Kasongo 1

Kabombo Kasongo
Reading -0990-013 Chapter 7, think, intelligence, and language
Date: October 6, 2014

What is language?
Language is one of the most remarkable and ordinary things human beings do. Whether
spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols. We need language to speak with
one another, listen to each other, and read, and write. Language is not just how we speak to each
other but how we talk to ourselves.
There are times that we have experiences of a guilty conscience. The feeling of having
done something you shouldnt have done. The little voice in your head that determine, you
shouldnt have done that! Why did you do that? speak to you in your mother tongue.
This is another definitions for language:
Communication of thoughts and feeling through a system of chance signals, such as voice
sound, points, or written symbols. Such a system including its rules for combining its
components, such words. Such a system as used by a nation, people, or other distinct
community; often contrasted with dialect.

The Basic Properties of language

All human language have infinite generativity, the ability to produce an endless number
of meaningful sentence. This superb flexibility comes from five basic rules systems. They
include:
Phonology: a languages sound system.

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Morphology: a languages rules for word formation.

Syntax: a languages rules for combining words to form acceptable phrases and sentence.
Semantics: the meaning of words and sentences in a particular language. And the last is
Pragmatics: the useful character of language and the ability of language to communicate even
more meaning than is verbalized.
Many animal and even plant species communicate with each other. Humans are not
unique in this capability. However, human language is unique in being a symbolic
communication on system that is learned instead of biologically inherited. Symbols are sounds or
things which have meaning given to them by the users. Originally, the meaning is arbitrarily
assigned. For instance, the English word dog does not in any way physically reassembly the
animal it stands for. All symbols have a material form but the meaning cannot be discovered by
mere sensory examination of their forms. They are abstractions.
My Reflection
Researching and finding all this great information about language has been a great
adventure for me. I have always known that language is really important in humanity. Because I
came from Africa, Zambia. My family came from Congo. Zambia and Congo, are two different
countries.
Congolese and Zambian people dont like each other at all. In order for you to live in
Congo or Zambia, you have to know how to speak their languages. And when I say their
language its not just one or two, but more than a fifty teen languages. When my family moved
to Zambia, thats when I was born. And where we stayed, almost every house in the
neighborhood had their own languages.
We had to learn so many languages in order to communicate with one another and it
wasnt easy. My first year in America, I spoke twenty five languages, but the longer I keep on

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living here, the more languages I lose. And now Im only down to three languages. Swahili,
French and English because these are the only languages that we use at home and outside the
home. Here in America, the most common language used is English. Everywhere you go in the
United States one out of ten people speak more than one language. In contrast to Africa, ten of
ten people speak more than one language.

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WORKS CITED
MLA FORMAT for referencing a
BOOK by MC Graw Hill education
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/language,
http://books.google.com/books?id=X1SVzsc8mbEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=animals+used+la
nguages&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aQRdVPvKJozliQKazIH4CA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&
q=animals%20used%20languages&f=false
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/language, Book, and
British Dictionary definitions for language