~.eyV\. ~ ~..

{ai}'~'1p~f'
T-
J

.f.~':";"
".rfV{e, H9.~SJ
-.~.'..-~
~. 1Á,,"~ p,'fh :Motr-~'4 ~ 0'0 .J!rrYMo&ahor>.&--
~~ ; eo/ ~
...

Aduocp- i-e:
~/

:I, 5~: fuJ::" ~/19?r. '

" ;;;

File 1.4 What Do Vou Know

() When Vou Know a /
Language?
As a speaker of English, you know a great deal about your language, but suppose someone were to
ask you to put all that knowledge down into a textbook to be used to teach English to others. You
would soon find out that although you know perfectly well how to speak English, you are not con-
sciously aware of most of that knowledge. Linguists are interested in this "hidden" knowledge, whieh
they call1inguistic competence. In this course we will be examining (among otherthings) the elements
of linguistie eompetenee-that is, what you know when you know a language. •.
But if linguistie competenee isn't available to eonseious thought, how ean ~e find out what
this~.eompetenee is like? We can observe speakers' linguistie performance and draw conclusions about
the knowledge that underlies it. You can think of linguistic competenee as being a person's petential
to speak a language, and his ar her linguistie performanee as the realization of that potential. Compare
it with riding a bicycle. You can have the ability to ride a bike even when you' re not using that ability
and even though you probably aren't fully aware of all the eomplex motor tasks and feats of balance
and timing that are involved. When you get on a bike and go, that's bicyeling performanee.
Now suppose you're riding along, and you hit a bump and fali off. That doesn't mean you're
not a corriperent cyclist, even though your performance was impaired. Maybe you just weren't paying
, attention to where you were going, or a squirrel ran in front of your tire, ar it was dark and you
)1 couldn't see well. Linguistie performanee is quite similar; speech usually contains Iots of mistakes and
hesitations, but that doesn't mean that the eompetenee underlying that speech is flawed. Since compe-
tence ean't be observed directly, linguists use linguistic performance as a basis for drawing conclu-
o •

sions about what competence must be like. However, they try to disregard performanee factors (the
inevitable speeeh errors, ineomplete utteranees, and so on) and foeus on consistent pattems in their
study of linguistie competence. .
So what are some of the things you know about your language? Here is a brief survey.

Phonetics
•...
Part of your linguistic competence has to do with your knowledge of the sounds of your language.
You know how to produee them though you may have never had to really think about the mechanics
of doing 50, Imagine, for instance, that you are trying to describe to someone else how the first sound
in the word' ihe is pronouneed (the, by the way, contains only two sounds). Or suppose you had to ex-
plain the diHerenees between the vowels in the words bat, beai, and boot. Youhave probably been pro-
ducing these sounds for years withaut having to think twiee about them. When you attempt to leam
another language, you become acutely aware that other languages have sounds that English does not
have-for example, French r, French ar Spanish p, the German ü and o vowels, the ch of German
(which has more than a single pronuneiation), or the clieks of some languages of África,such as Xhosa
and Zulu.

))8

- •• --
 .-i

"

'f
Wlzat Do You Knoto When You Know a Language?

Phonology
-, File 1.4

~ Not only ean yau produce and perceive the sounds of your language, yau knaw how these sounds

1~
~,
work together as a system. For instance, you know what sequenees of sounds are possible in different
positions. In wards like ptomaine ar Ftolemy English speakers usually omit the p, because pt is nat a
cambinatian that ean aeeur at the beginning of English words. There is nothing inherently difficult
J. about this cluster, hawever; it oeeurs non-initially in many English words, sueh as apt, captive, and
l:
~ tapped, and some languages (such as Greek) do allow pt clusters to aeeur ward-initially.
1>
An even more dramatie demanstration of yaur inherent knawledge of possíble saund se-
f quenees appears when yau consider Jumbles and Scrambles from the newspapers. (These are aetually
eoncemed with unserambling letters, not sounds, but the same principles apply.) For example, gisnt
has five letters. There are 5! (5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120)possible arrangements of these letters, When you do
a [umble, hawever, you rarely eansider many of the possibilities: yau've probably a1ready grouped n
and g as ng, put the one vowel somewhere in themiddle, and put s and t tagether in st. Yau don't even
think of beginning words with ng, gt, ar gs or ending them with gnt ar tn, ar even gn [this does oeeur,
but it's rare and pranauneed as n). Your inherent knowledge of what is a possible sequenee of sounds
, in the English language enables you to eliminate these possibilities.
i\.....J
Your knawledge of phonology also allows you to make substifutions for uníamiliar sounds.
Consider the sounds diseussed earlier that are foreign to an English speaker. When we try to pro-
nounce words containing sueh sounds, we usually replaee them with saunds from our own language.
For instanee, English speakers often pronounce the German name Bach with a final k sound and re-
place the ü in German grün 'green' with the same vowel as in English moon. Or English speakers may
ignore differences that are important in other languages but not in English, sueh as the tones in Thai
and the Chinese languages.

Morphology
'v
,) For the most part, speech eonsists of a eontinuous stream of sound with few pauses between words.
Speakers, however, have little trouble breaking utteranees down into the words that make them up.
Thus an English speaker ean easily analyze (a) as containing the sequenee of words in (b), and a Welsh
speaker ean just as easily break (e) down into (d) (which means the same thing as (bj].

(a) Ihavetogohomeearlytoday.
(b) I have to gohome early today.
(c) Rhaidimifyndadre'ngynnarheddiw.
(d) Rhaid i mi fynd adre'n gynnar heddiw.

Vou also know how ta break individual words down into smaller parts that have a meaning or
some other function, and yau know howto create words by combining these smaller parts. For in-
stance, how many parts are there to the words desk, oranges, and unbelievability? Can you produee an
example af a word you've never heard or read before? You can certainly understand newly eomposed
words-for example, uncoffeelike. As a speaker of some language, you know which sueh combinations
are possible and which ones aren't. Compare baka: with the nonword "erbake, ar nicely with *bookly (the
"*" is used to mark that something is ungrammatieal-in this case, that it is not a possíble ward). What
is wrong with these starred words?

:j) 9
 1

Syntax
I Introductíon
T
I
I
!

') You can reeognize well-formed-that is, grammatical-sentenees:

(a) "You up pick at o'clock will eight.

(b) *1will picks you up at eight o' clock.
(e) I will piek you up at eight o'cloek.
(d) At eight oclock, I will piek you up.

Sentences (a) and (b) are ungrammatical; (a) is just nonsense and (b) violates the morphological condi-
tion imposed by modals that their verb complements appear in "bare"form. Sentences '(e) and (d) are
grammatieal, and they are also syntaetically related to each other. Why is (d) grammatical but (e) not?

(e) "You up at,Iwillpickeighto'cloek.

There is an important difference between the grammaticality of a sentenee (whether it is struc-

turally well-formed) and semantieacceptability (whether it makes sense). Belcr~, (f) is strueturally
well-formed (compare it with the structurally parallel sentenee in (gj), but semantically odd.

(f) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

(g) Contented little cats purr loudly.

Semantics

Part of yaur linguistic eompetenee has to do with your ability to determine the meaning of sentences.
Your competenee also allows you to determine when a sentence has more than one meaning. Consider
" ) the following ambiguous sentences; what are the different meanings eaeh one ean have?

(a) I like chocolate cakes and pies.

(b) 1'11 meet you at the bank.
(e) Visiting relatives can be dreadful.
(d) I saw her duck.

You also know when different sentences mean the same thing.

(e) [ohn is an unmarried male.

(f) [ohn is a bachelor.
(g) The ear bumped the truck.
(h) The truck was bumped by the caro

Above, (e) and (f) are synonymaus sentences, as are (g) and (h). In addition, (g) and (h) are syntacti-
cally related (one ís the passiva ot the other).

Pragmatics \..

Your understanding of the meaning of sentences and larger utteranees also involves an understanding
of how the context of those utteranees influences their meaning. For instance, suppose you're a stu-
dent in a classroom; there's a lot of noise out in the hall, and the instructor says to you, "Can you dose

!J
10

•
. . ~'. ,l/l<, ,,'
- -- . --- - .-_.-._---~---- -- - ...

-.' •
 -
',',
/'

,-;;,"
)f. ...

~
~.'~" , ..
. . What Do You Know When You Know a Language? File 1.4

I
the door?" Taken quite literally, this is an inquiry about your door-closing abilitíes, but you would
probably not even think of ta.king the question in that way, Instead, you would understand it as a re-
quest that you dose the doar.
~ As a speaker of a language, you subscribe to unspoken conventions that enable you to use and
interpret language correctly, though you may have never consciously become aware of these "rules."
You also know how to use language to do things-to perform what are called speech acts. In the ex-
ample above, your instructor performed the act of requesting you to elose the door. Think about the
many different ways you could use Ianguage to perform the act of, for example, finding out from
someone what time it is, requesting information fram someone, orgiving someone a waming.

Styles of Speech

You also understand the contexts or situations in which different styles of language may be used. Sup-
pose, for instance, you are explaining what it is you plan to do after college (a question most students
are relentlessly subjected to). In what ways would your answer be different if you were taIking to your
roornrnate, to your parents, or to a prospective employer at a job interviejv? Speech styIes can vary in
pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax, among other things. (Who are "OU more líkely to use a sen-
tence like this one with? With whom is ihere a greater likelihood that one wil/ employ a sentence cf this genre?)
You are also prabably quite aware that not ali speakers of your language talk in exactly the
same way. Everyone speaks a dialect, and dialects can vary in subtle ar striking ways. You can often
draw conclusions about where a speaker is from, and you may make assumptions about their ethnic
background or socioeconomic class based on the way they talk. Justified ar not, most people have
opinions about their own speech and that of others; though they may not realize it, these opinions are
strangly influenced by nonlinguistic factors.

:, ))

'0»
11