Chapter 1
- MacNeilage’s quotation can be associated with the physical adaptation source out of the four sources because MacNeilage speaks about the other mammalian activities and considers speech to be very similar to chewing, licking and sucking.
- The beginning of the language is based on the natural sounds. All the onomatopoeic words like (bow-wow, cuckoo, bang, splash, rattle, hiss, boom) to name a few echo naturally and the earlier words are the imitations of the natural sounds heard by the ancient people around them.
- When humans speak they make sounds either by inhaling or exhaling breath. The exclamatory word like Ouch is pronounced by exhaled breath and is considered to be as an unlikely source of speech that is not similar to ordinary speech. Other examples include Ah!, Ooh!, and Wow!.
- Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes, and they are roughly even in height (Yule, 3). This special feature helps humans in the production of speech sounds and is also helpful in making sounds such as f for v.
- The pharynx is a longer cavity above the vocal box (larynx) that acts as a resonator, and results in a high range and clear sound produced via larynx or voice box (vocal cords). The position of larynx differs in humans and primates and is helpful for humans to get more vocal power.
- The language ability in the deaf children would not depend on the physical adaptations of teeth or larynx that help in producing speech if the deaf children start to develop speech from birth. All children including deaf need a special capacity to learn a language that is genetically determined and it must be natural. The deaf children of deaf parents naturally acquire Sign or sign language (Yule, 172).
Chapter 2
- The transmission of language from one generation to next is called cultural transmission. Language is acquired through native speakers and not by parental genes. Humans have natural tendency to learn a language generally however the utterance of the language is not natural. For example, a child inherits physical features from natural Chinese parents, and if that child is adopted by French speakers at birth, it is likely that the child will grow up speaking French and not Chinese.
- Humans create new infinite expressions and describe new objects and situations and this property is called productivity or open-endedness, whereas the animal communication is called fixed reference as the number of signals is finite relating to a particular object or occasion.
- The Displacement property of language enables people to talk about ‘the future’. It allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment (Yule, 9).
- The scientist couple Beatrix and Allen Gardner used a form of American Sign Language to experiment on Washoe. In these tests the humans did not provide any signals and Washoe could still show the proper signs and identify the objects in the images.
- Arbitrariness is the property of Sarah’s language because there is no natural connection between the grey plastic shape to convey the meaning of the word red.
- The key element in Kanzi’s language learning was exposure and observation, a kind of learning at a very early age.
Chapter 3
- In Pictograms the ‘pictures’ represent particular images in a consistent way, and the images are described as a form of picture-writing, and Ideograms are the more abstract derived forms. The difference in both is the representation of the symbol and the entity.
- The basic difference between the logographic and phonographic systems is the representation of symbols. Symbols represent words in logographic writing system and symbols represent sounds in phonographic system.
- In rebus writing, the symbol for one entity is taken over as the symbol for the sound of the spoken word used to refer to the entity (Yule, 22). The specified symbol is used when that same sound occurs in any other words.
- The modern Japanese language has the partially syllabic writing system or a syllabary.
- The name given to the writing system used for Russian is called the Cyrillic alphabet.
- China has the longest history of the writing system that is in continuous use.
Chapter 4
- The study of physical properties of speech as sound waves in air is acoustic phonetics whereas the perception of speech sounds via the ear is auditory phonetics.
- (a) bang = +V, (b) smack = −V, (c)thud = −V, (d) crash = −V, (e) splat = +V, (f) wham = +V
- (a) belly = bilabial, (b) calf = velar, (c) chin = palatal, (d) foot = labiodental, (e) hand = glottal, (f) knee = alveolar, (g) mouth = bilabial, (h) thigh = dental (i) toe = alveolar
- (a) cheery = affricate, (b) crazy = stop, (c) dizzy = stop, (d) funny = fricative, (e) happy = glide (or fricative), (f) jolly = affricate, (g) loony = liquid, (h)merry = nasal, (i) silly = fricative
- (a) bæk = back, (b) b?t = bought, (c) fes = face, (d) haw = how, (e) hopi? = hoping, (f) hu = who, (g) klok = cloak, (h) t?ip = cheap, (i) ð? = the
- (a) bake = bek, (b) doubt = dawt, (c) gem = dzεm, (d) noise = nɔjz, (e) phone = fon, (f) shy = ʃaj, (g) these = ðiz,(h) thought = θɔt, (i) wring = rıIŋ
Chapter 5
- The difference between allophone and phoneme lies in substitution. Substituting allophone results in different pronunciation of the same word, and substituting a phoneme results in a word with different meaning and pronunciation.
- Sound pronounced with stronger puff of air is aspirated sound. For example, if you cover your mouth with the back of your hand and say tar and then star, there will aspiration.
- The following words are the minimal pairs: ban:bun, fat:pat, fat:far, pit:pat, bell:bet, tape:tale, heat:heel, meal:heel, chain:sane, and vote:goat.
- Phonotactics is a blend of the letter sounds in all the languages. It is the study of structure of the sounds in any language and is associated with the constraint in a language on the allowed combination of phonemes that are specific to a language. For example, the sound that begins with /gn/ is not permitted in English but is accepted in German.
- The open syllables end with a vowel (as nucleus), for example me, to and no. The closed syllables end with a consonant (as coda), for example up, cup, at or hat.
- (a) government = /n/, (b)postman = /t/, (c)pumpkin = /p/, (d) sandwich = /d/
Chapter 6
- The origin of the word nitwit is “Ik niet weet” and it is a borrowed from the colloquial Dutch expression that means ‘I don’t know’.
- (a) and (b) are borrowings, and (c) is an example of calque.
- (a) infixing (bloomin),
(b) clipping doctor and veterinarian,
(c) compounding (skate and board), compounding (kick and ass) and conversion from verb kick + noun ass to adjective),
(d) acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,
(e) conversion from noun party to verb,
(f) coinage,
(g) borrowing from Arabic suffa, hypocorism from comfortable
- The prefixes are dis-, in-, re-, and un-
The suffixes are: -less, -ness, -ment, -ive, -able, and -ful
- In Kamhmu, Srnal is the word for ‘an ear ornament’.
- (a) blending from Federal Express + converting from noun to verb,
(b) clipping from telephone and compounding,
(c) blending car and hijack and converting from verb to noun,
(d) borrowing from Japanese and compounding,
(e) eponym from William Hoover and converting from noun to verb.
Works Cited
Yule, George. The Study of Language. 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press. (2005). Print.
