Theorists- CLA

Theorists- CLA

Noam Chomsky- stated that children are born with an innate knowledge of language when they are born and learning of their native language is at high speed when hearing it from others (Plato believed it too).

This links to children over regularising and putting grammar into utterances when they are not needed. Chomsky is one of the most famous theorists on child language acquisition and his theories were based on his own intuitions about English and not actually studied on real children.

Chomsky created the LAD - Language Acquisition Device

1. Baby already knows about linguistic rules, as they are born with an innate knowledge of language.

2. Baby hears examples of his/ her native language

3. The linguistic rules help Baby make estimations and presumptions about the language it is hearing.

4. From these estimations and presumption Baby works out grammatical sets of rules. As more language is heard the grammar becomes more and more like adults.

Skinner- B.F. Skinner bases his theory of children acquiring language through behaviourism. Skinner states that all behaviour is conditioned through:

Positive Reinforcement – Rewards, repetitions, following through of requests and demands

Negative Reinforcement – Punishment, ignoring, denial of wants

This happens again and again until the behaviour is learned and becomes natural and automatic. So, babies imitate their parents/carers and are either reprimanded or praised according to their accuracy. Skinner believes that biology plays almost no part in the way children learn language.

Piaget- Piaget's theory on children learning language is mainly focused around “cognitive development,” meaning language is controlled by the development of thinking. If a baby can use sentences involving phrases such as, "more than", "less than" it is obvious that the concepts of "more than" must have been grasped, before the child uses the phrase in an utterance.

Put simply, until the child thinks of a concept, they cannot vocalise it and the higher their thinking the more they vocalise.

Bruner- Bruner created and argued for the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS). Bruner states through LASS that parent often use books and images to develop their child’s naming abilities and their ability to get involved in conversation.

1- Gaining attention- drawing the babies attention to a picture

2- Query- asking the baby to identify the picture

3- Label- telling the baby what the object is

4- Feedback- responding to the babies utterances

This is also called SCAFFOLDING, where the child is supported in their learning of language by carers and once they have learnt it, the support is taken away.

Berko and Brown - found that a child who referred to a plastic inflatable fish as a ‘fis’ substituting the ‘s’ sound for the ‘sh’ sound, couldn’t link an adult saying ‘fis’ as the same object (only responded to adult saying ‘fish’).

Jean Aitchison -came up with stages of lexical development

1- Labelling – Linking words to objects to which they refer, understanding labels

2- Packaging – Exploring labels and where they can apply, over/underextension occurs in order to gain meanings.

Halliday -is just the functions of child language. The most commonly used is instrumental and regulatory, which are learnt, along with interactional and personal, at a young age. Representational is used by 6-8+ year olds.

David Crystal-  Children learn language through copying and imitating others. This is how children develop regional accents. David Crystal has the theory that children learn language in five stages, which aren’t clearly defined and some tie in with each other.Crystal believes that language acquisition is not just about producing sounds, but also about being able to perceive sounds and understand the meaning of utterances that people make.

· He says that babies respond to different types of sounds by being able to distinguish between different voices. Before the babies are 1 day old they can tell which is their mother’s voice to someone else’s voice. As well as contrasts in intonation and rhythm.

The babies also show signs of comprehension between 2 and 4 months. They do this by responding to different adult tones of voice such as angry or soothing. Between 6 and 9 months, the child learns to recognise different utterances in situations for example ‘clap hands’ or ‘say bye-bye’.Towards the end of the first years, the children show a sign of verbal learning whether it is names of people or objects.

Therefore knowing the meaning of at least 20 words by the end of the first year before even uttering a word.  Overall Crystal’s theory was that children learn in amorphous stages by trial and error to successfully learn the language. They learn in stages of grammar, different types of questioning e.g. intonation and recognising the rhythms of voices.

 

 

 

 

 

What are the main reasons for language change?

1. What are the main reasons for language change?

The main reasons for language change could be for various reasons; all languages change over time, and vary from different countries. They may change as a result of social or political pressures, such as invasion, colonisation and immigration. New vocabulary is required for the latest inventions, such as transport, domestic appliances and industrial equipment, or for sporting, entertainment and leisure pursuits.

Reasons for language change:

Transport and communication: transport links to advances in technology, as words are created to describe new modes of transport and communication, increasing number of text language.

Trade, work and urbanisation: focus on agriculture to industry has maintained some agricultural terminology in an urban context.

Globalisation/travel:  communication with other countries has led to us borrowing some terms from other languages and cultures, particularly brand names and foods.

Science and technology: technology has given us a great number of new terms as we name new inventions, meanings have also been broadened.

Politics: the rise and fall of British Empire led to foreign words entering our language. High political change led to the use of French words and spellings.

2.What are the ways in which language changes?

Lexical changes are the study of lexical changes forms the diachronic portion of the science of onomasiology. The on-going influx of new words in the English language helps make it a rich field for investigation into language change, despite the difficulty of defining precisely and accurately the vocabulary available to speakers of English. Throughout its history English has not only borrowed words from other languages but has re-combined and recycled them to create new meanings, whilst losing some old words.

Phonetic and phonological changes- Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken. Phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially different patterns of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds in different positions in words.

Semantic changes- Semantic changes are shifts in meaning of the existing words. They include:

· pejoration, in which a term acquires a negative association

·amelioration, in which a term acquires a positive association

·widening, in which a term acquires a broader meaning

·narrowing, in which a term acquires a narrower meaning

Syntactic change- Syntactic change is the evolution of the syntactic structure of a natural language.  Over time, syntactic change is the greatest modifier of a particular language. Massive changes may occur both in syntax and vocabulary and are attributable to either creolization or relexification.

3.What are the key influential factors on the development of English as accessible to all?

The first key influential factor on the development of English, would be the development of the printing press, the development of printing, like the development of writing itself, had profound effects on human societies and knowledge. "Print culture" refers to the cultural products of the printing transformation. The actual printing press was typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press are widely regarded as among the most influential events in human history, revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe the world they live in, and ushering in the period of modernity.
 

William Caxton printing press was the first English man to bring this from Germany and it was to standardise the English language and translate, 1746. Caxton affiliated himself with the household of Margaret, the duchess of Burgundy, sister of the English king Edward IV. She became one of his most important patrons and encouraged him with his translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' from French to English. Caxton's own translation of 'The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye' was the first book printed in the English language.

In 1476 Caxton returned to London and established a press at Westminster, the first printing press in England. Amongst the books he printed were Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', Gower's 'Confession Amantis' and Malory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur'. He printed more than 100 books in his lifetime, books which were known for their craftsmanship and careful editing. He was the translator of many of the books he published, using his knowledge of French, Latin and Dutch.

4.What is the difference between a prescriptive and descriptive attitude to language use? 

A descriptive approach to language takes the view that language is a phenomenon that can be studied scientifically. Such an approach takes as its evidence all aspects of language use but, given the vast amount of data, most linguists concentrate on particular varieties of a language. 

The prescriptive approach to language, on the other hand, takes the view that there is an idealized form of a language to the use of which we all should aspire. Such an approach is often taken by those with little knowledge of how language works and little professional training in its study and it is often based on social rather than linguistic considerations.

5.What did Johnson think were the problems with his dictionary? Are these problems still evident in dictionaries today?

Johnson's dictionary was made when etymology was largely based on guesswork. His Classical leanings led him to prefer spellings that pointed to Latin or Greek sources, "While his lack of sound scholarship prevented him from detecting their frequent errors". For example, he preferred the spelling ache over ake as he wrongly thought it came from the Greek achos. Some of his spelling choices were also inconsistent: "while retaining the Latin p in receipt he left it out of deceit; he spelled deign one way and disdain another; he spelled uphill but downhil, muckhill but dunghil, instill but distil, inthrall but disenthrall.

6. What is lingua Franca and to what extent was/is English one?

English as a lingua franca is the use of the English language "as a common means of communication for speakers of different first languages". ELF is also "defined functionally by its use in intercultural communication rather than formally by its reference to native-speaker norms" whereas English as a foreign language aims at meeting native speaker norms and gives prominence to native speaker cultural aspects.

7. What are the prestigious forms of English now (overt and covert)?

Prestige influences whether a language variety is considered a language or a dialect. In discussing definitions of language, Dell Hymes wrote that "sometimes two communities are said to have the same, or different, languages on the grounds of mutual intelligibility, or lack thereof", but alone, this definition is often insufficient. Different language varieties in an area exist along a dialect continuum, and moving geographically often means a change in the local variety. This continuum means that despite the fact that standard German and standard Dutch are not mutually intelligible; the speech of people living near the border between Germany and the Netherlands will more closely resemble that of their neighbours across the border than the standard languages of their respective home countries.

8. How has politically correct language and the sapir-whorf hypothesis influenced modern English usages?

The Political Correctness movement is an intellectual effort to use language to allow and encourage social progress.  It has suffered from a great deal of ridicule and scorn, and it has also been confused by many.

The theoretical foundation of the PC movement is this: language creates categories for thought, and words can create either opportunities or boundaries.  The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is a widely accepted part of this theory.  All of language is a construct that attempts to signify abstract meaning, and any construct will be lacking.  The language we use affects not just the messages we communicate, but the fundamental ways that we think and act.  The problem arises when the linguistic constructs we use influence our way of thinking in negative ways.  These negative influences from language can be called politically incorrect.

9.Find three examples of obsolete English grammar that you can make references to in the exam?

Inflection is the name for the extra letter or letters added to nouns, verbs and adjectives in their different grammatical forms. Nouns are inflected in the plural, verbs are inflected in the various tenses, and adjectives are inflected in the comparative/superlative.
tense

complexety of syntax

10.Find three features of modern punctuation that take advantage of a lessening of prescriptive?

 

11.Find three neologisms from the past five years?

Science and technology:

·         black hole (1968)

·         meme (1976)

·         grok (1961) coined by Robert A. Heinlein

·         prion (1982)

·         beetle bank (early 1990s)

Science fiction:

·         hyperspace (1934)

·         waldo (1942)

·         Dyson sphere (circa 1960)

·         ansible (1966)

·         phaser (1966)

Politics: Category: Political neologisms

·         carpetbagging (19th century)

·         Gerrymandering (1812)

·         Dixiecrat (1948)

12.Do an internet search to find an article that interests you on language uses. Find a key quote to memorise. How does that writer communicate their ideas?

 

 

13.Read at least one chapter from a book from a library about language change; identify how the attitudes expressed in It are a product of when it was written?

 

 

 

 

14.What does gender theory reveal about English use through the ages?

 

Terminology

·         8am – Expressive interaction

·         10am – Referential

·         5.30pm -Transactional exchange

·         Phatic utterances- are short greetings or exchanges that show that we are being polite or that we want to begin a conversation. They don't contain much meaning in themselves – but as indicators of our feelings and intentions, they are very important. These featured in each conversation shown on the previous screen – but they differed in type.

·         Interactional exchange- These kinds of exchanges are primarily social. They allow us to share experiences with those around us and help us to develop our relationships.

·         expressive utterances

·         Referential utterances communicate facts, such as the passing on of information in the classroom, like in this snippet of Jean speaking to her English class about language change

·         Transactional exchanges- are to serve a particular, usually practical, purpose – often involving goods or services. Here is another example - a short transcript of an exchange between two people in a jeweller's shop – C=customer A=shop assistant

·         Permanence- When you have a normal conversation it's not usually recorded – so it remains only in the memory of yourself and those who heard it.

·         Expressing feelings- When we talk, we use facial expressions, different tones of voice and body language to convey our feelings. Whereas writing relies on expressive words, on punctuation and graphological features to try to convey feelings.

·         A moment in time- When you talk to someone, you do this during a particular time period – another way of expressing this is by saying that it is ‘temporally bound'.

·         Context- In addition to being temporally bound, speech is also ‘context bound'. That is, it takes place in a particular situation with all the participants aware of who is talking to whom about what.

·         unplanned speech- the register is informal, there's a lot of interaction, there are a number of deictic expressions and there are interruptions and overlaps

·         Planned talk is almost always written down first with the intention of being spoken later.

·         Rhetorical/Rhetorical question- A persuasive variety of language (speech and writing) often used in the public/political arena.

·         Hyperbole- Extravagant exaggeration. For example consider the following piece of football commentary: ‘...he kicked the ball so hard he knocked it into the middle of next week’.

·         Listing-

·         Emphasising-

·         Metaphors-
 

·         Register- A particular kind of speech. We often change our register many times during the course of a day depending on which we are speaking to and the situation. This is known as register switching.

·         Non-fluency features- Features which demonstrate that speech is spontaneous rather than planned such as hesitation, repetition, fillers.

·         Fillers- Fillers are words like ‘umm’, ‘erm’, ‘kind of’. They are used by speakers to ‘fill in’ pauses until they are able to articulate what they wish to say next.

·         Unvoiced pauses- silent pause in speech.

·         Deictic- deictic expression cannot be understood unless the context of the utterance is known. Examples are ‘here’ and ‘there’.

·         Overlap- Where two or more speakers speak simultaneously.

·         Non-fluency features- Features which demonstrate that speech is spontaneous rather than planned such as hesitation, repetition, fillers.

·         Colloquial- Characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation.

·         Adjacency- Two utterances that follow on from one another in a logical sequence. E.g. question and answer.

·         Adjacency pair- Two utterances that follow on from one another in a logical sequence. E.g. question and answer.

·         Insertion sequence- Where the original conversation is suspended for a short while because of an interruption from another source.

·         Repairs- A correction of a mistake made in speech – by the person speaking or another participant.

·         Back-channel- Feedback noises or brief utterances from a listener, showing the speaker that they are listening.

·         Chaining- Description the linking of adjacency pairs in a conversation.

·         Alliteration- Use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable. Often used in persuasive language like that of advertising or politics.

·         Collective noun- Collective nouns refer to groups of things such as ‘family’, ‘herd’ and ‘flock’.

·         Complex sentence- The subjective or personal part of lexical meaning – which may include individual emotional associations.

·         Compound sentence- A sentence made up of two or more clauses, where there is one main clause and the other clause, or clauses are dependent upon it.

·         Concrete noun- Concrete nouns are things that we can name such as people, places or things – ‘Robert’, ‘Sheffield’, ‘Mars bar’.

·         Jargon- Specialised technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject.

·       Verbs- are words of action. This includes straightforward actions such as ‘walk’, ‘eat’, ‘sleep’ and less obvious actions such as states of mind. In a sentence, a verb will usually tell you what the noun is doing.

Theories:

Grices Maxim The cooperative principle (CLA)

A linguist called H.P.Grice developed the idea that there are 4 maxims for successful conversation:

·         The maxim of quantity.

·         Say just the right amount for the situation.

·         The maxim of relevance.

·         What you say should be relevant to the topic being discussed.

·         The maxim of manner.

·         You should speak in a clear, orderly way.

·         The maxim of quality.

·         What you say should be truthful.

Robin Lakoff in the 1970s-

Lakoff was one of the first serious linguists to look into the social implications of the differences in men and women’s use of speech. She analysed the links between language, gender and power in her novel ‘Language and women’s place’, where she questions who holds the power and how they use it. Lakoff argued that language is fundamental to gender inequality and it could contribute to the lack of women’s power in two areas- Language used about women and the language used by women.  Lakoff claimed that there were certain features of women’s language that gave the impression women are weaker and less certain than men are. Women’s language was distinguished in a number of ways including

·         Hedging- uncertainty and lack of authority e.g. ‘sort of’

·         2.Super polite forms – ‘If you don’t mine please may you..’

·         3.Hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation- e.g. women avoid ‘ain’t’ or double negatives

·         4.Tag questions – show that women want approval from their utterances e.g. ‘I’m coming with you, all right?’

·         5.Speaking in italics – women use exaggerated intonation or stress for emphasis, expresses uncertainty e.g. ‘I am very frustrated with you’

·         6.Empty adjectives approval- Lakoff claims that if a man uses these terms he appears more feminine as it damages his masculine prestige e.g. ‘divine, lovely, adorable, delightful and sweetie’

·         7.Use of implication- Lakoff claimed women use this because they do not feel the authority to give orders e.g. ‘it’s cold in here, isn’t it’ instead of ‘shut the window’

·         8.Special lexicon- Lakoff states that such words are trivial and evidence of the fact that women have been allowed control over unimportant things e.g. purple of blue women would say ‘lilac’ or ‘violet’

·         9.Question intonations in declarative statements- women raise the pitch of their voice at the end of statements expressing uncertainty e.g. ‘Dinner’s in half an hour?’

·         10.  Sense of humour lacking- Lakoff argued that women don’t joke as much or understand jokes.

·         11.  Speak less frequently – men speak more often than women, proves women to be less certain of themselves.

·         12.  Indirect speech- ‘Wow, I’m so thirsty’ instead of asking for a drink.

·         13.  Avoid coarse language of expletives

·         14.  Apologies- ‘I’m sorry, but I think that… ’

 

Brown & Levinson in the 1980s-