ENG 3306

1. ENG 3306 Lecture 1

2. Linguistics = study of language What is a language?

3. Language versus Dialect • If two distinct speech forms are mutually unintelligible they are two distinct languages. • If two distinct speech forms are mutually intelligible, they are two dialects of the same language.

4. This sounds easy enough, but what about the following scenario: Three towns, 10 km apart: A B C O----------------------------------O-----------------------------------O People from town A can understand people from town B People from town B can understand people from town C BUT, people from town A cannot understand people from town C We call this a dialect continuum, and they are quite common around the world. One famous one is the Dutch/German dialect continuum. Someone from Amsterdam and someone from Munich cannot understand each other – but people from the smaller boarder towns on the Dutch/German border can understand one another. Another dialect continuum is Cree. Cree is spoken from Alberta to Quebec, but not all dialects are mutually intelligible. Neighbouring dialects tend to be mutually intelligible, but dialects that are geographically distanced tend not to be.

5. Is Chinese a language? Linguistically, Chinese is a subfamily of languages (it is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family) The most widely spoken Chinese language is Mandarin (northern China and Taiwan). Another familiar Chinese language is Cantonese (Hong Kong and Guangdong province). A 10-year-old child from Beijing and a 10-year-old child from Hong Kong will not understand a word the other is saying – thus, Mandarin and Cantonese are two different languages. However, Mandarin is the official language of China. Sometimes, Mandarin is simply referred to as “Chinese”. Because of the official status of Mandarin, all the other Chinese languages are sometimes referred to as “dialects” – but this is a different use of the word “dialect” than described above. In this course, we will use the terms we introduced above.

6. Political situations can have the opposite effect, too. Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible with their respective speakers. Under our definitions, these two speech forms are dialects of the same language (sometimes the term “Serbo-Croatian” used to be used). Some speakers of these two forms, however, consider Serbian and Croatian to be different languages for political reasons. Thus, the term ‘Serbo-Croatian’ would not be used. Furthermore, Bosnian (another related dialect) is also mutually intelligible. Also, speakers of Spanish and Portuguese can sometimes understand each other with relative ease – but not always. So, would we call these two different languages or two dialects of the same language? Complicating this is the fact that speakers of Portuguese are usually far more likely to be able to understand Spanish than the other way around. Here, intelligibility only runs one way. Thus, our definitions of “dialect” and “language” are useful rules of thumb, but dialect continua blur the distinction.

7. Sprachbund • A sprachbund is a geographically determined group of languages which share common features, but are not all genetically related. • Balkan Sprachbund – included Romanian (Romance), Bulgarian (Slavic), Greek (Hellenic), and Albanian (Albanian)

8. Sprachbund • Thai, Vietnamese, Sino-Tibetan • Northwest Coast Sprachbund (from California to Alaska) – includes Salish, Wakashan and Chimakuan languages

9. How does one form of the language become the standard? A COMMON MYTH: REALITY

10. The data that the theoretical linguist uses is usually elicited spoken language or recorded corpuses of spoken language. With this in mind, which of the following are acceptable English sentences? Who did you go to the movies with? I don’t got hardly any money left. John wants to carefully fix the car. Answer? – they all are! Remember, we are dealing with spoken language – all of these sentences are found in spoken English, so they are acceptable sentences. In a nutshell, if a native speaker of the language in question says the sentence is ok, then it’s ok.

11. The litmus test here is the native speaker’s intuitions. Compare the following: Who do you think Peter likes? Who do you think likes Peter? Who do you think that Peter likes? Who do you think that likes Peter? The last sentence is not one you’ll hear a native speaker of English say. We say that this sentence is ungrammatical. We mark it with an asterisk. 무엇을 민수가 먹지 않았니? 민수가 무엇을 먹지 않았니? 무엇을 아무도 먹지 않았니? *아무도 무엇을 먹지 않았니? (* on wh-question) OR 민수는 아버지가 손이 아프다고 생각한다. 민수는 아버지를 손이 아프다고 생각한다. *민수는 아버지를 손을 아프다고 생각한다. *민수는 아버지가 손을 아프다고 생각한다. *

12. This brings us to an important point. Parity of language. From a linguistic perspective, no language or dialect is “better” than another one. In other words, we cannot say one language or dialect is better able to express a concept or more suitable for a given topic.

13. Prescriptivism:The practice of dictating, by virtue of some authority, acceptable standards of language use. Linguists are interested in a descriptive approach – The way people actually use language tells us something about how the human mind works. Prescriptive approaches are what most of us are familiar with. Editors, for example, are interested in prescriptive approaches to the study of language. Prescriptivist attitudes are most often applied to written language, but are often applied to spoken language. Examples of prescriptive authorities (with varying degrees of qualifications) include the Academie Française, Oxford English Dictionary, Chicago Manual of Style, Ann Landers, your high-school English teacher and so forth.

14. In the case of English, prescriptive rules had another source – Latin In the mid 19th century, some writers such as Dryden and Swift sought to “fix” the English language (i.e., keep it from changing) by introducing rules from Latin into English. Latin was perceived as a “perfect” language. However, some rules of Latin are unsuited for English. Take the sentence above. Who did you go to the movies with? There is a prescriptive rule against stranding prepositions like this. The sentence should read With whom did you go to the movies? The reason for this rule is simple. Latin doesn’t strand prepositions, so English shouldn’t, either. However, preposition stranding (sentences such as (6)) have been used in the language for over 700 years. But…how about the following: A good writer should have a clear idea of who she is writing for. A good writer should have a clear idea of for whom she is writing.

15. Another famous example is the following: Someone forgot their umbrella on the bus. A prescriptivist approach holds that someone is singular and should have a singular descendent. The sentence, then, should read as follows: Someone forgot his umbrella on the bus. In fact, some people will severely admonish you for using generic or singular ‘they’. The truth of the matter is that generic ‘they’ (or ‘their’ as in the sentence above) has been around since the word ‘they’ was borrowed into English. (It may surprise you to find out that they was not originally an English word – it was borrowed from Scandanavian). Almost immediately after it was borrowed into English, it was used as in the sentence above – the way we still use it today. It can be found in the works of Shakespeare and Austen. In the 1850’s, however, a few scholars at the time decided that generic ‘they’ should not be used. The upshot is this – languages and dialects do not have any inherent (positive or negative) value, linguistically speaking. From a linguistic point of view – all languages and dialects are equal.

16. Descriptivism:The practice of describing, analyzing and understanding how language is used This includes language in all its forms, including its dialects (the form of a language used in a geographically determined area), sociolects (the form of a language used by a given socio-economic class) and even idiolects (the particular form of a language used by a specific person). This is the approach followed by most linguists. …and in Korean 옷이 예쁘십니다 os-i yeyppu-si-p-ni-ta cloth-NOM pretty-HON-FORMAL-IND-DECL ‘The clothes are nice.’ 시 – addressee honorific?

17. Studying Knowledge of Language: • Homer expected to surprise him. • I wonder who Homer expected to surprise him. • I wonder who Homer expected to surprise. • What does a native speaker know about these sentences? • In (1), Homer  him; Homer is doing the surprising • In (2), Homer may or may not = him; Homer is not doing the surprising • Both (1) and (2) contain an identical string of words: “Homer expected to surprise him.” • In (3), Homer is again doing the surprising. • Speakers have a tacit or unconscious knowledge of the grammar of their language. • This is substantially different from knowledge such as “Don’t end a sentence with a preposition”, etc.

18. The Black Box Problem: The scientist/linguist cannot directly observe what is going on in the brain (although MRI studies have made some head-way). Any mechanism that cannot be directly observed is often called a black box. Input  ???  Output We create models that connect the input to the output. We test these models against additional output (data) and revise accordingly.

19. Universal Grammar: • A speaker’s knowledge of language has four key properties: • It is tacit (unconsciously known) • It is complex (new data are still being uncovered) • It is untutored (children are not taught how to speak) • It suffers from a Poverty of Stimulus (next slide) • Chomsky conceived of a Universal Grammar(UG) to account for these properties. • All humans are born with the same UG • UG + Experience  Adult Grammar (AG) • Evidence for UG: • The acquisition process is remarkably uniform across languages. • There are significant shared features across diverse languages. • All children are equally pre-disposed to learning any language, regardless of race or background.

20. How does the child uncover the complexity of human language? Poverty of the Stimulus – The input the child receives is too impoverished to determine the rules of their language. Example: parasitic gaps Which files did you put away without reading __ ? (compare: Which files did you put away without reading them?) The first sentence contains a ‘parasitic gap’ – the precise details are unimportant. What is important is that this sentence is grammatical. Consider now the following sentences. *Which teacher punished you for hitting __ in the face? (compare: Which teacher punished you for hitting them in the face?) Somehow, we just know that certain constructions allow parasitic gaps and others don’t. We’ve never received instruction on this, nor are examples of parasitic gaps prevalent enough for us to figure them out.

21. Kids (don’t) say the darndest things… Jamie was climbing a tree one day. When he was near the top of the tree, he fell and bruised his arm. Later on that day, he was having a bath. His father walked in and asked, “What happened to your arm?” Jamie answered back, “I hurt it climbing a tree earlier.”

22. When did Jamie say he hurt his arm? When he was climbing the tree. When he was having a bath. When did Jamie say how he hurt his arm? When he was having a bath. *When he was climbing a tree. Children never offer this response How do we know that this is not a possible response?

23. The Task of Linguists: UG: Determine the nature of the language faculty we are born with What properties are universal and what properties are subject to cross-linguistic variation? Adult Grammar: Determine what we come to know about language as adults Data: Determine how we get from UG to adult grammar given the data we are exposed to Speech and Understanding: Determine how adult grammar is used in speaking and understanding