People’s Democratic ...

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People's Democratic Republic of Algeria Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research Abbes Laghrour University - Khenchela Faculty of Letters and Languages Department of English Language & Literature

??????- Bloom and Lahey defined language as "a knowledge of a code for representing ideas about the world through a conventional system of arbitrary signals for communication". - According to Britanica Encyclopedia, language is a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release. Lecture Two

The Basic Features of Language

Language is human so it differs from animal communication in several ways. Language can have scores of characteristics. These characteristics of language set human language apart from animal communication. Some of these features may be part of animal communication; yet they do not form part of it in total. I. Description of Human Language Language is Social: Language is a set of conventional communicative signals used by humans for communication in a community. Language in this sense is a possession of a social group, comprising an indispensable set of rules which permits its members to relate to each other, to interact with each other, to co-operate with each other; it is a social institution. Language exists in society; it is a means of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations. Language is Symbolic: Language consists of various sound symbols and their graphological counterparts that are employed to denote some objects, occurrences or meaning. These symbols are arbitrarily chosen and conventionally accepted and employed. Words in a language are not mere signs or figures, but symbols of meaning. The intelligibility of a language depends on a correct interpretation of these symbols. Language is Systematic: Although language is symbolic, yet its symbols are arranged in a particular system. All languages have their system of arrangements. Every language is a system of systems. All languages have phonological and grammatical systems, and within a system there are several sub-systems. For example, within the grammatical system we have morphological and syntactic systems, and within these two sub-systems we have systems such as those of plural, of mood, of aspect, of tense, etc. Language is Vocal: Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds only produced by a physiological articulatory mechanism in the human body. In the beginning, it appeared as vocal sounds only. Writing came much later, as an intelligent attempt to represent vocal sounds. Writing is only the graphic representation of the sounds of the language. So the linguists say that speech is primary. Language is Non-instinctive, Conventional: No language was created in a day out of a mutually agreed upon formula by a group of humans. Language is the outcome of evolution and convention. Each generation transmits this convention on to the next. Like all human institutions languages also change and die, grow and expand. Every language then is a convention in a community. It is non- instinctive because it is acquired by human beings. Nobody gets a language in heritage; he acquires it because he an innate ability. Language is Productive and Creative: Language has creativity and productivity. The structural elements of human language can be combined to produce new utterances, which neither the speaker nor his hearers may ever have made or heard before any, listener, yet which both sides understand without difficulty. Language changes according to the needs of society. II. Design Features of Language

Interchangeability: all members of the species can send and receive messages
Feedback: users of the system are aware of what they are transmitting
Specialization: the communicative system serves no other function but to communicate
Semantic nature: the system conveys meaning through a set of fixed relationships among signifiers, referents and meaning. 5. Arbitrariness: there is no natural or inherent connection between a token and its referent
Discreteness: the communication system consists of isolatable, repeatable units
Displacement: users of the system are able to refer to events remote in space and tine
Productivity: new messages on any topic can be produced at any time
Tradition, cultural transmission: certain aspects of the system must be transmitted from an experienced user to a learner
Duality: meaningless units (phonemes) are combined to form arbitrary signs. Signs can be recombined to form new larger meaningful units (s-p-o-t a tops, pots)
Prevarication: the system enables users to talk nonsense or to lie
Learnability: the user of the system can learn other variants. Humans can learn different languages; bees are limited to their genetically specified dialect
Reflexiveness: the ability to use the communication system to discuss the system itself. Lesson Three: The Origins of Language

The human larynx or "voice box" (containing the vocal folds) differs significantly in position from the larynx of other primates such as monkeys. In the course of human physical development, the assumption of an upright posture moved the head more directly above the spinal column and the larynx dropped to a lower position. This created a longer cavity called the pharynx, above the vocal folds, which acts as a resonator for increased range and clarity of the sounds produced via the larynx. Other primates have almost no pharynx. One unfortunate consequence of this development is that the lower position of the human larynx makes it much more possible for the human to choke on pieces of food. Monkeys may not be able to use their larynx to produce speech sounds, but they do not suffer from the problem of getting food stuck in their windpipe. In evolutionary terms, there must have been a big advantage in getting this extra vocal power (i.e. a larger range of sounds) to outweigh the potential disadvantage from an increased risk of choking to death. 5. Tool-Making Source

In the physical adaptation view, one function (producing speech sounds) must have been superimposed on existing anatomical features (teeth, lips) previously used for other purposes (chewing, sucking). A similar development is believed to have taken place with human hands and some believe that manual gestures may have been a precursor of language. By about two million years ago, there is evidence that humans had developed preferential right- handedness and had become capable of making stone tools. Tool making, or the outcome of manipulating objects and changing them using both hands, is evidence of a brain at work. The Human Brain

The human brain is not only large relative to human body size, it is also lateralized, that is, it has specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those functions that control the motor movements involved in complex vocalization (speaking) and object manipulation (making or using tools) are very close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain. That is, the area of the motor cortex that controls the muscles of the arms and hands is next to the articulatory muscles of the face, jaw and tongue. It may be that there was an evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-using abilities of humans and that both were involved in the development of the speaking brain. A recent study kept track of specific activity in the brains of experienced stonecutters as they crafted a stone tool, using a technique known to have existed for 500,000 years. The researchers also measured the brain activity of the same individuals when they were asked to think (silently) of particular words. The patterns of blood flow to specific parts of the brain were very similar, suggesting that aspects of the structure of language may have developed through the same brain circuits established earlier for two-handed stone tool creation. If we think in terms of the most basic process involved in primitive toolmaking, it is not enough to be able to grasp one rock (make one sound); the human must also bring another rock (other sounds) into contact with the first in order to develop a tool. In terms of language structure, the human may have first developed a naming ability by consistently using one type of noise (e.g. bE E r). The crucial additional step was to bring another specific noise (e.g. gO O d) into combination with the first to build a complex message (bE E r gO O d). Several thousand years of development later, humans have honed this message-building capacity to a point where, on Saturdays,

watching a football game, they can drink a sustaining beverage and proclaim 'This beer is good'. As far as we know, other primates are not doing this. 6. The Genetic Source

We can think of the human baby in its first few years as a living example of some of these physical changes taking place. At birth, the baby's brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight and the larynx is much higher in the throat, allowing babies, like chimpanzees, to breathe and drink at the same time. In a relatively short period of time, the larynx descends, the brain develops, the child assumes an upright posture and starts walking and talking. This almost automatic set of developments and the complexity of the young child's language have led some scholars to look for something more powerful than small physical adaptations over time as the source of language. Even children who are born deaf (and do not develop speech) become fluent sign language users, given appropriate circumstances, very early in life. This seems to indicate that human offspring are born with a special capacity for language. It is innate, no other creature seems to have it and it is not tied to a specific variety of language. Is it possible that this language capacity is genetically hard-wired in the newborn human? The Innateness Hypothesis As a solution to the puzzle of the origins of language, the innateness hypothesis would seem to point to something in human genetics, possibly a crucial mutation or two, as the source. In the study of human development, a number of gene mutations have been identified that relate to changes in the human diet, especially those resulting in an increase in calorie intake, possibly tied to the ability to digest starch in food and a substantial increase in glucose production. These changes are believed to have enhanced blood flow in the brain, creating the conditions for a bigger and more complex brain to develop. We are not sure when these genetic changes might have taken place or how they might relate to the physical adaptations described earlier. However, as we consider this hypothesis, we find our speculations about the origins of language moving away from fossil evidence or the physical source of basic human sounds toward analogies with how computers work (e.g. being pre- programmed or hard-wired) and concepts taken from the study of biology and genetics. The investigation of the origins of language then turns into a search for the special "language gene" that only humans possess.The Social Interaction Source

Another proposal involving natural sounds was nicknamed the "yo-he-ho" theory. The idea is that the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that physical effort involved several people and the interaction had to be coordinated. So, a group of early humans might develop a set of hums, grunts, groans and curses that were used when they were lifting and carrying large bits of trees or lifeless hairy mammoths. The appeal of this proposal is that it places the development of human language

in a social context. Early people must have lived in groups, if only because larger groups offered better protection from attack. Groups are necessarily social organizations and, to maintain those organizations, some form of communication is required, even if it is just grunts and curses. Sounds, then, would have some principled use in the social interaction of early human groups. This is an important idea involving the uses of humanly produced sounds. It does not, however, reveal the origins of the sounds produced. Apes and other primates live in social groups and use grunts and social calls, but they have not developed the capacity for speech. 4. The Physical Adaptation Source

Lecture One What is Language? Language sets people apart from all other creatures. Every known human society has had a language and though some nonhumans may be able to communicate with one another in fairly complex ways, none of their communication systems begins to approach language in its ability to convey information. Nor is the transmission of complex and varied information such an integral part of the everyday lives of other creatures. Nor do other communication systems share many of the design features of human language, such as the ability to communicate about events other than in the here and now. But it is difficult to conceive of a human society without a language. Language, like culture, that other most human attribute, is notable for its unity in diversity: there are many languages and many cultures, all different but all fundamentally the same, because there is one human nature and because a fundamental property of this human nature is the way in which it allows such diversity in both language and culture. Though the word "language" seems very common and simple, it is not easy to give an exhaustive, accurate definition to it. This resulted in a variety of definitions by scholars and linguists who provided explanations based on different perspectives and approaches.The Divine Source In the biblical tradition, as described in the book of Genesis, God created Adam and "whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." Alternatively, following a Hindu tradition, it is Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, who is credited with bringing language to humanity. In most religions, there appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language. In an attempt to rediscover this original divine language, a few experiments have been carried out, with rather conflicting results. The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if human infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language around them, then they would spontaneously begin using the original God-given language. The Greek writer Herodotus reported the story of an Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus (or Psamtik) who tried the experiment with two newborn babies more than 2,500 years ago. After two years of isolation except for the company of goats and a mute shepherd, the children were reported to have spontaneously uttered, not an Egyptian word, but something that was identified as the Phrygian word bekos, meaning "bread."Phonologists are concerned with questions such as:

o What sounds contrast in one language but not another (answers to such questions explain why Spanish speakers have trouble with the difference between English sh and ch, or why English speakers have trouble with the different "u" sounds in French words like rue 'street' and roue 'wheel'.)? o What sounds of a language can or cannot occur one after the other (for example, why can words begin in st- in English but not in Spanish)? o How do poets or writers or song lyrics intuitively know how to match the rhythm of speech to the abstract rhythmic pattern of a poetic or musical meter? 3. Morphology Morphology is the study of word structure. Morphologists examine such questions as:

o To what extent are ways of forming words "productive" or not (e.g. why do English speakers say arrival and amusement but not *arrivement and *amusal)?The children may not have picked up this "word" from any human source, but as several commentators have pointed out, they must have heard what the goats were saying. (First remove the -kos ending, which was added in the Greek version of the story, then pronounce be- as you would the English word bed without -d at the end. Can you hear a goat?) King James the Fourth of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around the year 1500 and the children were reported to have spontaneously started speaking Hebrew, confirming the King's belief that Hebrew had indeed been the language of the Garden of Eden. About a century later, the Mogul emperor Akbar the Great also arranged for newborn babies to be raised in silence, only to find that the children produced no speech at all. It is unfortunate that Akbar's result is more in line with the real-world outcome for children who have been discovered living in isolation, without coming into contact with human speech. Very young children living without access to human language in their early years grow up with no language at all. This was true of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron in France, discovered near the end of the eighteenth century, and also of Genie, an American child whose special life circumstances came to light in the 1970s. From this type of evidence, there is no "spontaneous" language.The "Bow-Wow" Theory

In this scenario, when different objects flew by, making a C AW- C AW or C O O - C O O sound, the early human tried to imitate the sounds and then used them to refer to those objects even when they weren't present. The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations that seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In English, in addition to cuckoo, we have splash, bang, boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech and of course bow-wow. Words that sound similar to the noises they describe are examples of onomatopeia. While a number of words in any language are onomatopoeic, it is hard to see how most of the soundless things (e.g. "low branch") as well as abstract concepts (e.g. "truth") could have been referred to in a language that simply echoed natural sounds.If human language did emanate from a divine source, we have no way of reconstructing that original language, especially given the events in a place called Babel, "because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth," as described in Genesis (11: 9). 2. The Natural Sound Source

A quite different view of the beginnings of language is based on the concept of natural sounds. The human auditory system is already functioning before birth (at around seven months). That early processing capacity develops into an ability to identify sounds in the environment, allowing humans to make a connection between a sound and the thing producing that sound. This leads to the idea that primitive words derive from imitations of the natural sounds that early men and women heard around them. Among several nicknames that he invented to talk about the origins of speech, Jespersen (1922) called this idea the "bow-wow" theory.o What is the basis of metaphors (e.g. Why is my car is a lemon a "good" metaphor but my car is a cabbage is not)? o What makes sentences like I'm looking for a tall student or the student I am looking for must be tall have more than one meaning? o In a sentence like I regret that he lied, how do we know that, in fact, he did lie? o How many meanings can be found in a sentence like three students read three books and why do just those meanings exist? Pragmatics Like semantics, pragmatics is also concerned with meaning. However, it studies the speaker's meaning as used in context. It analyses how much is communicated than said, how utterances function in different situations, and how things are done throough words. In addition to these sub-fields, there are a number of other sub-fields that cross-cut them:

Historical linguistics The study of how languages change over time, addressing such questions as why modern English is different form Old English and Middle English or what it means to say that English and German are "more closely related" to each other than English and French.He observes the phenomena of nature and forms a hypothesis about their occurrence, and so does a linguist, who aims at describing and analyzing the structure of a given language using the scientific method: (a) controlled observation

(b) analysis, generalization and prediction, i.e., formation of hypothesis

(d) confirmation, modification or rejection of the generalization, yielding theory.Sources:

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics, edited by Keith Allan https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/HistoryOfLinguistics.htm

Lecture Six

The Branches and Sub-Fields of Linguistics

Language is a phenomenon with many layers, from the sounds that speakers produce to the meanings that those sounds express.More precisely, it investigates the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, philosophy of language, language and thought, discourse analysis, theory of intercultural communication, translation theories, and the second language acquisition theory.Presence : Optional Compulsory Course Syllabus Weeks Main Tracks 1 Introduction to Language and Linguistics 2 Human Language: Definition 3 Human Language: Design Features 4 Origins of Human Language 5 Language History and Families 6 Linguistics: Definition 7 History of Linguistics 8 Modern Linguistics 9 De Saussure's Principles of Linguistics 10 Branches of Linguistics 11 Phonetics: Definition and Branches 12 The Articulatory System 13 Vowels 14 Consonants Description and objectives of the course

?Orientation Period

non-theoretical studies before the 19th century
historical linguistics 19th century
structuralism first half of 20th century
generative grammar second half of 20th century

The origins of linguistics go back to the Indian grammarian Panini (600 BC), who provided the first well-grounded analysis of the structure of language in his Sansrkit grammar known as the 'Astadhyayi' (eight books).The English word "language" derives ultimately from Proto-Indo- European *dn ghweh2s "tongue, speech, language", through Latin 'lingua', "language; tongue", and Old French 'language'. The following are examples of definitions by different scholars:

Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: "Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds

combined into words.Sources:

The study of language, by George Yule (2006) https://linguistics.ucla.edu/undergraduate/what-is-linguistics/

Lecture Seven: Phonology

Introduction Linguistics was defined earlier in this course as the scientific study of language through the analysis of its linguistic levels.????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????: ????????????????: ??????????????????????1.3.2.2.1.2.

Original text

People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research Abbes Laghrour University – Khenchela
Faculty of Letters and Languages Department of English Language & Literature

مهورية الجزائرية الديمقراطية الشعبية وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث العلمي
جامعة عباس لغرور خنشلة كلية: اآلداب واللغات قسم: األدب واللغة اإلنجليزية

 Domain: Letters and Foreign Languages
 Branch: English Language
 Specialty: English Language

Language and Culture

 Cycle: Bachelor X Master

 Academic Year: 2024/2025 Semester: 1

Course Title Teaching Unit Dedicated Time (per week) Credit Coefficient
Linguistics and Phonetics 3 hours
 Evaluation Method: Exam: 50 % Tutorial: 50 %
 Tutorial’s Components (TD) (Please allocate a mark to each criterion)
Criteria Presence/lectures Research Work Oral Test Written Test
Mark (total 20) 05 5 05 5
 Presence : Optional Compulsory
Course Syllabus
Weeks Main Tracks
1 Introduction to Language and Linguistics
2 Human Language: Definition
3 Human Language: Design Features
4 Origins of Human Language
5 Language History and Families
6 Linguistics: Definition
7 History of Linguistics
8 Modern Linguistics
9 De Saussure’s Principles of Linguistics
10 Branches of Linguistics
11 Phonetics: Definition and Branches
12 The Articulatory System
13 Vowels
14 Consonants
Description and objectives of the course

 For first year students, the main objective is to build a solid, rich background about the field of linguistics. More precisely, they have to understand the scope, objectives, and branches of linguistics. The students must acquire by the end of the course all basic knowledge about linguistics as the scientific study of language.
Suggested Bibliography or further readings

 "The Study of Language", by George Yule (2016)
 "An Introduction to Linguistics" by Stuart Poole (1999)
 "Aconcise Introduction to Linguistics Bruce Rowe et al. (2015)

Lecture One What is Language?

Language sets people apart from all other creatures. Every known human society has had a language and though some nonhumans may be able to communicate with one another in fairly complex ways, none of their communication systems begins to approach language in its ability to convey information. Nor is the transmission of complex and varied information such an integral part of the everyday lives of other creatures. Nor do other communication systems share many of the design features of human language, such as the ability to communicate about events other than in the here and now. But it is difficult to conceive of a human society without a language.
Language, like culture, that other most human attribute, is notable for its unity in diversity: there are many languages and many cultures, all different but all fundamentally the same, because there is one human nature and because a fundamental property of this human nature is the way in which it allows such diversity in both language and culture.
Though the word "language" seems very common and simple, it is not easy to give an exhaustive, accurate definition to it. This resulted in a variety of definitions by scholars and linguists who provided explanations based on different perspectives and approaches.
The English word "language" derives ultimately from Proto-Indo- European *dn̥ ǵʰwéh₂s "tongue, speech, language", through Latin 'lingua', "language; tongue", and Old French 'language'. The following are examples of definitions by different scholars:

Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds

combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of ideas into thoughts.”

The American linguists Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager formulated the following definition: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.”

Bloom and Lahey defined language as “a knowledge of a code for representing ideas about the world through a conventional system of arbitrary signals for communication”.

According to Britanica Encyclopedia, language is a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.

Lecture Two

The Basic Features of Language

I. Description of Human Language
Language is Social: Language is a set of conventional communicative signals used by humans for communication in a community. Language in this sense is a possession of a social group, comprising an indispensable set of rules which permits its members to relate to each other, to interact with each other, to co-operate with each other; it is a social institution. Language exists in society; it is a means of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations.
Language is Symbolic: Language consists of various sound symbols and their graphological counterparts that are employed to denote some objects, occurrences or meaning. These symbols are arbitrarily chosen and conventionally accepted and employed. Words in a language are not mere signs or figures, but symbols of meaning. The intelligibility of a language depends on a correct interpretation of these symbols.
Language is Systematic: Although language is symbolic, yet its symbols are arranged in a particular system. All languages have their system of arrangements. Every language is a system of systems. All languages have phonological and grammatical systems, and within a system there are several sub-systems. For example, within the grammatical system we have morphological and syntactic systems, and within these two sub-systems we have systems such as those of plural, of mood, of aspect, of tense, etc.

Language is Vocal: Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds only produced by a physiological articulatory mechanism in the human body. In the beginning, it appeared as vocal sounds only. Writing came much later, as an intelligent attempt to represent vocal sounds. Writing is only the graphic representation of the sounds of the language. So the linguists say that speech is primary.
Language is Non-instinctive, Conventional: No language was created in a day out of a mutually agreed upon formula by a group of humans. Language is the outcome of evolution and convention. Each generation transmits this convention on to the next. Like all human institutions languages also change and die, grow and expand. Every language then is a convention in a community. It is non- instinctive because it is acquired by human beings. Nobody gets a language in heritage; he acquires it because he an innate ability.
Language is Productive and Creative: Language has creativity and productivity. The structural elements of human language can be combined to produce new utterances, which neither the speaker nor his hearers may ever have made or heard before any, listener, yet which both sides understand without difficulty. Language changes according to the needs of society.

II. Design Features of Language

Interchangeability: all members of the species can send and receive messages

Feedback: users of the system are aware of what they are transmitting

Specialization: the communicative system serves no other function but to communicate

Semantic nature: the system conveys meaning through a set of fixed relationships among signifiers, referents and meaning.

Arbitrariness: there is no natural or inherent connection between a token and its referent

Discreteness: the communication system consists of isolatable, repeatable units

Displacement: users of the system are able to refer to events remote in space and tine

Productivity: new messages on any topic can be produced at any time

Tradition, cultural transmission: certain aspects of the system must be transmitted from an experienced user to a learner

Duality: meaningless units (phonemes) are combined to form arbitrary signs. Signs can be recombined to form new larger meaningful units (s-p-o-t à tops, pots)

Prevarication: the system enables users to talk nonsense or to lie

Learnability: the user of the system can learn other variants. Humans can learn different languages; bees are limited to their genetically specified dialect

Reflexiveness: the ability to use the communication system to discuss the system itself.

Lesson Three: The Origins of Language

Overview
How did language emerge? Did it appear in its complete form the beginning? Did it develop through time from a primitive form to its complex human form? These are the basic questions touched upon in every discussion about the origins of language. According to Charles Darwin, language originated from musical signs our first ancestors used "to charm each other".
The Spoken language probably developed 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, long before language did some 6000 years ago in Mesopotamia. This makes any study of the origin of language more of speculation than science. As classified by Yule (2017), the origin of language is approached from different perspectives based on the source believed to be where first language came from. Six sources are set: divine, natural sound, social interaction, Physical adaptation, tool-making source, genetic.

The Divine Source
In the biblical tradition, as described in the book of Genesis, God created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Alternatively, following a Hindu tradition, it is Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, who is credited with bringing language to humanity. In most religions, there appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language. In an attempt to rediscover this original divine language, a few experiments have been carried out, with rather conflicting results. The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if human infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language around them, then they would spontaneously begin using the original God-given language. The Greek writer Herodotus reported the story of an Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus (or Psamtik) who tried the experiment with two newborn babies more than 2,500 years ago. After two years of isolation except for the company of goats and a mute shepherd, the children were reported to have spontaneously uttered, not an Egyptian word, but something that was identified as the Phrygian word bekos, meaning “bread.” The pharaoh concluded that Phrygian, an older language spoken in part of what is modern

Turkey, must be the original language. That seems very unlikely. The children may not have picked up this “word” from any human source, but as several commentators have pointed out, they must have heard what the goats were saying. (First remove the -kos ending, which was added in the Greek version of the story, then pronounce be- as you would the English word bed without -d at the end. Can you hear a goat?) King James the Fourth of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around the year 1500 and the children were reported to have spontaneously started speaking Hebrew, confirming the King’s belief that Hebrew had indeed been the language of the Garden of Eden. About a century later, the Mogul emperor Akbar the Great also arranged for newborn babies to be raised in silence, only to find that the children produced no speech at all. It is unfortunate that Akbar’s result is more in line with the real-world outcome for children who have been discovered living in isolation, without coming into contact with human speech. Very young children living without access to human language in their early years grow up with no language at all. This was true of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron in France, discovered near the end of the eighteenth century, and also of Genie, an American child whose special life circumstances came to light in the 1970s. From this type of evidence, there is no “spontaneous” language. If human language did emanate from a divine source, we have no way of reconstructing that original language, especially given the events in a place called Babel, “because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth,” as described in Genesis (11: 9).
2. The Natural Sound Source

The “Bow-Wow” Theory

In this scenario, when different objects flew by, making a C AW- C AW or C O O - C O O sound, the early human tried to imitate the sounds and then used them to refer to those objects even when they weren’t present. The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations that seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In English, in addition to cuckoo, we have splash, bang, boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech and of course bow-wow. Words that sound similar to the noises they describe are examples of onomatopeia. While a number of words in any language are onomatopoeic, it is hard to see how most of the soundless things (e.g. “low branch”) as well as abstract concepts (e.g. “truth”) could have been referred to in a language that simply echoed natural sounds. We might also be rather skeptical about a view that seems to assume that a language is only a set of words used as “names” for things.
The “Pooh-Pooh” Theory

Another of Jespersen’s nicknames was the “pooh-pooh” theory, which proposed that speech developed from the instinctive sounds people make in emotional circumstances. That is, the original sounds of language may have come from natural cries of emotion such as pain, anger and joy. By this route, presumably, Ouch! came to have its painful connotations. But Ouch! and other interjections such as Ah!, Ooh!, Phew!, Wow! or Yuck! are usually produced with sudden intakes of breath, which is the opposite of ordinary talk. We normally produce spoken language as we breathe out, so we speak while we exhale, not inhale. In other words, the expressive noises people make in emotional reactions contain sounds that are not otherwise used in speech production and consequently would seem to be rather unlikely candidates as source sounds for language.
3. The Social Interaction Source

Another proposal involving natural sounds was nicknamed the “yo-he-ho” theory. The idea is that the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that physical effort involved several people and the interaction had to be coordinated. So, a group of early humans might develop a set of hums, grunts, groans and curses that were used when they were lifting and carrying large bits of trees or lifeless hairy mammoths. The appeal of this proposal is that it places the development of human language

The Physical Adaptation Source

Instead of looking at types of sounds as the source of human speech, we can look at the types of physical features humans possess, especially those that may have supported speech production. We can start with the observation that, at an early stage, our ancestors made a major transition to an upright posture, with bi-pedal (on two feet) locomotion. This really changed how we breathe. Among fourlegged creatures, the rhythm of breathing is closely linked to the rhythm of walking, resulting in a one pace – one breath relationship. Among two-legged creatures, the rhythm of breathing is not tied to the rhythm of walking, allowing long articulations on outgoing breath, with short in-breaths. It has been calculated that “human breathing while speaking is about 90% exhalation with only about 10% of time saved for quick in-breaths” (Hurford, 2014: 83). Other physical changes have been found. The reconstructed vocal tract of a Neanderthal man from around 60,000 years ago suggests that some consonant-like sound distinctions were possible. Around 35,000 years ago we start to find features in fossilized skeletal structures that resemble those of modern humans. In the study of evolutionary development, there are certain physical features that are streamlined versions of features found in other primates. By themselves, such features would not guarantee speech, but they are good clues that a creature with such features probably has the capacity for speech.
Teeth and Lips

Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes, and they are roughly even in height. They are also much smaller. Such characteristics are not very useful for

ripping or tearing food and seem better adapted for grinding and chewing. They are also very helpful in making sounds such as f or v. Human lips have much more intricate muscle interlacing than is found in other primates and their resulting flexibility certainly helps in making sounds like p, b and m. In fact, the b and m sounds are the most widely attested in the vocalizations made by human infants during their first year, no matter which language their parents are using.
Mouth and Tongue

The human mouth is relatively small compared to other primates and can be opened and closed rapidly. It is also part of an extended vocal tract that has more of an L-shape than the straight path from front to back in other mammals. In contrast to the fairly thin flat tongue of other large primates, humans have a shorter, thicker and more muscular tongue that can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds inside the oral cavity. In addition, unlike other primates, humans can close off the airway through the nose to create more air pressure in the mouth. The overall effect of these small differences taken together is a face with more intricate muscle interlacing in the lips and mouth, capable of a wider range of shapes and a more rapid and powerful delivery of sounds produced through these different shapes.
Larynx and Pharynx

The human larynx or “voice box” (containing the vocal folds) differs significantly in position from the larynx of other primates such as monkeys. In the course of human physical development, the assumption of an upright posture moved the head more directly above the spinal column and the larynx dropped to a lower position. This created a longer cavity called the pharynx, above the vocal folds, which acts as a resonator for increased range and clarity of the sounds produced via the larynx. Other primates have almost no pharynx. One unfortunate consequence of this development is that the lower position of the human larynx makes it much more possible for the human to choke on pieces of food. Monkeys may not be able to use their larynx to produce speech sounds, but they do not suffer from the problem of getting food stuck in their windpipe. In evolutionary terms, there must have been a big advantage in getting this extra vocal power (i.e. a larger range of sounds) to outweigh the potential disadvantage from an increased risk of choking to death.

Tool-Making Source

watching a football game, they can drink a sustaining beverage and proclaim 'This beer is good'. As far as we know, other primates are not doing this.

The Genetic Source

We can think of the human baby in its first few years as a living example of some of these physical changes taking place. At birth, the baby’s brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight and the larynx is much higher in the throat, allowing babies, like chimpanzees, to breathe and drink at the same time. In a relatively short period of time, the larynx descends, the brain develops, the child assumes an upright posture and starts walking and talking. This almost automatic set of developments and the complexity of the young child’s language have led some scholars to look for something more powerful than small physical adaptations over time as the source of language. Even children who are born deaf (and do not develop speech) become fluent sign language users, given appropriate circumstances, very early in life. This seems to indicate that human offspring are born with a special capacity for language. It is innate, no other creature seems to have it and it is not tied to a specific variety of language. Is it possible that this language capacity is genetically hard-wired in the newborn human? The Innateness Hypothesis As a solution to the puzzle of the origins of language, the innateness hypothesis would seem to point to something in human genetics, possibly a crucial mutation or two, as the source. In the study of human development, a number of gene mutations have been identified that relate to changes in the human diet, especially those resulting in an increase in calorie intake, possibly tied to the ability to digest starch in food and a substantial increase in glucose production. These changes are believed to have enhanced blood flow in the brain, creating the conditions for a bigger and more complex brain to develop. We are not sure when these genetic changes might have taken place or how they might relate to the physical adaptations described earlier. However, as we consider this hypothesis, we find our speculations about the origins of language moving away from fossil evidence or the physical source of basic human sounds toward analogies with how computers work (e.g. being pre- programmed or hard-wired) and concepts taken from the study of biology and genetics. The investigation of the origins of language then turns into a search for the special “language gene” that only humans possess. In one of the tasks at the end of this chapter (Task G on

page 9), you can investigate the background to the discovery of one particular gene (FOXP2) that is thought to have a role in language production.
Sources
"6 Early Theories about the Origin of Language", BY ARIKA OKRENT DECEMBER 19, 2020. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/48631/6-early-theories-about-origin-language
"The Study of Language" George Yule 2017

Lecture Five
Linguistics: Definition and History

Defining Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. More precisely, it investigates the nature, structure, and variation of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, philosophy of language, language and thought, discourse analysis, theory of intercultural communication, translation theories, and the second language acquisition theory.
Science studies its subjects in objectively and empirically. The scientist has no interference in the phenomenon he studies. He observes the phenomena of nature and forms a hypothesis about their occurrence, and so does a linguist, who aims at describing and analyzing the structure of a given language using the scientific method:
(a) controlled observation

(b) analysis, generalization and prediction, i.e., formation of hypothesis

(d) confirmation, modification or rejection of the generalization, yielding theory.

The goal of linguistics is to provide valid analyses of language structure. Linguistic theory is concerned with establishing a coherent set of independent principles to explain phenomena in language. For a simpler explanation, language might be illustrated as a car engine. It consists of different parts put into accurate positions and clusters. Each of the parts has a function and works in accordance with other parts on specific levels so that the whole system functions effectively and accurately. The endeavor of linguistics is to describe how the constituents of the language system and their operating mechanism.

Linguistics: Descriptive vs. Prescriptive

Linguistics takes a descriptive approach to language: it tries to explain things as they actually are, not as we wish them to be. When we study language descriptively, we try to find the unconscious rules that people follow when they say things like sentence (1). The schoolbook approach to language is typically prescriptive. It tries to tell you how you should speak and write.
Notice that there is a place for both description and prescription in language study. For example, when adults learn a foreign language, they typically want someone to tell them how to speak, in other words to prescribe a particular set of rules to follow, and expect a teacher or book to set forth those rules. But how do teachers know what rules to prescribe? At some point in time, someone had to describe the language and infer those rules. Prescription, in other words, can only occur after the language has been described, and good prescription depends on adequate description. We obviously don't want to be teaching people the wrong things about language.

A Brief History of Linguistics

The history of linguistics is bound up with various theories which have been proposed in the attempt at explaining the nature of the human language faculty. These theories can be grouped into three broad categories which correspond roughly to historical epochs.
Orientation Period

non-theoretical studies before the 19th century

historical linguistics 19th century

structuralism first half of 20th century

generative grammar second half of 20th century

The origins of linguistics go back to the Indian grammarian Panini (600 BC), who provided the first well-grounded analysis of the structure of language in his Sansrkit grammar known as the 'Astadhyayi' (eight books). Then, the tradition moved to the Greek civilization with the works of famous philosophers such as Socrates (469-399 BC), Plato (c.427-348 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). During the rise of Islamic Civilisation, scholars such as Ibn Abi Ishaq (died AD 735/6, AH 117) and Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali, who established diacritical marks and vowels for Arabic in the mid-600s and Sibawayh set the foundations of Arabic linguistics.
As far as the modern linguistics is concerned, various linguistic theories have been developed over the past two centuries as shown above. The school of historical linguistics came to be known in the late 19th century as Neogrammarianism. Structuralism in the 20th century was introduced by Ferninand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss-French linguist whose original ideas were published in a book posthumously (Cours de linguistique générale, 1916). Generative grammar was invented and developed by Noam Chomsky (1928- ) and has been the dominant model of formal linguistics in recent decades.
Linguistics as a science began at the beginning of the 19th century and was diachronic in its orientation. The essential theoretical assumption of linguists at this time was that of the sound law which maintains that (phonological) change is without exception unless this is

prevented by phonotactic environment. Later analogical change can mask an earlier change and make it appear irregular by increasing its scope beyond environments in which it originally applied.
In the latter half of the 19th century linguistic techniques reached a highwater mark and the linguists involved are known today as Neogrammarians (Junggrammatiker). One of their main concerns was the reconstruction of the proto-language Indo-European from which nearly all languages in Europe and many in the Middle East and northern India are derived.
The advent of structuralism at the beginning of the 20th century is associated with Ferdinand de Saussure, a French-Swiss scholar whose ideas have had a lasting effect on the linguistic thought of following generations. Saussure stressed the interaction at any one time of elements in a language's structure and maintained that these were interrelated in a network of relations. Diachrony is in his view just a stringing together of various synchronic slices, so that the structure of a language at one point in time is primary and historical considerations are dependent on the principles derived from viewing language synchronically.
The consideration of system structure has led to a functional view of language change which recognises both simplification and repair along with avoidance of merger as valid types of change.
The generative approach to language change sees it primarily as rule change which becomes part of the internalised grammar of a certain generation and remains so until replaced by another rule change. This type of change is always binary, i.e. a rule is either present or not, and as such has been rejected by many, notably by sociolinguists, who argue that there is often a variable application of rules and that speakers can have a command of several subsystems whose use is determined by external, social factors.
Sources:

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics, edited by Keith Allan https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/HistoryOfLinguistics.htm

Lecture Six

The Branches and Sub-Fields of Linguistics

Language is a phenomenon with many layers, from the sounds that speakers produce to the meanings that those sounds express. The field of Linguistics is comprised of several sub- fields. Most professional linguists become specialists in one or more of these sub-fields. The major ones are:

Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. Phoneticians study both the production of speech sounds by the human speech organs (articulatory phonetics) and the properties of the sounds themselves (acoustic phonetics). Phoneticians are concerned with such questions as:

• What are the sounds, from among all those that humans could make, that actually exist in the world’s languages?
• What specially defines different “accents”?
• Can speakers be identified by “voiceprints”?
• What are the properties of sounds that would apply in computerized speech synthesis?

Phonology
Phonology is the study of language sound systems. Phonologists are concerned with questions such as:

• What sounds contrast in one language but not another (answers to such questions explain why Spanish speakers have trouble with the difference between English sh and ch, or why English speakers have trouble with the different “u” sounds in French words like rue ‘street’ and roue ‘wheel’.)?
• What sounds of a language can or cannot occur one after the other (for example, why can words begin in st– in English but not in Spanish)?

• How do poets or writers or song lyrics intuitively know how to match the rhythm of speech to the abstract rhythmic pattern of a poetic or musical meter?
3. Morphology
Morphology is the study of word structure. Morphologists examine such questions as:

• To what extent are ways of forming words “productive” or not (e.g. why do English speakers say arrival and amusement but not *arrivement and *amusal)?
• What determines when words change form (for example, why does English have to add –er to adjectives when making comparisons, but Hebrew does not add any equivalent)?
• How can humans program computers to recognize the “root” of a word separated from its “affixes” (e.g. how could a computer recognize walk, walks, walking, and walked as the “same” word)?
4. Syntax
Syntax is the study of how linguistic units larger than the word are constructed. Syntacticians address such questions as:

• How can the number of sentences that speakers can create be infinite in number even though the number of words in any language is finite?
• What makes a sentence like visiting relatives can be boring ambiguous?
• Why would English speakers judge a sentence like colorless green ideas sleep furiously to be “grammatical” even though it is nonsensical?
• How can languages express the same thoughts even though they construct their sentences in different ways (e.g. Why does English I saw them there mean the same thing as French je les y ai vus even though the order of elements in French is I them there have seen)?
• How can humans program a computer to analyze the structure of sentences?

Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. Semanticists answer such questions as:

• How do speakers know what words mean (e.g. How does one know where red stops and orange starts)?
• What is the basis of metaphors (e.g. Why is my car is a lemon a “good” metaphor but my car is a cabbage is not)?
• What makes sentences like I’m looking for a tall student or the student I am looking for must be tall have more than one meaning?
• In a sentence like I regret that he lied, how do we know that, in fact, he did lie?
• How many meanings can be found in a sentence like three students read three books and why do just those meanings exist?
Pragmatics
Like semantics, pragmatics is also concerned with meaning. However, it studies the speaker's meaning as used in context. It analyses how much is communicated than said, how utterances function in different situations, and how things are done throough words.

In addition to these sub-fields, there are a number of other sub-fields that cross-cut them:

Sociolinguistics
The study of how language is used in society, addressing such questions as what makes some dialects more “prestigious” than others, where slang comes from and why it arises, or what happens when two languages come together in “bilingual” communities.

Psycholinguistics
It is the study of how language is processed in the mind, addressing such questions as how we can hear a string of language noises and make sense of them, how children can learn to speak and understand the language of their environment as quickly and effortlessly as they do, or how people with pathological language problems differ from people who have “normal” language.

Neurolinguistics
It is the study of the actual encoding of language in the brain, addressing such questions as what parts of the brain different aspects of language are stored in, how language is actually stored, what goes on physically in the brain when language is processed, or how the brain compensates when certain areas are damaged.

Computational linguistics
Learning and understanding a language involves computing the properties of that language that are described in its phonology, syntax, and semantics. The challenge of describing this process connects linguistics with computational issues at a very fundamental level. How could syntactic structures be computed from spoken language, how are semantic relations recognized, and how could these computational skills be acquired?

Sources:

The study of language, by George Yule (2006) https://linguistics.ucla.edu/undergraduate/what-is-linguistics/

Lecture Seven: Phonology

Introduction
Linguistics was defined earlier in this course as the scientific study of language through the analysis of its linguistic levels. The branch of linguistics, which deals with the sound level, is phonetics and phonology. For phonetics is delivered as a separate course to first year students, the focus of this lecture is phonology (phonetics is only referred to when required for distinguishing it from phonology). Moreover, emphasis is put on key concepts and methods of analysis, with examples that better clarify phonology and its scope.

Defining Phonology
Among the about 7000 languages in the world, each has its own sound system. This makes languages sound differently to the human ear; one would distinguish or recognize a certain language just by listening to it. The sound system of Arabic is different to English, and this can be felt even by non-experts. This distinctive sound system is the endeavor of phonology.
Phonology is the study of the sound patterns of a given language. In other words, it aims at analyzing the rules that govern and organize the sound system. More specifically, Phonology concerns itself with (1) what sounds are in a language, (2) how they do and can combine into words, and (2) explains why certain phonetic features are important to identifying a word. Accordingly, the focus of phonology is the mental, abstract side of the sound system as it is wired within the human brain.
Phonology vs. Phonetics
Phonology and phonetics are often confused, for they both deal with the sounds of the language and are inter-related. However, they differ in many ways. While phonetics is concerned with the physical aspect of the sounds, i.e. their production, transmission and reception, phonology investigates their abstract and functional aspect. Consequently, phonetics is universal, but phonology is language-specific. Moreover, the study of phonology requires us to take meaning into consideration, while phonetics does not.

Phonemes
Phonemes are the basic unit of sound and the smallest unit of language (they are sensed in your mind rather than spoken or heard). Each language has its own set of phonemes.. For example, we know that English speakers distinguish between [s] and [z], and we use this difference to signal the difference between the words sip and zip. We will say that [s] and [z] are two different phones because they contrast with each other in English. You can test this out by taking any pair of sounds (as we took [s] and [z]) and creating a pair of words (like sip and zip) which are identical, except that where one has one sound, the other has the other sound, just as where sip has [s], zip has [z]. Pairs of words like this are called minimal pairs, and are used to demonstrate that pairs of sounds are used in a language to distinguish words

from each other. For instance, "pan and ban", "lock and lot", "cry and try" are minimal pairs. This technique is used by linguists to decide if a sound is a phoneme or not in a given language. Thus, Sound units that distinguish words from each other are called phonemes. Phonemes are usually enclosed in / / (e.g., /s/, /z/) to distinguish them from sounds ([s], [z]) and ordinary letters (< h >).

Allophones
Allophones are variant ways of pronouncing the “the same sound”. For instance, English speakers pronounce the [t] in toll differently from that in hat. The [t] of toll is breathier than the [t] of hat. The former is said to be aspirated, and the latter unaspirated. We represent the aspirated [t] as [t h ], with the diacritic [ h ] indicating aspiration. We represent the unaspirated
[t] as [t] with no diacritic. The important point here is that English speakers do not signal any difference in meaning with the difference between [t h ] and [t]. Substituting one of these sounds for the other would not affect the meaning of a word, but it would create an odd and perhaps non-native pronunciation of the word. Unlike phonemes, allophones do not generate a new meaning when replaced by each other.
Let’s now look at a different pair of English sounds. If we replace the [t] in hat, with [d], we get had, which is different in meaning from hat. Clearly, English speakers treat the difference between [d] and [t] differently from the way they treat the difference between [t h] and [t] and between longer and shorter versions of vowels. In the case of [t] and [d], the difference can signal a difference in meaning; in the other cases it cannot. Differences in sound that signal differences in meaning are said to be phonemic, distinctive, or contrastive. Differences in sound that do not signal meaning differences are allophonic, non-distinctive or non-contrastive. One objective of phonology is to identify which sound differences are contrastive and which are not. As we have seen, the contrastive sound units are called phonemes.
A good way to think about allophones is as a group of phonetically similar sounds that are treated as members of the same sound category. Because the members of a sound category are treated as “the same sound” in a language, they cannot be used for communicating differences in meaning. English speakers treat [t h ] and [t] as belonging to the same sound category, which is /t/, so they cannot be used to distinguish one word from another. Different phonemes are different categories of sounds and the differences among these categories can signal differences in meaning. English speakers treat [t] and [d] as belonging to different sound categories—/t/ and /d/, respectively—and so these can be used to differentiate one word from another. Sound categories are abstractions. We can only perceive them when one of their members is pronounced.
The sounds that make up the category are called the allophones of that phoneme. Thus, [t] and [t h] are allophones of the English phoneme /t/.

Complementary Distribution and Free Variation
Complementary distribution is the mutually exclusive relationship between two phonetically similar segments. It exists when one segment occurs in an environment where the other segment never occurs. Thus, in southern British English (RP), an unaspirated [p] appears after an initial [s], e.g. in [spin] (spin); an aspirated [ph] e.g. initially in [phin]; but there is no context in which both would be normal. Therefore, they are in complementary distribution, and in part, they are described as allophones of the same phoneme.
Think about a soccer team: Each player standing on the field has her own ‘environment’ where she waits for the kickoff. This environment is the territory where she launches an offensive strategy, and the territory that she defends when the opposite team is approaching her team’s goal. She may be the goalie, or the fullback, or right halfback. Her position or territory is defined relative to the center line and right or left halves of the field, or relative to her team’s goal. Any single player with any of these territories is not the team – the team is the whole collection of players with their territories. Think of the phoneme like the team, and the allophones like the players. Allophones also have their ‘territory’ or linguistic environments that they cover, and no allophones of a phoneme will have overlapping territories. These territories, or ‘environments’, are defined in terms of the relevant linguistic features of the sounds near the allophone. These ‘relevant linguistic features’ are features related to voicing, place and manner of the sounds, or handshape, location, and orientation of a signed segment. When one sound or signed segment enters the territory of another, you know they are on opposing teams, i.e., members of different phonemes. When you define the territory of an allophone, you are defining its distribution, the set of places within words in a language where the allophone appears.
Here is an example:

[spæt] [phæt] *[sphæt] *[pæt]

[spul] [phul] *[sphul] *[pul]

[ph] and [p] are in complementary distribution. [p], or ‘unaspirated p’, doesn’t occur word- initially, but ‘aspirated p’ does. An English speaker hears these sounds as the same sound; even if some speakers pronounce words with unaspriated [p] at the beginning, other speakers won’t hear those pronunciations as different words with different meanings.
Another case that can be found sometimes in relation to sounds' nature and occurrence within language is free variation. Free variation is the interchangeable relationship between two phones, in which the phones may substitute for one another in the same environment without causing a change in meaning. Free variation may occur between allophones or phonemes. It is found in accents and dialects of the same language. When phonemes are in free variation, speakers are sometimes strongly aware of the fact (especially if such variation is noticeable only across a dialectal or sociolectal divide), and will note, for example, that tomato is pronounced differently in British and American English (/təˈmɑːtoʊ/ and /təˈmeɪtoʊ/ respectively), or that either has two pronunciations that are distributed fairly randomly. However, only a very small proportion of English words show such variations. In the case of allophones, however, free variation is exceedingly common

and, along with differing intonation patterns, variation in allophony is the most important single feature in the characterization of regional accents.

Figure1. Algorithm for distinguishing sound Patterns

Phonemic Patterns May Vary Across Languages
The same phones may occur in two languages but pattern differently because the phonologies of the languages are different. For instance, while aspiration is not distinctive in English, it is distinctive in Thai:

So, as shown in these examples from Thai language, the phones p and ph are two different phonemes as they generate new meaning of words in minimal pairs.

Lakhasly

Summarize result (Using the clustering technique)

Original text

Summarize English and Arabic text online

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