Semester I
B 1.1 Communication Sciences
Part A Speech-Language Pathology
Unit 1: Speech, language and communication
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Definitions of speech, language, communication, and their components
A) Communication: Communication mainly an active and intentional two way process of exchange of message.
Speech: Speech is the most efficient and frequently used mode of language expression. It is a set of verbal codes, the commonest codes are spoken words. Words are combined in specific ways to convey meaning. Speech is produced with the help of speech mechanism structures like tongue, jaw, lips , etc.
Language: Language is the main vehicle for Communication. It is a set of arbitrary symbols (mainly conventional) used by a group of people for the purpose of communication.
COMMUNICATION components: 1.SPEECH, 2.LANGUAGE
1.Speech: a.Voice, b.Fluency, c.Articulation, d.Prosody
a.Voice:
Voice is produced when air from the lungs passes through the vocal folds (vocal cords) in the larynx (voice box) causing the vocal folds to vibrate. This vibration produces a sound that is then modified and shaped by the vocal tract (throat, mouth and nasal passages).
b.Fluency:
Fluency refers to continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort in speech production. All speakers are dysfluent at times. They may hesitate when speaking, use fillers (“like” or “uh”), or repeat a word or phrase. These are called typical disfluencies or non-fluencies.
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Fluency refers to speech flow or the ease with which words and sentences emerge from a speaker. The characteristics that determine speech flow are the continuity, rate and timing. When these aspects are not appropriately used speech fluency gets affected resulting in broken continuity, high rate of speech or inappropriate timing. Some of these features are parts of all our speech. Children during their language development go through a stage known as normal non-fluency around the age of 3-4 years.
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c.Articulation:
Articulation refers to making sounds. The production of sounds involves the coordinated movements of the lips, tongue, teeth, palate (top of the mouth) and respiratory system (lungs). There are also many different nerves and muscles used for speech.
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The process of production of speech sounds is called Articulation. This involves incredibly fast obstruction or diversion of the air stream and vocal tone by the tongue, lips, and jaws. The resultant sounds can be grouped into two major categories, namely, vowels and consonants. All the speech sounds are described as where and how the air stream is obstructed by the structures in the vocal tract.
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d.Prosody:
Studies the impact of speech melody
i.e., Intonation, tone, rhythm, stress, etc.., on the words of sentence.
Example: "Yeah, that was a great movie,"
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It is the description of patterns of speech relating to the stress, pitch, intonation, rhythm, and duration of Syllables.
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2. Language:
As language is the main vehicle for communication, language essentially has same functions as that of communication. Just like communication which has different modes, the language has different parts.
These parts deal with
what to say(Content) ,
when to say (use), and
how to say a word or a sentence(form).
These parts are called as components of language.
We will be able to communicate efficiently by making use of these components.
components:
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Form
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Content
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Use
Form - deals with the structure of language -how to form words and sentences grammatically.
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form - ' pronoun + Verb + Noun'
Content - deals with the meaning part of language - What to say or the content of the message.
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content - conveying one's name
Use - deals with the usage of language - where, when, with whom and for what purpose language
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use - fulfilling the purpose of introduction
Example:
I am Munawar.
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Sub-Components:
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Form:
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a.Phonology: (It studies the range and rules for using speech sounds in a language)
Phonology studies the range of speech sounds a native speaker uses while speaking and how they are produced.
In addition it also studies the rules that are used while combining speech sounds. Although some speech sounds are common across languages, different languages have different number of speech sounds.
The smallest units of sound that make up a language are called phonemes.
For example, the word “that” contains three phonemes the “th” represents one phoneme /th/, the “a” maps to the short a sound /ă/, and the “t” to its basic sound /t/.
Example:
English language - 43 speech sounds.
Telugu language - 47 speech sounds.
Speech sounds can be further sub-divided depending on their nature and production as consonants and vowels.
b.Morphology: (Rules for combining speech sounds to form meaningful words)
Morphology deals with the rules for combining speech sounds to form words, i.e., it is concerned with internal structure of words.
It studies the rules governing creation of words from roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc.
Example:
Pstklr is not a word in English language
Kapaka is not a word in Telugu language, as these combination of speech sounds is not meaningful.
Morphemes like chair, table, boy, etc. can be used independently. Morphemes like un_, _ful, _ness (in English) are not meaningful on their own, but when attached to words they become meaningful, (e.g., unlike, useful). These part words like un_, _ful, etc., are known as grammatical morphemes.
c.Syntax: (Rules for combining words to make sentences)
Syntax refers to the grammatical aspects of a language. It deals with word order, inflections and relationships between words.
Syntax describes the rules that speakers use in forming and in understanding sentences.
Syntactic rules specify which strings of words are acceptable and which are not.
Without syntactic organisation, language would be an incoherent jumble of words.
For example:
Hurricanes are scary is a Syntactically acceptable sentence.
Whereas scary a are Hurricanes is not an acceptable sentence.
d.Prosody:
Studies the impact of speech melody
i.e., Intonation, tone, rhythm, stress, etc.., on the words of sentence.
Example: "Yeah, that was a great movie,"
Or
It is the description of patterns of speech relating to the stress, pitch, intonation, rhythm, and duration of Syllables.
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Content:
a.Semantics: (Relationship of symbols to objects and events (Meaning))
It is study of language meaning and how it is acquired.
The semantic component of language includes meanings as well as rules for linking meaning with words and word sequences (Phrases and sentences).
Semantics is particularly concerned with the relationships between language and knowledge of the real world of objects and events.
The most important point to remember about language meaning is that words do not represent things, they represent ideas about things.
It is possible to have a grammatically correct sentence which semantically may not be acceptable, for example, / eat sky.
Example:
For example, the word lion in a language refers to a wild animal which roars.
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Use:
a.Pragmatics:
Pragmatics deals with the language from the point
of view of users. It deals with the set of rules that determine who says what to whom in which circumstances,
i.e., pragmatics deals with the study of use of language. For example, a request for water is carried out differently at home as compared to a hotel.
Different sets of words and styles are used.
Some of the pragmatic rules that govern a social interaction include preparing for and maintaining conversation, correcting errors made, giving and taking information, opening and closing a conversation, changing topics, turn taking, understanding the listener and the context, etc.
Example:
Pragmatics - Rules for using language in a social context with a purpose
