518017 - Task 1 – Jhoan Alexander Gomez Imbachi

Task 1-Introduction to main terms
Tutor: Jose Alexander Arciniegas Torres
Jhoan Alexander Gómez Imbachi
Código: 1007562834
Grupo: 518017_103
Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia UNAD
Escuela de Ciencias de la Educación
Licenciatura en Lenguas modernas
Introduction to Linguistics
Pitalito-Huila
(31/08/2021)

Activity
Step 1: Checking - Go to the Learning Environment and check the Course Contents and
Bibliographic References for Unit 1. Watch the video [Big Think]. (2012, October 6).
Steven Pinker: Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain [Video File]. Activate
Subtitles/closed captions to make it easier for you to take notes.

Step 2: Answers - According to the video:
• What is language?
• Language is one of the fundamental topics, in the human sciences, it´s the trait that
most conspicuously distinguishes humans from other species, it´s essential to
human cooperation; we accomplish amazing things, by sharing our knowledge or
coordinating our actions by means of words.
• What concept is developed with the famous Noam Chomsky’s phrase
“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”?
• Although the sentence is well written grammatically, it is very close to making no
sense, but looking at it on the other hand for an English speaker can recognize that
the sentence conforms to the syntax patterns in English and is found as a wellformed
sentence.
• Example: blue and red mountains travel the world. Many words, forming a
sentence that does not make sense since the mountains do not have characteristics
such as being blue or red and they do not travel the world because they will always
be in the same place.
• What is the basic explanation for the fact that a person speaks a foreign
language with a specific accent?
• When a person is acquiring knowledge of another foreign language, he transfers the
phonology rules of his first language and applies them to his second foreign
language, and for this you have a specific word called as well as "accent".

Step 3:
Questions:
1. In our own language, we detect the word boundaries simply?
Because in our mental lexicon, we have stretches of sound that correspond to
One word that tell us where it ends.
2. The syntax is referred to in the language as?
The rules that allow us to put words into phrases and sentences.
3. Why morphology is important in language?
Because, morphology shows the rules that allow us to put together pieces of
words, as prefixes and suffixes in complex words.
Step 4. Screenshot of participation in forum.