Language makes humans unique - no other species is comparable in the complexity of their languages

Transcription

1 LING 1001 Page 1 Chapter 1 File Introducing the study of language Language makes humans unique - no other species is comparable in the complexity of their languages All humans are capable of language, whether hearing or deaf Emerges very early in the development of children Indispensable for social interaction, as it reflects our self-identity - we speak differently depending on where we come from, whom we talk to, where the conversation is carried out, etc. All languages are variable, and reflect social and cultural aspects of a society Most of what we say and hear has never been uttered before Any group of speech sounds could have any meaning Language is systematic, and thus can be studied scientifically It is systematic on many levels We can express an infinite number of ideas in an infinite number of ways There is variation at every level of structure There are many universal properties of language - some are shared by all, and some are used by none Many properties of language are arbitrary, and cannot be predicted by general principle We aren't aware of the principles that govern our speech All languages change over time File What you know when you know a language Linguistic competence: Unseen potential to speak a language Linguistic performance: Observable realization of that potential Performance errors: Simple mistakes in the performance of language, that do not reflect a poor linguistic competence - disregarded when studying linguistic competence, because there is no pattern behind them Communication chain: Composed of an information source and transmitter, which sends a signal to communicate a certain message, to a receiver and destination, who then interprets the message Noise: Interference in the communication chain, may affect the success of the communication Phonetics: Sounds involved in speech, what is/isn't speech, what sounds are used in your language Phonology: Language-specific knowledge about the distribution of sounds (whether pt at the start of a word can occur in your language, etc.), also allows you to recognize sounds spoken by different speakers Morphology: Word formation, allowing us to create and understand combinations of parts (such as ungiraffelike)

2 LING 1001 Page 2 Syntax: How words combine to form phrases and sentences, involved in the ability to construct and use sentences you've never heard before Semantics: Interpreting meanings based on context, how words combine to mean different things (green duck), includes a general meaning behind the words that you know (for example, a sofa cannot duck, and a sofa is the same as a couch) Pragmatics: Using context to determine the meaning of an utterance (not just one word) and when is the right time to say things Language exists only in the minds of its speakers, and so your linguistic competence is the language itself existing in your mind Lexicon: All the words that you know, what they mean, how they are pronounced, how they are used Mental grammar: The elements and rules involved in your language (phonetics through to pragmatics) - helps you to produce well-formed utterances and interpret those of others All humans can acquire the language that they are exposed to as children, and will do so naturally without being taught Language variation: The differences between people's mental grammars based on dialect and past experience - no two people have exactly the same mental grammar Descriptive grammars: Rules someone has deduced based on observing speakers' linguistic performances, attempting to deduce the nature of the linguistic competence behind their language File What you don't (necessarily) know when you know a language Writing is a representation of language, but because it does not exist everywhere, must be taught, uses extra parts of the brain, and can be edited - it is secondary to language itself as spoken/signed Writing is a later historical development than spoken language, and there is an extra step between conceptualizing the message and the reception of the idea No naturally occurring society uses only a written language with no spoken form Writing is associated with education, and so the form of speech used is perceived as the "standard" language Prescriptive grammar: Rules to tell people what the correct/proper way to use a language is, based on the beliefs of a single user of a language - tries to enforce a norm that does not exist in natural human language Your mental grammar cannot be incorrect, because you are a speaker of the language and know perfectly well how to speak it, regardless of what a grammarian thinks - there is no "good" or "bad" way to use a language Descriptive rules account for different varieties of language, while prescriptive rules do not accept other forms In the 17th and 18th centuries, people prescribed rules to make English more like Latin because they felt it was somehow "purer" than the base English spoken by the general populace Usage, not logic, must be the basis of descriptive grammars - if people use double negatives for emphasis, then you can't just say they cancel each other because it makes logical sense These rules survive because there's a social status attached to them - speaking "properly" shows that you are educated

3 LING 1001 Page 3 Prescriptive rules are used as an aid in social identity, to allow speakers of a nonstandard dialect to learn the rules of the standard File Design features of languages Design features: The characteristics that apply to all human languages, some of which do not apply to non-human languages - these allow the identification of languages when they are discovered, as only communication systems that display all of the features can be considered a language of its own Mode of communication: A system for transferring the message Modality: Different modes of transfer for language, such as spoken and signed - how they are produced, and how they are perceived Semanticity: Words have a meaning or function, and always have the same meanings - this also leads us to assume that even words we have never heard before have a meaning, rather than classifying them as useless noise Pragmatic function: The communication system serves a useful purpose (survival, social bonds, etc.) - even gossip and habitual greetings have a purpose Interchangeability: All users of the language can produce and receive messages Cultural transmission: Aspects of language that we acquire by communicative interaction with other uses of the language - even though our ability to learn a language is innate, we must learn the specific signals of our language through interaction with other speakers Arbitrariness: The form and meaning of a word are not necessarily connected - for example, the pit of a peach can also be a seed or a stone, and so the relationship between a group of sounds and its meaning is merely an arbitrary convention Form: The way a word is communicated (the sounds or signs it comprises) Meaning: What the form represents Linguistic sign: The combination of a form and a meaning (the sound of pit, plus the meaning "the inner core of a peach" equals the word 'pit') Iconic: A non-arbitrary connections of form and meaning Evidence for arbitrariness - There are many possible forms to express a single meaning, there is nothing intrinsic in the combination of sounds to denote its meaning, words with the same meaning have different forms in different languages, similar forms express different meanings in other languages Onomatopoeia - Words that imitate natural sounds or have meanings associated in such a way with nature, yet they are not the same across languages, and so many of them are simply conventions used by different languages and cultures Sound symbolism: Sounds that evoke a particular meaning ([i] meaning small things across different languages), associated with the meaning of the word the sound occurs in Discreteness: Discrete parts in a language that can be combined and reformed - every language has a limited number of sounds in its vocabulary, from 10 to 100, that are combined to mean many things Duality of patterning: The fact that we can create a large number of meaningful elements from a few meaningless sounds Displacement: A design feature unique to human language, the way our languages can communicate

4 LING 1001 Page 4 things that are not physically present Productivity: Also limited to human language, it is the capacity for novel messages to be built from discrete units - we can create infinite meanings with what we have to work with, rather than being limited in the ways we can combine the sounds in our language Every rule in linguistic structure allows greater productivity, telling us which forms are allowed, and how they can be used Natural languages: Languages that have evolved naturally though a speech community, these contain all of the design features, because they have developed over generations by their native speakers Constructed languages: Invented by a human, and so generally do not imitate all of the design features of a natural language - but they have the potential to become a natural language if they have native speakers and a speech community File Language modality Auditory-vocal (aural-oral): Spoken languages Visual-gestural: Signed languages, may also be acquired in childhood as a child's native language Code: An artificially constructed system for representing a natural language, rather than a fully formed and unique language on its own - such as Signed Exact English II, which could not have native speakers as they must learn English first Signed languages, such as American Sign Language, are structurally distinct from each and from the spoken languages they may have been based on, and can have native speakers - there is no requirement of another language to give meaning to the signs Sign languages are governed by the same unique phonological, morphological, and syntactic rules as spoken languages Signed languages aren't pantomime - signs don't always represent the same thing in different languages, as pantomime would be universal, and they can represent abstract things which pantomime can't Signs in signed language are often just as arbitrary as words in spoken languages, and are merely arbitrary conventions of the users of the language to convey a specific meaning - they may be iconic when they are introduced, but they change over time and can be modified for casual conversation There are multiple signed languages, not just one universal "sign language" - speakers of British Sign Language and American Sign Language could not understand each other without knowing the other signed language as well There have been places where such a large percentage of a community's population is deaf that all individuals are capable of using a signed language to communicate (such as the Al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in Israel, where the ability to sign fluently is considered a status symbol among hearing individuals) Both auditory-vocal and visual-gestural modalities are viable options for human language, and the aspects they share allow us to study universal properties of language and find out which are modality specific Textbook exercises p.30: 3. Why do linguists tend to ignore speech performance errors in their study of linguistic competence? Linguists tend to ignore speech performance errors because they're abnormalities, rather than consistent patterns, and don't represent anything about linguistic competence.

5 LING 1001 Page 5 7. What are five descriptive rules of your native language? p. 31: a. The "p" in Ptolemy is essentially silent. b. Past tense verbs are often the same as the present tense, but with a -d at the end. c. Double negatives are common in casual conversation. d. Passive forms are often used for formal situations. e. Speak and talk are usually used interchangeably. 12. For each of the following statements: i) identify which ones are prescriptive rules and which are descriptive, and ii) give an example of how the rule could be written the other way. a. It's me is ungrammatical; it's I is the correct way this idea. i) This rule is prescriptive. ii) Most speakers of English prefer the phrase it's I over it's me. b. People who say ain't may suffer some negative social consequences, because many speakers of English associate ain't with a lack of education. i) This rule is descriptive. ii) Never say ain't, to show that you've been properly educated. c. In casual styles of speaking, English speakers frequently end sentences with prepositions; ending sentences with prepositions is avoided in formal styles. i) This rule is descriptive. ii) Don't end a sentence with a preposition. d. Between you and me is correct; between you and I is ungrammatical. i) This rule is prescriptive. ii) Both between you and me and between you and I are used by native English speakers. e.some speakers of English accept the sentence My mother loved. i) This rule is descriptive. ii) My mother loved is grammatically incorrect. p. 32: 19. You are given the following information: the word for * is pronounced as [xua] (written as?) in Mandarin Chinese. Can you fill out the formula below with the two elements "[xua]" and "*"? [xua] + * = the word? 23. In Chinese, expressions for moving from one city to another by way of yet another city must take the form 'from X pass-through Y to Z' and cannot be expressed as 'from X to Z pass-through Y'; this is illustrated in the examples below (the * indicates that a sentence is unacceptable). a. Ta cong Sanfanshi jingguo Zhijiage dao Niuyue He from San Francisco pass-through Chicago to New York 'He went from San Francisco through Chicago to New York' b. *ta cong Sanfanshi dao Niuyue jingguo Zhijiage He from San Francisco to New York pass-through Chicago 'He went from San Francisco to New York through Chicago' How would you characterize the form-meaning relationship exhibited by these Chinese expressions? The form of the sentence reflects the trip as it was completed, and so the meaning of the sentence is meant to illustrate the trip itself - from San Francisco, through Chicago to New York. The relationship, then, is an iconic one.

6 LING 1001 Page 6 p. 34: 28. Over the years, many people have (mistakenly) associated signed languages with pantomime. Give three arguments that this association is unwarranted. a) Signed languages can communicate abstract concepts, which would be impossible with pantomime. b) Signs are modified over time without a change in meaning, and if they were meant to be pantomime they would lose their meaning completely. c) The same sign can mean something different in different signed languages, exactly the same as sounds can signify different meanings in different spoken languages.