meaning, not syntax, is the essence of language

What is the essence of language?
What are we doing when we speak? 
Is it "grammaring" as must be derived from the Chomskyan school?
or "gossiping", as suggested by many scholars who try to theorize background conditions that were either necessary for or much more than that, did in fact cause language originating? 
In order to answer the two questions at the article beginning, one should first of all listen to oneself and any other speaking person, just to find out the obvious, an obvious so many linguists and erudite people ignore. 
It is meaning  that whoever speaks wants to deliver.
Speech is intentional and voluntary. It has nothing to do with any kind of automation, biological necessities, or any other compulsions not directly connected to the performing of the actual act of speech. 
A person starts speaking in order to deliver whatever meaning one has in mind, and all means of expressions, including words, grammar, gossip, voice raising, and whichever speakable means and ideas will be utilized in order to make the meaning in mind well expressed. 
As I did in the first post, I add here a paragraph from my book "Sounds from the Garden of Eden" (shown below), that reveals the connection between speech and animal expressions, 
based on the centrality of meaning.

The following is a paragraph from chapter 2 page 184-185

One of the leitmotifs of this study is the comparison of
chimpanzee and human utterances. Its major point is the
profound difference between the vocal aspect of chimpanzee
utterance, and that of human speech. Scholars are struggling
to account for these differences, using sophisticated abstract
models.
Yet another aspect of the comparison has not been mentioned
in any model I have heard of, and is not sufficiently discussed:
the similarity of human and chimpanzee utterance, since
both are holistic. Any sound utterance, of either humans
or chimpanzees, is holistic. Every human word, just as any
expressive sound of an ape, is a holistic utterance. In other
words, neither human words nor a chimpanzees’ expression
can be divided into smaller units of meaning. The metaphoric
sense of the word is irrelevant here, since a metaphor is not
an inherent part of the meaning, but an additional meaning.
The word “they”, which can refer to any group of people, once
uttered under specific circumstances, has a single, indivisible
meaning. This is also the case of apish sound expressions.
Despite being rich in sounds, each refers to a single intention, the anticipatory of meaning.
Human words are parallel to apish utterance not by the
extremely different manner of sound generation, but by the
unity of intention in these two different types of utterances.
This similarity must lead to a major conclusion regarding the
evolution of speech. In order to start linking these two extremely
different types of utterances, and bridging the seemingly
unbridgeable difference, one must first accept that they are both
holistic and indivisible. Having established that speech must
have originated from guttural sounds, using the conclusions of
our examination so far, we can further link apish expressive
sounds and human ones by establishing that verbal utterance

invariably preceded the forming of phones.

Below is my book title, available on Amazon.


                                                         

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ON THE HISTORY OF A LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE FAMILIES

What is so mysteriously indecipherable about language evolution

Has Chomsky advanced linguistics?