The study of language functions

The study of language functions

1. Language functions allow a human to create a variety of cultural identities unique to the products of the human language learning system such as economic or political systems and rule-governed societies (e.g., Dance, 1985)

2. Language Functions

   • Semantic Relationships
     • Because all human beings develop the meaning of their environment as they acquire their language learning system, the basis of language, for all speakers, for all languages, consists of the meaning of those relationships about people, their actions, and their objects within a context or setting.
   • Problems with acquiring basic semantic relationships
     • When the meaning of a basic semantic relationship expands, then the child develops higher thinking and therefore more acceptable social behavior. Note that for producing basic semantic relationships, the child can non-verbally point, reach, grab, shake; but for expanded semantic relationships, more language structures must be used. Language development structurally increases to show the development of the child’s thinking.
   • 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).
       • Social intentions
         • As neuro-typically developing children express what they “know” from what they learn about their world, they begin to to a variety of ideas in a variety of ways. The various ways for relate to the way that refer referring children socially intend for their utterances to function.
       • Preoperational cognition
         • The child is learning more about how to relate to others (social development) as well as about how he or she thinks about play (cognitive development) than the child is learning sentence structures. Analyzing only the sentence structures does not explain how language functions for this child.

3. 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
       • Semanticity
         • Flexibility
           • Productivity
             • Redundancy
               • When a speaker continues to acquire meaning through the Neuro-Semantic Language Learning System, then the speaker may try to use more words to convey a particular meaning.
               • Concrete cognition
                 • Speech acts
                   • 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. The complexity of the function of language generates more than simple back and forth comments. In fact, probably the most complex type of language function occurs in a debate where two or more speakers are using a multitude of very sophisticated 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.
                 • The meaning of basic semantic relationships of people, their actions, and their objects increases through the neuro-semantic processes of overlapping and layering of patterns and concepts to form more complex concepts. These complex concepts increase the language functions of displacement, semanticity, flexibility, productivity, and redundancy
             • 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.
           • Flexibility is a language function. The traveler could have called and told her family and boss that her flight was cancelled and that she would miss the meeting. Although this is a solution to the problem, it leaves the responsibility for the meeting on others to cancel or rearrange.
         • A child acquires the semantic features that become semantic relationships that represent concepts which overlap and layer to form more complex meanings. The representation of ideas is called lexical tags.
       • Displacement is a language function that increases along with the increased development of conceptual meanings ( semanticity), the use of semantic social intentions in a variety of ways (flexibility) to mean a variety of concepts ( productivity) in a very efficient way (redundancy). These expanded language functions are important to the continued cognitive and social development of a child.