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The Study of Language Functions

Language represents this thinking so that language is more than imitated

structures; language includes the function of thinking.

Language functions solve problems, invent new tools, create living spaces in typically adverse locations. Language functions are greater than the sum of their developmental patterns of language structures.

Semantic relationships

to consists of the meaning of those relationships about people, their

actions, and their objects within a context or setting.

Socially, children communicate about themselves in relationship to their environment.

Cognitively, children think

only about the way they act in relationship to the objects in their world.

These meaningful relationships that a child

possesses about his or her world are called semantic relationships. These semantic relationships function to connect the

child to his or her world and the child’s world to the child’s thinking.

The child is central to the action so the child is an agent.

Agency is a basic function of early language acquisition.

Problems with acquiring basic semantic relationships

A child who cannot receive the sensory input of spoken patterns (e.g., the child might have a hearing loss) or a child who

is not able to turn the perceptual patterns into concepts (e.g., children with autism) may not develop the concepts easily and therefore will have difficulty acquiring language functions.

Extended semantic relationships

The purpose of the child adding an additional pattern is to expand the meaning of the utterance. These types of

expansions allow the child to use language to “refer.” The act of referring is a language function. Being able to refer

allows a speaker to be specific about the message the speaker wants to convey (e.g., Kasher, 1998). The child is expanding the utterance parallel to his ability to relate to the meaning of the world in relationship to him.

The semantic correction

is when Mom increases the child’s knowledge or meaning of the perceptual patterns that the child sees. In this way, the child

develops a new concept. When meaning is given to what a

person says or writes, then that meaning increases the concepts for higher cognitive development and the social use of

language.

Social intentions

As neuro-typically developing children express what they “know” from what they learn about their world, they begin to refer to a variety of ideas in a variety of ways. The various ways for referring relate to the way that children socially

intend for their utterances to function (e.g., Bradford & National Research Council, 2000).

This is learning that when he initiates an intention, the other person may or may not accept the initiation at that

moment. This development of language to explain social interaction is helping to learn the social rules of his

community. He is beginning to learn that others have their separate needs, wants, and desires.

Preoperational cognition​​​​​

Expanded language functions

The expanded language functions are probably the most important social and cognitive developments acquired by a child learning to think critically and problem solve. These expanded language functions move a child’s communication from the here-and-now of juice cups to ideas that span time and place.

Displacement

Displacement is

an important, expanded language function that begins early on and continues to expand throughout a person’s thinking.

Semanticity

The representation of ideas is called lexical tags. A lexicon refers to an

individual’s underlying meanings for what most adults call words. The child assigns meaning with a tag, not really a

word. Increasing complexity of meaning throughout life is a language function called

semanticity.

Flexibility

Displacement and semanticity are two types of expanded language functions that take the basic semantic relationship of an agent, action, and object and move the meaning into complex ideas across time and space. These language functions

allow the speaker to be more flexible with language.

Productivity

The bottom line is that to be productive with language

means that the user of language must also be able to displace the concept from the physical object, assigning meaning

through the layering process of semanticity for greater flexibility.

Redundancy

Such redundancy occurs because our thinking (cognition) lacks

sufficient meaning (semantics) to be able to use different words to mean different ideas. Socially, the listener has

difficulty following the ideas.

Concrete cognition

Expanded language functions allow for an increased meaning through extending meanings of basic concepts (e.g.,

Wittgenstein, 2001/1953). The result is more expanded language functions that also increase thinking for better problem

solving, planning, decision making and so forth. At the concrete level of cognition, speakers are able to think clearly about others and what others are thinking about and therefore their language reflects the relationships.

Speech acts

Semantic development allows a speaker of English to use language to perform a variety of functions within a conversation. These conversational language functions or speech acts include the rules for the context, verbal and non-verbal characteristics of the speaker’s utterance, and the effects on the listener.

Expanded speech acts

As speakers engage in discourse, the language functions of the speech acts generate more and more meaning for the

speakers and the listeners.