Functions of verbal behavior

Functions of verbal behavior
Verbal behavior has various at the same time. One of the most importance functions of verbal behavior is to communicate but not all verbal behavior is communicate it has communication as its primary function.

The production of verbal art or literature can in principle serve any of a wide range of functions, including but not restricted to communication.

Here are some of the other functions which can be served by verbal behavior and which are sometimes served specifically by verbal art:

• Entertainment
  
• The display of skill
  
• Praise of a good patron, or censure of an enemy
  
• The promotion of cultural values and morality
  
• The expression of mutual experience, thus bonding together and audience
  
• Recording of historical events, or laws or tenets of religion
  
• Communication with supernatural beings
  
• The control of the physical world by magical means
  
• Healing
  
  

Any of these functions can also be served by non-verbal behaviors: for example, while communication is one of the possible of verbal behavior, it is also possible to communicate non-verbally.
Functions of verbal behavior

Languages Styles and Language Dialects

Languages Styles and Language Dialects
Consider the following sentence:
You makin’ sense, but you don’ makin’ sense!

Speakers of the standard dialect of English are likely to conclude that this sentence is ungrammatical.

The first clause lacks a (finite) verb that the standard dialect requires and the sequence do+ be in the second clause is a combination that the standard dialect prohibits.

Speakers of the standard dialect might also question the logic of the sentence (and hence, as has unfortunately happened, the logical abilities of its utterer).

After all, the two clauses appear to contradict each other.

No human language is fixed, uniform, or unvarying; all languages show variation. Actual varies from group to group, and speaker to speaker, in terms of the pronunciation of a language, the choice of words and the meaning of those words and even the use of syntactic constructions.

To take a well known example, the speech of American is noticeably different from speech of the British, and the speech of these two groups in turn is distinct from the speech of Australians.

When groups of speakers differ noticeably in their language, they are often said to speak different dialects of the language.
Languages Styles and Language Dialects

What is Phonology?

What is Phonology?
Phonology is the subfield of linguistics that studies the structure and systematic patterning of sounds in human language.

The term phonology is used in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to a description of the sounds of a particular language and the rules governing the distribution of those sounds.

Thus we can talk about the phonology of English, German, or any other language.

On the other hand, it refers to that part of the general theory of human language that is concerned with the universal properties of natural sound systems (i.e., properties reflected in many, if not all, human languages).

Phonology is not specifically concerned with aspects of speech production or perception which are purely the result of the physical properties of the system.

For instance it is often said that the articulation of the ‘k’ sounds in the words car and key differ from each other slightly.

In the ‘k’ of the key the tongue is brought slightly towards the front of the mouth in comparison with the ‘k’ of car.

The reason for this, of course is that the ‘ey’ vowel of key drags the tongue forward slightly, because that vowel is produced with the tongue slightly further forward in the mouth that the ‘a’ vowel of car.

This kind of phenomenon is of great interest to those speech scientist who study the precise way in which human speech sounds are produced and their influence on each other during speaking.
What is Phonology?

Structure of language

Structure of language
The structure of language, or the way of morphemes are put together to form words and sentences that are both meaningful and correct.

We used the term syntax to refer to the way words are put together into phrases and sentences.

The term grammar refers to the overall set of rules for speaking and writing a given language.

Every language has syntactic rules that govern how words are put together. In English we say “the blue hat,” while in French one would say “the hat blue”.

It is not that one way is any better that the other but, rather that one way is agreed upon as “correct” in each language and the other is not.

We can all accept the statement “I sat on the chair,” but we know that a similar statement, “the chair sat on I,” is incorrect.

The words are the same, but the difference in order makes the second example nonsensical.

Using the same reasoning, we can accept a statement as correct even of we have never heard it before in exactly that way.

This fact led a linguist named Noam Chomsky to develop a new area of linguistic study called generative or transformational grammar.

Chomsky reasoned that of a native speaker can create an infinite number of grammatically correct statements without ever having heard of them, there must be a set of underlying linguistics rules that allow a person to generate his or her language.

The process of moving from those underlying rules (which Chomsky called deep structure) to the actual statement (surface structure) is termed a transformation.

In the same way, a native speaker can reject any statements that are not correct without ever having heard them before and usually without having to think about them.

Chomsky argues that the deep structure of all languages are the same, and that all born with an innate knowledge of deep structure.

They are also born with the capacity for making transformation, regardless of the deep and surface structures of their language.
Structure of language