UNIT 1 - Activities - Actividades Resueltas PDF

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Actividades Resueltas...

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Issues for further thought and exercises 1. Depicted below are the forms of various signs in everyday use. What are their meanings? Is the sign an icon or a symbol? Justify your answers.

It´s a symbol called “The looped square” that consists in a square with outward pointing loops at its corners. In the past this symbol appeared in some ancient objects in the north of Europe, as in Finland, where this symbol was painted or carved on houses and barns, and domestic utensils such as tableware, to protect them and their owners from evil spirits and bad luck. The looped square also appeared in artifacts of the Mississipian culture of the south-east of the United States. In modern times, The looped square appears in some countries such as Germany, Ukraine, Finland,... as indicator in some places of cultural interest. Also, this symbol has an international recognition through informatic. It´s in use in Apple´s keyboards as the symbol of the key of command. It´s a symbol because the relation with the object is conventional and arbitrary.

This smiling face is an icon. This icon means happiness and shows a positive attitude. It´s an icon because it has a direct relation of similarity with the object that it represents.

The skull is a symbol that represents the death, a danger señal or an indicative in the label of a toxic substance. Also the skull has been used by the pirates with two crossbones and on a black bottom, as symbol in their flags. It´s a symbol because the relation with the object is conventional and arbitrary.

It´s a symbol called the Yin and the Yang. It´s a principle of the chinese philosophy, in where the Yin and the Yang are two opposite energies that are needed and complement each other, the existence of one depends of the existence of the other one. The Yin and the Yang is a symbol of harmony due to the balance that produces the interaction of both energies. The Yin is the feminine principle, the land, the darkness, the passivity and the absorption. The Yang is the masculine principle, the sky, the light, the activity and the penetration. It´s a symbol because the relation with the object is conventional and arbitrary.

This wheelchair is an icon that we can see often in buildings with adapted accesses specially for users of wheelchairs, but also for other problems of mobility. Often the symbol denotes the elimination of environmental barriers, and helps or improvements for elders, parents with prams for babies, and travellers. It´s an icon because it has a direct relation of similarity with the object that it represents.

It´s an icon, we can find it in doors in public buildings indicating “female toilet”. It represents a woman because of the dress. It´s an icon because it has a direct relation of similarity with the object that it represents.

It´s an icon, it indicates that it´s forbidden to smoke.We can find it in some buildings and areas. It´s an icon because it has a direct relation of similarity with the object that it represents.

2. Traffic lights form a sign system. Describe the system of traffic lights in use in your country. To do this you should identify the range of signs belonging to the system, specifying their forms and meanings. Answer also the following questions. What combinations of signs are permitted? How would you describe their syntagmatic relations? Which of Hockett´s design features are satisfied, and to what extent? *Traffic light for pedestrians: It has drawn in it interior the shape of a pedestrian and it has got two colours: green and red; and two types of positions: fix and intermittent. Green light fixes: In the form of a pedestrian in march. It indicates the pedestrians that they can begin to cross the road. Red light fixes: In the form of an inmobile pedestrian. It indicates the pedestrians that they can´t cross the road. Intermittent green light: It means that the time in order that the pedestrians cross the road is close to completion and that the red light is going to ignite.

*Traffic light for travellers: They regulate the step of vehicles to engine as the cars, motorcycles, trucks,... This type of traffic lights have three different lights: green, yellow and red. As in the case of the traffic lights of the pedestrians the green light indicates go-ahead for the traveller, the red light indicates that they must stop, and the yellow light means precaution because soon it will change to red.

There is a combination of signs, signs that indicate step or stopping. For example, the green one indicates step (you can cross the road) while the red one indicates stopping (you can´t cross the road). I would describe the sintagmatic relation like a relation between the signs. Traffic lights are formed by three different lights: red, green and yellow. Each of them indicates an action you have to follow. The red one indicates that you must stop, the green one indicates that you can cross and the yellow one indicates that is going to change from green to red. Arbitrariness and Cultural transmission are Charles Hockett´s design features satisfied while productivity, displacement, reflexivity and duality are not.

3. If you were to ask me for the loan of a book, I might reply with a simple No! If I had replied in a very loud voice, No! this would probably be understood as an emphatic and unequivocal refusal. What meaning would you say loudness conveys, and do you consider loudness to be iconic of this meaning? Can you think of other iconic ways of expressing similar meanings? Loudness conveys can have for me many meanings, maybe is the loudness of a person when he/she speaks (He/She can speak very loudly or low), also I think that it´s how a person interpretates the conversation or the message and how the person feels in that moment (maybe He/She has a bad day). I consider loudness to be iconic of this meaning because when we talk we are using all the time differents loudnesses (low or loud), and in this case when we say No! with this meaning we reply in a very loud voice, also the intonation takes part by the use of exclamatory signes. An example of iconic sign could be in music an octave, when we see an octave we relate it with music.

5. Collect comments on “incorrect” or “sloppy” English (or another language spoken in your community) from the media and everyday speech. What aspects do they target (e.g. pronunciation, meaning, grammar)? What is the basis for the claim (are arguments produced, and if so, what are they)? What do they reveal about the author of the comment? Examples: *wanna = want to *gotta= have got to *gonna = be + going to + Verb They make changes in grammar and pronunciation, the meaning is the same but they change the structure of the words and it makes that the pronunciation also changes. The basis for the claim is that they have a coloquial use and sometimes it can create cofusion between people in the communication and also at the moment of speaking.

6. The male Australian lyre bird´s mating song is made up of sequences of songs from other bird species, in various selections (depending on the range of other birds it has heard) and coming in orders that differ from bird to bird. Does this illustrate duality of patterning? Explain your answer. No, because duality of patterning is not found in animal comunnication systems. Their sign-forms are simple in the sense that they cannot be analysed into components that are re-used in other signs; there is an absence of patterning in the forms and the meanings. Each form is completely different from every other form, and does not involve components that are reused to make other forms. 7. Does English writing show duality of patterning? What about Chinese writing? Explain. If your answer to both questions is “yes”, is the duality manifested in the same or different ways in the two types of writing? Yes, Chinese writing isn´t shows duality patterning because its graphic system doesn´t depend of the speech.

8. We discussed six design features of human languages. Others have been proposed. Find out what they are, and think about their usefulness and the extent to which they distinguish human language from traffic lights or another system of signs used by humans or animals. (Begin with the website http://www.ling.ohiostate.edu/-swinters/371/designfeatures.html. Web-addresses change frequently, and you may need to search with Google or another search-engine.) Semanticity: Specific language signals represent specific meanings; the associations are ‘relatively fixed’. An example is how a single object is represented by different language signals i.e. words in different languages. In French, the word sel represents a white, crystalline substance consisting of sodium and chlorine atoms. Yet in English, this same substance is represented by the word salt. Likewise, the crying of babies may, depending on circumstance, convey to its parent that it requires milk, rest or a change of clothes. Vocal-Auditory Channel: With the exception of signed languages, natural language is vocally transmitted by speakers as speech sounds and auditorily received by listeners as speech waves. Although writing and sign language both utilize the manual-visual channel, the expression of human language primarily occurs in the vocal-auditory channel. Broadcast Transmission and Directional Reception: Language signals (i.e. speech sounds) are emitted as waveforms, which are projected in all directions (‘broadcasted into auditory space’), but are perceived by receiving listeners as emanating from a particular direction and point of origin (the vocalising speaker). Transitoriness: Language signals are considered temporal as sound waves rapidly fade after they are uttered; this characteristic is also known as rapid fading. In other words, this temporal nature of language signals requires humans to receive and interpret speech sounds at their time of utterance, since they are not subsequently recoverable. Interchangeability: Humans can transmit and receive identical linguistic signals, and so are able to reproduce any linguistic message they understand. This allows for the interlocutory roles of ‘speaker’ and ‘listener’ to alternate between the conversation’s participants via turn taking within the context of linguistic communication. Total Feedback: Humans have an ability to perceive the linguistic signals they transmit i.e. they have understanding of what they are communicating to others. This allows them to continuously monitor their actions and output to ensure they are relaying what they are trying to express.

Specialization: Language signals are emitted for the sole purpose of communication, and not any other biological functions such as eating. In other words, language signals are intentional, and not just a side effect of another behaviour. Contrasting example: Biological functions which may have a communicative side effect: such as a panting dog which hangs out its tongue to cool off (biological), may simultaneously indicate to its owner that it is feeling hot or thirsty (communicative). Discreteness: Language signals are composed of basic units and are perceived as distinct and individuated. These units may be further classified into distinct categories. These basic units can be put in varying order to represent different meanings. The change in meaning is abrupt, and rarely continuous. 9. We said that both speech and writing are suitable subjects for linguistic investigation. Is a good piece of writing also a good piece of speech if it is read aloud? What differences would you expect to find between speech and writing in the ways that things are expressed? What grammatical differences would you expect? Yes, because writing is derivative from speech and secondary to it. Speech is historically prior, and is represented in some form or another in all true writing systems. In my opinion, I think that speech is more expresive than writing, when you are talking you express many things, your thoughts, your feelings...it´s different than when you write, you are also express the same but in a different way, you can´t discuss with other people, you can´t interact with them. The grammatical differences are that when you are writing you have to pay attention in putting the words and its orthographic signs in a correct way, while in speech you should use a correct vocabulary and you don´t have to worry about orthographic signs. 10. Writing does not only influence the way that people think about their language, but can also influence speech. What are some of the ways your language (and opinions about it) has been influenced by the way it is written? I think that thanks to education, the people around us teach us many things, and one of this things is the language, everything that we learn through the speech then we express it in a paper.

11. What is a syllabary? What are some languages that employ syllabaries in writing? See what you can find out about the nature and development of one syllabary. Answer the following questions: When was it invented? By who? How many symbols does it use? What do they represent? Do you think a syllabary would be a good system for writing English? Explain your reasons. A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. Languages that employ syllabaries in writing are Japanese, Cherokee, Vai.. It was invented in 1830 by Sequoyak. It uses more than 200 symbols. A symbol in a syllabary represents a consonantal sound followed by a vocalic sound. I think that a syllabary wouldn´t be a good system for writing English because English admits more complex syllabic structures, making the writing difficult by a syllabary. To be able to write english using a syllabary, each possible syllable in English would need a different symbol. 12. What is Signed English or Manually Coded English? Find out about this system of manual signs, and write a brief description . Mention where the hand-signs come from, Who uses this system, and where? Comment also on any advantages or disadvantages of this system in relation to deaf sign languages such as ASL (American Sign Language) and BSL (British Sign Languages). Manually Coded English is a variety of visual communication methods expressed through the hands which attempt to represent the English language. Unlike deaf sign languages which have evolved naturally in deaf communities, the different forms of MCE were artificially created, and generally follow the grammar of English. This system is used for deaf people and it is used globally. American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology. British Sign Language (BSL) is a sign language used in the United Kingdom(UK), and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands, body, face and head. Many thousands of people who are not deaf also use BSL, as hearing relatives of deaf people, sign language interpreters or as a result of other contact with the British deaf community.

13. We have mentioned a number of branches of linguistics in this chapter. The list was selective, and there are many more named branches. Here are some: forensic linguistics, philosophical linguistics, corpus linguistics, dialectology, computational linguistics, onomastics, stylistics, mathematical linguistics, philology, contrastive linguistics, lexicography and narratology. Look one or more of these terms up in an encyclopaedia or dictionary of linguistics, and/or on the web, and write a paragraph description in your own words . Forensic linguistics,legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics. There are principally three areas of application for linguists working in forensic contexts: • understanding language of the written law, • understanding language use in forensic and judicial processes, and • the provision of linguistic evidence. The discipline of forensic linguistics is not homogenous; it involves a range of experts and researchers in different areas of the field....