...(the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.” -Robert A. Heinlein In this text, Saussure concerns himself with what he refers to language, which he defines as a system of signs that express a concept, and argues that it can be expressed by two components: langue (the abstract system of language that is internalized by a community) and parole (the individual acts of speech). Furthermore, Saussure regards parole as heterogeneous (composed of many parts) and langue as homogeneous (composed of the union of meanings and what he refers to as sound images – both being psychological in nature). Therefore, Saussure considers langue as systematic; this being the reason why Saussure chooses to focus on langue as it allows an investigative methodology that is rooted, supposedly, in pure science. In this text, Saussure endeavors to argue against a common view of language that regards language as being a natural organism which grows and evolves following a set of laws that are outside the control of human beings. Instead, Saussure wants to position language as a social phenomenon that is beyond the immediate control of the individual speaker. To clearly state his point, Saussure needs to define the following concepts. The Sign The signe (sign) is the basic unit of language that Saussure wants to focus on for the start of his investigation in linguistics...
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...edition of Nature with a passage from the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus. The 1849 second edition included instead a poem by Emerson himself. Both present themes that are developed in the essay. The passage from Plotinus suggests the primacy of spirit and of human understanding over nature. Emerson's poem emphasizes the unity of all manifestations of nature, nature's symbolism, and the perpetual development of all of nature's forms toward the highest expression as embodied in man. Nature is divided into an introduction and eight chapters. In the Introduction, Emerson laments the current tendency to accept the knowledge and traditions of the past instead of experiencing God and nature directly, in the present. He asserts that all our questions about the order of the universe — about the relationships between God, man, and nature — may be answered by our experience of life and by the world around us. Each individual is a manifestation of creation and as such holds the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Nature, too, is both an expression of the divine and a means of understanding it. The goal of science is to provide a theory of nature, but man has not yet attained a truth nbroad enough to comprehend all of nature's forms and phenomena. Emerson identifies nature and spirit as the components of the universe. He defines nature (the "NOT ME") as everything separate from the inner individual — nature, art, other men, our own bodies. In common usage, nature refers to...
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...A2 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE What follows should act as reminders. For full revision you need to do more than rely on these notes. Use your course notes, essays and text books. 1. Key Words: Religious language is cognitive if it is thought of as conveying knowledge of what is really there. Religious language is non-cognitive it is thought as conveying feelings or expressing desires or guiding ways of behaving. Religious language is realist if it is thought of as conveying testable facts that actually pertain in reality. Religious language is non-realist it is thought of as conveying guiding ideals but with no basis in factual reality. Religious language offers a correspondence theory of truth if it is thought of as being able to point to the reality that it is trying to convey. Religious language offers a coherence theory of truth if it is thought of as conveying making sense within a network of other beliefs which people hold to be true. 2. What Religious Language is: Religious language is an outlet for emotion in special times of life. Religious language is the language of worship. It is performative, ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’, and it is prescriptive (law making – i.e. honour your father and mother). However, none these uses of religious language is our focus. Our focus is how religious language might make truth claims about the reality of God and whether it can succeed in doing this. Philosophers...
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... ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE TEACHING PROJECT TOPIC: “TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN SOCIO-LINGUISTIC CONTEXT” SUBMITTED BY: GAURAV .N. SHIMPI CHECKED BY: PROF. DIPTI PETHE YEAR : 2012 -2013 INDEX Introduction Aims and Objectives Meaning and Nature of Language English Language and Literature in India Role of Language in Teaching Literature Sociolinguistic Contest in Learning and Teaching English Language Conclusion Bibliography INTRODUCTION Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society. Sociolinguistics differs from sociology of language in that the focus of sociolinguistics is the effect of the society on the language, while the latter's focus is on the language's effect on the society. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics. It is historically closely related to linguistic anthropology and the distinction between the two fields has even been questioned recently. It also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc., and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place...
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..."What have you learnt about language acquisition from children's early words and meanings?" A child acquires language through a variety of sources. In this essay I will be explaining how children acquire words and meanings when learning language. A child goes through various stages of acquiring words. They being the cooing stage which means they are making open vowel sounds. This then adapted into a consonant vowel pattern in the babbling stage. The child then begins to use proto-words that they may not understand. Finally they use productive vocabulary to express needs or wants. The early words and meanings a child acquires, are mainly influenced by their environment and personality. This is shown in Nelsons experiment where she determined that when a child starts to use early words their functions could be put into four categories of naming, action, social and modifying. When looking at a transcript of a child’s early words the influences on vocabulary could be seen. Using names such as “mummy” or “cup” shows the child is referential meaning they use concrete nouns often. Whereas a child that uses many action and social words like “play” and “hello” is more expressive and use abstract nouns. This is also evident in the Social Inertactionist Theory. Bruner suggested that children acquire language through nature and nurture, so children in different environments with different parents would develop distinctive words and meanings that relate to their own personal surroundings...
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...Language and Lexicon Penny Rider Psychology 360 July 23, 2012 University of Phoenix Language and Lexicon Humans depend on language to communicate with others. The use of communication can be in many forms, such as verbal, written, or the use of signals. A person uses language to communicate feelings, emotions, thoughts, and fears to others. The use of language sounds are how society learns new and different ways of communicating with the rest of the world and various ways of thinking. Language and language development are important in producing a person’s dynamic and interactive systems. These systems reinforce a person’s instincts pertaining to nature and nurture. The development and learning processes of language helps the mind to distinguish the differences of words to the language coming from sounds. These processes help to a person understand sneezes, coughs, or other sounds coming from the mouth is not the same as sounds of language. The words of language are separated into groups, objects, events, and actions. The process of learning language begins in a person’s early years through nature, starting point, and nurture, environmental influences. A person cannot communicate or understand the meaning of an object without the use of language. The uses of signs are not valuable without the organization into various relationships of language through the translation of concepts. Every culture has different language and lexicon. The vocabulary of language is defined...
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...study of the language is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It becomes a tangle begetting multiple language discrepancies. That is why linguistics compares languages and explores their histories, in order to find and to account for its development and origins to give the answers to this or that language point. Due to the semantic features of language the meanings of words, their ability to combine with other words, their usage, the “place” they hold in the lexical system of a language do not concur for the most part. All the same “ideas” expressed by words coincide in most cases, though the means of expression differ. The principal types of lexical correspondences between two languages are as follows: 1) Complete correspondences; 2) Partial correspondences; 3) The absence of correspondences Let’s deal with them more exactly. 1) Complete lexical correspondences. Complete correspondence of lexical units of two languages can rarely be found. As a rule they belong to the following lexical groups: - proper names and geographical denominations: - the months and days of the week, numerals. - scientific and technical terms (with the exception of terminological polysemy). 2) Partial lexical correspondences. While translating the lexical units partial correspondences mostly occur. That happens when a word in the language of the original conforms to several equivalents in the language it is translated...
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...1. The object of Lexicology. The main lexicological problems. Lexicology is a branch of linguistics, the science of language. The term Lexicology is composed of two Greek morphemes: lexis meaning ‘word, phrase’ (hence lexicos ‘having to do with words’) and logos which denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’. Thus, the literal meaning of the term Lexiсolоgу is ‘the science of the word’. The literal meaning, however, gives only a general notion of the aims and the subject-matter of this branch of linguistic science. Lexicology as a branch of linguistics has its own aims and methods of scientific research, its basic task being a study and systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is concerned with words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words. Distinction is naturally made between General Lexicology and Special Lexicology. General Lexicology is part of General Linguistics; it is concerned with the study of vocabulary irrespective of the specific features of any particular language. Special Lexicology is the Lexicology of a particular language (e.g. English, Russian, etc.), i.e. the study and description of its vocabulary and vocabulary units, primarily words as the main units of language. Needless to say that every Special Lexicology is based on the principles worked out and laid down by General Lexicology, a general theory of vocabulary. There is also a close relationship...
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...Bibliography Linda Bookwalter Kaplan University Annotated Bibliography Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews Neuroscience (11), 831-843. Doi: 10.1038/nrn1533. The research that Dr. Kuhl shows is that children from different parts of the world are learning other different language. The children are able to pick up the language that adults are speaking rather if it’s native or non native. All children are different in their own way. As a group, infant’s discriminatory ERP responses to the non-native contrast are present at 7 months of age, but disappear by 11 months of age, consistent with behavioral data (Kuhl, 2004). The strengths of this article is when the infants of the same age group were divided into subgroups of the components of the basis of the individuals ERP, it was evident that the brains of the infants remained sensitive to the contrast of the 11 month old of an non-native contrast. The weakness of this article there are some factors of the social skills that are effecting the language acquisition because the language that is evolved are not being addressed for the need of a child’s social communication. The influences on this article are that the children learn by simply being introduced to the proper auditory information. The data that was collected was changes that occurred during the Universal Language timeline of the perception of speech and the production of speech development. The data means what changes...
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...Running head: TRACING THE NATURE OF SEMANTIC CHANGE Tracing the Nature of Semantic Change Shahrin Akter 1521358655 Department of English North South University Tracing the Nature of Semantic Change Introduction Language never stands still. All living languages are continually changing over the course of time due to social, cultural, environmental, historical and linguistic factors. Semantic change is one of the major phenomenon of language change. Basically, semantic change deals with the change of the original meaning of a word as well as the development of a new word which is reflected in the way the words are being used. This paper mainly puts an insight to the major causes of semantic change as well as trace the traditional classification made by various scholars. According to Varshney, “The main factors responsible for semantic change are vagueness in meaning, loss of motivation, polysemy, ambiguous contexts and the structure of the vocabulary”. (p. 284). Over the passage of time, people use words in a new context. Hence the meanings of the words are changing gradually, often to the point that the new meaning is radically different from the original usage. For instance, the word ‘awful’ originally meant ‘awe-inspiring, filling someone with deep awe’, as...
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...While analysis Leopold and Thoreau are that they both have the same conservation the environment. They come from different area and different job, but the both are nature lover. They to leaves the wealthiest toward sufficiency. For Leopold, he has being fulfill to love the environment or the nature from his family. He have been played with the nature since young age to fulfill as part of his life. Thoreau runs a way to fine the true meaning of life. Lucky, he successful with this wish and get more toward the meaning of the nature. The similarity of the Leopold and Thoreau is they are nature lover. They are protect environment as long as it can take for the new generation to use. Leopold wants people "human being" to respect this land and behaves...
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...Linguistic Sign as a Social Factor in Language Development By Krystyna Poluektova CONTENTS CHAPTER I – Introduction Statement of the problem and purpose……………………………………………3 CHAPTER II Literature review, definition of terms and main ideas………………………………………………………………………………………………….5 CHAPTER IV – Conclusion…………………………………………........................14 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………….15 Introduction Statement of the problem and purpose The idea of the linguistic sign, which is today asserted or implied in most works of general linguistics, came from Ferdinand de Saussure. Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics. Saussure's ideas had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century. Two currents of thought emerged independently of each other, one in Europe, the other in America. The results of each incorporated the basic notions of Saussurean thought in forming the central tenets of structural linguistics. Saussure posited that linguistic form is arbitrary, and therefore all languages function in a similar fashion. According to Saussure, a language is arbitrary because it is systematic in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Also, all languages have their own concepts and sound images...
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...true, based on how interpretive one concept is over the other. In “Homo religiousus,” Karen Armstrong delves into two classifications of truth, the symbolic and the logical truth, and provides examples that corroborate her beliefs. In “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning It Was Friday,” Martha Stout insinuates that the truths, Armstrong terms rational, conceptual and logical, are being influenced by the symbolic nature that is built into any “meaning-seeking creature[’s]” biology (Armstrong 5). An example of a meaning-seeking creature is Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens are the symbolic species. The ability that a meaning-seeking creature possesses, to understand, stems from a foundation of symbols. When defining truth, the idea that everything is made out of symbols has to be accounted for, and when regarding symbols, nothing can actually be concretely true. Therefore, there is no absolute truth, but rather there are conditions that can qualify different concepts as true, based on their levels of trueness, such as maintaining a unified consciousness, the mechanics of beliefs, language, and the...
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...PLATO TRUTH IS DIFFRENT FROM ART AND NIT CONSIDER ART AS CAPTURING TRUTH CAN WE EQUATE CULTURE AND NATURE (COUNTRY) as Paz do in his work MOVEMENT OF NATURE AND TIME THE RELTn IS NOT PURE LIKE ARISTOTLE NATURE IS NO MORE ETERNAL BUT SOMETHING FLEETING AND IN THE PROCESS IMITATE TIME AND NATURE “THERE IS NO ORIGINAL WORK, THERE ARE ONLY TRASLATION AND TRANSLATIONS OF TRANSLATION” THE ORIGINAL IS ALWAYS UNFAITHFUL TO THE TRANSLATION........ HIS POEM ALSO OFFER A CRITICISM OF ITSELF THE “I” IS DEFLECTED OR A MARGINAL PRESCENCE PAUSEK THE IDEA OF MOMENT OUTSIDE TIME THE IDEA OF Tangible and Intangible Estrangement NAME- RANJANA NAGAR SUPERVISOR- RAJAN KRISHNAN COURSE- ADVANCED READING IN SIGN THEORY PhD LITERARY ART/ STUDIES Report on the Advanced Readings in Sign Theory course From the discussions and readings in the class, I have tried to accumulate different ideas and debates and develop my own understanding of the process of semiotics. Taking up the examples of painting by MF Husain and Van Dyke, I will illustrate several points that I have understood. Let me begin with a general definition of “semiotics” that I had at the beginning of the course: Semiotics can be understood as a process involved with meaning making. It explains how various words, objects and images generate meaning or in other words how do we comprehend or attribute meaning to them. In the process semiotics does not limit itself within symbolism but even questions the naturalistic...
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...people actually say and do in particular everyday circumstances. People talk about the world, about their work, about others and their relations with them. And in talking, they do things. That was Austin’s (1962) revolutionary insight into an aspect of language that had not been fully recognized: the pragmatic function of language, what language does to make social life possible. This turn to language, or to discourse, has had the effect of breaking down barriers between different social sciences concerned with the analysis of everyday social life. 1.2. Definitions of discourse Discourse analysis is widely recongnised as one of the most vast and least defined areas of linguistics. One reason for this is that the understanding of discourse is based on scholarship from a number of academic disciplines that are quite different from one another, such as, the philosophy of language, pragmatics, sociolinguistics. In a very general sense, two definitions are prevalent in the field, which underlie two different assumptions about the general nature of language and the goals of linguistics: the so-called ‘structuralist’ or ‘formalist’ approach, and the so-called ‘functional’ approach. The former defines discourse analysis as ‘language above the level of...
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