Universal properties of language

From An Introduction to Language and Linguistics (Fasold &

Connor-Linton (editors), 2006, Yule, 2003)

Universal properties of language From an Introduction to Language and

Linguistics (Fasold & Connor-Linton (editors), 2006, Yule, 2003)

Modularity

Most linguists believe that language is a modular system. That is, people
produce and interpret language using a set of component subsystems (or
modules) in a coordinated way. Each module is responsible for a part of
the total job; it takes the output of other modules as its input and
distributes its own output to those of other modules.

Modularity (continued) For example, Phonetics is about production and

interpretation of speech sounds. Phonology studies the organization of
raw Phonetics in language in general and in individual languages in
particular. In other larger linguistic units such as Semantics, a new
module as discourse which is the organization of language above and
beyond sentence has been added as a subsystem.

Constituency and recursion

All languages are organized into constituents, allowing more complex

units to enter structures where simpler ones are also possible. So we can
say in English, “She sat down,” “The smart woman sat down.” She can be
replaced by “The smart woman” because they are constituents of a
sentence.

Constituents and recursion (continued) Being composed of constituents

also allows languages to be recursive. Recursion is the property of
language which allows grammatical processes to be applied repeatedly,
combining constituents to produce an infinite variety of sentences of
indefinite length. For example, we can expand the short sentence like
“He was tall” into longer sentences like “He was tall and strong and
handsome”.

Discreteness

Another property of all languages is discreteness. Each sound in a

language is treated as discrete. It is possible to produce a range of
sounds or forms into individual, bounded units. For example, different
languages divide the continuous “space” of possible speech sounds into
different inventories of phonemes.

Productivity
In all human languages, an infinite number of new meanings can be
constructed by combining existing forms according to the rules of a given
language. For example, new words can be coined by creating novel
combination of existing morphemes, like teflon is originally formed by the
combination of te(tra)-fl(our)-on.

Arbitrariness

The form of human language has no intrinsic relationship between the

form of a word (how it sounds) and its meaning. It is generally the case
that there is no “natural” connection between a linguistic form and its
meaning. A property of linguistic signs is, therefore, their arbitrary
relationship with the objects they are used to indicate.

Reliance on context

Language is organized into two layers simultaneously. This property is

called duality, or “double articulation”. A single sequence of sounds can
have more than one meaning. Therefore, at one level, we have distinct
sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meaning. For example,
when we say “bin” we have another level producing a meaning which is
different from the meaning of saying “nib”.

Variability

The language that people use varies depending on who’s speaking

and the situation in which they’re speaking. Variability in language
allows people to communicate far more than the semantic content of
the words and sentences they utter. It is indexical that it signals the
social identities (geographical, social status, ethnicity, and even
gender) and the immediate speech situation.
Language is the principal method of community used by human beings. Languages
consist of spoken sounds in spoken languages and written symbols that are used for
written languages. Language is the conventional speaking system through which we
can communicate with others and express our ideas, feelings, and information.
Language is the most important aspect of our life because it allows us to create cultural
ties, friendships, and relationships by spreading our thoughts and ideas.

______________________________________________________________
PROPERTIES OF LANGUAGE
There are basically six properties of language that makes human language different
from animal language. These properties are some kind of features that are unlikely to
be found in the languages of other living creatures. Here, the properties are given
below.

1. Displacement

This property allows us to communicate about those events that are currently absent
from the environment ( like I did the work yesterday, what is your plan for this vacation
or I will get the job in the next month). It allows us to make up stories and think about
both the past and the future.

2. Productivity

It resembles the infinity of unique words/sentences and the combination of the words. It
is linked to the fact that the potential number of utterances in human languages is
infinite.

3. Arbitrariness

It basically presents that no natural connection between a linguistic form and its
meaning exists. That means the words or symbols used to make the right perception
about the objects are not inherently interconnected to those objects they symbolize.

4. Discreteness:

This property ensures that the sounds used in languages are meaningfully distinct and
those sounds are considered our own with our distinct meaning.

5. Duality

At one stage of language, we find two kinds of simultaneity of language, one is discrete
sounds and another is discrete meanings.

We can combine the letters l, a,k, and e in two different ways: lake and leak. These two
word means two different meanings even though they are comprised of the same four
sounds.

6. Cultural Transmission

Language is learned through culture with other speakers and not from parental genes.

Characteristics of Language

There are basically 10 characteristics of language. Some of the are major

characteristics and some of them are minor characteristics. Again some of them are
relatable to the properties of language mentioned before.

Here, the characteristics are given below:

1. Language is a social phenomenon

Language should be considered a social phenomenon considering Its uses, importance
and It's unique value. Language exists in our human society and plays a big role in
nursing and developing culture and establishing good relations between human
beings.

2. Language is the main means of human communication:

It is a universal acknowledgment that language is the main means of communication

among human beings. Although there are also some means of communication is exists
among us like nods, winks, mathematical symbols, sirens, maps, codes, horns, etc. But
all of this commutation system is too much limited to language. They are not as
appropriate as language is.

3. Language is basically vocal

Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds which are produced by the vocal cord,
an articulatory organism of the human body. Initially, it must have come out as sounds
only and writing mostly come much later. During the lifetime of a human being, he/she
must speak more than he/she writes.

4. Language is unique, complex, creative, and modifiable

Language is a unique substance on the planet. There are no other talking species in
the world without human beings. Human being has their own way to communicate.
Again, each language is unique in its own sense. Though there are similarities among
languages, each language has Its own particularities. Language is changing each and
every moment and new languages are begin created with time. The old English
language is not same as the modern English. So, language is also modifiable.

5. Prolapse

Man can talk about situations, stories, and certainty without the presence of that
situation & environment. Man can talk about the past or about the future. Language
allows us to think in that way. We can talk in absence of someone with the mean of
language.

Besides these major characteristics, some minor characteristics are also given below:

6. Productivity
Whatever we create is productivity. Speaking itself is also a type of productivity. We
can talk about topics that are displaced or we can talk about the things that may be
present or not, or talk about anything in the past, present, or future. We can make a
story that doesn’t exist.

7. Language is Social

Language is a set of conventional communicative symbols used by humans for

communication in society. In this sense, language is a possession of a social group,
comprising an indispensable set of rules which permits its members to share thoughts
with each other, communicate with each other, and cooperate with each other; it is a
social institution. Moreover, Language exists in society; it is the means of nourishing
and developing culture and establishing human relations.

8. Language is systematic

Despite being symbolic, the symbols of the language are arranged in specific systems.
All languages have their individual & unique arrangement of plans. Each language is
an arrangement of systems.

9. Language is a symbolic system

Language is signified as a symbolic system. It consists of different types of symbols

based on sound for concepts, things, ideas, thoughts, objects, etc. Language has
specific sounds and words according to their symbols.

The words in a language are not just patterns or images but symbols that have
meaning. The core value of a language is sometimes funded by the true explanation of
these symbols.

10. Language is non - instinctive and Conventional

No language was made in a single day. Language is the result of the advancement of
culture and tradition. Every age transmits this tradition to the following. Like every
single human organization or system, languages may also be changed and passed on,
developed, modified, and extended. So, we can consider language as non-instinctive
because naturally it is acquired and modified by us.

SAUSSUREAN STRUCTURALISM
BY NASRULLAH MAMBROL
Ferdinand de Saussure introduced Structuralism in Linguistics, marking a
revolutionary break in the study of language, which had till then been
historical and philological. In his Course in General Linguistics (1916),
Saussure saw language as a system of signs constructed by convention.
Understanding meaning to be relational, being produced by the
interaction between various signifiers and signifieds, he held that meaning
cannot be understood in isolation. Saussure illustrated this relationality of
language, with the terms paradigmatic axis (of selection) and the
syntagmatic axis (of combination), and with the example of 8.25 Geneva
to Paris express. Further, he challenged the view of reality as independent
and existing outside language and reduced tang cage to a mere “naming
system”. He questioned the conventional “correspondence theory of
meaning” and argued that meaning is arbitrary, and that language does
not merely reflect the world, but constitutes it.

As Jacques Derrida pointed out, Saussure’s theory is based on binary

oppositions or dyads, i.e., defining a unit in terms of what it is not, which
gives rise to oppositional pairs in which one is always superior to the
other. The most fundamental binary opposition is related to the concept
of sign, the basic unit of signification. In Saussure, the previously
undivided sign gets divided into the signifier (the sound image) and the
signified (the concept). Saussure stressed that the relationship between
the signifier and the signified is conventional and arbitrary, and that both
terms are psychological in nature. There is no one-to-one relation
between the signifier and the signified. For instance, the sound image
“tree” may refer to different kinds of trees or it may even be a metaphor
for forest. Therefore, it is inferred that meaning is arbitrary and unstable.

The second binary opposition is-that of the langue and parole, where
langue refers to language as a structural system based on certain rules,
while parole refers to an individual expression of language. The terms
langue and parole are parallel to the terms competence and performance
formulated by Chomsky.
 The binary opposition of synchronic and diachronic refers to the study of
the structure and functions of language at a particular point of time, and
over a period of time respectively.
Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic axes refer to the axes of selection and
combination respectively, where syntagmatic denotes the relationship of
units/words in a linear pattern, while ‘paradigmatic axis constitutes the
interchangeable units in a language.--------------------------------

The most significant of the binary oppositions that has been criticized by
Derrida is that of speech and writing. Saussure privileged speech over
writing owing to the subjectivity, authority and presence of the speaker.
Derrida called this phonocentrism, a manifestation of the logocentrism,
which literally means the centrality of the logos. “Logos” etymologically
and historically means the “Word of God” and by extension, rationality,
wisdom, law – all synonymous with power. Derrida describes logocentrism
as the metaphysics of presence and is opposed to the concept of the
centrality of presence, because presence contains within itself, traces of
absence, thereby deconstructing its very centrality. In connection to and
in opposition to logocentrism, Derrida introduces “ecriture”, a French
term roughly translated as writing – which exists beyond the logos and is
characterised by absence and differance, where meaning is constantly
under erasure, and does not have the authority of the logos, and is hence
anti-logocentric. A related word, archi ecriture, refers to writing as an
ultimate principle than as a derivative of logos. According to Derrida, even
speech can be considered as a form of writing — writing on air waves, or
into the memory of the listener. Thus the concept of ecriture subverts the
superiority of speech over writing.

Before 1960, few people in academic circles or outside had heard the
name of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). But after 1968, European
intellectual life was a-buzz with references to the father of both linguistics
and structuralism. That Saussure was as much a catalyst as an intellectual
innovator is confirmed by the fact that the work – the Course in General
Linguistics – for which he is now famous outside linguistics was compiled
from three sets of students’ lecture notes for the years of the Course in
General Linguistics given at the University of Geneva in 1907, 1908–9, and
1910–11. That Saussure a linguist and, to the wider academic community
and general public, an obscure specialist in Sanskrit and Indo-European
languages, should become the source of intellectual innovation in the
social sciences and humanities, is also cause for thought. It suggests that
something quite unique occurred in the historical epoch of the twentieth
century, so that a new model of language based on Saussure’s structural
approach emerged to become the model for theorising social and cultural
life. Saussurian theory has its basis in the history of linguistics, and its
implications extend to the whole of the social sciences. We thus need to
consider both these aspects.
Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857, to one of the best-known families of
the city, one famous for its scientific accomplishments. He was thus a
direct contemporary of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939) and Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), although there is little
evidence of his ever having had contact with any of them. After an
unsatisfactory year in 1875 at the University of Geneva studying physics
and chemistry, Saussure went to the University of Leipzig in 1876 to study
languages. Then, in the wake of eighteen months studying Sanskrit in
Berlin, he published, at the age of 21, his much acclaimed mémoire
entitled, Mémoire sur le systéme primitif des voyelles dans les langues
indoeurope ´ennes (Mémoire on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-
European Languages). Fifty years after Saussure’s death, the renowned
French linguist, Emile Benveniste, would say of this work that it presaged
the whole of Saussure’s future research on the nature of language
inspired by the theory of the arbitrary nature of the sign.
In 1880, after defending his thesis on the absolute genitive case in
Sanskrit, Saussure moved to Paris, and in 1881, at the age of 24, he was
named lecturer in Gothic and Old High German at the Ecole Pratique des
Hautes E´ tudes. For just over a decade Saussure taught in Paris until he
was appointed professor of Sanskrit and Indo-European languages at the
University of Geneva.
Although acclaimed by his colleagues, and devoted to the study of
language, Saussure’s published output began to dwindle as the years wore
on. As he put it, he was dissatisfied with the nature of linguistics as a
discipline – with its lack of reflexiveness, as with its terminology 1 – and
yet he was unable to write the book which would revamp the discipline
and enable him to continue his work in philology.
The work now famous, Course in General Linguistics, composed from
some of Saussure’s lecture notes along with the notes of his students,
could be seen perhaps to be a partial fulfilment of Saussure’s belief that
language as such needed to be re-examined if linguistics was to move on
to a sounder footing.

Saussure’s Approach to Language

Within the history of linguistics, Saussure’s approach, as exemplified in the
Course, is generally thought to have opposed two influential
contemporary views of language. The first is that established in 1660 by
the Port-Royal philosophers, Arnauld and Lancelot in their Grammaire
generale et raisonnee (Eng. Tr., The Port Royal Gammar 1975), where
language is seen as a mirror of thoughts and based on a universal logic.
For the Port-Royal grammarians, language is fundamentally rational. The
second view is that of nineteenth-century linguistics, where the history of
a particular language is deemed to explain the current state of that
language. In the latter case, Sanskrit, the sacred language of ancient India,
believed to be the oldest of languages, was also believed to function as
the connecting link between all languages, so that, ultimately, language
and its history would become one with each other.
The historical approach to language and, to a lesser extent, the rationalist
approach, assumes that language is essentially a naming process –
attaching words to things, whether or not these are imaginary – and that
there is some kind of intrinsic link between the name and its object. Why a
particular name came to be attached to a particular object or idea, could,
it was believed, be determined historically – or even prehistorically. The
further back in history one went the closer one was supposed to come to
a coincidence between the name and its object. As Saussure put it, such a
perspective assumes that language is essentially a nomenclature: a
collection of names for objects and ideas.

Key Elements of the Course

What, then, are the key elements of Saussure’s theory as manifest in the
Course? To begin with, Saussure shifts the focus of study from the history
of language in general, to a consideration of the present configuration of a
particular natural language like English or French. Now, a history of
language becomes the history of languages, without there being an a
priori link between them, as nineteenth-century linguists had assumed.
To focus on the present configuration of (a) language is, automatically, to
focus on the relationship between the elements of that language and not
on their intrinsic value Language, Saussure says, is always organized in a
specific way. It is a system, or a structure, where any individual element is
meaningless outside the confines of that structure. In a strong and
insistent passage in the Course, Saussure says: ‘in language [langue] there
are only differences. Even more important a difference generally implies
positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language,
there are only differences without positive terms’ (Saussure 1976: 166 and
1993: 118). The point is not only that value, or significance, is established
through the relation between one term and another in the language
system – so that, in the example used by Saussure, ‘t’ can be written in a
variety of ways and still be understood – but that the very terms of the
system itself are the product of difference: there are no positive terms
prior to the system. This implies that a language exists as a kind of totality,
or it does not exist at all. Saussure uses the image of the chess game to
illustrate the differential nature of language. For in chess, not only is the
present configuration of pieces on the board all that matters to the
newcomer to the game (no further insight would be gained from knowing
how the pieces came to be arranged in this way), but any number of items
could be substituted for the pieces on the board (a button for a king, etc.)
because what constitutes the game’s viability is the differential
relationship between the pieces, and not their intrinsic value. To see
language as being like a chess game, where the position of the pieces at a
given moment is what counts, is to see it from a synchronic perspective.
To give the historical approach precedence – as the nineteenth century
did – is, by contrast, to view language from a diachronic perspective. In
the Course, Saussure privileges the synchronic over the diachronic aspect
because it provides a clearer picture of the factors present in any state of
language.
Arbitrary Relation Between Signifier and Signified
Of equal importance for grasping the distinctiveness of Saussure’s theory
is the principle that language is a system of signs, and that each sign is
composed of two parts: a signifier (signifiant) (word, or sound-pattern),
and a signified (signifie´) (concept). In contrast to the tradition within
which he was brought up, therefore Saussure does not accept that the
essential bond in language is between word and thing. Instead, Saussure’s
concept of the sign points to the relative autonomy of language in relation
to reality. Even more fundamentally, however, Saussure comes to
enunciate what has become for a modern audience the most influential
principle of his linguistic theory: that the relationship between the signifier
and the signified is arbitrary. In light of this principle, the basic structure of
language is no longer assumed to be revealed by etymology and philology,
but can best be grasped by understanding how language states (that is,
specific linguistic configurations or totalities) change. The ‘nomenclaturist’
position thus becomes an entirely inadequate basis for linguistics.

Langue and Parole

Perhaps the terms which have caused more conceptual difficulties and
drawn more criticism of Saussure’s theory than any others, are langue
(individual natural language viewed as a structure, or system), and parole
(individual speech acts, or acts of language as a process). This conceptual
couple introduces the distinction between language as it exists as a more
or less coherent structure of differences, and language as it is practiced by
the community of speakers. While Saussure propose in the Course that a
specific linguistic structure is distinct from speech, and while he argued
that the basis of language, as a social fact, is to be grasped exclusively at
the level of structure, it is also true that nothing enters the realm of the
linguistic structure without first becoming manifest in individual speech
acts. More significantly, the very extent of the totality of the structure
could only be known with certainty if the totality of speech acts were also
known. In this sense, the domain of the structure always remains, for
Saussure, more hypothetical than the domain of speech. However, much
depends here on whether one looks at speech from an individual,
psychological perspective, or whether one focuses on the whole
community of speakers. In the first case, to view language through the
speech of the individual qua individual is one thing; to view it through the
speech acts of the whole community is quite another. Saussure’s point is
that language is fundamentally a social institution, and that, therefore, the
individualist approach is inadequate for the linguist.
Language is always changing. But it does not change at the behest of
individuals; it changes over time independently of the speakers’ wills
Indeed through a Saussurian optic, individuals are as much formed by
language as it is they who form language, and the question arises as to
whether such a vision might have implications for other disciplines in the
social sciences. In fact, his was the case for those theorists working under
the rubric of ‘structuralism’ in the 1960s.

Saussure and the Human Sciences

With the emergence of the Saussurian model in the human sciences, the
researcher’s attention was turned away from documenting historical
events, or recording the facts of human behaviour, and towards the
notion of human action as a system of meaning. Such was the result of
emphasising, at the broader societal level, the arbitrary nature of the sign
and the corresponding idea of language as a system of conventions.
Whereas a search for intrinsic facts and their effects had hitherto been
made (as exemplified when the historian supposed that human beings
need food to survive, just as they need language to communicate with
each other – therefore events turned out this way), now the socio-cultural
system at a given moment in history, becomes the object of study. This is
a system within which the researcher is also inscribed, much as the
linguist is inscribed in language. A greater concern to be more reflexive
thus also becomes the order of the day.
For many, like the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu, or the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as for Roland
Barthes in literary criticism and semiotics, Saussurian insights initially
paved the way for a more rigorous and systematic approach to human
sciences – an approach that would genuinely attempt to take seriously the
primacy of the socio-cultural domain for human beings. Just as Saussure
had emphasised the importance of not studying speech acts in isolation
from the system of conventions which gave them currency, so it was
deemed inadequate to study social and cultural facts independently of the
social or cultural system which gave them currency. Society or culture at a
given state of development, and not discrete individual human actions in
the past or present, became the focus of study. Whereas the generation
before (the generation of Sartre) had sought to discover the natural
(intrinsic) basis of human society in history – much as nineteenth-century
linguists had sought to reveal the natural elements of language – the
structuralist generation’s effort was directed towards showing how the
differential relations of the elements in the system – whether the latter be
a series of texts, a kinship system, or the milieu of fashion photography –
produced a meaning, or meanings, and thus had to be ‘read’ and
interpreted. In other words, the study of socio-cultural life is seen to entail
deciphering signs through focusing on their differential value, and not on
their putative substantive value (often equated with the ‘natural’), and
also paying attention to the symptomatic level of signification, as well as
to the explicit level.
Structure
Structure, as inspired by Saussure’s theory of language, can thus refer to
the ‘value’ of elements in a system, or context, and not to their mere
physical, or natural existence. Now it has become clear that the physical
existence of an entity is complicated by the effects of the linguistic and
cultural milieu. Structure, then, is a reminder that nothing social or
cultural (and this includes, of course, the individual) exists as a ‘positive’,
essential element outside it in isolation from all other elements. Such an
approach reverses the one taken in the political philosophy of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where the biological individual is
placed at the origin of social life. And just as this philosophy saw no
society as existing prior to the individual, so it also denied the relative
autonomy of language.
Probably the main objection that can be raised against the translation of
Saussure’s emphasis on structure into the study of social and cultural life,
is that it does not make sufficient allowance for the role of practice and
individual autonomy. Seeing human freedom as a product of social life,
rather than as the origin, or cause, of social life, has made it seem, in the
eyes of some observers, to be quite limited. A conservative bias, denying
the possibility of change, would thus be the consequence of structure
While this problem is still unresolved, it is perhaps important to recognize
the difference between the freedom of the hypothetical individual (whose
very social existence would be equivalent to a limit on freedom), and a
society of free individuals, where freedom would be the result of social life
understood as a structure of differences. Or, rather, we could say that
perhaps researchers should begin to explore the idea that, to paraphrase
Saussure: Society is a system of freedoms without positive terms. On this
reading, there would be no essential, or substantial freedom – no freedom
incarnate in the individual in a state of nature.

Note
1 Cf. ‘I am more and more aware of the immense amount of work
required to show the linguist what he is doing. . . . The utter inadequacy of
current terminology, the need to reform it and, in order to do that, to
demonstrate what sort of object language is, continually spoil my pleasure
in philology’ (Sausssure 1964: 95, cited in Culler 1986: 24).
Source
Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers From Structuralism To Post-Humanismm
Second Edition John Lechte Routledge 2008
References
Arnauld, Antoine and Lancelot, Claude (1975), The Port-Royal Grammar:
general and rational grammar, ed. and trans. Jacques Rieux and Bernard E.
Rollin, The Hague: Mouton.
Culler, Jonathan (1986), Ferdinand de Saussure, Ithaca and New York:
Cornell University Press.
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1976), Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale, ed. Tullio
de Mauro, Paris: Payot. In English as Saussure (1993) Course in General
Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris, London: Duckworth.
Saussure, Ferninand de (1986), Letter of 4 January 1894, in ‘Lettres de F.
de Saussure a` Antoine Meillet’, Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 21 (1964),
95, cited in Culler, Jonathan (1986), Ferdinand de Saussure, Ithaca and
New York: Cornell University Press.
Saussure’s Major Writings
(1993) Course in General Linguistics, trans Roy Harris, London: Duckworth.
(1976) Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale, critical edn Tullio de Mauro Paris:
Payot.
(1967) Cours de linguistique ge´ne´rale, 2 vols, critical edn by Rudolf
Engler, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz.

GENERATIVISM
COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE
1. - Definition of competence
Noam Chomsky (1965) coined the term competence to account for the
unconscious knowledge speakers have of their language. This unconscious
knowledge refers to what someone knows about the language, the mental
representation of the language (Fromkin and Rodman, 1981).
Competence, however, has been subdivided into two broad areas,
namely, linguistic competence and communicative competence.
1.1- Linguistic competence:
O’Grady, Dobrovolsky and Aronoff (1993) define linguistic competence as
the ability speakers have "to produce and understand an unlimited
number of sentences, including many that are novel or unfamiliar" (p. 3).
Normally, language users speak a language without consciously knowing
about the rules governing it, i.e. the grammar behind it. For this reason,
some authors refer to linguistic competence as grammatical competence.
This knowledge has five main components: phonological, syntactic,
semantic, lexical and morphological.
1.1.1) Phonological competence refers to the knowledge speakers have of
the sounds and possible sound combinations of a language. This implies
that speakers of a language can recognize the words of their language (or
those who might be) by simple listening to them, i.e. a speaker of English
can determine whether a word might belong to English or to another
language only by listening to it.
1.1.2) Syntactic competence refers to the knowledge the speakers have
about the possible syntactic combinations of their language. Usually
speakers know most (if not all) of the possible combinations of their native
language, e.g. a speaker of English knows that "the dog the boy bit" is not
a grammatical English sentence.
1.1.3) Semantic competence refers to the knowledge speakers have of the
meanings of words in their languages. Speakers know, for instance, the
relationship between the word "dog" and the reality represented by this
word, although there is apparently no natural connection between the
two. That is why in French the same reality is represented with the word
"chien" and in Spanish "perro".
1.1.4) Lexical competence refers to the knowledge speakers have of an
extensive amount of words in their language. It also refers to the ability
that speakers have to use these words according to the appropriate
context. For instance, in the paradigm of nouns, speakers can choose from
a quite extensive variety of nouns when building a sentence, however, the
speakers know that in a sentence such as "the _______ died in that car-
accident" only biological beings could be placed in that position because
only biological things "die"; however, inanimate or non-existing nouns
could fill the blank for representing abstract ideas, or other different
purposes such as irony and humor (this is usually referred to as a
pragmatic meta-knowledge).
1.1.5) Morphological competence refers to the knowledge speakers have
of the formation of words in their language, or better said, word structure.
Usually, speakers know that, in general, to create a plural noun they need
to add an "s" at the end of the word. For instance, the word "table" can be
pluralized into "tables". In this case, in linguistics, it is said that the word is
composed by two morphemes –considered to be the minimal meaningful
units in a language- which are "table-s". Speakers of languages know
about word-formation in their languages. They create words, for fun or
fashion, that "sound" like their languages, but that maybe they do not
"officially" constitute a part of their lexicon.
1.2.- Communicative competence:
Communicative competence is a broad term that involves not only the
structural features of language, but also its social, pragmatic and
contextual characteristics. Therefore, it is necessary to understand
communicative competence as the sum of a series of competences.
1.2.1) Grammatical competence refers to the ability to speakers have to
use the different functioning rules of the system of their language. This
competence, actually, is what we referred previously as linguistic
competence.
1.2.2) Sociolinguistic competence refers to the ability speakers have to
produce sentences according to the communicative situation. Speakers
(usually) know when, where and whom to say things.
1.2.3) Discursive competence refers to the ability speakers have to be able
to use the different types of discourse. Usually, language users know what
is being referred to in different contexts, i.e. they discern between new
and old information, and are able to determine the discourse topics. For
instance, speakers know when a "he" refers to "John" or to "the child"
according to the text context in the sentence: John went to the park, and
he found a child who was sick. The young boy was crying because he
didn’t know where his mother was.
1.2.4) Strategic competence refers to the knowledge speakers have to
maintain communication. Therefore, this competence accounts for the
strategies language users have to be understood, and to understand
others. Gestures, expressions, mimics and intonation are among others
some of the most strategies used.

2.- Definition of performance

Performance is considered to be the physical representation, usually in
utterances of any type, of the human competence (Chomsky, 1965). It
refers to "how" someone uses language (Fromkin and Rodman, 1981).
Chomsky considered performance as a faulty representation of
competence because of psychological "restrictions such as memory lapses
and limitations, distractions, changes of directions halfway through
sentence, hesitation and so on" (Villalobos, 1992, p. 20). Performance, in a
way, accounts for the failures language users have when transposing their
competence into actual linguistic production.
3.- Implications of competence and performance in EFL teaching
EFL teachers who consider the elements involving both linguistic and
communicative competence in a classroom setting tend to understand
more the new linguistic challenges faced by students when learning an L2.
Some teachers might understand, for instance, the nature of some
mistakes in terms of interference from the L1. Others might interpret
mistakes as the lack of cultural and social knowledge of the target
language. In any case, the important point is that teachers might be able
to understand better the nature of the learning process and apply certain
orientations towards the syllabus design and classroom activities (Bell,
1981). Besides, a language teacher who understands and distinguishes
competence from performance necessarily has a different vision of the
students’ difficulties when learning the L2 and, as so, conceives the
learners roles differently, e.g. not as a passive learner, but as an active
member of the teaching-learning process (Nunan, 1991; Nunan, 1999).

4.- Some practical considerations to be observed in an EFL teaching

setting
The following considerations are an attempt to simplify the acquisition of
L2 competences into the mental framework of students. They are issued
in terms of the activities that are considered to promote actual
involvement of the students in the teaching-learning process (Nuttal,
1982; Omaggio, 1986; Wallace, 1991; Weaver, 1994).
4.1) Contextualized activities: one of the problems that may be faced by
students is that out-of-context activities might frustrate the development
of linguistic and communicative L2 competences. It is, therefore, of
paramount importance to promote authentic activities that encourage
students to see language as it actually works.
4.2) Interactive activities: interaction is considered to be a key factor in
the L2 classroom. Interaction of the sort student-teacher-student is of
paramount importance to the development of the linguistic and
communicative competences of students. However, such interactivity
must be contextualized in actual language use situations so that students
understand the real purposes of language.
4.3) Professor’s Feedback: it is relevant to consider the effects of teachers’
feedback in the development of the linguistic and communicative
competences in the L2 classroom setting. However, a question arises in
terms of the effectiveness of correcting mistakes explicitly. This discussion
is still at stake in the current literature. In this sense, it is better that
teachers explore the learning strategies of each student and try to
determine what they need. In any case, it is important to foster activities
that involve students in cognitive processes that allow them to solve
linguistic problems related to competence. At the end, they might not
need explicit grammar instruction to learn the L2.

4.4) Contextual factors: it is important to account for contextual factors

that are present in the teaching and learning process, i.e. the
environment, the L1 linguistic competence, the authenticity of the
activities, the linguistic distance between the L1 and the L2, among others.
As it was mentioned before, this is merely a short list of suggestions
attempting to promote the development of both linguistic and
communicative competence in students. However this list is in no way
(and it does not attempt to be) the solution for helping students in
developing such competences. However, the most important issue here is
to consider the importance of terms such as competence and
performance in real-life learning-teaching environments and the L2
pedagogical implications they acquaint for.

Activity: read the notes above and answer these two questions
thoroughly (you may use other sources as well as your own experience as
students.
1)Compare competence and performance (Chomsky) with langue and
parole (F. de Saussure). Are they the same in some way, but with different
names?
2)Why do you think there´s a connection between this theme and EFL
(English as a foreign language) teaching?

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

 by Bernard Comrie
No one would disagree with the claim that language and thought interact
in many significant ways. There is great disagreement, however, about the
proposition that each specific language has its own influence on the
thought and action of its speakers. On the one hand, anyone who has
learned more than one language is struck by the many ways in which
languages differ from one another. But on the other hand, we expect
human beings everywhere to have similar ways of experiencing the world.
Comparisons of different languages can lead one to pay attention to
'universals'—the ways in which all languages are similar, and to
'particulars' —the ways in which each individual language, or type of
language, is special, even unique. Linguists and other social scientists
interested in universals have formulated theories to describe and explain
human language and human language behavior in general terms as
species-specific capacities of human beings. However, the idea that
different languages may influence thinking in different ways has been
present in many cultures and has given rise to many philosophical
treatises. Because it is so difficult to pin down effects of a particular
language on a particular thought pattern, this issue remains unresolved. It
comes in and out of fashion and often evokes considerable energy in
efforts to support or refute it.

Relativity and Determinism

There are two problems to confront in this arena: linguistic relativity and
linguistic determinism. Relativity is easy to demonstrate. In order to speak
any language, you have to pay attention to the meanings that are
grammatically marked in that language. For example, in English it is
necessary to mark the verb to indicate the time of occurrence of an event
you are speaking about: It's raining; It rained; and so forth. In Turkish,
however, it is impossible to simply say, 'It rained last night'. This language,
like many American Indian languages, has more than one past tense,
depending on one's source of knowledge of the event. In Turkish, there
are two past tenses—one to report direct experience and the other to
report events that you know about only by inference or hearsay. Thus, if
you were out in the rain last night, you will say, 'It rained last night' using
the past-tense form that indicates that you were a witness to the rain; but
if you wake up in the morning and see the wet street and garden, you are
obliged to use the other past-tense form—the one that indicates that you
were not a witness to the rain itself.
Differences of this sort have fascinated linguists and anthropologists for
centuries. They have reported hundreds of facts about 'exotic' languages,
such as verbs that are marked or chosen according to the shape of an
object that is being handled (Navajo) or for the relative ages of speaker
and hearer (Korean). Such facts are grist for the mill of linguistic relativity.
And, indeed, they can be found quite readily in 'nonexotic' languages as
well. To cite a fact about English that is well known to linguists: It is not
appropriate to say Richard Nixon has worked in Washington, but it is
perfectly OK to say Gerald Ford has worked in Washington. Why? English
restricts the present perfect tense ('has worked') to assertions about
people who are alive. Exotic!
Proponents of linguistic determinism argue that such differences between
languages influence the ways people think—perhaps the ways in which
whole cultures are organized. Among the strongest statements of this
position are those by Benjamin Lee Whorf and his teacher, Edward Sapir,
in the first half of this century—hence the label, 'The Sapir-Whorf
Hypothesis', for the theory of linguistic relativity and determinism. Whorf
proposed: 'We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe
significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to
organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech
community and is codified in the patterns of our language' (Whorf, 1940;
in Carroll, 1956, pp. 213-4). And, in the words of Sapir: 'Human
beings...are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has
become the medium of expression for their society. ...The fact of the
matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up
on the language habits of the group' (Sapir, 1929; in Manlbaum, 1958, p.
162).
Investigating Language and Thought
How can such bold claims be substantiated beyond examination of
individual languages themselves? If one takes the hypothesis seriously, it
should be possible to show that Turks are more sensitive to evidence than
are Americans, but that Americans are more aware of death than Turks.
Clearly, the hypothesis cannot be supported on so grand a level. Rather,
experimental psychologists and cognitive anthropologists have sought to
find small differences, on controlled tasks, between speakers of various
languages. Maybe Navajos are somewhat more sensitive to shapes of
objects, for example.
The results have been mixed. In most cases, human thought and action
are overdetermined by an array of causes, so the structure of language
may not play a central causal role. Linguistic determinism can best be
demonstrated in situations in which language is the principal means of
drawing people's attention to a particular aspect of experience. For
example, if you regularly speak a language in which you must pick a form
of second-person address (you) that marks your social relationship to your
interlocutor—such as Spanish tu ('you' for friends and family and for those
socially subordinate) vs. usted ('you' for those socially above in status or
for those with whom you have no close connection) or French tu versus
vous—you must categorize every person you talk to in terms of the
relevant social dimensions. (As a thought experiment of linguistic
determinism, think of the categorizations of social relationships that
would have to be made if Spanish became the common language of the
United States.)
Going beyond thought experiments, some of the most convincing research
demonstrating some degree of linguistic determinism is being conducted
under the direction of Stephen C. Levinson at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Levinson and his
collaborators distinguish between languages that describe spatial relations
in terms of the body (like English 'right/left', 'front/back') and those that
orient to fixed points in the environment (like 'north/south/east/west' in
some aboriginal Australian languages). In a language of the second type
one would refer, for example, to 'your north shoulder' or 'the bottle at the
west end of the table'; in narrating a past event, one would have to
remember how the actions related to the compass points. Thus, in order
to speak this type of language, you always have to know where you are
with respect to the compass points, whether you are speaking or not. And
Levinson's group have shown, in extensive cross-linguistic and cross-
cultural studies, that this is, in fact, the case.
Much more research needs to be done, but it is not likely that the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis will be supported in the strong form quoted above. For
one, language is only one factor that influences cognition and behavior.
For another, if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis were really true, second
language learning and translation would be far harder than they are.
However, because language is so pervasive—and because we must always
make cognitive decisions while speaking—weaker versions of the
hypothesis will continue to attract scientific attention. (For a lively debate
on many of these issues, with much new evidence from several fields,
read Gumperz and Levinson 1996.)

Suggested Readings
Gumperz, J. J., and Levinson, S. C. 1996. Rethinking linguistic relativity. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.

Lucy, John A. 1992. Language diversity and thought: A reformulation of the linguistic
relativity hypothesis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sapir, E. 1929. "The status of linguistics as a science". Language 5. 207-14. Reprinted in

The selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture, and personality, ed. by D. G.
Mandelbaum, 160-6. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Whorf, B. L. 1940. "Science and linguistics". Technology Review 42: 227-31, 247-
8.Reprinted in Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee
Whorf, ed. by J. B. Carroll, 207-19. Cambridge, MA: The Technology Press of MIT/New
York: Wiley. 1956.

THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS LINGUISTIC THEORY

SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
Benjamin Whorf argued that "we dissect nature along lines laid down by
our native languages".
By Richard Nordquist
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the linguistic theory that the semantic
structure of a language shapes or limits the ways in which a speaker forms
conceptions of the world. It came about in 1929. The theory is named
after the American anthropological linguist Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and
his student Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941). It is also known as the theory of
linguistic relativity, linguistic relativism, linguistic determinism, Whorfian
hypothesis, and Whorfianism.
History of the Theory
The idea that a person's native language determines how he or she thinks
was popular among behaviorists of the 1930s and on until cognitive
psychology theories came about, beginning in the 1950s and increasing in
influence in the 1960s. (Behaviorism taught that behavior is a result of
external conditioning and doesn't take feelings, emotions, and thoughts
into account as affecting behavior. Cognitive psychology studies mental
processes such as creative thinking, problem-solving, and attention.)
FEATURED VIDEO
Language Currently Under Development Discovered
Author Lera Boroditsky gave some background on ideas about the
connections between languages and thought:
"The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back
centuries; Charlemagne proclaimed that 'to have a second language is to
have a second soul.' But the idea went out of favor with scientists when
Noam Chomsky's theories of language gained popularity in the 1960s and
'70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar for all
human languages—essentially, that languages don't really differ from one
another in significant ways...." ("Lost in Translation." "The Wall Street
Journal," July 30, 2010)
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was taught in courses through the early 1970s
and had become widely accepted as truth, but then it fell out of favor. By
the 1990s, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was left for dead, author Steven
Pinker wrote. "The cognitive revolution in psychology, which made the
study of pure thought possible, and a number of studies showing meager
effects of language on concepts, appeared to kill the concept in the
1990s... But recently it has been resurrected, and 'neo-Whorfianism' is
now an active research topic in psycholinguistics." ("The Stuff of Thought.
"Viking, 2007)
Neo-Whorfianism is essentially a weaker version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis and says that language influences a speaker's view of the world
but does not inescapably determine it.
The Theory's Flaws
One big problem with the original Sapir-Whorf hypothesis stems from the
idea that if a person's language has no word for a particular concept, then
that person would not be able to understand that concept, which is
untrue. Language doesn't necessarily control humans' ability to reason or
have an emotional response to something or some idea. For example, take
the German word sturmfrei, which essentially is the feeling when you
have the whole house to yourself because your parents or roommates are
away. Just because English doesn't have a single word for the idea doesn't
mean that Americans can't understand the concept.
There's also the "chicken and egg" problem with the theory. "Languages,
of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our
needs," Boroditsky continued. "Simply showing that speakers of different
languages think differently doesn't tell us whether it's language that
shapes thought or the other way around."

PRAGMATICS
In the late 1960s, two elderly American tourists who had been touring
Scotland reported that, in their travels, they had come to a Scottish town
in which there was a great ruined cathedral. As they stood in the ruins,
they saw a small boy and they asked him when the cathedral had been so
badly damaged. He replied in the war. Their immediate interpretation, in
the 1960s, was that he must be referring to the Second World War which
had ended only twenty years earlier. But then they thought that the ruins
looked as if they had been in their dilapidated state for much longer than
that, so they asked the boy which war he meant. He replied the war with
the English, which, they eventually discovered, had formally ended in
1745. Brown (1998)
In Semantics, we focus on conceptual meaning and the relationships
between words, but there are other aspects of meaning that depend more
on context and the communicative intentions of speakers. In Gill Brown’s
story, the American tourists and the Scottish boy seem to be using the
word war with essentially the same basic meaning. However, the boy was
using the word to refer to something the tourists did not expect, hence
the initial misunderstanding. Communication clearly depends on not only
recognizing the meaning of words in an utterance, but recognizing what
speakers mean by their utterances. The study of what speakers mean, or
‘speaker meaning’, is called pragmatics.
Invisible meaning
In many ways, pragmatics is the study of ‘invisible’ meaning, or how we
recognize what is meant even when it isn’t actually said or written. For
that to happen, speakers (or writers) must be able to depend on a lot of
shared assumptions and expectations when they try to communicate. The
investigation of those assumptions and expectations provides us with
some insights into how more is always being communicated than is said.
Driving by a parking garage, you may see a large sign like the one in the
picture, HEATED ATTENDANT PARKING. You read the sign, knowing what
each of the words means and what the sign as a whole means. However,
you don’t normally think that the sign is advertising a place where you can
park your ‘heated attendant’. (You take an attendant, you heat him/her
up, and this is where you can park him/her.)
Alternatively, the sign may indicate a place where parking will be carried
out by attendants who have been heated. The words in the sign may allow
these interpretations, but we would normally understand that we can
park a car in this place, that it’s a heated area, and that there will be an
attendant to look after the car. So, how do we decide that the sign means
this when the sign doesn’t even have the word car on it? We must use the
meanings of the words, the context in which they occur, and some pre-
existing knowledge of what would be a likely message as we work toward
a reasonable interpretation of what the producer of the sign intended it to
convey.
Our interpretation of the ‘meaning’ of the sign is not based solely on the
words, but on what we think the writer intended to communicate.
In the 2nd sign, BABY & TODDLER SALE, assuming things are normal and
this store has not gone into the business of selling young children over the
counter, we can recognize an advertisement for a sale of clothes for those
babies and toddlers. The word clothes does not appear in the message,
but we can bring that idea to our interpretation of the message as we
work out what the advertiser intended us to understand. We are actively
involved in creating an interpretation of what we read and hear.
Context
In our discussion of the last two examples, we emphasized the influence
of context. There are different kinds of context. One kind is described as
linguistic context, also known as co-text. The co-text of a word is the set
of other words used in the same phrase or sentence. The surrounding co-
text has a strong effect on what we think the word probably means. In the
last chapter, we identified the word bank as a homonym, a single form
with more than one meaning. How do we usually know which meaning is
intended in a particular sentence? We normally do so on the basis of
linguistic context. If the word bank is used in a sentence together with
words like steep or overgrown, we have no problem deciding which type
of bank is meant. Or, if we hear someone say that she has to get to the
bank to withdraw some cash, we know from this linguistic context which
type of bank is intended.
More generally, we know how to interpret words on the basis of physical
context. If we see the word BANK on the wall of a building in a city, the
physical location will influence our interpretation. While this may seem
rather obvious, we should keep in mind that it is not the actual physical
situation ‘out there’ that constitutes ‘the context’ for interpreting words
or sentences. The relevant context is our mental representation of those
aspects of what is physically out there that we use in arriving at an
interpretation. Our understanding of much of what we read and hear is
tied to this processing of aspects of the physical context, particularly the
time and place, in which we encounter linguistic expressions.

Deixis
There are some very common words in our language that can’t be
interpreted at all if we don’t know the context, especially the physical
context of the speaker. These are words such as here and there, this or
that, now and then, yesterday, today or tomorrow, as well as pronouns
such as you, me, she, him, it, them.
Some sentences of English are virtually impossible to understand if we
don’t know who is speaking, about whom, where and when. For example:
You’ll have to bring it back tomorrow because she isn’t here today.
Out of context, this sentence is really vague. It contains a large number of
expressions (you, it, tomorrow, she, here, today) that rely on knowledge
of the immediate physical context for their interpretation (i.e., that the
delivery driver will have to return on February 15th to 660 College Drive
with the package labeled ‘flowers, handle with care’ addressed to Lisa
Landry).
Expressions such as tomorrow and here are obvious examples of bits of
language that we can only understand in terms of the speaker’s intended
meaning. They are technically known as deictic expressions, from the
Greek word deixis (pronounced like ‘day-icksis’), which means ‘pointing’
via language.
We use deixis to point to things (it, this, these boxes) and people (him,
them, those idiots), sometimes called person deixis.
Words and phrases used to point to a location (here, there, near that) are
examples of spatial deixis, and those used to point to a time (now, then,
last week) are examples of temporal deixis.
All these deictic expressions have to be interpreted in terms of which
person, place or time the speaker has in mind. We make a broad
distinction between what is marked as close to the speaker (this, here,
now) and what is distant (that, there, then). We can also indicate whether
movement is away from the speaker’s location (go) or toward the
speaker’s location (come). If you’re looking for someone and she appears,
moving toward you, you can say Here she comes! If, however, she is
moving away from you in the distance, you’re more likely to say There she
goes! The same deictic effect explains the different situations in which
you would tell someone to Go to bed versus Come to bed.
People can actually use deixis to have some fun. The bar owner who puts
up a big sign that reads Free Beer Tomorrow (to get you to return to the
bar) can always claim that you are just one day too early for the free drink.

Reference
In discussing deixis, we assumed that the use of words to refer to people,
places and times was a simple matter. However, words themselves don’t
refer to anything. People refer. We have to define reference as an act by
which a speaker (or writer) uses language to enable a listener (or reader)
to identify something.
To perform an act of reference, we can use proper nouns (Chomsky,
Jennifer, Whiskas), other nouns in phrases (a writer, my friend, the cat) or
pronouns (he, she, it ). We sometimes assume that these words identify
someone or something uniquely, but it is more accurate to say that, for
each word or phrase, there is a ‘range of reference’. The words Jennifer or
friend or she can be used to refer to many entities in the world. As we
observed earlier, an expression such as the war doesn’t directly identify
anything by itself, because its reference depends on who is using it.
We can also refer to things when we’re not sure what to call them. We
can use expressions such as the blue thing and that icky stuff and we can
even invent names. For instance, there was a man who always drove his
motorcycle fast and loud through my neighborhood and was locally
referred to as Mr. Kawasaki. In this case, a brand name for a motorcycle is
being used to refer to a person.
Inference
As in the ‘Mr. Kawasaki´ example, a successful act of reference depends
more on the listener’s ability to recognize what we mean than on the
listener’s ‘dictionary’ knowledge of a word we use. For example, in a
restaurant, one waiter can ask another, Where’s the spinach salad sitting?
and receive the reply, He’s sitting by the door. If you’re studying linguistics,
you might ask someone, Can I look at your Chomsky? and get the
response, Sure, it’s on the shelf over there. These examples make it clear
that we can use names associated with things (salad) to refer to people,
and use names of people (Chomsky) to refer to things. The key process
here is called inference. An inference is additional information used by the
listener to create a connection between what is said and what must be
meant.
In the last example, the listener has to operate with the inference: ‘if X is
the name of the writer of a book, then X can be used to identify a copy of
a book by that writer’. Similar types of inferences are necessary to
understand someone who says that Picasso is in the museum or We saw
Shakespeare in London or Jennifer is wearing Calvin Klein.
Anaphora
We usually make a distinction between introducing new referents (a
puppy) and referring back to them (the puppy, it).
We saw a funny home video about a boy washing a puppy in a small bath.
The puppy started struggling and shaking and the boy got really wet.
When he let go, it jumped out of the bath and ran away.
In this type of referential relationship, the second (or subsequent)
referring expression is an example of anaphora (‘referring back’). The first
mention is called the antecedent. So, in our example, a boy, a puppy and a
small bath are antecedents and The puppy, the boy, he, it and the bath are
anaphoric expressions.
Anaphora can be defined as subsequent reference to an already
introduced entity. Mostly, we use anaphora in texts to maintain reference.
The connection between an antecedent and an anaphoric expression is
created by use of a pronoun (it), or repetition of the noun with the (the
puppy), or the use of other nouns that are related to the antecedent by
inference, as in the following examples:
We found a house to rent, but the kitchen was very small.
I caught a bus and asked the driver if it went near the downtown area.
In the first example, we must make an inference like ‘if X is a house, then X
has a kitchen’ in order to interpret the connection between antecedent a
house and anaphoric expression the kitchen. In the second example, we
must make an inference like ‘if X is a bus, then X has a driver’ in order to
make the connection between a bus and the driver. In a context where
both speakers easily make these types of inferences, it is possible to hear
someone complain I was waiting for the bus, but he just drove by without
stopping. When the antecedent is bus, we might expect it as the pronoun,
but use of the pronoun he obviously assumes an inference involving the
driver. We have used the term ‘inference’ here to describe what the
listener (or reader) does.

..-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Activity
Read the notes carefully; then, do the following exercises:
1) What are the deitic expressions in the following utterance?
I´m busy now so you can´t do that there. Come back tomorrow.
2) Say what the anaphoric expressions in this sentence are:
Dr. Dang gave Mary some medicine after she asked him for it.
3) What kind of inference is involved in interpreting these utterances?
a) Professor: Bring your Plato to class tomorrow.
b) Nurse: The broken leg in room 5 wants to talk to the doctor.
4) All of the following expressions have deictic elements in them. What
aspects of context have to be considered to interpret such expressions?
a) Note on office door: Back in one hour.
b) Telephone answering machine: I´m not here now.
c) Advertisement for sports shoes: Just do it.
d) Watching a horse race: Oh, no, I´m in last place!
e) Answering a telephone: Oh, it´s you!
f) On a map / directory: YOU ARE HERE.
g) In a car that won´t start: Maybe I´m out of gas.
h) Pointing to an empty chair: Where is she today?
5) All of the following expressions were found in notices announcing sales.
a) What is being sold in each case and (if you know) how do you know?
b) Also consider how many different underlying structures are actually
involved in these expressions (i.e., a ´Toy Sale´ basically means ´someone
is selling toys´; can we assume the same structure for ´Garage Sale´ and
the others?)
Back-to-School Sale Bake Sale Big Screen Sale
Casual Sale Clearance Sale Foundation Sale
Floor Sale Furniture Sale Garage Sale
Home Theater Sale Labor Day Sale One Cent Sale
Plant Sale Tent Sale Warehouse Sale

6) Anaphoric reference is usually defined in terms of ´subsequent

reference´ within a text and illustrated via pronouns. There are other ways
in which ´subsequent reference ‘can be accomplished (e.g.by repeated
noun phrases or names). Read through the following paragraphs and:
a) identify all examples of anaphoric reference
b) say what kind of problems arise in an exercise like this and how you
may solve them.
i) On April 13, 1990, at a tavern in Mercedes, Texas, a bat bit the right
index finger of a 22-year-old visitor. The man, who did not seek medical
attention, seemed well until May 30, when the affected hand began to feel
weak. Just six days later he was dead of rabies, having been tormented in
the interim by many of its symptoms. Before slipping into a comma, the
Texan suffered episodes of rigidity and breath holding; hallucinations;
extreme difficulty swallowing (so much so that he refused liquids);
frequent spasms in the face, mouth and neck; continuous drooling; and
finally disorientation accompanied by high fever.
ii) Horse of the Year Holy Bull was pulled up after suffering strained
ligaments during Saturday´s Donn Handicap. Cigar, who was disputing the
race with the favourite at the time of the incident, went on to win the race.
He paid $10 for the win. Cigar´s jockey Jerry Bailey said he heard “a pop”
as his horse and Holy Bull were racing together. Veterinarian Dr. Peter Hall
said of the champion, “He strained the ligaments which support the ankle,
but the injury isn´t severe. He isn´t in distress. But he´ll probably never race
again”.