LING 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Linguistic System, Iconicity, Robert Lowth
14 Jan 2013
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Document Summary
The unconscious knowledge of language is revealed by the way speakers of one language pronounce words from another language, Many french canadians pronounce words such as this and that as if they were spelled dis and dat. The english sound represented by the initial letters th is not part of the french sound system, and the french mispronunciation reveals the speakers" unconscious knowledge of this fact. Knowing the sound system of a language includes more than knowing the inventory of sounds: sounds may start a word, end a word, or follow each other. Knowing a language is knowing that certain sound sequences signify certain concepts or meanings. Knowing a language is therefore knowing how to relate sounds and meanings. If you do not know a language the osunds spoken to you will be mainly incomprehensible, because the relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they represent in the languages of the world is, arbitrary.
