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Language

Language

Language is a form of communication in which sounds and symbols are combined according to formal rules. It’s a human method of communicating with one another which can be further broken down into listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Language is not produced through random sounds and symbols. To produce language, spoken or written, the individual must adhere to a series of rules. Phonemes are the basic speech sounds, there may be more in some words than others and English has 40 to 50 phonemes. Letters are the basic units of written language. Morphemes are the smallest units of the language and the grammar provides the basic rules for word order. Syntax refers to the rules for word order. Semantics refers to a system of using words to create meanings. Given a few words, the rules of a language allow individuals to generate many sentences with different, but also regular, meanings. This is as language is flexible; connection between words and its meaning are not fixed. Most researchers believe that the language acquisition is a combination of nature and nurture. Chomsky believed in the innateness of the language structure, an innate mechanism that enables a child to analyze language and extract the basic rules of grammar. He also believes that despite superficial differences all human language share a fundamental structure i.e. nouns, verbs, tenses, adjectives etc.
Adult speakers of English tend to know somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 words. Common words are easy to describe and use, suggesting their meanings are clearly accessible. A quite a lot of information is stored in the mental lexicon about words meanings and pronunciations the goal of word recognition is to access the information as quickly as possible and this process occurs in two different sensory modalities: auditory and visual.   There are important differences between the two modalities that, at this level of the language system lead to quite different model of recognition...