11/11/2020

Last week

■ Language is a cognitive property of humans , i.e. it

is species–specific
■ Language is a faculty of the human mind
Concepts of modern grammar ☀ a window onto the human mind
■ Language cannot be defined (merely) as a means
LECTURE 2 of communication
THE LANGUAGE ■ + the displacement property
FACULTY (II)

Today The language faculty ….

“Languages are all filled with rules we all follow

without knowing why.”

 The language faculty cont. (1) a red big balloon vs. a big red balloon

(2) That he left surprised me.

vs.
He left surprised me.

Language is rule-governed
What is language?
6

(3) Copilul pe care am cunoscut.

(4) Ion a cunoscut pe nimeni.

Language is rule-governed
(5) a reface, a revedea, a resustine, a rebea

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Language is rule-governed
7 Language is rule-governed
(6) *Copilul pe care am cunoscut.
Copilul pe care l-am cunoscut
(7) *Ion a cunoscut pe nimeni.
Ion nu a cunoscut pe nimeni.
(8) a reface, a revedea, a resustine, a rebea
a reface, a revedea, a resustine, a *rebea
Language is rule-governed
Task . Listen again to the same story. Answer the
question in (10):
(10) When did the boy say how he hurt himself?
(i) When he fell off the tree.
(ii)While taking a bath
Language is rule-governed
11
• Language = a system of rules, specific to humans
• we have tacit knowledge of the rules of our
language
• rules are internal to our mind
“People don’t think when they speak, they just
speak.” (Aronoff)
11/11/2020
Task . Listen to the following story. Answer the question
in (9):
(9) When did the boy say he hurt himself?
(i) When he fell off the tree.
(ii) While taking a bath.
Language is rule-governed
Task . Listen again to the same story. Answer the
question in (10):
(10) When did the boy say how he hurt himself?
(i)When he fell off the tree
(ii)While taking a bath
Task
(11) Sunglasses traumatize to likes that water by
perplexed usually is tinnitus with ameoba an.
(12) An amoeba with tinnitus is usually perplexed by
water that likes to traumatize sunglasses.
(13) A cat with dental disease is rarely treated by a vet
who is unable to cure it.
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 Why do we agree?
“Every speaker of every language has a store of
linguistic information in their minds that allows
them to create and to understand new sentences.
Part of that store is a kind of mental dictionary. It
grows over our lives, and sometimes shrinks as we
forget words. It is a finite list of the basic bits of
our language. But that’s not enough. We also need
something that will allow us to combine words to
express ourselves, and to understand those
combinations when we hear them.”
 Why do we agree?
“Linguists call this the mental grammar. It is what is
responsible for distinguishing between the first
example and the latter two. As every speaker grows up,
they learn words, but they also develop an ability that
allows them to put words together to make sentences
of their languages, to understand sentences, and to
judge whether certain sentences are unremarkable or
odd.”
(Adger 2019:8)
Why do we agree?
Mental dictionary/
Words
Rules/Grammar
11/11/2020
 Why do we agree?
“Every speaker of every language has a store of
linguistic information in their minds that allows
them to create and to understand new sentences.
Part of that store is a kind of mental dictionary. It
grows over our lives, and sometimes shrinks as we
forget words. It is a finite list of the basic bits of our
language. But that’s not enough. We also need
something that will allow us to combine words to
express ourselves, and to understand those
combinations when we hear them.”
 Why do we agree?
“Linguists call this the mental grammar. It is what is
responsible for distinguishing between the first
example and the latter two. As every speaker grows up,
they learn words, but they also develop an ability that
allows them to put words together to make sentences
of their languages, to understand sentences, and to
judge whether certain sentences are unremarkable or
odd.”
(Adger 2019:8)
Why do we agree?
 The general rules of our language(s) are
stored in our minds
mental grammar
we have tacit knowledge of rules
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…and a distinction Language is creative

19 20

 Prescriptive rules: they tell people how they should

speak according to some standard
(14) omul *(pe) care l-am cunoscut
(15) whom (*who) have you met?
• Descriptive rules: describe the way in which people
actually speak
they can offer an insight into how the mind uses
language
• This rule-governed system allows us to create and
understand an infinite number of novel sentences
• Each language: about 40 sounds and a limited
number of words BUT one can produce an infinite
number of sentences
 language is creative

Language is creative
21 22

( 16) John told me that Sue said that her mother told we use a finite number of items to create a potentially
her that Bob had asked .... infinite number of sentences

HOW?

The core property that allows for infinite creativity is < we possess an internalized grammar
recursion, i.e. the ability to put a phrase into yet a
larger phrase , ad infinitum = tacit knowledge of language

So far... Task. Pinker 3.

23

Language
= a rule-governed system, which allows infinite
combinations of symbols

The normal use of language is innovative and
potentially infinite in scope

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What is language?
 it’s important not to confuse language with written
language
e.g. spoken language is found in all human cultures
throughout history whereas writing was invented a
very small number of times in human history,
about 5,000 years ago.
One more important distinction
27
 knowledge of (any particular) language:
a system of rules (a grammar) internal to each
individual = internally represented in the brain
= I(nternalized)-Language
 Task
29
“In one sense, English is a procedure for making
sentences. This is what we implicitly mean when
we say of someone that he knows English. We
cannot mean by this that he has in mind a list of
all possible English sentences. We must mean
instead that he can follow the recipe for
producing (and understanding) English
sentences. Chomsky […] calls this sense of
language “I-language.” (Baker 2002)
11/11/2020
What is language?
 language vs. proper grammar
 descriptive grammar - how people speak
 prescriptive grammar - how people ought to
speak according to some standard
 Task
28
“In one sense, English is a procedure for making
sentences. This is what we implicitly mean when
we say of someone that he knows English. We
cannot mean by this that he has in mind a list of
all possible English sentences. We must mean
instead that he can follow the recipe for
producing (and understanding) English
sentences. Chomsky […] calls this sense of
language “I-language.” (Baker 2002)
One more important
30 distinction
E(xternalized) language
< the totality of utterances that can be made in a
speech community (Bloomfield 1933)
< the actual use of language in concrete situations
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 Task
31
[…] Alternatively, one could be thinking of English
as a collection of actual sentences. That might be
what we implicitly have in mind when we say that
they speak English. By this we mean that many of
the sentences that come out of their mouths are
examples of the English language. Chomsky calls
this sense of language “E-language”, [...] looking at
examples of language as they exist external to the
minds of people who speak the language.” (Baker
2002: 54)
33
 the study of I-language, i.e. the aim is to uncover the
internalised linguistic system of native speakers
…and then to generalize from the grammars of
particular I-languages to all possible human
languages
A possible human language
The differences between human languages are
trivial compared to the differences between human
languages and other animal communication
systems (Gleitman)
e.g. relying on the order of words to convey the
meaning of your thought or changing the ending of
words and then shuffling them around
11/11/2020
 Task
32
[…] Alternatively, one could be thinking of English
as a collection of actual sentences. That might be
what we implicitly have in mind when we say that
they speak English. By this we mean that many of
the sentences that come out of their mouths are
examples of the English language. Chomsky calls
this sense of language “E-language”, [...] looking at
examples of language as they exist external to the
minds of people who speak the language.” (Baker
2002: 54)
The goal of linguistics
34
T he goal of linguistics: to understand the human
language faculty, instantiated in individual
minds/brains
o to identify what it is that speakers know about their
language
o what exactly enables them to acquire language, to use
and understand the language
o how language is represented in the mind /brain
“ What is a possible human language?”
A possible human language
36
“Not only do they all use words and phrases, and
comparable phonological processes and basically
identical semantic analyses, but in fact, once you
get down to analyzing what’s structurally possible
and impossible in all these languages, what you
find are essentially the same processes. So much
that it’s reasonable to conclude that we all speak
Human language – just Human, for short – with
mere dialectal variations among ourselves.”
(Uriagereka 1998)
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A possible human language
“However different languages may seem on the
surface, underneath they seem to be cut out of the
same pattern.” (Slobin)
Languages can be traced to a common mould:
Universal Grammar (UG)
UG - the initial state of the language faculty
= genetic factor
The innateness hypothesis: arguments
39
 there is a huge discrepancy between the primary
linguistic data (PLD) and what children end up
knowing
 the poverty of the stimulus argument
41
 some parents do NOT correct any errors
 parents rarely challenge the grammatical mistakes
which children make
What do they usually correct?
= violations of truth /propriety
= possibly pronunciation
Children don’t understand the point of correction!
11/11/2020
The innateness hypothesis
 we can all acquire language
 language is species-specific
 language is uniform across the species
 it is plausible to assume that the ability to acquire
language is innate
the course of language acquisition is determined by
an innate language faculty
The innateness hypothesis: arguments
40
 Parents do not teach their children how to speak
 Parental correction is neither frequent enough nor
distinctive enough
i.e. correction does not occur with sufficient frequency
or regularity in the input to be considered as essential
for learning.
 the no negative evidence argument: we acquire
language in the absence of correction
42
 Child: Nobody don't like me.
 Mother: No, say "nobody likes me".
 Child: Nobody don't like me.
 ...
 (eight repetitions of this dialogue)
 ...
 Mother: No, now listen carefully; say "nobody likes
me".
Child: Oh! Nobody don't likes me.
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Further evidence Further evidence

43 44

 babies can discriminate sounds before the age of 6 Jusczyk & Thompson (1978)
months (!)  Subjects: 2-month-old infants

e.g. they can tell the difference between
/g/ and /k/ = voiced vs. voiceless
/b/ and /g/ = place of articulation
/d/ and /n/ = manner of articulation
 Aim: see if they can detect the difference between 2
contrasting stop consonants in sequences of two
syllables (i) in initial position; (ii) in medial position
 Method: high amplitude sucking/non-nutritive
sucking
e.g. {bada} then {gada}: increase in the sucking rate

Further evidence Further evidence

45 46

 method: conditioned head turn Part 2: contrasts from Hindi and Thompson Salish
(a Native American language) unavailable in
English
 Domain: capacity to discriminate native and non-
native phonemes at 6-8, 8-10 and 10-12 months
 Results:
 at 6-8 m. the infants could discriminate all of the
 English children:
phonemes
Part 1: /b/ - /d/ contrast discrimation
 at 10-12: the infants were able to discriminate
Results: all infants were able to make the contrast
only the English consonants.
discrimination

Further evidence The innateness hypothesis

47 48

 the 12-month-old human has developed the
capacity to categorize only those phonemes
which are in its native language (in Ruben &
Schwartz 1999)
•
• Is input immaterial to language acquisition?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…
Based on a system of computations, the child’s
language faculty sets up a particular language,
according to the data it is presented with

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Summing up So far….
50

■ Language is a cognitive property of humans

■ Language is a faculty of the human mind
UG = the genetic factor of language acquisition
= a “language acquisition device”
■ Language is a rule-governed system
■ Knowledge of these rules: tacit
■ Language is creative (< recursion) Next week: What is the stuff that UG is made of?
■ Language vs. written language
■ Language vs. prescriptive grammar
■ Language is innate