EDUE 411

1. EDUE 411 Lecture 1

2. What is language? • Language = communication? • Is language a type of communication? • Is communication a type of language?

3. Language must be composed of recognizable speech sounds? bird songs? sign languages?

4. Properties of Language • Everyone acquires language • Double Articulation/Duality • Arbitrary • Creative • Hierarchical • Displacement • Meaningful silence • Recursion

5. Some key concepts and properties of language (1) All non-pathogenic (i.e., normal) human beings acquire language upon exposure to a speech community. Despite the best efforts by some parents to “teach” language to their children, children acquire language at their own rate, whether their parents try to teach it to them or not. Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy. Adult: You mean, you want the other spoon. Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please Daddy. Adult: Can you say, “the other spoon”? Child: Other…one…spoon. Adult: Say, “other”. Child: other Adult: “spoon” Child: spoon Adult: “other…spoon” Child: other…spoon. Now give me other one spoon.

6. Other forms of communication also seem to be universally acquired, however. No known instances of some bees performing waggle dances better than other bees. Lack of exposure to language: A child must be exposed to a speech community before the onset of puberty for language acquisition to take place. Genie: Child found at age 13 who had been completely sheltered from language. Her father would only make barking noises, and her mother and older brother were forbidden to speak to her at all. To this day, Genie cannot use language. She can only communicate in short sentences that lack the structure found in normal speech.

7. (2) Double Articulation/Duality Language consists of units of sound and units of meaning. SOUND MEANING cat 고양이 /kæt/ /kojaŋi/ The units of sound do not bear any meaning. They can be re-arranged to form other units of meaning (words). /ækt/ act /tæk/ tack /tækt/ tact or tacked

8. Are the units of “sound” and units of meaning divorced in other forms of communication? Hand gestures of traffic police? Bird songs? Dogs’ barks, howls and whines? (and tail movements, etc.)

9. (3) Language is “arbitrary” This is related to Martinet’s concept of “double articulation” where the signifier (the word in a language used to refer to a concept) and the signified (the concept in question) are related by an arbitrary sequence of sounds. There is no intrinsic property of a cat that leads us to necessarily call it a “cat” SOUND MEANING die Katze el gato cat le chat

10. Sound Symbolism/Iconicity Some aspects of language do seem relate sound and meaning. Onomatopoeic words: buzz, splash, meow, 쉿, 두근두근, 땡땡땡, etc. Turkish: şıp – plop şak – clap, crack Hewbrew: yimyum – meow Basque: kukurruku – cock-a-doodle-doo Arbitrariness in animal communication? Bee’s waggle dance – which aspects are iconic and which are arbitrary?

11. (4) Language is creative You can understand or create any novel sentence. It is highly unlikely that any of you has heard the following sentence before: Last night several pink elephants flew in through my bedroom window and poured champagne into a hollowed out grapefruit. Nevertheless, you understand exactly what it means. Creativity is also found below the level of the word. Yesterday, John found a wug in the forest. You may not know what a wug is (since it’s made up), but once you do, you will automatically understand the following sentences. Yesterday, John found several wugs in the forest. This creature is rather wuggish. Mary evaluated the degree of wuggishness of this creature.

12. (5) Language is hierarchical A language does not consist of a linear sequence of words – it has internal structure. Johnis happy. The man over thereis happy. The girl I gave $10 to is happy. IsJohn happy? Isthe man over there happy? Isthe girl I gave $10 to happy? The subject of these sentences (underlined) can be simple or complex – in either case, we move the auxiliary (boldface) over it to make a yes/no question. There is no language in the world that has a rule such as “move the auxiliary two words to the left”.

13. (5) Language is hierarchical A language does not consist of a linear sequence of words – it has internal structure. 철수가 내 사과를 먹었다. Chelswu-ka nay sakwa-lul mek-ess-ta Chelswu-NOM my apple-ACC eat-PST-DECL ‘Chelswu ate my apple.’ 내 사과를 철수가 먹었다. nay sakwa-lul Chelswu-ka mek-ess-ta my apple-ACC Chelswu-NOM eat-PST-DECL ‘Chelswu ate my apple.’ Move the object one word to the left?

14. (5) Language is hierarchical A language does not consist of a linear sequence of words – it has internal structure. 이 학생이 내 사과를 먹었다. i haksayng-i nay sakwa-lul mek-ess-ta this student-NOM my apple-ACC eat-PST-DECL ‘This student ate my apple.’ 내 사과를 이 학생이 먹었다. nay sakwa-lul i haksayng-i mek-ess-ta my apple-ACC this student-NOM eat-PST-DECL ‘This student ate my apple.’ *이 내사과를 학생이 먹었다. *i nay sakwa-lul haksayng-i mek-ess-ta this my apple-ACC student-NOM eat-PST-DECL (‘This student ate my apple.’)

15. (5) Language is hierarchical A language does not consist of a linear sequence of words – it has internal structure. 이 학생이 내 사과를 먹었다. i haksayng-i nay sakwa-lul mek-ess-ta 내 사과를 이 학생이 먹었다. nay sakwa-lul i haksayng-i mek-ess-ta *이 내사과를 학생이 먹었다. *i nay sakwa-lul haksayng-i mek-ess-ta Move the object to the left of the subject – a hierarchical unit. No rule such as ‘move a phrase one word to the left.’

16. Thus, languages do not make reference to the linear sequence of words, but the hierarchical structures in the language. Consider the following sentence: The girl who is playing is named Rosie. How do we make a yes/no question out of this? the girl who is is playing is named Rosie? = Rosie Move the auxiliary that appears after the subject. Move the first auxiliary? Move the second auxiliary? is named Rosie? the boy is saying that the girl is

17. (6) Language exhibits displacement We can talk about events in the past or future, or possible events, or counterfactual events. Last week, John and Mary went to the opera together. They thought the tenor was amazing. Next week, they will attend the opening of Carmen. It might rain tomorrow. 눈이 올둥말둥 하네요. (It may or may not snow.) If John hadn’t hurt his leg last week, he could have run in yesterday’s race. Displacement refers to away from the here and now (in terms of time, space and truth). We can talk about things that aren’t here, that don’t happen now or aren’t true. This distinguishes human language from animal communication. Bees cannot communicate possible sources of nectar or discuss last week’s source of nectar. But they can discuss sources of nectar that aren’t present. Dogs cannot communicate their intended actions if a burglar were in the house. They can only do so if a burglar is actually in the house at the time.

18. (7) Meaningful Silence Some linguistic concepts are not paired up with a sound correspondence. John washed the glasses. John washed the glass. John washed some glass. John is a glass-washer. /-es/ - plural marker  means “more than one” refers to one glass refers to a quantity of the material glass can refer to either one glass, more than one glass, or the material glass Lack of an overt marker does not imply absence of concept denoted by that marker. Other forms of communication are not known to make use of meaningful silence.

19. (7) Meaningful Silence Some linguistic concepts are not paired up with a sound correspondence. 먹었어요 – obligatory past tense reading mek-ess-e-yo eat-PST-INFORMAL-POLITE ‘ate’ 먹어요 – absence of tense marking does not indicate lack of tense… must be interpreted as present mek-e-yo eat-INFORMAL-POLITE ‘eats’

20. (8) Recursion Recursion in language refers to the ability to embed smaller structures in larger structures repeatedly. John’s hat John’s brother’s hat John’s brother’s baby’s hat This is the house that Jack built. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. etc.

21. Recursion A sentence is typically composed of a subject and a predicate: subject predicate John Mary ate the apple. left the room. S – sentence NP – noun phrase VP – verb phrase S NP VP John ate the apple S  NP VP

22. Recursion VP often consists of a verb and a direct object (another NP) report a crime, a robbery, a story, a piece of gossip NP S VP  V NP report that John left work early, that the knives were missing, that a fire broke out, that it might rain later on Now we can see how recursion comes about: S NP VP and VP V S The ‘S’ inside the VP itself contains an NP and VP

23. Recursion Now we can see how recursion comes about: S NP VP and VP V S The ‘S’ inside the VP itself contains an NP and VP John reported a crime. John reported that Mary witnessed a crime. John reported that Mary heard that Susan witnessed a crime. John reported that Mary heard that Susan told Bill that Alice thinks that… John’s sister John’s sister’s friend John’s sister’s friend’s brother John’s sister’s friend’s brother’s piano teacher …

24. Recursion Limits on recursion: Recursive structures do not go on forever People need to breathe, eat and sleep, etc. Listener may get bored or confused and walk away if speaker keeps going on… Once upon a while back there was an ambitious contortionist who made up his mind he would try to conquer the twenty-seventh highest dead volcano on Neptune, with his tongue secretly hiding behind his overweight postman’s Swedish Hi-Fi set and the shoelaces of his Persian Ugh boots stubbornly caught on the corner of the round Toongabbie equestrian sports complex, while he would try to breed miniature brown cicadas inside a quickly rotating water-heater with seven silk pillowcases hanging from his uneducated vacuum cleaner which would be chained around his navel, and ask if his second grand-stepfather has heard of any orange-flavoured Portuguese atomic submarines in the neighbourhood lately that have precisely half of their crews attempting to break the 1958 record for mass voluntary electrocution whilst being sponsored by the dangerous chrysanthemum division of Interflora, who have recently gone bankrupt due to the discovery of an overcrowding of rebellious screwdrivers in the Martian stratosphere last week, when salamanders controlled nine hours forty-seven minutes of the 1978 Pakistani croquet final between the lower Philadelphia fishmonger recruiting officer and Karl Marx’s younger brother Harpo, who has not seen his bedroom since the Mexican figure-skating champion booked fourteen tomatoes for exceeding the post-war speed limit and lost his balance whilst trying to hunt abominable snowmen at the Olympics with a soggy sultana hidden inside his chaperone’s nightshirt which, in 1947, when John Lennon first washed his face and socks in the same country, had its only steel-plated sleeve melted off by the self-appointed chairman of Doubtful Drainpipes Destruction Company under the New Moscow Harbour Bridge which is, at present, rusting severely, due to a heavy downpour of talcum powder over at Disneyland and also due to sixteen undernourished lizards going into a deep, meditating coma without asking their mothers, who were not about to stand for this caper and sat down immediately, squashing Winston Churchill’s scale model of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which…

25. Recursion Are the limits on recursion a property of language itself? Or are the limits on recursion merely a by-product of external factors (such as the need for clarity and conciseness)? Pragmatic limits on recursion? Is pragmatics part of the language faculty? Shampoo directions: 1. lather 2. rinse 3. repeat Or is this just common sense?

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

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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)

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

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

34. 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.

35. 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. *

36. 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.

37. 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 Académie Française, Chicago Manual of Style, Ann Landers, your high-school English teacher and so forth.

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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?

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. 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.”

45. 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?

46. 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

47. * - ungrammatical ? – awkward or odd ?* - very awkward or odd % - acceptable to some, but not to others – dialect variation # - unacceptable, but grammatical – pragmatically odd & - ungrammatical under the intended interpretation Here are some examples. I like carrots. * I carrots like. % I likes carrots. [Newfoundland English] % John promised Mary to wash the dishes. =John promised Mary that he would wash the dishes. # Carrots like me. pragmatically ill-formed

48. grammatical – A sentence is grammatical if it does not violate any principles of grammar acceptable – A sentence is acceptable if a native speaker can use it in a particular context A model of grammar should predict that all and only the acceptable sentences of a language (in the appropriate context) are grammatical. The set of all acceptable sentences and the set of all grammatical sentences should be identical.

49. Numbers here indicated co-reference. (1) a. John1 thinks that Mary likes him1. b. John thinks that Mary2 likes herself2. c. * John1 thinks that Mary likes himself1. d. * John thinks that Mary2 likes her2. * = unacceptable to a native speaker Reflexive pronoun and its antecedent must be in the same clause. (2) a. John thinks [that Mary2 likes herself2.] b. * John1 thinks [that Mary likes himself1.] Principle of Reflexive Pronouns: A reflexive pronoun and its antecedent must be in the same clause.