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Chapter 1
Prākṛta Bhāṣā
Man is a social being. He is mutually related with others, co-existingly associated with animal kingdom and moving and enjoying around natural surroundings with feelings and emotions. He requires a medium for communicating his intentions, emotions, thoughts and desires etc. for his ways in the world. Language is such a vehicle for expressing all such activities. These may be effected through all the perceptual senses like touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing ( signals, symbols, symptoms, etc.). These mediums are employed by the sentients like men and animals and insentients like natural objects (rivers, oceans, etc.) alike. However, when we talk about language in modern sense, it has comparatively a limited meaning. It refers to the medium for human species only. The ancient symbolism did not prove sufficient for the above purposes and the spoken language was the natural outcome. And hence, it refers to the organ of hearing and speech only. Currently, the language, in general, consists of in the pronunciation of sounds, words etc. to be meaningful. The word 'language' is now defined as an ordered structure of arbitrary sound symbols pronounced through human speech organs and through which speaking, hearing and later writing activities are performed in specific groups'. It is clear that without language, a man can not become a man. That is why, the science of linguistics has been developed in the west during the last two and half centuries. It studies the (i) language characteristics like (a) arbitrariness, (b) acquiremental nature, (c) creativity, (d) imitability, (e) transformability, (f) dual levelling, (g) non-finality, (h) speakability and audibility; (ii) its internal and external structures under five major heads like (a) syntax, (b) morphology, (c) wordology, (d) phonetics
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