My Study of Linguistics: An Overview

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by RonPrice, Jan 20, 2015.

  1. RonPrice Mr RonPrice Registered Senior Member

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    Part 1:

    ‘Language in Use’ was a subject in which I tutored at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, now the University of Tasmania, in 1974 and it was here that I first came across socio and psycho-linguistics. I hope to get into this subject now in my retirement. Although I had studied the teaching of English at teachers’ college in 1966-7, had studied English Literature and Composition in primary and secondary school in a multitude of forms from 1949 to 1963 and taught English as a teacher from 1967 until 1973, I had had no contact with the academic discipline of linguistics until 1974.

    After 1974 I had no more contact with the subject until the 1990s at a technical and further education college(now a polytechnic) and then only peripherally as relatively limited parts of several of the subjects I taught at that time. By 2006, after seven years in retirement, linguistics only came across my path occasionally. I began to keep a file on the subject in 2003 and I had only two articles from previous courses I had taught. After three years, 2003-2006, there were still less than 20 items in the file. It seemed relevant to continue with this file even though the subject had limited value thusfar.

    Part 2:

    Linguistics
    , I am informed by Wikipedia, is the scientific study of language. Such study has, broadly speaking, three aspects: language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest known activities in the description of language have been attributed to Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BCE), with his analysis of Sanskrit in Ashtadhyayi.

    Linguistics analyzes human language as a system for relating sounds and meaning. Phonetics studies acoustic and articulatory properties of the production and perception of speech sounds and non-speech sounds. The study of languagemeaning, on the other hand, deals with how languages encode relations between entities, properties, and other aspects of the world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity. While the study of semanticstypically concerns itself with truth conditions,pragmatics deals with how context influences meanings.

    Ron Price

    15/3/'05 to 21/1/'15.
     
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  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Today we include other forms of communication in the category of language. Particularly since both gorillas and chimpanzees have been taught to communicate in American Sign Language (the largest vocabulary I've read about is 2,000 words, and one of the adults taught ASL to her baby), it is incumbent upon us to accept sign language as, indeed, language.

    Although ASL was derived from American English, it is not a one-for-one code. The grammar is considerably different, with noise-words like articles omitted, and shades of meaning expressed by presenting two signs at once, with their relative positions carefully chosen.

    Since gestures are used by all human communities (not always with the same meaning--the Turks express "yes" and "no" with the opposite head gestures from ours) and also by other animals, it's generally assumed by anthropologists that sign language was developed first. Around 70KYA we suddenly find, in the archeological record, an explosion of complex, coordinated activities that could not possibly have been performed by people who were communicating with their hands at the same time. This was the birth of spoken language.

    The most important of those activities, from our perspective, was the first successful migration out of Africa about 10,000 years later.

    --the Moderator
     
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  5. RonPrice Mr RonPrice Registered Senior Member

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    I send my belated thanks to Fraggle Rocker for his thought response to my post and his several comments about language. With over 20,000 posts at this site he has been an important contributor here. I often taught specialist aspects of English to a wide range of students. I taught essay-writing at the then Ballarat College of Advanced Education in 1977 and 1978 as well as communication in several certificate courses(certificates 1 to 4). I taught communication to diploma students, business communication at advanced diploma adults, English literature to tertiary entrance examination(TEE) students, English TEE, and study skills at Technical and Further Education colleges, some of which became polytechnics by the 21st century. All of these courses were practical programs. The study of linguistics, a course which was significantly theoretical, was the only one I taught. That was, as I say, in 1974.

    After 1974 the only study of this field was peripheral in the relatively limited sections of several of the subjects I taught until I retired from all forms of teaching in 2005. By 2015 linguistics only came across my path occasionally. When I began this file in 2003 I had only two articles from previous courses I had taught. After a dozen years, 2003-2015, there were only 20 items in this file. It seemed relevant to continue with this file even though the subject has had limited value, thusfar, as I headed through my 70s from 2014 to 2024. Who knows what will take place in my study of linguistics in the multi-discipline study that has come to occupy my time in these years of leisure, of retirement. I no longer have my time occupied with paid employment and social tasks, with the responsibilities of raising children & of community. My mind is free to journey across the "useful branches of learning of the day....& the varied learning of the time."(Abdul-Baha, Secret of Divine Civilization, Baha'i Pub. Trust, Wilmette, 1970(1928), pp.35-6.

    Ron Price
    5/9/'12 to 13/5/'15.
     
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I'll be 72 next month. I'm still working as a technical writer on software projects.
     
  8. RonPrice Mr RonPrice Registered Senior Member

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    Goodonyer, as they say Downunder, Fraggle. I've reinvented myself, but don't make any money---just the pension keeps me going. I'm a writer & author, poet & publisher, editor & researcher, reader & scholar, online blogger & journalist. I'm now a retired teacher & tutor, lecturer & adult educator, taxi-driver & ice-cream salesman. I only drop into this site every month or so. If you want to write to me do so at my email address; ronprice9@gmail.com; or you can drop a comment on my website at: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/
     

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