Discussion Post #3

In ASL, two levels of the four-level langauge model are observable (ie. phonetics, phonology, grammar, and semantics) which are grammar and semantics. Though, I think phonology may be present in the language as well except, instead of particular sounds/sequences of sounds, "words" in the language are composed of specific hand shapes, movements, and even non-manual signals (ie. eyebrow movements, eye movements, head movements, etc.) In my learning, thus far, I've combined and applied disciplinary perspectives from applied linguistics and sociolinguistics to learn sign, but a greater emphasis has been placed on sociolingusitic application. Like any language, ASL borrows from other langauges as well and is heavily influenced by the English language. So, relying on sociolinguistics allows me to learn where each sign comes from in relation to certain social factors which enables me to better use signs in the correct context and to remeber them more easily as well. This has especially been…

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Discussion Post 3

The diagram of Aitchison’s linguistics starts from pragmatics, which means using language contextually. This can also look like social rules or phrases that shape a language’s meaning and culture, beyond just the words themselves. For Hebrew, I think of words like “Yalla,” which means something like “come on” or “let’s go,” or “Sababa,” which means “that’s good.” Right now, I am not at the level of using metaphors in Hebrew, but I have definitely heard them before. It is interesting that different languages have different slang words and phrases that create different cultural meanings for them.Next on the diagram is semantics, which is how meaning is created. There is so much that goes into semantics, like how words and phrases convey meaning, as well as relationships between words and how different words can mean similar things. The other day, my friends and I were talking about how the word serve has so many fun meanings. There is serving a tennis ball, serving food, serving your…

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Discussion Post #3

While studying the Korean constants, I noticed that it has a constant phonology because the “j” and the “ch” sound similar. As well as the vowels “yeo” and “eo” sound the same. Different disciplines can be useful to see a holistic understanding because they can interconnect with different perspectives to learn a language with all available perspectives. In Korean, in psychology, they perceived the Subject, then the Object, and lastly the Verb. For computational Phonology the sounds that Koreans hear know what each mean while for me, I still have trouble differentiating the sounds. I prefer the disciplinary approach of stylistics literature for korean because it is easy for me to read the words out loud while practicing the pronunciation, and when I practice a simple sentences I have an image of the words written. If I were able to read fluently, it would be great to view the perspective of authors because they can influence the population, so understanding the source may have a better…

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Discussion 3 Spring 2026

Chinese primarily follows the same subject-verb-object structure as English, but I am still learning the different ways in which words can be arranged. For example, in some cases, I can signify having completed an action by adding the word “le” after the verb (and sometimes the rest of the sentence), but I don’t know if this applies to all cases of the past tense. One of the other concepts I am coming to understand is the way characters are combined to create new words with complex senses. The words for “stairs” come from the characters for “building” and “ladder”, and a part of the character for ladder means “wood”, as it was used in early building structures. Tracking ideas like this might relate broadly to the “language”, “anthropology”, and “sociology” areas of Aitchison’s linguistics. As a beginner, I will probably focus mostly on applied linguistics, but I am also interested in literature, philosophy, and psychology, so I hope to consider and learn more about how Mandarin has…

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