house built for two infants and stationed a mute nurse to care for them. The children did not acquire speech, which seemed to...
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...“[Children’s] Brains are already fine tuned to attend to sounds around them and process them as part of their developing understanding of the worlds in which they find themselves. Cooing usually starts at around the three month stage (Karmiloff Smith 1994) and the response of the adult…can act as a ‘reward’ encouraging thesis early attempts at sound making and interaction” (David Goouch, Powell & Abbott,2003:821) This essay will discuss the acquisition of language in the first two years of a child’s life, looking at different theories and approaches that have been explored over recent years. The essay aims to distinguish if language acquisition is an in built skill which we are all born with or if it is a learned skill which we acquire as we interact with the world around us. Skinner (1957) put forward the argument in favour of the debate that language is developed through nurture- saying that language is a learnt behaviour. Skinner provided that children simply repeat utterances they have heard, this implies that language acquisition is a simple case of rote learning(Ambridge & Lieven,2011:242). He believed that much of what we learn is from the environment around us, he used his theory of operant conditioning to explain how and why we have developed the ability to communicate through spoken words. Operant conditioning, to put it very simply suggests that if a behaviour is rewarded the subject will continue to behave that way. In the case of language acquisition...
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...Articles 8 SENTENCE STRUCTURE 9 Structure of a simple sentence 9 PRESENT TENSE 10 S – A – V rules 11 Possessive case 11 Universal Auxiliaries 11 PRESENT CONTINUOUS TENSE 12 When to use 12 Rules 12 SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE 13 Rules 13 Subject Auxiliary Verb 13 Universal Auxiliaries 13 PRESENT PERFECT TENSE 14 Rules 14 Subject Auxiliary verb form 14 Universal Auxiliaries 14 PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS TENSE 15 Rules 15 Subject Auxiliary verb form 15 Universal Auxiliaries 15 PAST TENSE 16 Subject Auxiliary Verb form 16 Universal Auxiliaries 16 PAST CONTINUOUS TENSE 17 Rules 17 Subject Auxiliary verb form 17 Universal Auxiliaries 17 SIMPLE PAST TENSE 18 Rule 18 Universal Auxiliaries 18 PAST PERFECT TENSE 19 Rule 19 Subject Auxiliary Verb form 19 Universal Auxiliary 19 PAST PERFECT CONTINUOUS TENSE 20 Rule 20 Subject Auxiliary verb form 20 Universal Auxiliaries 20 FUTURE TENSE 21 Rules 21 Subject Auxiliary Verb form 21 Universal Auxiliaries 21 FUTURE CONTINUOUS TENSE 22 Rules 22 Subject Auxiliary verb form 22 Universal Auxiliaries 22 FUTURE PERFECT TENSE 23 Rules 23 Subject Auxiliary Verb form 23 Universal Auxiliary 23 FUTURE PERFECT CONTINUOUS TENSE 24 Rules 24 Subject Auxiliary Verb form 24 Universal Auxiliaries 24 EXERCISES FOR GRAMMAR 24 Grammar Parts of Speech Every word in the English language belongs to a particular family or group or category named “Part of Speech”...
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...written materials, for a variety of text formats. (Linda Balsiger, M.S, CCC-SLP, Language and Learning) It is a way on how one delves for the importance of printed texts, the message or lesson it conveys to the readers. But due to poor comprehension, students are having difficulties in interpreting reading materials. Students who were said to be poor comprehenders are less noticed in class because teachers are more focused to students who are learning to read. Learners who lack in comprehension are undetected during class for they are fluent and reading accurately, specifically in the field of English. English is the universal language of all countries in the whole wide world that is why a subject made out of this are being taught and studied by teachers and at the same time, the learners. It covers a wide range of study that includes literary texts, essays, grammar usage, production of words, etc. English reading without comprehending the point or the meaning that a certain text delivers to the reader is ineffective and inefficient. Students who had undergone in this case had poor development in knowledge acquisition and unable to reflect in their lives the information written on reference materials. Reading requires comprehension but most learners prefer to read than to understand. It’s either they can’t extract the key points inside the text, incapable of identifying what the story is all about, or they wanted to finish quickly the subject’s topic because their attention were...
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...systems. Communication is essential for human beings. Language is the primary way in which adults pass ways of thinking and conversing on to their children. Language is an accumulation of knowledge because we learned everything by somebody through language. Society would have to recreate itself every generation if it could not pass its knowledge on through language. Language is one of the most powerful tools in human communication. Words are meant to establish and maintain friendly contact. Through words, people shape their identities. People can express their feelings, attitudes, and experiences to each other through words. By speaking, information can be give to others about oneself and the world around him/her. In Christine Leong's essay Being A Chink, she describes the power of language. She said, "It gives us identity, personality, social status, and it also creates communities, defining both insiders and outsiders. Language has the ability to heal or to harm, to praise or belittle, to promote peace or even to glorify hate." I believe this is what language is all about. Language has two purposes. Depending on what is said, and how others perceive what has been said, language can be helpful to the soul or destroy one's self-confidence. Words are intended to inform others so they can understand us. Words are not intended to establish superiority; if they are, people get hurt in the process. Language is a uniquely human trait, and questions of how and why it evolved have...
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...its ability to hold large amounts of data without sacrificing performance. Microsoft Access functions in different ways that tie together …what? . Tables are used to store data from which queries can pull information from and perform calculations against the data. Forms can be used to enter information into tables. Reports will allow the information to be displayed in a printer-ready format. The reports can also be exported to other Microsoft Office programs, such as Excel or Word. Finally, macros allow for the automation of database tasks. Modules are an area for advanced programming language within the database. The last sentence does not support the topic - Refer to grammar guide for details on how to avoid dependent clauses and run-on sentences https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/grammar/writing_style/thesis.asp Reports are often used to expose the big picture emphasizing the main facts and trends. Reports of this caliber group and sort...
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...Memory, Theories on Language Student ID: 21923613 July 12, 2015 Essay Assignment Exam number: 250391 Language learning from what I’ve read starts when you are about a year old. Learning theory approach to language development suggest that “Language acquisition follows the principles of reinforcement and conditioning.” They give one example in our textbook on page 232 about a mother praising her baby for saying “mama” which means the baby is more likely to continue saying it. Once the baby gets older the learning theory approach to acquisition no longer applies, because it has an issue with grammar. A child that might say “Why he walks away?” could be understood by the listeners around so it makes the theory harder to explain. So we might as well jump to our next topic in language acquisition, which is an innate process by nativist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky believed that people shared something called universal grammar. He also suggested the language acquisition device, it’s a neural system of the brain to help the understanding of language. There is also clear evidence from scientist who have helped this innate process they have researched. They have discovered that there are specific places in the brain that contribute to learning languages, and there are certain areas in the mouth and throat that help with new speech. There is also some research on how some languages need a different tone in speech such as pitch to make a words mean different things such as Chinese. In...
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...The English that was brought to America in seventeenth century was, of course, the language--or versions of the language--of Early Modern England. The year of the Captain John Smith's founding of Jamestown (1607) coincides roughly with Shakespeare's writing of Timon of Athens and Pericles, and the King James Bible (the "Authorized Version") was published only four years later, in 1611. It was not long before writers on both sides of the Atlantic began to acknowledge the language's divergence. As early as the mid-seventeenth century, Samuel Johnson, in a review of Lewis Evans's "Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical, and Mechanical Essays," pays the [American] writer's language a backhanded compliment: This treatise is written with such elegance as the subject admits, tho' not without some mixture of the American dialect, a tract ["trace"] of corruption to which every language widely diffused must always be exposed. (In the World, No. 102, Dec. 12, 1754; quoted by Mencken 4) Johnson's assessment was mild compared to that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who asserted in 1822 that "the Americans presented the extraordinary anomaly of a people without a language. That they had mistaken the English language for baggage (which is called plunder in America), and had stolen it" (quoted in Mencken 28). Noah Webster attributed some of the marked features of New England speech to a conservatism engendered by the relative isolation, vis à vis the rest of the world, of the colonists...
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...cohesive, clear, and well-structured analyses/critiques about what they have read. Students will write a variety of rhetorical modes and for a variety of purposes including narration, information, and persuasion. Students’ papers will reflect a sophisticated level of original analysis and include references to the read text or to outside sources where appropriate. VII. Course Objectives: Students will: * develop an ability to write about problems from historical, philosophical, rhetorical and/or cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives; * engage in group discussions and activities to develop critical perspectives, a clear sense of audience, and a fluent and effective style; * plan, write, and revise three to four formal essays approximately 4-6 pages in length, at...
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