1 / 34

Towards a useful theory of language

Towards a useful theory of language. Richard Hudson SOAS March 2008. Fun with Beja grammar. u-ja:s-u:-k win-u the- dog - Nom -your big-is o-ja:s-o:-k rih-an the- dog - Acc -your I-saw o-ja:s-i-u:-k niwa win-u

madra
Download Presentation

Towards a useful theory of language

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Towards a useful theory of language Richard Hudson SOAS March 2008

  2. Fun with Beja grammar • u-ja:s-u:-k win-u the-dog-Nom-your big-is • o-ja:s-o:-k rih-an the-dog-Acc-your I-saw • o-ja:s-i-u:-k niwa win-u the-dog-’s-Nom-your tail big-is

  3. Truth • I was discovering the hidden truths of Beja. • Not because they were useful, • But because the process was fun, • And I wanted a PhD. • But I needed a theory.

  4. London linguistics in 1963 • Little support for USA Structuralism • Phonetics • SOAS: Firth’s prosodic analysis • UCL: the Joneme • Grammar • SOAS: nothing • UCL: a choice by courtesy of Randolph Quirk.

  5. A choice between … Noam Chomsky, via David Reibel

  6. … and … Michael Halliday

  7. Language for its own sake in 1963 • Main criterion: elegant analyses • Chomsky: aux-inversion • Halliday: Boolean choice networks • Not about meaning. • Not about psychology and the mind. • Not about culture and social choice. • Not about usefulness.

  8. But some people ask... • What is the point of linguistics? • Should public money fund private fun? • Is linguistics useful?

  9. Is linguistics useful? “You're a human being, and your time as a human being should be socially useful. It doesn't mean that your choices about helping other people have to be within the context of your professional training as a linguist. Maybe that training just doesn't help you to be useful to other people. In fact, it doesn't.” (Chomsky, 1991)

  10. Another answer. “I was interested in what other people wanted to know about language, whether scholars in other fields or those with practical problems to be faced and solved – including …. teachers.” (Halliday, 2002)

  11. A precedent: Babylonia, 2000 BC Akkadian Babylon Sumerian

  12. Becoming literate in Babylon

  13. Verb conjugations(Sumerian and Akkadian)

  14. (in that order!) We – you – they

  15. So what? What is linguistics for? • Truth? • Utility? • Do these conflict? • But what if the truth is too complicated to be applied? Yes! Yes! No!

  16. Two application interfaces Linguistics Linguistic theory Applied linguistics Descriptive linguistics Practical projects Linguistic description

  17. Popularity • Utility requires uptake by people. • Applied linguistics: Can practitioners use it? • Descriptive linguistics: Does it help writers of grammars and dictionaries? • Uptake depends on • truth (supported by evidence) • users’ minds.

  18. How simple is language? • One answer: • Very simple • But it looks very complicated. • Chomsky • Another answer: • Very complicated • But it looks simple. • Cognitive linguistics

  19. Usage-based learning • We learn language. • We remember individual utterances. • We relate new utterances to old ones. • We strengthen links by experience. • We induce generalisations from stored exemplars.

  20. So what? • “Knowledge of language is knowledge.” (Goldberg 1995) • It includes a vast amount of detail • and generalisations • and frequency/recency effects • and finely classified relations.

  21. Word Grammar • In short, I-language is a network. • A cognitive network • Like ‘I-society’. • It includes numerous individual exemplars • plus induced generalisations • plus finely classified relations • plus activation levels.

  22. Evidence for networks • Spreading activation • Spilled activation causes: • Speech errors, e.g. orgasm for organism • Priming effects, e.g. doctor primes nurse. • Spreading activation affects the whole of language, not just ‘the lexicon’.

  23. Errors at all levels Errors involve neighbours in: • Phonology: orgasms (organisms) • Morphology: slicely thinned (thinly sliced) • Syntax: I’m making the kettle on • For: making some tea + putting the kettle on • Meaning: crosswords (jigsaws) • The environment: (Addressee is sitting at a computer.) You haven’t got a computer (screwdriver) have you?

  24. Priming at all levels Words prime network neighbours in: • Phonology: verse primes nurse (but only briefly) • Morphology: hedges primes hedge for longer than pledge does. • Syntax: Vlad brought a book to Boris primes other V + DO + PP sentences • Semantics: doctor primes nurse

  25. So … • It’s networks all the way down. • Every element of language is intimately connected with elements at other levels. • The language network is formally the same as the general cognitive network: • This is the main claim of Word Grammar.

  26. Networks in Beja acc DOG Def:acc DOG:acc Your Poss:nom {i} {o} {ja:s} {o: - k} {i} u:

  27. So what? • Suppose Word Grammar is true. • How could a descriptive linguist use it? • How do you write a network dictionary? • And what about a network grammar? • And how about an applied linguist? • E.g. How do you design an L1 literacy programme to teach a network?

  28. Books • All our current practice is rooted in books: • Grammars structured in modular chapters. • Dictionaries structured in lemmas. • Maybe that’s why theories with the same structure are so popular. • But what if language isn’t like a book? • Suppose it’s like the rail network …

  29. Pictures

  30. Databases • Bank accounts • Train times • So why not languages? • 2nd millennium BC: word lists on clay tablets • 2nd millennium AD: books

  31. Linguistics in the 3rd millennium • One super-database per language • or per speaker - cf genome • Many different user interfaces: • For changing the database. • For retrieving items and their properties. • For planning teaching programmes. • For automatic analysis of texts. • Etc.

  32. How? • Build a computer system with the right data structures. • Build very user-friendly input systems. • Let the experts enter their own data. • cf Wikipedia • especially: Wiktionary (14 languages) • Build very user-friendly interfaces.

  33. Conclusion • Investigating language is fun. • We should aim for both truth and utility. • But even a true theory is useless if it’s not usable. • Language is actually a complex network. • So a true theory needs a database in order to be usable. • Meanwhile we’ll have to muddle through as best we can.

  34. Thank you This show can be downloaded from: www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/talks.htm#soas For more on Word Grammar: …/dick/wg.htm

More Related