1.

1 Africa

In the 1960s, a group of linguists from nations in post-

colonial Africa and academics from around the world met to

discuss the impact of social change and national integration

on language use and language development. Ferguson (2006:2)

acknowledges the work of Fishman (1968:7) who described

the challenges of the language policy issue in these states as

a tension between nationalism - the cultivation of national

1dentity- and nationism - the development of "operational

efficiency in administration and economic management for

the maintenance of political stability". The proceedings of

this Conference were published in the Fishman, Ferguson

& Das Gupta (1968) volume entitled Language Problems

of Developing Nations". The assumptions behind this title

and their implications are worthy of critical analysis. In this

context, it could be said that language planning was organized

around a European notion of the nation state in which the

citizens are "unified around a common language" (Ferguson

2006:4). This led to multilingualism being perceived as

inefficient and having the potential to promote disunity in

the early years of independence when social cohesion and

economic development were core national goals. In these

models, planning is assumed to be necessary and desirable,

and language planning tends to become a centralised process

that is done by those with technical expertise and authority.

However, as research on the cognitive and affective

benefits of multilingualism has developed and post-colonial

confidence has grown while still concerned about the need

to link with new globalization processes and opportunities

- academics have increasingly been calling for the role of

international/colonial languages such as English, Portuguese

and French to have a more restricted role and an increased

role to be accorded to African languages. However, this does

not always mean that learners are receiving instruction in

hqual Education: Guide for reaunu

their mother tongue even though the national languages might

still be unknown by learners from rural areas or smaller, non-

dominant language communities.

1 THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE

Language is a defining feature that distinguishes human beings

among other species. Although other animal species have developeu

their own communication systems, they pale in comparison to

human language in terms of complexity, creativity, discreteness ol

speech and gestural units, and adaptability. Language plays a vitatnd

in the human existence as a primary medium for communicauo

the

the

lays a vital role

interaction and is an integral part in the development of cultures and

sOcieties. Language, a distinctly human trait, is emb

being's physiology, cognition and thought processes.

bedded into huma

The possession of language is what makes human beings unique.

However, it has become a familiar aspect of daily life that one can

easily take it for granted. This makes the study of language a necessary

enterprise. Linguistics, the scientific study of language, deals with

the description of different but interrelated phenomena involved with

involved with

language: its structure and use.

It is never an easy task to describe, more so to define such an

immensely complex concept as language. Linguists, who mainly stuuy

this highly sophisticated phenomenon in the existence of humanity,

differ in their approaches and understandings of this concept ana o

offer different and incompatible definitions. They view language

cept and ofte

sa

social fact (Saussure, 1969), a mental entity (Pinker, 1995), a set of

structures (Chomsky, 1957), a system of systems (Meillet, 1903 in

Bauer, 2007), or a tool for communication (Buhler, 1934).

Cognitive scientists, who are greatly influenced by Noam

Chomsky, an American linguist and political commentator, primarily

view language as a *psychological faculty," a "mental organ,

a "distinct piece of the biological makeup of the brain," and a

computational module." Chomsky argued for a Universal Grammar,

an innate ability of the human brain to acquire language and proposed

that there exist a *linguistic acquisition device" which supplies the child

with the basic principles of grammar.

Language is also characterized as a tool for human communication:

grammatical structures of a language reflect constraints on use and

needs of the users. In contrast with the formalist approaches proposed

by Chomsky and his followers, the functionalist theories of grammar

views language as a "product of more cognitive abilities that are also

used in non-linguistic activities" and not just as product of a specialized

mental device (Bybee, 1998).

Languages of the world share some design features (see Table 1)

general organizational mechanisms that distinguish human language

from other forms of communication. These features may be shared by

some animal communication systems.

Language uses a small number of sounds (less than 50 in most

languages) that are combined to produce a large, but finite,

number of words, which can be combined in an infinite number of

sentences.

Language can produce novel sentences that have never been

uttered before.

| There is no necessary connection between sound and meaning

the meaning dog and the English word dog are connected

arbitrarily as proven by the existence of the word chien in French,

which roughly expresses the same meaning

An individual can both be a speaker and a hearer.

The differences between language units are of an all-or-nothing

kind: a sound cannot be heard as something in between a b or p

SOund.

Speaking requires only a limited part of the speaker's behavior/

attention and is independent of its context.

Not all aspects of language are innate; some are taught after birth

and differ according to the culfture the child is reared in

1.1 Languages of the World and their Classification

Ethnologue, 16th edition listed 7, 102 living languages spoken

by around 7 billion people in the world (Ethnologue, 2015). These

languages are grouped into larger language families according to

en

genetic afiliation. There are 141 different language families and six of

these stand out as the major language families, comprising the 5% of

the world languages (Ethnologue, 2015). Table 2 below shows the six

major language families of the world.