Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Chapter 6,7 and 8...

Chapter 6, demonstrates the formation of words in English language, and how those are created with different patterns. Its most of the concepts illustrate how the words are formed with different languages, sounds, verbs, nouns, adjectives and names of the persons. According to Etymology, there are many different ways new words entered in English language. For instances, Coinage is one of the least common processes of word formation that invents totally new terms. The most typical sources are invented trades names for commercial products that becomes general terms for any versions of that products such as Kleenex, Tylenol, and Teflon.
There are many words are made from name of the people and it describes as Eponyms; for example, the words fahrenheit is from the German, Gabriel Fahrenheit, and Volt from the Italian, Alessandro Volta. Borrowing is one of the process of word formation that taking over the words from other languages; croissant is one of the words that came from French. When two separate words produce a single form of the word that describes as compounding; for instances, the word bookcase is compounding that created with two different words.
Additionally, the process of Blending, Clipping, Backformation, Conversion, Acronyms and Derivation are among those patterns that also describe how the words are created in English Language.

Chapter 7, focuses the morphology, meaning the rules of word formation, in addition to discussing the morphems, and its different patterns of the word stucture such as free and bound morphems, lexical and functional morphemes, derivational and inflectional morphemes, and morphological description.
The definition of a morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. According to the pattern of morphemes, there are a huge distinction between two types of morphemes; these are the free and bound morphemes. Free morphemes can stand or function by themselves as single words, for example, open and tour. However, the morphemes wich are bound cannot stand without being attached to another forms, such as re-, -ist, -ed, and -s are among them. To describe about the free morphemes, we can separate this into two catagories. The first catagory is lexical morphemes that functions with the noun, adjective and verb. The second types of free morphemes are called functional morphemes that consists of the functional words in the language such as conjuction, preposition, articles, and pronoun; and as an example, but, when, and becuase are among them.
However, the morphems that are bound also divided into two types. These are the derivation and inflectional morphemes. People use the derivation morphemes to make new words of a different grammatical catagory from the stem; for example, the derivation morpheme -ness, changes the adjective good, to the noun goodness. However, the reason why people also use the functional morphemes because it shows if a word is plural or singular, it it is past tense or not, or if it is a comparative or possesive form.
After observing the distinguish-patterns of the morphemes, it easy to understand how various words are created in order to form a phrase or sentence. Moreover, It also demonstrates the morphemes of the other languages and how those things make a particular number of singular or plural, in addition to forming the word from adjective to noun.


Chapter 8, demonstrates the structure of the phrases and sentence. To organize any sentence, it's important to understand the rules of grammar. Therefore, without knowing any rules, we cannot make any organized sentence. English language provides eight parts of speech, and these are the noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, prepostion, conjuction, and article. Beside English, every language has their different types of grammar to follow. For example, grammatical gender is one type of rules that is followed by Spanish, French, German or among other languages. Spanish language has two grammatical gender, masculine and feminine; for example, el sol (the sun) is considered as masculine and the la luna (the moon) is for feminine. By concentrating the grammar, a person could be able to organize any sentence perfectly.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Amy Tan...YES/NO

After reading this passage, it's come to my notice that culture affects our personality and also our languages, and becuase of that people have different ways to express their thoughts and ideas. However, becuase of the distingusing of cultures, people often misunderstood each others languages. Most Americans think that Chinese people don't have any particular words for yes and no. However, Amy Tan disagree with this statement. She believes, the reason why a Chinese person cannot say, No straightly becuase of their modesty and politeness, in addition to feeling shy. However, Americans don't have enough time being so polite is becuase of their limited- schedule. Due to this reason, they are so straight-forward than chinese.
According to Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, every person gets influenced by their cultures and language, as a result, it also affects on their personality. For instances, if anybody asks a chinese whether they have eaten or not, they are going to answer it differently such as eaten already, have not and later; however, these are the things often unknow to an American. They complain that chinese language is so difficult to understand because it provides so many various tones.
However, if we have excuse to each other languages, we will never get any solution to understand them. So, Any Tan wants people to know a language better before making any compliment.

Monday, March 22, 2010

the phonetic symbols of my name...

The name of Nazia Kamrun is written as [ nəʒɛæ kæmɹun]. The phonetic of the name, Nazia kamrun is voiced (v+), and the place of articulations are n= alveolar, ə= schwa, ʒ= palatal, æ= velar; k=velar, æ= velar, m= bilabial, ɹ= alveolar, u= glottal, and n= alveolar. Moreover, the manner of articulation of my name is Nasals= m,n and æ, Fricatives= ʒ, stops= k, liquids= ɹ, and Glides= u.
Some people often cannot pronunce my name. they often call me Nasha =Nəʃɑ, instead of calling Nazia. The reason a person cannot say my name properly is becuase of the variation of languages, and the articulation of their speech.
I also often get difficulty in pronuncing some of names, such as Andrzej, Andrzejek, and Antoniusz, in addition to memorizing these names. Due to this fact, I get trouble to speak those names because of the difference between Bengali and other languaues, and its variation of the manner and place of articulations.

Chapter 5, Yule

Chapter 5, explains the different patternes of the sound in a language. It's often hard for us to pronunce a word or sentence without knowing their phones. Due to that, we often get problems to speak a language in any occasion. This chapter illustrates some methods and explanations of a language that helps a person to understand the characterization of any word or sentence, in addition to producing and arranging it. Beside this, it's also explain the difference between Phonemens and Allophones, in addition to distingusing between syllable and clusters. Phoneme is different type of sound in a language, or the abstract unit or sound; however, Allophones are a group of several phones that served as one phoneme. A syllable contains a vowel ( or a vowel- like) sound. The most common type of syllable in a language has a consonant and vowel, and it represented as (CV).
By knowing these methods and theory, a person is capable of speaking a language, especially English more natural and regular instead of artificial-sounding talk.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Assignment




When any word , sound or sentence makes sense to our minds we could demonstrate it as a language. Every person speaks at least one language in this world, and when they speak them that should make sense to others so that people could share their feelings and desires. However, if any person wants to learn other language which is not their natives, it could be challenging for them because people are not familiar with its different phonology, morphology, syntax and rules. For example, my native language is Bengali that is easy for me to speak, write and understand; additionally, I am capable of organizing my ideas and thoughts without thinking because I have linguistic competence. However, when I want to speak English I need to think how I am going to express it because of having lack of fluency and accent. So, I often feel embarrassed talking to any English speakers.
Though I have been living in the United States for a long time, I get difficulty in speaking English because of not practicing it regularly. However, after putting so much efforts, especially writing journals, and reading newspapers or magazines I often improve myself. But, if I take a gape of not practicing it, I lose my fluency and that thing made me feel so bad.
Due to my English, I struggled a lot to pass my English regents exam in high school. I was offered to take it ,and that exam was so hard for me to pass because of my lack of knowledge in vocabularies, sentence structures, organizations and fluency. Though I was not bad at grammar, I had difficulty in writing and reading. So, I worked hard to pass that regent. However, I always lost my confident while I took it because of my poor English. After failing twice, I passed my regent though my score was not satisfactory. Therefore, every time when I write and speak English, I ask myself why I cannot do this as the was a English speaker does?
The reason I got in trouble speaking and writing English because of the differentiation between English and Bengali. These two languages are totally different from its sounds , words, phrases and sentences.
From my perspective, if any language is similar with others due to its sounds and words a person could adopt those languages easily. For example, most Bengali people are capable of understanding and speaking “ Hindi” and “ Urdu” better than Arabic, French or Spanish. Additionally, a person who is Spanish speaker could learn English quickly rather than a Chinese or Japanese speaker because of having similarity between English and Spanish Alphabets.