Iligan Medical Center College

College of Education

MATRIX FOR LEARNERD WITH EDUCATIONAL NEEDS

SURBAN, KATE M.

BSED IN ENGLISH

Submitted to:

MRS. FLOREBEL CALIMBAYAN

ABSTRACT

This article aims to analyze the functioning of the nominal plural in English and in a few

other languages, by systematically showing the limits of the traditional singular/plural

opposition. Some languages have no nominal plural, others have a ternary or even

quaternary system. The definition of the plural may vary from language to language.

English does not see it in the same way as French, for example. Although this article does

not explicitly fall within the framework of cognitive grammar, certain cognitive

implications of the plural and its marking will be considered and certain principles

questioned, in particular that of motivation and the non-arbitrary nature of numbers.

Introduction

My aim in this paper is to examine how plurality functions in English and other languages.

I will start off with an analysis of the singular / plural dichotomy and point out its

limitations. Such a binary system provides an incomplete picture, which requires refining,

if only because some languages have a ternary or even quaternary system or because there

is no strict overlapping between the grammatical singular / plural distinction and the

semantic one.

2Next, the various markings of the plural will come under scrutiny, which will allow me to

point out their cognitive implications, that is, we will see how the plural can be envisaged

from a cognitive point of view in various languages.

3Plurality is not just a question of morpho-syntax or word-endings. In the final section, I

will deal with numerals and what they tell us from a cognitive point of view.

4More generally, this paper will also examine the body-based model championed by

cognitivists and a typically cognitive question that may be asked about number and

numerals: what do they tell us about the way we view our surrounding reality? The

problem of motivation and non-arbitrariness will also be raised, as will the question of

universals: is the singular / plural dichotomy universal? Are singular and plural necessary

categories?

1. The singular / plural dichotomy

1.1. Plurality and non-singularity

5The English word plural comes from the Old French plurel, itself derived from the Late

Latin pluralis, which means “concerning many”. In plural we find the Latin word plus,

which of course means “more”. In other words, the notion of plurality is based on the idea

that when using a plural we mean “more” and probably “more than one”, thus suggesting

that plurality is a relative concept, which is not entirely quantitative and from which degree

is not absent. More precisely, the plural is understood in relation to the singular; it is

“more” relative to the singular, a word which is a cognate of the word single: singular
comes from the Latin singularis, meaning “single”.

6We may infer from this that the notion of plurality is less stable and more vague than that

of singularity, which is not surprising given that plurality encompasses anything from ‘2’ to

infinity. In English, as will be seen later, the plural also encompasses ‘0’. This relative

instability may account for some erratic plural markings that will also be dealt with later.

7The relationship between plural and singular is more complicated than the often

postulated singular vs. plural dichotomy would have us believe.

1.2. The dual, duelling with the plural

8Many languages do not restrict themselves to the two-term system opposing the singular

and the plural and include a third term, called the dual, which is used to refer to two

entities. Some verbs can also have a dual agreement form. In languages that have a dual

form the plural is generally restricted to entities greater than two, although in Ancient

Greek dual forms are optional.

2 Jeanne LaVerne Masayesva, Aspects of Hopi Grammar, thesis MIT, downloadable at

http://dspace.mit.ed (...)

9For example, Hopi distinguishes mima maanat (those girls - dual form) and mima

mamant (those girls – plural form, necessarily more than two girls)2 and Sanskrit also has a

dual (Croft 2003:141).

10There seems to be a tendency for languages to drop the dual as they evolve, in which case

the plural takes over the dual. Conversely, in less developed societies, smaller figures,

especially from ‘1’ to ‘10’, are more central to their culture and it therefore makes more sense

to fully distinguish singularity, duality and plurality. It is useful to recall that some Amazonian

or Aboriginal languages contain few number words. The Andamanese, who live on the

Andaman Islands, a union territory of India, are said to count no higher than ‘2’ (Heine

1997:24). Dixon (1980:107-8) points out that “[t]he one obvious gap in Australian

vocabularies is the lack of any system of numbers”, and notes that most aboriginal languages

only have numbers for ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘several’ and ‘many’.

3 http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/06/counting_in_the_lang.html.

See also Gordon 2004 or Everett 200 (...)

11It would even seem that one Amazonian language, spoken by the Pirahã tribe, has no

number words, not even for ‘1’, which is extremely rare3. It is more common for a language to

have a small quantity of number words, which refer to low numbers, in which case ‘1’, ‘2’ and

‘3’ acquire special status, which justifies all the more the existence of the dual.
12This tendency for languages to drop the dual is evidenced by Slavic languages. The dual was

very common in these languages at the beginning of the second millennium, but only

remnants of this are still to be found in modern Slavic languages, except in Slovene, which has

retained full grammatical use of the dual: ena miza (= one table); dve mizi (= two tables); tri

mize (= three tables).

13The same can be said of Germanic languages insofar as the dual was present in the early

Germanic languages. In Old English, the dual was only present in some pronouns used in
reference to two entities. In other words, there was no dual inflection for nouns.

14Some Old English texts distinguish between wit (= we two) and we (= we more than two),

as in the lyrical poem “The Wife’s Lament” (Marsden 2004:339). The object pronoun and

possessive determiner are also distinguished along these lines: unc [dual] vs us [non-dual]

and uncer [dual] vs ure [non-dual].

1.3. The dual’s days are numbered, in English

15Despite the general tendency for the dual to disappear, remnants of it are found in

contemporary English, although none of these concern noun endings. One such remnant is

the word both, which implies a totality restricted to two items. It can be contrasted with all,

which also expresses totality but applied to a set higher than two: All three decided to go vs

*All two decided to go (OK Both decided to go). This dual word competes with the two, but

that is beside the point. In Romance languages, such as French, a literal translation of all two

is syntactically possible: tous (les) deux.

4 -tween in between is related to two, twain.

16The other remnants are either / neither, whether, between and latter. Whether it is used as

a conjunction or a determiner, either implies a choice between two items: Either you pass or

you fail (only two possibilities exist); You can park on either side of the road (there are only

two possible sides). Whether is a cognate of either. The dual form latter can only compare

two items, unlike the non-dual word last which can only compare more than two items.

Despite its etymology4, the preposition between is not strictly dual as such because it is not

restricted to two (Between us four it’s over 1,000 euros), but it can be contrasted with among,
which is non-dual (*Among us two vs Between us two). The preposition between can be

described as “paucal”, a term which will be dealt with later.

17To the list of anti-dual items (among, all...) may be added the quantifier every, in that it is

not compatible with duality (*every one of my parents /OK every one of my relatives /OK

each of my parents).

18As was suggested before, the use of the dual is “slipping”. This is borne out by the two

constructions the nicer of the two and each other. The dual construction the nicer / bigger /

more intelligent of the two tends to be replaced by the more regular the nicest / biggest /

most intelligent of the two, to the extent that the superlative used for a set of two is no

longer considered as grammatically flawed by some grammarians. Be that as it may, the

construction “the + comparative” could be referred to as a dual superlative in that the nicer of

the two can be construed as a superlative reduced to a set of two items.

5 Some style guides in the United States still advocate this distinction, although Merriam
Webster’s (...)

19Until twenty or thirty years ago, students were taught that each other was the dual

reciprocal pronoun (Luke and the boss were talking to each other) and one another its non-

dual counterpart (The ten women were talking to one another). Even though some teachers

still cling to this distinction they have to face the fact that it is no longer valid. Nowadays,

both each other and one another are used equally for a set of two or a larger set5.

20Even the quantifier a couple of, which typically refers to two items, is sometimes applied to

a slightly larger set of items, as in A couple of people voted against it, where it is more or less

synonymous with a few. Originally it was restricted to a dual use.

21Whether in Old or Modem English, the dual never concerned the number inflection of

nouns.

22Unlike English, contemporary French does not seem to have dual forms. It should be

remembered that the dual was present in all the early Germanic languages and so remnants

are more likely to be present in these languages than in Romance languages.

1.4. Dual, trial, paucal, plural et al.

6 Tolomako is a language of the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian languages. Lihir and

Manam arc langu (...)

23Beyond the three-term system (singular, dual, plural), some languages have developed an

even more complex one with the existence of the trial number, that is, a plural restricted to a
set of three, thus evincing a four-term system: singular, dual, trial and plural. In this case, the

plural is used for reference to four or more items. There does not seem to be a number based

on four items, a “quadral” (see Corbett 2000:26-30). Tolomako, Lihir, Manam and Tok Pisin

(though only in its pronouns) have trial number6. It must be added that the trial is rather

unusual.

24Some languages have a paucal number, which co-exists alongside the singular and the

plural. The paucal is used to refer to some or a few items, usually from ‘3’ to around ‘10’. This
word is a cognate of the noun paucity and both are derived from the Latin paucus, which

means “few”. Manam, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea has a paucal (Lichtenberk

1983:276). The English determiners some or (a) few could be termed “paucal” in theory but

this notion usually refers to the plural marking of the noun.

25The counting system of Russian could be said to include a paucal, even though to the best

of my knowledge this metalinguistic term is not usually applied to Russian. Indeed, ‘1’ is

followed by a noun in the nominative; after ‘2’, ‘3’ and ‘4’ the noun goes into the genitive

singular; all other numbers are followed by the genitive plural. In other words, number

inflection in Russian varies depending on how many referents there are. ‘2’, ‘3’ and ‘4’ are

apart in that, although they do not refer to a singular item, they are followed by a noun in the

singular, but contrary to ‘1’ the noun takes the genitive, so that ‘1 child’, ‘2/3/4 children’, ‘5

children’ read as follows in Russian: ‘1 child’, ‘2/3/4 of child’, ‘5 of children’. It can be seen that

‘2’, ‘3’ and ‘4’ constitute an intermediate category between the singular (‘1’) and the “real”

plural (‘5’ and beyond) and, in a sense, can be considered as a paucal.

7 Bruce Bower, “Numbers Beyond Words”,

http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33300/title/Numbers_bey (...)

26As I mentioned before, only one known language seems not to have numbers, that is, the

Amazonian language spoken by the Pirahã tribe, in which counting is reduced to a three-term

system, i.e. ‘few’, ‘some’, ‘more’7. According to Franck, Everett, Fedorenko and Gibson

(2008:819-824), it is the only known language not to have a word for ‘1’. The notions of

singular, dual, trial, paucal or plural seem totally alien to the speakers of this language.

27Even though one of the aims of this paper is to question the supremacy of the

singular/plural distinction, it must be added that no language has a trial number unless it has

a dual (Croft 2003:50) and no language has a dual unless it has a plural. In other words, the

plural is far more widespread than the dual, let alone the trial.

1.5. Natural number? The cognitive hypothesis

28The singular/plural distinction is undeniably very common but it is not universal. To start

with, some languages do not have it, like Japanese or Malagasy. In Malagasy nouns do not

inflect for number, although pronouns and demonstratives do (Montagne 1931:22).

Furthermore, we have just seen how the distinction is challenged by intermediate categories

like the dual, trial or paucal.

29When the evolution of languages is taken into account, it might even be tempting to say

that a three-term system (singular / dual / plural) would be more “natural” than a two-term

one (singular / plural), because of the seminal role of the body (especially the hands) in the

development of counting. According to many cognitive linguists (see Heine 1997:18-34), the

two hands of the human body provided the conceptual source for lower base numbers. It is
therefore easy to imagine that numbers like 2 or 5 played a central role in the early stages of

counting, a central role that was “naturally” translated into the grammatical marking of the

dual or even the trial or the paucal.

30My hypothesis is that with the evolution of society, dealing with larger numbers became

the norm and the central role of ‘2’ was challenged to the extent that the dual became

extraneous and disappeared in many languages to merge with the plural.

31In languages in which the dual has disappeared, it is possible to view this change as a

simplification of the system to a binary one, that is, singular vs plural, which, again, is neither

universal nor “natural”.

2. Plural inflections

2.1. The fishy plural in grammar books

32Number is not something grammarians of the English language are particularly interested

in, probably because the expression of number in that language seems fairly straightforward.

33Some basic grammar books limit their references to the existence of the plural marker -s, a

marker added to the majority of nouns, and fail to point out that this marker is only one of

the nominal plural markers of the English language, albeit by far the most common. When it

comes to the frequently used noun children, it is treated only as an exception and not as an

“Ν + plural suffix
34”, which makes sense, given the very restricted number of nouns that fall into the “Ν + -en

plural marker” category. Even the plural form children is increasingly challenged by the

regular plural noun kids. The tendency of the English language to make words enter a regular

pattern is at work here too.

35In the best-case scenario, grammarians will list the rather limited number of nouns which,

for historical reasons, are invariable, like most fish names (two fish, three trout) or the well-

known aircraft, sheep, deer, swine and a few others such as bear or buffalo which can inflect
for the plural marker or not. The invariability of many nouns is attributable to the Old English

declensions they belonged to. However, it is difficult to explain why so few nouns retained

their Old English invariability, while the vast majority of Old English invariable nouns (i.e.

invariable in the nominative and accusative plural) became regular, like the nouns word or

thing. This regularisation process of English nouns is partly due to the influence of the French

language during the Middle English period (Stévanovitch 2008:67). Paradoxically, some animal

nouns like trout or salmon (from Old French truite / salmun) borrowed from the French after

1066 are also invariable, probably because they belong to that category of animal nouns that

is so typically invariable, i.e. fish.

8 The use of a singular in He’s six foot tall may be attributed to an adjectival interpretation of

th (...)

36Two nouns are invariable in spoken English but variable in a more standard variety of the

language: pound (I can give you fifty pound / fifty pounds) and foot (He’s six foot / feet tall8).

37The noun head is traditionally invariable when used to count animals: thirty head of oxen.
The animal kingdom (with its fish, hunted animals and head of oxen) is once again

grammatically singled out.

38Grammarians who bother to mention invariable nouns also tend to draw up more or less

exhaustive lists of irregular nouns, some of which can also be regular like cactuses vs cacti or

formulas vs formulae. There are very few native irregular nouns left. The best-known patterns

in the native irregular form is the stem vowel change oo > ee (foot > feet), with boc (Mod.

Engl, book) for example being inflected as bec (Mod. Engl. books), but which only survives in
foot, goose and tooth and the - ouse > -ice change, which is only found in mouse and louse in

modern English, the former being somewhat challenged by mouses, which exists alongside

mice in computer parlance. I will come back to the stem vowel change to point out what it

may teach us from a cognitive point of view.

39The -en plural only survives in oxen, children and brethren. As this latter noun is now

archaic, it could even be argued that this plural morpheme only survives in two nouns. The

noun children actually includes two overt number markers from an etymological point of

view: <r> in this word is the trace of an Old English plural marker, not a highly productive one.

In Old English, the form was cildru, to which the more productive -n plural marker was added,

possibly because <r>marker was no longer felt to be a plural marker. By contrast <r>plural

marker is highly productive in German and remains one of the several plural markers in

modern German (Kind > Kinder; Buch > Bücher). As a result, a plural like *Kinderen could not

be coined in that language.

40Interestingly, there are many more non-native irregular nouns (phenomena, cherubim,

indices...) than native ones.

2.2. Collective nouns: e pluribus unum?

41Still on the subject of number, most grammar books will mention the ambiguous status of

collective nouns, when it comes to the use of a singular or plural verb form. Here again things

are not as clear-cut as the singular / plural distinction would have us believe.

42We all know that collective nouns like government or team take a singular or a plural verb
depending on whether they are conceived as global entities or a set of individuals. This

obtains mainly in British English. In American English, things are clearer: a singular collective

noun takes a singular verb. The following pairs can be contrasted:

It appears the government are selectively choosing to privatise parts of the road network.

[Brit. Engl.]

It appears the government is selectively choosing to privatise parts of the road network. [Am.

Engl, or Brit. Engl.]

I was looking forward to one of those quiet, soothing journeys of the kind that British Rail are

always promising. [Notes from a Small Island, B. Bryson]

I was looking forward to one of those quiet, soothing journeys that British Rail is always

promising. [Am. Engl.]

43National teams are typically plural in British English, but not in American English:
England have failed to reach the World Cup final.

Italy qualify for the Euro.

Who are Aston Villa playing today?

44This plural use of a verb with a singular collective noun is impossible in many languages:

*La France se sont qualifiés vs La France s’est qualifiée.

45The collective noun family stands out in American English, since, unlike its other collective

counterparts, it may be followed by a plural verb, even though the singular seems more usual:

My family have moved to Texas.

9 Things are slightly more complicated with the noun police. Most grammar books consider

that it cann (...)

46To add to this confusion, it may be added that four collective nouns are always plural, in all

varieties of English: people, police9, cattle, vermin, so that they can be considered as

intrinsically plural nouns, even though they are not plural nouns from an etymological point

of view and do not betray any plural features in their morphology. These four nouns are

different from government or family, which are intrinsically singular, in that the latter have a

plural form (governments, families). Conversely, people, police, cattle and vermin do not have

a plural form: the words * cattles or *vermins do not exist. The plural form peoples does exist

but with a different meaning. The word polices does exist but as a verb.
47Collective nouns challenge the apparent clarity and simplicity of the singular / plural

distinction, in that they show that singular nouns do not always behave singularly.

48Furthermore, if some singular collective nouns may take a plural verb, some plural nouns

take a singular verb, as in:

Is the United States going broke?

The Netherlands is a parliamentary monarchy, [sometimes used with a plural verb]

Where is that ten dollars I gave you?

Two and three is [or are] five.

More than one person is going to resign.

There’s people who wouldn’t agree there, [informal]

49This state of things can easily be accounted for (put briefly, unity prevails behind the

apparent plurality) but that would be beyond the scope of this article. What is more, some

nouns that are historically plural can behave like singular nouns, like darts, skittles, customs

or means: Darts is a predominantly British game.

50It is well known that potentially plural nouns used adjectivally are not n umber-inflected,

even with nouns that are always intrinsically plural, i.e. pluralia tantum, like trousers in

trouser-Ø press. Nevertheless, the current tendency is on the contrary to add the plural

marker to nouns used adjectivally as in antiques shop (or antique shop) and drugs problem,
which is replacing drug problem.

51This linguistic phenomenon betrays a discrepancy between the grammatically-motivated

singular and the semantically-motivated plural and further challenges the neatness of the

singular / plural dichotomy.

2.3. The plurality of the plural

52As I mentioned earlier, plural marking in English goes beyond the -(e)s ending, with plural

markers in -Ø (sheep), -e (formulae), -i (cacti), -im (cherubim), -x (tableaux), -en (oxen), stem

vowel change (mice) or more radical change (penny > pence). However, some of these nouns

have a regular plural: formulas, cactuses, cherubs, pennies, tableaus.

53Despite these different markers, the tendency of English since 1066 has been towards the

simplification of its plural system, with -(e)s (and its three different phonetic realizations)

representing the quintessential plural marker, especially when compared with German, where

plural markers are scarcely more frequent than in English but have all remained extremely

productive.

54As said before, the influence of the French language precipitated this simplification process.

In Old French, the -s marker was pronounced. It was originally mainly used for the plural

accusative, the nominative plural being in -Ø: li pere, sing. nom. or pl. nom.; les peres, pl. acc.

(Ο.F. pere =father).

55Many languages have several plural markers, be they native, as in German sg. Mann > pl.

Männer, or borrowed, as in Handy (= mobile in German) > Handys. However, that does not

mean that all languages perceive the plural the same way. For example, the conception of the

plural is more grammatical in English than in French, as can be seen with decimals. In English,

it is the presence of any numeral other than ‘1’ that triggers the plural, as in 1.5 kilometres. In

French a singular noun would be used here: 1,5 kilomètre. More surprisingly, even with

figures below Ί’the plural is used in English: 0.5 kilometres, which is grammatically justified by

‘5’ even though semantically 0.5 should be treated as a singular, as in French 0,5 kilomètre.

10 In the same way the quantifier no is followed by a plural count noun: Mirren has no

children and sa (...)

56The plural is even used with zero: zero degrees Celsius, which can be contrasted with zéro

degré (singular) in French10.

57We thus see two slightly different conceptions of the plural: in English the plural is reserved

for entities other than ‘1’; in French the plural starts with ‘2’.

58It can be argued from this fact that the-s marker cannot be defined just as a plural marker

in English; it is more strictly speaking a non-singular marker used whenever the referent is not

limited to ‘1’. Croft’s more usual definition of the English plural “in English ‘plural’ means

‘more than one’” (2003:141) is therefore questionable.

59The distribution of the singular and plural forms can be represented as follows, using the

“structure of the conceptual number space” devised by Croft (2003:141) as applied to

Sanskrit:

sing. Form

plural form

French

1- l.xxx

2 – 3 – 4 – 5 –....

English

0.-notl, l.-notl 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 –....

60This means that the singular in French goes from 1 to 1.9999...

61In English, the singular is restricted to 1 and does not include 0.9 (which corresponds to

“0.notl”).

62“l.-notl” in this diagram means that 1.07 for instance is followed by a plural noun (1.07

miles) and that 1.1 takes a singular noun (1.1 mile).

2.4. The plural makes its mark

63It is often said that the singular is the least marked of the various number categories: the

dual, trial, paucal, plural (Croft 2003:156). In Indo-European languages we can even say that

the singular is unmarked. We can thus compare book, Bitch [German], livre [French] with

books, Bücher, livres. French provides two exceptions to this generalization, boeufs and oeufs:

the singular of these two nouns is more marked than their plural, as will be seen later, which

is extremely unusual for any language (Croft 2003:89).

64Some singular nouns bear the plural marker because they were plural nouns originally, like

means, customs, darts but that does not mean that the singular is marked in these nouns.

65In Hungarian, a non-Indo-European language, the same phenomenon can be observed: the

singular is the unmarked form to which a plural marker in -(e)k may be added: gyerek (= child)

> gyerekek (= children).

66By contrast the plural is expressed by an overt inflection in Indo-European languages, even

though we know that there are invariable nouns in these languages, like sheep in English or
Messer (knife) in German. This distinction between an unmarked singular noun and a marked

plural noun is often considered to be a universal tendency, despite the fact that in some

languages, like Japanese or Malagasy, nouns are not marked for number. It should be noted

that in some languages both singular and plural are marked, but this is still a matter for

debate, as in Zulu (Doke 1930: 36, quoted in Croft 2003: 88). The singular sometimes has to be

marked when a noun is intrinsically plural in a language, as in a pair of trousers for the

intrinsically plural noun trousers, but this does not invalidate the unmarked nature of the

singular in English.

67The plural may make its mark but it is “no match” for the singular, given that singular noun

phrases far outweigh plural noun phrases. This idea put forward by Greenberg (1966) has led

to another one posited by Croft (2003: 111): “human beings talk more about singleton sets of

entities than plural sets of entities”. In other words, human beings would tend to view the

world as a place in which “singletons” outweigh plural sets.

2.5. Quiet French

68Few people would question the fact that Indo-European languages have a marked plural.

However, this is only partly true of French, which, though it has a visible prototypical plural

marker in -s, no longer has an audible plural marker, unlike all the other Indo-European

languages. Indeed the NPs train rapide (= fast train) and trains rapides (= fast trains) are

pronounced exactly the same way.

69The few nouns that do change in their plural form are nouns ending in -al or -ail: cheval >

chevaux (horse); travail > travaux (work), but not all of them (festival > festivals; portail >
portails). Surprisingly, two nouns drop their final consonant in the plural: boeufs (= oxen) and

oeufs (= eggs) are pronounced as boeu or oeu whereas the -f is sounded in the singular.

70As it is very difficult for most people to dissociate their language from writing, most French

speakers would instinctively deny that their language has simplified its nominal system to the

extent that the plural can be said to be unmarked in contemporary French. That is however

exactly how a linguist would describe French if it was not a written language.

71Remnants of the -s plural, which as I mentioned earlier was pronounced in Old French, are

found in the linking -s before a vowel: trains électriques is pronounced trains-z-électriques in

careful French, with a sounding of the plural marker -s, but trains électriques is also very often

pronounced like the singular NP train électrique.

72Oral French can therefore be described as a language with unmarked plural nouns, with a

few exceptions (chevaux, trains-z-électriques). In other words, the vast majority of French

nouns no longer have overt inflections for the singular and the plural.

73That being said, it could be argued that there is a covert plural marker in oral French,

because arbres in deux arbres (= two trees) is definitely felt to be a plural noun and because

the plural is definitely a grammatical category in French. Also, determiners are often present

to remind us of the plural category (le vs les or un vs des) and the adjective is clearly heard in

its plural form in les beaux arbres, pronounced les beaux-z-arbres: the linking /z/ is not

optional between a plural adjective and a noun that starts with a vowel sound, which adds to

the idea that a French noun in a plural NP is felt to be plural even if the plural marker is not
heard. Hence this notion of covert plural marker to be found in oral French.

74Consequently, French provides a slightly different grammatical scenario from the languages

that have no singular-plural distinction regarding nouns.

2.6. Not stating the obvious, especially in Hungarian

75Mass nouns in many languages are singular in form even if they refer to several countable
referents, which provides evidence that a singular form does not necessarily convey singular

meaning. Famous examples of uncountable nouns are nouns like hair or furniture. In German

the noun Haar (hair) is also used as a non-count noun.

76At the same time hair and furniture do not behave in the same way, in that the latter

cannot be number-inflected (*furnitures) whereas the former may be: Darling, why are there

three blond hairs on your black jacket?

77It is easy to imagine why the referent(s) of the noun hair may be conceptualized as a mass

noun: the hair that grows on the head or body is visualized as a whole rather than as tiny

parts making up a whole as in Romance languages (your hair > tes cheveux [pl.]).

11 Hungarian always treats nouns as mass nouns when they come after numerals or

quantifiers, as in sok (...)

78What is more puzzling with a language like Hungarian is that when the plural meaning of a

noun is obvious then the noun is not number-inflected. Thus after the quantifier sok (= a lot
of) the noun appears in its singular form, even though the referents are numerous: sok gyerek

(= lit. many child) vs *sok gyerekek (gyerekek = children)11.

79The same logic is found with numerals. Nouns are not inflected after numerals irrespective

of the number: két gyerek (lit. two child); *két gyerekek is ungrammatical.

80When referents are identical or very similar, the singular is used too, as with haj (= hair).
From a cognitive point of view, this suggests that similarity is perceived as one, despite the

obvious numerous items involved.

81Furthermore, there is no inflection for number with “natural duality”, i.e., items that

naturally come in twos in nature, like feet, legs or eyes. Such items are always treated as

singular items. In order to refer to only one item of the two, the “half + noun” construction

has to be used, so that the equivalent of one eye is literally “one half-eye”. The cognitive logic

here is that the language does not dissociate what nature provides in pairs. Language has

created some sort of “compact duality” based on the human body, thus providing another

body-based model as advocated by cognitivists.

82At the same time, this natural duality cannot be treated as a dual because Hungarian does

not have dual inflection. These nouns are obviously semantically non-singular but this is not

stated grammatically. Cognitively they are perceived as one, given that “one eye” in

Hungarian translates as “half an eye”.

83This section on number in Hungarian shows that the language stands slightly apart when it

comes to noun inflection insofar as the proportion of singular nouns in Hungarian is even

higher than in other languages, which is partly due to this lack of number agreement between

numerals and nouns or between duality and nouns or between quantifiers and nouns. It also

stands apart in following the principle that what is obviously plural does not need to be

stated grammatically.

2.7. The plural at heart

84In Indo-European languages, the singular is often perceived as the bare form and the plural

as a modified form. However, the modification provided by the plural should not be viewed as

peripheral despite the fact that the plural marker often seems added to the bare form, as in

English: book+s or Spanish: libro+s.

85My contention at this stage is that the plural is not so much added to the noun as an

intrinsic part of it. To prove this point it can be said first that in languages like Italian the plural

marker is not added to the noun but alternates with the singular: mano [masc.] > mani;

donna [fem.] > donne. As said before, in Old French the nominative plural was the same as

the nominative singular and in Old English many nouns were invariable.

86As an intrinsic part of the noun, the plural should be construed as modifying the noun

intrinsically, which accounts for the internal modification of the noun which was prevalent in

Old English as in fot >fet [feet] or boc [book] > bec [books]. This plural marking is still

prevalent in German: Bruder [brother] > Brüder [brothers], even though the internal

modification is often supplemented by a suffix as in Mann [man] > Männer [umlaut + -er
suffix].

87Similarly, the diminutive in German often entails the internal modification of the noun with

an umlaut as in Frau [woman] > Fraülein [young woman / miss]. The diminutive in -lein

modifies intrinsically our perception of the bare noun, in that a Fraülein is not the same as a

Frau, which also explains the internal modification by means of the umlaut.

88In all languages, the number (and probably also the diminutive) is more intrinsic to the

noun than case, if we are to believe Greenberg (1966:95), who postulates the following

universal: ‘Where morphemes of both number and case are present and both follow or both

precede the noun base, the expression of number almost always comes between the noun

base and the expression of case’. This universal obtains of course for Hungarian, as in

gyerekeket (gyerek = child; ek = pl.; et = acc.) or végtagaimat (végtag = limb; i = pl. with

possessives; m=1st pers. sing, poss.; t = acc.).

89In languages in which the determiner is added to the noun as a suffix, the order is “noun +

plural + determiner”, as in Icelandic steinarnir (= the stones < stein + pl. ar + det. nir). This

indicates once more that the plural is more intrinsic to the noun than all other suffixes.

2.8. Distant and close relations

90Greenberg’s universal tends to prove that number modifies the meaning of the noun

intrinsically, from within: the referents are not the same whether you say book or books, if

only because you refer to several items with books and only one with book.
91By contrast, an accusative does not change the semantics of the noun; it just provides the

function of the noun phrase within the sentence.

92The distance between the accusative and the noun base is iconic of this lack of change in

meaning: the accusative marker is most often a suffix, that is, it is added and it always comes

after number.

93Conversely, the proximity between the plural marker and the noun base is iconic of the

internal change in meaning, which sometimes leads to fusion between plural marking and the

noun base: the base itself is altered and changed into a new noun base, as in foot > feet. Even

though French no longer has an overt plural, there still exists a pair in which the plural is

totally different from the singular as in œil [eye] > yeux [eyes].

94Bybee (1985: 24-25) coined the phrase “the iconic distance hypothesis”, whereby the

distance between two morphemes is a reflection of the degree of alteration in meaning. This

hypothesis is supported by the differential between case and number.

3. Numerals

3.1. A cardinal point: numerals and arbitrariness

95The plural is intimately connected with numerals. Linguists have often expressed interest in

numeral systems and especially in cardinal numerals, 1, 2, 3, etc, paying special attention to

the origin of these words.

96Any discussion about cardinal numerals often revolves around the question as to whether

numerals are motivated or not. Are words like ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ arbitrary or not in the languages of

the world?

97Even though Saussure showed that most words are arbitrary, some linguists, especially

cognitivists like Heine (1997:19), qualify the arbitrariness usually attached to the signifier: “I
claim that numeral systems across languages are motivated – that is, they are non-arbitrary.”

98The higher a numeral, the more likely it is to be non-arbitrary. According to Heine, it seems

that no society in the world has developed a totally non-arbitrary word for ‘13’. If the words

three in English or drei in German may seem arbitrary, thirteen or dreizehn are clearly not.

The German word is even more transparent than its English equivalent in that dreizehn can be

broken up into drei (= three) and zehn (= ten). Old English was also more transparent in the

old form for ‘13’, i.e. threotene, which can also be broken up into threo (= 3) and tene (= 10).

In French, the /z/ phoneme found in numerals after ten, from onze (‘11’) to seize (‘16’),

appears to be a contraction of the Latin decem (= ten). The word treize (= 13) can thus be

construed etymologically as “three-ten”.

99The equivalent of thirteen in Hungarian is also totally transparent: tizenhárom clearly

combines tizen (= 10) and három (= 3). Innumerable examples could be quoted from other

languages.

100In most Indo-European languages the apparent arbitrariness of numerals stops at number
‘10’, as seen with onze, douze, treize... In English, the etymology of eleven would have been

lost, had not the language been recorded for several centuries, which bears out what

cognitive linguists say about the non-arbitrariness of numerals. Its etymology is not totally

clear but it seems to hinge on “one”.

101According to the Chambers Etymological Dictionary (1912), eleven comes from Old English

en(d)luf-on, in which <d>is an excrescent, i.e. haphazardly added to the word and -on a dative

plural suffix. So we are left with enluf, i.e. en, which is one variant of one in Old English + luf
(or lif) < tak (= ten) weakened to dak, lik, lip and lif (cf. Gothic ain-lif). This shows that eleven

corresponds to “one-ten”. However Skeat (1993) provides a different etymology for eleven:

endlufon is a cognate of Gothic ainlif, in which ain = one and lif is related to Lithuanian lika,

which means “remaining”. Thus eleven would mean “one remaining” (probably “one left from

ten”, i.e. “one above ten”). It might also be possible to relate lif and leave.

102German elf (‘11’) comes from Old High German einlif which meant “one left”, possibly

“one left once you have counted ten with your fingers”. Only specialists could work out this

type of etymology, which can only be traced for a very tiny proportion of the world’s

languages.

103By comparison, the numeral twelve appears far more transparent: any native speaker

could easily be convinced that twelve is connected to two. More precisely, it can be broken up

into twa + lif The connection between zwei (‘2’) and zwölf (‘12’) in German is even easier to

see and to hear: <zw>is pronounced in the same way in the two words, unlike <tw>in two and

twelve.
104All other numerals, except for hundred and thousand, are easy to deal with in terms of

transparency: it can be easily understood that the suffix -ty in twenty, thirty... is one of the

three ways of expressing ‘10’ in English, alongside ten and teen.

3.2. Size matters

105The transparency of higher numbers is further evidenced by the fact that high numerals
tend to be nouns originally (like Latin cent-um), which have retained some of their nominal

properties (Heine 1997: 22). Thus in French the numeral cent is number-inflected just like an

ordinary noun: trois cents ans (= three hundred years).

106The use of score as a numeral is now archaic, even though it survives in the phrase by the

score and the quantifier scores of: People are resigning by the score·, They’ve received scores

of letters. Eighty replaced four-score long ago. Score is actually a noun, albeit invariable (She

lived to be three score years and ten), which meant “a mark or notch for keeping count”, “the

number twenty, once represented by a larger notch” (Chambers Etymological Dictionary). In

Old Norse the cognate word skor meant both “notch” and “twenty”.

107What is also important to cognitive linguists, in their quest for non-arbitrariness, is the

fact that many numerals are constructed by means of addition, subtraction or multiplication.

Numerals like quatre-vingts (literally “four-twenty”, with the plural marker -s added to vingt)

or quatre-vingt-dix (“four-twenty-ten”) in French are a case in point. The Belgians and Swiss

much prefer the more logical nonante (‘90’), based on the sequence quarante, cinquante,

soixante, but octante or huitante for ‘80’ is less common than quatre-vingts. The origin of
quatre-vingt-dix is, of course, totally transparent but, when used in ordinary conversation,

this numeral is not thought of as meaning “four-twenty-ten” but just ‘90’.

3.3. Pointing fingers (and toes)

12 This is in keeping with Benveniste’s (1971: 45) famous analysis of the linguistic sign as

propounde (...)

108Heine’s contention that no society has developed a totally non-arbitrary word for ‘13’ and
beyond raises the following question: what about smaller numerals? Are they arbitrary or

not? In a Saussurean approach, numerals like one, two, three are considered arbitrary in that

there is nothing intrinsically motivated about the use of these words, other than the fact that

to an English speaker three means intrinsically ‘3’- it is difficult not to closely associate the

signified with the signifier - and that the arbitrariness of the word is not felt in spontaneous

conversation12.

109Heine’s argument is that all numeral systems are non-arbitrary. The reason why we think

the signifiers one, two, three are arbitrary is because of “a gap in our knowledge that remains

to be filled” (1997:19). The implicit idea behind this reasoning is that the origin of small

numerals is not accessible, which leaves room for the non-arbitrariness of numerals or at the

very least for the debatable nature of the posited arbitrariness of numerals. In other words, if

we could go back in time, we could prove that basic numerals are actually motivated, as in

Mamvu, a central African Nilo-Saharan language. They are motivated in that language insofar

as ‘6’ means literally “the hand seizes one”; ‘10’ means “all hands”, ‘11’ means “the foot

seizes one”. Very interestingly, ‘20’ means literally “one whole person” and ‘100’ “five whole

persons”. A whole person can be equated with twenty, in that a whole person normally has

ten fingers and ten toes, i.e. a total of twenty extremities.

110The problem is that even in a language like Mamvu, the numerals ‘1’ to ‘5’ are

etymologically opaque, which leads one to conclude that the lowest numerals are opaque in

all languages but the higher up one goes in numerals the more likely they are to be

transparent and therefore motivated.

111Does opaque mean arbitrary? We are faced with two options here. A Saussurean
approach would of course conclude that opacity is akin to arbitrariness. Heine’s contention is

that opacity just means that a gap in our knowledge needs to be filled. To him, arbitrariness is

open to debate, but it could also be argued that non-arbitrariness is open to debate too, in

that it cannot be proven in the case of the signifiers one, two, three... and their equivalents in

other languages.

112We can only conjecture that the Indo-European equivalents of one, two, three... may have

been motivated but this is impossible to prove.

113Having said that, there might seem to be a connection between ‘1’ and the word finger if

we are to believe Merritt Ruhlen, who, in his highly controversial book The Origin of Language

(1994), claims that *tik was a word that was used both for “one” and “finger” in the

hypothetical original mother tongue.

114The word “opaque”, as used by Heine, is in itself questionable insofar as it implies that we

cannot yet see through something. He explicitly opposes transparent linguistic forms, where

genetic motivation has already been reconstructed, to opaque forms (1997:32). This implies
that the motivation behind these forms is awaiting reconstruction, which can be considered

as a misuse of the word “opaque”.

115Furthermore, Heine’s theoretical position is open to criticism: one may wonder why a

lexeme that was supposedly motivated once, but no longer is, should be regarded as non-

arbitrary now.

3.4. Decimal systems: plenty of body

13 It is of course far more difficult to explain the 12 base number system used in many

languages. Sta (...)

116What seems less debatable in the cognitivist approach to numerals is their relation to the

body. The fact that decimal systems are widespread in the world can probably be accounted

for by the body-part model championed by cognitivists like Heine (1997: 19-24). The body-

part model is also referred to as “mimesis” (or bodily mimesis) in cognitive parlance (Evans

2007). Mimesis involves the ability to use a body part in the expression of a more abstract

notion. It is at work in counting in decimal systems, the source of which is to be found in the

two hands of every human being. It is easy to imagine the importance of hands as a visual aid

when counting and to infer that this visual aid provided the basis of the abstract decimal

systems prevalent in the world13.

117This anatomic characteristic of the human body probably also explains why numerals

beyond ‘10’ are very often etymologically transparent, and as a general rule much more so

than all numerals from ‘1’ to ‘10’.

118Evidence from many languages (Heine 1997: 18-34) suggests that numerals follow a

decimal system conceptually derived from the total sum of fingers and sometimes of fingers

and toes, as in Mamvu (see above). The system exemplified in Mamvu is “widespread in the

languages of the world” (Heine 1997: 20). Stampe (1976: 596) calls it the ‘one-hand, two-

hand, one-foot, whole-man variety’.

119This shows that the decimal system is far from arbitrary but rests on our physical

experience. To Heine, the human hand “provides the most important model for structuring
the numeral system”, which leads him to conclude that “The most common structure of

numeral systems appears to be one in which ‘5’ derives from ‘hand’, ‘10’ from ‘two hands’,

and ‘20’ from either something like ‘hands and feet’ or ‘whole person’.”

120It is easy to see why cognitivists set great store by numerals: they can be used to confirm

that human experience informs language and syntax. This idea lies at the heart of the

cognitive agenda. One aim of cognitive grammar is to link language and other aspects of

human sensor-motor experience. In other words, linguistic knowledge is not to be dissociated

from other types of knowledge.

Conclusion

121The fact that some languages do not have the singular / plural distinction shows that it is

not a necessary category of language. The context is usually quite sufficient to express

singularity or plurality. In the same way, when we use an unmarked plural noun in English, as

in Look at the sheep, the context is sufficient to interpret sheep as referring to one or several

items.
122In many languages the two-term system “singular / plural” is challenged by intermediate

categories, like the dual, even though these intermediate categories have proven less stable

than the singular or plural over time.

123The singular / plural distinction is not watertight: the singular may entail a plural verb and

vice versa. Also what appears plural (morphologically) may be treated as singular
(syntactically) or what was once plural may now be singular and, again, vice versa. Language

is very flexible in dealing with these two notions.

124What seems extremely widespread is the general tendency for each language to have

developed a variety of plural forms. In Hopi, the plural is multifarious. German and English

have several plural markers, although relatively few nouns are irregular in contemporary

English, a language that has undergone a regularization process. By contrast, the general

tendency for the singular is to be stable, i.e. it is often the bare form of the noun.

125The plurality of the plural tends to show that the plural cannot be reduced to a singular

noun with a plural suffix. Cognitively, it is more than that: the plural modifies intrinsically our

perception of the bare noun.

126The plural is not perceived in the same way in languages like English, French or Hungarian.

In English, the plural is really a non-singular rather than a number that starts with, ‘2’. What is

more, each language has its own way of defining what is ‘singular’ or ‘plural’ even with similar

referents, like somebody’s hair or eyes.

127Positing a binary singular / plural system can therefore be seen as an oversimplification. A

plural approach is required.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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NOTES

2 Jeanne LaVerne Masayesva, Aspects of Hopi Grammar, thesis MIT, downloadable at

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/l 721.1/16325

3 http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/06/counting_in_the_lang.html.

See also Gordon 2004 or Everett 2005.

4 -tween in between is related to two, twain.

5 Some style guides in the United States still advocate this distinction, although Merriam

Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1994) quotes Fowler (1926) as saying “the

differentiation is neither of present utility nor based on historical usage; the old distinction of

two as opposed to several was not e[ach], but either, & either other, which formerly existed

beside e[ach] o[ther] & one another would doubtless have survived if its special meaning had

been required”. Footnote suggested by Linda Pillière.

6 Tolomako is a language of the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian languages. Lihir and

Manam arc languages of Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin is a Melanesian English pidgin. Source:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Grammatical-number#Trial

7 Bruce Bower, “Numbers Beyond Words”,

http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33300/title/Numbers_beyond_words

8 The use of a singular in He’s six foot tall may be attributed to an adjectival interpretation of

the noun foot, grammatically interpreted as He’s a six foot tall man.

9 Things are slightly more complicated with the noun police. Most grammar books consider

that it cannot be followed by a singular verb. For instance, the sentence the police is looking...

is crossed out in Swan 2005:517. However there is much debate over the supposed

ungrammaticality of the construction the police is... as in We have no clue what the police is

up to (private conversation).

10 In the same way the quantifier no is followed by a plural count noun: Mirren has no

children and says she has no maternal instinct.

11 Hungarian always treats nouns as mass nouns when they come after numerals or

quantifiers, as in sok gyerek (= lit. many child)· In marked contexts this happens in English too,

as in There is cat all over the driveway (Talmy 1986). The difference is that this construction is

not optional in Hungarian and very unusual in English.

12 This is in keeping with Benveniste’s (1971: 45) famous analysis of the linguistic sign as
propounded in “The Nature of the Linguistic Sign”: “The concept (the “signified”) bæuf is

perforce identical in my consciousness with the sound sequence (the “signifier”) böf. How

could it be otherwise? Together the two are imprinted on my mind, together they evoke each

other under any circumstance. There is such a close symbiosis between them that the concept

of bœuf is like the soul of the sound image böf”.

13 It is of course far more difficult to explain the 12 base number system used in many

languages. Stampe (1976) provides an explanation for the duodecimal system used in Sora, a
Munda language spoken in Eastern India: it is the result of a reanalysis of the decimal system,

with a shift from ‘10’ to ‘12’.

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REFERENCES

Bibliographical reference

Wilfrid Rotge, “Plurality in English and other languages: does it add up?”, Anglophonia/Sigma,

13 (26) | 2009, 101-120.

Electronic reference

Wilfrid Rotge, “Plurality in English and other languages: does it add up?”, Anglophonia/Sigma

[Online], 13 (26) | 2009, Online since 13 December 2016, connection on 19 May 2022. URL:

http://journals.openedition.org/anglophonia/875; DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4000/anglophonia.875

Abstract
 Human language is used for self-expression; however, expression displays different stages.

The consciousness of self and feelings represents the stage immediately prior to the

external, phonetic expression of feelings in the form of sound, i.e., language. Animals such

as dolphins, Eurasian magpies, and chimpanzees live in communities, wherein they assign

themselves roles for group survival and show emotions such as sympathy. When such

animals view their reflection, they recognize themselves and exhibit self-consciousness.

Notably, humans evolved in a quite different environment than that of intelligent animals.

The human environment accommodated the development of interaction, self-expression,

and tool-making as survival became easier with the advancement of tools, shelters, and fire-

making. The need for complex language replaced hyperactivity or impulsiveness, traits

beneficial for simple survival that are currently often defined as attention deficit disorder.

Biologically, the mental capacity for human language can be allocated to only one

anatomical location: the brain; in particular, hominin brains have increased in size in areas

where tool-making and language-processing coincide. The increasing brain size allowed

advanced provisioning and tools and the technological advances during the Palaeolithic era

that built upon the previous evolutionary innovations of bipedalism and hand versatility

allowed the development of human language. Keywords: natural selection; evolutionary

adaptations; bipedalism; hyperactivity; self-consciousness; prefrontal cortex

3 1. Introduction Language is a method of expressing ideas or emotions that are used

and comprehended by a group of people, and sometimes refers to the grammar, syntax, or

order used for its components. Human language includes written symbols, gestures, and

vocalizations; however, it is difficult to state universally that language does not appear in

other animals. Animals are well able to communicate and convey information. In gorillas,

twenty-five distinct vocalizations are dominantly used for group communication. During

travel, sounds recognized as grunts and barks are used to indicate the locations of

individual members of the band (Harcourt et al. 1993). Common chimpanzees largely use
 distance calls to draw attention, signal alarm, and indicate food sources or other

community members (Goodall 1986). Bonobos also communicate primarily through

vocalizations. The methods of communication found in animals are not as complex as those

of humans but are efficient enough to demonstrate the evolutionary value of communally

sharing information. Thus, the question of how human language has evolved from animal

communication has been a topic of discussion for centuries. In 1871, Charles Darwin's

theory of evolution by natural selection shifted the core question of discussion from ‘did

human language evolve?’ to ‘how did human language evolve?’ As a result, there have been
many evolutionary theories concerning language origin. For example, Fitch (2000)

proposed the ‘mother tongue’ hypothesis, explaining that language evolved originally for

communication between mothers and their biological progeny. Ulbæk (1998) argued that

reciprocal altruism and moral regulation were the driving forces behind language. Many of

these theories are compelling; however, the shortage of empirical evidence has led to

4 little agreement regarding the various connections and directionalities of the

hypotheses proposed. 2. Evolution of the complex structure of human language 2.1.

Language and tool use 2.1.1. Brain evolution The evolutionary history of the human brain

primarily reveals a gradual increase in brain size in relation to body size during the

evolutionary path from early primates to ancient hominids and finally to Homo sapiens

(Buckner & Krienen 2013). The early Australopithecus brains were only slightly larger

than those of chimpanzees, but hominin brain size has increased rapidly over the last 2

million years (Zhang 2003), and various studies have demonstrated that hominins have

increasingly devoted energy towards brainpower during evolution (Leonard & Robertson

1992; Navarrete et al. 2011). 2.1.2. Process of brain evolution Bipedalism represents an

essential adaptation of hominin progeny that is considered the major force behind several

skeletal changes shared by all bipedal hominins (Lovejoy 1988). Possible reasons

underlying the evolution of human bipedalism include the freeing of the hands to use and
 carry tools, threat displays, sexual dimorphism in food gathering, and changes in climate

and habitat (from jungle to savannah). However, even with the ability to walk on two legs,

the earliest ape-like hominin ancestors took a long time to ultimately descend to the

ground. The first manmade tools classified as Oldowan appeared millions of years after

hominins settled into

5 terrestrial life. Until then, hominins were not capable of making such sophisticated

tools, although early hominin ancestors such as Australopithecus afarensis or Ardipithecus

were capable of making simpler tools (Panger et al. 2003; Roche et al. 2009). These
unclassified simple tools continued to develop such that the carvings and finishing touches

likely became more distinguishable and more associated with the categorization now used

for Palaeolithic tools (Whiten et al. 2009). Oldowan choppers were created by knapping or

striking a hard stone such as quartz, flint, or obsidian via direct percussion. The flakes that

broke off from the stone would have a naturally sharp edge. Humans subsequently

designed more complex bifacial hand axes and cleavers in the Acheulean tradition that

represented markedly more effective tools for guarding and hunting. Acheulean hand axes

were harder to master owing to the presence of two finely chipped convex surfaces that

intersected at a sharp edge (Yamei et al. 2000). This progress was followed by the

development of efficient Middle Palaeolithic weapons such as spears and awls, which

granted humans even more power (Villa & Lenoir 2009). Mousterian tools mostly used by

Neanderthals involved the Levallois technique (shedding off fragments around the outline

of the flake), which permitted the production of a superior range of shape and size

compared to the Acheulean tools (Binford LR & Binford SR 1966). Along with these

innovations, effective provisioning had long been made possible by free, usable limbs, with

which the males would move around bipedally. Tool-making is considered to have created

an environment that would permit more social interactions by allowing increased

provisioning and protection as well as increased opportunities for interactions and

 observations that led to further advances in tool-making and facilitated the concurrent

evolution of language and tool-making. As hominins evolved to have larger brains

6 and became more intelligent, they were able to engage in effective food gathering,

complex tool use, and fire-making (Flinn et al. 2005). 2.1.3. Benefits of tool and brain

evolution Brain evolution and bipedalism promoted a relatively food-rich environment. For

example, scientists have demonstrated that chimpanzees carry twice as many nuts during

bipedal walking compared with walking on four limbs (Carvalho et al. 2012). Thus, the

effective tool-making enabled by brain evolution and bipedalism would have consumed less
energy as well as enabled the gathering of foods. In addition, versatile tool use enabled vast

protection against predators. Gradually, humans developed technological advancements to

defend against dangerous carnivores. They learned to build primitive shelters and develop

stone tools. Humans also started to hunt rather than simply scavenge and were originally

talented at aimed throwing and clubbing (Young 2003). Initially, humans crafted simple

Oldowan choppers and then designed more complex bifacial hand axes in the Acheulean

era, followed by the development of efficient weapons in the Middle Palaeolithic such as

spears and axes. Finally, the control of fire by hominids presented a pivotal point in

evolution. The practices of fire-making and establishing protected homes near a waterway

or a cavern freed hominin ancestors from the inevitability of being vigilant at all times. Fire

drove away predators and pests, permitted better tool-making, and provided additional

heat to early/pre-humans. Furthermore, by cooking food, the later members of the genus

Homo conserved calories during digestion, as indicated by studies conducted by

Wrangham (2009), which allowed the inclusion of indigestible

7 or toxic plant components such as starch, mature roots, tubers, raw cellulose, thick

stems, enlarged leaves, and seeds in the hominid diet. 2.2. Explaining the origin of human

language Humans, compared to all other non-domesticated animals, do not spend most of

their time communicating for actual survival. Men and women alike normally utilize
 language to converse; humans talk, lecture, or listen to others in social groupings. Some

might believe that this is not necessarily the scenario of people who still lived in primeval

foraging communities. However, the numbers offered by Sahlins (1968) and the subsequent

study by Sackett (1996) established that foragers led egalitarian lives, labouring far fewer

hours and relishing more leisure than standard members of industrial society; yet, a

following study confirmed that they still dined well and enjoyed long lives (Guenevere &

Kaplan 2007). Thus, even among people who maintain hunter-gathering lifestyles, language

is dominantly used for actions not concerned with immediate survival, such as private
conversations, lecturing juniors, or listening to elders. Complex language, overall, is a tool

to direct attention toward human communication and relationships and away from the

diverse sounds of nature, but is for the most part dispensable for scavenging for food or

watching out for natural foes. For humans, more time spent within groups instead of

constantly looking out for predators or continuing the search for food dynamically drove

the development of language. However, the boundaries of the areas of the brain used for

language, cognition, and tool-making are not clearly defined because of individual

variation and the observation that combinations of different regions frequently work

together (Greenfield 1991).

8 2.3. Before human language: hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and aggressiveness The

ancestors of both chimps and humans that apparently possessed ambiguous traits of

humans and chimps evolved in two ways: towards chimpanzees including great

chimpanzees and bonobos, and towards Homo sapiens (Patterson et al. 2006). Studies have

demonstrated that great apes, along with cetaceans, elephants, and corvids, use

vocalizations for group communication (Goodall 1986). In humans, the evolutionary

adaptations that facilitated complex language development after the development of

bipedalism and manual dexterity such as tool use, fire, shelters, and community living also

resulted, on the other hand, in the lack of a need for ‘hyperactivity’; i.e., a loss of
restlessness, attraction to novelty, extreme vigilance, short attention span for a subject, and

impulsiveness, which are alleged animalistic traits that helped our helpless ancestors to

survive. Hartmann (1995) proposed that the condition of attention deficit hyperactivity

disorder (ADHD) presents an advantage under nomadic hunter-gatherer societies. From an

evolutionary perspective, these traits were likely beneficial, providing excellent hunting

skills and a quick response to predators (Adriani et al. 2012). Humans have been hunter-

gatherers from the beginning and throughout 90% of human history, before evolutionary

changes, fire-making, and the countless breakthroughs that occurred in stone-age societies.
As humans developed better innovations and organizational structures to improve their

quality of living, the demand for hyperactivity gradually decreased over a long period

regardless of whether they resided in a gathering or farming society. As noted by Diamond

(1998), the transition in which both farming and gathering coexisted was slow and obscure

Overall, the frequency of hereditary variants recognized as predisposing to ADHD suggests

that the trait likely conferred a survival benefit in the past (Arcos-Burgos & Acosta 2007).

Thus, in actuality the terms ‘attention

9 deficit/hyperactivity’ serve as only a description of specific symptoms rather than

representing a genetic disorder or disease (Boffey 2014; Saul 2014). The occurrence of not

only ADHD but some learning disabilities are also consistent with this line of reasoning.

Learning disorders such as dyslexia or dysgraphia are often coexistent with anomalies in a

similar brain region (Mayes et al. 2000), supporting this conjecture. 3. Social cohesion and

intelligence As discussed above, over time a relatively safe environment replaced the

requirement for ‘hyperactivity’ (immediate survival traits) with that for social bonds,

leading to natural selection that produced exceptional self-consciousness (intelligence).

Social cohesion is defined as humans interacting and spending time among themselves;

below, we present the association between social cohesion and self-consciousness

(intelligence) along with related findings from animal behaviour studies. 3.1. Relationship
between animal intelligence (self-consciousness) and social structure Avian species possess a

brain region called the nidopallium, which is the basic structure involved in learning that

corresponds to the human prefrontal cortex, and multiple examples of avian intelligence

have been published. For example, zoologists at Cambridge found that a rook, a member of

the crow family (Corvidae), was able to drop pebbles into a jar that was partly filled with

water to raise the water level and permit it to drink from the jar. The crow in this

experiment decided to drop the largest pebbles first, evidently identifying that the water

level would rise faster therefrom (Bird & Emery 2009).

10 Amongst ‘bird-brains’ , sociality has been known to be an motivation for intelligence,

especially for most corvids and parrots, which are considered to be among the most

intelligent and cunning avian species owing to their complex social structure (Bond et al.

2003). Corvid species split into factions to nest and guard territories. Many use cooperation

for hunting, during which one bird diverts the prey’s attention while the other catches it,

and certain social activities necessitate individual recognition. Corvids are also known for

cooperative breeding and elaborate social play such as ‘follow the leader’ or ‘king of the

mountain’ (Gill 1995). The association between social interconnection and intelligence is

not simply limited to corvids. For many other species of animals, the structure of their

societies is believed to be the driving factor behind their intelligence increase (Emery &

Clayton 2004). Elephants, for example, are a family-oriented species that show empathy

and express concern for individuals. They mourn for their dead, offer care and aid to the

dying, and gently scan the bones of their own kind, regardless of their relationship

(McComb et al. 2006). However, even though herd animals dwell together, their social

awareness is usually very insignificant. ‘In a buffalo herd, Bob doesn't care who Betty is,’

stated animal biologist Christine Drea (2009). Mammals such as buffalos, therefore, exhibit

little cognitive ability. In contrast, carnivores that must hunt to survive are generally more

intelligent than herbivores because hunting as opposed to consuming herbiage requires

coordination and planning. On the other hand, both coordination and sociality are readily

apparent in a pack of hyenas. In an animal coordination experiment by Duke University,

hyenas were discharged into an arena wherein a pair of ropes hung down from an overhead

platform. Only if the animals dragged the ropes concurrently would the podium release

food. Notably, the first pair that entered the pen solved the problem in less than two

minutes (Drea & Carter 2009).

11 3.1.1. Increased social interaction: human language, self-consciousness, and high

intelligence Intelligence is derived from learning during social bonding and interaction,
whereas sociality provides each unit in a group with an identity. Self-consciousness,

representing the height of intelligence acquired from social interaction, is demonstrated in

a few of the brightest species. Self-consciousness is a distinguished trait that is associated

with the mirror test, a standard test for animal intelligence used to determine whether the

subject animal can recognize itself in the mirror (Gallup 1970). Non-human species that

have passed the mirror-test include primates (bonobo, chimpanzee, orangutan, and

gorilla), cetaceans (bottlenose dolphin, killer whale), elephants, and corvids (Eurasian

magpie); these results substantiate claims that certain species are very intelligent (Prior et

al. 2008). Among the cleverest self-aware animals such as elephants, cetaceans, and corvids,

an association has been revealed between the number of group interactions and various

acquired behaviours (Poole 1996). In addition, Van Schaik (2006) conducted a specific

behavioural study with orangutans and chimps in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra,

demonstrating that for both species, the groups in which each primate had more

opportunities to examine others exhibited a greater variety of learned behaviours than

those groups offering fewer chances to observe. In this study, the authors considered that

the differences between groups were related to the quantity of available food; in groups

with limited food, individuals needed to devote more time to hunting and foraging, and had

less time for social interaction and observing others, and thus displayed fewer learned
 interactions. 3.2. The beginnings of human language

12 The increased social communication allowed by the development of tool use, fire, and

shelter that drove human intelligence (Mithen 2006) also provided a complex social

structure with a defined place for the individual, leading to self-awareness. Consequently,

humans are the most self-conscious of all animals, with the outcome of such concentrated

self-consciousness being language. In other words, out of an extreme desire to express

oneself and communicate to others, a form of language naturally arises. The earliest words

spoken by humans worldwide are assumed to have been sequences of the sounds /ma/
and /pa/. Ascribed to the meanings of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ throughout the world, ‘mama’

and ‘papa’ are phrases that are built from speech vocalizations and that are easiest to learn

(Gervain et al. 2008). In addition, a series of interjections was first employed by humans as

well. The inquisitive word/syllable ‘huh’ is one of the most common syllables in many

languages of the world, found in different regions, countries, and cultures (Dingemanse et

al. 2014). The use of the term ‘ow’ and distantly similar terms is transcontinental as well.

These interjections all begin with vowel sounds. The sounds are produced with an open

vocal cavity without any accumulation of air pressure, enabling effortless pronunciation for

the speaker (Laver 1994). The phrases that followed had many variations, but I suggest

that some broad principles existed for word-making: 1. Minimal, briefer sounds were

selected for key words of frequent use. 2. Severe/concentrated sounds (stop, affricate, and

fricative) were allotted for words with negative meaning. 3. Countless modifications happen

over time. 4. Advanced syntax, adverbs, and auxiliary verbs would come later.

13 The first principle is logical. Essential words that were often put into use would be

kept short. For example, first person subjective pronouns are universally one or at most

two syllables long; for example, ‘Wǒ’ in Chinese, ‘én’ in Hungarian, ‘Mimi’ in Swahili, and ‘Я’

in Russian. This principle usually works for other ‘necessity’ words as well, such as ‘mama’,

‘papa’, ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘water’, or ‘food’. Furthermore, some form of simple human language would
likely have existed for devising Acheulean tools and promoting their universal use. Coincident

with language-processing regions, strategic thinking for attaining the final product or for

predicting the resulting flake relies on the prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietal lobe

(Stout et al. 2015). Specifically, simple sounds of communication such as the words ‘yes’ and

‘no’, words used for planning and following step-by-step instructions, predicting where flakes

will fall, and words that define egocentric direction including ‘right’ and ‘left’, are needed

between tool-makers. Second, hominids allocated a negative undertone for certain sounds

because they were a hint of threat. Findings have shown that people unconsciously perceived
danger from sharp shapes that were cues of stings, claws, and the fangs of insects and

predators (Bar & Neta 2006). In addition, Köhler (1929) has shown that there was a strong

inclination to coordinate jagged shape with ‘takete’ and the roundish form with ‘baluba’. The

study was repeated with different words, ‘kiki’ and ‘bouba’ (‘maluma’ in the 1947 version of

the article), and conclusively led to a correlation between certain sounds and shapes. Certain

sounds, such as [k], did require a relatively stiffer, angular mouth form and a more taut,

clenched jaw than other sounds. The sounds gave a ‘sharp’ and ‘jagged’ impression. Thus,

humans subconsciously prescribed negative overtones to these vocalizations. Broadly stated,

the ‘harsh’ sounding words have harmful meaning. For example, early Greek words such as

‘kakos’ (evil) or ‘kaos’ (chaos)’ are

14 built from a tense mouth shape and locked jaws, compared to non-negative sounds

such as ‘hydro’ (water) and ‘helios’ (sun). The plasticity of language, as indicated by the third

principle, was illustrated by Pagel (2009) who compared language evolution to a massive

game of 'Chinese whispers', where the last person in the line ends up speaking gibberish.

Languages change over time because of the speakers’ desires to pronounce words with ease.

In old English, for example, the words for ‘bird’ and ‘horse’ were ‘brid’ and ‘hros’, which are

slightly more difficult to pronounce. The alteration of sounds would continue further with the

advent of writing. The final principle implies that human ancestors would have first spoken in
baby talk, without be-verbs, complex modifiers, or syntax. Such unconnected talk would have

served its purpose in the beginning, as early ape-like hominids without fire and stone tools

had difficulty surviving in unprotected environments. Like other animals, hominins simply

stayed alive by foraging and evading predators. There were no multifaceted circumstances,

where ‘I would prefer drink’, ‘I drink’, or even ‘drink’ would make a difference; it was just ‘To

be, or not to be’. Furthermore, before basic language and the beginning of writing,

conventional grammar such as dangling modifiers, run-ons, or split-infinitives would not

matter. As compound organizations arose in more developed civilizations, grammar

configurations happened intuitively from a need to specify one’s exact purpose. Thus, initially,

human brain size, consciousness, and intelligence increased concurrently as hominids started

living in more settled societies. A handful of nouns were assigned, with a few adjectives and

verbs to express and better recognize them. Individuals also agreed on words to express or

label themselves and others. Words such as conjunctions, adverbs, and be-verbs would come

later.

15 Finally, our antecedents formed what we would define as human language. Prehistoric

language before proto-writing, however, did not approach present-day language. Oral

languages are exceptionally brief, repetitive, and idiomatic. The number of words that are

mandatory for talking is very trivial compared to the 20,000 words or more that people

largely use to develop a long article or to enjoy complex literature. 4. Natural selection of

infant helplessness and self-consciousness (language) Hyperactivity, associated with modern

conditions such as ADHD, existed before human language, providing evolutionary benefits for

vulnerable foragers. In modern-day children diagnosed with learning disabilities, there is a

general reduction in the volume or irregularities in the left-side prefrontal cortex (Broca's

area), posterior parietal cortex (Wernicke's area), and temporal lobe (Malenka et al. 2009).

The prefrontal cortex mediates social perception and performs an executive role according to

the individual’s aims (Miller et al. 2002). The posterior parietal lobe, the region of the parietal
neocortex that is posterior to the primary somatosensory area, which comprises the cortical

field, cultivates a sense of will and arranges movements along with coding the location of

objects both within and outside of the body (Krubitzer & Disbrow 2010). Finally, the temporal

lobe works to construe speech, sensations, and memory (Smith 2007). An analysis of the

progression of this anatomical foundation of language shows that the human brain has

increased three times in size over a million years of evolution (Hawks 2014; Schoenemann

2006); specifically, the prefrontal lobe has grown in size six-fold, according to the prevailing

theory, along with increases in the posterior parietal cortex and the temporal lobe (Jerison
2012).

16 As described previously, evolutionary changes led to the loss of ‘hyperactivity’ in the

human lineage and a relatively safe environment replaced ‘hyperactivity’ with social bonds,

leading natural selection to favour exceptional self-consciousness (intelligence). Biologically,

as a part of the evolutionary sequence, the hominin brain reorganized its functions away from

visual processing, which is important for survival in the wild, and more towards other

functional areas such as planned movements, cognition, and language, which are crucial for

increased sociality and tool-making. This model is supported by the long developmental stage

of humans. The human infant is more helpless than that of all other primates. Furthermore,

human babies fall behind infants from other species at every stage of inchoate development.

The long period of growth and development of modern humans sets Homo sapiens apart

from the great apes (Dean et al. 2001). The requirement of the brain for glucose mounts at a

young age during which the body grows slowly owing to the brain’s high energy consumption

(Kuzawa et al. 2014). New-borns of some other species depend on birthmothers to some

degree; however, a human infant takes months to support itself by crawling or standing on its

own two feet and years to master even the simplest tasks such as walking skilfully or

preparing a meal. A human child remains completely dependent on parents to care for its

every need. Dunsworth et al. (2012) support the theory known as the ‘metabolic crossover
hypothesis’ to explain human infant helplessness. They claim that the energetic constraints of

both mother and foetus are the primary determinants of gestation length and foetal growth

in humans and across mammals. Near the end of a pregnancy, the maturation of the human

foetus places a heavy burden on the mother, and metabolic demands reach the mother's

limitations in meeting both the baby's energy requirements and her own. In other words, the

mother must perform additional work owing to the large amount of energy that the baby

consumes. Extensive studies in an array

17 of non-human mammals also indicate a limit in the development of a foetus because of

the degree of associated energy drain and how large the foetus can grow during the gestation

period. In agreement with this, recent analysis also refutes the traditional obstetrical dilemma

hypothesis (i.e., large foetal head/small maternal pelvis conundrum) (Warrener et al. 2012).

4.1. Energy requirements and early brain development The energy-draining perspective of a

human foetus, which is sufficiently energy consuming as to result in early parturition, relates

substantially to brain development, most of which takes place within the first three years of

human life. At birth, a human baby's brain starts at 0.35kg, and it rapidly grows to

approximately 1kg during the first year of life (Dekaban & Sadowsky 1978). Although the

human brain represents only 2% of the total body weight, the brain consumes a large amount

of energy in proportion to its volume. The brain demands 15% of the cardiac output, 20% of

the total body oxygen consumption, and 25% of the total body glucose utilization (Munck &

Lassen 1957). Human babies are defenceless during their early years as their brains make and

refine key neural connections, a process known as pruning. The question of why this early

development stage exists in babies that makes them vulnerable to predators and harsh

survival settings remains unanswered. A simple answer is that through evolutionary changes

and advanced tool-making, human habitats became a very rich and safe setting for women to

give birth, allowing the evolution of helpless infants. Bountiful and safe living, moulded by

advanced technologies, produced an environment in which hominins with socially active and
innovative brains could thrive. In an evolutionary trade-off, human infants became vulnerable

while attaining the capability to create and handle tools and consciously express themselves

with vocal language (self-consciousness). As the brain patterns

18 of language processing and tool-making were correlated, evolution passed along

individuals who possessed the intellect to handle tools and express themselves. Millions of

years of evolutionary pressure thus resulted in the helplessness of human infants who had

evolved larger, more complex brains. 4.2. Brain and language: connection to infant

helplessness or early parturition As formerly stated, ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ characterise phrases
that are constructed from the vocal sounds that are the easiest to generate, and

straightforward exclamations such as ‘huh?’ and ‘ow’ can be produced without any build-up

of air pressure. Thus, these particular words were effortlessly voiced by babies to call out to

their parents, to fulfil their interest, or to call out in pain. Thus, the first words to be

pronounced by humans seemingly originated out of babies’ mouths, likely indicating a

language mutation in a new-born. At one point, an infant with a variant larynx instinctively

prescribed simple sound sets for mother, father, curiosity, and pain. It is probable that

toddlers who expressed their detailed wants would have stimulated more care from their

parents and group members. In consequence, because these toddlers were able to express

their exact needs and draw more attention from adults, they were more likely to survive

compared with other infants who could not speak (or speak meaningfully). Even if the parents

themselves were not able vocalize such sounds, they would have eventually understood the

meanings of sundry babbles from numerous trial-and-error efforts and from their natural

instinct, which is similar to how domesticated dogs and non-wild animals interpret human

phrases. The evolution of language would then carry on as adult hominids with vocal

capabilities harmonized (in tonal languages) and elaborated upon certain sounds to indicate

certain values.

19 With respect to the biological underpinnings of human language, early regional

development in the brain matches the previously described evolutionary changes in brain size

(Nelson et al. 2001; Hawks 2014). In particular, a study by Gogtay (2004) has presented a

dynamic expansion in the posterior parietal lobe (sense of will), prefrontal lobe (group

cognition), and temporal lobe (language understanding) during the first few years. Such

anatomical data confirms studies regarding how the neural connections linked with language

and cognition are particularly receptive in toddlers (Nelson 2000). For newly vocal toddlers,

growing the ‘sense of will’ in the posterior parietal lobe innately inserted meaning and

objective in language while also, especially for adults, building syntax to aid in intricate
situations. Social cognition, mediated by prefrontal cortex enhancement, bestowed humans

with talent for analysing social context and situations, further facilitated by language. The

temporal lobe, last, serves to store the sounds and meanings of language for possible

interpretation. Together, these findings indicate that the evolutionary increase in brain size

concomitant with early language development was implemented through a long infantile

development period in humans made possible by the improved conditions of life that were

further improved by the benefits obtained with enhanced cognition and language use. 5.

Conclusion The discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone that is similar to that of Homo sapiens

in Kebara Cave confirmed that the complexity of modern language appeared prior to 100,000

years ago (Arensburg et al. 1989). The hyoid bone, which is loosely jointed to other bones,

connects the tongue and the larynx, creating broader muscle movements; this specific

structure, in combination with a descended larynx, allowed human vocalizations.

20 It might be difficult to pinpoint the exact time at which language began, as animals

including primates, cetaceans, and corvids exhibit some form of communication as well. For

millions of years, unclassified simple grunt-like sounds changed continuously and developed

to become distinguishable and more associated with the classifications now used for words or

structures in languages (Whiten et al. 2009). Thus, comparable to human evolution itself,

language has developed continuously across human history.

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Abstract and Figures

Is there a relationship between language and culture? If so, what is the role of culture in

language classrooms? This chapter attempts to answer these questions. Obviously, there is

a reciprocal relationship between language and culture. What is more, people’s cultural

background and behaviors shape the way they interpret the world around them.
Apparently, being aware of one’s own culture paves the way towards being aware of the

new culture by developing a sense of cultural awareness. Therefore, communicating cross-

culturally is regarded as an effective skill that can be developed through cross-cultural

awareness (Gudynkunst & Kim, 2003). With these in mind, let us consider what lies behind

the relationship between language and culture, and of course, how culture is integrated into

language classes. The organization of the chapter is designed as follows: firstly, the

relationship between language and culture is described. Secondarily, the state-of-the-art of

culture pedagogy in terms of language teaching is introduced. Making the case for

language and culture pedagogy, its implications are presented to which reference is made

subsequently in order to deliver target culture with the priority of teaching English as a

Foreign Language (hereafter: EFL). Conclusively, the last section remarks conclusions, and

pedagogical implications for teaching target culture through teaching the target language.

Introduction Is there a relationship between language and culture? If so, what is the role of

culture in language classrooms? This chapter attempts to answer these questions.

Obviously, there is a reciprocal relationship between language and culture. What is

more, people’s cultural background and behaviors shape the way they interpret the

world around them. Apparently, being aware of one’s own culture paves the way towards
 being aware of the new culture by developing a sense of cultural awareness. Therefore,

communicating cross-culturally is regarded as an eective skill that can be developed

through cross-cultural awareness (Gudynkunst & Kim, 2003). With these in mind, let us

consider what lies behind the relationship between language and culture, and of course,

how culture is integrated into language classes. The organization of the chapter is

designed as follows: rstly, the relationship between language and culture is

described. Secondarily, the state-of-the-art of culture pedagogy in terms of language

teaching is introduced. Making the case for language and culture pedagogy, its
implications are presented to which reference is made subsequently in order to deliver

target culture with the priority of teaching English as a Foreign Language (hereafter:

EFL). Conclusively, the last section remarks conclusions, and pedagogical implications

for teaching target culture through teaching the target language. Framing the

relationship between language and culture“All words have the ‘taste’ of a profession, a

genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age

group, the day and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived

its socially charged life.” (Bakthin, 1981, p. 293)

The Relationship Between Language And Culture, And Its Implications For E Teaching

689Imagine that you were grown up in a dierent place by learning a dierent

language. Would your perception of the world change? Would you then categorize

objects and/or ideas dierently? Would you have a dierent understanding of the

words? What about raising up with no language! Would you then stop thinking since

there was no language at all? Would you able to enroll in cultural activities meaningfully?

First of all, let us agree on the denition of culture since both terms, language and

culture, do refer to one’s place in a social group, or their relation with that group.

Basically, culture is regarded as a repertoire of shared beliefs, experiences, practices and

values that are used by a group of people in order to understand the world surrounding
 them (Nasir & Hand, 2006). Notably, it is important to clarify the distinction between

objective and subjective culture (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). The relatively visible and

obvious elements of culture such as food preferences, dressing, and architecture are

embedded within objective culture whereas subjective culture encompasses more hidden

and invisible cultural elements such as values, beliefs, patterns of verbal and nonverbal

communication (Hall, 1966). However in both, culture manifests arbitrariness in the sense

that dierent patterns could be interpreted and recorded in dierent ways; therefore,

the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ may have a change. Perhaps most obviously, culture is
represented by language since culture is interpreted, mediated and recorded by

means of a language (Kramsch, 1995). Language is not solely a means of communication,

albeit a cumulation of socially embedded practices; thus, words live socially

responsible lives. Quite similarly, social interactions do live linguistically responsible lives

since language is the mediator of any social interaction so as to occur. The starting point is

that language is inherently social by nature. Therefore, the language we use is aected by

the social contexts in which we see, hear and experience even though we do things

with words. Since language we use and the social contexts in which it occurs are mutually

related, language should be treated “not only as a mode of thinking but, above all, as a

cultural practice, that is, as a form of action that both presupposes and at the same time

brings about ways of being in the world” (Duranti, 1997, p.1). For much of the past

century, to say nothing of the present one, culture had been a topic of research for the

scholars in the eld of sociolinguistics and cultural studies in terms of forming local

and/or universal links

WORLD ENGLISHES AND CULTURE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

(EFL) EDUCATION90between language and culture. Its mediatory role, on the other

hand, directs language teachers’ interest towards two unleashed catchwords:

‘intercultural’ and ‘multicultural’. Intercultural as a term has widely been used in the
 European world of education to label the acquisition of knowledge in relation with the

customs and history of a society, which has later paved the way towards the development

of intercultural sensitivity in teachers (Baumgratz-Gangl, 1992), and intercultural

communicative competence (Byram, 1993). In particular, multicultural education thrives to

expand the traditional curriculum through the integration of issues such as social

class, gender, identity, and the like in order to develop an understanding of unique and

sensitive realities of history. In doing this, it is molded by de-emphasizing the national

dierences, and displaying the already existing social diversities, and therefore, cultural
pluralism. But what about language teaching? In practice, language teachers teach both

language and culture, or culture as language, albeit not language as culture (Kramsch,

1995). Culture is employed to enrich language classes to reinforce language learning;

however, it is not questioned whether this dialogic process of enunciation reveals codes

for the conception of language and culture. What is more, native culture and target

culture are embedded in this process in a cross-cultural way. Thus, when they

encounter, some new and hybrid codes could emerge, which is named as a “third space that

does not simply revise or invert the dualities, but revalues the ideological bases of division

and dierence” (Bhabha, 1992, p. 58). With these in mind, the section below spotlights the

case for language and culture pedagogy with special concern upon EFL

settings.MakingthecaseforlanguageandculturepedagogyAlthough

culture was regarded as an integral part of teaching a language, it was somehow

underrated, and cultural components were eliminated from learning materials (Stern,

1992). To mention, English language teaching in the 1970s was framed by Pulverness (1996)

as: “English was seen as a means of communication which should not be bound to

culturally-specic conditions of use, but should be easily transferable to any cultural

setting. Authenticity was a key quality, but only insofar as it provided reliable models of

language in use. Content was important as a source of motivation, but it was seen as

equally important to avoid material which might be regarded as ‘culture bound’.

Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, syllabus design and materials writing were

The Relationship Between Language And Culture, And Its Implications For E Teaching

691driven by needs analysis, and culture was subordinated to performance objectives.”

(p. 7)Quite reasonably, there has recently been a consensus on integrating culture as an

inseparable element in foreign language pedagogy (Byram, Bolubeva, Hui, & Wagner,

2017; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). Such an evolution in foreign language pedagogy

blossoms a rather new perspective and goals for learning culture in addition to language

learning. To mention, ‘linguistic competence’ (Chomsky, 1965) was at the center to

enhance language-related abilities of the learners. Seemingly inadequate, learning goals

were then oriented around ‘communicative competence’ (Canale & Swain, 1980).

Following these, however, the new learning goals are shaped by the context of

globalization, and the term of ‘intercultural competence’ has arrived (Byram, 1997;

Kramsch, 2015). The learning goals of intercultural communicative competence are

now expanded with communicative competence, discourse competence, linguistic

competence, and sociolinguistic competence (Byram & Parmenter, 2012). Thus, the

multidimensional nature of intercultural abilities is described by the skills of interpreting,

discovering, relating and interacting; knowledge of interaction and social groups in the

society; attitudes of curiosity and openness; and critical cultural awareness, which is

depicted as the ability to value dierent perspectives. Moreover, with the adoption of

communicative curriculum, language teaching has shifted from an initial focus on

grammar, literature and translation studies towards more communicative approaches

with the integration of culture into the language teaching practices. The growing body of

research recognizes the probable set of learning goals which integrates culture into

foreign language classroom (Diaz, 2012; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013; Risager, 2015).

Perhaps not surprisingly, culture serves as the fth skill broadening the scope of four

basic language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing (Corbett, 2003).
 Correlatively, it is noted that an increased cultural awareness stimulates learners to

develop an understanding of sensitivity, tolerance and empathy, all of which are

benecial for language learning (Tomlinson & Musuhara, 2004). Thus, serving as a

hidden curriculum (Kumaravadivelu, 2003), culture teaching plays a signicant role in

language classrooms. Putting this into practice, however, is arduous for language teachers.

For instance, it is challenging for language teachers to develop cultural

WORLD ENGLISHES AND CULTURE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

(EFL) EDUCATION92awareness in English language classes under the constraints of

time allowance, education system, even teacher’s own cultural knowledge, and so forth

(Ho, 2009). In a similar vein, learners with dierent cultural background learn in dierent

ways (Hui, 2005). What is more, it is rather dicult to integrate culture and language-

related practices in non-English-speaking countries since communicative norms to teach

are not similar to that of English as a second language (hereafter: ESL) case (Sowden,

2007). That is, in EFL classes, the language instruction in the classroom is most probably

the only exposure to target language, and EFL learners do not have the immediate

reaction to show and face in their daily life practices since their surrounding is oriented

with a non-English-speaking culture. Beyond question, it becomes more critical since

language teachers are most generally non-native speakers of the target language, and it

is then rather complex to decide on the specic cultural norms to integrate into language

classes since EFL learners may not have the opportunity to engage in such a community in

which target language is used. In this vein, developing cross-cultural awareness is regarded

as a burden for language teachers to choose and integrate parts of English-speaking culture

as an eective element of foreign language instruction. Most simply, cultural learning is

complex by nature since terms such as critical cultural awareness is abstract and ideal,

which seems far from everyday language practice. What is more, there are three stumbling

blocks that make it more complex for practical concerns: conceptual, developmental and
relational (Diaz, 2013). The conceptual one refers to the limitations of the conceptualization

of intercultural competence. The relational one refers to the lack of clarity in terms of

relational elements that bring intercultural competence together. Lastly, the developmental

one refers to the lack of a pure continuum of how intercultural competence is enhanced in

time. As it seems, there is no doubt that intercultural competence has a signicant role in

language learning; however, dening the learning goals to put into practice remains as the

nuts and bolts of language classrooms, where the target language itself requires a rather

complex process to be acquired.In terms of language learning, there is still no consensus on

a single theory to explain how foreign languages are learnt; and thus, nascent

theoretical orientations are yet to occur (Mitchell, Myles, & Marsden, 2013). As there is

no single pedagogy declared as superior to the others (Lightbown & Spada, 2013; Richards

& Rodgers, 2014), culture learning should rst contend with the process of language

learning as a complex

The Relationship Between Language And Culture, And Its Implications For E Teaching

693phenomenon. Recently, it is succinctly presupposed by the notion of developing

pragmatic competence that is “possible to create opportunities for meaningful learning

even with conventional materials such as coursebooks” by letting language learners to

“analyze and reect on their interactional experiences” (McConachy, 2018, p.9). Just as

importantly, pragmatic competence permits language learners to establish the ability to use

the target language appropriately in a social context by means of appropriate topics of

conversation, nonverbal behaviors, and turn-taking patterns (Bardovi-Harlig, 2001),

which is not a common case amidst language learners, especially intended messages are

indirectly addressed by the speakers of the target language (Ishihara & Cohen, 2010).

Quite the contrary, there is an opposing view on the integration of culture in language

classrooms that purports to localize the language learning materials (e.g., textbooks) to

respond to the needs of non-English learners (Kachru, 1986; Canagarajah, 1999;

 Kirkpatrick, 2007). Accordingly, it is required to start with the familiar before moving to

more unfamiliar elements so as to maintain target language. To put it plainly, the pedagogy

behind it is that familiar local materials can help to teach a foreign language and culture

better by eliminating language learners’ anxiety and ambivalence during the language

learning process. Similarly, language learners are not likely to experience culture shock

since local contextualization permits them to become more interactive with the target

culture and language. It is also worthwhile to reect that that culture is a ‘muddied

concept’ (Hall, 1981, p.20), albeit inextricably related to language. Within a specic
culture, cows are regarded as sacred animals, or seeing a black cat is assumed to bring bad

luck. Seemingly, the value judgments are culture-specic, and culture is not static. So to

speak, cultural awareness is there to avoid stereotypes. In this sense, watching foreign

movies may help to promote cultural awareness, and eliminate stereotypes (Cardon, 2010),

but cross-cultural stereotypes may mushroom, though (Angelova & Zhao, 2014).

Seemingly, there is “no ready-made, one-size-ts-all way of developing intercultural

capabilities through language education” (Liddicoat, 2013, p. xii). Therefore, in an attempt

to integrate culture into language teaching, language teachers need to employ culture-

specic language use to prevent misconceptions to blossom (Shemshadsara, 2012). With

these in mind, the section below highlights some practical concerns for language teachers

and pedagogical implications to arrange EFL classrooms for eective culture teaching

process.

WORLD ENGLISHES AND CULTURE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

(EFL) EDUCATION94Pedagogical implications and practical concerns for

languageteachers At any rate, teaching culture while teaching the target language aims

to develop language learners’ cross-cultural awareness. In doing these, the teaching of

culture targets to the followings as noted by Tomalin and Stempleski (1993): “To help

students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned
 behaviors;To help students to develop an understanding that social variables such as age,

sex, social class, and place of residence inuence the ways in which people speak and

behave;To help students to become more aware of conventional behavior in common

situations in the target culture;To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural

connotations of words and phrases in the target language;To help students to develop

the ability to evaluate and rene generalizations about the target culture, in terms of

supporting evidence;To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize

information about the target culture;To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about
the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people.” (p. 7-8).Obviously,

language is enmeshed with culture; however, it is challenging to integrate culture into

language teaching. One way to do this is to use culture-specic language in teaching culture

from an intercultural perspective. In doing this, language teachers may apply some key tenets

such as (a) active construction of both language and culture; (b) meaning-making through the

reciprocal relationship between language and culture; (c) social interaction for the negotiation

of meaning; (d) reection as the recognition of culture as an inseparable element of the

target language; (e) responsibility indicated by language learners’ attitudes and values in

order to develop cultural awareness; (f) noticing the dierences to avoid stereotypes, and to

respect varieties; (g) engagement of language learners through culture-specic language

tasks to experience language, culture and the relationship between them. Simply put,

classroom practice should reect the ideal learning outcomes by integrating language

and culture. Reecting this, language teachers can apply the notion of linguaculture,

which has recently been

The Relationship Between Language And Culture, And Its Implications For E  Teaching

695popular in foreign language education (Diaz, 2013; Risager, 2015). In the era of

globalization, language and culture pedagogy has been primed by a sociolinguistic

perspective. In this context, it is proposed that there are three dimensions in culture
teaching: identity dimension, poetic dimension, and semantic and pragmatic dimension. This

taxonomy provides a conceptualization of language and culture in a multidimensional and

undivided way. The focus is on cultural dierences that inuence interactions; therefore,

linguaculture learning provides a deep-seated procedure of constant modication and

regulation of linguistic ability and intercultural awareness. However, in a single framework,

it is the core dilemma to note how language and culture are addressed:Translating the

language and culture nexus, or in this case, linguaculture, into an incremental learning

progression is challenging. The lack of developmental notions of linguaculture learning

makes it dicult to map a coherent, progressive path from ab initio, beginning levels — the

largest in most language programs — to advanced levels. (Diaz, 2013, p. 34)Incorporating

language and culture in a broader view of learning, dynamic skill theory may help

language teachers to understand the complexity of culture teaching in language

classrooms through the ‘Developmental Model of Linguaculture Learning’ (hereafter:

DMLL). In doing this, simple elements are gathered together to frame the whole knowledge

through self-organization and adjustment in a dynamic process. To elaborate, the levels of

complexity are dened and mapped together for meaning-making. Therefore, cultural facts

are encountered as the new data to be experimented through cultural rules and structures,

and then, the bridge between language and cultural awareness is built by integrating self-

expressions with cultural views (Schaules, 2019). For instance, you are playing chess. To

become a good player, you need to express yourself in the medium of the play. You need to

follow the other player’s moves, which emerge from the general knowledge of the rules in a

cumulative process so as to play the game. The gure given below entails the overall process

for DMLL: Enco unteri ng new data as culturalfacts Experimenting cultural rules and

structures Integratingself-expressions with aculturalview Bridging language and cultural

awareness Figure 1. How culture is incorporated into language through DMLL

 WORLD ENGLISHES AND CULTURE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL)

EDUCATION96Quite the contrary, oral exchange or interaction is not sucient for

developing language learners’ cross-cultural communication skills. In terms of writing, it

appears as a burden on language teachers to reach good English writing since language

learners may come from completely dierent rhetorical traditions, or perceptions of good

writing (Kachru & Smith, 2008). To exemplify, an element in the native language may be

regarded as grandiloquent when using it in English as a target language. Therefore, language

learners are to develop their own logical reasoning in both language and culture by
developing cross-cultural awareness while learning the target language simultaneously, which

is labeled as experiential learning. Experiential learning benets from learners’ active

engagement and language practice in cultural context, albeit not purely the reception of the

language. For instance, language learners in groups can be assigned to create a map of

characteristics that are known as distinguishing elements of home and target cultures. These

maps can include music, clothing, geography, architecture, and so forth. In this way,

language teachers can identify any kind of stereotypical lapses that language learners may

have. As a practical note, critical incidents, also known as cultural capsules (Singhal, 1998) or

culturgrams (Peck, 1998), can be used as a way of practicing experiential learning in language

classrooms. They are molded as the short anecdotes or descriptions of some distinctive

situations that may create cross-cultural miscommunication. They provide language learners

to identify the lacunae between cultures by analyzing the situations and avoiding

stereotypes.As importantly, culture assimilators and cultoons (Henrichsen, 1998) can be

used as a method for integrating culture into language classrooms through experiential

learning. Culture assimilators are constituted by the short descriptions of situations with

four possible interpretations of the conversation between two people. Now, the case is that

one person is from home culture, and the other person is from the target culture. Language

learners are expected to read the denitions at rst, and then come up with the correct

interpretation of the already existing situations. On the other hand, cultoons are the
visual forms of culture assimilators with a series of four pictures that elaborate possible

signs of misinterpretations experienced by people in contact with the target culture. Now,

language learners are expected to evaluate the reactions of the characters given in the

pictures by analyzing their appropriateness with the target culture.

The Relationship Between Language And Culture, And Its Implications For E  Teaching

697Cultural problem solving (Singhal, 1998) as another way to provide information on target

culture can be used as a classroom activity to promote experiential learning. Herein,

language learners are provided with information in which a cultural dilemma is embedded.
For instance, they are given information on wedding ceremonies in dierent cultures, and

then asked to assess manners and traditional customs by pinpointing appropriate and/or

inappropriate behaviors. In doing this, they are expected to employ problem-solving skills;

henceforth, they have the opportunity to develop empathy, so to speak. Another insightful

classroom activity is role-playing. Herein, language learners are given roles to act out in

English in a short and straightforward way to conceptualize dierent cultural issues. Closely

related, simulations are used to elaborate more complex cultural situations with the

enrollment of more than two language learners. Both of them play a critical role in enhancing

language learners’ linguistic skills, pragmatic skills and cultural awareness by representing

culture-specic situations. If language learners have the opportunity to observe the

behavioral patterns of and/or have an interaction with native speakers, mini

ethnographic observations and interviews can help them to develop cultural understanding.

For instance, language learners can be assigned to notice how people from a denite

culture behave when ordering a meal from a restaurant. By the same token, they can be

assigned to ask questions and take notes on a previously selected topic (e.g., greetings) in

order to determine culture-specic behaviors through interviews. However, language

learners may not have the opportunity to nd a native speaker; herein, language

teachers may help them to nd someone available either in person, or online. Indisputably,
 with the advents in technology, media has a more prominent role in language teaching.

Therefore, incorporating media as an element to teach culture in language classrooms can

help language teachers to promote cultural understanding, as well. Language teachers can use

movies, advertisements, video clips, sitcoms and other web-based innovative materials by

stimulating multimodal language learning environment so that language learners experience

language and culture as unied elements. Conclusion It goes with the saying that culture

and language are interrelated; therefore, it is beyond question to eliminate culture from

language

WORLD ENGLISHES AND CULTURE IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL)

EDUCATION98learning. While developing a sense of otherness, culture teaching enables

language learners to both observe and participate in language learning activities by means of

culture-specic practices. Most importantly, the number of EFL learners has been growing

dramatically, and it becomes increasingly clear that language learners will not only face

language-related problems in educational environments but also in pursuit of professional

opportunities. Therefore, having the ability to recognize and utilize culturally appropriate

patterns will help language learners to have eective communication (either verbal or non-

verbal) in real-life practices. It is hoped that this chapter has contrived to clarify language- and

culture-related issues, and helped to contribute with a better understanding of the priority of

culture in foreign language classrooms. Post-readingQuestions:What are the main

problems faced by language teachers to teach culture in language classrooms?How do

language teachers integrate culture into teaching? Do you think the concept of local-

culture input for EFL teaching is benecial for teaching target culture?

The Relationship Between Language And Culture, And Its Implications For E  Teaching

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and culture meet. London: Routledge.

Applied Linguistics Mohammed Jasim Betti Department of English, College of Education for

Humanities, University of Thi-Qar This review deals with applied linguistics, its types and

applications. Applied linguistics is based on the application of linguistic theories in some fields

to solve problems like teaching, practical contrastive linguistics, forensic linguistics, stylistics,

discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, etc. This paper discusses the practicality

of linguistic theory in applied linguistics in any language-related fields, restriction vs

nonrestriction of applied linguistics, and research in applied linguistics and in linguistics. 1.

Linguistics Theoretical Linguistics is a branch of linguistics that is focused on developing

linguistic knowledge in general (e.g. what are the linguistic levels of any language) and concrete

models in particular (e.g. how the phonemes are organized in a given language. Internal

linguistics which means the study of the parts of the language system ( phonetics, phonology,

morphology, syntax and semantics, pragmatics and discourse can also be included). Linguistics
is then a pure science and its study is motivated by the desire to increase human knowledge

(Spolsky & Hult, 2008: 2). According to Nasr (1980: 2), the closely related levels of

linguistic study are phonology which is divided to segmentals and suprasegmentals; vocabulary

which consists of words; and grammar which consists of the means by which relationships

between words are shown. Any study is linguistic if it studies any one field of the above fields

theoretically not practically. So , the levels of linguistic analysis are phonetics, phonology,

morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. 2. Symptoms of Applied Linguistics a.

Application of Linguistic Research Applied linguistics is the use of linguistic theories, methods
and findings in elucidating and solving problems to do with language which have arisen in other

areas of experience (Crystal, 1992: 24). In Corder’s words: “my purpose of writing this book has

been to show the relevance of those studies which are broadly called linguistic to a number of

practical tasks connected with language teaching (1073: 7). It is also defined as the application of

linguistics to language teaching (Aitchison, 2003:10)(See also: Johnson and Johnson, 1999: 9).

If researchers regard themselves as linguists applying linguistics to validate a theory, this is

linguistics applied. If they see themselves as applied linguists seeking a

practical answer to a language problem, this is applied linguistics (The Handbook of Applied

Linguistics). b. Restriction to Language Teaching According to its birthplace, applied

linguistics is associated with language teaching. According to Corder, applied linguistics as

related to practical tasks connected with language teaching (applied linguistics) has implied

restriction. Some people including Corder himself disagree with this restriction because there

are other tasks other than language teaching to which linguistic knowledge is relevant (1973: 7).

c. Nonrestriction Applied linguistics is a multi-disciplinary approach to the solution of

language-related problems (Strevens, 1989: 9). It is not a theoretical study. It makes use of the

findings of theoretical studies. While applied linguistics and language teaching may be closely

associated, they are not one and the same activity (Corder, 1973: 10). So, linguistics is

concerned with theory and applied linguistics with data. 3. Areas of Applied Linguistics
Applied linguistics includes some other disciplines in addition to language teaching as said

earlier. Among these disciplines which appear as lists of the areas that make it up are first

language acquisition, computational linguistics, forensic linguistics, speech therapy,

neurolinguistics, second language acquisition (Wei and Cook, 2009: 1), clinical linguistics (the

linguistic analysis of language disorders), educational linguistics (the use of language in mother

tongue education), lexicography, translation and stylistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics

(Crystal, 2003: 29), Language and economy, language and culture, political discourse, discourse

analysis, language and law; corpus linguistics (Wei and Cook). With the passage of time some of
those fields become independent from AL (Wei and Cook, 2009: 1). Among those applied

fields are the four skills, DA, second language learning, second language teaching, variation

between language use and language performance, bilingualism and individual learner,

multilingualism and society, language policy and planning, translation and interpretation,

language assessment and technological applications (Kaplan, The Oxford Handbook of Applied

Linguistics, 2002), language and economy, political discourse and translation, language and the

law, neurolinguistics, clinical phonology, sign linguistics (Wei & Cook, Contemporary Applied

Linguistics, Vol. 20). Contrastive analysis, which means comparing two or more languages, is

another field of applied linguistics. Within contrastive linguistics, there are two types which are

theoretical and applied contrastive linguistics. The first makes contrastive studies

within general linguistics while the second compares or contrasts languages for pedagogical

objectives, like second or foreign language learning, translation, etc. (Aziz, 1989: 7). Examples

of contrastive studies are quoted below. Betti and Ulaiwi (2018: 83) describes and compares

stress in English and Arabic in order to arrive at the points of similarity and difference. This is

primarily achieved by showing its degrees, types, and functions, by surveying the literature

available and by contrasting it in the two compared languages, conducting a contrastive study.

The study hypothesizes that there is no difference between English and Arabic in terms of

degrees, types and functions of stress. The study finds out that stress as a phenomenon exists in
both languages and it is not phonemic. In addition, in both languages, it is connected with strong

syllables, and its primary functions of stress are emphasis and contrast. Betti and AlFartoosy

(2019: 93) give a full explanation of ellipsis and reiteration in English and Arabic to arrive at the

similarities and differences between them. It deals with ellipsis and reiteration as processes by

which a linguistic item is deleted or repeated. This is primarily achieved by showing their

definitions, nature, types, and functions, and by surveying the literature available and by

contrasting them in the two compared languages, conducting a contrastive study. The study finds

out that ellipsis and reiteration as processes are found in both languages. In addition, it also finds
out that ellipsis is more widely used than reiteration in both languages and that reiteration in

Arabic is used more than in English. In this regard, the study shows that there are similarities and

differences between English and Arabic but the area of differences is wider than that of

similarities. Betti and Igaab (2018: 30) aims to describe English and Arabic in modulation in

terms of ability, obligation, permission and willingness. The study concludes that this

phenomenon is found in both languages with the existence of a number of similarities and

differences. Betti (2020a: 1) seeks to shed light on compounding in Standard English and

Standard Arabic. A contrastive attempt is made through describing compounding in English,

then compounding in Arabic, and it is then that a contrastive study of compounding in English

and Arabic is attempted. The data of investigation consists of a hundred compound words (fifty

English compounds and fifty Arabic ones). Igaab and Altai (2018: 288) describes concord in

English and Arabic to arrive at the similarities and differences between the two languages. This

study aims at describing, analyzing and comparing concord in English and Arabic because the

phenomenon of concord has attracted a great deal of attention in the recent years. It also aims at

comparing and contrasting concord between the two languages by defining it, showing its

syntactic and semantic aspects and illustrating its different types and rules. This study concludes

that concord as a syntactic phenomenon exists in both languages. English deals with such a topic

clearly and separately in grammar while in Arabic, it is not by being explained in sentences

Igaab and Tarrad (2019: 53) deals with comparing pronouns in English and Arabic by
concentrating on the points of difference and similarity between the two languages. This study

aims at describing pronouns in both languages and then the comparison is made by defining

pronouns, showing their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects to know to what extent

both languages are similar or different in using pronouns. It is hypothesized that the two

languages are similar to each other in terms of their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of

pronouns; pronouns are found in both languages; and there are some points of similarity

and difference

between the two languages, but the differences outweigh the similarities. English has a clear
division of pronouns. Pronouns are dealt with syntactically, semantically and pragmatically. In

Arabic the division of pronouns is completely different. Igaab and Abdulhasan (2018: 89)

describes collocation for the purpose of finding out the similarities and differences between

English and Arabic. It aims at describing and comparing collocation in English and Arabic

through identifying its basic linguistic aspects which are syntactic, semantic, pragmatic

and textual. This study concludes that collocation exists in English and Arabic as a

linguistic phenomenon and the two languages study the term from all its linguistic aspects.

However, the way to describe collocation linguistically is different to some extent from one

language into another. Igaab and Al-Manhalawey (2010: 1) describes case in English and

Arabic to arrive at the similarities and differences between them. It investigates case as a

property of nouns and pronouns in English and Arabic. It aims at comparing and contrasting case

in English and Arabic by defining it, showing its history and system, mentioning and illustrating

its types, and showing to what extent the two languages are similar or different from each other

in terms of case. It describes case in English depending on an eclectic model in both languages.

The study concludes that case has a considerable status in defining and classifying nouns and

pronouns in both languages, position is a crucial factor in determining the types of case in

English, there are similarities but the area of differences occupies a wider space than the area of

similarities, and that the vocative is a type of syntactic non-clausal unit in English but it is a
morphological-syntactic and clausal one in Arabic. Igaab (2015: 1) is a contrastive and

descriptive study. It hypothesizes that both languages are similar and different from each other in

terms of modification. The procedures followed in this study include describing modification in

English and Arabic, and then making some comparisons between modification in both languages.

Finally, the hypothesis of this study is supported, i.e. there are some similarities that both

languages share but they are different from each other in a number of other aspects. Stylistics

is the linguistic study of literary texts. Betti (2006: 1) is a study in stylistic corpus linguistics. It

examines the frequency of the grammatical categories used in six prose texts. This aspect is
studied through the variables of prose text type and writer's sex. The model used to analyze the

corpus is adapted with modification from Ball (1993) and Burrows (1993). The study proves that

the text type and the writer's sex, in addition to the text theme determine the grammatical

category used. Al-Seady and Al-Sehlani (2002: 34) investigates thoroughly and compares the

use of collocation as a cohesive tie in three representative plays of the absurd theatre which

are selected for analysis and comparison. These texts are Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Pinter's

The Room and Albee's The Zoo Story. Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental processes

underlying the planning, production, perception and comprehension of speech (Finch, 2000:

196). In this regard, Betti and Igaab (2019: 229) is a case study which describes the speech of

three pre-school Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic children. The data of this study are collected through tape-

recording them. Through the analysis, it is concluded that the phonetic processes which exist in

the informants’ speech include assimilation, elision, gemination, nasalization and tafxiim and the

main ones are sound shift and

metathesis. It has been noted that the study informants pronounce some consonants which are

difficult to be pronounced by other children living in the same city; those consonants are either

regularly shifted to in the production of other consonants or as part of ordinary words containing

such sounds. Sometimes, more than one process is available in the production of some words.

The consonantal changes existing in the informants’ speech are many compared with the vocalic
ones which are very few. Discourse Analysis is the analysis of discourse (Fromkin et al. 2003:

581). It focuses on the structure of naturally occurring spoken language as found in such

discourses as conversations, interviews, commentaries, and speeches. Text linguistics focuses on

the structure of the written language as found in such texts as essays, notices, road signs, and

chapters (Crystal, 2007: 260). Discourse Analysis is the analysis of discourse (Fromkin et al.

2003: 581). It focuses on the structure of naturally occurring spoken language as found in such

discourses as conversations, interviews, commentaries, and speeches. Text linguistics focuses on

the structure of the written language as found in such texts as essays, notices, road signs, and
chapters (Crystal, 2007: 260). In Betti (2007: 399), some criteria are gathered through

open and closed questionnaires distributed to a jury consisting of some staff members

specialized in English language, Arabic language and psychology in addition to the

literature available on discourse analysis. Then, some sixteen jokes are collected to constitute

the data of the study. Some stereotyped jokes are excluded from the data. After

constructing the model, the jokes were analyzed in terms of their cohesion and coherence,

and that there are many types of jokes in Iraq including Khaliiji, stereotypical, animal,

Egyptian, etc. jokes. It is also proved that cohesion is not a prerequisite for maintaining a

joke. If it is not accompanied with coherence, a joke cannot be accepted. The coherence of the

joke in Iraq is brought by establishing some associations between the joke and the real world

created by the audience, These associations range from main to secondary associations.

Betti and Al-Jubouri (2009: 7) investigates themes and rhemes in English structurally and

intonationally. This is first done by surveying themes, rhemes and the various tones

accompanying them in English. The study hypothesizes that the advanced EFL learners in Iraq

face difficulties in producing and recognizing themes and rhemes in English. To verify the

hypothesis, two tests are designed and examined by a certain jury for their validity,

easiness/difficulty and time of responding. The tests measure the subjects' productive and

recognitive abilities of themes, rhemes and their tones. The study concludes that our advanced

EFL learners face difficulties on the recognition and production sides. Nevertheless, the females
prove to be more competent than the males on both types of skills, and fourth year subjects prove

to be also competent. The weakness that our learners face is sometimes due to inter and at other

times to intra causes. Forensic Linguistics refers to the use of linguistic techniques to

investigate crimes in which language data forms part of the evidence (Crystal, 1992: 141; and

2003: 184). Forensic Linguistics refers to the use of linguistic techniques to investigate crimes in

which language data forms part of the evidence (Crystal, 1992: 141; and 2003: 184). Betti

and Hashim (2018: 276) study is restricted to examine and contrast the linguistic features

(lexical, syntactic, discourse and pragmatic) of the English and Arabic lawyers’ discourse in the
courtroom. Eight trials are selected for the sake of comparison and investigation: four English

trials and four Arabic ones with sixteen lawyers (eight for the plaintiff and eight for the

defendant). Carrying out the analysis

relies on the use of the constructed model and the statistical program called Statistical Package

for the Social Sciences” (SPSS) that is used in this study to analyze the collected data

statistically. This study is mainly an attempt to put a spot of light on the special lawyer’s

language in the courtroom in English and Arabic, and also to investigate this jargon by means of

some stated levels. The study arrives at the unique features of legal language, and at some

significant similarities and differences between English and Arabic. Betti and Khalil (2020b:

1) aims at identifying the distinctive features of international agreements in English and Arabic

selected as a representative corpus as far as their lexico –grammatical and textual features are

concerned. It also aims at analyzing and comparing the English international agreements and

Arabic texts to establish their similarities and differences in textual organization, tactic relations

and cohesive ties. Thus, the study hypothesizes that then are (no) significant differences

in/between the EICs and AICs in textual organization, activization / passivization, sentence

length and complexity, tactic relations, modality and cohesive ties. The data consists of twelve

documents: six written in English and six in Arabic. All the data is considered valid and

authentic. The models chosen for study include Quirk et al’s (1972) and Halliday and Hasan
(1976). The study concludes that the English texts are characterized by using passive

constructions, length, and complex sentences, hypotactic relations, model verbs to express

different functions and cohesive ties. On the other hand, the Arabic texts use active construction,

less lengthy sentences, ways of expressing modality and cohesive ties. Educational linguistics

includes those parts of linguistics directly relevant to educational matters as well as those parts of

education concerned with language (Spolsky & Hult, 2008: 2). In the Teaching discipline, Al-

Seady (1998a: 59) investigates the various ways for the selection, gradation and presentation of

vocabulary to EFL learners. In it a survey is made of the selection of the criteria for the
selection of lexical items: frequency, range, availability, coverage and teachability. It also

traces the lexical items through various types of syllabuses: grammatical, situational,

topical and notional-functional. The study concludes that; 1. both the teacher and the applied

linguist are not in a state of decision on the way they present the lexical items to learners, 2. the

importance of lexical items varies according to different types of syllabuses. 3. some factors like

motivation of learners and characterization of the teachers, are optimal in selecting the most

effective procedures for vocabulary teaching. Betti and Yaseen (2020:43) measure the Iraqi

EFL learners’ use of conversational maxims at the recognition level. The study aims at testing

whether the Iraqi EFL learners observe or flout the Gricean maxims, assessing the Iraqi

EFL learners’ mastery of the conversational maxims, and identifying which maxim(s)

is/are frequently flouted by the learners of EFL. The study hypothesizes that the Iraqi EFL

learners flout all the maxims of conversation, the maxim of relation is the least flouted one, the

Iraqi EFL learners find the maxims difficult to adhere to, and the maxim of quantity is mostly

flouted. The subjects of the study are one hundred Iraqi EFL learners at the fourth-year,

Dept. of English, College of Education for Humanities, University of Al-Muthanna. The data

elicitation tool a recognition test designed in accordance with nature of the study. The study

brings forth the conclusions that the subjects have a difficulty in utilizing the maxims

altogether, they flout all the conversational maxims in relatively different degrees, and the
learners are mostly abided by the maxim of relation more than the other three ones. Betti and

Hasan (2020: 41) study investigates the Iraqi EFL learners' (IEFL) ability to use Speech Acts

(SAs) in MA and Ph.D. theses defense. It aims at analyzing utterances (Us) made by the MA and

Ph.D. IEFL learners in terms of SAs, the class to which those SAs belong, the type of tone the

learners use, and the errors committed by the learners and their types. It is hypothesized that the

learners use the SA of stating more than the other types of SAs in their MA and Ph.D. defence,

the learners use directives more than other SA categories, the EFL learners use the falling tone

more than the other types of tones. The researchers record the defense of six IEFL learners: four
MA and two Ph.D. during the Academic year 2019-2020. They put the recorded data into an

orthographic form showing the tone type for each tone unit, and check each recorded utterance

(U) for the SA used, the SA category to which the SA belongs, the type of tone used and if any,

the type of error the participants commit. The study concludes that the MA IEFL learners use

more SAs than the Ph.D. ones, the most frequently used SA is the SA of asserting, the most

frequently used category of SAs is the representative one, and the learners use the falling tone

more than the other types of tones. Betti and Mahdi (2021: 69) aims at observing, describing,

analyzing and identifying the trouble sources of repair strategies which exist in the Iraqi

university viva discussions in English, and investigating their repair positions and inadequacies.

Likewise, it is hypothesized that misunderstanding errors is the most frequent trouble source of

repairs in the Iraqi university viva discussions in English, non-repair is the most frequent repair

inadequacy, and that the fourth position of repair is the most frequent position type. The

procedure adopted to fulfil the aims and to verify the hypotheses include collecting data which

consists of four hours and ten minutes of audiotaped oral interactions in the MA and Ph.D. viva

discussions, developing a model for repair strategies from various theories in CA, observing and

collecting the data by recording audiotaped samples of those interactions in viva discussions as

sample of the study, putting the datasets into orthography, calculating and describing by the use

of the model, and analyzing the dataset of the study qualitatively and quantitatively. The study

concludes that the eclectic model suggested and applied in the study gives a multi- faceted
description of the different repair study. It is found that repair sources of trouble include

grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, discourse, factual information, channel, processing,

misunderstanding errors, repair of no errors. It also exposes that there are zero occurrence of

miss-repair, self-repair and other-repair failures, that pronunciation trouble source of repair

results in the highest occurrences and that factual information and repair of no errors are the least

frequent

trouble sources. The study reveals that non-repair is the most frequent repair inadequacy and

same turn repair position is the most frequent one. Betti and Mahdi (2021: 14) studies the
conversation analysis (CA) of Iraqi university staff members’ and researchers’ self-repair and

other-repairs strategies in the Iraqi University Viva Discussions in English (IUVDE). It aims at

constructing a model for repair strategies to describe those academic discussions in English,

which is taken from representative authors and writers, studying and analyzing repair strategies

and correction, and arriving at the types of self-repair and other-repair operations and strategies

used by the participants in the study, something which characterize their academic discussions.

The collected data of the study include four hours and ten minutes of audiotaped oral interactions

of the staff members and researchers’ interactions in the viva discussions of some departments in

some universities in Iraq. The data is recorded in 2019. The theoretical framework adopted in

this study is a CA one. The study concludes that the eclectic model suggested and applied in this

study, being comprehensive, works successfully to describe the designated areas and types of

repair strategies, the staff members (examiners) in the discussions prove proficient in using self-

repair and other-repair operations efficaciously. It is also concluded that the Iraqi university staff

members and researchers use self-repair strategies which are recycling, deleting, reformatting

replacing, inserting aborting, sequence jumping, and reordering, and they use other-repair ones

which are candidate understanding, partial repeats, full repeats, replacement candidate

understanding, open class repairs, request for translation and explanation, request for definition

and explanation, interrogative words and request for repetition. Likewise, staff members are
proven to produce more repair cases than researchers. Betti, Igaab and Al-Ghizzi (2018: )

aims at specifying the different types of directives available in the literature about speech acts;

showing their relationship; and investigating the ability of the Iraqi EFL learners to recognize

and produce the aforementioned speech acts. To validate the hypotheses of the study, a test is

used to measure the ability of the fourth year subjects, at Thi-Qar University, College of

Education for humanities, to recognize and produce permission, obligation and prohibition. It is

hypothesized that the Iraqi EFL learners’ performance at the recognition level is better than that

at the production of permission, obligation and prohibition; their performance of permission at

both the recognition and production levels is better than that of obligation and permission; they

tend to use some specific linguistic forms which are characteristic of the types of directives. The

study concludes that the subjects’ performance at the recognition and production levels do not

reveal a moderate mastering of permission, obligation and prohibition. In spite of that, their

recognition level is better than their production and they have weaknesses at the pragmatic level

of the selected directives. 4. Research in Applied Linguistics 1) A paper is linguistic when it

has no application. The only two ways to make a linguistic study are to validate a linguistic

theory in one of the levels mentioned previously and when two or more languages are studied to

show or to arrive at the universal features among languages. 2) A paper is in applied linguistics

when there is an application. If there is no application, it is not an applied linguistic study.

So, when a theory is chosen as a model in pragmatics to analyze discourse or text, or when a test

is made to measure an achievement of students, or when the effect of a mother tongue is seen, or

when a theory is chosen to analyze a legal text, or when a theory in pragmatics, or in semantics

or in grammar is chosen to analyze a literary text, etc. , we are within applied linguistics. All the

previous examples refer to applied linguistic studies not linguistic ones. 3) No study in

linguistics is done with one of the above applications and it is regarded as linguistic not applied

linguistic. 4) Some MA and Ph.D. courses in theoretical linguistics or in general linguistics are

opened in Iraq with applications in their theses and dissertations, they are not linguistic but
applied linguistic ones. Hence, there are supposed to be some modifications. 5) Carrying out

theses and dissertations in applied linguistics or in ELT without application is neither in applied

linguistics nor in linguistics. 6) ELT, as part of applied linguistics, is part of applied linguistics

and there should be some application. References Al-Seady, Mohammed J. B. (1998).

Comparative Education: Some Basic Contributions of Islamic Education to Western

Educational Thought. Al- Qadisiya Journal, 3, 2, 82-89. Al-Seady, Mohammed J. (1998a).

Teaching EFL Vocabulary. Al-Qadisiya Journal, 3, 2, 59-69. Al-Seady, Mohammed J. B.

(1998b). The Employment of English Lexicons by Adolescent Speakers of Nasiriya Iraqi Arabic
as Determined by Sex Differentiation. Al-Qadisiya Journal, 3, 2, 72-9. Al-Seady, Mohammed J.

B. and Al-Sehlani, Mohammed K. A. (2002). Collocation in Three Texts of the Absurd: A

Stylistic Comparative Cohesive Study. The Scientific Journal of Al-Qadisiya University, 3, 2, 34-

44. Al-Seady, Mohammed J. B. (2002). Some Morphological, Lexical and Syntactic Aspects of

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