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Language (b)
Gap-fill exercise
Fill in all the gaps using the AWL words in the list, then press "Check" to check your answers. Use the "Hint" button to get a free letter if an answer is giving you trouble. Note that you will lose points if you ask for hints or clues!
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Essentials for Speech
For human language to be possible, certain
are necessary. These
are physiological (the body must be
of producing the sounds of speech), grammatical (the speech must have
); and semantic (the mind must be
of dealing with the meanings of what is spoken).
Physiology
Although most of the human organs of speech
to perform other
(such as eating), they are so well
for speaking that human speech appears to be the most efficient
system of any living organism. In speech, an airstream is produced by the lungs and modulated by vibration (or lack of vibration) of the vocal cords and by movement of the tongue, the soft palate, and the lips. The airstream can be obstructed in
degrees by the teeth and can be closed off from or kept open to the nasal cavity. People who have physiological impairments of speech and hearing still possess language, although the production and reception of language may have been
to
systems such as AMESLAN.
Grammar
All human language has a grammatical
sound (signalling) units are combined to produce meaning. The
units of sound combination that have meaning are called morphemes. A morpheme can
to a word, but it can also refer to other sound combinations that have meaning but are not words (such as prefixes and suffixes). In the word coexist, for example, both co and exist are morphemes. Words and morphemes can be classed together according to what they do in a sentence. Classes of morphemes include parts of speech (such as nouns and verbs) as well as prefixes, suffixes, and so forth. Members of different word classes form phrases that in turn combine into larger units - sentences or utterances.
Semantics
, in human language, the speaker necessarily
meaning to the
sound
, and the meaning is
and understood by other humans who share the same language. The
of
meanings with sounds, words, and sentences and
meanings that others
in this way is believed to
grammar as a tool for relating thoughts or ideas to speech, or signalling. Every meaningful sentence or utterance has a surface and an
. At the surface are the words and sentence
as spoken and
. At the
or deep level are the words and sentence
as they are grammatically
. This level of deep
is where sentence
appears
. Two different surface
can be
to mean one thing, and one surface
of a sentence may have two meanings. The surface sentence "Flying planes can be dangerous" means both that it can be dangerous for someone to fly planes and that planes that are flying can be dangerous. The different
of this sentence have to do with its common surface
having two
deep structures. On the other hand, "To please John is easy" and "It is easy to please John",
different surface
, are the same sentence at the level of deep
. Human
is a
combining special speech organs, grammatical
, and intended and understood meanings.
Check
Hint
OK
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