Environmental Geology Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Environmental Geology - Assignment Example The Disaster yielded both to economic and life loss where fifty-seven people died besides obliteration of 250 homes and the region’s infrastructure. Additionally, the mountain also comprises of crater glacier that has an ice thickness raging amid 1 to 2 meters, thus making it young geologically. The mountain besides having glaciated valleys during eruption incidences, it comprises of three rivers namely Toutle, Kalama and Lewis where their purposes entail recreational and power generation (Samson 17). For illustration, lewis, which feeds three dams mainly for hydropower production, is helpful to the park itself and society. The park has its contribution regarding environmental degradation setbacks that have affected the area besides humanity and wildlife. The frequent eruption incidences witnessed on the mountain comprises production of obnoxious gases like Chlorine and HFCs that contribute to the destruction of ozone (GVP). However, this feature to numerous populaces may not be clear, but scientifically it is evident that volcano eruptions normally comprise of harmful gases that enhance global warming. This is due to the obliteration of the ozone layer that is liable for filtration of harmful solar rays to human. The eruptions besides destroying the surrounding forest cover, it also yields to wildlife destruction that adorns the mountain. The destruction inevitable because no known human efforts or any known remedy can salvage both the forest and wildlife. According to some concerns emanating from environmentalists, they stated that, the augmenting volcanic ash might yield to prolonged negative impacts like freezing, crop destruction or horrific hazards (GVP). This is an indication that, in the future these occurrences may render the region unfruitful because the economic factors that mark the place mighty become extinct. Its eruption yields to burning of numerous insects hence destroying ecosystem that

The Sound of an Utterance and Its Meaning Essay

The Sound of an Utterance and Its Meaning - Essay Example The theory of phonosemantics states that phonemes and meanings are inter-related, or that â€Å"phonemes are signs in some sense† (Gudwin & Queiroz 2007:177), which is a concept known as sound symbolism. Let’s first understand how mind interprets meaning of a word. Sign is something that refers to a property of an object, and when interpreted, leaves an effect on the interpreter’s mind. This effect is called meaning. If we talk about human language, words and phonemes (/st-/, /gl-/, /-ump/, /-at/) are the signs that leave an effect on humans’ brains, linking a specific meaning to the word. The study of this link between phonemes and meanings is called phonosemantics. It states that our minds process sounds quite unconsciously, like the invoking of emotions on the sound of music without the interpreter even understanding it. The hypothesis that the theory of phonosemantics holds is that, the relationship between phonemes and meanings must be arbitrary since every language has its own words for the same object or its properties. This arbitrariness is to be understood only in the sense that words acquire meanings randomly, and such words form connections with other similar-sounding or similar-meaning words with the passage of time. Once a word has acquired a meaning, both will stay interconnected forever for a specific language. 3. What is Sound Symbolism? Chan (1996:1) states that, â€Å"Sound symbolism is the study of the direct relationship between the sound of an utterance and its meaning. It is a special nature of human language, that the utterance of sound can be linked with some meaning. The sound of a child’s cry refers to his wanting attention. A loud scream refers to somebody who is in danger. Clearing the throat refers to one’s attempt to start communication. The name called to grab a person’s attention matches the acoustic restrictions of the environment in which it is being called, like we call a name unintentionally loudly if there is noise in surroundings. Sound symbolism is pervasive to human language, and plays a very important role in linguistics, â€Å"especially at the affective level† (Chan 1996:2). It explains a symbolic or metaphoric link between sounds and meanings because when we hear a sound, we interpret it and associate it with images and concepts, and respond to them emotionally. Phonosemantics goes one step further in claiming that even distinct sounds (like scream) have meanings, which are vague and metaphoric in nature. Sound symbolism involves two types of words: phonaesthetic words, and imitative words. Imitative words will be defined later. 3.1. Phonaesthetic words Phonaesthesia is the concept, originally presented by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (Fisher 2011:85), that describes the link between phonaesthemes or phonaesthetic words and specific meanings (Trask 2000:252). Trask gives the example of â€Å"slime, slope, slush, sludge, slip slide, slosh, sl urry and slug.† All of these words start with /sl-/ and give off an idea of wet and slippery. These are phonaesthemes because they have the element of wetness in them, like when we hear these words, a kind of watery feeling comes into our minds. Hence, phonaesthetic words usually have the same combination of alphabets or consonant clusters at the beginning or ending of the words. Smith (2002:3) has given many good examples in his paper, like â€Å"