Language essays

Language essays Humans and animals alike utilize language as a tool for survival. Animals and insects communicate with each other through closed communications. Grey-leg geese perform a ritualistic dance before mating, tropical perch contend in duels and the loser would display stripes to admit defeat, ants leave trails of different odors while foraging for food, honeybees dispatch directions of pollen by performing a dance. Each gesture has a specific connotation; however, no matter how many messages or calls an animal may have in its repertoire, each gesture is mutually exclusive. Animals generally cannot combine parts of two gestures to form new meanings; this type of communication is thereby categorized as closed. Humans, however, can continually express new meaning without having to create new sounds. By using different combinations and arrangements of phonemes and morphemes, syntax allows us to produce an infinite number of meanings without having to create new sounds. It also enables u s to understand and utter sentences that we have never heard before. This malleable trait of the human language made scientists consider it an open communication. The complexity of the human language would not have been possible without certain biological conditions, such as a mouth-and-throat structure that can create a wide range of sounds. And equally important is a brain that is capable of making associations amongst various sources of information, and to translate them quickly enough to maintain communication. Children in all cultures acquire language in the same sequence as they mature. Within the first ten months, an infant learns the patterning of sound in social interaction, allowing them to babble in the sound of their culture. By two years, the child is able to dispatch messages in 1- and 2-word utterances, forming simple versions of the adult language. The childs vocabulary grow ...