Presentation Transcript
The Laws of Human Language :The Laws of Human Language Free powerpoints at http://www.worldofteaching.com Fromkin and Rodman (1988)
NUMBER 1 :NUMBER 1 HUMAN BEINGS
=
LANGUAGE
NUMBER 2 :NUMBER 2 THERE ARE NO
“PRIMITIVE”
LANGUAGES
NUMBER 3 :NUMBER 3 THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN SOUND AND MEANING IS (mostly)
ARBITRARY
NUMBER 4 :NUMBER 4 LANGUAGE IS AN INFINITE ARRAY OF SENTENCES FROM A FINITE SET OF SOUNDS AND SIGNS.
IE. WORDS INTERACT (SEE Zipf’s law)
NUMBER 5 :NUMBER 5 ALL GRAMMARS CONTAIN RULES FOR FORMING WORDS / SENTENCES
OF A SIMILAR KIND.
NUMBER 6 :NUMBER 6 ALL LANGUAGES ARE MADE UP OF DISCRETE SOUNDS (Phonemes) WHICH HAVE A LIMITED SET OF PROPERTIES
NUMBER 7 :NUMBER 7 SIMILAR GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES ARE FOUND
IN ALL LANGUAGE
( Nouns, verbs etc….)
NUMBER 8 :NUMBER 8 THERE ARE SEMANTIC (that which gives meaning) UNIVERSALS IN ALL LANGUAGES. (male/female animate/human)
NUMBER 9 :NUMBER 9 EVERY LANGUAGE HAS ITS
OWN LAWS
(ways of negation, forming questions, commanding etc…)
NUMBER 10 :NUMBER 10 SPEAKERS ARE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING
AND COMPREHENDING
AN INFINITE ARRAY OF SENTENCES
(see rule #4)
NUMBER 11 :NUMBER 11 ALL NEWBORNS ARE
CAPABLE OF ACQUIRING
ANY LANGUAGE
NUMBER 12 :NUMBER 12 LANGUAGE
=
CHANGE
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