What You Know When You Know A Language

What You Know When You Know a Language

The Study of Language

Language is systematic and complex at the same time, the language can be used to express an infinite number of ideas. Language also changes over time, whether speakers desire change or not. Another characteristic is that language varies according to locations, commonly referred to as dialects. Lastly, although there exist some differences regarding vocabulary and pronounciation in the same language known as dialects, there are also some features that all languages share.

The Speech Communication Chain

We humans use language to communicate an idea from our mind to the mind of someone else. In order to act either as a source and transmitter or as a receiver and destination, you must have several information stored as part of your linguistic competence; that is you must know a lot about you language.

What You Know When You Know a Language

One of the basic features that you know when you know a language is that you can immediately recognise when someone is speaking in your own language, because you are able to recognise your language speech sounds and the ones that are not.

Another feature is that you know how to produce those speech sounds without having to think twice about them (Phonetics). You also know how those sounds work together as a system, so the knowledge about the distribution of speech sounds is part of your knoledge of Phonology.

You can also know how to break individual words down into smaller parts that have a particular meaning or function, and how to create new words by combining there smaller parts. You also know which combinations are words and which are not (Morphology).

You also know a great deal about your language´s Syntax; how words combine in order to form phrases and sentences well formed. Another part of your linguistic compentence has to do with the ability to interpret meanings of phrases and sentences, Semantics. And lastly Pragmatics has to do with the ability to determine the meaning according to the context, depending on the situation sometimes we can find ourselves involved.