INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS 1:
Instructor: dr Dorota Klimek-Jankowska
sigma1979@poczta.onet.pl
Conceptual goals of linguistics
Modern linguists work on the nature of HUMAN language. We are interested in how language functions in
human mind/brain.
The central assumptions of modern linguistics:
Language is a window to
the mind
Language is a biological
phenomenon
Language is a window to
the mind,
Language is innate
menon
o
Figure 1: Noam Chomsky
This is the so called MENTALIST/NATIVIST APPROACH to human language.
Which hemisphere is responsible for language?
Experiments: the left hemisphere of a mature language speaker is responsible for language. MRI pictures of
the brain activity confirm it.
Kimura:
He presented information simultaneously to both ears. Listeners reported right ear language input more
accurately.
In the brain of a young child both hemispheres are active during language use.
LATERALIZATION - during puberty, one hemisphere (in 90% of the cases it is the left hemisphere)
gradually takes over the responsibility for language.
Two brain areas in the left hemisphere are responsible for language: Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area.
Wernicke’s area impaired
QUESTIONS: How is our knowledge of a language organized in the brain?
Is the knowledge of a language conscious or tacit?
Conscious knowledge - examples : …………………………………………………………………………..
Tacit knowledge - examples:…………………………………………………………………………………
When we speak we are not aware of the mental principles which govern the process of speaking in the same
way as we are not aware of the physical processes which govern ball-throwing or bicycle-riding.
The focus of linguistics is on the nature of linguistic knowledge, which is tacit, not conscious.
COMPETENCE VS. PERFORMANCE
Modern linguistis call this hidden knowledge of a grammar – COMPETENCE. Another name for
COMPETENCE is MENTAL GRAMMAR.
We have no direct access to COMPETENCE. We cannot observe our linguistic competence using a
microscope. When we speak, we produce actual sentences called by linguistis PERFORMANCE. Competence
is our mental potential to speak and performance is the actual realization of this potential.
SUMMARY:
Competence – language which we have in our mind
Performance – the actual realization of the competence
Linguists investigate competence but they can only access competence by analyzing performance.
Our tacit knowledge of a language ( COMPETENCE/MENTAL GRAMMAR) consists of many abstract
subsystems which interact in language production:
- LEXICON,
- A tacit knowledge of PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL RULES of a language: knowledge of the
sounds of a language and their patterning
- A tacit knowledge of MORPHOLOGICAL RULES of a language: you know how to break individual
words down into smaller units: meaningful, meaningless but *meaningness.
- A tacit knowledge of SYNTACTIC RULES (we know which combinations of words are correct in a given
language).
Exercise 1: Mark with an asterisk (*) those sentences which you think are ungrammatical. State, if you can,
why a given sentence is ungrammatical for you.
1) Morning yesterday went Jane to school.
2) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
3) She felt dishappy.
4) My table died two days ago.
5) The boy found.
6) The boy found in the house.
7) The boy found the ball in the house.
- A tacit knowledge of SEMANTICS - Part of you linguistic competence is your ability to determine the
meaning of sentences.
Knowledge of ambiguity:
Visiting relatives can be boring.
DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR/PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
Descriptive grammar – a list of rules we have internalized during the course of language acquisition.
Descriptive grammar describes our subconscious linguistic knowledge.
Prescriptive grammar lists the rules we should follow in order to speak correctly.
HOW IS LANGUAGE ACQUIRED BY CHILDREN?
NATIVISM/MENTALISM vs. EMPIRICISM
A question to consider: If linguistic knowledge is tacit, how do children acquire it?
Nativism: The core of our linguistic knowledge is innate. Nativism is associated with Mentalism – language is
hard-wired in our mind.
Empiricism: Linguistic knowledge comes from experience. We are born as TABULA RASA and we learn a
language from experience.
I. Predictions of Empiricism
1) Some people will take longer to learn a language because their experience may vary.
FALSE: Everybody masters a language relatively early and with the same ease irrespective of their social
background, place of birth, education, intelligence, cognitive abilities.
Every child can acquire any of the world’s languages in about five years.
Children acquire language much more rapidly than other information of similar complexity (cf. algebra,
calculus).
Children acquiring the same language pass through similar acquisitional stages.
2) Different people in a community will have completely different grammars depending on their different
linguistic experiences.
FALSE: All speakers of a given community use the same grammar – they watch and understand TV
programmes with an equal success.
3) Different children will go through completely different processes in learning a language because their
experience with a language is different.
FALSE: Children acquiring the same language pass through similar acquisitional stages. It is easy to predict
the mistakes which they will start to make at the age of one, two…
4) Certain languages will be harder to learn.
FALSE: Irrespective of whether one comes from China or from England, they master a language with the
same ease and with a similar speed.
5) Success at learning a language will correlate with success at other mental tasks.
FALSE: Children with Williams syndrome show remarkable language skills despite severe mental retardation
and IQ values that are often below 50. The dissociation between language and general cognitive capacities is
independent from other cognitive domains.
All these predictions are not true.
II. Evidence for Nativism and Mentalism:
THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
1) At the age of five children produce and interpret sentences which they have never heard before.
The answer is: an essential body of our linguistic knowledge is innate and our linguistic experience only
brings systematicity and lexicon to the innate linguistic settings in our brain.
Human beings are born with the Universal Grammar – which is a human language faculty: (innate) languagespecific domain of the human mind. UG shapes the course and outcome of language acquisition.
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (UG): genetically pre-specified body of knowledge about a human language.
2) Parents do not instruct their children about the rules of grammar and nevertheless children know all the
rules of grammar of their language. Parents do not instruct their children that the third person singular verbs
are marked with ‘s’ in English?
The answer is: Children acquire language because they are born with an innate human language faculty.
3) Many aspects of a grammar are universal across all languages which are scattered all over the world.
Even more surprisingly, there are language communities which are isolated from the rest of the world but
their languages appear to have the same complex grammaticam structures which can found in other world
languages.
Conclusion: Language is a biological phenomenon.
4) Genetic evidence for NATIVISM and MENTALISM.
If there is an innate linguistic knowledge, it must be encoded in genes. And indeed, evidence for the genetic
inheritance of language disorders has been quoted in the literature as probably the most persuasive piece of
evidence in support of an innate language capacity. We will focus on the best studied case: the British KE
family. About half of the members of this three-generational family suffer from a speech and language
disorder that runs through this family in a pattern strongly suggests genetic inheritance. In 2001, a point
mutation of the human gene FOXP2 was found to be related to the inherited speech and language disorder
affecting the members of the KE family. The findings suggest that the mutation of this gene leads to an
atypical development of brain areas typically associated with speech and language. Furthermore, a
comparison between FOXP2 genes of human, mice and apes suggests that the human variant of FOXP2 is of
relatively recent origin and that fixation in the genome of our species occurred during the last 200 000 years
concomitant with or subsequent to the emergence of anatomically modern humans. This is the first case
attested where a genetic defect can be directly correleted with certain speech and langauge functions. FOXP2
was enthusiastically celebrated as the first ‘language gene’ to be discovered.
The precise content of UG (of the mental grammar) remains an emprical question.
5) EVIDENCE FROM LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT - APHASIA
Aphasia
Aphasia is language disruption caused by damage to the brain (strokes, head injury, tumor). The damage in
different parts of the brain results in different kinds of disruption. The disruption tells us what function that
part of the brain normally has.
BROCA’S APHASIA - Paul Broca- Discovered a patient nicknamed ‘Tan’
- Agrammatic (many grammatical errors)
- Slow, effortful, telegraphic speech
This part of the brain is closely associated with grammatical rules; not associated
with understanding the meaning of content words.
Sample of speech of a patient with Broca’s aphasia 1: What brought you to hospital?
Yes... ah... Monday... ah... Dad ... Peter Hogan, and
Dad... ah... hospital... and ah... Wednesday... Wednesday
nine o'clock and ah Thursday... ten o'clock ah doctors...
two... two... an doctors and... ah... teeth... yah... And a
doctor an girl... and gums, an I.
WERNICKE’S APHASIA (Carl Wernicke – discovered a correlation between the damage of this part of the
brain and a particular type of a language disorder)
- Fluent speech,
- Poor comprehension - difficulties in understanding others
- Use of neologisms (e.g., ‘fremser’ for’ ashtray’): these patients have problems finding some words in their
mental lexicon and they substitute them with neologisms)
What brings you to the hospital?Boy, I'm sweating, I'm awful nervous, you know, once
in a while I get caught up, I can't mention the tarripoi,
a month ago, quite a little, I've done a lot well, I
impose a lot, while, on the other hand, you know
what I mean, I have to run around, look it over,
trebbin and all that sort of stuff.