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Linguistic Adaptation to Speech Function
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Abstract:
It is because we look mostly at certain languages or because we are primarily interested in certain aspects of language that we still have an imperfect understanding of all the means and the motives of man's use of language. Despite the accessibility of virtually every language on the face of the earth and the ease with which we can observe, collect, and analyze la langue pratiquee — language in action — we continue to preoccupy ourselves with standard language, explicit texts, elicited data, and with problems made more amenable by the available stock of observations. We do not yet clearly understand, or have not described with compelling rigor and explicitness, the functions that language and speech have for man. And if we are in agreement at least about the irreducible inventory of functions, we have not gone far in describing the consequences of these functions for language structure and language use. This paper deals with one of these functions, the expressive function. It demonstrates that expressiveness or affect is not merely a function of individual psychology and behavior in unconscious (unattended to, unmannered) and manipulated or edited speech. Expressiveness is not merely manifested in pragmatics — in the manner in which speech is constructed — but also in its structure. Moreover, languages differ significantly in the way they realize this universal function.
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Keyword:
Africa; Gbaya; ideophones
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URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110800036.595
http://hdl.handle.net/1807/67630
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