Language and Linguistics

Language and Linguistics • This section of the course is about language ... the vehicle for holding and transmitting culture • We will cover the origins of human language; the structure of language; historical linguistics; sociolinguistics; and the history of writing.

Language origins • Evidence for the evolution of language comes from anatomy – comparative anatomy of modern humans and chimps and comparative anatomy of hominids through time – and from primate sign language, experiments in tool making, and comparative linguistics. • The capacity for language, like the capacity for culture, was part of biological evolution.

Evidence for the evolution of language comes from anatomy – comparative anatomy of modern humans and chimps and comparative anatomy of hominids through time – and from primate sign language, experiments in tool making, and comparative linguistics.

We do not know much about the details of language evolution but we do know that the capacity for language, like the capacity for culture, was part of biological evolution. • There have not been any hominids on Earth except for H. sapiens for 40,000 years. That is probably how long it has been since the currently observable human capacity for language has been part of our repertoire.

There are technologically primitive people on Earth – hunters and gatherers who never took part in the Neolithic revolution, much less the preindustrial state revolution or the industrial revolution or the post-industrial revolution now underway. • But there are no primitive people on Earth. All humans have the same capacity for acquiring a language and all human languages ever known are capable of transmitting any culture, even the most technologically complex.

The evolution of language and the development of the human hand and the ability to make tools are probably all related. • The voice box and neurological complexity have all evolved. • We know from endocranial casts that the area of the brain devoted to speech began developing as early as H. habilis.

Speech and handedness • The speech area of the brain is adjacent to the area devoted to the control of the human hand. • The makers of Oldowan tools were mostly right handed. • Chimps can make stone tools – they don’t do that in the wild – but when they do in experiments in captivity, they do not show any preference for right- or left handedness(Stanley Ambrose, Science 2001). • William Haviland points out that handedness is associated with lateralization of the brain, as is language.

Hypoglossal canal • By half a million years ago, in H. erectus, we see a major increase in the size of the hypoglossal canal – which could accommodate larger nerves for controlling the tongue. • By the time we get to Neandertals, the hypoglossal canal is the same size as it is in fully modern humans (though this is controversial)

Hyoid bone • The hyoid bone: U-shaped bone at the base of the tongue that supports the tongue muscles • In Neanderthals, the hyoid shows that the larynx was as developed as that in modern humans • And the thorax had expanded to the same size as that of modern humans: breath control required for continual speech.

Washoe and other chimps • Experiments with chimps and other apes show they are capable of much more than we thought, in terms of language. • Chimps do not have the physical apparatus for human speech, but Beatrice and Allan Gardner taught Washoe, a female chimp, 160 signs in Ameslan.

Generalizing signs • Washoe moved beyond the signs and generalized them – and combined them. • She learned “open” for one door, and then used it to ask for other doors to be opened • She asked for refrigerators to be opened and pointed to open drawers and briefcases.

Washoe and Lucy (who was trained by Roger Fouts) learned the sign for feces and generalized it to mean dirty. • Lucy used the term as an expletive when she got mad at Fouts for not giving her something. • Lucy invented “cry hurt food” – three signs in Ameslan – to talk about radishes and “candy fruit” to talk about watermelons. Chimps and other great apes achieve the linguistic capacity of a 2–3 year old human.

Comparative linguistics and language origins • Brent Berlin and Paul Kay studied 110 languages and found seven stages in the development of color terms. • All languages have at least two terms, white and black, or color and lack of color. • When languages acquire a third term, it is always red. • When languages acquire a fourth term, it is either green or yellow.

Berlin and Kay’s study • At five terms, green or yellow enters, depending on which one entered at stage IV. • At 6 terms, blue enters, and at 7 terms, brown enters. • At the final stage of 8 or more terms, purple, pink, orange, grey or combinations of these terms enter the lexicon. Moreover, color lexicons become more complex as societies become more complex.

Brown and Witkowski’s study • Cecil Brown and Stanley Witkowski replicated Berlin and Kay’s work using plants and animals. • At the first stage of lexical complexity for organisms, languages have a word for plant. • Next they distinguish trees from all other plants. • Then grerb enters the lexicon –grass and/or herb.

Then bush enters, and then grass, and the vine. • In the animal kingdom, the simplest lexicons distinguish animals from plants. • Then fish enter the lexicon; then bird; then snake; then wug (worm and bug); and finally, mammal.

Complexity of the lexicon • But complexity of the lexicon for organisms is very plastic, as comparisons between urban and primitive peoples shows. • People in small-scale societies can name from 400-800 plants. • In urban areas, this is 40-80 and they recognize even fewer, as John Gatewood showed in his research on loose talk.

Pidgins and creoles • Recent studies of Pidgins and Creoles also shed light on the evolution of language. • Pidgin languages are always second languages. • They develop when speakers of different languages try to communicate, often for purposes of trade. • The lexicon usually comes from one language, and the grammar from the other.

Creole languages develop from pidgins, but as people develop native capacity in a pidgin, the structure changes. • Hawaii is a good case. In the late 19th century, Filipinos, Puerto-Ricans, Anglo-Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and American Blacks all came to work on the plantations there.

Bickerton’s study • Derek Bickerton studied Hawaiian Creole in 1975 when it was a fully developed language. • Compared the structural properties of Hawaiian Creole to other creoles. • Found similarity in the use of particles for modifying verb roots to produce tense, and similarities in the use of singular, plural and neutral number markers.

Bickerton suggests that the similarities across creoles are because of a genetic substrate in humans. • This substrate produces basic structural properties in languages at the early stage of development. • Noam Chomsky referred to as the biological basis of the capacity for language acquisition.

Language complexity and evolution • Some people are studying the properties of child languages across the world to test whether this is true. • If it is, then the theory would be that the more child-like a language, the easier it is to learn – and the more like early language it must be. • But languages are getting simpler –English and modern German from early German, Spanish, Italian and French from Latin. • So the whole picture is not yet clear.

Children’s language acquisition • 12 - 13 months name objects • 18 – 20 months one-word sentences • 18 – 24 months two-word sentences

The experiment at Washington State University on language origins.

Structure of language • Immediate constituents approach – Leonard Bloomfield • Transformational grammar approach – Noam Chomsky

Chomsky’s observation • The IC approach doesn’t account for the fact that humans can learn languages or for the fact that languages are generative • From a finite number of rules operating on a finite number of words, we can encode and decode an infinite number of well-formed sentences.

Transformational-generative grammar • TG grammar makes it possible to understand language play • It makes understandable the fact that sentences can have many meanings – because they are similar surface representations of different roots. • Flying planes can be dangerous • I don’t like John’s cooking

Four parts of grammar • Phonology • Morphology • Syntax • Semantics • The earliest part that we acquire is the phonology – and it appears to be the most difficult part of a language to acquire after childhood

Writing is not the same as language • As we look at grammar, the first thing to remember is that writing is not the same as language. • Language is an ideal concept, like race, and only exists in the surface representations. • Speech and writing are different surface representations of language, and writing is not a better representation than speech.

English phonology • English has 46 phonemes and many allophones • We discover the phonemes of a language by looking for short, minimal pairs, like pig/big in English to isolate distinctive features • Here we see that voicing is the distinctive feature because p and b are both bilabial stops, but only one is voiced • In English, we have stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, and liquids.

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Stops, or plosives, are made by forming the mouth and tongue in a particular way and forcing the air to stop temporarily on the way out of the mouth during speech. • The letters p, t, and k represent the three common voiceless stops in English. • The p sound is a bilabial stop • The t sound is an apico-dental stop • The k sound is a velar stop

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Voiced stops • Each voiceless stop has its voiced counterpart in English, so be have • p, t, k and b, d, and g • Note the meaningful differences between the words ten and den, pig and big, cut and gut (curl/girl) • The difference is the single, distinctive feature of voicing

Allophones • Many sound differences are not phonemic, but are allophones • Recall the concept of an allele – an alternative form of a gene • The t sound has several allophones in English • Word initial, before a vowel, the t sound is heavily aspirated • Put your hand up to your mouth and say “torrid tango”

Say “itty bitty” – the t in the middle of each word has no aspiration. Word medially and intervocalically, the t sound is unaspirated. • Native speakers of English find it hard to make a word-initial, prevocalic, unaspirated t – like the t in “patter.” • Native speakers of Spanish use this sound incorrectly, word initially and prevocalically, in English – Spanish simply has no aspirated t.

Affricates • The word “saturate” has an affricate in it for many dialects of American English • An affricate is a combination of a stop and a fricative, a t and a sh, in this case • One of the allophones of t is ch – when followed by the glide sound y and the vowel sound u – as in satch-yur-ate • Some people say matoor, leaving out the the glide before the u, and thus converting the phoneme t to its prevocalic aspirated allophone

Dialect allophones • British dialects of English don’t have the ch allophone for t at all • They say matyoor, separating the glide and the u vowel and adopting the prevocalic aspirated allophone for t

English phonology • The phonology of the grammar comprises the rules for the sounds of the language – which sounds can be made, and how the sounds can occur in various positions in words. • We have 46 phonemes in American English, including 11 vowels in most dialects of American English. • Sleek hawk – high-front to low-back vowels

Front Central Back High i u I U Mid e b o ] Low æ a

The ten vowels of English i see o sew v sit U put e set u ooze æ cat b sofa a hot ] saw

Many Americans have nine, rather than ten vowels. • cot and caught • marry, merry, Mary • There are only six squiggles to represent the ten vowels, plus four diphthongs: say, toy, cow, my

The Kissinger effect • Why take you through these details of phonology? To show you how much you have to learn in order to become a native speaker of a language. • No one has a better vocabulary or a better command of the syntax and the semantics of English than Henry Kissinger does. • But Kissinger came to the U.S. when he was 15 years old, by which time, his phonology was locked into German.

Morphology • Morphology comprises the rules of the grammar for constructing meaningful chunks of sounds. • A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. • Bound and unbound morphemes. • -un is a bound morpheme with many allomorphs – illegal, immaterial, inactive, ignoble

Past tense and plural nouns in English • Plural s z ez • Past t d ed • Note that the e in ez and in ed is a shwa Ə • part parts, bag bags, rose roses • slip slipped, bag bagged, want wanted

Sociolinguistics • Language and gender • The use of honorifics and hedging in speech • Some language, like Japanese, have quite strong rules about how men and women should speak.

Gendered speech in Japanese yamada ga musuko to syokuzi o tanosinda yamada son dinner enjoyed yamada-san ga musuko-san to o-syokuzi o tanosim-are-ta yamada-hon son-hon hon-dinner enjoyed-hon Both sentences mean "Yamada enjoyed dinner with his son." Bonvillain, Nancy. 2000. Language, culture, and communication: the meaning of messages. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall, 2000.

Women in the U.S. use question mode for declarative statements as part of a softening, or hedging speech register. • Men also use softening modes, but in different situations. • It remains to be seen whether the amount of softening differs between men and women.

Language and Linguistics