"Call unto me, and I will answer you"

"Call unto me, and I will answer you, and will show you great and mighty things which you do not know" Jeremiah 33:3 - Call unto me and I will answer you and tell you great and mighty things you do not know.  The Lord asks us today, what you want me to do for you. He says that if we call (ask for something with passion and desperation) He will answer. There is hope. God is in control of everything and He tells us that if we call unto Him, He will respond. I will speak life to the situations I see around me, in my life or the lives of everyone I know or have contact in some way. He loves you and wants the best for you. Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be healthy as well as your soul prospers. God's will for our lives is His good, pleasing and perfect. So I take this word that God gave me today and it's mine. And it is for you too. To be a Christian and not pray is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. Prayer is truly the oxygen of spiritual life. Prayer energizes us in our spirit, soul & body. Our nation will not get back on its feet until we begin to pray and seek God’s face. When we pray, God is moved to work in our lives and dispatch angels to assist us in our endeavors for His Kingdom. Fervent, heartfelt prayer releases us from stress, tension, and anxiety and frees us up to boldly do God’s bidding. Prayer’s purpose is not to get God to agree with us but to bring us into agreement with His will for our lives. As we pray, our resources, opportunities are joined to His resources in Heaven. God has bound Himself by covenant to hear and answer our prayers: Jeremiah 33:3 – “Call unto Me and I will answer you.” Pray much, knowing your prayers are stored up around God’s throne until the day when He answers.

4 Possible Questions: Theme of the Poem

1.   How will you describe Miniver Cheevy based on the poem?  2.   What were his problems all about? If you were in the shoe of Miniver Cheevy, would you do the same? Why? 3.   How can you relate yourself with Miniver Cheevy? 4.   Would you also escape reality as what Miniver Cheevy did to his life?

Compare and Contrast

The two works have similar ideas, but are different from one another. On one hand, "Richard Cory" is about a man who has absolutely everything. All knew that he was a man of money, but he spoke with such a down to earth tone. That is why everyone really admired him and just though the highest of him. But one day, he killed himself. This goes to show that you really cannot judge a book by its cover. On the other hand, "Miniver Cheevy" is about a man who has pure jealousy towards those who are in power. He is basically jealous of the knights and those within the medieval realm. Both "Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy" reflect society. "Richard Cory" shows how people do not really take into consideration the dangers of money. They just saw Richard Cory as this rich and powerful man, and had no idea he was actually suffering. The work does not tell exactly what Richard Cory was going through, but it can be inferred that it had something to do with money. Things are not always as great as they seem, and sometimes you have to dig deep in order to find the truth. "Miniver Cheevy" reflects many people today. People in the past, present, and future are never satisfied with what they have. They are envious and jealous of those with more this or more that. I can absolutely say that Edwin Arlington Robinson does a good job at tying both "Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy" into one another.

DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY

Simply saying, inner turmoil is the state of mind we put ourselves in when we start to believe that things in our lives are just not working out the way we would like for them to. If I am suffering with an inner turmoil, definitely this will affect my state of mind in which I assumed that people leaves me the feeling of being discouraged, fearful, unworthy or, at worst, unable to keep on going towards my self.               Basically, life on the path of Spirit is not meant to be like this.  That is why I can, in fact, overcome this state of mind with a little time, patience and discipline on my part.  To do so, I must first get to the root cause, an immense feeling of unworthiness.  In my part, what is important however, is that we truly start to believe that we are in fact worthy of all that our hearts desire.                I do believe that I can handle things up with God. If I am in this difficult state, I will further strengthen my faith, I know that God is with us in every situation, and He is with us right where we are! What we need to discover is how to respond appropriately to our current circumstances. Jesus has offered us a solution to responding to our difficult situations! In Matthew 11:28 He calls us to “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.” God is just waiting to give us that peace.  To open up our life to Him. To allow Him to change and challenge us, and transform our inner reactions to life’s situations. I truly desire His peace and ask God to fill me with His peace and to show how I can change and surpass this problem.                  I also believe in the power of relationships! I should learn to acknowledge that being alone does not always mean being lonely.  That's right.  We can all be extremely content and happy on our own.  In fact, at times we need to be on our own for no other reason than our own sanity.  We are, after all, very much complete just as we are.  True, it is a wonderful thing to love another human being with total heart and soul, but in actuality it is we who make our own spiritual happiness.

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

First Language Acquisition

How did We
Learn to Speak?

Language Acquisition

Is the study of how human beings acquire a grammar.

The way we acquire the grammar of our first language.

First words that you have learned…?

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Language Acquisition

A set of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic categories which underlie their ability to speak and understand the language to which they are exposed.

(Example given:)

Language Acquisition

                Transformation

Child does not possess a grammar of a particular language

Mental State

Child does possess a grammar of a particular language

OVERVIEW

(1)A child acquiring English might form the plural of foot first as foots, then as feets, then as feetses, and finally as feet.

_{This illustrates the fact that language is acquired in stages.}

(2)A child acquiring English might form an interrogative such as Why can’t I go? As Why can’t I go?

Illustrates the fact that language is not acquired through simple imitation

(3) All normal children acquire a language, but not all children learn to read and write.

Do you agree?

Supports the hypothesis that human beings are genetically programmed to acquire a language.

(4)Many children gain a fairly sophisticated facility with language before they master tasks such as tying their shoes, telling time, or adding numbers.

Language acquisition is not thought to be a function of intelligence or general intellectual abilities.

STAGES

PRELINGUISTIC STAGES

LINGUISTIC STAGES

1. PRELINGUISTIC STAGES

3 STAGES

Crying sounds

Cooing sounds

Babbling sounds

Crying Sounds

By 2 months, types of crying may be identified: crying signifying rage, hunger, pain.

Serves as primitive communication link between parent and child.

Cooing Sounds

These utterances include gurgles, sighs, grunts and little wisps of sounds which may all be referred to as comfort sounds.

Infants earliest vocalizations are cries

2 to 4 months -  cooing and babbling.

Babbling

A universal phenomenon found in all human infants. It is characterized by chaining & linking of sounds together on one vocal play usually happens when the child is alone.

It is a way to self- imitation

How about deaf babies?

Since they cannot hear the sounds they produce, they probably lose interest and hence have much less true vocal play than the hearing child.

Human organism goes through as it matures

3 Stages – Crying, Cooing & Babbling

Real-life example

How do birds begin to fly…?

GENETICALLY ENCODED STAGE IN MATURATION

Speech sounds

Infants are able to perceive differences between pairs of stimuli:

[ba] and [pa] ; [ba] and [ga]

There are several methods in testing the perception of infants and 1 of those is----

PACIFIER

The child sucks on a pacifier which is connected by wire to a monitoring device.

The child hears a repeated stimulus for several minutes for [ba]- [ba]- [ba]

Follows [pa]- [pa] -[pa]

The innate ability of infants to perceive at least some auditory sounds as foundation.

2.  LINGUISTIC STAGES

In acquiring language, children go through more or less the same stages at more or less the same time.

Example: a child will typically acquire stops (/p,b,t,d,g,k/) before liquids (/l,r/)

True or False?

Every normal child will acquire ALL of the stops, completely and correctly, before any of the liquids.

FALSE. because it is a general pattern of acquiring language.

Which is correct?

John ate before he came home.

Before John came home, he ate.

(This general principle seems to apply to children acquiring any first language.)

Problems of investigators in dealing with immature informants.

1. Interpreting the structure underlying a child’s utterance.

                ex: “wear shirt no”

-is it a structured sentence or unstructured string of words?

-is wear shirt a verb-object construction or just a memorized phrase?

-is the placement of no at the end of the utterance the result of a rule or simply an after-thought?

2. Investigators cannot question a child like they can an adult speaker.

Remember: They are immature informants
(infants and children)

Implication:

In studying language acquisition, we should avoid over interpreting a child’s productions.

Conversation between Brenda & Scallon

Brenda: [ka](4 times)

Scollon: What? Oh, bicycle? Is that what you said?

Scollon: What?

Brenda: [na]

Brenda: Go. Go.

Scollon: No?

Scollon: (undecipherable)

Brenda: Not.

Brenda: [baIš]

Scollon: No. I got it wrong.

Acquisition of Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Syllable Structure

1. Vowels

Children typically acquire /a,i,u/ at an early stage.

/a/- universal (it occurs in all languges)

/i,u/- nearly universal (occurs vast majority of languges.)

Thus, /a,i,u/ will be acquired early, & other immediate vowels will come later.

2. Consonants

Children typically acquire /p,b,m,w/ at an early stage.

Place of articulation

Manner of articulation

Place of Articulation

From the front of the mouth to the back.

Labials are acquired before alveolars, palatals, and velars. (see the consonant table)

Manner of Articulation

From most consonant-like to least consonant-like.

Stops & Nasals before Liquids & Fricatives. (see the consonant table)

EXAMPLES

Room                    [wum]

Love                      [w^v]

Dæt                       [that]

How about /ma/ & /pa/?

/m,p,a/

Are all acquired very early.

Telebision – Television (/b/ & /v/)

b first before v

/b/ & /v/ : same characteristics

[+voice] ; [+labial]

Another example:

/bambi/               /mami/

/titεr/           /sIstər/

3. Syllable Structure

CV Syllables

Where C= Consonant ; V= Vowel

Let’s have an exercise

Spy

Ask

Spry

Asked

Splints

Clustering of Sounds: “Stoves”

[o] or [tho], [thov], [stov], and then [stovz]

3. Syllable Structure

Simplification

Reduplication

Blending

Simplification

Initial consonant clusters

Scramble - /skǽmbəl/

Drink        - /dIk/

Which word do we learn first? Tummy or stomach?

Tummy is the correct answer!

Again, the point is that a child’s acquisition of phonology is rule-governed and predictable.

Reduplication

Or syllable repitition

Mama, papa, peepee and so on.

CVCV

Blending

Combines features of two (2) adjacent segments into a single segment. (Turning CVC into CV)

EX: /gud/ - /gu/ 

     /snow/ - /sno/ - /no/

You passed the phonology stage!!

Acquisition of Morphology

Morphology

Study of word formation

Study of the rules governing the internal structure of words.

Grammatical bound morphemes

Gradually begin to appear at the age of 2-3 years.

Grammatical bound morphemes

It includes :

Inflectional morphemes

Grammatical morphemes

Inflectional Morphemes

Which is acquired fairly early?

1. {PRES PART}       -ing
2. {PAST}, {PLU}, {POSS} and {PRES}

1. {PRES PART}
                ex: Ping, Ding, Driving

2. {PAST}

                shows up variously as /t/ as in walked; /d/ as in hugged; /Əd/ as in added.

3 SIMPLE PRINCIPLES

If a verb ends in a voiceless segment, add the voiceless segment /t/.

walk       - walked

If the verb ends in a voiced segment, add the voiced segment /d/

Hug        - hugged

If the verb already ends in /t/ or /d/, so {PAST} shows up as  /Əd/ .

Hate      - hated

SUMMARY

Final Segment        Sound                              Example

[- voice]                                               /t/                          walked

[+ voice]                                              /d/                         hugged

/t,d/                                      /Əd/                      hated

Let’s have an exercise!

How about irregular past tense forms?

Go                          - goed

Went     - wented

Break    - Breaked

Until the child learns that these are the irregular forms of verb.

3. {PLU}

The morpheme {PLU} shows up as /s/ as in ducks; /z/ as in dogs; /Əz/ as in horses.

3 SIMPLE PRINCIPLES

If the noun ends in a voiceless segment, add the voiceless segment /s/.

Duck      - ducks

If the noun ends in a voiced segment, add the voiced segment /z/

Dog        - dogs

If the noun ends in /s,z,ž,Š,Č,Ĵ/, add /Əz/

Horse    - horses

SUMMARY

Final Segment        Sound                              Example

[- voice]                                               /s/                          ducks

[+ voice]                                              /z/                          dogs

/t,d/                                      /Əz/                      horses

Let’s have an exercise!

How about irregular plural forms of noun?

Feet

Feets

Feetses

Feet

Until the child learns that these are the irregular forms of noun.

4. {POSS} & 5. {PRES}

                                {PLU}     {POSS}  {PRES}

/s/                          cats                        Bart’s                    waits

/z/                          cads                       Bud’s                     wades

/Əz/      cases     Bess’s   winces                 

Order of                               Morpheme                         Domain

Acquisition         

                                1                              {PLU}                     N

                                2                              {POSS}                  NP

                                3                              {PRES}                   S

(Example given:)

Derivational Affixes

The more productive they are, the earlier they are acquired.

Ex: unhappy       à           inconsolable

More productive Derivational morphemes

-ly

Quick-                   quickly

Intelligent-          intelligently

Careful-                carefully

-er

Love-                     lover

Farm-                    farmer

Drive-                    driver

A less productive affix

-hood

Father-                 fatherhood

Mother-                               motherhood

(X) Wrong

Uncle-                   unclehood

Cousin-                 cousinhood

Conclusion:

A child’s acquisition of morphology is for the most part systematic and rule governed.

Let’s have Syntax!!!

You passed the morphology stage!!

Acquisition of SYNTAX

SYNTAX

Study of sentence formation.

STAGES

Length of Utterance and Word Order

Questions

Negatives

Length of Utterance and Word Order

STAGES:

One-word or holophrastic stage

Two-word stage

Multiword Stage

One-word or holophrastic stage

This stage lasts between 3 and 9 months

Its usually refers to some concrete object in the child’s environment

EX:

Shoe, milk, eye, ball, mommy, daddy

Two word Stage

Utterance  forms  like:

Subject-Verb

EX: Doggie run

Verb-modifier

EX: Push bike, sit there

Multiword Stage

Also called as telegraphic stage

Utterances of more than 2 words.

EX:

That Besas chair                (That’s Besas’ chair)

Besas sit on chair              (Besas is sitting on the chair)

It's in the multiword stage that word order starts to become fixed.

QUESTIONS

What are the 2 types of question?

YES-NO INTERROGATIVE             

WH INTERROGATIVE

( Let’s have an activity)

YES-NO INTERROGATIVE             

Ex: Has Besas seen J.V?

WH INTERROGATIVE

Ex: Who has Besas seen?

A child exposed to English first signals questions simply by intonation.

Intonation- is the modulation of the speaking voice or the tune of the melodic pattern of what you say.

Let’s have a dialogue.

Utterance: CHILD

Child asks this way:

Daddy going. “Daddy is going.”

Daddy going? “Is Daddy going?”

NEGATIVES

FIRST TO ACQUIRE

Not

No

Can’t

Don’t

won’t

didn’t

2^nd to acquire

Wasn't

Couldn't

Wouldn’t

Shouldn’t

Utterance: CHILD

1^st stage:

No milk, all gone milk, no eat, wear hat no

2^nd stage

Can’t , don’t,

Ex: it’s not hot, I don’t like that

Conclusion:

A child’s acquisition of syntax categories and rules proceeds through orderly, systematic and predictable stages.

Let's have SEMANTICS!!!

You passed the syntax stage!!

•       Acquisition
of
SEMANTICS

What is Semantics?

Semantics is the study of meaning (words or sentence) that is used by humans to express themselves through language.

What is the distinction between Lexical and Sentence semantics ?

 Lexical Semantics

                (meanings of individual words)

•        Two process that children go through in acquiring the meanings of individual words:

ü                  Overgeneralization

ü   Subsequent Narrowing

                                Example: 

                                                a. Cookie

                                                b. Dog

                                                 

                 

Children tend to acquire the so- called

“basic- level terms”.

•       Like house before terms such as building or cabin.

•        Bird (basic-level) before animal (too general) or robin (too specific).

                                    

Another principle is that children typically acquire the positive member of a pair of opposites before the negative member.

                 

Example:

•       When a 3-year-old child is presented with two sticks of different lengths, they give more correct responses to questions like which stick is longer? Than to which stick is shorter?               

•        If a friend says that he just saw a new movie, you might ask How long was it? than How short was it?

(In this examples, long is the positive term and short is the negative term.)

Sentence Semantics

(the interpretation of the entire sentences)

•       Active Sentences

                Example:

                                 John pushed Mary .

•       Passive Sentences

                Example:

                                John was pushed by Mary.

(Both interpreted as ‘John pushed Mary.’)

                                The child is responding to the order of the major sentence constituents (John pushed, and Mary) and ignoring the grammatical morphemes (was and by).The child seems to be interpreting the first NP (John) as the agent, the volitional actor, and the second NP (Mary) as the patient, the thing acted upon.

Bare Infinitives

                                - Is a subordinate clause containing an infinitive verb and no overt subject (thus, the infinitive is said to be “bare”).

                 

Example:

                                I told you where to sit

(It contains subordinate clause where to sit, w/c has no overt subject NP; thus, where to sit is a bare infinitive clause.)

Minimum Distance Principle (MDP)

                - the strategy of interpreting the subject of such bare infinitives.

•        It can be stated as follows:

                                - interpret the subject of a bare infinitive as the closest NP to the left.

                               

Children acquire in systematic stages involves the interpretation of sentences containing temporal connectives before and after.

For example:

                - He came home before he ate lunch

                - Before he ate lunch, he came home

                - He ate lunch after he came home

                - After he came home, he ate lunch

•        First Stage

                - They interpret all the sentences according to the order of mention principle: the event reported in the first clause is interpreted as happening before the event reported in the second clause.

•        Second Stage

                - Children interpret all sentences containing before correctly; however, they continue to interpret sentences containing after according to the order-of-mention strategy.

•        Third Stage

                - They interpret both before and after as ‘before’.

•        Fourth and Final Stage

–       The children interpreted all four sentence types correctly; that is, before as ‘before’ and after as ‘after’.

•       Stages

1. All sentences interpreted via order of mention (i.e., event in first clause happened first; event in second clause happened second).
2.  Before interpreted correctly; after interpreted via order of mention.
3.  Before and after interpreted as ‘before’.
4.  All sentences interpreted correctly.

---END--- J

Descriptive Pattern Organizer

The Beauty and The Beast

  

 The story of Beauty and the Beast is been around for centuries in written and oral form, and recently in film and video. I suppose I could say that theme is “love is blind”. But that phrase has also described people who are in love with despicable people and that love blinds them to the truth. Love, how basic privileges, noticing the small things in life, appreciate what you do have tomorrow it could be gone.

 

"Beauty and the Beast" is basically like don’t judge the book by its cover. The beast originally is ugly, but underneath, he really is a nice, caring, type of guy. Things aren’t always the way they seem; in other words, one should not be deceived by appearances for beauty lies within. One must rather try to look past the eye can see and look inside that person where his/her true personality is found. Other themes are the significance and power of love and how it changes human, family sacrifice, modesty, people change, and more and most important one should learn to be calm and control his temper. In every single detail there’s a theme and lesson to be learned. Love can conquer any boundaries, and its everlasting.

 

The love chemistry of a bookish young woman who falls in love with the Beast and finds the kind-hearted human inside him and the cold-hearted prince transformed into a Beast as a punishment for his selfishness, but later warms, with the help of  Belle, and ends up being transformed back into a handsome prince as a reward. This story gives us an implication that despite what befalls you in life you should never treat innocent person as though they are responsible for your state of misery and you should never become so bitter with life that you no longer wish to be a part of it because the one responsible for the state you’re in is staring back at you in the mirror yourself. Also you should not become so frustrated with life that you fail to recognize when someone has entered your life to help you change it! “Beauty and the Beast” is one of the most beloved of all the fairy tales just because it contrasts goodness with badness in a way that is appealing to the imagination. It is also a story that depicts with the special force the mystery of virtue itself. Virtue is the “magic” of the moral life for it often appears in the most unexpected persons and places and with surprising results. Beauty is able to “see” the virtues in Beast that lie hidden beneath his monstrous appearance. Like all the great fairy tales, “Beauty and the Beast” invites us to draw analogies between its imaginary world and the world which we live. It supplies the imagination with information that the self also uses to distinguish what is true from what is not.

 

"Beauty and the Beast” embraces one last important moral truth: a person’s decisions in life will define what kind of she becomes. In the sense, our destinies are not fated: we are the ones providing our own decisions and destinies in life.