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This is Westminster Abbey. It is one of the oldest buildings in London. It is not only a church but also the resting place of famous statesmen, scientists, poets and musicians. There are monuments here to William Shakespeare, Walter Scott and many others. ...
On the left you see the Houses of Parliament with the clock tower Big Ben. ...
Oh, we are approaching Trafalgar Square. Look, Tower Bridge is parting in the middle.
And the two halves are moving upwards. A big steamer is passing underneath. It won't
take longer than a minute and a half to restart the traffic. ...
Now we enter Fleet Street with its newspaper and printing offices. ...
TS 4a
All languages have certain things in common. These include (1) a sound-pattern, (2) words, and (3) grammatical structure.
A sound-pattern is a group of sounds that the human speech organs can pronounce. Most languages have from 20 to 60 of these sounds.
Words are sounds or sound-patterns that have a meaning. Words may stand for objects, actions or ideas.
Grammatical structure is the way in which elements of language are put together in forming larger units such as sentences. Grammatical structure is divided by linguists into syntax and morphology.
Syntax studies relations among elements of a sentence, including the order of words. The English sentence / see Mary illustrates a common word order in English. The word order / Mary see is not correct in English.
Morphology studies the forms of words. In the sentence The teacher asked a question, the verb asked has the ending -ed that signals past tense. The word teacher is made up of the verb teach and the element -er means that a teacher is one who teaches. The roles of syntax and morphology are different in different languages. All languages have word order of some sort. In some languages, however, the word order is less strict than in others. Some languages, such as Chinese, use syntax only. Modern English uses a combination of syntax and morphology.
TS 4b
Development of Language
A language does not remain the same over long periods of time. Grammar, vocabulary and sound-patterns all change.
No one knows how language began. Most scholars believe that language developed very slowly from the sounds that were made by pre-human creatures. According to this view, a simple system of communication with time was made more complex. But no one knows when or how this process took place. The first real sign of language is writing. But scholars believe that first words were written thousands of years after the appearance of language. One of the earliest known written texts are Egyptian hieroglyphics that date from about 3000 ВС.
No one knows all the reasons why languages change, but they continue to do so as long as people speak them. Some changes have been explained. For example, words are added to a vocabulary to denote new ideas or objects. Words are brought from one language to another by speakers of different languages.
Most language changes happen for unknown reasons. Languages do not become better or worse, only different. The change is very slow. A standard form of a language is used in educational systems and such communication systems as radio and television. However, language will probably never stop changing. Only when a language loses all its speakers it stops changing completely. A language that is no longer spoken is called a dead language.
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