MEG 04
ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE
IGNOU MEG 04 Solved Free Assignment
MEG 04 Solved Free Assignment July 2023 & January 2024
Q. 1. Write short notes on the following:
(i) Theories on the origin of language.
Ans. In linguistics, the origin of language is known as glottogony; a technical term derived from the Greek roots of the same word. It refers to the ‘genesis of language’ or better put it as the evolution of language’.
So when did the language begin? It is an intriguing question and we may not find a completely satisfying answer to this question.
There are many theories that try to explain the origin of language and some of those have traditional amusing names.
The Divine Source Theory: According to this theory the language has been provided to humans by a divine source. As there are different religions the divine source varies across the world.
According to Christian belief, God after creating the world created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof” (Genesis, 2:19).
According to Hindu mythology the language came from goddess Saraswati, wife of Brahma, creator of universe. For Egyptians it came from Thoth, for Babylonians the source was Nabu, and for Muslims it was Allah.
The tower of Babel story says: “Because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth (Genesis II: 9).
It is an interesting fact that almost every religion in the world has a story to say about the origin of language. Some experiments were also done to justify the existence of this theory, but these attempts proved to be futile.
The Natural Sound Source Theory: This theory believes that the human language evolved from the natural sound we hear or make.
There are further divisions in this theory as natural sounds are infinite in numbers. Thus the two famous theories are “bow-wow theory” and “yo-heave-ho” theory.
“Bow-Wow” Theory: This theory suggests the formation of words by imitating (echoing) natural sounds — also known as onomatopoeia – like bow wow, cawcaw, cuckoo, buzz, hiss, rattle, screech, etc.
But it failed to give a logical explanation about the origin of the names of soundless objects – wood, stone – abstract ideas – truth, happiness, after all language is not simply a set of words used to identify an object or a thing, it is more complicated than that.
Another argument against this theory says that language also impacts the way we hear and imitate natural sounds, for example, in English a rooster crows cock-a-doodle-doo’; in Hindi ‘kuk-ru-ka-roo’ and in German ‘kikeriki’.
“Yo-Heave-Ho” Theory: According to this theory the language evolved from the sounds made by person involved in physical efforts – grunts, groan, and swear words – indicating that language developed in social context.
But again it fails to explain the various other aspects of language development. Apes have grunts and social call, but they capacity to speech.
The Pooh-Pooh Theory: The English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) believed that human language developed from instinctive cries that human made to express emotions, such as fear, anger, pleasure, and pain.
In 1871, in his book ‘Descent of Man’, Darwin first suggested this idea. According to him like human himself, his language evolved from the expression of emotion.
For example, a feeling of contempt is expressed by puffing of air out through the nostrils or the mouth and the results are the sounds like “pooh” or “pish”.
The critics of Darwin, with disgust, called this theory – the Pooh-pooh theory.
The Ding-Dong Theory: It was the famous linguist Max Muller, a contemporary of Darwin, who proposed the ding-dong theory.
According to Muller there is a mysterious correspondence between sounds and meanings.
Small, sharp, high things tend to have words with high front vowels in many languages, while big, round, low things tend to have round back vowels! This is often referred to as sound symbolism.
According to him, the primitive elements of language were but reflex expression of human being induced by sensory impression.
The most primitive words would therefore be phonetic types rung out from the organism of the first man or men when struck with an idea.
So, it might be clear now that it is impossible to trace the origin of language. Another issue that intriguing in nature is how often language was invented.
Perhaps it was invented once, by our earliest ancestors – perhaps the first who had whatever genetic and physiological properties needed to make complex sounds and organise them into strings.
This is called monogenesis. Or perhaps it was invented many times-polygenesis – by many people. We can try to reconstruct earlier forms of language, but we can only go so far before cycles of change obliterate any possibility of reconstruction.
Many say we can only go back perhaps 10,000 years before the trail goes cold. So, perhaps we will simply never know. But we can always guess the reason for its invention.
The language must have evolved due to following reasons:
(a) For passing through factual information and command, or in other words, information talking.
(b) For expression of thoughts, emotions and feelings.
(c) For maintaining social circle on friendly level, also called as ‘phatic communication.
(d) For aesthetic purpose like poetry.
(e) For psychological reasons like relieving nervous tension.
To understand language better, let us have a look on its different characteristics.
(ii) The Articulatory System.
Ans. Once the air comes out of the larynx it is further modified with the help of different articulators. These articulators are the basic constituents of articulatory system.
(a) The pharynx: The pharynx is the part of the neck and throat situated immediately posterior to (behind) the mouth and nasal cavity, and cranial, or superior, to the esophagus, larynx, and trachea.
The pharynx’s muscles can modify the pharyngeal cavity to a great extent. These modification affects the quality of sound produced.
(b) The Lips: The lips play an important part in the production of sounds like /p/ and /b/ which are produced by attaching both the lips and releasing it abruptly to let pass the stream of air behind it.
When both the lips are attached and the air is blown out from nose, it leads to the production of consonant sound /m/.
Though, vowel sounds do not need any articulators but their quality depends upon the movement of lips.
(c) The Teeth: Some consonant sounds are produced with the help of teeth, for example, both version of /th/ sound in words like ‘think’ and ‘that’ are produced by the quick movement of tip of tongue between the upper and lower teeth.
(d) The Teeth Ridge: The teeth ridge is also known as the alveolar ridge. It is convex in shape, lying between upper teeth and hard palate. It also helps in production of consonant sounds like /t/ and /d/
(e) The Hard Palate: The hard palate is the upper part of the mouth after alveolar ridge towards the throat. It can be felt with tongue. With the help of hard palate some sounds are produced like initial sound in ‘yes’.
(f) The Soft Palate: After hard palate towards the throat, if we roll our tongue we will find a portion of soft skin. This portion is called soft palate or velum.
Velum functions in two ways to produce sounds: (a) It makes contact with the back of the tongue to complete the closure and (b) It gets raised and makes contact with the back wall of pharynx to complete the closure.
The first type of closure is called Velar closure and the second type of closure is called velic closure. Sound in words like flat, board, spray, etc. are produced during a velic closure.
(g) The Uvula: The uvula is a small tongue like organ at the end of the soft palate.
(h) The Tongue: Tongue is the most important and flexible articulator in the speech apparatus. It moves to make contact with different articulators to produce different sounds. Many sounds are produced with the help of tongue.
For example, when tongue is suspended in the mid of the mouth slightly curved sound/sh/ is produced.
Q. 2. Examine the salient features of the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses.
Ans. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as linguistic relativity, was named after famous anthropological linguist Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941).
In its relatively modest form, it says that one’s perception, thought, and behaviour are influenced by one’s language.
We may discern different versions of this claim by distinguishing degrees of linguistic influence, the highest of which is complete and unalterable determination of the fundamental structures of perception, thought, and behaviour.
In the most radical form, the hypothesis says that one’s reality is constructed by one’s language and that differently structured languages give rise to different realities, which are incommensurable. Writing in 1929, Sapir argued in a classic passage that.
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.
It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.
The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group.
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.
The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached… We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir 1958 [1929], p. 69)
This position was extended in the 1930s by his student Whorf, who, in another widely cited passage, declared that. We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.
The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by our minds-and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds.
We cut nature up, organise it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organise it in this way-an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.
The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organisation and classification of data which the agreement decrees.
(Whorf 1940, pp. 213-14; his emphasis) Whorf distanced himself from the behaviourist stance that thinking is entirely linguistic (Whorf 1956, p. 66).
In its most extreme version, as stated earlier, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ can be described as consisting of two associated principles.
According to the first, linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language. According to the second, linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently.
On this basis, the Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible.
Some commentators also apply this to the translation’ of unverbalised thought into language. Others suggest that even within a single language any reformulation of words has implications for meaning, however subtle.
George Steiner (1975) has argued that any act of human communication can be seen as involving a kind of translation, so the potential scope of Whorfianism is very broad indeed.
Indeed, seeing reading as a kind of translation is a useful reminder of the reductionism of representing textual reformulation simply as a deter-minate ‘change of meaning’, since meaning does not reside in the text, but is generated by interpretation.
According to the Whorfian stance, ‘content’ is bound up with linguistic ‘form’ and the use of the medium contribute to shaping the meaning.
In common usage, we often talk of different verbal formulations meaning the same thing’, but for those of a Whorfian persuasion, such as the literary theorist Stanley Fish, it is impossible to mean the same thing in two (or more) different ways’ (Fish 1980, p. 32).
Reformulating something transforms the ways in which meanings may be made with it, and in this sense, form and content are inseparable.
From this stance words are not merely the ‘dress’ of thought. The importance of what is ‘lost in translation’ varies, of course. The issue is usually considered most important in literary writing.
It is illuminating to note how one poet felt about the translation of his poems from the original Spanish into other European languages (Whorf himself did not in fact regard European languages as significantly different from each other).
Pablo Neruda noted that the best translations of his own poems were Italian (because of its similarities to Spanish), but that English and French ‘do not correspond to Spanish-neither in vocalisation, or in the placement, or the colour, or the weight of words.
He continued: ‘it is not a question of interpretative equivalence: no, the sense can be right, but this correctness of translation, of meaning, can be the destruction of a poem.
In many of the translations into French-I don’t say in all of them-my poetry escapes, nothing remains; one cannot protest because it says the same thing that one has written.
But it is obvious that if I had been a French poet, I would not have said what I did in that poem, because the value of the words is so different.
I would have written something else.’ (Plimpton 1981, p. 63) With more pragmatic’ or less ‘expressive’ writing, meanings are typically regarded as less dependent on the particular form of words used.
In most pragmatic contexts, paraphrases or translations tend to be treated as less fundamentally problematic.
However, even in such contexts, particular words or phrases which have an important function in the original language may be acknowledged to present special problems in translation.
Even outside the humanities, academic texts concerned with the social sciences are a case in point.
The Whorfian perspective is in strong contrast to the extreme universalism of those who adopt the cloak theory.
The neo- classical idea of language as simply the dress of thought is based on the assumption that the same thought can be expressed in a variety of ways.
Universalists argue that we can say whatever we want to say in any language, and that whatever we say in one language can always be translated into another. This is the basis for the most common refutation of Whorfianism.
‘The fact is,’ insists the philosopher Karl Popper, ‘that even totally different language is not untranslatable’ (Popper 1970, p. 56). The evasive use here of ‘not untranslatable’ is ironic.
Most universalists do acknowledge that translation may on occasions involve a certain amount of circumlocution.
Individuals who regard writing as fundamental to their sense of personal and professional identity may experience their written style as inseparable from this identity, and in so far as writers are attached to their words’, they may favour a Whorfian perspective.
And it would be hardly surprising if individual stances towards Whorfianism were not influenced by allegiances to Romanticism or Classicism, or towards either the arts or the sciences.
As I have pointed out, in the context of the written word, the ‘untranslatability’ claim is generally regarded as strongest in the arts and weakest in the case of formal scientific papers (although rhetorical studies have increasingly blurred any clear distinctions).
And within the literary domain, untranslatability’ was favoured by Romantic literary theorists, for whom the connotative, emotional or personal meanings of words were crucial (see Stone 1967, pp. 126-7, 132, 145).
Whilst few linguists would accept the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its ‘strong’, extreme or deterministic form, many now accept a ‘weak’, more moderate, or limited Whorfianism, namely that the ways in which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of language we use.
Moderate Whorfianism differs from extreme Whorfianism in these ways:
the emphasis is on the potential for thinking to be influenced’ rather than unavoidably ‘determined’ by language; It is a two-way process, so that ‘the kind of language we use is also influenced by the way we see the world”; Any influence is ascribed not to Language’ as such or to one language compared with another, but to the use within a language of one variety rather than another (typically a sociolect-the language used primarily by members of a particular social group);
- Emphasis is given to the social context of language use rather than to purely linguistic considerations, such as the social pressure in particular contexts to use language in one way rather than another.
Q. 3. Discuss in detail the changes in English sounds with reference to changes in consonant sounds, the vowel system and spellings.
Ans. Before understand that how the sounds in English language changed during the course of time, let us first know the current sound system in English language. English is divided into three different sound groups.
These are vowels, consonants, and diphthongs. According to IPA (International Phonetics Association) there are twelve vowel sounds, eight diphthongs, and twenty-three consonant sounds in English.
Vowel sounds are i:, I, ɛ, æ, w:, D, []:] (Board), Ÿ, u:, ^, :, c.
Diphthongs can be defined as a vowel sound in which tongue changes position to produce the sound of two vowels. The diphthongs in English language are: ei, cu, ai, au, []I] (Boy), Ic, ec, and c.
[w].
Consonants in English are [p], [t], [k], [t ƒ ], [f], [9], [s], [[ ], [b], [d], [g], [d¥], [v], [d], [z], [¥], [m], [n], [y], [1], [r], [j], and
Changes in Consonant Sounds: The consonant sounds, as we see today has developed after centuries of change.
There are few consonant sounds that were there in the Old English, but now in Modern English they have lost their existence, there are sounds which have changed, there are sounds which have remained the same during the entire course of time, and there are few add on as well.
Two consonant sounds that dis-appeared from English are [x] and [p]. The first sound [x] was very uncommon in Old English and started to change in that period itself, but somehow it managed to exist through Middle English period.
In Modern English this sound, probably has been lost or transformed into some sound. In Old English people use to spell it h, but later in thirteenth century people started to spell it gh.
In Old English this sound appeared after back vowels, for example, neah, rüh, nähwær, etc. In Middle English Geoffrey Chaucer used this sound in words like lighte, bought, rough, tough, etc. In Modern English there are two possible happening of [x].
The first possibility is – it has disappeared from the language as the words light and bought suggest. The second possibility is – it has transformed into [f] sound as the words rough and tough suggest.
Many linguists believe that this sound no longer exist in English language. The second sound [p] appeared in Old English after back vowels or a consonant (except n)-swōgan, sagu, folgian, etc.
This sound later in Middle English period was changed to [g] similar to regular [g] sound in English. Since then it is continuously used as sound [g].
Apart from these two lost sounds there are two more sounds which have in the way they are pronounced. The first sound is [r] which today is simply produced with a flap of tongue; however, earlier it was produced as a trilled sound by Chaucer and King Alfred.
The second sound which has changed its pronunciation is [j], it was spelled in Old English as g or ge or gei. Today this sound is produced by gliding the tongue between the two palates; however, in Old English this sound was more spirant.
The one sound which has been added to the Modern English is the sound []. This sound has been developed from [zj] in French borrowed words like measure, usury, azure, etc.
It did not become an independent sound until Modern English period.
Apart from all these changes all other consonants sounds remain unchanged in Modern English.
These sounds are classified into eight categories on the basis of manner of articulation.
They are the voiced stops ([b] in ‘bow’ and ‘crab,’ the [d] in ‘dock’ and ‘blood,’ and the [g] in ‘game’ and ‘bag.”), the unvoiced stops ([p] in ‘pour’ and ‘slap,’ the [t] in ‘time’ and ‘adept,’ and the [k] in ‘cold’ and ‘poke.”), the voiced aspirants or fricatives ([v] in ‘very’ and ‘shove,’ the [8] in ‘thy’ and ‘bathe,’ the [z] in ‘zoo’ and ‘wise,’ and the [] in ‘measure’), the voiceless aspirants or fricatives ([f] in ‘fool’ and ‘laugh,’ the [0] in ‘thigh’ and ‘bath,’ the [[] in ‘shock’ and ‘nation,’ the [s] in ‘soup’ and ‘miss,’ and the [h] in ‘hope’ and ‘ahead.”), the voiced affricates ([d¥]in ‘germ,’ ‘journal’ and ‘wedge.’), the voiceless affricates ([t[] in ‘lunch’ and ‘chapter.”), and the nasal ([m] in ‘mind’ and ‘sum,’ the [n] in ‘now’ and ‘sign,’ and the [n] in ‘sing,’ ‘longer’ and ‘bank’).
Most of the sounds are still spelled the same as were in Old English, but there some exception to this, for example, in Old English people spelled [[] as sc, and for [k] they used [c].
There are few sounds in Modern English which have not changed in terms of spelling and pronunciation since Old English, but in terms of status. For example, the sound [] was there in the Old English, but as a variation of sound [d¥].
Similarly [v], [d], and[z] were the variation of sound [f], [9], and [s] respectively.
The change was made not only in terms of sounds, but also in terms of words. Due the initial consonant cluster many of [h], [k], [w], and some [f]’s were deleted.
Changes in Vowel Sounds: Tracing the history of English vowel sounds we do not find any considerable change in the vowel sound system from Old to Middle English.
It was only after fourteenth Century the English vowel system we notice a drastic change which was termed as ‘the great vowel shift’ by Jespersen.
A detailed examination of vowel evolution tells us that most of the short vowels were unchanged from Old to Middle English.
But like everything else this to has an exception. [a] of Old English became [a] in the middle, thus cattle of became cattle in Middle English, and also y of old was transformed into [i] in middle English, thus giving us brigge which was brycg in Old English.
The most considerable change in long vowels was the change of a to ō thus ban to bōn. The long y of old evolved in somewhat similar manner to short y thus br y d to bride.
Important point here is to notice is that, whatever change happened in the vowel was in its quality.
The long vowels of Old English were shortened in Middle English and short vowels were lengthened.
But the major change in the English vowel system was noticed between 1450 and 1750 in England. This change is called ‘the great vowel shift’ which was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), a Danish Linguist and Anglicist.
The values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English, and the Great Vowel Shift is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.
Originally, these vowels had “continental” values much like those remaining in Italian and liturgical Latin.
However, during the Great Vowel Shift, the two highest long vowels became diphthongs, and the other five underwent an increase in tongue height with one of them coming to the front.
The principal changes (with the vowels shown in IPA) are roughly as follows. However, exceptions occur, the transitions were not always complete, and there were sometimes accompanying changes in orthography:
(a) Middle English a: fronted to [w:] and then rose to [&:]. [e:] and in many dialects diphthongised in Modern English to [el] (as in make). Since Old English â had mutated to []:] in Middle English, Old English â does not correspond to the Modern English diphthong [er].
(b) Middle English [&:] rose to [e:] and then to Modern English [i:] (as in beak).
(c) Middle English [e:] rose to Modern English [i:] (as in feet).
(d) Middle English [i:] diphthongized to [ii], which was most likely followed by [cl] and finally Modern English [a1] (as in mice).
(e) Middle English []:] rose to [o:], and in the eighteenth century this became Modern English [o] or [c] (as in boat).
(f) Middle English [o:] rose to Modern English [u:] (as in boot).
(g) Middle English [u:] was diphthongised in most environments to [u], and this was followed by [a], and then Modern English [a] (as in mouse) in the eighteenth Century. Before labial consonants, this shift did not occur, and [u:] remains as in room and droop.
This means that the vowel in the English word date was in Middle English pronounced [a:] (similar to modern dart); the vowel in feet was [e:] (similar to modern fate); the vowel in wipe was [i:] (similar to modern weep); the vowel in boot was [o:] (similar to modern boat); and the vowel in house was [u:] (similar to modern whose).
The effects of the shift were not entirely uniform, and differences in degree of vowel shifting can sometimes be detected in regional dialects both in written and spoken English, for example in the speech of much of Scotland.
An important point to notice is, not all words underwent certain phases of the Great Vowel Shift. ea in particular did not take the step to [i:] in several words, such as great, break, steak, swear and bear. Other examples are father, which failed to become [&:] / ea, and broad, which failed to become [o:].
Shortening of long vowels at various stages produced further complications. ea is again a good example, shortening commonly before coronal consonant such as d and th, thus: dead, head, threat, wealth etc.
(This is known as the bred-bread merger.) oo was shortened from [u:] to [] in many cases before k, d and less commonly t, thus book, foot, good etc. Some cases occurred before the change of [] to [A]: blood, flood.
Similar, yet older shortening occurred for some instances of ou: country, could. Note that some loanwords such as soufflé and Umlaut have retained a spelling from their origin language which may seem similar to the previous examples, but since they were not a part of English at the time of the Great Vowel Shift, they are not actual exceptions to the shift.
Q. 4. Discuss with examples the main speech mechanism with reference to three systems: the Respiratory System, the Phonatory System and the Articulatory System.
Ans. Respiration is achieved through the mouth, nose, trachea, lungs, and diaphragm.
Oxygen enters the respiratory system through the mouth and the nose. The oxygen then passes through the larynx (where speech sounds are produced) and the trachea which is a tube that enters the chest cavity.
In the chest cavity, the trachea splits into two smaller tubes called the bronchi. Each bronchus then divides again forming the bronchial tubes.
The bronchial tubes lead directly into the lungs where they divide into many smaller tubes which connect to tiny sacs called alveoli.
The average adult’s lungs contain about 600 million of these spongy, air-filled sacs that are surrounded by capillaries. The inhaled oxygen passes into the alveoli and then diffuses through the capillaries into the arterial blood.
Meanwhile, the waste-rich blood from the veins releases its carbon dioxide carbon dioxide follows the same path out of the lungs when you exhale.
The main function of the Respiratory system in the process of speech production is to build the air pressure for the production of sounds. Speech begins with the prepatory intake of air at the ratio of 10:90.
Thoracic cavity expands secondary to the lowered diaphragm giving expansion to lungs and thus creating a negative pressure and air which is now available for speaking.
To speak, lungs deflate and rib cage contract forcing air out. There are other organ apart from lung which can also provide air for the production of speech sounds like glottis and the velum.
THE PHONATORY SYSTEM
The Phonatory system is the source of the production of voiced sound. This system gives way to phonation which means the production of voiced sounds.
Phonation is accomplished with the larynx which is attached to the top of the trachea, and is the outlet of the respiratory pump into the upper airway.
The larynx is the structure at the entrance to the trachea that functions as a valve biologically and as the source of voice for speech.
The larynx contains a pair of muscular band called vocal cords. Vocal cords can attain a number of positions for the production of sounds.
Three of the important positions are:
(a) When the air stream enters larynx, subglottic pressure builds up. When the pressure becomes great enough the vocal cords are pushed wide apart and air can now flow freely through glottis.
In this position a number of sounds can be produced. These sounds are called voiceless sounds.
(b) In the second position vocal cords are held loosely together. In this position the pressure of the air stream from lungs would be able to pass through freely thus would cause vibration which results in production of different sounds called voiced sounds.
(c) The third position that vocal cord take is when they are held tightly together. In this case the air stream from lungs is blocked.
Now if the vocal cords are drawn apart suddenly from this position, there is a production of explosive sound which is called glottal stop.
Once the air comes out of the larynx it is further modified with the help of different articulators. These articulators are the basic constituents of articulatory system.
(a) The pharynx: The pharynx is the part of the neck and throat situated immediately posterior to (behind) the mouth and nasal cavity, and cranial, or superior, to the esophagus, larynx, and trachea. The pharynx’s muscles can modify the pharyngeal cavity to a great extent. These modification affects the quality of sound produced.
(b) The Lips: The lips play an important part in the production of sounds like /p/ and /b/ which are produced by attaching both the lips and releasing it abruptly to let pass the stream of air behind it.
When both the lips are attached and the air is blown out from nose, it leads to the production of consonant sound /m/. Though, vowel sounds do not need any articulators but their quality depends upon the movement of lips.
(c) The Teeth: Some consonant sounds are produced with the help of teeth, for example, both version of /th/ sound in words like ‘think’ and ‘that’ are produced by the quick movement of tip of tongue between the upper and lower teeth.
(d) The Teeth Ridge: The teeth ridge is also known as the alveolar ridge. It is convex in shape, lying between upper teeth and hard palate. It also helps in production of consonant sounds like /t/ and /d/.
(e) The Hard Palate: The hard palate is the upper part of the mouth after alveolar ridge towards the throat. It can be felt with tongue. With the help of hard palate some sounds are produced like initial sound in ‘yes’.
(1) The Soft Palate: After hard palate towards the throat, if we roll our tongue we will find a portion of soft skin. This portion is called soft palate or velum.
Velum functions in two ways to produce sounds: (a) It makes contact with the back of the tongue to complete the closure and (b) It gets raised and makes contact with the back wall of pharynx to complete the closure.
The first type of closure is called Velar closure and the second type of closure is called velic closure. Sound in words like flat, board, spray, etc. are produced during a velic closure.
(g) The Uvula: The uvula is a small tongue like organ at the end of the soft palate.
(h) The Tongue: Tongue is the most important and flexible articulator in the speech apparatus. It moves to make contact with different articulators to produce different sounds. Many sounds are produced with the help of tongue.
For example, when tongue is suspended in the mid of the mouth slightly curved sound/sh/ is produced.
Q. 5. What do you think is the role of English vis-à-vis the Indian languages in modern India?
Ans. English is one of the most important languages in India today. Though, since independence it has always been regarded as a second language, but it has surpassed many of the Indian languages.
English is one of the official languages of India, with about eighty million speakers according to the 1991 Census of India. Less than a quarter of a million people speak English as their first language.
With the exception of some families who communicate primarily in English, as well as members of the relatively small Anglo-Indian community numbering less than half a million, speakers of Indian English use it as a second or third language, after their indigenous Indian language(s), such as, Assamese, Urdu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi, Sindhi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, etc.
Several idiomatic forms, derived from Indian literary and vernacular language, also have made their way into Indian English. Despite this diversity, there is general homogeneity in syntax and vocabulary among the varieties of Indian English.
Many attempts were made to free the Indian education system from the existing cage. Jawaharlal Nehru intended to revolutionise the complete education system of India.
According to him the changes made in the country should also be reflected i.e. the education system of India.
After independence English education was given new dimensions. Hindi in Devnagri script was declared as the official language of the country which made the bilingual situation of India, trilingual.
English remained the language of higher studies and also become library language.
It was also used as a link language and official language. The situation evolved due to this demanded for excellence in English but it was not very probable demand as the emphasis of English education was reduced to a great extent.
This gave rise to various controversies and arguments and in turn different language commissions, education commissions were appointed to find a solution for this problem.
In 1950 Indian Constitution declared fourteen languages as Indian Languages out of which Hindi was to be the first to enjoy the status of national language. Surprisingly English remained as transitional language until 1965.
Most of the commissions proposed the replacement of English as a medium of instruction and communication by Indian languages, but at the same time they also proposed the retention of English as the ‘library language.
For example, the “university education commission” 1948-49 which was led by Dr. S Radhakrishnan argued for the replacement of English by an Indian language but also propose to retain English “to keep ourself in touch with the leaving stream of ever growing knowledge”.
IGNOU MEG 03 Solved Free Assignment 2023-24