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1. UNIT ONE
Language as the Medium of
Communication
Defining language
How do you define language?

2. Definitions of language
• It is a device of interaction which is used by
people to express their ideas, emotions and
desires.
• It is a means of thinking, planning and
implementing system.
• It is shared by people in the same speech
community.
• It is something that people learn from their
environment.

3. Definition of language
Language is purely human, non
instinctive (not natural) method of
communicating ideas, desires and
emotions by means of a system of
voluntary produced symbols.

4. Definition of language
Language is learned, shared and
arbitrary system of verbal symbols
through which human beings in the
same speech community interact and
hence communicate in terms of their
common cultural experiences and
expectations.

5. 1.1. Unique Properties of Human
Language
What are the differences between
animals’ way of communication
and human language?

6. Properties of language cont...
A. Displacement
This property of language enables human
beings to talk about remote events in space
and time.
Using language, human beings can discuss the
past and the further events and remote
places. Unlike human beings, animals can not
talk about things and events that are not
found in the immediate environments.

7. Properties of language cont...
B. Arbitrariness
There is no logical or natural connection
between linguistic forms and the objects or
ideas they represent in the universe. In
animal communication there seems to be a
connection between the signals and the
messages that the signals convey.

8. Properties of language cont...
C. Productivity
People are able to produce new utterances
and sentences that they have never heard
before. Even children who are learning their
first language produce words and phrases that
they have never heard or used before. A lot of
new words and expressions are being created
as the existing words and expressions seem to
be inadequate to express new concepts and
objects.

9. Properties of language cont...
Productivity (creativity) is the property
of language that enables human beings
to create new words or expressions.
Animals’ communication is not as
flexible as human language.

10. Properties of language cont...
D. Cultural Transmission
Animal communication is natural, not
learned. Human language, on the other
hand is transmitted from one generation to
the next through learning (though it is
argued that the ability to learn language is a
genetic endowment).

11. Properties of language cont...
E. Discreteness
The sounds in a language are meaningfully
distinct. To make it clearer, let us consider
two English words ‘big’ and ‘dig’. These two
words have different meanings because of
the distinction between the sounds ‘b’ and
‘d’.
Each sound in a language is seen as discrete
as separate and different from the other
sounds.

12. Properties of language cont...
F. Duality
Language works at two levels. At one level
we produce individual sounds. Each sound
we produce does not have any intrinsic
meaning by itself. At another level, they
produce meaningful utterances when they
are produced a successive way, in a certain
combination.

13. Properties of language cont...
Various combinations result in various
meanings as in ‘pot’, ‘top’. These dual (two)
levels existing at the same time
(simultaneously) are referred to as duality.
It is this property of language that makes it
very economical. With limited sounds,
human beings can express unlimited
number of ideas.

14. 1.2.Levels of Language Organization
• Phonology
• Morphology
• Syntax
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
• Discourse

15. Phonology
 Phonology studies the systems and
patterns of sounds in a language.
Phonology contributes to meaning:
 1.by allowing individual sounds (phonemes) to
change meaning eg. Cat /kat/ and rat/rat/
2. in the use of stress and intonation at a
supersegmental level.

16. Morphology cont…
Morphology studies the internal structure
of words.
Meaning is also contributed by morphemes
as these not only have lexical meaning
themselves but may also contribute
grammatical modifications to the main
lexical items, through inflection and
derivation.

17. Words are the basic units of language.
Sentences come later, when words are
strung/patterned together meaningfully.
Words identify things in the world, but
their r/p is unnatural. Such type of words
are also called lexical items.
Morphology cont…

18. Denotative and connotative (associative)
meaning of words
Denotative meaning: refers to the conceptual-
meaning that defines a lexeme in terms of its
constituent features.
Example: The denotative (conceptual) meaning
of the lexeme ‘woman’ can be defined in
terms of such properties as: +human, -male,
+adult and +female.
Morphology cont…

19. Connotative meaning:
 it refers to the meaning that goes beyond
a word’s dictionary definition.
Morphology cont…

20. Activity
State components of the conceptual meaning
of the following words
• Elephant
• bed
• ostrich
• dog
• pasta
Morphology cont…

21. 2. Suggest the associative meanings of the
following Amharic words
• [abəba] ‘flower’
• [wənd] ‘male’
• [k’əllal] ‘simple’
• [wuša] ‘dog’
• [kəbbad] ‘heavy’
• [dzṫb] ‘hyena’
• [alga] ‘bed’
Morphology cont…

22. Syntax
• Syntax emphasizes on how words combine
to form sentences.
• Meaning is also contributed by the
particular combinations of words that make
up the syntax of the language.

23. Example:
a. Chris gave the notebook to Dana.
b. Dana gave the notebook to Chris.
These two sentences contain exactly the same
meaning-bearing elements (words) but they have
different meanings because the words are
combined differently in them.
Thus the two sentences differ not in terms of the
words in them but rather in terms of their syntax.
Syntax cont…

24. • One of the most obvious yet important ways
in which languages are different is the order
of the main elements in a sentence. In
English, for example, the subject comes
before the verb and the direct object
follows the verb. In Amharic, on the other
hand, the subject and the direct object both
precedes the verb.
Syntax

25. Semantics
• Semantics: is concerned with the
investigation of meaning in a language
without any reference to the context of
situation. So, semantics studies the meaning
of words, sentences, and the like of a
language not in use of some communicative
activities.

26. Example
- ‘Ass’ means donkey.
- I’ve got to finish a piece of work.
• Formally, out of context, a sentence has a
kind of time-free and place- free meaning.
This types of meaning is termed as
semantic.
Semantics cont…

27. • Semantics gives a context independent
meaning.
• Syntax is the input of semantics.
• Semantics addresses the denotative meaning
of a sentence.
• Semantics provides only a surface
interpretation of a sentence utterance.
• Semantics works in an explicit level.
Semantics cont…

28. Semantic features of words
Semantic features of words are features
that determine the usage of the words as
well as their placement in a sentence(s).
Features such as ‘+animate, -animate,
+human, -human, +male, etc. can be
treated as basic patterns in differentiating
the meaning of each word and expression
in a language.
Semantics cont…

29. Animate Human Male Adult
• table - - - -
• cow + - - +
• girl + + - -
• woman + + - +
• boy + + + -
Semantics cont…

30. Semantics cont…
From the above feature analysis one can
describe about the basic meaning of a
particular word. The meaning of ‘boy’, for
example, incorporates the semantic features:
[+ Human, + male, -adult]. The meaning of
‘elephant’ satisfies the semantic features:
[-human, +/- male, + adult]

31. Example
a) The woman spoke to the boy
b) The elephant spoke to the boy
Sentence (a) and (b) in the above are correct
syntactically (i.e. in their word arrangements).
However, sentence (a) is acceptable than
sentence (b). Sentence (b) is odd and
unacceptable. This oddness comes from the
semantic feature that the subject (i.e. ‘the
elephant’) holds.
Semantics

32. Pragmatics
• Pragmatics: analyses the relation between linguistic
expressions and their uses.
• The meaning of linguistic expressions in a particular
context, between particular people**.
Example 1:
Pete: Coming down to the pub tonight?
Bill: I’ve got to finish a piece of work.
Bill’s reply will normally be taken to indicate that he is not
free to go to the pub, even though he does not actually
say that. This kind of use of meaning is known as
pragmatic.

33. Example 2:
- What did you say?
hearing it from an old man, we are likely to
infer that he has not heard what has been
said.
hearing it from a young man holding an
iron bar we might infer that we are in a
potential violent situation.
This shows that context is a major source of
supplementary information.

34. Thus, pragmatics involves the speaker’s intention to
convey a certain meaning which may, or may not,
be evident from the message itself.
Consequently, interpretation by the hearer of
this meaning is likely to depend on context.
• Pragmatics offers a context dependent meaning.
• Semantics is the input of pragmatics.
• Pragmatics covers the connotative meaning of a
sentence.
• Pragmatics provides a complete interpretation of
a sentence utterance.
• Pragmatics works in an implicit level.

35. Activity -1
Look at the following utterances and state
whether they are intended to be taken literally
or not.
(1)Tired traveller: ‘This suitcase is killing me’
Yes / No
(2) A boy feeling thirst: ‘Mom give me water’
Yes / No
(3) During a business meeting: ‘It’s a dog-eat-
dog situation’ Yes / No
(4) Hungry person at the dinner table: ‘I could
eat a horse!’ Yes / No