Language in Use 91-92
This unit looks at three aspects of the internal organisation of language,
sounds, words and meaning, and how they inter-relate. Its aim is to show
how language is patterned although we are normally unaware of the fact as we
try to make sense of an utterance.
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The aim of this session is to explore the part played by intonation in spoken
language. The class should be divided into small groups, and members of the
groups should take it in turns to think a sentence and hum it to the others.
Discussion should focus on how much meaning can be conveyed by this means alone,
especially about the speaker's state of feeling-angry, bored, happy, etc.
The next stage involves a pair of utterances:
(a) firstly, each member of the group makes a message, speaks -ill the nouns
and adjectives, and hums the rest;
(b) secondly, they make up another message, but this time the), hum the nouns
and adjectives and speak the rest.
Discussion should focus on the fact that while it is easy to tell what message (a) is about, message (b) is much more difficult to interpret, although it tells you as much about the emotional state of the speaker as (a).
[2] The examination of pattern is carried further in this session by looking at the way in which we can take nonsense words to be proper words in the language. Make available to each group a list of nonsense words, ask them to put them into sentences and provide an interpretation for each sentence. Circulate the results. Discussion should then focus upon the reasons why particular words were used in particular ways to make the sentences, and what kind of meaning the sentences have. The following examples show the type of nonsense word needed: strugget, branket, splange; to tribble, to prive, to flench; stacious, strakeful, spoothly, fendulously, plomefully.
[3] The class will have discovered how much meaning a message can have
even if we can only identify words as nouns, verbs, and so on. In this session,
the aim is to show:
(a) how the grammatical class to which a word belongs determines many features
of the message
(b) how the dictionary meaning affects the whole pattern of the message
Begin by asking the groups to write sets of sentences using one nonsense Word like 'ompton', as noun, verb, adjective, adverb. Circulate the results. Then ask the class to make up a word, give several meanings to it, and finally write a separate sentence for each meaning. In this case, the word 'ompton' mightt be taken to mean a kind of an animal: a kind of fish; a part of a machine, the name of a participant in a game; or a dialect word meaning something like 'slimy residue'. A variant approach here is to ask the class to regard place names as words that have to be used in sentences such as 'I'm feeling a bit wembley this morning'.
Work in [1] may be taken further through H10 and C6, while further work in spelling may be approached through C 10.