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Learning and writing in children

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Learning and writing in children

Introduction In most fields of study, language is thought of principally in terms of the written word, for it is in this form that we usually make permanent records of important ideas. Rela- tively little attention is spared for something as fleeting and unremarkable as spoken con- versation. In linguistics, however, speech, rather than writing, is regarded as more central to human language, for several reasons. First, humans have probably used spoken lan- guages for 100,000 years, perhaps longer. Writing is a relatively recent development, only a few thousand years old. Even today, most of the world′s 5,000 or so languages have no established writing system. But there is no society which communicates just by writing, without a spoken language. Furthermore, children learn to speak long before they learn to read and write; indeed, learning of spoken language takes place without formal instruction. But does ordinary speech really warrant scientific atten- tion? Although we generally take the processes of speech pro- duction and recognition for granted, they involve a range of surprisingly intricate mental abilities – part of the knowledge we have of the language(s) we speak.[unique_solution] The words that we wish to express seem to emerge inexplicably from our mouths, as soundwaves. These soundwaves then hit the hearer′s ear, send- ing auditory signals to the brain, which are interpreted – again, seemingly magic – as the words intended by the speaker. What kind of mental system might underlie this capacity to produce and recognize speech? Which aspects of this system appear to be common to all humans, and which aspects vary from lan- guage to language? And what exactly goes on in the mouth and throat to produce speech? These sorts of questions are the domain of phonetics and phonology (both from the Greek root phon- ′sound′), the two subfields of linguistics concerned with speech sounds. In the remainder of this chapter, we examine some basic observations, terminology, and techniques of analysis used by phoneticians and phonologists to address these questions.

 

 

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