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WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
A language is a set of systems by which we communicate. This system is a finite one made
of principles that make it possible for speakers to construct sentences to do particular
communicative jobs. These principles may be called Grammatical Competence and
Communicative Competence. By saying grammatical competence, we refer to the
knowledge and the ability to produce sentences, building blocks of sentences (e.g., parts of
speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns), and how the sentences are formed.
Although it can master the rules of sentence formation in a language, the grammatical
competence is still not very successful at being able to use the language for meaningful
communication. So here is when we need to refer to communicative competence, which
includes knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and function, and
knowing how to vary our use of language according to the setting and participants.
by Isabel Montaa
DISCRETENESS
The term is especially used in phonetics
and phonology to refer to sounds which
have relatively clear-cut boundaries, as
defined in acoustic, articulatory or
auditory terms. It is evident that speech is
a continuous stream of sound, but
speakers of a language are able to
segment this continuum into a finite
number of discrete units, these usually
corresponding to the phonemes of the
language.
PRODUCTIVITY
It refers to the creative capacity of
language users to coin new words and,
produce and understand an indefinitely
large number of sentences.
ARBITRARINESS
PHONETICS
LEXICOLOGY
by Isabel Montaa
SYNTAX
SEMANTICS
by Isabel Montaa
EUROPEAN COLONIALISM
Thanks to explorers, colonial
administrators, travelers, missionaries and
others grammar and word lists and texts
were spread up in Europe. Some scholars
compiled these multilingual lists and made
language comparisons. The languages
that were related to one another where
appreciated gradually, and sooner,
developed and established.
In later centuries, William Jones will
discover the relatedness of Indo-European
languages and will be the founder of
comparative linguistics.
Other families of related languages were
recognized and motivated soon after by
the hand of:
by Isabel Montaa