THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS

1. Language functions are the socio-cognitive processes of the human’s Neuro-Semantic Language Learning System social). The socio piece is the way that a person uses language to communicate with and to other people. And, the cognitive piece is the way a person thinks.

   • LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
     • Semantic relationships
       • SOCIALLY
         • The children communicate about themselves in relationship to their environment.
       • COGNITIVELY
         • The children think only about the way they act in relationship to the objects in their world.
       • AGENT+ACTION+OBJECT
         • The child is an agent who can act, as an agent, performs an action in relationship to the object. The child is learning the language about being an agent in relationship to performing actions on objects or with objects.
     • Problems with acquiring basic semantic relationships
       • A lack of language development affects the social and cognitive development of the child just like the lack of social and cognitive development affects language acquisition.
         • All languages utilize a basic understanding of one’s environment. This basic understanding is referred to as semantic relationships among and between agents, their actions, and their objects.
     • 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.
         • Social intentions
           • Some of the social intentions for representing thinking through language functions include, but are not limited to, greeting, rejecting, denying, existing, negating, and requesting. The meaning of these language functions, like the acts of referring and expanding, are greater than the words or structures that the child uses.
         • 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.
       • 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. Language represents the socio-cognitive development of the Neuro-Semantic Language Learning System. Semantic development allows a speaker to use language to perform a variety of pragmatic acts. These pragmatic acts often express social intentions.
   • 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. Through these expanded language functions, a speaker can talk about ideas that cannot be seen.
       • Displacement
         • This change in referring to others and their actions in the here-and-now to referring to acts that are not seen or touched is another type of language function called displacement.
       • Semanticity
         • A child acquires the semantic features that become semantic relationships that represent concepts which overlap and layer to form more complex meanings.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. Only individuals who are able to think with maximum levels of language functions will have the displacement and semanticity needed to be maximally flexible.
       • Productivity
         • Flexibility, like displacement and semanticity, increases a person’s ability to use language in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes. These expanded language functions help a person become more productive
       • Redundancy
         • There is one more very important expanded language function, 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
         • 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 from the child thinking in the here-and-now (preoperational thinking) to the child being able to think in the rules of societal expectations (concrete thinking).

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