Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE
_ SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE: _ The figure above shows English to Gujarati mappings for consonants: _________ Prologue: Human life in its present form would be impossible and inconceivable without the use of language. To the question: “Who is speaking?” Mallarme, the French poet, answered, “Language is speaking.” The traditional conception of language is that it is, in Aristotle’s phrase, sound with meaning. Everybody uses language, but nobody knows quite how to define it. Language is arguably the defining characteristic of the human species, yet the biological basis of our ability to speak, listen and comprehend remains largely mysterious; about its evolution, we know even less. The origin of language is a widely-discussed topic. Whole doctorates have been based on it, thousands of books have been written on it, and scholars continue to argue about how and why it first emerged. Many animals can communicate effectively with one another but humans […]
