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Introduction to Languages - Essay Example

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A language is a means of passing information from one person to another. There are many languages across the world. For example, English, German, Spanish and Arabic among others. Every language has its own structural rules used in communication. …
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Introduction to Languages
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? Introduction to Languages Insert Languages Introduction A language is a means of passing information from one person to another. There are many languages across the world. For example, English, German, Spanish and Arabic among others. Every language has its own structural rules used in communication. This paper intends to discuss some rules in English as a language in relation to language A. it also expects to discuss morphology and phenotical aspect of English. Loose Ladies My point was is that I feel like want to raise more awareness am in a position where I can’t just pick myself and just go thank God hating hasn’t stopped they need us to help them keep close to them. Phonetic transcription m a? p ? ? ? t w ? s ? s ? ?: t a? f i: l l a? k e a? w ? ? t t ? r e? s e m ? ?: w e ?: n e s s ?: m ? n p ? s ? t ? ? n we?? e ?: ? k ?: n t d? ? s t p ? k m a? s e l f ?: n d d? ? s t g ?. ? n k g ? d h ? t ? ? g h ?: s n t s t ? p p e d ? e? n i: d ? s t ? h e l p ? e m k i: p k l ? s t ? ? e m. Q2.1 A morpheme is a combination of sounds, which can give a specific meaning. There are two types of morphemes free morphemes and bound morphemes. A free morpheme can stand alone and give complete meaning while a bound morpheme cannot give meaning on its own. Examples of free morphemes include cat, dog cow, house, computer and television. An Example of a bound morpheme is in the word dogs (Bauer B 2007). The letter “s” is a bound morpheme since it cannot give any meaning just on its own, it must accompany another morpheme to make meaning. A house is a place used by man for staying. A dog is an animal kept by man for security purposes. It alerts him when there is danger at night or during the day. A computer is a machine used by man to process and store information. A television is equipment used to give information through audiovisual means from a broadcasting station and a cow is a type of cattle kept by man for providing milk. In language A, Mu means yam while pa means a house. In plural, the words change to pemu and pepa respectively. This means that the prefix pe is used as bound morpheme to give meaning that the items are in plural. Q2.2 Speaking or writing singular words in requires that one must use articles like an, and a, for uncountable noun for countable nouns in English respectively. Language A does not follow this rule. A good example is “mu tekan peho” meaning “a yam is burning.” The article “a” is not necessary in Language A while it must appear before a noun in English. The second arise in the order of tenses. Tekan indicates present action while tekan with a suffix le at the end of the verb indicates an activity that will continue in future. ‘Is’ in English show a present continuous activity while future continuous tense use will be together with ing at the end of the verb. This is clearly indicated by these examples from language A and English. “pemu tekan pehole” which means “yams will be burning (Bauer B 2007).” “Mu tekan peho” which means, “a yam is burning.” Task 3 The word black in the first sentence means that all employees ought to put on shoes that painted black only. The color of shoes must be black for all people who expect to do such jobs. Pitch black is a phrase, which indicates that when there is no light darkness cover the house. Therefore, in this context, the darkness covers the house when lights go off. One has to express openly his points clearly for others to understand. In some occasions, it might be difficult to identify which group is right. When there is no clarity of points the words black and white indicates the inability to identify whether a point is right or wrong. During funerals, there is rampart sadness in and around the home of the bereaved. All people who come to the funeral sympathize and comfort the bereaved (Bauer B 2007). In this case, the word black means those sad moments related to death. On this day people where black clothes to indicate their sorrowful moments. There are different forms of tea in the restaurants. When customers get into the restaurant, they have freedom to choose which type of tea to take. Black coffee in restaurants is that tea without any color. It is made from water and coffee only. In acting people, choose their best parts to act. The sad moments are relate to black. Most actors do not like these parts although others do better. For instance, an actor can be given ill characters. If she or he performs well then he gets recognition for better performance. There are moments of joy and sadness in an office. When people are in joy bright colors like yellow orange and white indicate their happy moods. On the contrary, when a problem befalls s them the status change abruptly and a black color denotes this state. When an accident occurs in the office and people incur several cuts they feel pain therefore being in a sad mood. Currency appreciates and depreciates depending on the economic status. As it escalates, prices of commodities increase thus leading to higher commodity prices (Foley 1998). The citizens spent much reducing amount of their savings. This period when one is operating on the negatives is painted black since it leads to stress. Most friends will feel negative if one of their friend’s accounts is always on the negative side. Black color in this context relates to activities or some ideas that are mostly on the negative side and may cause pain to individuals. Language Understanding Language is a medium through which people pass messages from one person to the other. There are thousands of languages in the world. Some people are able to handle more than one language confidently. Examples of languages include English, Chinese, and Arabic among others. one is said to understand a language when he or she has the ability to cite rules and regulation to apply in the language. It also means that one is capable of producing acceptable lexical forms of sentences in the language. This involves knowing how to create and connect ideas in a language. Every language has its own rules and regulations, which are applicable (Fromkin and Rodman 2004) . The rules are always in connection with the eight parts of speech. The eight parts of speech are verbs, nouns, interjections, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions. These are the basics that we look at for us to determine whether the person in question understand language or not. Language has more features to deal with at different length. Joining of words is a crucial issue in language. For instance, conjunctions in English Join two or more sentences together. Get me a glass of water. Bring me a plate of sausage. These sentences can form one meaningful sentence using a conjunction as follows: get me a glass of water and a plate of sausage. A person who understands a language should be able to use skills to join sentences to avoid repetition of some words during communication. The following chart shows all parts of speech in English Language (Hacker 2009). A person with good mastery skills must make use of the parts of speech correctly. PART OF SPEECH FUNCTION EXAMPLES OF WORDS Verb Word of action Sing, work, plant, and sit. Noun Name of something or person Dog, pen, cow, man, and music Adjectives Words that describe nouns An/a interesting , big, good, well Adverb Word that describe adverbs, verbs or adjectives Silently, quickly, really, badly pronoun A word that can replace a noun Preposition Enables linking of nouns to others At, after, but, on and to Conjunctions Joins words clauses or sentences But, and, when, Interjections They are short exclamation marks that are inserted into a sentence sometimes. Well, hi, ouch, oh The other point to consider from this reading is that a person should have proper skills to Identify suffixes and prefixes. When a suffix is added to a noun the noun changes to plural. The sounds that combine to form these word form morphemes. A person with skills in a language must identify the two types of morphemes. The first is the free morphemes and the second is the bound morphemes. Examples of free morphemes are cat, flower, table, animal and clipboard. An addition of a suffix‘s’ which is a bound morpheme changes the morpheme to bound morpheme. It changes the word from singular to plural. A person with good mastery skills of language will have to identify different use of words in different contexts (Kolln and Funk 200). The word Black can give varied meanings depending on its use as in the examples below. 1. A security personnel has a black computer. 2. It was pitch black in the house with all lights off. 3. During the debate, it was clear that things were not simply black or white. 4. The day the body of her deceased husband was flown back was a day to wear black. 5. Can I have a black coffee, please? 6. As a comic, he excelled in black humor. 7. Because of the cuts, everybody in the office was in a black mood. 8. With the currency rates going steeply down, it was a black day for the economy 9. Colleagues were jealous of her as her account was always in the black. 10. The black ball still had to be potted. Proper mastery skills of a language require that one should understand the use of tenses. There are different types of tenses in every language. For instance, present tense describes events that take place currently. Under present tense, there are also fine parts like future continuous. The commutating parties must take into consideration to communicate effectively. past events is another pert that one should consider to identify whether the speaker is able to arrive at the required language standards. The finer details like past continuous and past participle can determine the ability of a person to understand a certain language (Stump 2001). Phonetics Phonetics deals with pronunciation of words according to their phonetic symbols. There are twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Each letter is pronounced differently from each other. Some of the phonetic symbols include; Vowels IPA examples   ? cup, cut ?: army, father ? cat, bag e met, red ? away, cinema :? learn, turn ? sing sitting   i: seen, heat ? hot, rope ?: flour, call ? could, put u: food, blue a? eye, five a? out, now e? eight, say o? home, go ?? join, boy e?? air, where ??? here, near ??? tourist, pure Consonants IPA example b lab, bad d lady, did f if, find g flag, give h hello, how j yellow, yes k back, cat l little, leg m mother A person who is well versed with a language like English must be able to interpret and use the above symbols effectively while communicating. Bibliography Anderson, Stephen R. (1992). A-Morphous Morphology. Cambridge: CUP. Bauer, Mary Beth, (2007)., Grammar and Composition.  New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. New York,     Foley (1998), using a modified transcription. This phenomenon of Kwak'wala was reported by Jacobsen as cited in van Valin and La Polla, Chicago. Fromkin, Victoria, and Robert Rodman (2004)  An Introduction to Language.  5th ed.     Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Joanovich College Publishers, Chicago. Hacker, Diana (2009).  The Bedford Handbook for Writers.  3rd ed.  Boston: Bedford     Books of St. Martin's Press,New York. Kolln, Martha, and Robert Funk.(200)  Understanding English Grammar.  5th ed.     Boston:  New York Stump, Gregory T. (2001). Inflectional morphology: a theory of paradigm structure. No. 93 in Cambridge University Press, Chicago. Read More
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