Knowledge of Language

1. Knowledge of Language January 19, 2012

2. Mission Objectives • Wrap up Prescriptivism ~ Descriptivism • Try to figure out how language can be creative. • The previous problems with prescriptivism: • Confusion about application of prescriptive rules • (they’re not natural) • Hypercorrection • Standards can shift over time • Prescriptive rules form a poor understanding of natural language.

3. Non-Standard Sentences • How do you feel about the following sentences? • I’m done my homework. • I borrowed him some money. • My car needs washed. • All I do anymore is work. • Mary said that she wanted to come with. • If someone had invited me, I would have went to the party. • Note: the grammaticality of these sentences can vary from group to group, or speaker to speaker. • (In a sense, linguistics can be a “personal science”.)

4. “a” prefixing, part 1 a. The man likes sailing. b. The man went sailing. Correct answer: (b) (57-1) a. William thinks fishing is silly. b. William goes fishing every Sunday. Correct answer: (b) (56-2) Rule: [a-] form cannot be a noun.

5. “a” prefixing, part 2 a. The woman was coming down the stairs. b. The movie was shocking. Correct answer: (a) (53-5) a. The movie was fascinating. b. The movie kept jumping up and down. Correct answer: (b) (52-6) Rule: [a-] form cannot be an adjective.

6. “a” prefixing, part 3 a. He makes money by building houses. b. He makes money building houses. Correct answer: (b) (55-3) a. Sally got sick cooking chicken. b. Sally got sick from cooking chicken. Correct answer: (a) (50-8) Rule: [a-] form cannot be preceded by a preposition.

7. “a” prefixing, part 4 • a. Sam was following the trail. b. Sam was discovering the cave. Correct answer: (a) (57-1) • a. The man was hollering at the hunters. b. The man was recalling what happened that night. Correct answer: (a) (55-3) Rule: first syllable of [a-] form must be stressed. Note: “The man was a-tellin’ what happened that night.” Also: Al-freakin’-berta • Lastly: 44 people got all 8 correct.

8. Descriptive Benefits • Language tends to operate in patterns, even if they are non-standard. • Important: Appalachian English speakers are not just speaking English with mistakes. • Descriptive linguistics enables us to understand how those patterns work. • History of economics analogy.

9. To Be Fair • Standards are useful because they provide a single form of the language to teach to non-native speakers. • They help establish uniformity in the written language. • They can help clear up confusions. • for instance: supposably • They also help to distinguish those who have mastered the arbitrary rules from those who haven’t. • (for better or worse) • Otherwise: • They are not useful for (scientific) linguistic analysis.

10. Previous Quick Write

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12. Previous Quick Write

13. Check it out! • Try your hand at interpreting “Prairie Dog-ese”: • http://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/132650631/new-language-discovered-prairiedogese

14. Linguistic Creativity (again) • One of the crucial design features of language was creativity (or productivity). • Charles Hockett: • “Language users can create and understand completely novel messages.” • “In a language, new messages are freely coined by blending, analogizing from, or transforming old ones. This says that every language has grammatical patterning.” • “In a language, either new or old elements are freely assigned new semantic loads by circumstances and context. This says that in every language new idioms constantly come into existence.” • How is it possible for human beings to do this?

15. To Infinity and Beyond • Last week, we found out that honeybees can produce a variety of different “dance messages”. • = “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 0 • degree angle with the sun.” • = “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 45 • degree angle with the sun.”

16. To Infinity and Beyond • The number of different messages the bees can produce is limited only by the number of angles they can differentiate: • “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 1 degree angle with the sun.” • “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 2 degree angle with the sun.” • …………… • “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 359 degree angle with the sun.” • Q: Can the bees dance at angles they haven’t seen before? • If so, how?

17. To Infinity and Beyond • A: yes, if they dance according to rule. •  Their dances have to fit into a meaningful pattern. • The rule = “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at X degree angle with the sun.” •  The bees have to know the rule. • Knowing the rule enables them to exhibit “creativity”, in a sense.

18. Different Infinities • What kind of infinities exist in human language? • Note that we can say (translations of) everything the bees can say: • Fly at a 1 degree angle with the sun. • Fly at a 2 degree angle with the sun. • …………… • Fly at a 359 degree angle with the sun. • • We can get as detailed as we want to about it, too: • Fly at a 45 degree, 13 minute, 27.6685 second angle with the sun.

19. Infinity + 1 • In addition to the infinity of things the bees can say, we can say other things, too. • Examples (borrowed from Ray Jackendoff): • A numeral is not a numbskull. • A numeral is not a nun. • A numeral is not a nunnery. • …………… • A nun is not a nursery. • …………… • An oboe is not an octopus.

20. Linguistic Infinities • These are uninteresting, but novel sentences. • In order to understand them, you must know the rule by which they are constructed. • Rule: • [Sentence] = A X is not a Y. • Point: • Knowledge of rules is more abstract than just knowledge of sentences.

21. Language Model #1 • In this model, all we “know” are the individual sentences we can use in language. • (no rules) • This is a good enough model to describe the vervets’ (or prairie dogs’) “language”. A nun is not a nursery. Fly at a 45 degree angle with the sun. I like linguistics.

22. Language Model #2 • In this model, we “know” all the rules we can use to combine words to form sentences in a language. • This is a good enough model to describe the bees’ “language”. • Is it good enough for human language? A X is not a Y. X at a Y degree angle with the Z. X likes Y.

23. What do you think? • No. There are even bigger infinities. • Check out these sentences: • Bill thinks that Beth is a genius. • Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius. • Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius. • Jean knows that Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius. • ad infinitum... • Some “real” examples:

24. How many rules do we need? • X verbs that Y is a Z. • W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z. • V verbs that W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z. • and so on… • Q: Can we store all these patterns in our heads? • A: No, because no matter how many we store, there is always a longer one… • So how do we know all of these sentences?

25. Language is Recursive • Recursive = involving a procedure that can refer to itself. • In language, rules for producing sentences can be used in rules for producing sentences. • Humans have to know rules of the following kind: • [Sentence] = X verbs that [Sentence]

26. Language Model #3 • Jackendoff: “We know not just patterns of words, but patterns of patterns.” • This is how we can be infinitely creative with a finite set of rules. S = X likes Y. S = A X is not a Y. S = X verbs that S.

27. Check it out • Included among the infinite number of things we can say is a lot of complete nonsense. • Examples (from Chomsky and Lewis Carroll): • Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. • I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to compose someday. • ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves • Did gyre and gimble in the wabe… • Check out the postmodernism generator: • http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

28. What’s the difference? • Nonsense sentences work because they fit in with the patterns formed by the sentences that actually do make sense. • (and that we use every day) • Compare with the following: • Large green lizards sleep soundly. • I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to perform someday. • ‘Twas evening, and the slimy toads • Did squirm and wiggle in the cage…

29. What’s the difference? (part 2) • But the following sentences don’t work at all: • Green sleep ideas furiously colorless. • I’m memorizing the perform of the score I sonata to hope someday. • Brillig and, slithy and the toves • Wabe gimble in the gyre and did… • Note: just because we can say an infinite number of things, we can’t just say anything…

30. Technical Terminology • The set of rules that we know for creating sentences in a language is the grammar of that language. • The rules of grammar that we know are very abstract. (patterns of patterns) • Strings of words which do not adhere to these rules are ungrammatical. • Q: If these rules are so abstract, how did we figure out what they are? • How do we learn language?

31. Beneath the Surface • Note: we learn the language that we hear as we grow up, but… • We never hear the rules. • We can only learn from examples. • Our knowledge of language is sub-conscious. • Analogy: driving a car. • This knowledge is difficult to characterize. • (It is not explicitly taught to us.)

32. How is that possible? • Theory: language acquisition is so hard that we can’t do it by just observing other language users. • (we need help) • Claim: every human being has a “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD) • LAD = innate knowledge of language. • The LAD helps us learn language as we grow up. • Interacts with experience.

33. Predictions • The LAD theory makes some important predictions. • Universal Grammar (UG) • All languages should share certain features in common • …due to the workings of LAD. • A basic example: • All languages have nouns and verbs. 2. Poverty of the Stimulus • There should be properties of language that people “know” without ever having experienced them.

34. A More Complicated Example • How do you turn the following sentence into a yes/no question? • The boy who is sleeping is dreaming of a new car. • = Is the boy who is sleeping dreaming of a new car? • Not: *Is the boy who sleeping is dreaming of a new car? • “The boy” is linked to the second “is”. • Kids understand this connection without ever being taught about the link. • They never form the question the wrong way. • Think: baby turtles crawling towards the ocean.

35. Recursion • Recursion = another universal property of language? • which is unique to humans? • (Noam Chomsky thinks so.) • Remember, recursion = • involving a procedure that can refer to itself. • Ex: an English sentence may consist of: • [Noun] [verbs] that [sentence]. • With this rule, we can make sentences like: • Jean knows that Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius. • Sentences like this could be infinitely long…

36. Limited Infinities • However: there are limitations on how much we can remember. • This means that a sentence like: “I don’t know if Ross suspects that Monika thinks that Chandler hopes that Joey supposably believes that Phoebe heard that…” • couldn’t really go on forever. • Check out another kind of recursion: • The boy scared Mary. • The boy that the dog bit scared Mary. • How about: • The boy that the dog that the cat scratched bit scared Mary. (?!?)

37. Competence vs. Performance • An important distinction: • Linguistic Competence: • What a (native) speaker knows about a language. • Linguistic Performance: • How language is actually used in speech production and comprehension. • Word strings that are ungrammatical violate the rules of linguistic competence. • Other strings are impossible to say (or understand) because of performance limitations.

38. Performance Problems • Note: it is not impossible for native speakers of a language to make mistakes. • Ex.: slips of the tongue. • You have hissed all my mystery lectures. • = You have missed all my history lectures. • My wife made me some banana bed yesterday. • = My wife made me some banana bread yesterday. • Stammering, pauses, hesitations. (George Bush-isms, Barack Obama’s Presidential oath, etc.) • What matters (for grammar) is not what you actually do so much as what you think about what you do.