Chapter 1: What is Language? Prof. Ai-li Hsin

1. Chapter 1: What is Language? Prof. Ai-li Hsin

2. What Is Language? • We live in a world of language. • The possession of language, perhaps more than other attribute, distinguishes humans from other animals. • Language is the source of human life and power.

3. Linguistic Knowledge • Knowledge of the sound system • Knowledge of words • The creativity of linguistic knowledge • Knowledge of sentences and nonsentences

4. When you know a language, you can speak and be understood by others who know that language. • Deaf persons produce and understand sign languages just as hearing persons produce and understand spoken language.

5. Knowledge of the Sound System • Unconscious knowledge is revealed by the way speakers of language pronounce words from another language. • Knowing the sound system of a language includes more than knowing the inventory of sounds.

6. Knowledge of Words • Knowing a language is also to know that certain sound sequences signify certain concepts or meaning. • The relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they represent in the languages of the world is an arbitrary one. • The arbitrary relationship between form and meaning of a word is used in sign languages used by deaf people. • Many signs which were originally like miming become conventional.

7. Sound symbolism in language Words whose pronunciation suggests the meaning. e.g. onomatopoetic words buzz、murmur、cock-a-doodle-doo • Sometimes particular sound sequences seem to relate to a particular concept. e.g. in English: gl →glare 、 glance 、 glimmer 、 glint • No one speaks in isolated words.

8. The Creativity of Linguistic Knowledge • Knowledge of a language enables you to combine words to form phrases, and phrases to form sentences. • Knowing a language means being able to produce new sentences never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before.

9. We are creative in our use of language means that language use is not limited to stimulus-response behavior. ex: a scream/ a grunt is not part of language • However some involuntary cries can befound in the language. ex: ouch, er, uh, you know

10. Knowing a language includes knowing what sentences are appropriate in various situations. ex:A: How are you? B: The weather is fine. • Our creative ability not only is reflected in what we say but also includes our understanding of new or novel sentences.

11. There is no limit to the length of any sentence and therefore no limit to the number of sentences. ex:This is the house. This is the house that Jack built. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

12. How long is the longest sentence? ex: The old man came. The old, old, old, old, old, man came. • All human languages permit their speakers to form indefinitely long sentences; creativity is an universal property of human language.

13. Knowledge of sentences and nonsentences • Sentence: a group of words that usually contains a subject and a verb, expresses a complete idea or a question. • Our brains couldn’t store an infinite set of sentence. • When you learn a language you must learn something finite. ~ Your vocabulary is finite and that can be stored.

14. Does putting one word after another in any order always form sentences? (1) • John is difficult to love. • It is difficult to love john. • John is anxious to go. • It is anxious to go John. You can see that words are not enough by examining the above strings of words.

15. (2) a. Drink your beer and go home! * b. What are drinking and go home? c. Linus lost his security blanket. * d. Lost Linus security blanket his. • Every string of words does not constitute a well-formed sentence. • Linguistic knowledge includes rules for forming sentences and making the judgments, such as the examples in (1) and (2) • These rules must be finite in length and in number so that they can be stored in our finite brains. • When you know a language, you know the sounds, the words and the rules for their combination.

16. Linguistic Knowledge and Performance 〝What’’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?〞〝I don’t know, I lost count,〞said Alice. 〝She can’t do addition,〞the Red Queen interrupted. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Class

17. Very long sentences are theoretically possible, speakers’ knowledge permit them to form longer and longer sentences. • But they are highly improbable. It is a difference between what you know and how you actual use.

18. Linguistic competence: The knowledge of a language represented by the mental grammar that accounts for speakers’ linguistic ability and creativity. It is the unconscious knowledge. • Linguistic performance: The use of linguistic competence in the production and comprehension of language.

19. Sometimes when we speak, the messages is garbled. Such as stammer, pause or produce slip of the tongue. • Slip of the tongue: It is an involuntary deviation of an intended utterance. e.g. I’m Tarzan, and you must be Jane. → Me Tarzan! You Jane!

20. What is Grammar? • Descriptive grammar: describing how language is actually used, without giving rules for how it ought to be used. It is unconscious, and exits in native speakers’ minds. E.g. the mental lexicon • Prescriptive grammar: telling people how they ought to use a language. All these uses are conventional. E.g. the grammatical books

21. Mental grammar: the internalized and unconscious grammar that a descriptive grammar attempts to model. • Teaching grammar: state explicitly the rules of the language, list the words and pronunciations, and aid in learning a new language or dialect. • Universal grammar: the innate principles and properties that pertain to the grammars of all human languages.

22. Chomsky proposed that human beings are born with an innate 〝blueprint〞 for language. （Universal grammar） • Linguistic theory: a theory of the principles that characterize all human languages; the 〝laws of human language.〞

23. Language Universal • The sign languages of deaf communities provides some of the best evidence to support the notion that humans are born with the ability to acquire language, and the language is governed by the same universal properties. • The ASL system was used in France and brought to the U.S. in 1817. It is represented by a series of hand shapes and movements.

24. The difference between finger-spelled letters and the ASL signs: E.g.

25. Animal “Languages” • The ability to produce sounds similar to those used in human language cannot be equated with the ability to acquire the complex grammar of human language. • Most animals “signaling” communication system • The signal is fixed.

26. Birdcalls convey messages associated with the immediate environment. • Birdsongs are used to take out territory and to attract mates. • The bee’s dance is confined to a single subject-food source. The kinds of messages that can be conveyed are limited, and messages are stimulus controlled.

27. What We Know about Language • 1. Wherever humans exist, language exits. • 2. There are no primitive languages. • 3. All languages change through time. • 4. The relationship between the sounds and meanings of spoken languages and between the gestures and meanings of sign language are for the most arbitrary. • 5. All human language use a finite set of discrete sounds or gestures that are combined to form meaningful elements or words.

28. 6. All grammars contain rules of a similar kind of the formation of words and sentences. • 7. Every spoken language includes discrete sound segments. Every spoken language has a class of vowels and a class of consonants. • 8. Similar grammatical categories are found in all languages. • 9. There are universal semantic properties like “male” or “female”, “animate” or “human”, found in every language in the world.

29. 10.Every language has a way of negating, forming questions, issuing commands, referring to past or future time, and so on. • 11. Speakers of all languages are capable of producing and comprehending an infinite set of sentences. • 12. Any normal child is capable of learning any language to which he or she is exposed.

30. The End ◆ Do you know language better? ◆ Find the study of language interesting? ◆ Chapter 2: Language & Brain

31. What Is Grammar? ◆ Descriptive Grammars ◆ Prescriptive Grammars ◆ Teaching Grammars

32. ※Descriptive Grammars • To the extent that the linguistic’s description is a true model of the speakers’ linguistic capacity, it is a successful description of the grammar and of the language itself. Such a model is called descriptive grammar.

33. Grammar:  the first in reference to the mental grammar speakers have in their brain.  the second as the model or description of this internalized grammar. From now on we will not differentiate these 2 meanings, because the linguist’s descriptive grammar is an attempt at a formal statement of the speakers’ grammar. Grammatical sentence: The sentence conforms to the rules of mental grammars and linguist grammars. Ungrammatical sentence: The sentence deviates in some way from these rules.

34. Dialect: 1. Language or variety of a language. 2. It is not superior to any other in a linguistic sense. 3. Every grammar is equally complex, logical, and capable of producing an infinite set of sentence to express any thought. If something can be expressed in one language or one dialect, it can be expressed in any other language or dialect.

35. ※Prescriptive Grammars • From ancient times until the present, “purist” have believed that language change is corruption, and that there are certain “correct” forms that all educated people should use in speaking and writing. They wished to prescribe rather than describe the rules of grammar, which gave rise to the writing of prescriptive grammars.

36. In 1762 Bishop Robert Lowth wrote “A Short Introduction To English Grammar with Critical Notes.” Lowth prescribed a number of new rules for English, many of the influences by his personal taste. Examples:  I don’t have none.  I don’t have any.  You was wrong about that.  You were wrong about that.  Mathilda is fatter than me.  Mathilda is fatter than I. Because Lowth was influential and because the rising new class wanted to speak “properly” many of these new rules were legislated into English grammar, at least for the prestige dialect.

37. The view that dialect that regularly use double negatives are inferior cannot be justified if one looks at the standard dialect of other language in the world. Examples: French: Je ne veux parler avec personne. I not want speak with no-one. Italian: Non voglio parlare con nessuno. not I-want speak with no-one. English translation:“I don’t want to speak with anyone.”

38. Today our bookstore are filled with books by language “purists” attempting to save English tongue from destruction. For example, Edwin Newman in his books rails against those who use the word hopefully to mean “I hope,” as in “Hopefully, it will not rain tomorrow,” instead of using it “properly” to mean “with hope.” But language is vigorous, dynamic and constantly changing. The meaning of hopefully has been broadened for most English speakers to include both usages.

39. Finally, all of the preceding remarks apply to • spoken language. Writing, which is not acquired • through exposure, but must be taught, follows • certain prescriptive rules of grammar, usage and • style that the spoken language does not, and is • subject to little if any dialectal variation.

40. ※Teaching Grammars • Teaching grammars are different from the descriptive grammar. They are used to learn another language or dialect and are used in school to fulfill language requirement.

41. Teaching grammars assume that the student already knows one language and compares the grammar of the target language with the grammar of the native language. The meaning of a word is given by providing a gloss. maison —— “house” in French. gloss It’s assumed that the student knows the meaning of the gloss “house,” and so the meaning of the word maison.

42. Language Universal ※Grammar—Knowledge of language 1.Phonology—thesound system 2.Semantics—thesystem of meaning 3.Morphology—therules of word formation 4.Syntax—therules of sentence formation 5.lexion/the dictionary—thevocabulary of words

43. ※Universal Grammar 1.”It’s certainly the business of a grammarian to find out, and not to make, the law of a language.” ---John Fell,1784 2.The laws representing the universal properties of all languages constitute a “universal Grammar”. 3.German philosopher, Alsted first used the term “general grammar”.

44. 4.Robert Kilwardby excluded considerations of the characteristics of particular languages. 5.Universal grammar is part of the human biologically endowed language faculty. 6.The major aim of linguistic theory – to discover the nature of this universal grammar whose principles characterize all human language.

45. 1.Chomsky proposed that human being are born with an innate “blueprint” for language, what we referred to earlier as Universal Grammar. 2.Children are able to acquire language as quickly and effortlessly as they do because they do not have to figure out all the rules of their language, only those that are specific to their particular language.

46. ※The Development of Grammar Children learn languages all in very much the same way. 1.Word 2.Word—Sentence eg. (a). “Cathy build house” instead of “Cathy is building the house.” (b). “你 笨笨”instead of “你好笨” 3.Sentence

47. ※Sign Languages : Evidence for Language Universals Humans are born with the ability to acquire language, and these languages ,including Sign Languages are governed by the same universal properties.

48. ※Properties of Sign Languages • visual-gestural systems. • fully developed languages which are capable of creating and comprehending new words and sentences • combine lip reading with knowledge of the structure of languages, the meaning, and context of languages.

49. the system of gestures is equivalent to • the phonology of spoken languages. • ※American Sign Language • ASL is fully developed •  an outgrowth of the Sign Language in French. •  ASL has its own grammar.

50.  English alphabets in ASL are represented by a series of hand shape and movements.  occurs in simultaneous movements, unlike individual finger-spelled letters.