What is Language Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

What is Language - Essay typesetters caseThis essay leave behind look into Smith and Wilsons theory of what a row is, and their arguments on the head that language is rule-governed. What is a Language? There have been a number of definitions on what a language is and in each definition, there is an aspect that points out language is rule-governed. This is where Neil Smith and Deidre Wilson come in to disembarrass the claim that language is governed by rules. Language uses the concept of grammar. Grammar is a set of rules whose main tasks argon to go against well-formedly from ungrammatical convictions and to provide a description of grammatical sentences. Individuals who are fluent in a particular language often correct themselves when they make mistakes in grammar while talking even when no one has corrected them (Smith and Deirdre 327). A language speaker will excessively feel and know when soulfulness from a distinct language makes a mistake in grammar when trying to sp eak his language. For example, an American will feel and know the mistake when a German pronounces the word what as vat. When two speakers of resistent vocabularys of the very(prenominal) language meet and talk, each will feel the other one is making grammatical mistakes in their sentences and would want to correct them but out of politeness will keep away from correcting the other. A speaker of British English will for example see a fault in a sentence interchangeable I done gone to school. He will feel deal the sentence is supposed to be I had gone to school. The speaker of the other English dialect will similarly feel that the British English speakers sentence needs both(prenominal) correcting. This not only shows that languages have a set of rules that they follow but it also shows that these rules do differ (Smith and Deirdre 327). Rules can be created and operated by a single individual easily. There are two such(prenominal) instances in language. One of them is when ch ildren are learning how to speak and the case of grownups with idiosyncratic speech poses. Kids learning their rootage language often make their own rules on how they pronounce the words and how their sentence structure should be. These rules are more often than not defile according to the adults but to them they cannot be more right. An instance of such a grammar rule is when a child asks mummy what that was? Instead of mummy what was that? Adults on the other hatful could have a difference in their linguistic rules (Smith and Deirdre 329). A sentence like what did you want to do before going out might seem wrong to another individual. People who have also suffered a brain damage and consequently suffered aphasia or speech loss also fall in this category of creating their own rules. This results in the construction of sentences that are ungrammatical pronounce words in the wrong way (Smith and Deirdre 330). Rules patterns cannot be reversed and clam up have the same meaning. S ometimes they become meaningless when reversed. The same applies to language. A pattern of a sentence construction loses its meaning or becomes meaningless when changed. A sentence like we ate the food ourselves when changed to ourselves ate the food we it becomes meaningless though the words are still the same. Therefore, like rules, language pattern loses its meaning when changed (Smith and Deirdre 332). Like rules, language has a feature of being world(a) (Smith and Deirdre 337). There is a striking similarity in the language that cuts across all language patterns of the globe. The pattern of a sentence structure of different languages pointing out to the same thing will have or so of not exactly the same pattern when all of them are translated into one language. A sentence like