CHAPTER ONE

1.0     INTRODUCTION

1.1     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Language in any human society is an important human heritage. The significance of language in human life cannot be over-emphasized. It is indeed central not only to our social interactions and relationships, but also in distinguishing us and enabling others to ascertain the position in the society. This would explain why people with speech or hearing disabilities find it difficult to integrate and participate fully in their communities. What this means is that every language community has developed unique modes of using its language. At the same time, each language has been moulded in a special way to serve the needs of the community that speaks it. In this way, every language is a unique system and therefore, a resource for humankind. It is because of the many unique systems in each language that we talk of linguistic diversity. This linguistic diversity, like bio-diversity, is an important feature of our universe. The many languages spoken by the various world populations signify the communication problems, which human societies are likely to face in their day to day interactions. Generally, all languages are unique in some senses because languages, the world over, are not only significant to the personal and social well-being of their speakers, but they are also valuable as a resource and constitute an invaluable heritage for humanity. This is because each human language has a unique linguistic inventory and rules, reflects its own cultural experience, expresses its own world view and manifests its own artistic peculiarities. Thus, taken together, all the many world languages have an enormous wealth of linguistic, cultural, world view and artistic phenomena to offer mankind. The complexity of human languages, has many implications for the scholastic understanding of a language that is foreign to us.