What is language and

how do we study it?

Week 2
 Try and answer the following
questions on language!
1. There are five vowel sounds in English. T/F
2. Educated people speak more grammatically than do uneducated people. T/ F
3. All linguists speak several languages. T/F
4. The languages of primitive peoples have simpler grammars than languages such as
English or French. T/F
5. Parrots and people can both use language. T/F
6. There are _____ units of meaning in the word ‘disrespectfully.’
 Introduction
• We use language to:
• Communicate
• Play games
• Identify each other
• be judgmental
• ….
 Introduction
• Some language myths:
• French sounds more romantic than German
• I don’t know nothing is sloppy English
• Some languages are more primitive than others
• People who say aks instead of ask are being lazy
• We are taught language by our parents and teachers
• Writing is more perfect than speech
 What is Language?
• Our language expertise
• What is it that we know about language?

* Chicago a large city in the Midwest is.

Chicago is a large city in the Midwest.
 What is Language?
• Acquiring versus Learning a Language
• Unconscious vs conscious process
• Children ‘acquire’ language
• We ‘learn’ language rules

You should say, “I’s I” rather than,

“It’s me”!
 Human Language & Animal Communication

• How is human language different?

• Hockett: design features of hum. lang.
“Language is obviously as different
1) Semanticity
from other animals’ communication
2) Arbitrariness
systems as the elephant’s trunk is
3) Discreteness different from other animal’s
4) Displacement nostrils.” (Pinker, 342)
5) Productivity
6) Duality of patterning
Which design feature does each of the following
example show?

1. “tree” (English), “baum” (German)

2. Try to draw a picture of “There’s not a giraffe standing beside me.”

 Discussion questions

• One of Hockett's design features of language is arbitrariness. Arbitrary signs or

symbols have no connection to what they represent. In language, the connection
between words and meanings is arbitrary, which is illustrated by the fact that
different languages have different words for the same concept (‘horse’ is cheval in
French and Pferd in German). What about onomatopoeia? Think about words like
buzz and woof. Is the connection between these words arbitrary or not? Look up
some examples from other languages. What do such examples tell you about
onomatopoeia and arbitrariness?
 Human Language
and Animal Communication
• Communication system of the African vervet monkey
• 3 distinct calls for 3 types of predators
• Has semanticity and arbitrariness but lack ___________________
__________________________________
 Human Language
and Animal Communication
• Communication system of honeybees & birds
• ‘dance’ to communicate the location of pollinating flowers (__________________)
• some bird songs have some duality of patterning
 Human Language
and Animal Communication

• Can other Animal’s learn language?

• Numerous attempts to teach apes with varying degrees of success
• Limitations: Primates lack the same vocal apparatus as humans, Hockett’s
design features of language may not be an accurate yardstick, the role of
the trainer (language learning vs. acquisition)
 Human Language
and Animal Communication

• Two case studies:

1. Washoe:
Allen and Beatrix Gardner (late 1960s)
• Taught _____ to Washoe
• Washoe mastered 200 signs
 Why American Sign Language (ASL)?

(1)Apes are physically incapable of making human vocal sounds,

but they can use their hands much like humans;
(2)ASL has all the design features of spoken human language, in
contrast with the limited artificial “languages” used with other
experiments
• Watch short film on Washoe: Teaching chimpanzees how to
sign (1973) (7:50-11:30)
• Sign for “more” in different situations
• Sign for “come”, “open”, “open hurry”
 Human Language
and Animal Communication

2. Nim : Herb Terrace (1970s)

• Taught 125 signs
• Nim’s signs were repetitions
• Nim failed to master grammar
• The Nim study proved to be flawed
• Watch 2011 documentary on Nim: The Nim Project (1:04:00-1:06:45)
• “Nim was a brilliant beggar”
• “you can learn a list of words by rote”
• What Apes can do
• use signs symbolically (arbitrariness): shoe, tree, cat, baby, sweet, dirty,
red, more…
• extension to new contexts: open, in
• juxtaposition: water bird, fruit drink, me out
• Not human language structure
• No Duality of Patterning
• No Discreteness: no evidence for ASL morphology or structure
• No Productivity: does not parallel child language acquisition
 What is Grammar?
• (Generative) grammar: A set of rules for producing the grammatical
sentences of a language
• No other communication system appears to have the equivalent of human
language grammar
• Merriam-Webster Online
 What is Grammar?
• The Components of Grammar
1) Phonetics
2) Phonology
3) Morphology
4) Syntax
5) Semantics
 What is Grammar?
• What is Grammatical?
• A possible sentence in the language
 What is Grammar?
Two common uses of the word “grammar”

a) Following the practice of a socially determined “standard” in

constructing utterances
b) Following a system of (unconscious) rules in constructing
utterances
 Discussion question
• As we've pointed out in the chapter, the term grammar has many meanings. Explain
the distinct meanings of grammar in the following sentences. If you can think of
others, discuss them as well. You may use a dictionary if you like, but do not rely on
it alone.

a. I better watch my grammar around you!

b. Please proofread your paper for grammar and style.
c. I'm taking a class on Spanish grammar.
d. Our innate capacity for the grammar of a language is quite amazing.
 What is Grammar?
- Prescriptive and Descriptive grammar

① Descriptive grammar: describes the rule system we use to

produce sentences (e.g. I don’t know who to see.)
② Prescriptive grammar: a set of rules that prescribes how we are
supposed to speak (e.g. we should say ‘I don’t know whom to
see.’)
 What is Grammar?
When prescription and description overlap:
– Most prescriptive rules are unnatural (e.g. split infinitives)

– Some prescriptive rules are actually descriptive rules (e.g. double

negatives using any-)
 What is Grammar?
 Modification: another overlap
– We are constantly modifying our language and revising our system
of grammatical rules
– We might adopt descriptive rules that are more highly valued and
we may learn unnatural language rules to impress
 What is Grammar?
• Grammar across Space and Time
- Do different varieties of a language such as English share one
grammar? (considering different geographical areas, or time)
- “English” is a continuum of language varieties rather than one
language with a single set of grammatical rules.
How do we decide if two different language varieties are
two dialects of the same language?

- Mutual intelligibility?
- Dialects: two language varieties that are mutually intelligible  unclear

- Swedish and Norwegian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, Malaysian and

Indonesian, Serbs and Croats
- Cantonese and Mandarin
- Language-dialect continuum
 Discussion questions
• Which of the following sentences are ungrammatical in terms of your own
descriptive grammar and which are ungrammatical in terms of prescriptive
grammar? Briefly explain why you analyzed each sentence the way you did.
a. Rosie a beautiful pony is.
b. Maurice and me are going to the movies tonight.
c. John put the book.
d. All the tulips are coming up in the garden.
e. The all tulips are coming up in the garden.
 Discussion questions
f. Purple big pillows were on her bed.
g. I don't have no idea.
h. Who did you talk to?
i. I saw a cat climb up tree.
j. I have drank six glasses of water in a row.
a. *Rosie a beautiful pony is.
b. Maurice and me are going to the movies tonight.
c. * John put the book.
d. All the tulips are coming up in the garden.
e. * The all tulips are coming up in the garden.
f. * Purple big pillows were on her bed.
g. I don't have no idea.
h. Who did you talk to?
i. * I saw a cat climb up tree.
j. I have drank six glasses of water in a row.
 What is Grammar?
• Universal Grammar
- We all acquire a complex grammatical system: basic cognitive hardwiring,
predisposed
- One of the goals of modern linguistics
- UG (Core grammatical rules): e.g. All languages combine subjects and
predicates to form larger units, all languages have nouns and verbs…
 What is Grammar?
• Universal Grammar
- Each principle can be characterized in binary terms (e.g.,
languages differ in how the subject is expressed.)

Non vuole mangiare

Not want to eat.
 What is Grammar?
• Universal Grammar
- Parameters: binary settings of UG principles (e.g., SVO or SOV, null
subject parameter)
English, French, Swahili, Thai: SVO parameter is set to “on”
The lizard caught a fly.
Subject – verb - object

Korean, Japanese, Turkish, Hindi: SVO parameter is set to “off ”

도마뱀이 파리를 잡았다.
Subject – object - verb
 What is Grammar?
• Universal Grammar - Sign Language Grammar:
 full linguistic systems with grammar that differ from spoken language
only in modality
 most signs are arbitrary
 Signs have discreteness, productivity, duality of patterning, and
displacement
 have different varieties and change over time
 have parameters (e.g. ASL – null subject language)
 What is Grammar?
- Sign Language Grammar:
 duality of patterning: ASL signs are combinations of four
basic parameters (hand shape, hand location, movement, palm
orientation) – signs distinguished only by hand shapes (candy,
apple, jealous)
 What is Grammar?
- Sign Language Grammar:
 arbitrariness: ASL signs have no obvious pictorial relation to what they represent
 What is Grammar?
- Sign Language Grammar:
 discreteness: morphology and inflection
 What is Grammar?
- Sign Language versus body language:
 physical gestures (smiling, clapping…) do not have
discreteness, no duality of patterning, no displacement
 much body language is instinctive
 The Scientific Study of Language
• Linguistics: the scientific study of language
• Noam Chomsky and Generative grammar
• Syntactic Structures (1957): introduced generative grammar
 The Scientific Study of Language
- Chomsky designed a theory of grammar that describes a precise and finite
set of rules that generates the possible sentences in a language
- He proposed that these generative rules might be grounded in UG
 The Scientific Study of Language

- “Chomskyan revolution”: study of language from the

inside out, as a system
- What is it that we know about language in order to speak
it and understand it?
 Influences on Modern Linguistics

• 18th century Rationalism

• Structural Linguistics
 Influences on Modern Linguistics
• 18th century Rationalism and Empiricism
- Rationalism: all knowledge can be gained through the use of
reason, innate knowledge
- Empiricism: humans learn through experience, blank slate
 Chomsky proposed a rationalist approach to language, humans
are predisposed to acquire language
 Influences on Modern Linguistics
• Structural Linguistics
- Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) Course in General Linguistics: language is a
structural system
- Signifier and signified
- Langue and parole

 Chomsky: linguistic competence and linguistic performance

 Linguistic Today
• Linguistics became to occupy its own field
• Since Chomsky, other theories of grammar have emerged (generative and
non-generative)
• Subfields of linguistics (Table 1.1 p. 22)
 Table 1.1 Subfields of Linguistics

• Grammar
• Pragmatics
• Sociolinguistics
• Neuro-linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Computational linguistics
• Historical linguistics
• Anthropological linguistics
 Summary
• Linguistics as the scientific study of language
• Universal Grammar: a set of core grammatical rules and principles
 Discussion question
• In his book Knowledge of Language (p. 8), Noam Chomsky gives the following pair of
sentences, noting that in (a), the underlined pronoun them can refer to “the men”
earlier in the sentence, whereas in (b), the underlined them must refer to some
people not otherwise mentioned in the sentence:
(a) I wonder who the men expected to see them.
(b) The men expected to see them.

With respect to these facts, Chomsky poses the questions, “How does every
child know, unerringly, to interpret the [pronoun] differently in the two
cases? And why does no pedagogic grammar have to draw the learner’s
attention to such facts?”
 Group/Individual Assignment
• Videotape 2 to 5 minutes of casual conversation among a group of 3-4 students in
English (You must by law have their permission to do so. However, try to make the
recording as unobtrusive as possible—you don't want their speech to be stilted or
formal as a result of the taping.) Now transcribe the tape, writing down everything
that was said, including “ums” and “ahs,” false starts, and other features. (Please
leave out names and other identifying characteristics.) You will likely find that the
speaker very rarely uses complete sentences. Analyze the transcript by identifying
how the speakers’ L1 (e.g., Korean) may have influenced the way the speakers speak.
• Hand in 1) a transcript, 2) audio file, 3) individual analysis of the transcript by week
7. Groups may present their findings on a voluntary basis (+ 0.5 point).