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An Introduction
to Language
AUSTRALIAN &
NEW ZEALAND
10 T H
EDITION
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams,
Mengistu Amberber, Felicity Cox, Rosalind Thornton
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An Introduction to Language: Australian and New Zealand 10th edition
10th Edition
Victoria Fromkin
Robert Rodman
Nina Hyams
Mengistu Amberber
Felicity Cox
Rosalind Thornton
Head of content management: Dorothy Chiu
Senior content manager: Fiona Hammond
Content developer: Talia Lewis
Project editor: Raymond Williams
Text designer: James Steer
Editor: Jade Jakovcic
Proofreader: James Anderson
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Permissions/Photo researcher: Helen Mammides
Cover: Shutterstock.com/Skorik Ekaterina
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currency of URLs.
Previous edition published by Cengage in 2018.
Authorised adaptation of An Introduction to Language by Fromkin/Rodman/Hyams
11th edition, published Cengage Learning © 2019 ISBN 9781337559577
© 2022 Cengage Learning Australia Pty Limited
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Brief contents
Part 1
The nature of human language
1
1. What is language?
2
Part 2
Grammatical aspects of language
27
2.
Phonetics: the sounds of language
28
4.
Morphology: the words of language
118
Semantics and pragmatics: the meanings of language
209
3.
5.
6.
Phonology: the sound patterns of language
Syntax: the sentence patterns of language
Part 3
66
156
The psychology of language
255
7.
256
8.
Language acquisition
Language processing and the human brain
Part 4
302
Language and society
347
9.
348
Language in society
10. Language change: the syllables of time
11. Writing: the ABCs of language
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397
441
v
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Contents
Guide to the text
Guide to the online resources
Preface
About the authors
Acknowledgements
xiii
xvii
xix
xxiii
xxiv
Part 1
The nature of human language
1
1 What is language?
2
Linguistic knowledge
Knowledge of the sound system
Knowledge of words
The creativity of linguistic knowledge
Knowledge of sentences and non-sentences
3
3
5
7
Linguistic knowledge and performance
What is grammar?
8
8
Prescriptive grammars
10
Universal Grammar
13
Descriptive grammars
Teaching grammars
The development of grammar
Sign languages: evidence for language universals
9
12
14
14
What is not (human) language
15
Can animals learn human language?
17
The birds and the bees
Can computers learn human language?
Chapter review
Part 2
15
19
21
Grammatical aspects of language
27
2 Phonetics: the sounds of language
28
Speech sounds
Identity of speech sounds
The phonetic alphabet
vi
2
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29
30
31
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Sound and spelling correspondences
CONTENTS
34
Categorising speech sounds
36
Vowels
47
Consonants
38
Prosodic features
53
Tone and intonation
54
Stress
The phonetics of signed languages
Chapter review
3 Phonology: the sound patterns of language
Phonemes: the phonological units of language
Identifying phonemes
Complementary distribution
An illustration of vowel allophones: nasalisation in English
An illustration of consonant allophones: variation in English /t/
54
56
58
66
67
68
69
71
72
Phonological features
73
Natural classes of speech sounds
76
Contrastive and non-contrastive features
Feature specifications for Australian English consonant and vowel phonemes
73
79
Phonological rules
80
Segment insertion and deletion
85
Feature change
Reordering
From one to many and from many to one
The function of phonological rules
81
85
86
87
Phonemic analysis: discovering phonemes
Phonotactics
87
90
The production of morphemes
92
An illustration of allomorphs: English past tense
94
Lexical gaps
An illustration of allomorphs: English plurals
An illustration of allomorphs: Akan negation
91
92
96
Prosodic phonology
96
Word stress
97
Syllable structure
Sentence and phrase stress
Intonation
Approaches to phonology
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97
98
99
100
vii
CONTENTS
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Optimality Theory
101
Chapter review
103
An exemplar-based approach to phonology
4 Morphology: the words of language
Content words and function words
Morphemes: the minimal units of meaning
The discreteness of morphemes
Bound and free morphemes
Bound roots
118
119
121
123
123
126
Rules of word formation
127
Inflectional morphology
129
Derivational morphology
The hierarchical structure of words
Rule productivity
Compounds
Word formation errors
127
132
134
137
139
Sign language morphology
Morphological analysis: identifying morphemes
140
141
5 Syntax: the sentence patterns of language
156
Chapter review
What syntax rules do
Sentence structure
Constituents and constituency tests
Syntactic categories
Selection
146
157
160
160
163
172
Phrase structure
174
Phrase structure rules
176
Phrase structure trees
Structural ambiguities
The infinity of language
174
185
187
Movement
189
Aux movement
190
Tense movement
190
Universal Grammar principles and parameters
192
Parameters
197
Chapter review
200
Principles
Universal Grammar in action: sign-language syntax
viii
101
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192
198
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6 Semantics and pragmatics: the meanings of language
What speakers know about sentence meaning
Truth
CONTENTS
209
210
210
Entailment and related notions
211
Compositional semantics
212
When compositionality goes awry
215
Ambiguity
Semantic rules
212
213
Lexical semantics (word meanings)
220
Lexical relations
222
Theories of word meaning
Semantic features
Argument structure and thematic roles
220
226
230
Pragmatics
232
Language and thought
238
Pronouns and other deictic words
Chapter review
Part 3
The psychology of language
7 Language acquisition
Children’s capacity for language
Usage-based language development
Corrective feedback
The theory of Universal Grammar
232
243
255
256
256
257
259
261
Acquiring linguistic knowledge
264
The acquisition of phonology
269
Infant perception and production of speech sounds
The acquisition of the lexicon
The acquisition of morphology
The acquisition of syntax
The acquisition of pragmatics
The acquisition of signed languages
265
271
273
277
284
284
Knowing more than one language
286
Second-language acquisition
289
Childhood bilingualism
Chapter review
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286
295
ix
CONTENTS
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8 Language processing and the human brain
Comprehension of speech
The speech signal
Speech perception
Bottom-up and top-down models
Lexical access and word recognition
303
303
305
306
307
Syntactic processing
309
Garden path sentences
310
Syntactic category ambiguity
Further factors
310
313
Speech production
315
Application and misapplication of rules
316
Lexical selection
Planning units
315
317
The human brain: localisation of language
319
Acquired dyslexia
325
Neural evidence of grammatical phenomena
328
Neurolinguistic studies of sentence and word structure
330
Aphasia
Brain imaging in aphasic patients
Neurolinguistic studies of speech sounds
321
326
329
Language and brain development: left hemisphere lateralisation
331
Delayed exposure to language
332
Language creation in deaf children
335
Brain plasticity
The critical period
332
333
The Modular mind: dissociations of language and cognition
336
Specific language impairment
338
Linguistic savants
Genetic basis of language
Chapter review
x
302
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337
339
340
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Part 4
Language and society
9 Language in society
Dialects
Regional dialects
Dialects of English
Social dialects
CONTENTS
347
348
348
350
351
358
Languages in contact
367
Contact languages: pidgins and creoles
368
Lingua francas
Bilingualism
367
374
Language and education
376
Teaching reading
377
Second-language teaching
Bilingual education
376
379
Language in use
379
Slang
380
Taboo or not taboo?
381
Styles
Jargon and argot
Language and sexism
Secret languages and language games
Chapter review
10 Language change: the syllables of time
The regularity of sound change
Sound correspondences
Ancestral protolanguages
379
381
384
385
387
397
398
398
399
Phonological change
399
The Great Vowel Shift
401
Phonological rules
400
Morphological change
Syntactic change
Lexical change
402
403
406
Semantic change
412
Addition of new words
Broadening
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407
413
xi
CONTENTS
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Narrowing
413
413
Meaning shifts
Reconstructing dead languages
413
Comparative reconstruction
416
The nineteenth-century comparativists
414
Historical evidence
Extinct and endangered languages
The genetic classification of languages
421
423
Types of languages
Why do languages change?
426
429
11 Writing: the ABCs of language
441
Languages of the world
Chapter review
425
432
The history of writing
442
Pictograms and ideograms
443
Cuneiform writing
444
446
The rebus principle
From hieroglyphics to the alphabet
447
Modern writing systems
447
Syllabic writing
449
Word writing
448
Consonantal alphabet writing
450
Alphabetic writing
451
Writing and speech
452
Spelling pronunciations
457
Spelling
454
Chapter review
Glossary
Index
xii
419
458
465
488
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Guide to the text
CHAPTER
As you read this text you will find a number of features in every
chapter to enhance your study of linguistics and help you
twotheory
of these
words
a minimal
pair, two separate w
understand Any
how the
is applied
in form
the real
world.
The two sounds that differentiate the words belong to differen
From the minimal set of [bVt] words above (where V refers to
variety of English has at least 14 vowel phonemes. Remember t
Use thewe
phoneme
for Australian
Englishcorrespondin
vowel sounds. To that total
canlist
add
a phoneme
inside the front cover as a quick reference list
pair such as book [bʊk] ofand
back that
[bæk]
and
we can
the symbols
are used
to represent
theadd one for [
sounds of Australian English.
such as boy [boɪ] and bee [biː]. We can also add bare [beː] and be
Our minimal pair analysis has revealed 12 monophthon
of these symbols
phonemes, namely, /iː/ /ɪ/Find
/e/instances
/eː/ /æ/
/ɐː/ /ɐ/ /ɔ/ /oː/ /ʊ/ /ʉː/
throughout the text.
/ɪə/. To this set of phonemes we must also add schwa /ə/, the vo
unstressed syllables in English and is particularly common in
pair patty [pʰætiː] versus patter [pʰætə] illustrates its phonem
symbolising these phonemes is given in the MD phonemic sys
/ɒ/ /ɔ/ /ʊ/ /u/ /ɜ/ /eɪ/ /aɪ/ /ɔɪ/ /aʊ/ /oʊ/ /ɪə/. See Table 2.1 for d
differ slightly in different varieties of English because the sy
way of representing the phonemes, which may vary between th
in English, each of the vowel phonemes has a number of var
allophone is not random or haphazard – it is principled.
A PHONEME LIST FOR AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH
Vowels
Consonants
Phoneme
Stops
/p/
/b/
/t/
/d/
/k/
/ɡ/
Nasals
/m/
/n/
/ŋ/
As in
pit
/bɪt/
tip
/mɪt/
sing
/sɪŋ/
nit
/j/
/l/
Fricatives
/f/
/v/
part
/ɐː/
/ɡʊd/
mitt
pat
/æ/
/kʊd/
good
pair
/eː/
/dɪp/
could
pet
/e/
/tɪp/
dip
peat
pit
/iː/
/ɪ/
/pɪt/
bit
putt
/ɐ/
pot
/ɔ/
port
/oː/
/nɪt/
put
/ʊ/
boot
/ʉː/
pert
/ɜː/
Approximants
rip
/ɹ/
/w/
Harrington, Cox & Evans
Phoneme
As in
high
/ɑe/
/jɪp/
lip
hay
/æɪ/
/wɪp/
yip
apart
/ə/
/ɹɪp/
whip
hoy
/oɪ/
/lɪp/
how
/æɔ/
hoe
/əʉ/
fan
/fæn/
thick
/θɪk/
van
here
/ɪə/
/piːt/
/pɪt/
/pet/
/peː/
/pæt/
/pɐːt/
/pɐt/
/pɔt/
/poːt/
/pʊt/
/bʉːt/
/pɜːt/
/əpɐːt/
/hæɪ/
/hɑe/
/hoɪ/
/hæɔ/
/həʉ/
/hɪə/
Mitchell & Delbridge
/væn/
peat
/i/
/pit/
pit
/ɪ/
/pɪt/
pet
/ɛ/
/pɛt/
pair
/ɛə/
/pɛə/
fission
pat
/ʃ/
/fɪʃən/
/æ/
/pæt/
vision
part
/ʒ/
/vɪʒən/
/a/
/pat/
putt
hit
/ʌ/
/pʌt/
/h/
/hɪt/
pot
/ɒ/
/pɒt/
Affricates
port
/ɔ/
/pɔt/
put
chill
/ʊ/
/pʊt/
/ʧ/
/ʧɪl/
boot
Jill
/u/
/but/
/ʤ/
/ʤɪl/
pert
/ɜ/
/pɜt/
Lexical categories with examples
apart
/ə/
/əpat/
Noun (N)
puppy, man, soup, happiness, thought, he, Mary
hay
/eɪ/
/heɪ/
high
Verb (V)
find, run, sip, see, know, try, want, believe
/aɪ/
/haɪ/
hoy
Verb (V)
red, big, happy, quick, hopeless, silly, awful
/ɔɪ/
/hɔɪ/
how
/aʊ/ very
/haʊ/
Adverb (Adv)
again, always, brightly, often, never, quickly,
hoe
/oʊ/
/hoʊ/
Preposition (P)
up, across, over, into, besides, with, of, to,
from, before, after, at, in, on, by
here
/ɪə/
/hɪə/
tour
/ʊə/
/tʊə/ (now rare)
Phrasal lexical categories with examples
/θ/
/ð/
/s/
/z/
Noun phrase (NP)
this
/ðɪs/
sip
zip
/sɪp/
/zɪp/
puppies, the man, some soup, his girlfriend, a good thought, the man with the telescope, a bottle of Coke
Verb phrase (VP)
Adjective phrase (AdjP)
Adverb phrase (AdvP)
Prepositional phrase (PP)
smiles, always jokes, often goes to the city, rode on a camel into the desert
happy, very silly, bright blue, red with anger, worthy of praise
brightly, more quickly, very slowly, really often
of linguistics, in the laundry, at the party, from the city
Find useful summary tables while you learn
about syntax including a quick guide to the
various lexical categories inside the back
cover.
Complementary distribution
Quick tests for lexical categories
Note: These tests are not foolproof so try both the morphological and the distributional tests.
Noun
Morphological
Verb
Morphological
Adjective
Morphological
Distributional
Distributional
Distributional
Adverb
Morphological
Distributional
Preposition
Morphological
Distributional
Can the word take a plural suffix? (e.g. X-s)
Can the word combine with an article? (e.g. a X, the X)
or
Can the word appear after an adjective? (e.g. silly X, beautiful X)
As we have seen, minimal pairs illustrate that some speech sou
(e.g. the vowels in bit and bet) and these contrastive sounds repr
language. We have also seen that some sounds are not contrasti
and cannot be used to make different words. The rounded and un
respectively were cited as examples that do not contrast. The sub
not create a minimal pair, so you can say the word sat with eith
[sʷ] and the meaning of the word remains the same. The round
the /s/ phoneme do not occur in the same phonological context
Can the word take a suffix for present or past tense? (e.g. X-s, X-ed)
Can the word be used with an adverb? (e.g. X quickly, X often)
or
Can the word be used with a modal? (e.g. can X, will X)
Can the word be used in a comparative form by adding –er or preceding it by more? (e.g. X-er, more X)
Can the word be positioned between a determiner and a noun? (e.g. the X book, a X boy)
or
Can the word be preceded by very? (e.g. very X) Caution!: This test also identifies adverbs
Does the word end with –ly? (e.g. X-ly) Caution!: This test only identifes a small subset of adverbs, and there
are also adjectives ending with –ly
Can the word be preceded by very? (e.g. very X) Caution!: This test also identifies adjectives
or
Is the word ungrammatical when positioned between a determiner and a noun? (e.g. *the X book, *a X boy)
None. Prepositions are a closed class set (e.g. in, under, before, of, with etc.)
Can the word be followed by a noun phrase? (e.g. X the box)
Functional categories with examples
Determiner (Det)
the, a, my, his, your, each, some, many, two, several, this, those
Complementiser (C)
that, if, for, whether
Auxiliary (Aux)
have, be, do, can, may, might, must, will, shall, should, would, could
Conjunction (Conj)
Person
Singular
1st
I
2nd
3rd masculine
3rd feminine
3rd neuter
and, or, but
you
he
she
it
Subject pronoun
Plural
we
yo
they
they
they
Pronouns
Singular
me
you
him
her
it
Object pronoun
Possessive pronoun
Plural
Singular
you
you
them
her
us
them
my
him
Table 3.1
them
its
Plural
our
you
their
their
their
Distribution of rounded and unrounde
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Before a rounded vowel
xiii
Bef
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GUIDE TO THE TEXT
PART-OPENING FEATURES
Refer to the Chapter list for an outline
of the chapters in each part.
Part 2
Grammatical aspects of language
2 Phonetics: the sounds of language
27
4 Morphology: the words of language
118
3 Phonology: the sound patterns of language
5 Syntax: the sentence patterns of language
6 Semantics and pragmatics: the meanings of
language
66
156
209
The theory of grammar is concerned with the question: What is the nature
of a person’s knowledge of [their] language, the knowledge that enables
[them] to make use of language in the normal, creative fashion? A person
who knows a language has mastered a system of rules that assigns sound
and meaning in a definite way for an infinite class of possible sentences.
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, 1968
CHAPTER OPENING FEATURES
2
Phonetics: the sounds of
language
7111 languages are spoken today. That number is constantly in flux, because we’re learning
more about the world’s languages every day. And beyond that, the languages themselves
are in flux. They’re living and dynamic, spoken by communities whose lives are shaped by
our rapidly changing world. This is a fragile time: Roughly 40 per cent of languages are now
endangered, often with less than 1000 speakers remaining. Meanwhile, just 23 languages
BK-CLA-FROMKIN_10E-200595-Chp02.indd 27
account for more than half the world’s population.
27
18/01/21 2:37 PM
Authentic real-world and literary
quotes provide insights and connect
with the theory.
Ethnologue, https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/how-many-languages
Learning objectives
After reading Chapter 2, you should be able to:
• show an understanding that speech is produced through carefully coordinated
overlapping vocal gestures that lead to disturbances in the air creating dynamic changes
in acoustic energy
• demonstrate familiarity with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and its ability to
represent the speech sounds of the world’s languages, showing a particular understanding
of the IPA symbols used to represent Australian English speech sounds
• categorise the consonant sounds of English according to the taxonomy determined by
the International Phonetic Association and show an understanding of some additional
consonantal features used across the world’s languages
• describe the major features used to classify the vowels of the world’s languages, with a
focus on Australian English
• show how the phonetic features of length, pitch and loudness can be used in language to
create the prosodic characteristics of rhythm, stress, intonation and tone
• compare the difference between spoken and signed languages through your
understanding that signed languages use combinations of features such as handshape,
orientation, movement and location to distinguish meaning.
Identify the key concepts that the
chapter will cover with the Learning
objectives at the start of each chapter.
The speech sounds that humans use in language are restricted to those we can make with our
FEATURES vocal
WITHIN
CHAPTERS
organs and that
we can easily differentiate when we listen to speech. All spoken languages
PART 3 / THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
fundamental
frequency
In speech, the
rate at which
the vocal
folds vibrate,
symbolised as
F0, called F-zero,
perceived by the
listener as pitch.
intensity, and the particular combination of ‘greater or lesser’ is heard as a particular sound.
(Imagine smooth ocean waves with regular peaks and troughs approaching a rocky coastline.
As they crash on the rocks they are ‘modulated’ or broken up into dozens of ‘subwaves’ with
varying peaks and troughs. That is similar to what is happening to the glottal pulses as they
‘crash’ through the vocal tract.)
Computer programs can be used to decompose the speech signal into its frequency components.
BK-CLA-FROMKIN_10E-200595-Chp02.indd 28
18/01/21 2:37 PM
spectrogram
When speech is fed into a computer (from a microphone or a recording), an image of the speech
(voiceprints)
signal is displayed. The patterns produced are called spectrograms or sometimes voiceprints. A
A visual
representation
spectrogram of the words heed, head, had and who’d produced by a speaker with a British accent
of speech
is shown in Figure 8.1.
decomposed
intensity
The28
magnitude of
an acoustic signal,
which is perceived
as loudness.
xiv
use classes of sounds known as vowels and consonants, make use of air flowing from the lungs,
and use pitch in some way to signal meaning. These fundamental similarities exist across
languages, but there are also a great many differences between the world’s languages in terms
Thetype
sounds
produce
can beused.
described
in terms
of how fast
variations
of airofpressure
of the
and we
number
of sounds
Some spoken
languages
use athe
very
small number
occur,
the words.
fundamental
frequency
of–the
sounds spoken
and is perceived
bythe
the hearer
speechwhich
soundsdetermines
to differentiate
For instance,
Rotokas
a language
by people on
as
pitch.
We
can
also
describe
the
magnitude,
or
intensity,
of
the
variations,
which
determines
island of Bougainville – uses as few as 11 speech sounds. Others like !Xóõ (also known as East
Taa)loudness
– a language
of Botswana
– is reported
the largest
inventory
of speech
the
of the
sound. The
quality to
of have
the speech
sound
– whether
it issounds
an [iː]oforall
an [ɐː] or
1
languages,–with
up to 161 sounds
used
to differentiate
words.
whatever
is determined
by the
shape
of the vocal
tract
when air is flowing through it. This
This
chapter
will
discuss
speech
sounds,
how
we
produce
them
and
how
they
may
be
classified.
shape modulates the sound from the glottis into a spectrum of frequencies of greater or lesser
When you see Key terms marked in
bold, study the Definitions nearby to
learn important vocabulary. See the
Glossary at the back of the book for a
full list of key terms and definitions.
Get Complete eBook Download By email at student.support@hotmail.com
into component
morphemes, words, and phrases that exist in the grammar. They also show that when we speak,
SPECTS OF LANGUAGE words are chosen and sequenced ahead of when they are articulated.
Get
Complete
eBook
Bylevel.
email
at student.support@hotmail.com
Planning
also goes
on atDownload
the sentence
In experimentally
controlled settings, speakers
GUIDE TO THE TEXT
take longer to initiate (begin uttering) passive sentences like The ball was chased by Nellie than
active sentences like Nellie chased the ball. They also take longer to begin uttering sentences
e coordination test shows that up his breakfast and up his dinner cannot be conjoined,
containing relative clauses like The cat that the dog chased climbed the tree than ones like The cat
sting that they are
not constituents.
In fact, up is part of the phrasal verb ‘throw up’. It is
FEATURES
WITHIN CHAPTERS
that scratched the dog climbed the tree due to the word order in the relative clause. These findings
le to coordinate his breakfast and his dinner, however, which tells us that these two strings
suggest that more planning goes into sentences that have a less common word order than into
examples
of linguistic rules and theory in practice are captured in Worked examples.
ds are the sameKey
kind
of constituent.
sentences with SVO word order, as outlined in the worked examples below.
e can summarise this section by evaluating whether or not the string of words in the
n from the sentence The puppy played in the garden passes the constituency tests, as shown
Worked example
Planning in Active versus Passive Sentences
e 5.1. ‘Q’ and ‘A’ abbreviatePART
‘Question’
and ‘Answer’.
2 / GRAMMATICAL
ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE
nstituency tests
Nellie chased the ball
Active
The object of ‘chase’ is ‘the ball.’
Grammaticality does not depend on the truth of sentences. If it did, lying would be impo
Passive
Nor
does it depend on whether
realofobjects
aresentence
being discussed,
ble 5.1
The constituency tests
The object
the active
‘the ball’ nor on whether someth
possible. Untrue sentencesbecomes
can be grammatical,
sentences
discussing unicorns can be gramm
the subject NP
in the passive
uestion: Is the string of words in the garden a constituent?
sentence.
and sentences referring to
pregnant rocks can be grammatical.
PART 2 / test
GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS
OF LANGUAGE
Standalone
Q: Where
did the puppy
play?
Our unconscious
knowledge of the syntactic rules of grammar permits us to
A: In the garden grammaticality judgements. These rules are not the prescriptive rules that are taught in s
Replacement by a pro-form
The puppy played
the garden
likein‘Don’t
end a sentence with a preposition’. Children develop unconscious syntactic ru
The puppy
played
there
Worked
example
their Sentences
language long
before theyRelative
attend school,
as is discussed in Chapter 7.
containing
Clauses
Move as a unit test
Coordination test
The ball was chased by Nellie
Worked example
a It was in the garden that the puppy played.
Sentence structure
[The cat[that
__scratched
the dog]
climbed
the tree. The relative clause modifies ‘the cat’;
Semantic
rule
I is where
b In the
garden
the puppy
played
The meaning
of: played in the garden and on the porchthis is known as the head noun. ‘The cat’
The puppy
is the agent of ‘scratch’ and it is moved
S that anything
by a transformation
position
S
S
V
I reallyOdo not know
has ever beenfrom
morethe
exciting
than diagramming sentence
marked with ‘__’.
Gertrude Stein, ‘Poetry and Grammar’, 193
the above examples, the group of words in the garden passes all tests. In each case, the test
[Thesocat[that
thetodog
chased__]
the tree.
The relative
clause modifies ‘the cat’,
NP
Aux
a grammatical sentence and
it is safe
conclude
it isclimbed
a constituent.
The VP
standalone
test
the
head
noun.
‘The
cat’ is the and
patient
Syntactic rules determine the order of words in
a sentence,
the organisation of the gro
that in the garden can beisused
as a fragment
answer to a question. It can also
be replaced
the
following
truth
condition:
of
the
verb
‘chase,’
and
it
is
moved
by a
O
S
V words. The
O words in the sentence:
pro-form there. The move as a unit test shows us that in the garden can be moved
from its from the object position
transformation
If the meaning of NP
individual)
is apuppy.
member
of the
meaning
of VP (a
set of ‘__’.
The(an
child
found
the
inside
the
relative
clause
marked
al position without any loss of grammaticality. Sometimes,
however,
you may
find
that
a
individuals), then
S
is
TRUE;
otherwise
it
is
FALSE.
be grouped
intoanother
[the child]
and
[found
the puppy], corresponding to the subject and pre
ular test does not work for a particular stringmay
of words.
If so, try
test.
It is
always
of the sentence. A further division gives [[the child] [[found][the puppy]]], and final
idea to try several tests.
Interestingly,
however,
speakers
more up
likely
produce
a passive
sentence
after
hearing
Rule
I states that
a sentence
thatare
is made
of atosubject
NP
and a VP
is trueIt if
subject
[[[the][child]]
[[found][[the][puppy]]]].
is the
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theLANGUAGE
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r knowledge of the
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CHAPTER
5 structure
/ SYNTAX:
THEand
SENTENCE
PATTERNS
Other
key
elements
are highlighted
simplewords
navigation,
including
trees
Constituency
a
passive,
despite
its
non-typical
word
order.
In
syntactic
priming
experiments,
speakers
are
NP refers to an individual whosentence
is among the
members
of the
set that
constitutes
the meaning
of
tree
diagram,
which
illustrates
the hierarchical
structure
of sentence
ee structure for the sentence The puppy playedofinthe
the garden is in
asafollows:
asked
describe
a scene
afterishearing
an unrelated
passive
sentence.
Results show
that
the
VP.toNotice
that
this rule
completely
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it doesornot
refer to
any particular
sentence,
Theifchild
found
the puppy
they are more
likelyIttoworks
describe
the scenefor
using a passive
that
is sings
what
they
have just
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individuals
equally
such
as
Ellen
Rex barks.
Therefore
The
first testor
is verbs.
the ‘standalone’
test. Ifwell
a group sentences
of words can
stand
alone
as aorfragment
answer
meaning
of form
Rex barks
is the truthConsider
condition
(i.e.
the ‘if-sentence’) that states that the sentence
to a the
question,
they
a constituent.
the
following:
the puppy
is true if the individual referred to by Rex is among thethe
setchild
of individualsfound
referred
to by barks and
the
puppy played
318
CHAPTER
5
/
SYNTAX:
THE
SENTENCE
PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE
so on.
What
did the child find?
Constituency
tests
the
puppy
child
found
the
in
Let us now try a slightly more complex case: the sentence Jack kissed Laura. The main syntactic
The puppy.
difference
and the previous one is that we now have a transitive verb that
*Found the. between this example
the garden
the
puppy
The
first
test
is
the
‘standalone’
test.
If a group of words can stand alone as a fragment
answer
requires
-CLA-FROMKIN_10E-200595-Chp08.indd
318 an extra NP in object position; otherwise our semantic rules will derive the meaning 1/16/21 8:58 PM
to
a
question,
they
form
a
constituent.
Consider
the
following:
addition to the syntactic
tests same
just described,
experimental
evidence
hasexample.
shown that
using
mechanical
procedure
aspuppy
in the
first
We
again start
withto
the
The
testthe
shows that
the group
of ‘tree’
wordsisthe
can
stand
as
abeing
fragment
answer
theword
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upside
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its ‘root’
the entire
sentence,
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ers do not mentally meanings
represent and
sentences
as
strings
of
words,
but
rather
in
terms
of
structure.
question, while thesyntactic
group ofand
words
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the cannot.
This
test
supports
ourare
judgement
that the
the
‘branches’
leading
to
its
‘leaves’,
which
the
individual
words,
the, child, found, t
What did the
child find? listen to sentences that have clicking noises
Constituency tests
tuents. In these experiments,
participants
puppy is a meaningful linguistic
unit
while
foundcan
thebe
is just
two words
listed
one
afterjust
theas
other.
puppy.
The
diagram
redrawn,
showing
the
words
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WordIn
meanings
The points.
puppy.
ed into them at random
some cases the click occurs at a constituent boundary.
The second test is the ‘replacement
a pro-form’
test.the
There
are
several kinds
of pro-forms.
treeby
diagram
conveys
same
information
as the
nested brackets, but more clearl
*Found
the.
Jack between
refers
(or The
means)
Jackthat
ample, the click might occur
thetosubject
andthe
theindividual
predicate,
is, between
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andand
cansubgroupings
substitute forare
natural
groups
of words.
Consider
the of the tree. From th
groupings
reflected
in the
hierarchical
structure
ppy and played in the garden.
In other
sentences,
the click
is inserted
in the middle of
refers
to (or means)
the individual
Laura
followingLaura
question and
answer
diagram,
we know
that can
the phrase
foundasthe
puppy divides
naturally
Thebetween
test shows
that
group
of words
the puppy
stand
a fragment
answer
to the into two branches, o
stituent, for example,
andthe
puppy.
Participants
are
then
askedalone
to report
kissed the refers
to (or means)
the set of
pairs
of individuals
X and Y such that X kissed Y.
the
verb
found
and
the
other
for
the
direct
object
the
puppy.
A
different division, say, fou
question,
the group
of words found
the first,
cannot.
This test supports
the click occurred.
There while
have been
two important
results:
participants
in these our judgement that the
Where did you find the puppy?
Constituency
tests
and
puppy,
is
unnatural.
puppy
isand
a meaningful
linguistic
words listed one after the other.
iments noticed the
click
recalled its
location unit
bestwhile
whenfound
it occurred
at atwo
constituent
Sthe is just
I found him in the park.
root
The second test is the ‘replacement by a pro-form’ test. There are several kinds of pro-forms.
NPsubstitute
Aux for
VPnatural groups of words. Consider the
Pronouns are one kind of pro-form and can
Here, the pronoun him is replacing the puppy. When the group of words the puppy is replaced
following question and answer
Jack sentence,
V so we
NP can conclude that the puppy is a
by the pronoun, the result is a grammatical
thethe place
child of an
found
constituent.
There are eBook
also words, such as do, that canat
take
entire expression,
Getdid
Complete
Where
you find the puppy? Download By email
xv
Constituency
tests
kissed student.support@hotmail.com
Laura
the puppy
such
as
in
found
the
puppy.
I found him in the park.
Get Complete eBook Download By email at student.support@hotmail.com
GUIDE TO THE TEXT
END-OF-CHAPTER FEATURES
At the end of each chapter you will find several tools to help you to review, practise and extend your knowledge of
the key learning objectives.
PART 3 / THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
CHAPTER REVIEW
Summary
Psycholinguistics is concerned with linguistic performance or processing, which is the use of linguistic knowledge
(competence) in speech production and comprehension.
Comprehension, the process of understanding an utterance, requires the ability to access the mental lexicon
to match the words in the utterance to their meanings. Comprehension begins with the perception of the acoustic
speech signal. Listeners who know a language have the ability to segment the stream into linguistic units and to
recognise acoustically distinct sounds as the same linguistic unit.
Psycholinguistic studies are aimed at uncovering the units, stages and processes involved in linguistic
performance. Several experimental techniques, including lexical decision tasks, have proved helpful in
understanding lexical access. The measurement of response times (RTs), shows that it takes longer to retrieve less
common words than more common words, longer to retrieve possible non-words than impossible non-words,
longer to retrieve words with larger phonological neighbourhoods than ones with smaller neighbourhoods, and
longer to retrieve lexically ambiguous words than unambiguous
ones.8A/word
may prime
another AND
wordTHE
if the
CHAPTER
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
HUMAN BRAIN
words are semantically, morphologically or phonologically related. The priming effect is shown by faster RTs to
related words than to unrelated words.
To comprehend the meaning of an utterance, the listener must parse the string into syntactic constituents.
This is done according to the rules of the grammar of the language and also following structural parsing principles
that
favour errors
simpler
structures,
although
factors, such
as frequency
of occurrence
and subcategorisation
1 Speech
(i.e.
‘slips of the
tongue’other
or ‘bloopers’)
illustrate
a difference
between linguistic
competence
information,
can also since
influence
the parser
in its structural
and performance
our very
recognition
of them aschoices.
errors shows that we have knowledge of well-formed
Language
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filled
with
temporary
ambiguities
–
points
at
which
the
sentence
can
continue
in
more were
than one
sentences. Furthermore, errors provide information about the grammar. The following utterances
actually
wayobserved.
because aAword
is ambiguous
in Dr
its syntactic
few are
attributed to
Spooner. category or because there are different structural possibilities. In
such
the reader
‘gostate
down
a garden
path’
and have
to
and redo
CHAPTER
LANGUAGE
PROCESSING
THE HUMAN BRAIN
a cases,
For each
speechmay
error,
what
kind of
linguistic
unit
or backtrack
rule 8is /involved,
thatthe
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Much
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aboutor
the
units and stages of speech production comes from observing and
morphological,
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Manyor
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Based
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the
information
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in this
would
thethe
location
neural
activity
be
the
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(Note: The
intended
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left chapter,
of the
arrow
and
actual of
utterance
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to the
right.)
phonological
relatedness
of words and
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frequency.
different
read
in these
two systems? Explain.
Example: when
ad
hocChinese
oddspeakers
hack
Neurolinguistics is the study of the brain mechanisms and anatomical structures that underlie linguistic
a phonological
vowellanguage
segmentimpairment have been shown to have particular difficulty with morphemes
19 Children
with specific
competence and performance. The brain is divided into two cerebral hemispheres, which are connected by the
b reversal
or exchange
of segments
related
to tense,
which tend
to be omitted from their productions. Make a list of all of the relevant morphemes
corpus
callosum,
a
network
that permits the left and right hemispheres to communicate. Language is lateralised
PART 3 / THE
PSYCHOLOGY
LANGUAGE
Example:
she tense
gaveOF
itinaway
she make
gived up
it away
that
express
English, and
a sentence in which this particular morpheme is omitted. You may
to the left hemisphere of the brain. Much of the early evidence for language lateralisation came from the study
a inflectional
morphology
want
to check Chapter
4 to get some help on English morphology.
of aphasia. Evidence for language lateralisation as well as the contralateral control of function is also provided by
b incorrect
application
of regular
past-tense
rule to exceptional
verbof the following topics:
20 Challenge
exercise:
Do some
independent
research
on one or more
split-brain patients and by studying people with other neurological conditions, such as acquired dyslexia.
Example:
When
willof
you
you will leave?
a
Consider
some
theleave?
high-techWhen
methodologies
used to investigate the brain discussed in this chapter, such
Advances in technology have provided a variety of non-invasive methods for studying the living brain as
a as
syntactic
rule
PET, MRI
and MEG. What are the upsides and downsides of the use of these technologies on healthy
Aitchison,
J, 2011,
The articulate
An introduction
to
Obler,
L K and
Gjerlow
2002, Language
brain, 4th
edition,
it
processes
language.
Bymammal:
measuring
electromagnetic
activities
(ERPs
and
MEGKstudies),
andand
through
imaging
b patients?
failure to Consider
move thethe
auxiliary
to form
a question
cost,
the
intrusiveness
and the ethics
of exploring
aPress,
person’s
brain,
against
psycholinguistics,
Oxford,
UK.and
Cambridge
University
Cambridge,
UK.weighed
techniques,
suchRoutledge,
as CT, MRI,
fMRI,
fPET scans, both damaged
and healthy
brains
can
be observed
and
Caplan, D
1987,
Neurolinguistics
and linguistic
aphasiology,
Cambridge
Patterson, K E, Marshall, J C and Coltheart, M (eds) 1986, Surface
the
knowledge
obtained
from
such
studies.
i brake
fluid
viii Are weoftaking
a bustoback?
Are we taking
blake fruid
evaluated.
These
studies
confirm
earlier
results
concerning
the
lateralisation
language
the
left
hemisphere.
University Press, Cambridge, UK.
dyslexia, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
b
Recent
research
suggests
that
specific language impairment
maythe
have a genetic
basis. Conduct some
ii Language:
drink
isStructure,
the
curse
ofto
the
working
of
language
the
left
hemisphere
begins
verybass?
early
life. While
the
left
_____Lateralisation
1996,
processing,
and
disorders,
MIT Press, is a process
Pinker,that
S 1994,
The buck
language
instinct,inWilliam
Morrow,
New
York.
research
to find out what
and experimental
findings
have
led
researchers
to the
this
conclusion.
ixE,isKlima,
he
broke
the
crystal
on
my
watch
classes
is theobservations
curse
of the drinking
Cambridge,
MA.
Poizner,
H
Sevidence
and
Bellugi,
1987,
What
hands
revealhe
about
hemisphere
is
innatelywork
predisposed
to specialise
for language,
there
also
ofU considerable
plasticity
in
PART 3_____
/ THE
OF
LANGUAGE
2001,
‘Neurolinguistics’,
in
M
Aronof
and
J
Rees-Miller
(eds),
The
the
brain,
MIT
Press,
Cambridge,
MA.
ItPSYCHOLOGY
may
be
helpful
to
investigate
the
websites
of
senior
researchers
in
this
area,
such
as
Mabel
Rice
and
brokeofthe
on my crotch
the systemclasses
during(Spooner)
the early stages of language development. The plasticity
thewhistle
brain decreases
with age and
handbook
of linguistics,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Rice, M and Wexler, K 1996, ‘Toward tense as a clinical marker of
Dorothy
Bishop.
x
a
phonological
rule
a
phonological
fool
iii
I
have
to
smoke
a
cigarette
with
my
coffee
with
the
increasing
specialisation
of the different
hemispheres and
regions
ofimpairment
the brain.in English-speaking children’, Journal
Curtiss,
S 1977,
Genie: A linguistic
study of a modern-day
‘wild child’,
specific
language
cAcademic
Look
up
some
ofcoffee
the research
on the spontaneous emergence
language
in individuals
withstretch
hearing loss
xi of
pitch
and
stress
piss
…Press,
smoke
my
with a cigarette
York.
Speech
and Hearing
Research,
39: 1239–1257.
The timing
ofNew
exposure
to language
is crucial. The critical-ageof hypothesis
states
that there
is and
a window
of
haveJ 2005,
not had
access
to language
input,
such as in
Nicaraguan
Sign
or inseries:
Al-Sayyid
Bedouin
_____ andwho
Schaeffer,
‘Syntactic
development
in children
with
Searchinger,
GLebanon
1994,
TheLanguage
human
language
1, 2, 3, Equinox
Film/
xii
lemadon
iv
untactful
distactful
opportunity for learning a first language. Within this time frame, children have the
capability
to acquire
language,
of Knowing,
Inc.,
York.
Sign
Language.
AtD-,what
point
does
a and
gestural
home
sign Ways
system
become
a New
‘language’?
You
mayseduction
wish to read
,
hemispherectomy:
The
I-,
and C-systems’,
Brain
Language
xiii
speech
production
preach
v
an
eating
marathon
a
meeting
arathon
or,
in theJ, 2011,
case The
of deaf
children,
create
language
if there is noSedivy,
appropriate
language
model
inand
the
environment.
J
2019,
Language
in
mind:
An
introduction
to
psycholinguistics.
Aitchison,
articulate
mammal:
An
introduction
to
Obler,
L
K
and
Gjerlow
K
2002,
Language
brain,
4th
edition,
94: 147–166.
literature
by Susan
Goldin-Meadow,
Ann
Senghas and Marie
Coppola.
xiv
he’s
a New
Yorker
vilanguage
executive
committee
executor
committee
Oxford
University
Press,
Oxford,
UK. ithe’s
The
faculty
isOxford,
modular.
It is independent
systems
with
which
interacts.
psycholinguistics,
Routledge,
Cambridge
University
Press,
Cambridge,
UK.a New Yorkan
Damasio,
H 1981, ‘Cerebral
localization
ofUK.
the aphasias’,
in M Taylor of other cognitive
d DThe
late
former
prime
minister
Dame
Margaret
Thatcher
was
(famously)
quoted
as
saying:
‘If
you
Senghas,
A,
S,
and
Özyürek,
A children
2004,
‘Children
creating
core
Caplan,
1987,
Neurolinguistics
linguistic
aphasiology,
Cambridge
Patterson,
KKita,
E,I’d
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J C and
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Surface
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about
that
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lady
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selective
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Sarno
(ed.),
Acquired
aphasia,
Academic
New York.
of language:
Evidence
an emerging
sign language
University
Press,
Cambridge,
UK.
dyslexia,
Hillsdale,
NJ.
want
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want somethingproperties
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suggests,
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Fiederici,
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past
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Much
in
Nicaragua’,
Science,
305:
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_____human
1996, Language:
Structure,
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MIT
Press,
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S
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language
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William
Morrow,
New
York.
capacity.
Cambridge,
MA. information differently. This exercise asks you to take up the controversial
that
men MIT
andPress,
women
process
neurolinguistic
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is centred
on experimental
and behavioural
data
from
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or
atypical
Smith,
NH
V E,
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Tsimpli,
IM
1995, The
mindimpaired
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Language
Cambridge, MA.
Poizner,
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S and
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Uwith
1987,
What
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S 2005,
The resilience
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and
process and
and
learning
modularity,
Blackwell,
Oxford,
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_____in2001,
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language.
These
findings
greatly
enhance
our
understanding
of
language
structure
and
acquisition.
deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language.
state
what
a computer
would
have
to London.
have
in its knowledge
to
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that
interpretation.
Springer,
SP
and
Deutsch,
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1997,
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brain,
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research
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handbook
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and
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tense
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1977, Genie:
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C 1998,
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S 2008,Research,
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Academic
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_____ andJ 2007,
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Searchinger,
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language series:
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and C-systems’,
Brain and
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pp.
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University
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Tokyo.
cCambridge,
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Review your understanding of
the key chapter topics with the
Summary.
Exercises
Further reading
Test your knowledge and
consolidate your learning
through the end-of-chapter
exercises.
Extend your understanding with
challenge exercises.
Further reading
BK-CLA-FROMKIN_10E-200595-Chp08.indd 340
Lenneberg,
H 1967,
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foundations
of aphasias’,
language, Wiley,
New
Damasio, H E1981,
‘Cerebral
localization
of the
in M Taylor
i For those of you who have children and don’t
York.
Sarno (ed.), Acquired aphasia, Academic Press, New York.
it, biology
we have
nursery
downstairs.
(Sign
Lieberman,
Pknow
1984, Language
The
evolution
language,
Harvard
Fiederici, A D
2017,
inand
our a
brain:
Theoforigins
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University
Cambridge,
MA.
human capacity.
MIT
Press, Cambridge,
MA.
inPress,
a church)
Goldin-Meadow, S 2005, The resilience of language: What gesture creation
ii The police were asked to stop drinking in
in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language.
public
Psychology
Press,places.
New York.
iii OurS.bikinis
are exciting;
they are simply
the
Goldin-Meadlow,
and Mylander,
C 1998, ‘Spontaneous
sign systems
created by
deaf
children
in suit
two cultures’,
Nature, 391: 279–281.
tops. (Bathing
ad in newspaper)
Ingram, J 2007, Neurolinguistics: An introduction to spoken language
iv It’sand
time
we made smoking history.
• processing
https://www.youtube.com/user/thelingspace
its disorders. Cambridge University Press, – Fun
(Antismoking
campaign
slogan) acquisition,
short introductory
videos
on language
Cambridge,
U.K.
Lenneberg,
E
H
1967,
Biological
foundations
of language,
v
Do
you
know
time? (Hint:
ThisWiley,
is a New
psycholinguistics andthe
neurolinguistics.
York.
pragmatic
ambiguity.)
• http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/
Lieberman,
P 1984, The biology and evolution of language, Harvard
vi Concerned
withcan
spreading
violence,
University
Press, Cambridge,
MA.
neurolinguistics
– You
learn about
howthe
ourprime
Weblinks
called dyslexia
a press conference.
brains minister
work, aphasia,
and stuttering.
•
Extend your understanding with
the suggested Further reading
and Weblinks relevant to each
chapter.
research that support the existence of the CPH and
research that failed to support the existence of the
CPH.
https://aphasia.org.au/about-aphasia – At this site
you will find information about aphasia and useful
Weblinks
links to Australian and overseas aphasia sites.
•
•
1/16/21 8:58 PM
Traxler,
M J 2011,
Introduction
to psycholinguistics:
Understanding
Oxford
University
Press, Oxford,
UK.
viiA, Kita,
The
of theA church
have
cast off
language
science.
Wiley-Blackwell,
Oxford,
UK. creating
Senghas,
S,ladies
and
Özyürek,
2004,
‘Children
core
Warren,
P 2012,
psycholinguistics,
University
properties
ofIntroducing
language:
Evidence
from
anCambridge
emerging
sign
language
clothing
of every
kind
and
they may
be
Press,
Cambridge,
UK.
in
Nicaragua’,
1779–1782.
seenScience,
in the305:
church
basement on Friday.
Yamada,
J 1990,
Laura: AI M
case
for the
of language,
MIT Press,
Smith,
NV
and Tsimpli,
1995,
Themodularity
mind of a savant:
Language
(Announcement
in aOxford,
church
bulletin)
Cambridge,
MA.
learning
and
modularity, Blackwell,
UK.
Springer,
S P and
1997, Left
right brain,
5th edition,
viii
SheDeutsch,
earnedG little
as abrain,
whiskey
maker
but he
W H Freeman,
San
Francisco.
loved
her
still.
Tesan, G and Crain, S 2008, ‘An MEG study of the negative polarity item
ix The butcher backed into the meat grinder
any: Lexical and postlexical processing’, in R Kakigi, K Yokosawa
and
gotBiomagnetism:
a little behind
in his work.
S Kuriki
(eds),
Interdisciplinary
research and
• and
http://psychology.about.com/od/
exploration,
pp. 229–231,
Hokkaido
University
Press,the
Tokyo.
x A dog
gave birth
to puppies
road
historyofpsychology/a/genie.htm
– near
Here
you
will
Traxler, M J 2011, Introduction to psycholinguistics: Understanding
and
was
cited
for
littering.
learn more about Genie’s case.
language science. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
xi
A
hole
was
found
in
the
nudist
camp
wall.
Warren,
P 2012, Introducing psycholinguistics, Cambridge University
• http://criticalperiodhypothesis.blogspot.com/p/
Press, Cambridge,
UK. are looking into it.
The police
history-of-cph_21.html
– This site introduces the
Yamada, J 1990, Laura: A case for the modularity of language, MIT Press,
history ofMA.
the critical period hypothesis [CPH],
Cambridge,
https://www.youtube.com/user/thelingspace – Fun
http://cnlr.northwestern.edu – At this site you
short introductory videos on language acquisition,
will learn how researchers at the Center for
the Neurobiology of Language Recovery of
http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/
Northwestern University help people with aphasia
neurolinguistics
You can learn about how our
regain language –functionality.
brains work, aphasia, dyslexia and stuttering.
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html –
https://aphasia.org.au/about-aphasia
– At
this
site
Interesting information about language
and
the
you
will
findtoinformation
about aphasia and useful
brain,
easy
read!
links to Australian and overseas aphasia sites.
••
http://psychology.about.com/od/
http://ling.umd.edu/neurolinguistics
– Gain a better
historyofpsychology/a/genie.htm
– HerefMRI,
you will
understanding
of techniques like MEG,
EEG or
learninmore
about Genie’s
case.
ERP
neurolinguistics
research.
••
http://criticalperiodhypothesis.blogspot.com/p/
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lngbrain/main.htm
– All
history-of-cph_21.html
This site
introduces
you
could want to know– about
language
and the
the
historyincluding
of the critical
period
[CPH],
brain,
articles,
linkshypothesis
and a glossary
of
research that
support the existence of the CPH and
important
terms.
research that failed to support the existence of the
CPH.
BK-CLA-FROMKIN_10E-200595-Chp08.indd
341and neurolinguistics.
psycholinguistics
•
xvi
•
•
341
1/16/21 8:58 PM
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Guide to the online resources
FOR THE INSTRUCTOR
Cengage is pleased to provide you with a selection of resources
that will help you to prepare your lectures and assessments, when
you choose this textbook for your course.
Log in or request an account to access instructor resources
at au.cengage.com/instructor/account for Australia
or nz.cengage.com/instructor/account for New Zealand.
MINDTAP
Premium online teaching and learning tools are available on the MindTap platform - the personalised eLearning
solution.
MindTap is a flexible and easy-to-use platform that helps build student confidence and gives you a clear picture of
their progress. We partner with you to ease the transition to digital – we’re with you every step of the way.
The Cengage Mobile App puts your course directly into students’ hands with course materials available on their
smartphone or tablet. Students can read on the go, complete practice quizzes or participate in interactive real-time
activities.
MindTap for Fromkin’s An Introduction to Language is full of innovative resources to support critical thinking, and
help your students move from memorisation to mastery! Includes:
• Fromkin’s An Introduction to Language eBook
• Interactive phoneme list for Australian English
• Chapter revision quizzes
MindTap is a premium purchasable eLearning tool. Contact
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ANSWER KEY AND ADDITIONAL EXERCISE SOLUTIONS
The answer key provides instructors with suggested solutions to all the end-of-chapter exercises in the text.
Solutions to the additional exercises are also provided.
COGNERO TEST BANK
A bank of questions has been developed in conjunction with the text for creating quizzes, tests and exams for your
students. Create multiple test versions in an instant and deliver tests from your LMS, your classroom, or wherever
you want using Cognero. Cognero test generator is a flexible online system that allows you to import, edit, and
manipulate content from the text’s test bank or elsewhere, including your own favourite test questions.
POWERPOINT™ PRESENTATIONS
Use the chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides to enhance your lecture presentations and handouts by reinforcing
the key principles of linguistics.
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GUIDE TO THE ONLINE RESOURCES
ARTWORK FROM THE TEXT
Add the digital files of graphs, tables, pictures and flow charts into your course management system, use them in
student handouts, or copy them into your lecture presentations.
INTERACTIVE PHONEME LIST FOR AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH
Listen to the sounds of Australian English with the interactive phoneme list, which includes both Harrington, Cox
and Evans (HCE) and Mitchell and Delbridge (MD) vowel transcription systems. Each phoneme is captured in the
locally recorded library of words spoken with an Australian English accent.
LEXICAL CATEGORY TEST TABLES
Download a copy of the summary tables located inside the back cover of the text for quick reference.
FOR THE STUDENT
MINDTAP
MindTap is the next-level online learning tool that helps you get better grades!
MindTap gives you the resources you need to study – all in one place and available when you need them. In the
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STUDENT WEBSITE
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Resources on the Student Website are included with this text. This collection of bonus online tools includes:
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Access the resources at https://fromkin.cengagelearning.com.au/
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Preface
Well, this bit which I am writing, called Introduction, is really the er-h’r’m of the book, and I have
put it in, partly so as not to take you by surprise, and partly because I can’t do without it now.
There are some very clever writers who say that it is quite easy not to have an er-h’r’m, but I
don’t agree with them. I think it is much easier not to have all the rest of the book.
A A Milne, The Christopher Robin Birthday Book
The last thing we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
Interest in linguistics – the study of human language – has existed throughout history. Many of the
questions discussed in this book have been asked for thousands of years. What is language? What do
you know when you know a language? What is the origin of language? Is language unique to the human
species? Why are there so many languages? Where do they come from? How are they related? How do
children learn language? Are some languages (or dialects) superior to others? Are some languages simpler
than others? What do all languages have in common? What is the neurological basis of human language?
What parts of the brain are concerned with language? Can computers be taught to speak and understand
human language? These are only a few of the questions that have piqued curiosity about language.
In addition to a philosophical interest in such questions, there are many other reasons that linguists,
psychologists, philosophers, educators, sociologists, legal experts, neurologists, communication engineers
and computer scientists need to understand the nature of human language. New developments in
linguistics have wide ranging impact in education, health science, sociology, psychology, law, medicine,
technology and communication.
In light of the importance of linguistics in so many diverse disciplines, the first nine (Australian)
editions of this textbook were directed towards students in a wide variety of courses. The book has
been used in linguistics and non-linguistics courses, at all levels from undergraduate to postgraduate,
for students in fields as diverse as computer science, English, foreign languages, speech pathology,
anthropology, communications and philosophy. The tenth Australian edition follows in this tradition,
but further extends and updates the content to make it suitable for an even wider audience. Students will
gain insight into current linguistic issues and develop a better understanding of debates appearing in the
national media. We hope that this book will help to dispel certain common misconceptions that people have
about language and language use.
We have provided many new exercises and problem sets in this edition so that students can apply their
knowledge of linguistic concepts to novel data. This will help to consolidate learning and further test
understanding of the material in the text. More research-oriented exercises have also been added for those
instructors who wish their students to pursue certain topics more deeply. Some exercises are marked as
‘challenge exercises’ if they go beyond the scope of what is ordinarily expected in a first course in language
study. An answer key is available to instructors to assist them in areas outside of their expertise. Chapter 1
continues to be a concise introduction to the general study of language. It includes many ‘hooks’ for
engaging students in language study, including discussions of signed languages; a consideration of animal
‘languages’; a treatment of language origins; and the occasional silliness of self-appointed mavens of
‘good’ grammar who beg us not to carelessly split infinitives and who find sentence-ending prepositions an
abomination not to be put up with.
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xix
PREFACE
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Chapter 2, on phonetics, introduces the notion of phoneme and allophone at the beginning of the chapter
to set the scene for discussion of different levels of analysis. In this chapter the transcription system for
Australian English, based firmly on the principles of the International Phonetic Alphabet is introduced.
This system is essential for the study of Australian English speech patterns. The text fully adheres to
the International Phonetics Association (IPA) notation conventions. The taxonomic classification system
for describing the sounds of the worlds languages is introduced with particular reference to articulatory
processes that are necessary to create individual speech sounds. Consonants, vowels, tone and intonation
are illustrated through examples from a range of languages.
Chapter 3, on phonology, reinforces the concept of phoneme and allophone and highlights some
important allophonic processes that occur in English. This chapter retains numerous Australian English
and other language problems and examples to illustrate the important theoretical concepts relating to the
patterns of sounds in language. Material in this chapter continues to be presented so that the student can
appreciate the need for formal theories through real-world examples.
Chapter 4 launches the book into the study of grammar with morphology, the study of word formation,
as that is the most familiar aspect of grammar to most students. The subject is treated with clarity
and an abundance of simple illustrations from non-English languages to emphasise the universality of
word structure, including the essentials of derivational versus inflectional morphology, free and bound
morphemes, and the hierarchical structure of words. The section on compounds words has been expanded
to include a detailed discussion of their internal structure.
Many instructors have noted that recent school English curricula include little teaching of grammar,
and have requested that the text cover more foundational knowledge. Chapter 5 now has an expanded
section on the various syntactic categories, and ways to identify parts of speech. In particular, we have
expanded the section on how to identify different syntactic categories using constituency tests. Our
feedback has shown that our students would benefit more from studying the basics of sentence structure
than learning about current views on X-bar phrase structure. For this reason, we have not followed
the US edition in moving to X-bar theory. Instead, we have chosen to introduce students to the more
intuitive earlier system of phrase structure rules with ternary branching trees, leaving X-bar theory
for more advanced courses on syntax. The text introduces students to phrase structure rules slowly and
systematically, incorporating many example tree structures. While our focus is necessarily on the sentence
structure of English, we have introduced cross-linguistic examples where possible. The intention in the
syntax chapter is to enhance the student’s understanding of the differences among languages as well as
the universal aspects of grammar. Nevertheless, the introductory spirit of these chapters is not sacrificed,
and students gain a deep understanding of word and phrase structure with a minimum of formalisms and a
maximum of insightful examples and explanations, supplemented as always by quotes, poetry and humour.
Chapter 6, on semantics, has been more finely structured so that the challenging topics of this complex
subject can be digested in smaller pieces. Still based on the theme of ‘What do you know about meaning
when you know a language?’ the chapter first introduces students to truth-conditional semantics and
the principle of compositionality. Following that are discussions of what happens when compositionality
fails, as with idioms, metaphors and anomalous sentences. Lexical semantics takes up various approaches
to word meaning, including the concepts of reference and sense, semantic features, argument structure
and thematic roles. The most heavily revised parts of this chapter are the sections on argument structure,
thematic roles and semantic features, the latter now containing a discussion of how these features affect
the syntax. In the section on pragmatics, we discuss and illustrate in depth the influence of situational
versus linguistic context on the communicative content of utterances, the significance of implicature in
comprehension, Grice’s maxims of conversation, presuppositions and J L Austin’s speech acts.
The chapters comprising Part 3, `The psychology of language’, have been revisited. Chapter 7, `Language
acquisition’, remains rich in data from English and other languages. The 10th edition incorporates a new
xx
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PREFACE
section on the acquisition of Murrinhpatha, an Australian indigenous language spoken in the Northern
Territory. Bilingualism and L2 acquisition are taken up in detail, including a section on L2 teaching.
This edition includes both usage-based approaches to language acquisition as well as the generative
approach. The arguments for innateness and Universal Grammar that language acquisition provides are,
nevertheless, exploited to show the student how scientific theories of great import are discovered and
supported through observation, experiment and reason. As in most chapters, Australian Sign Language
(Auslan) is discussed, and its important role in understanding the biological foundations of language is
emphasised.
In Chapter 8, ‘Language processing and the human brain’, the section on psycholinguistics has
been revised to accommodate recent discoveries. This chapter may be read and appreciated without
technical knowledge of linguistics. When the centrality of language to human nature is appreciated,
students will be motivated to learn more about human language, and about linguistics, because they
will be learning more about themselves. As in the previous edition, highly detailed illustrations of
MRI and PET scans of the brain are included, and this chapter highlights some of the new results and
tremendous progress in the study of neurolinguistics over the past few years. There is a section on how
MEG (magnetoencephalography) can be used to study aspects of our linguistic knowledge. The arguments
for the autonomy of language in the human brain are carefully crafted so that the student sees how
experimental evidence is applied to support scientific theories.
Part 4 is concerned with language and society, including sociolinguistics and historical linguistics.
Chapter 9 emphasises the important relationship between language and society and includes a focus on the
concept of social dialect and style. Pidgins and creoles are discussed with greater reference to Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander languages. The ‘Language in use’ section takes up slang, profanity, racial
epithets, euphemisms and similar topics. Attitudes towards language and how they reflect the views and
mores of society are also included in this chapter. We also discuss topics such as English spoken by nonnative speakers and so-called standard languages. A section on language and sexism reflects a growing
concern with this topic. An expanded list of references in this chapter is a valuable resource for further
study.
Chapter 10, on language change, includes the latest research on language families, language relatedness
and language typology. There is also a section ‘Extinct and endangered languages’, which reflects the
intense interest in this critical subject. In response to reviewers’ requests, a detailed and more complex
illustration of the application of the comparative method to two contemporary dialects to reconstruct their
ancestor – often called ‘internal reconstruction’ – is included in this chapter.
Chapter 11, on writing systems, has been updated with a discussion on emojis, adding a further
dimension to what it means to write a language.
Key terms, which are bold in the text, are defined in the margin close to where they appear, as well as
in the revised glossary at the end of the book. The glossary has been expanded and improved so that this
edition provides students with a linguistic lexicon of nearly 550 terms, making the book a worthy reference
volume.
This new Australian edition continues to reflect the study of linguistics in Australia by taking account
of the place of language in Australian society and by basing its detailed description of English on the
Australian English dialect. The phonemic symbols, for example, are those that are in standard use in this
country, and the discussion of social and regional variation in Chapter 9 continues to focus on Australia
and New Zealand. This book assumes no previous knowledge on the part of the reader. An updated list of
references and list of weblinks at the end of each chapter are included to accommodate any reader who
wishes to pursue a subject in more depth. Each chapter concludes with a summary and exercises to enhance
the student’s interest in, learning and comprehension of the textual material. We wish to thank the
reviewers of this edition. We have benefited greatly from discussions with and suggestions from friends,
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xxi
PREFACE
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colleagues, students, lecturers, tutors and reviewers of the last edition. If this text is better than the last,
it is because of them. The responsibility for errors in fact or judgement is, of course, ours. We hope that the
continual updates we make to the book improve its quality and the user experience. Finally, we wish to say
thank you to the lecturers who have used the earlier editions; without them and their students there would
be no new edition.
xxii
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About the authors
Victoria Fromkin received her bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley,
in 1944 and her MA and PhD. in linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1963 and
1965, respectively. She was a member of the faculty of the UCLA Department of Linguistics from 1966 until
her death in 2000, and served as its chair from 1972 to 1976. From 1979 to 1989 she served as the UCLA
Graduate Dean and Vice Chancellor of Graduate Programs. She was a visiting professor at the Universities
of Stockholm, Cambridge, and Oxford. Vicki served as president of the Linguistics Society of America
in 1985, president of the Association of Graduate Schools in 1988, and chair of the Board of Governors
of the Academy of Aphasia. She received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award and the Professional
Achievement Award, and served as the US Delegate and a member of the Executive Committee of the
International Permanent Committee of Linguistics (CIPL). She was an elected Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York
Academy of Science, the American Psychological Society, and the Acoustical Society of America, and
in 1996 was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. She published more than one
hundred books, monographs, and papers on topics concerned with phonetics, phonology, tone languages,
African languages, speech errors, processing models, aphasia, and the brain/mind/language interface – all
research areas in which she worked. Vicki Fromkin passed away on 19 January, 2000, at the age of 76.
Robert Rodman received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of California, Los
Angeles, in 1961, a master’s degree in mathematics in 1965, a master’s degree in linguistics in 1971, and
his PhD. in linguistics in 1973. He was on the faculties of the University of California at Santa Cruz, the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kyoto Industrial College in Japan, and North Carolina State
University. His research areas included forensic linguistics and computer speech processing. In 2009, he
was elected into the American Academy of Social Sciences as an Associate Fellow for his achievements in
computational forensic linguistics. Robert Rodman passed away on 15 January, 2017, at the age of 76.
Nina Hyams received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University in 1973 and her MA
and PhD. in linguistics from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1981 and 1983,
respectively. She joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1983, where she is
currently a professor of linguistics. Her main areas of research are childhood language development and
syntax. She is author of the book Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters (D. Reidel Publishers,
1986), a milestone in language acquisition research. She has also published numerous articles on the
development of syntax, morphology, and semantics in children. She has been a visiting scholar at the
University of Utrecht and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and has given lectures throughout
Europe and Japan. Nina lives in Los Angeles with her pal Spot, a rescued border collie mutt, and his olde
English bulldogge companion, the ever soulful Nellie.
Mengistu Amberber is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of New South Wales. His main
research interests include the syntax–semantics interface (with particular reference to generative
grammar) and linguistic typology. He is the co-editor of Complex Predicates: Cross-linguistic Perspectives on
Event Structure (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Felicity Cox is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University. She is an Australian
Research Council Future Fellow and has published widely on the phonetics and phonology of Australian
English. Felicity is an author (along with Prof Janet Fletcher) of Australian English: Pronunciation and
Transcription, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Rosalind Thornton is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University. Rosalind
teaches introductory linguistics, and child language acquisition. Her research focuses on the acquisition of
syntax and semantics, focusing on typically-developing children.
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Acknowledgements
Cengage and the authors would like to thank the following reviewers, who provided incisive and helpful
feedback:
•• Gavin Austin, University of Southern Queensland
•• Manuel Delicado Cantero, ANU
•• Alison Dench, Sheridan College
•• Iain Giblin, Macquarie University
•• Weifeng Han, Flinders University
•• Alan Libert, University of Newcastle
•• Hossein Shokouhi, Deakin University
We would also like to thank David Blair, Mark Harvey and Peter Collins for their major contributions to
previous editions, and Adam Schembri for his valuable help in reviewing and updating this edition’s sections
on sign languages.
Every attempt has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright holders. Where the attempt has been
unsuccessful, the publisher welcomes information that would redress the situation.
xxiv
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Part 1
The nature of human language
1 What is language?
2
Reflecting on Noam Chomsky’s ideas on the innateness of the
fundamentals of grammar in the human mind, I saw that any innate
features of the language capacity must be a set of biological structures,
selected in the course of the evolution of the human brain.
S E Luria, A Slot Machine, a Broken Test Tube, an Autobiography, 1984
The nervous systems of all animals have a number of basic functions
in common, most notably the control of movement and the analysis of
sensation. What distinguishes the human brain is the variety of more
specialized activities it is capable of learning. The pre-eminent example is
language.
Norman Geschwind, Specializations of the Human Brain, 1979
Linguistics shares with other sciences a concern to be objective,
systematic, consistent and explicit in its account of language. Like other
sciences, it aims to collect data, test hypotheses, devise models and
construct theories. Its subject matter, however, is unique: at one extreme
it overlaps with such ‘hard’ sciences as physics and anatomy; at the other,
it involves such traditional ‘arts’ subjects as philosophy and literary
criticism. The field of linguistics includes both science and the humanities,
and offers a breadth of coverage that, for many aspiring students of the
subject, is the primary source of its appeal.
David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2010
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1
1
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What is language?
When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the ‘human
essence’, the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to [humankind].
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, 1972
Learning objectives
After reading Chapter 1, you should be able to:
• understand the arbitrary relation between linguistic form and meaning
• distinguish between linguistic knowledge (competence) and linguistic behaviour
(performance)
• distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive rules of grammar
• understand the relationship between grammatical rules of individual languages and
principles of language structure that may hold across all languages
• explain the difference between human language and the communicative systems of other
animals.
Whatever else people do when they come together – whether they play, fight, make love or make
cars – they talk. We live in a world of language. We talk to our friends, our associates, our wives
and husbands, our lovers, our teachers, our parents, our rivals and even our enemies. We talk
to bus drivers and total strangers. We talk face-to-face and over the telephone, and everyone
responds with more talk. Television and radio further swell this torrent of words. Hardly a
moment of our waking lives is free from words and even in our dreams we talk and are talked to.
We also talk when there is no-one to answer. Some of us talk aloud in our sleep. We talk to our
pets and sometimes to ourselves.
The possession of language, perhaps more than any other attribute, distinguishes humans
from other animals. To understand our humanity, one must understand the nature of language
that makes us human. According to the philosophy expressed in the myths and religions of many
peoples, language is the source of human life and power. To some people of Africa, a newborn
child is a kintu, a ‘thing’, not yet a muntu, a ‘person’. Only by the act of learning language does the
child become a human being. According to this tradition, then, we all become human because we
all know at least one language. But what does it mean to know a language?
Linguistic knowledge
sign language
A language used
by deaf people in
which linguistic
units, such as
morphemes and
words as well
as grammatical
relations, are
formed by
manual and other
body movements.
2
Do we know only what we see, or do we see what we somehow already know?
Cynthia Ozick, ‘What Helen Keller Saw’, New Yorker, 16 and 23 June 2003
When you know a language, you can speak and be understood by others who know that language.
This means you are able to produce strings of sounds that signify certain meanings and to
understand or interpret the sounds produced by others. But language is more than speech. Deaf
people produce and understand sign languages just as hearing people produce and understand
spoken languages. The languages of the deaf communities throughout the world are equivalent
to spoken languages, differing only in their modality of expression.
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
Almost everyone knows at least one language. Five-year-old children are nearly as proficient
at speaking and understanding speech as their parents. Yet the ability to carry out the simplest
conversation requires profound knowledge that most speakers are unaware of. This is true for
speakers of all languages, from Albanian to Zulu. A speaker of English can produce a sentence
that has two relative clauses without knowing what a relative clause is, such as:
My goddaughter, who was born in Sweden and who now lives in Australia, is named Disa,
after a Viking queen.
In a parallel fashion, a child can walk without understanding or being able to explain the
principles of balance and support or the neurophysiological control mechanisms that permit one
to do so. The fact that we may know something unconsciously is not unique to language.
Knowledge of the sound system
Part of knowing a language means knowing what sounds (or signs)1 are in that language and
what sounds are not. One way this unconscious knowledge is revealed is by the way speakers of
one language pronounce words from another language. If you speak only English, for example,
you may substitute an English sound for a non-English sound when pronouncing words of another
language, such as French ménage à trois. If you pronounce it as the French do, you are using sounds
outside the English sound system.
French people speaking English often pronounce words such as this and that as if they were
spelt zis and zat. The English sound represented by the initial letters th in these words is not part
of the French sound system, and the French pronunciation reveals the speaker’s unconscious
knowledge of this fact.
Knowing the sound system of a language includes more than knowing the inventory of sounds.
It means also knowing which sounds may start a word, end a word and follow each other. The
name of a former president of Ghana was Nkrumah, pronounced with an initial sound like the
sound ending the English word sing. Although this is an English sound, no word in English
begins with the ng sound. Speakers of English who have occasion to pronounce this name often
mispronounce it (by Ghanaian standards) by inserting a short vowel sound, such as Nekrumah
or Enkrumah. Similarly, the first name of the New Zealand mystery writer Ngaio Marsh is often
mispronounced with an ‘n’ sound at the beginning instead of the ‘ng’ sound. Children who learn
English recognise that ng does not begin a word, just as Ghanaian and Māori children learn that
words in their language may begin with the ng sound.
We will learn more about sounds and sound systems in Chapters 2 and 3.
sign
A single gesture
(possibly
with complex
meaning) in the
sign languages
used by the deaf.
Knowledge of words
Knowing the sounds and sound patterns in our language constitutes only one part of our linguistic
knowledge. Knowing a language means also knowing that certain sequences of sounds signify certain
concepts or meanings. Speakers of English know what boy means, and that it means something different
from toy or girl or pterodactyl. When you know a language, you know words in that language; that is,
which sequences of sounds are related to specific meanings and which are not.
Arbitrary relation of form and meaning
The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is. I don’t have to reflect a moment; the right
name comes out instantly. I seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts
what animal it is. When the dodo came along he [Adam] thought it was a wildcat. But I saved him. I
just spoke up in a quite natural way and said, ‘Well, I do declare if there isn’t the dodo!’
Mark Twain, Eve’s Diary, 1906
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
arbitrary
Describes
the property
of language,
including sign
language,
whereby there
is no natural
or intrinsic
relationship
between the
way a word is
pronounced (or
signed) and its
meaning.
If you do not know a language, the words (and sentences) of that language will be mainly
incomprehensible because the relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they
represent in the languages of the world is, for the most part, an arbitrary one. When you are
acquiring a language, you have to learn that the sounds represented by the letters house signify
the concept
; if you know French, this same meaning is represented by maison; if you know
Spanish, by casa, if you know Amharic, by bet. Similarly,
is represented by hand in English,
main in French, nsa in Twi, and ruka in Russian. The same sequence of sounds can represent
different meanings in different languages. The word bolna means ‘speak’ in Hindu-Urdu and
‘aching’ in Russian; bis means ‘devil’ in Ukrainian and ‘twice’ in Latin; a pet means ‘a domestic
animal’ in English and ‘a fart’ in Catalan; and the sequence of sounds taka means ‘hawk’ in
Japanese, ‘fist’ in Quechua, ‘a small bird’ in Zulu, and ‘money’ in Bengali.
These examples show that the words of a particular language have the meanings they
do only by convention. This arbitrary relationship between form and meaning is shown in
Figure 1.1, whereby a pterodactyl could have been called a ron, blick or kerplunkity and remained
the same type of dinosaur.
As Juliet says in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Figure 1.1
Form and meaning
Herman®/LaughingStock Licensing Inc., Ottawa, Canada
4
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
This conventional and arbitrary relationship between form (sounds) and meaning (concept)
of a word in spoken languages is also true of many signs in sign languages. If you see someone
using a sign language you do not know, it is doubtful you will understand much of the message
from the signs alone. A person who knows Chinese Sign Language (CSL) would find it difficult to
understand Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and vice versa.
For some signs, the relationship between form and meaning was originally not arbitrary.
The Auslan sign meaning ‘tomorrow’, for example, may have originated as a compound of signs
meaning ‘one’ and ‘sleep’. Over time this has changed, just as the pronunciation of words may
change; now, the sign is formed by a ‘one’ handshape moving away from the cheek. These signs
become conventional, so that the forms of the handshape, movement and location do not reveal
the meaning any longer.
There is some sound symbolism in language; that is, words whose pronunciation suggests
their meaning. Most languages contain onomatopoeic words, such as buzz or murmur, that imitate
the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to. But even here the sounds differ
from language to language, reflecting the particular sound system of the language. In English
cock-a-doodle-doo is an onomatopoeic word whose meaning is ‘the crow of a rooster’, whereas in
Finnish the rooster’s crow is kukkokiekuu. Forget gobble gobble when you are in Istanbul; a turkey
in Turkey goes glu-glu.
Sometimes particular sound sequences seem to relate to a particular concept. In English many
words beginning with gl relate to sight, such as glare, glint, gleam, glitter, glossy, glaze, glance,
glimmer, glimpse and glisten. However, such words are a very small part of any language, and gl
may have nothing to do with ‘sight’ in another language or even in other words in English, such
as gladiator, glucose, glory, glutton, globe and so on.
To know a language we must know words of that language. But no speaker knows all the
entries in an unabridged dictionary, and even if someone did, he or she would still not know that
language. Imagine trying to learn a foreign language by buying a dictionary and memorising
words. No matter how many words you learnt, you would not be able to form the simplest phrases
or sentences in the language, or understand a native speaker. No one speaks in isolated words. Of
course, you could search in your tourist’s dictionary for individual words to find out how to say
something like ‘car – petrol – where?’ After many tries, a native speaker might understand this
question and then point in the direction of a service station. If the speaker answered you with a
sentence, however, you probably would not understand what was said; nor would you be able to
look it up, because you would not know where one word ended and another began. Chapter 5 will
explore how words are put together to form phrases and sentences, and Chapter 6 will explore
word and sentence meanings.
The creativity of linguistic knowledge
convention/
conventional
The agreed-on,
though generally
arbitrary,
relationship
between the form
and meaning of
words.
form
The phonological
or gestural
representation of
a morpheme or
word.
meaning
The conceptual
or semantic
aspect of a sign
or utterance
that permits us
to comprehend
the message
being conveyed.
Expressions
in language
generally have
both form –
pronunciation
or gesture – and
meaning.
sound symbolism
The notion that
certain sound
combinations
occur in
semantically
similar words,
for example, gl
in gleam, glisten,
glitter, which all
relate to vision.
onomatopoeia/
onomatopoeic
Refers to
words whose
pronunciations
suggest their
meaning, e.g.
meow, buzz.
Albert: So are you saying that you were the best friend of the woman who was married to
the man who represented your husband in divorce?
André: In the history of speech, that sentence has never been uttered before.
Neil Simon, The Dinner Party, 2000
Knowledge of a language enables you to combine sounds to form words, words to form phrases
and phrases to form sentences. You cannot buy a dictionary of any language with all its sentences
because no dictionary can list all the possible sentences. Knowing a language means being able
to produce and understand new sentences never spoken before. This is the creative aspect, or
creativity of language. Not every speaker of a language can create great literature, but everybody
who knows a language can create and understand new sentences.
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creative aspect/
creativity of
language
Speakers’ ability
to combine the
finite number of
linguistic units of
their language
to produce and
understand an
infinite range of
novel sentences.
5
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
In pointing out the creative aspect of language, Chomsky made a powerful argument against
the behaviourist view of language that prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century,
which held that language is a set of learnt responses to stimuli. While it is true that if someone
steps on our toes we may automatically respond with a scream or a grunt, these sounds are not
part of language. They are involuntary reactions to stimuli. After we automatically cry out, we
can then go on to say, ‘Thank you very much for stepping on my toe because I was afraid I had
elephantiasis, but because I could feel it hurt I know I don’t’, or any one of an infinite number of
sentences, because the particular sentence we produce is not controlled by a stimulus.
Even some involuntary cries, such as ouch, are constrained by our own language system, as are
the filled pauses that are sprinkled through conversational speech, such as er, uh and you know in
English. They contain only the sounds found in the language. French speakers, for example, often
fill their pauses with the vowel sound that starts their word for ‘egg’ – oeuf – a sound that does
not occur in English. Knowing a language includes knowing what sentences are appropriate in
various situations. Saying ‘Minced steak costs five dollars a kilo’ after someone has just stepped
on your toe would hardly be an appropriate response, although it would be possible.
Our creative ability is not only reflected in what we say, but also includes our understanding of
new or novel sentences. Consider the following sentence: Ben Hall decided to become a bushranger
because he dreamed of pigeon-toed giraffes and cross-eyed elephants dancing in pink skirts and green
berets on the wind-swept sands of the Nullarbor. You may not believe the sentence, you may question
its logic, but you can understand it, although you have probably never heard or read it before now.
Knowledge of a language, then, makes it possible to understand and produce new sentences. If
you counted the number of sentences in this book that you have seen or heard before, the number
would be small. Next time you write an essay or a letter, see how many of your sentences are
new. Few sentences are stored in your brain, to be pulled out to fit some situation or matched with
some sentence that you hear. Novel sentences never spoken or heard before cannot be stored in
your memory.
Simple memorisation of all the possible sentences in a language is impossible in principle. If
for every sentence in the language a longer sentence can be formed, then there is no limit to the
length of any sentence and therefore no limit to the number of sentences. In English you can say:
This is the house.
or
or
or
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house
that Jack built.
And you need not stop there. How long, then, is the longest sentence? A speaker of English
can say:
The old man went.
or
6
The old, old, old, old, old man went.
How many ‘olds’ are too many? Seven? Twenty-three?
It is true that the longer these sentences become, the less likely we would be to hear or to
say them. A sentence with 276 occurrences of ‘old’ would be highly unlikely in either speech or
writing, even to describe Methuselah. But such a sentence is theoretically possible. If you know
English, you have the knowledge to add any number of adjectives as modifiers to a noun and to
form sentences with indefinite numbers of clauses, as in the house that Jack built.
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
All human languages permit their speakers to form indefinitely long sentences; creativity is
a universal property of human language.
The fact of human linguistic creativity was well expressed more than 400 years ago by Huarte
de San Juan (1530–1592):
‘Normal human minds are such that … without the help of anybody, they will produce 1000
(sentences) they never heard spoke of … inventing and saying such things as they never
heard from their masters, nor any mouth’.
Knowledge of sentences and non-sentences
A person who knows a language has mastered a system of rules that assigns sound and
meaning in a definite way for an infinite class of possible sentences.
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, 1972
Our knowledge of language not only allows us to produce and understand an infinite number
of well-formed (even if silly and illogical) sentences. It also permits us to distinguish wellformed (grammatical) from ill-formed (ungrammatical) sentences. This is further evidence of
our linguistic creativity because ungrammatical sentences are typically novel, not sentences
we have previously heard or produced, precisely because they are ungrammatical! Consider the
following sentences:
1
a John kissed the little old lady who owned the shaggy dog.
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Who owned the shaggy dog John kissed the little old lady.
John is difficult to love.
It is difficult to love John.
John is anxious to go.
It is anxious to go John.
John, who was a student, flunked his exams.
Exams his flunked student a was who John.
If you were asked to put an asterisk before the examples that seemed ill formed or
ungrammatical or no good to you, which ones would you choose? (The asterisk * is used before
examples that speakers reject for any reason. This notation will be used throughout the book.)
Our intuitive knowledge about what is or is not an allowable sentence in English leads us to put
an asterisk before b, f and h. Which ones did you choose? Would you agree with the following
judgements?
2
a What he did was climb a tree.
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
*What he thought was want a sports car.
Drink your beer and go home!
*What are drinking and go home?
I expect them to arrive a week from next Thursday.
*I expect a week from next Thursday to arrive them.
Linus lost his security blanket.
*Lost Linus security blanket his.
asterisk
The symbol *
used to indicate
ungrammatical
or anomalous
examples;
for example,
*cried the baby,
*sincerity dances;
also used in
historical and
comparative
linguistics to
represent a
reconstructed
form.
If you find the sentences with asterisks unacceptable, as we do, you see that not every string of
words constitutes a well-formed sentence in a language. Our knowledge of a language determines
which strings of words are well-formed sentences, and which are not. Therefore, in addition to
knowing the words of the language, linguistic knowledge includes rules for forming sentences
and making the kinds of judgements you made about the examples in (1) and (2) above. These
rules must be finite in length and finite in number so they can be stored in our finite brains.
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Yet they must permit us to form and understand an infinite set of new sentences. They are not
rules determined by a judge or a legislature, or even rules taught in a grammar class. They are
unconscious rules that we acquire as young children as we develop language.
Returning to the question we posed at the beginning of this chapter – what does it mean to
know a language? It means knowing the sounds and meanings of many, if not all, of the words
of the language, and the rules for their combination – the grammar, which generates infinitely
many possible sentences. We will have more to say about these rules of grammar in later chapters.
Linguistic knowledge and performance
linguistic
competence
The knowledge
of a language
represented
by the mental
grammar
that accounts
for speakers’
linguistic ability
and creativity.
For the most
part, linguistic
competence is
unconscious
knowledge.
linguistic
performance
The use of
linguistic
competence
in the
production and
comprehension
of language;
behaviour as
distinguished
from linguistic
knowledge.
slip of the tongue
(speech error)
An involuntary
deviation from
an intended
utterance that
often results in
ungrammaticality,
nonsense words,
anomaly, etc.
‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’
‘I don’t know’, said Alice. ‘I lost count’. ‘She can’t do Addition’, the Red Queen interrupted.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871
Our linguistic knowledge permits us to form longer and longer sentences by joining sentences
and phrases or adding modifiers to a noun. Whether we stop at three, five or eighteen adjectives,
it is impossible to limit the number we could add if desired. Very long sentences are theoretically
possible, but they are highly improbable. Evidently, there is a difference between having the
knowledge necessary to produce sentences of a language and applying this knowledge. It is a
difference between what we know – our linguistic competence – and how we use this knowledge
in actual speech production and comprehension – our linguistic performance.
Speakers of all languages have the knowledge to understand or produce sentences of any
length. However, there are physiological and psychological reasons that limit the number of
adjectives, adverbs, clauses and so on that we actually produce and understand. Speakers may
run out of breath, lose track of what they have said or die of old age before they are finished.
Listeners may become confused, tired, bored or disgusted.
When we speak we usually wish to convey some message. At some stage during the act of
producing speech, we must organise our thoughts into strings of words. Sometimes the message
is garbled. We may stammer or pause or produce slips of the tongue (or speech errors), like
saying ‘preach seduction’ when ‘speech production’ is meant (discussed in Chapters 3 and 8). We
may even sound like the character in the cartoon below, who illustrates the difference between
linguistic knowledge and the way we use that knowledge in performance.
For the most part, linguistic knowledge is not conscious knowledge. The linguistic system –
the sounds, structures, meanings, words and rules for putting them all together – is acquired with
no conscious awareness. Our ability to speak and understand, and to make judgements about the
grammaticality of sentences, reveals our knowledge of the rules of our language. This knowledge
represents a complex cognitive system. The nature of this system is what this book is all about.
Figure 1.2 highlights the distinction between linguistic knowledge and linguistic performance.
What is grammar?
We use the term ‘grammar’ with a systematic ambiguity. On the one hand, the term refers to
the explicit theory constructed by the linguist and proposed as a description of the speaker’s
competence. On the other hand, it refers to this competence itself.
Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, The Sound Pattern of English, 1968
8
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
Figure 1.2
Linguistic knowledge versus linguistic performance
grammar
A linguistic
description
of a speaker’s
mental grammar;
the mental
representation
of a speaker’s
linguistic
competence;
what a speaker
knows about a
language.
CartoonStock/Robert Mankoff
Descriptive grammars
There are no primitive languages. The great and abstract ideas of Christianity can be
discussed even by the wretched Greenlanders.
Johann Peter Suessmilch, in a paper delivered before the Prussian Academy, 1756
The way we are using the word grammar differs from most common usages. In our sense, the
grammar includes the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of their language – rules
for combining sounds into words (called phonology), rules of word formation (called morphology),
rules for combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences (called syntax) and rules for
assigning meaning (called semantics). The grammar, together with a mental dictionary that
lists the words of the language, represents our linguistic competence. To understand the nature
of language, we must understand the nature of grammar and, in particular, the internalised,
unconscious set of rules that is part of every grammar of every language.
Every human being who speaks a language knows its grammar. When linguists wish to
describe a language, they attempt to describe the rules (the grammar) of the language that exist
in the minds of its speakers. Some differences will exist among speakers, but there must be shared
knowledge too. The shared knowledge – the common parts of the grammar – makes it possible to
communicate through language. To the extent that the linguist’s description is a true model of
the speakers’ linguistic capacity, it is a successful description of the grammar and of the language
itself. Such a model is called a descriptive grammar. It does not tell you how you should speak;
it describes your basic linguistic knowledge. It explains how it is possible for you to speak and
understand and make judgements about well-formedness, and it tells what you know about the
sounds, words, phrases and sentences of your language.
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phonology
The sound system
of a language;
the component
of a grammar
that includes
the inventory
of sounds
(phonemic units)
and the processes
required to
ensure their
appropriate
combination
and realisation,
including aspects
of rhythm,
intonation and
stress; the study
of the sound
systems of all
languages.
morphology
The structure
of words; the
component of
the grammar
that includes the
rules of word
formation.
syntax
The rules
of sentence
formation; the
component of the
mental grammar
that represents
speakers’
knowledge of
the structure
of phrases and
sentences.
semantics
The study of the
linguistic meaning
of morphemes,
words, phrases
and sentences.
9
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
descriptive
grammar
A linguist’s
description or
model of the
mental grammar,
including the
units, structures
and rules; an
explicit statement
of what speakers
know about their
language.
mental grammar
The internalised
grammar that
a descriptive
grammar
attempts to
model; see
linguistic
competence.
grammatical
Describes a wellformed sequence
of words, one
conforming to
rules of syntax.
ungrammatical
Describes a
structure that
fails to conform
to the rules of
grammar.
dialect
A variety of a
language whose
grammar differs
in systematic
ways from
other varieties.
Differences
may be lexical,
phonological,
syntactic and/or
semantic.
prescriptive
grammar
Rules of grammar
brought about
by grammarians’
attempts to
legislate what
grammatical
rules for speakers
should be, rather
than what they
are.
10
Linguists use the word grammar in two ways: the first refers to the mental grammar speakers
have in their brains; the second to the model or description of this internalised grammar studied
by linguists. Almost 2000 years ago the Greek grammarian Dionysius Thrax defined grammar
as that which permits us either to speak a language or to speak about a language. From now on
we will not differentiate these two meanings because the linguist’s descriptive grammar is an
attempt at a formal statement (or theory) of the speaker’s grammar.
When we say in later chapters that a sentence is grammatical, we mean that it conforms to the
rules of the mental grammar (as described by the linguist); when we say that it is ungrammatical,
we mean it deviates from the rules in some way. If, however, we posit a rule for English that does
not agree with your intuitions as a speaker, then the grammar we are describing differs in some
way from the mental grammar that represents your linguistic competence; that is, your language
is not the one described. No language or variety of a language (called a dialect) is superior to any
other in a linguistic sense. Every grammar is equally complex, logical and capable of producing an
infinite set of sentences to express any thought. If something can be expressed in one language
or one dialect, it can be expressed in any other language or dialect. It might involve different
meanings and different words, but it can be expressed. We will have more to say about dialects
in Chapter 9. This is true as well for languages of technologically underdeveloped cultures. The
grammars of these languages are not primitive or ill formed in any way. They have all the richness
and complexity of the grammars of languages spoken in technologically advanced cultures.
Prescriptive grammars
It is certainly the business of a grammarian to find out, and not to make, the laws of a
language.
John Fell, Essay Towards an English Grammar, 1784
Just read the sentence aloud, Amanda, and listen to how it sounds. If the sentence sounds
OK, go with it. If not, rearrange the pieces. Then throw out the rule books and go to bed.
James Kilpatrick, ‘Writer’s Art’ (syndicated newspaper column), 1998
Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau, journal entry, 1860
Not all grammarians, past or present, share the view that all grammars are equal. Language
‘purists’ of all ages believe that some versions of a language are better than others, that there
are certain ‘correct’ forms that all educated people should use in speaking and writing, and that
language change is corruption. The Greek Alexandrians in the first century, the Arabic scholars at
Basra in the eighth century and numerous English grammarians of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries held this view. They wished to prescribe rather than describe the rules of grammar, which
gave rise to the writing of prescriptive grammars.
In the Renaissance a new middle class emerged who wanted their children to speak the dialect
of the ‘upper’ classes. This desire led to the publication of many prescriptive grammars. In 1762
Bishop Robert Lowth wrote A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes, in which
he prescribed a number of new rules for English, many of which were influenced by his personal
taste. Before the publication of his grammar, practically everyone – upper class, middle class and
lower class – said ‘I don’t have none’, ‘You was wrong about that’ and ‘Matilda is fatter than me’.
Lowth, however, decided that ‘two negatives make a positive’ and therefore one should say ‘I
don’t have any’, that even when you is singular it should be followed by the plural were and that
I not me, he not him, they not them and so forth should follow than in comparative constructions.
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
Many of these prescriptive rules were based on Latin grammar, which had already given way to
different rules in the languages that developed from Latin, such as Italian and French. Because
Lowth was influential and because the rising new class wanted to speak ‘properly’, many of these
new rules were legislated into English grammar, at least for the prestige dialect – that variety of
the language spoken by people in positions of power.
Figure 1.3 highlights the distinction between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar,
suggesting that double negatives are not ‘correct English’.
Figure 1.3
Prescriptive grammar
prestige dialect
The dialect
usually spoken
by people in
positions of
power, and the
one deemed
correct by
prescriptive
grammarians;
for example,
RP (received
pronunciation)
(British) English,
the dialect spoken
by the British
royal family.
Pearls Before Swine © 2015 Stephan Pastis. Reprinted with permission of ANDREWS McMEEL SYNDICATION. All rights reserved.
The view that dialects that regularly use double negatives are inferior cannot be justified if
one looks at the standard dialects of other languages in the world.
Romance languages, for example, use double negatives, as the following examples from French
and Italian show:
French:
Italian:
Je
ne
veux
parler
avec
personne.
I
not
want
speak
with
no-one.
Non
voglio
parlare
con
nessuno.
not
I want
speak
with
no-one.
standard dialect
The dialect
(regional or
social) considered
the norm.
English translation: I don’t want to speak with anyone.
Prescriptive grammars such as Lowth’s are different from the descriptive grammars we have
been discussing. Their goal is not to describe the rules people know, but to tell them what rules they
should follow. British prime minister Winston Churchill had this to say about the ‘rule’ against
ending a sentence with a preposition: ‘That is a rule up with which I shall not put’.
Today our bookstores are filled with books by language purists attempting to ‘save the English
language’. Edwin Newman, for example, in his books Strictly Speaking and A Civil Tongue, rails
against those who use the word hopefully to mean ‘I hope’, as in ‘Hopefully, it will not rain
tomorrow’, instead of using it ‘properly’ to mean ‘with hope’. What Newman fails to recognise
is that language changes in the course of time and words change meaning, and the meaning of
hopefully has been broadened for most English speakers to include both usages. Other saviours
of the English language blame television, the schools and even the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation for failing to preserve the standard language, and they mount attacks against those
academics who suggest that non-standard varieties are perfectly proper in their context and
effective for communication.
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Figure 1.4 offers another example of the disjunction between prescriptive grammar and the
actual use of language
Figure 1.4
Prescriptive grammar and actual use
‘Piled Higher and Deeper’ by Jorge Cham, http://www.phdcomics.com.
All human languages and dialects are fully expressive, complete and logical, as much as
they were 200 or 2000 years ago. Hopefully, this book will convince you that all languages and
dialects are rule-governed, whether spoken by rich or poor, powerful or weak, learned or illiterate.
Grammars and usages of particular groups in society may be dominant for social and political
reasons, but from a linguistic (scientific) point of view, they are neither superior nor inferior to
the grammars and usages of less prestigious segments of society.
Having said all this, it is undeniable that the standard dialect may indeed be a better dialect
for someone wishing to obtain a particular job or achieve a position of social prestige. In a society
where ‘linguistic profiling’ is used to discriminate against speakers of a minority dialect, it
may behove those speakers to learn the prestige dialect rather than wait for social change. But
linguistically, prestige and standard dialects do not have superior grammars.
Finally, all of the preceding remarks apply to spoken language. Writing is another story (see
Chapter 11). Writing is not acquired naturally through simple exposure to others speaking the
language (see Chapter 7), it must be taught. And writing follows certain prescriptive rules of
grammar, usage and style that the spoken language does not, and is subject to little dialectal
variation.
Teaching grammars
I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.
Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1912
teaching
grammar
A set of language
rules written to
help speakers
learn a foreign
language or a
different dialect
of their own
language.
12
The descriptive grammar of a language attempts to describe the rules internalised by a speaker of
that language. It is different from a teaching grammar, which is used to learn another language
or dialect. Teaching grammars are used in schools to fulfil language requirements. They can
be helpful to people who do not speak the standard or prestige dialect, but find it would be
advantageous socially and economically to do so. Teaching grammars state explicitly the rules
of the language, list the words and their pronunciations and aid the learning of a new language
or dialect.
It is often difficult for adults to learn a second language without formal instruction, even
when they have lived for an extended period in a country where the language is spoken. (Second-
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
language acquisition is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.) Teaching grammars assume the
student already knows one language and compares the grammar of the target language with the
grammar of their native language. The meaning of a word is given by providing a gloss – the parallel
word in the student’s native language. For example, with maison, ‘house’ in French, it is assumed the
student knows the meaning of the gloss ‘house’, and so the meaning of the word maison.
Sounds of the target language that do not occur in the native language are often described by
reference to known sounds. Therefore, the student might be aided in producing the French sound
u in the word tu by instructions such as ‘Round your lips while producing the vowel sound in tea’.
The rules on how to put words together to form grammatical sentences also refer to the
learner’s native-language knowledge. The teaching grammar Learn Zulu by Sibusiso Nyembezi,
for example, states,
gloss
A word in one
language given
to express the
meaning of a
word in another
language; for
example, ‘house’
is the English
gloss for the
French word
maison.
‘The difference between singular and plural is not at the end of the word but at the beginning of
it’, and warns that ‘Zulu does not have the indefinite and definite articles “a” and “the”’.
Such statements assume that students know the rules of their own grammar, in this case
English. Although such grammars might be considered prescriptive in the sense that they attempt
to teach the student what is or is not a grammatical construction in the new language, their aim
is different from grammars that attempt to change the rules or usage of a language that is already
known by the speaker.
This book is not primarily concerned with either prescriptive or teaching grammars, but these
are considered in Chapter 9 in the discussion of standard and non-standard dialects.
Universal Grammar
In a grammar there are parts that pertain to all languages; these components form what is
called the general grammar. In addition to these general (universal) parts, there are those
that belong only to one particular language; and these constitute the particular grammars
of each language.
César Chesneau Du Marsais, c. 1750
There are rules of particular languages, such as English, Swahili and Zulu, that form part of the
individual grammars of these languages, and then there are rules that hold in all languages. Those
rules representing the universal properties of all languages constitute a Universal Grammar (UG).
The linguist attempts to uncover the laws of particular languages and also the laws that pertain
to all languages. The universal laws are of particular interest because they give us a window
into the human ‘faculty of language’ which enables us to learn and use any particular language.
Interest in language universals has a long history. Early scholars encouraged research into the
nature of language in general and promoted the idea of general grammar as distinct from special
grammar. General grammar was to reveal those features common to all languages.
Students trying to learn Latin, Greek, French or Swahili as a second language are generally so
focused on learning aspects of the new language that differ from their native language that they may
be sceptical of the universal laws of language. Yet there are many things that all language learners
know unconsciously even before they begin to learn a new language. They know that a language has
its own set of sounds, perhaps thought of as its alphabet, that combine according to certain patterns
to form words, and that the words themselves recombine to form phrases and sentences. The learner
will expect to find verbs and nouns, as these are universal grammatical categories; they will know
that the language – like all languages – has a way of negating, forming questions, issuing commands,
and referring to past or future time; and more generally, they will understand that the language has
a system of rules that will allow them to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences.
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Universal
Grammar (UG)
The principles
and properties
that pertain to
the grammars
of all human
languages.
13
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
One way of thinking about UG is as the blueprint that all languages follow that forms part
of the child’s innate capacity for language learning. It specifies the different components of the
grammar and their relations, how the different rules of these components are constructed, how
they interact and so on.
The linguist’s goal is to reveal the ‘laws of human language’, just as the physicist’s goal is to
reveal the ‘laws of the physical universe’. The complexity of language undoubtedly means this
goal will never be fully achieved. All scientific theories are incomplete and new hypotheses must
be proposed to account for new data. Theories are continually changing as new discoveries are
made. Just as physics was enlarged by Einstein’s theories of relativity, so grows the linguistic
theory of UG as new discoveries shed new light on the nature of human language. The comparative
study of many different languages is of central importance to this enterprise. 2
The development of grammar
How comes it that human beings, whose contacts with the world are brief and personal and
limited, are nevertheless able to know as much as they do know?
Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, 1948
lexicon
The component
of the grammar
containing
a speaker’s
knowledge about
morphemes
and words; a
speaker’s mental
dictionary.
Linguistic theory is concerned not only with describing the knowledge that an adult speaker has
of his or her language, but also with explaining how that knowledge is acquired.
All typically developing children acquire (at least one) language in a relatively short period
with apparent ease. They do this despite the fact that parents and other caregivers do not provide
them with any specific language instruction. Indeed, it is often remarked that children seem to
‘pick up’ a language just from hearing it spoken around them. Children are language-learning
virtuosos – whether a child is male or female, from a rich family or a disadvantaged one, whether
he or she grows up on a farm or in the city, attends day care or is home all day, none of these factors
fundamentally affect the way language develops. Children can acquire any language they are
exposed to – English, Dutch, French, Swahili, Japanese – with comparable ease and, even though
each language has its own peculiar characteristics, children learn them all in very much the same
way. For example, all children go through a babbling stage; their babbles gradually give way
to words, which then combine to form simple sentences and then sentences of ever-increasing
complexity. The same child who may be unable to tie her shoes or even count to five has managed
to master the complex grammatical structures of her language and acquire a substantial lexicon.
How children accomplish this remarkable cognitive feat is a topic of intense interest to
linguists. According to one hypothesis, the child’s inexorable path to adult linguistic knowledge
and the uniformity of the acquisition process point to a substantial innate component to language
development. Children acquire language as quickly and effortlessly as they do because they do not
have to figure out all the grammatical rules of language, but only those that are specific to their
particular language. The universal properties – the laws of language – are part of their biological
endowment. There are alternative views on language acquisition that assume little or no innate
component specific to language. In Chapter 7 we will discuss language acquisition in more detail.
Sign languages: evidence for language universals
It is not the want of organs that [prevents animals from making] … known their thoughts …
for it is evident that magpies and parrots are able to utter words just like ourselves, and yet
they cannot speak as we do, that is, so as to give evidence that they think of what they say.
On the other hand, men who, being born deaf and mute … are destitute of the organs which
serve the others for talking, are in the habit of themselves inventing certain signs by which
they make themselves understood.
René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditation on First Philosophy, 1637
14
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
The sign languages of deaf communities provide some of the best evidence to support the view
that all languages are governed by the same universal principles. Current research on sign
languages has been crucial to understanding the biological underpinnings of human language
acquisition and use.
The major language of the deaf community in Australia is Australian Sign Language – known
as Auslan. It has evolved mostly from British Sign Language (BSL), with some input from Irish
Sign Language, both of which were brought to Australia during the nineteenth century.
Auslan and other sign languages do not use sounds to express meanings. Instead, they are
visual–gestural systems that use hand, body and facial gestures as the forms used to create
vocabulary and to express grammatical rules. Sign languages are fully developed languages, and
signers create and comprehend unlimited numbers of new sentences, just as speakers of spoken
languages do. Signed languages have their own grammatical rules and a mental lexicon of signs,
all encoded through a system of gestures, and are otherwise equivalent to spoken languages.
Signers are affected by performance factors just as speakers are; slips of the hand occur similar
to slips of the tongue. Finger fumblers amuse signers just as tongue twisters amuse speakers.
These and other language games play on properties of the phonological (that is, ‘sound’) systems
of the spoken and signed languages.
Deaf children who are exposed to signed languages acquire them just as hearing children
acquire spoken languages, going through the same linguistic stages, including the babbling stage.
Deaf children babble with their hands, just as hearing children babble with their vocal tracts.
Neurological studies show that signed languages are organised in the brain in a very similar
way to spoken languages, despite their visual modality. We discuss the brain basis of language
in Chapter 8.
In short, signed languages resemble spoken languages in all major aspects. This universality
is expected because, regardless of the modality in which it is expressed, language is a biologically
based ability. Our knowledge, use and acquisition of language are not dependent on the ability
to produce and hear sounds, but on a far more abstract cognitive capacity.
Australian
Sign Language
(Auslan)
The sign language
used by the deaf
community in
Australia; see also
sign languages.
What is not (human) language
It is a very remarkable fact that there are none so depraved and stupid, without even
excepting idiots, that they cannot arrange different words together, forming of them a
statement by which they make known their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no
other animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the
same.
René Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditation on First Philosophy, 1637
All languages share certain fundamental properties, and children naturally acquire these
languages – whether they are spoken or signed. Both modalities are equally accessible to the
child because human beings are designed for human language. But what of the ‘languages’ of
other species – are they like human languages? Can other species be taught a human language?
The birds and the bees
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), ‘To a Skylark’
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
discreteness
A fundamental
property of
human language
in which larger
linguistic units
are perceived to
be composed of
smaller linguistic
units, e.g. cat is
perceived as the
phonemes /k/,
/æ/, /t/; the cat is
perceived as the
and cat.
bird call
One or more
short notes
that convey
messages about
the immediate
environment,
such as danger,
feeding, nesting
and flocking.
birdsong
A complex
pattern of notes
used by birds
to mark their
territory and to
attract mates.
displacement
The capacity
to talk (or sign)
messages that are
unrelated to here
and now.
16
Most animal species possess some kind of communication system. Humans also communicate
through systems other than language, such as head nodding or facial expressions. The question
is whether the communication systems used by other species are at all like human language with
its very specific properties, most notably its creative aspect.
Many species have a non-vocal system of communication. Among certain species of spiders
there is a complex system for courtship. Before approaching his ladylove, the male spider goes
through an elaborate series of gestures to tell her that he is indeed a spider and a suitable mate,
and not a crumb or a fly to be eaten. These gestures are invariant. One never finds a creative spider
changing or adding to the courtship ritual of his species.
A similar kind of gestural language is found among the fiddler crabs. There are 40 species and
each uses its own claw-waving movement to signal to another member of its ‘clan’. The timing,
movement and posture of the body never change from one time to another or from one crab to
another within the particular variety. Whatever the signal means, it is fixed – only one meaning
can be conveyed.
An essential property of human language not shared by the communication systems of spiders,
crabs and other animals is its discreteness. Human languages are not simply made up of a fixed
set of invariant signs. They are composed of discrete units – sounds, words, phrases – that are
combined according to the rules of the grammar of the language. The word top in English has
a particular meaning, but it also has individual parts that can be rearranged to produce other
meaningful sequences – pot or opt. Similarly, the phrase the cat on the mat means something
different from the mat on the cat. We can arrange and rearrange the units of our language to form
an infinite number of expressions. The creativity of human language depends on discreteness.
In contrast to crabs and spiders, birds communicate vocally and birdsongs have always
captured the human imagination. Musicians and composers have been moved by these melodies,
sometimes imitating them in their compositions, at other times incorporating birdsongs directly
into the music. Birdsongs have also inspired poets, as in Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’, not to mention
cartoonists.
Birds do not sing for our pleasure, however. Their songs and calls communicate important
information to other members of the species and sometimes to other animals. Bird calls
(consisting of one or more short notes) convey danger, feeding, nesting, flocking and so on.
Birdsongs (more complex patterns of notes) are used to stake out territory and to attract mates.
Like the messages of crabs and spiders, however, there is no evidence of any internal structure to
these songs; they cannot be segmented into discrete meaningful parts and rearranged to encode
different messages as can the words, phrases and sentences of human language. In its territorial
song, the European robin alternates between high-pitched and low-pitched notes to indicate how
strongly it feels about defending its territory. The different alternations indicate intensity and
nothing more. The robin is creative in its ability to sing the same song in different ways, but not
creative in its ability to use the same units of the system to express different messages with
different meanings. Recently, scientists have observed that finches will react when the units of
a familiar song are rearranged. It is unclear, however, whether the birds recognise a violation of
the rules of the song or are just responding to a pattern change.
Though crucial to the birds’ survival, the messages conveyed by these songs and calls are
limited, relating only to a bird’s immediate environment and needs. Human language is different,
of course. Our words and sentences are not simply responses to internal and external stimuli. If
you are tired you may yawn, but you may also say ‘I’m tired’, or ‘I’m going to bed’, or ‘I’m going
to a cafe for a double espresso’. Notably, you also have the right to remain silent, or talk about
things completely unrelated to your physical state – the weather, the movie you saw last night,
your plans for the weekend, or most interesting of all, your linguistics class.
The linguists call this property of human language displacement: the capacity to talk
(or sign) messages that are unrelated to here and now. Displacement and discreteness are two
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
fundamental properties that distinguish human language from the communication systems of
birds and other animals.
One respect in which birdsongs do resemble human languages is in their development. In
many bird species the full adult version of the birdsong is acquired in several stages, as it is for
children acquiring language. The young bird sings a simplified version of the song shortly after
hatching and then learns the more detailed, complex version by hearing adults sing. However, it
must hear the adult song during a specific fixed period after birth – the period differs from species
to species – otherwise song acquisition does not occur. For example, the chaffinch is unable to
learn the more detailed song elements after 10 months of age. A baby nightingale in captivity
may be trained to sing melodiously by another nightingale, a ‘teaching bird’, but only before its
tail feathers are grown. These birds show a critical period for acquiring their ‘language’ similar
to the critical period for human language acquisition, which we will discuss in Chapter 7. As
with human language acquisition, the development of the birdsongs of these species involves
an interaction of both learnt and innate structure.
An interesting consequence of the fact that some birdsongs are partially learnt is that
variation can develop. There can be ‘regional dialects’ within the same species and, as with
humans, these dialects are transmitted from parents to offspring. Researchers have noted, in fact,
that dialect differences may be better preserved in songbirds than in humans because there is no
homogenisation of regional accents due to radio or television. We will discuss human language
dialects in Chapter 9.
Honey bees have a particularly interesting signalling system. When a forager bee returns to
the hive, it communicates to other bees where a source of food is located by performing a dance
on a wall of the hive to reveal the location and quality of the food source. For one species of
Italian honey bee, the dancing may assume one of three possible patterns: round (which indicates
locations near the hive, within 6 metres or so); sickle (which indicates locations 6 to 18 metres
from the hive); and tail-wagging (for distances that exceed 18 metres). The number of repetitions
per minute of the basic pattern in the tail-wagging dance indicates the precise distance – the
slower the repetition rate, the longer the distance. The number of repetitions and the intensity
with which the bee dances the round dance indicates the richness of the food source – the more
repetitions and the livelier the bee dance, the more food to be had.
Bee dances are discrete in some sense, consisting of separate parts, and in principle they
can communicate infinitely many different messages, like human language; but unlike human
language the topic is always the same – namely, food. They lack the displacement property. As
experiments have shown, when a bee is forced to walk to a food source rather than fly, it will
communicate a distance many times farther away than the food source actually is. The bee has
no way of communicating the special circumstances of its trip. This absence of creativity makes
the bee’s dance qualitatively different from human language.
As we will discuss in Chapter 8, the human language ability is rooted in the human brain. Just
like human language, the communication system of each species is determined by its biology.
This raises, again, the interesting question of whether it is possible for one species to acquire the
language of another.
Can animals learn human language?
It is a great baboon, but so much like man in most things … I do believe it already understands
much English; and I am of the mind it might be taught to speak or make signs.
Entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary, 1661
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The idea of talking animals is as old and as widespread among human societies as language itself. All
cultures have legends in which some animal speaks. All over west Africa, children listen to folktales
in which a ‘spider-man’ is the hero. ‘Coyote’ is a favourite figure in many Native American tales, and
many an animal takes the stage in Aesop’s famous fables. Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse and Donald
Duck are icons of American popular culture. The fictional Doctor Dolittle communicated with all
manner of animals, from giant snails to tiny sparrows, as did Saint Francis of Assisi.
In reality, various species show abilities that seem to mimic aspects of human language. Talking
birds, such as parrots and mynahs, can be taught to faithfully reproduce words and phrases, but this
does not mean they have acquired a human language. As the poet William Cowper put it:
‘Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse; but talking is not always to converse’.3
Talking birds do not decompose their imitations into discrete units. Polly and Molly do not
rhyme for a parrot. They are as different as hello and goodbye. If Polly learns to say Polly wants
a cracker and Polly wants a doughnut, and also learns to say whisky and bagel, she will not then
spontaneously produce Polly wants whisky or Polly wants a bagel or Polly wants whisky and a bagel.
If she learns cat and cats, and dog and dogs, and then learns the word parrot, she will not be able to
form the plural parrots as children do. Unlike every developing child, a parrot cannot generalise
from particular instances and therefore cannot produce sentences he has not been directly taught.
A parrot – even a very verbose one – cannot produce an unlimited set of utterances from a finite
set of units. The imitative utterances of talking birds mean nothing to the birds; these utterances
have no communicative function. It is clear that simply knowing how to produce a sequence of
speech sounds is not the same as knowing a language. But what about animals that appear to
learn the meanings of words? Do they have human language?
Dogs can easily be taught to respond to commands such as ‘heel’, ‘sit’, ‘fetch’ and so on,
and even seem to understand object words like ball, toy and so on. Indeed, in 2004 German
psychologists reported on a border collie named Rico (Figure 1.5) that had acquired a 200-word
vocabulary (containing both German and English words). When asked to fetch a particular toy
from a pile of many toys, Rico was correct over 90 per cent of the time. When told to fetch a
toy whose name he had not been previously taught, Rico could match the novel name to a new
toy among a pile of familiar toys about 70 per cent of the time – a rate comparable to that of
young children performing a similar novel name
task. More recently, a border collie named Chaser
Figure 1.5 Rico responding to a command by
that lives in South Carolina in the US was reported
fetching a toy
to understand the names of 1022 toys! Chaser was
taught these names over a three-year period. Like
Rico, he is able to connect a novel name to a new
toy placed in a huge pile of toys whose names he
already knows.
Rico and Chaser are clearly very intelligent dogs
and their name recognition skills are amazing.
It is unlikely, however, that Rico or Chaser (or
Spot or Rover) understand the meanings of words
or have acquired a symbolic system in the way
that children do. Rather, they learn to associate
a particular sequence of sounds with an object
or action. For Chaser and Rico, the name ‘Sponge
Bob’, for example, might mean something like ‘fetch
Sponge Bob’ – what the dog has been taught to do.
AAP Photos/Reuters/Manuela Hartling
The young child who has learnt the name ‘Sponge
Bob’ knows that it refers to a particular toy or
18
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
television character independent of any a particular game or context. The philosopher Bertrand
Russell (‘The Uses of Language’) summed up the dog rather insightfully, noting that
‘however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though
poor’.
In their natural habitats, chimpanzees, gorillas and other non-human primates communicate
with each other through visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile signals. Many of these signals seem
to have meanings associated with the animals’ immediate environment or emotional state. They can
signal danger and can communicate aggressiveness and subordination. However, the natural sounds
and gestures produced by all non-human primates are highly stereotyped and limited in the type and
number of messages they convey, consisting mainly of emotional responses to particular situations.
They have no way of expressing the anger they felt yesterday or the anticipation of tomorrow.
Even though primate communication systems are quite limited, many people have been
interested in the question of whether they have the latent capacity to acquire complex linguistic
systems similar to human language. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, there
were a number of studies designed to test whether non-human primates could learn human
language, including both words (or signs) and the grammatical rules for their combination.
In early experiments researchers raised chimpanzees in their own homes alongside their children, in
order to recreate the natural environment in which human children acquire language. The chimps were
unable to vocalise words despite the efforts of their caretakers, although they did achieve the ability to
understand a number of individual words. Primates’ vocal tracts do not permit them to pronounce many
different sounds but because of their manual dexterity, sign language was an attractive alternative to
test their cognitive linguistic ability. Starting with a chimpanzee named Washoe and continuing over
the years with a gorilla named Koko and another chimp ironically named Nim Chimpsky (after Noam
Chomsky; Nim was the subject of a movie, Project Nim, released in August 2011), intense efforts were
made to teach them American Sign Language. Although the primates achieved small successes, such
as the ability to string two signs together and to occasionally show flashes of creativity, none achieved
the qualitative linguistic ability of a human child.
Similar results were obtained in attempting to teach primates artificial languages designed to
resemble human languages in some respects. Common chimpanzees Sarah, Lana, Sherman and
Austin, and, more recently, a male bonobo (or pygmy chimpanzee) named Kanzi, were taught
languages whose ‘words’ were plastic chips, or keys on a keyboard, which could be arranged into
‘sentences’. The researchers were particularly interested in the ability of primates to communicate
using such abstract symbols.
These experiments also came under scrutiny. Questions arose over what kind of knowledge Sarah
and Lana were showing with their symbol manipulations and to what extent their responses were being
inadvertently cued by experimenters. Many scientists, including some who were directly involved
with these projects, have concluded that the creative ability that is so much a part of human language
was not evidenced by the chimps’ use of the artificial languages. As often happens in science, the
search for the answers to one kind of question leads to answers to other questions. The linguistic
experiments with primates have led to many advances in our understanding of primate cognitive
ability. Researchers have gone on to investigate other capacities of the chimp mind, such as causality.
These studies also point out how remarkable it is that within just a few short years, without the benefit
of explicit guidance and regardless of personal circumstances, all human children are able to create
new and complex sentences never spoken and never heard before.
Can computers learn human language?
Computers are prolific. If you are reading this book, there is a high likelihood that you use a
computer, be it as large as a desktop or as small as an Apple Watch. You may also be able to speak
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
to your computer and it may speak back. Your computer may take dictation, translate between
languages, read an electronic newspaper out loud and give you the definition of eleemosynary.
These are the trappings of human language, but does your computer, or any computer, have
human language competence?
We saw earlier that two key properties of human language are discreteness and displacement.
Computer speech has both these properties. Spoken words are assembled from discrete, prestored
units of sound; and sentences from a prestored lexicon of words. Moreover, computer speech may
refer to the past, present or future and to its current location or another place.
Unlike talking birds, computers have no trouble generalising sentences, such as ‘Polly wants
a cracker’ to ‘Polly wants some whisky’ or even to ‘Hedwig likes mice’. Forming plurals or past
tenses are also easily programmable. A computer could associate one million spoken names of
objects to pictures of those objects, putting poor Chaser (and all of us) to shame. As to the lack of
creativity among non-human primates, computers suffer from no such drawback. Computers have
been programmed to write poetry, learn new words, and even provide psychological counselling.
Even the best of language-using computers have distinctly non-human language traits. While
humans never pronounce the same word twice identically, computers always do. Humans suffer
from slips of the tongue, fumbled pronunciations and convoluted phrasing. Humans often speak
in fits and starts, hemming and hawing, and inserting filler sounds such as ‘um’ and ‘you know’.
Humans repeat words in a sentence such as ‘I … I … I don’t want to paint uh I mean stain … stain
my floor, no, I mean the decking’. Humans bollix their syntax and realise it after they may have
said ‘The horses away ran from the barn jumped the fence over’. Computers never do any of this
unless they are purposefully programmed to do so, and even when they are, the ‘mistakes’ sound
disingenuous.
Nonetheless, it may be argued that these are issues of linguistic performance. The toughest
test of linguistic competence is a version of one first suggested by Alan M. Turing (1912–1954),
the British mathematician who is considered the founder of modern computer science. Behind
two screens are placed a computer and a human. An interrogator engages both voices behind the
screens in conversation. If based on language usage, the interrogator is unable to determine which
is the human and which is the computer, then one might argue that the computer has attained
human linguistic competence.
No computer has come close to passing this ‘Turing test’, fictional computers and robots to the
contrary notwithstanding. Indeed, the test has never been seriously administered. Moreover, if in
an unforeseeable future a computer was programmed to pass this test, it would be the ingenuity
and linguistic competence of the programmers on display, not the computer nor its software.
Despite the intelligence of animals and machines, none has achieved the linguistic competence
of any healthy human being.
20
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
CHAPTER REVIEW
Summary
We are all intimately familiar with at least one language – our own. Yet few of us ever stop to consider what we
know when we know a language. No book contains, or could possibly contain, all the elements of the English or
Russian or Zulu language. The words of a language can be listed in a dictionary, but all the sentences cannot be.
However, a language consists of these sentences as well as words. Speakers use a finite set of rules to produce and
understand an infinite set of possible sentences.
These rules are part of the grammar of a language, which develops when you acquire the language and
includes the sound system (the phonology), the structure and properties of words (the morphology and lexicon),
how words may be combined into phrases and sentences (the syntax), and the ways in which sounds and
meanings are related (the semantics). The sounds and meanings of individual words are related in an arbitrary
fashion. If you had never heard the word syntax you would not, by its sounds, know what it meant. The gestures
used by signers are also arbitrarily related to their meanings. Language, then, is a system that relates sounds (or
hand and body gestures) with meanings. When you know a language you know this system.
This knowledge (linguistic competence) is different from behaviour (linguistic performance). You have the
competence to produce a million-word sentence, but performance limitations, such as memory and endurance,
keep this from occurring.
There are different kinds of ‘grammars’. The descriptive grammar of a language represents the unconscious
linguistic knowledge or capacity of its speakers. Such a grammar is a model of the mental grammar every speaker
of the language knows. It does not teach the rules of the language; it describes the rules that are already known. A
grammar that attempts to legislate what your grammar should be is called a prescriptive grammar – it prescribes. It
does not describe, except incidentally. Teaching grammars are written to help people learn a foreign language or a
dialect of their own language.
The more that linguists investigate the thousands of languages of the world and describe the ways in which
they differ from each other, the more they discover that these differences are limited. Linguistic universals pertain
to each of the parts of grammars, the ways in which these parts are related and the forms of rules. According to
one influential hypothesis, these principles comprise Universal Grammar (UG), which provides a blueprint for the
grammars of all possible human languages and constitutes the innate component of the human language faculty
that makes normal language development possible.4
Strong evidence for UG is found in the way children acquire language. Children learn language by exposure.
They need not be deliberately taught, although parents may enjoy ‘teaching’ their children to speak or sign.
Children will learn any human language to which they are exposed, and they learn it in definable stages, beginning
at a very early age.
The fact that deaf children learn sign language shows that the ability to hear or produce sounds is not a
prerequisite for language learning. All of the sign languages in the world, which differ as spoken languages do, are
visual–gestural systems that are as fully developed and as structurally complex as spoken languages. The major
sign language used in Australia is called Australian Sign Language, or Auslan.
If language is defined merely as a system of communication, or the ability to produce speech sounds, then
language is not unique to humans. There are, however, certain characteristics of human language not found in
the communication systems of any other species. A basic property of human language is its creativity – a speaker’s
ability to combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of well-formed grammatical sentences, most of
which are novel, never before produced or heard.
For many years, researchers were interested in the question of whether language is a uniquely human ability.
There have been many attempts to teach non-human primates communication systems that are supposed to
resemble human language in certain respects. Overall, results have been disappointing. Some chimpanzees have
been trained to use an impressive number of symbols or signs. But a careful examination of their multi-sign
utterances reveals that unlike children, the chimps show little creativity or spontaneity. Their ‘utterances’ are often
unwittingly cued by trainers and have little syntactic structure. Some highly intelligent dogs have also learnt a
significant number of words, but their learning is restricted to a specific context and it is likely that their
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
‘meanings’ for these words are very different from the symbolic or referential meanings that would be learnt by a
human child.
Computer scientists have laboured for decades to program computers with the linguistic competence of a
human. While the results are impressive, and computers appear to be able to talk, listen, and understand, there is
little evidence that human linguistic competence has been achieved.
Exercises
1
An English speaker’s knowledge includes the sound sequences of the English language. When new products
are put on the market, the manufacturers have to create names for them that conform to the allowable sound
patterns of the language. Suppose you were hired by a manufacturer of soap products to name five new
products. What names might you come up with? List them.
As we are interested in how the names are pronounced, describe in any way you can how to say the words
you list. Suppose, for example, you named one detergent Blick. You could describe the sounds in any of the
following ways:
bl as in blood, i as in pit, ck as in stick
bli as in bliss, ck as in tick
b as in boy, lick as in lick.
22
2
Consider the following sentences. Put an asterisk (*) before those that do not seem to conform to the rules of
your grammar; that is, those that seem ungrammatical to you. State, if you can, why you think the sentence is
ungrammatical.
a Robin forced the sheriff go.
b Napoleon forced Josephine to go.
c The devil made Faust go.
d He passed by a large pile of money.
e He drove by my house.
f He drove my house by.
g Did in a corner little Jack Horner sit?
h Elizabeth is resembled by Charles.
i Nancy is eager to please.
j It is easy to frighten Emily.
k It is eager to love a kitten.
l That birds can fly flabbergasts.
m The fact that you are late to class is surprising.
n Has the nurse slept the baby yet?
o I was surprised for you to get married.
p I wonder who and Mary went swimming.
q Myself bit John.
r What did Alice eat the toadstool with?
s What did Alice eat the toadstool and?
3
It was pointed out in this chapter that a small set of words in languages may be onomatopoeic; that is, their
sounds imitate what they refer to. Ding-dong, tick-tock, bang, zing, swish and plop are such words in English.
Construct a list of 10 new onomatopoeic words. Test them on at least five friends to see if they are truly nonarbitrary as to sound and meaning.
4
Although sounds and meanings of most words in all languages are arbitrarily related, there are some
communication systems in which the signs unambiguously reveal their meaning.
a Describe (or draw) five different signs that directly show what they mean. Example: a road sign indicating an
S curve.
b Describe any other communication system that, like language, consists of arbitrary symbols. Example: traffic
signals, where red means stop and green means go.
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
5 Consider these two statements: ‘I learnt a new word today’. ‘I learnt a new sentence today’. Do you think the
two statements are equally probable? Give reasons for your answer.
6 An African grey parrot named Alex who was the subject of a 30-year experiment was reported to have
learnt the meanings of 150 words. There are many reports online about Alex’s impressive abilities. In the
light of evidence presented in this chapter, or based on your own online research, discuss whether Alex’s
communications were the results of classical operant conditioning, as many scientists believe, or whether he
showed true linguistic creativity, as his trainers maintain.
7 A wolf is able to express subtle gradations of emotion by different positions of the ears, the lips and the tail.
There are 11 postures of the tail that express such emotions as self-confidence, confident threat, lack of
tension, uncertain threat, depression, defensiveness, active submission and complete submission. This system
seems to be complex. Suppose there were a thousand different emotions that the wolf could express in this
way. Would you then say a wolf had a language similar to a human’s? If not, why not?
8 Suppose you taught a dog to heel, sit up, roll over, play dead, stay, jump and bark on command, using the
italicised words as cues. Would you be teaching it language? Why?
9 Challenge exercise: One of the key assumptions of this book and an important discovery of modern linguistics
is that sign languages are essentially the same as spoken languages except that they use gestures instead of
sound. However, we know people use gestures when they communicate in speech. Write a short essay on the
role of gestures in spoken language interaction (see Goldin-Meadow and Alibali, 2013, listed in the ‘Further
reading’ section).
10 State some rule of grammar that you have learnt is the correct way to say something but that you do not
generally use in speaking. You may, for example, have learnt that ‘It’s me’ is incorrect and that the correct form
is ‘It’s I’. Nevertheless, you always use ‘me’ in such a sentence; your friends do also and, in fact, ‘It’s I’ sounds odd
to you.
Write a short essay presenting arguments against someone who tells you that you are wrong. Discuss how
this disagreement demonstrates the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars.
11 Noam Chomsky has been quoted as saying:
It’s about as likely that an ape will prove to have a language ability as that there is an island
somewhere with a species of flightless birds waiting for human beings to teach them to fly.5
In the light of evidence presented in this chapter, or based on your own online research, comment on
Chomsky’s remark. Do you agree or disagree, or do you think the evidence is inconclusive?
12 Challenge exercise: In the text, we discussed how birdsongs are fundamentally different from human
language. However, some recent studies suggest that the acoustic patterns of some bird songs resemble the
acoustic patterns found in speech. Research this topic, starting from the article by James and Sakata (2017)
listed in the ‘Further reading’ section, and write a short essay.
13 Think of song titles that are ‘bad’ grammar but which, if corrected, would lack effect. The 1929 Fats Waller
classic ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’, for example, is clearly superior to the bland ‘I am not misbehaving’. Try to come up
with five or ten such titles.
14 Linguists who attempt to write a descriptive grammar of linguistic competence are faced with a difficult
task. They must understand a deep and complex system based on a set of sparse and often inaccurate data.
(Children learning language face the same difficulty.) Albert Einstein and Leopold Infield captured the essence
of the difficulty in their book The Evolution of Physics, written in 1938:
In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the
mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he
has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which
could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the
only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the
real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Write a short essay that speculates on how a linguist might go about understanding the reality of a person’s
grammar (the closed watch) by observing what that person says and does not say (the face and moving hands).
A person might, for example, never say ‘The sixth sheik’s sixth sheep is sick as a dog’, but the grammar should
specify that it is a well-formed sentence, just as it should somehow indicate that ‘came the messenger on time’
is ill formed.
15 View the movie My Fair Lady (drawn from the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw). Note every attempt to
teach grammar (pronunciation, word choice and syntax) to the character of Eliza Doolittle. This is an illustration
of ‘teaching grammar’.
16 English words containing dge in their spelling (trudge, edge) are said mostly to have an unfavourable or negative
connotation. Research this notion by accumulating as many dge words as you can and classifying them as
unfavourable (sludge) or neutral (bridge). What do you do about budget? Unfavourable or not? Are there other
questionable words?
17 Euphemism treadmill refers to the linguistic phenomenon in which a euphemism evolved to be as offensive as
the word it replaced, requiring yet another euphemism. Provide some examples from English. (Hint: Sex, race
and bodily functions are good places to start.)
18 Challenge exercise: Read the Cratylus Dialogue by Plato – it is available online at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/cratylus.html.
In it is a discussion (or dialogue) of whether names are conventional (i.e. what we have called ‘arbitrary’) or natural.
Do you find Socrates’ point of view sufficiently well-argued to support the thesis in this chapter that the relationship
between form and meaning is indeed arbitrary? Argue your case in either direction in a short (or long if you wish)
essay.
19 Challenge exercise: It is claimed that Pirahã – an indigenous language of Brazil – violates some of the universal
principles hypothesised by linguists. Which principles are in question? Is the evidence persuasive? Conclusive?
Speculative? (As a starting point, use the journal Current Anthropology, 46(4), August–October 2005 and the
journal Language, 85(2), June 2009.)
20 Challenge exercise: There are approximately 7000 languages spoken today in the world according to the
encyclopaedia Ethnologue: Languages of the World (see https://www.ethnologue.com/endangered-languages).
Many languages are seriously endangered and some will cease to be spoken in the near future. Write a short
essay on the topic of language endangerment and what linguists and language planners can and should do
about it.
21 There are, very roughly, about half a million words in use in today’s English language according to current
unabridged dictionaries. However, if we reach back to the beginnings of the printing press and examine large
amounts of published English we find an additional half a million words now no longer in use, such as slethem,
a musical instrument. Write a short essay arguing one way or the other that the lexicon of the English language
ought to be counted as containing one million or so words. Feel free, as always, to poke around the internet to
inform yourself further.
22 The linguist Geoffrey Pullum has published a number of incisive criticisms of some prescriptive grammarians’
advice on English usage. Research Pullum’s view on this topic (see also his posts on the popular linguistics
blog Language Log at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll) and write a short essay about the issues he raised,
focusing on arguments and evidence.
23 Challenge exercise: Constructed languages are languages that are consciously designed and invented for
various purposes. It has been claimed that the process of inventing languages can provide us with insight into
the structure of natural languages. Research this topic, starting from the video talk by the linguist David Adger
on Language Invention and Language Structure (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA5NXBbXYdQ), and write
a short essay.
24 Challenge exercise: In this chapter, we discussed the phenomenon of sound symbolism and noted that even
though there are some words whose pronunciation suggests their meaning, there appears to be no consistent
pattern across languages. However, there are recent studies that challenge this conclusion. Research this topic,
starting from the article by Dingemanse et al. (2016) listed in the ‘Further reading’ section, and write a short
essay.
24
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CHAPTER 1 / WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
25 In the text, we discussed a number of prescriptive rules in English, such as the prohibition on using two
negatives in a sentence. If you speak another language, provide some examples of prescriptive rules in the
language.
26 In the text we mentioned speech error, which is an anomalous or ungrammatical utterance due to an
involuntary deviation from an intended utterance. Provide five actual examples of speech errors using the
Fromkin Speech Error Database (https://www.mpi.nl/dbmpi/sedb/sperco-search.pl).
27 In his recent book Language Unlimited, the linguist David Adger (2019) invites readers to carry out the following
simple experiment:
Make [a sentence] up that, say, spans at least one line on the page. Now go to your favourite search
engine and put in the sentence you’ve made up, in inverted commas, so that the search engine looks
for an exact match. Now hit return.
Adger then asks the question: ‘does your sentence exist anywhere else on the internet?’
Discuss briefly what you found out from your search. What does this tell us about the nature of human
language?
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PART 1 / THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Further reading
Adger, D 2019, Language unlimited: The science behind our most creative
power, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Anderson, S R 2004, Doctor Dolittle’s delusion: Animals and the
uniqueness of human language, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Berwick, R C and Chomsky, N 2015, Why only us? Language and
evolution, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bickerton, D 2014, More than nature needs: Language, mind, and
evolution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Chomsky, N 1986, Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use,
Praeger, New York.
Crystal, D 2010, Cambridge encyclopedia of language, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Dingemanse, M, Schuerman, W, Reinisch, E, Tufvesson, S and Mitterer, H
2016, ‘What sound symbolism can and cannot do: Testing the iconicity
of ideophones from five languages’, Language, 92(2): e117–e113.
Enfield, N 2017, How we talk: The inner workings of conversation. Basic
Books, New York.
Evans, N 2009, Dying words: Endangered languages and what they have to
tell us, Wiley-Blackwell, Milton, QLD.
_____ and Levinson, S C 2009, ‘The myth of language universals:
Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science’,
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32: 429–492.
Evans, V 2014, The language myth: Why language is not an instinct,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Everett, D L 2017, How language began: The story of humanity’s greatest
invention, Liveright, New York.
Goldberg, A 2019, Explain me this: Creativity, competition and the partial
productivity of constructions. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Goldin-Meadow, S and Alibali, M W 2013, ‘Gesture’s role in speaking,
learning, and creating language’, Annual Review of Psychology, 64:
257–283.
Harrison, K D 2010, The last speakers: The quest to save the world’s most
endangered languages, National Geographic Books, Washington DC.
Hess, E 2008, Nim Chimpsky: The chimp who would be human, Bantam,
New York.
Hurford, J 2014, The origins of language: A slim guide, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, UK.
James, L S and Sakata, J T 2017, ‘Learning biases underlie ‘universals’
in avian vocal sequencing’, Current Biology, 27: 3676–3682.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.10.019
Johnston, T and Schembri, A 2007, Australian Sign Language: An
introduction to sign language linguistics, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK.
Malt, B and Wolff, P (eds) 2010, Words and the mind: How words capture
human experience, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Moro, A 2008, The boundaries of Babel: The brain and the enigma of
impossible languages, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Napoli, DJ 2019, Do animals use language? The 5-minute linguist: Bitesized essays on language and languages, 3rd edition. Carolyn Myrick
and Walt Wolfram, eds. Equinox Publishing, London.
Peterson, David J 2015, The art of language invention: From horse-lords
to dark elves, the words behind word-building. Penguin Books, New
York.
Pfau, R, Steinback, M and Woll, B 2012, Sign language: An international
handbook, De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin.
Pilley, J W 2013, Chaser: Unlocking the genius of the dog who knows a
thousand words, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston.
Pinker, S 2007, The stuff of thought: Language as a window into human
nature, Viking, New York.
Pullum, G K 2018, Linguistics: Why it matters. Polity Press, Cambridge,
MA.
Schembri, A, Fenlon, J, Cormier, K and Johnston, T 2018, ‘Sociolinguistic
typology and sign languages’. Frontiers in Psychology, 9: 200.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00200
Schembri, A C and Lucas, C 2015, Sociolinguistics and deaf communities,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Tomasello, M 2008, Origins of human communication, MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA.
_____ 2019, Becoming human: A theory of ontogeny, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, MA.
Weblinks
•
https://lexicon.hum.uu.nl – The Lexicon of
Linguistics offers a dictionary of linguistic terms.
If you come across a linguistic term you are not
familiar with, it is a great place to start your search.
Bookmark this site – it will save you precious time
during your preparation for exams!
•
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_
rouge06.html – This site presents Chomsky’s
Universal Grammar, observations that support the
Chomskyan view of language as well as criticisms of
Chomsky’s theories.
•
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/education – This site
provides some interesting activities and questions for
discussion so you have a clearer understanding of
the similarities and differences between human and
animal communicative behaviour.
•
http://www.auslan.org.au – At this site you will
find a dictionary, a brief history and a corpus of
Australian Sign Language (Auslan).
•
https://www.sila.org.au – Another great Australian
website for all kinds of language–related
information and tools.
3
The poem ‘Conversation’. The Poems of William Cowper, Esq. of
the inner temple. Complete in one volume.
For a recent perspective on the debate on language universals
see Evans, N and Levinson, S (2009), Evans, V (2014) listed in the
‘Further reading’ section.
Chomsky, N 1980, ‘Are those apes really talking? Skeptics say it is
mostly a lot of monkeyshines’, Time, 3 October, 115.
Endnotes
1
2
26
The sign languages of the deaf will be discussed throughout the
book. As stated, they are essentially the same as spoken languages
except that they use gestures instead of sound. A reference to
‘language’, then, unless speech sounds or spoken languages are
specifically mentioned, includes both spoken and signed languages.
It is important to note here that the concept of ‘UG’ is controversial
and not accepted by all linguists. For alternative ways of explaining
the similarity across languages see Goldberg (2019), Tomasello
(2008, 2019) listed in the ‘Further reading’ section.
4
5
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Part 2
Grammatical aspects of language
2 Phonetics: the sounds of language
28
4 Morphology: the words of language
118
3 Phonology: the sound patterns of language
5 Syntax: the sentence patterns of language
6 Semantics and pragmatics: the meanings
of language
66
156
209
The theory of grammar is concerned with the question: What is the nature
of a person’s knowledge of [their] language, the knowledge that enables
[them] to make use of language in the normal, creative fashion? A person
who knows a language has mastered a system of rules that assigns sound
and meaning in a definite way for an infinite class of possible sentences.
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, 1968
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27