 So far, we have looked at language where while talking about various aspects of language and its generic features by now, I was trying to make you see a particular point about language which is it is a it is more like a continuum then like definite numbers for a particular reason that there are not boundaries specific boundaries defined at one place one stops and then the other begins. Now, one can ask a question is this completely unfair to count languages that is also not completely unfair because at one point on the same continuum two languages or let me put it this way at two different points on the same continuum if we think language is a continuum things do sound very different right sometimes so different that they are mutually unintelligible. Therefore, it is it is okay to count them as different numbers too as long as we understand that is in some some places on the same continuum it might be difficult or or languages share lot of things with one another as long as we understand these things we are we are fine then we also started talking about two different aspects of language study that is two different approaches through which language is studied one is language purely as a phenomena of human mind and the other is a language the use of language in actual world real societies these are two different ways of looking at language we started looking at some of them and we will go into more details along these two lines where we will be focusing largely on language is a phenomena of human mind which is I language some of the some of other things just to refresh ourselves and to to help you keep these things in the mind all the time as part of generic understanding or general knowledge about language it is what it is the most sophisticated product of human mind what could be other products of human mind if we say this is one of the most sophisticated products it assumes that there are other things other things may not be may not be as categorically a product as a as languages are or languages when we say most sophisticated product of human mind we refer to other kinds of activities that human mind performs right and in such activities it has a specific distinction okay we will also go through lots of specific details where we do not claim that we are studying human mind per se but we will see how studying language helps study human mind lot of scientists have studied human mind from different perspectives biologists neurologists neuroscientists in in fact beginning from ancient time and philosophy to mathematics to life sciences this this part of a study this part of scholarly endeavored to study human mind that is the functioning of human mind has been one of the real goals of many types of studies nobody as of now conclusively claim conclusively claims that they have they have figured out this thing however the the pursuit is on do you know people studying actual physical properties of human mind have concluded that there is nothing inside it do you know about this this position are you are you familiar with people who have studied physical properties of human mind that is when they when they have opened it up they found there is nothing inside it okay now I mean on a lighter note that sounds not just hilarious but it is consistent with what people have and from ancient time people have been calling if they find somebody who does not understand much they say is he has an empty brain right he has an empty mind actually human human mind is empty there is nothing nothing in that now that part is just a side comment however what is interesting about it is if there is nothing to see then then how does it do all kinds of complicated computation this question clear to you when you open up any machine motor engine or this kind of a machine you find lots of lots of circuits lots of complicated machine units in any one of them in all of them however there is nothing in human mind at least there is nothing visible then how does it function is anyone of you know how it one of the ways one of the things available in human mind helps it coordinate its functions no no okay have you heard about neurons right what are they what is that what is that what is the what are neurons brain not really not really cells but well if we are not particular and technical in terms of definitions we can say that how many of them are there in human mind right and then people studying neurons claim that specific set of neurons are assigned a specific activities and then they report to one another and then to the larger units and then to the larger units and they are they are also assignments in a way that they can perform multiple actions at a time therefore while we are doing other things we are either aware of things happening or we can perform multiple activities right now so that that's that's one part of it yet we do not know if there is a set of neurons assigned to language okay we know or at least we we believe that there is a set of neurons assigned for carrying information all over the place telling us information about look about environment around us and thinking seeing moving motor coordinated at coordination probably there are things for that there are specific set of neurons assigned for that but we do not have evidence if there is a set of neurons assigned for language okay that that's one point and and remember I don't remember whether I told you this thing in the last class or the before the class before there is still a discussion going on about language being coded in human genes so these are these are hypothetical questions that scientists are working on we do not have evidence for these things as of yet so this is what we mean when we say it's one of the most sophisticated product of human mind and we call it product because to otherwise to study human mind we need to look at its physical properties however if you look at the structure of human language then that leads us to the study of human mind as well it sometimes when it is difficult to study the powerhouse probably looking at the product can help us understand where it's coming from okay so that way studying structure of language here particularly human language and trying to find out its underlying system helps us understand human mind that is if if the underlying system of language is such that we are a underlying system of language is designed in such a way in such a complex way then this must not be and and this must not be a product of an ordinary activity and that way backward we look at human mind and then we say studying language helps us understand performance of human mind as well okay when when we look at a specific aspects of language and its complexities I will remind you time to time with reference to why it is called i-language and what what it refers to when we say i-language and then how house complex phenomena it could be okay in terms of e-language when we when we look at it it seems to be a very powerful social too we have talked about the spread of language 6800 1650 in India and then how language and continuum that we discussed and just I told you about it that it's difficult to count and how it is how it can be looked at in both ways how language becomes part of identity of human beings as a group as society or as an individual sometimes it's it's more it's a stronger than religion and other aspects of life and and things like that therefore it's undoubtedly a very powerful tool as well besides being a systematic besides having an underlying system which is purely some sometimes when you look at it's a structure you will see it's it's purely mathematical in nature and we'll we'll look at the mathematical part again when we are looking at specific structures and at all levels of sounds words and and sentences more so at the level of sentences and another interesting aspect of language is which also we have briefly discussed we are going to go into the details of that as well that when it comes to learning of a language and here by learning I refer to learning of language as a child learning of language in a natural environment that is not in a classroom setting and we are talking about forced language all the all these terms forced language natural environment are technical in the sense of a study of language we will we will look at those terms as well what I want to underline here is when we look at learning of language we end up concluding that it happens in such a way that we don't even realize what happened and before you realize you end up speaking a fully developed system which we call grammatical sentences in a normal setting and which enables us to communicate with one another in a nice way and at that stage we say now now the child is linguistically adult and which happens do you have any idea when it happens when do you think a child starts speaking a good grammatical sentence five four to five years yeah that simple so by the time by the age of four and five a child becomes linguistically adult in a very strict sense that by adult we do not mean a discussion on nuclear science what we only mean is a good sentence a child can convey you simpler things whether it wants water food it has pain it's not it a child wants something the child can talk in a in a normal way and then that kind of thing continues and we reach at reach different levels so this is what we mean that we learn it without putting any effort and even as an adult you want to go back and see which people have done in a systematic way what does really happen when a child really begins speaking such a complicated system by the age of four what could have happened we can only say that it happens we don't really know what happens okay and I'll show you some of them as well and you you know these things we have just been talking about it that it's a rule-government system and strongest marker of society culture and identity and a few words about culture I'm not sure if we get to come back to this thing or when we are looking at sentences I'll refer back to it couple of times the only reason why I'm bringing culture in it most of the time in a class on principles of principles and parameters are about I language people would want to stay away from this this term because they only want to look at language as a phenomena here they only want to look at the mathematical properties of language that is its combinatorial capabilities of how how words combine as sentences and what are the underlying rules in it I am bringing in here this term culture to prepare you for looking at in a little bit more serious serious sense of the term culture and which which is which is the following when we acquire language or we continue enriching it acquisition of language does not take place without acquisition of its cultural components okay there are there are a lot of things that are embedded in language which are attributed to its cultural components okay and a speaker of a language by a speaker I mean native speaker of a language does not learn such things as a specific additional instructions they grow up with such things the way they grow up speaking a language okay for example if someone if if we have to say someone died right there are various different ways of saying the same thing in different languages and because I need to move to a different thing I am not giving you a specific examples but you understand what I what I am saying now nobody tells you which one is appropriate in which which circumstances right but you know that right how can we talk about it without without giving you an example can can anyone of you give an example what are the terms for death this is this may not be a great thing to talk about early in the morning but nonetheless when this has come up as an example let's talk about an example give me just two three terms and that could be in Hindi or any other language anybody okay sorry which which refers to okay that's not what I am referring to I am referring to different words for death in a particular language for example I can give you two from Hindi Marana, Mithu, Dehanth and some of the derogatory ones and Moth is not a derogatory one okay alright even these even these four five of them right when we want to talk about somebody in a more dignified and respectful way which one would you prefer if do we need to say let's let's say let's talk about the recent one I don't want to use the example of Mahatma Gandhi let's talk about the recent one or for that example Mahatma Gandhi do we say Mahatma Gandhi ki mithu ho gayi aur we say Mahatma Gandhi margayi which one sounds better why the other one has little bit of little bit of the other one is little bit marked right and there are more derogatory ones than that which we do not use in a specific situation so all I am trying to tell you is we don't learn these things we are not given a list of words for different situations different situations and then we are never told either in a classroom or in any other form in society that use this one for this situation and everybody agrees on which one should be used in which situation for example when I give you this example I think all of you agree that one is marked over the other right this this acquisition does not take place in a instructional way therefore we can say that cultural components of language also takes place at the time of its acquisition as a systematic phenomena as a rule governed phenomena alright fine and this is why we say language is a child's play really it's a child's play because children perform much better than adults and here I have a reference to it means more when you compare it with second language acquisition so every time we talk about a child we mean first language acquisition and every time we are talking about adults we are talking about second languages so it simply means that if you want to learn a language learning of language takes place in a better way when a child learns it however as an adult when we try to learn a language you know what happens we can learn little bit here and there we can go all the way very close to native like competence we can say that near native competence but we never depend on such competence what we depend on or what makes us a native speaker of a language is the situation when we have learned we have acquired a language as a child while growing up that is what it means and the last one language is a special purpose cognitive ability is also related to the first one and it's related to what we started with language as a sophisticated product of human mind for example when you look at other things like let's say swimming or riding a bicycle okay or okay let's take just these two examples there is a role of practice in these things the more you practice the better swimmer you become right the more you practice a better cyclist you become and there are lots of other activities where which is cognitive ability for example singing the more you practice a better singer you become okay such activities are called general purpose cognition language is called a special purpose cognition because there is absolutely no role of practice in language learning of language does not take place through practice and I'll come back to this and emphasize this more and I'm only underlying this right now for you to think a lot of times we are made to believe that we learn language also through practice the more we practice the better we perform in language now we can accept the role of practice in learning a language when it comes to second language to some extent in acquisition of first language the role of practice is zero and I say it with responsibility it's zero absolutely no role of practice a simple argument is if we if we practice if we learn a language through practice then we would learn only the words that we have heard we will be speaking only the sentences from our languages that we have heard before however as a native speaker of a language irrespective of which one you speak you have capability to speak a sentence that you may have you may not have ever heard before in other words you have capability to speak or understand any word any sentence of your language whether you have heard them before or not you get this thing this argument alone completely rules out the possibility of practice in learning language and therefore language as a cognitive phenomena of human mind as a cognitive ability is special in the sense that it's different from everything else human mind performs there is a role of human mind in singing there is a role of human mind in in swimming cycling everything else but the the role of human human mind in in learning a language is very different from learning anything else there is one more distinction which is quite obvious which is all other things that we have just mentioned like swimming riding singing you perform better at these things when you grow up your ability to perform at these things develop or increases when you are growing up if you look at language it decreases the more you grow up it decreases why that happens there is a there is an there is a theory for that not not assumptions and I'll take you through that that as well these are again I have just put them as a list here these are the things which we have discussed 6800 languages 62 1 1,652 in India which is approximately 25% from 5 different language families some of these things also we have discussed and I'm just adding couple of them as new fact here languages of the world have limited sounds they have sounds in a limited number that is no language goes beyond 50 or around 50 okay all of them will share sound with others that is there is not going to be a language which has completely distinct set of sounds from other languages okay and again this has reference to language continuum the more the closer they are on on the continuum higher the possibility of sharing larger number of sounds okay the farther they are on the on the line or the continuum lower the possibility of sharing many sounds okay so it's it's no mystery that Tamil and Telugu will share more sounds than Tamil and Assamese or for that matter Tamil or French okay this this is this is no mystery geographical proximity geographical coexistence and and mutual existence help you conclude that these languages will share more sounds however what is what is more interesting is no matter how far apart languages could be it just does not happen that they don't share a sound or few sounds alright and here once again to underline that it never happens that two languages will share just one sound for the sake of maintaining these rules it's not just one sound if if not too many it's definitely a bunch of sounds alright and that also tells us irrespective of geographical boundaries language a language language is definitely a phenomenon of human mind and therefore human mind functions alike this this sentence should not be difficult for you to understand now that language boundaries are porous there aren't hard and fast boundaries between languages and which is either consequence or which helps people communicate one when I say consequence language being porous is probably a consequence of language sharing sounds okay or we can look at it in a different way which is they share sounds because they are in closer proximity and because because they are porous now when when we are talking about set of sounds all the sounds are not of just same type have you heard about these terms consonants and vowels now in the I I I don't need the definition from you I only want you to understand it because those definitions are not that relevant or for that matter we will we'll talk about that and we will spend a couple of minutes on that but I want you to understand more fundamental stuff and something which is more theoretical in nature now in the set of sounds in a given language again there is no language which has just vowels or only consonants whatever the number of sounds available in a language may be that's going to be combination of both consonants and vowels can you guess why or can you guess what would be the result of it if I can give you a hint at the level of words because eventually we make we make words out of sounds so if we need both and all the languages definitely have both sounds both types of sounds so what will be its consequence at the level of word any idea maybe you are thinking too hard therefore you are you are not saying it's very simple thing tell me what I am going to say is a consequence of that or not if we have a word in any language you cannot get a word only with consonants okay if vowels are required in every language then vowels are going to play a role in every word in no language you are going to have a word where there is no vowel pay attention to this carefully you can have a what the reason why it was difficult for you to guess probably and I am guessing about it you can have a word only with vowels okay therefore we cannot say that all the words must have both consonants and vowels get it we cannot say all the words of all the languages must have both we can have a word in probably all the languages of the world only with vowel sounds okay but there cannot be a word in any language of the world only with consonant sounds okay while you are thinking about a word on the basis of what I have just said which sound is more fundamental consonants are vowels naturally right vowels are going to be more fundamental because now on the basis of this we can say there cannot be a word without a vowel we can have a word only with vowels we cannot have a word only with consonants therefore we cannot have a word without a vowel does that sound does it sound like something mathematical to you do you see some nature of mathematics in it this is the underlying system of a language at the level of sound and this is way too fundamental that I am telling you which is see how this is organized at the level of sounds that is sorry or at the level of words no words in any language without a vowel get it now at this note can we quickly talk about the vowels and consonants very quickly because I need to go to language and dialects very quickly what do you think is a vowel sound or what do you think is a consonant sound you may have heard these things and you when you hear these two types of sound you are told something along with them and we are going to look at not exactly the definitions of these two types of sounds but what they really mean in a little bit more detailed way not tomorrow tomorrow we will be talking about acquisition of language but a day later that will be next week but today I just want to hear something from you about consonants and vowel sound what do you think is a consonant sound no you have heard these two sounds for sure right that there are some of the sounds that are consonants some of the sound that are vowel forget about the definition or anything about both what is what is the difference between the two think about them I think I am taking you to way too fundamental level in the study of language right about sounds and its classical distinction between a consonant sound and a vowel sound and yet I want you to think you not knowing this does not say anything about you trust me it is really not saying that you do not understand anything or you do not understand about sounds now what I want your attention to is the following a speaker of a language we do not need to go to a laboratory to establish we speak languages or we speak language right but it is very easy on the basis of this example to conclude when you speak a language you definitely speak you definitely have that inventory of sounds of that language again that inventory includes both types consonants and vowels right now you know the consonants sounds and vowel sounds of the inventory of your language right but when you are asked can you give me few vowel sounds in a classroom setting in an articulated way it is difficult for us to even tell the distinction between the two hang on here I am not trying to make a make fun of fun of it I am trying to establish a point which is this capability that I know here refers to acquisition of language as what we know I language okay and that is the capability which refers to what is called knowledge of language and I come to this term again at that point in time it will be easier for you to see and I will give you tons of examples of these things that language or the rules of language consist of rules that we all know but we just do not know that we know them all like this particular example of distinction between a consonant and a vowel get this point alright so we will come to more of such rules later and please think about the distinction between between two like I said as a speaker of the language we do not really need to know those rules as a speaker of the language we do not really need to know distinction between consonants and vowels but if we want to study them there is a way to find out the distinction between the between the two and I am not asking you to look them up in any books I am only asking you to think about them what could be the distinction between the two and we will make them more obvious when we are talking about sounds alright okay and I am leaving the last part of CVCV CVCV simply refers to consonant vowel consonant vowel and we will talk about these types of phonotactic rules little later now we have discussed some questions like these before so keeping E language in mind where does the language is where does one language stop and the other begins we have looked at that and it is it could be difficult there are overlapping areas and those overlaps are not ordinary overlaps those overlaps are not inconsequential they have huge consequences in defining the language or understanding language as a either as a phenomena of human mind or as a phenomena of society we will keep looking at them as well we want to look at today where we did not get to spend little bit time on language and dialect okay and I want you to understand this particular distinction in a little bit more technical way and by technical I mean little bit more clear fashion which is the following so these are the things that you that we hear when we say a word dialect whether we put them in these words are not these are the things that we have in mind these are different words in the under different bullets but eventually there is a way to combine them all and this is what we mean when we say dialect alright however even more fundamental than this is when we say or when we talk about distinction between language and dialect what we know to begin with or what we assume is language is something superior and dialect is something low okay nobody nobody debates that just the two terms tell about themselves that one is higher the other is lower okay this is there like like oxygen or bloodiness okay however what I want you to look at is that is not true we can understand them which in whichever way we want we can talk about them in different ways that we want but that is not true the moment we talk about up and low we are talking about and I want your undivided attention here which is we are talking about language in society we are not talking about language here okay that is I language at the level of I language there is absolutely no distinction between these two terms okay let me let me first show you some of these things and then I will underline I language again some of the things that you will find people telling you is languages have more number of a speakers and dialects have lesser fewer number of a speakers now if there is no distinction between the two terms at the level of I language and what we mean by I language is the way we acquire language right either two different varieties of language or two different languages okay if we compare any language with Hindi the total number of a speaker is going to be lower than lower than Hindi for any language right does that make any other language dialect of Hindi no right do also do people learn two different languages in two different ways when we are when we are talking about learning of a language as a child a newly born baby or and when it is growing all the way to the age of five either in the natural environment where Tamil is spoken or Telugu is spoken or for that matter French English or German are spoken they acquire languages in the same way if there is no distinction at the level of acquisition of language how can we say that that external factors will make a distinction in in putting value judgment about the two okay so when we say there is no distinction between the two terms in a technical sense we mean that that acquisition takes place in the same way that is similarities or differences with other languages if we call language A as language and language B as dialect and let me give you give names names here if let's say if we say Hindi is a language and Bhaj Bhaasha or Avidhi are dialects of Hindi okay what what I am saying is if Hindi is acquired the way in same way as Bhaj Bhaasha or Avidhi then how are they different from one another they are different from one another of course at the level of numbers of speakers but then in a scientific understanding of an object the number of speakers would not make a difference get this point similarly if there is literature available in a language and not in other languages how does that make a difference between the two two instruments as in in in the forms of spoken languages it just a matter of coincidence that in some languages we have written a stuff in other languages we don't right what is the language in which most of the books are written in our time English right so that simply means English is we can we can associate different kinds of values value judgments with English it's more important it's spoken in a much wider geography it's spoken by large number of peoples can we say a language which which is not spoken by same number of people or there are not those many books written in languages like let's say Hindi or Bangla or Punjabi that they are not languages that that's not going to be going to be true so look defining the distinction between the two namely language and dialect on the basis of these terms are only superficial way of looking at them that that's the only point I am trying to make I am not saying that languages with lots of literary volumes are no good that's not the point I am trying to say it's just a matter of coincidence that a language has lot of books written in it and the other language does not have a language may have too many people speaking it and the other may not have may not have too many speakers that would not make any difference at the technical level at the same time whether a language has a writing system or not again is not important because I have we have talked about this that we can write any language in any script it's only a way to represent sounds now when we talk about English we are more used to seeing the language English in Roman script when we talk about Hindi we are more used to seeing the language in Nagri script that's all it's a matter of getting used to now if that did not exist then at one level we can write any language in any script again this is not I am not trying to devalue the significance of a script all I am trying to say is any script can write any language therefore again whether a language has a script or not has nothing to do with its underlying system okay and it will be clearer when we talk about its underlying underlying systems of languages therefore whether a language is lower or higher it's a socio it it's decided on the basis of its socio political status and people start agreeing right power structure is such that we agree to anything only in that sense people accept okay fine what you are saying is it must be true one is higher language the other is not so higher language and this is so much in our in our system that we don't even need to say that and we accept these things however at the level of its underlying system acquisition and other technical aspect there is no distinction between what we know or what we have been told as language and dialect we'll keep looking at these things more and more when we look at these are these systems alright we stop here I realize you may have another