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LIN 1310BIntroduction to Linguistics

Prof: Nikolay Slavkov

TA: Qinghua Tang

Acknowledgements: Many of the slides for this course are based on Eta Schneiderman’s slides.

CLASS 2

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Today

• Announcements and Reminders:-get textbook, Agora Bookstore 145 Besserer street (typo in syllabus)-read chapter 1, -Friday DGDs cancelled, need to register in one of the other two sections. If you have a conflict, see me ASAP.-get a copy of syllabus-course website can be accessed via Virtual Campus or at:www.courseweb.uottawa.ca/LIN1310BH2007/Index.htm

• Basic Linguistic Concepts (may be on the test)

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Origins of Language

• Religious accounts- language as a gift of a God; which is the first language?• Anecdotal accounts-language as a result of an accident, social interaction, labour,

etc. • Genetic / physiological accounts-language as a result of a genetic mutation / evolutionsee Table 1.1 of text (language specialization). • Arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning• Onomatopoeia

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Language Specialisation

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Creativity: defining characteristic of language

• Knowing a language is different from knowing (all) words in a dictionary.

• Even if you know all words in a dictionary, you may not be able to speak the language.

• You cannot buy a dictionary with all possible sentences of a language.

• No matter how thorough a dictionary is, it is always incomplete because new words enter the language, meanings change etc.

• We use language creatively and that is how we differ from a dictionary.

• The creative aspect of language use accounts for the fact that we are not just limited to stimulus-response behaviour.

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Recursivity as creativity

• For every sentence in a language, a longer one can be found (recursivity):

1) This is an old man;

2) This is a very old man;

3) This is a very very old man;

4) This is a very very old man, who fought in World War II;

5) This is a very very old man, who fought in World War II and received an award of bravery.

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Innovation as creativity

• New sounds, words, structures may enter the language (innovation, language change).

-Sounds: Canadian raising (see p. 57 in text): house [haws] ~ [hws]about [bawt] ~ [bwt]-Words: ‘to google something,’ ‘to beach the boat,’-Structures (p. 234 in text): Speak they the truth? (Old and Middle English)Do they speak the truth? (Modern English)

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Animal Communication

• Traditionally, animal communication has been considered to be different from linguistic behaviour.

• Animals arguably lack the creative aspect of human language

• However, humans are inferior to animals in certain communicative respects (i.e. smell, colour coding etc.)

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Creativity vs. ConstraintsInfiniteness vs. Finiteness

• Our freedom in using language creatively is not unlimited! There are a number of rules or constraints that operate in any given language to restrict our creativity:

e.g. a jail (noun) to jail (verb)a prison (noun) *to prison (verb)to imprison *to imjail

• We rarely know these rules and mechanisms. They are usually subconscious. Just as we don’t consciously know the rules and mechanisms of walking.

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Linguistic Competence

• Our subconscious knowledge of how to form and interpret sounds, words and sentences in our native language.

a. Native speakers know what constitutes a contrastive speech sound in their language, and can produce / perceive it easily. They also which sound combinations are allowed and which ones are not allowed in their language.

b. Native speakers can reliably tell the difference between a word and a non-word.

c. Native speakers know what constitutes a sentence and a non-sentence, i.e. grammatical vs. ungrammatical sentence

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Linguistic Competence: Examples

a. Sounds: prasp, flib, traf vs. *psapr, *bfli, *ftra; [] as in think and [] as in the;

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1365353836237246497

b. Words: ungrammatical *ingrammatical*uncompetent incompetent

c. Sentences:What he wanted was a new laptop.*What he thought was a new laptop.I expect them to do well in this course*I expect to do well in this course them.

=> As native speakers of at least one language, we have strong intuitions about the sounds, words and sentences of that language.

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Competence vs. Performance

• Although our subconscious knowledge of our language can be considered perfect, we do occasionally make performance errors. These include slips of tongue, hesitations, false starts, stutters, Freudian slips etc.:

1) I would like to have boney and hutter for breakfast.

2) I want to buy… am… sell my car.

3) I want to k…(ill)… am…pet your dog

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Competence vs.

Performance

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Performance errors versus other ungrammatical utterances

1) I would like to have boney and hutter for breakfast. 2) I would like to see this book interesting. => (1) is a performance error and can be produced by a

native speaker; (2) is very unlikely to be produced by a native speaker. It could be uttered by an L2 (second language) speaker whose L1 (first language) allows this word order. While (1) is a performance error in English, (2) is an ungrammatical utterance showing that the person who produced it does not have the linguistic competence of an English native speaker.

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Linguistic Competence = Grammar of a language

• Linguists use the term grammar in a different way from what people typically think of a grammar. Linguists use the term grammar to refer to the mental system that allows humans to form and interpret the sounds, words and sentences of their native language.

• The grammar of a language is the linguistic competence that its speakers possess subconsciously.

• Linguists are interested in describing and explaining this system. They focus on uncovering the rules and constraints that guide our production and interpretation of sounds, words and sentences.

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Components of Grammar:

• Typically, linguists break down the grammar into the following components:– Phonetics (speech sounds)– Phonology (patterning of speech sounds)– Morphology (word formation)– Syntax (sentence formation)– Semantics (interpretation)

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Descriptive vs. Prescriptive Grammar

• Descriptive grammar aims to describe the way language works.

• Prescriptive grammar ‘prescribes’ or ‘legislates’ language, i.e. it says how language should work, and uses labels such as ‘good’ or ‘correct’ vs. ‘bad’ or ‘incorrect’

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Examples• Prescriptive grammar claims that double negation

(1), ‘ain’t’ (2), ending a sentence with a preposition (3), splitting an infinitive (4), etc. is bad English:

1) I don’t have nothing.2) This ain’t gonna happen.3) This is the girl that I went to the movies with.4) I can easily eat five chocolate bars.-However, this is a matter of taste, arbitrary judgement,

linguistic prejudice, politics, social stratification.-Some of these forms may have special meaning /

function.-Sometimes following prescriptive rules may force us to

produce ridiculous utterances: e.g. This is something up with which I will not put.

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Prescriptivism

• Many of these prescriptive rules in English were created by 18th century grammarians, who tried to determine which forms are preferable often based on Latin grammar.

• Prescriptivism is elitist in nature because it stigmatizes certain utterances declaring them as bad, and labels the people who use them ‘uneducated’

• Prescriptivism labels certain varieties / dialects of a language incorrect or inferior

• Arbitrary / prescriptivist attitudes lead people to call certain languages primitive, ugly-sounding, certain grammars underdeveloped etc.

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Prescriptivism

• Many countries have language academies which are often the source of prescriptivist rules.

• Prescriptivism often fails because it goes against language innovation and language change, which are natural language phenomena.

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Descriptivism

• Linguists are interested in how language is and not in how language should be.

• They are equally interested in all varieties of a language and in all languages

• They consider all languages to be equally developed and sophisticated

• They welcome language innovation and change as an interesting phenomenon whose mechanisms need to be investigated

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Is prescriptivism all bad?

• Prescriptivism can be useful in small doses

• It is also unavoidable in certain situations

Example: language standardisation; education; foreign language instruction; national language planning, literacy, etc.