CHILD DEVELOPMENT PEDAGOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Trager formulated the following definition: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.” Any succinct definition of language makes a number of presuppositions and begs a number of questions.

Detailed explanation-2: -“A language is a system of arbitrary, vocal symbols that permit all people in a given culture or other people who have learned the system of that culture, to communicate or to interact” (Finocchiaro, 1964. (1964). English as a second language: From theory to practice.

Detailed explanation-3: -According to Chomsky, language is a natural object, a component of the human mind, physically represented in the brain and part of the biological endowment of the species (Chomsky, 2002: 1).

Detailed explanation-4: -Arbitrariness in human language refers to the fact that the meaning of linguistic signs is not predictable from its word form, nor is the word form dictated by its meaning/function. It is not possible to deduce the underlying meaning from its word form. Furthermore, there may be semantic change.

Detailed explanation-5: -In his textbook Language (1933), he had himself adopted a behaviouristic theory of meaning, defining the meaning of a linguistic form as “the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response which it calls forth in the hearer.” Furthermore, he subscribed, in principle at least, to…