The study of language functions

The study of language functions

1. Language functions

   • These 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 (Dance, 1985).
     • Language functions let people know that the child has learned something because of the way he communicates it.

2. Semantic relationships

   • They are the meaningful relationghips that a child possesses about his or her world.
     • These function to connect the children to their world and the children's work to their thinking.

3. Extended semantic relationships

   • These relationships mean that the children start acquiring more and more language structures, and make the expressions grow more and more.
     • For example, when the baby says simple sentences such as "me like fruits" and then starts by correcting and saying "I like fruits" and finally "I like fruit". These shows that he has expanded his semantic relationships.

4. Social intention functions

   • According to Arwood (1991a), the child expresses an intention or semantic meaning of concepts that are social and therefore in nature. The semantic and pragmatic development of pragmatic language represents how the child thinks and acts. These are:
     • Greeting: it is the way you welcome or let people know you have seen them and want to be seen by them.
       • For example: when a child comes home and sees his mother and tells her “hi, mom” and gives her a hug and a kiss. This is a greeting that includes words and body language.
     • Rejecting: it is the action you do when the proposition you are receiving is not what you expected or wanted.
       • For example, somebody invites you to a concert, but concerts are not really your thing, so you reject the invitation because you would rather do something different. In children, this is usually seen when they are offered some vegetables.
     • Denying: it is the action of saying that something didn’t happen despite of knowing it did.
       • For example, children sometimes deny having homework from school.
     • - Existing: for a child, existing is the fact of being in one place, he does not realize that it means existing, he just knows that someone or something is somewhere.
       • For example, if they don’t want their mom to enter their room means that they don’t want her to exist in their room in that moment.
     • - Requesting: it is the action of asking for something, such as a favor.
       • For example, when children ask their father to play with them after school.

5. Expanded language functions

   • Expanded language functions are the responsible of letting people talk about and ideas that cannot be seen, such as how to take a flight into space, even though the person has never been there before. This ability starts to be developed in the childhood with the requests we receive from our mom, when for example she says: “come here” and she points to you and then points to the place she is; there the children start learning that sometimes words refer to ideas across time and space. The children extend past the here-and-now of physical objects or physical experiences into expanded language when they develop correct semantic relations.
     • - Displacement: For example, when the child knows that the word face means a part of the body, and can talk about that, but eventually starts to learn that face can also be an action, and that you can face a problem, soon they will be able to tell more complex sentences without even knowing they are more complex, just because of their environment and how they are learning new meanings of words and sentences
     • Semanticity: For example: when a kid says something like “me not like vegetables”, and that is not correct, but it is understandable; then after some time and after practicing and getting corrected, he will be able to correctly express “I don’t like vegetables”.
     • Flexibility. For example, when you have an argument with someone because they have a different vision of something, you don’t let your antique meaning get you into trouble, but you open your mind and analyze if what the other person says is logic, and you add it to the bank of meanings you have inside.
     • Productivity. For example: when you have seen that when your mom says “come here” it means you have to go there, and then you use it for your own new productions and add something like, “please” or “for a moment”.
     • Redundancy. For example, when you say: “repeat again” instead of just “repeat”, “ask a question” instead of just “ask”.