The lure of language
or: The glamour of grammar
Dick Hudson
Westminster School, October 2015
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The least interesting person here
• Born 1939 into a very monolingual England.
• First lured by language: a notice in Dutch, seen age 7
• Secondary school: Grammar school = school that taught grammar
• I loved it!
• Same teacher taught Latin and English, with grammar.
• A-levels: French, German, Latin.
• BA: Modern and Mediaeval Languages, with some Linguistics
• PhD: The grammar of an unwritten African language
• Next 50 years: Researching language structure
• and getting frustrated by UK language education
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How did language lure me?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Etymology
Language change
Grammar
Language analysis
Generative linguistics
Psychological modelling
Educational linguistics
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1. Etymology
• GLAMOUR – what’s its history?
• or: “Where does it come from?”
• or: Why do these sounds have this meaning?
• or: How is this word related historically to other words?
• Answer:
•
•
•
•
•
It comes from GRAMMAR!
How on earth did that happen?
History: Grammar was central to education (think ‘grammar school’)
So Grammar
education
wizardry, magic
And gl....? Compare glint, gleam, glitter, glance, ...
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TREACLE
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TREACLE in the Online Etymological
Proto-IndoDictionary
European
• mid-14c., "medicinal compound, antidote for poison," from Old
French triacle "antidote, cure for snake-bite" (c. 1200), from Vulgar
Latin *triacula, from Latin theriaca, from Greek theriake (antidotos)
"antidote for poisonous wild animals," from fem. of theriakos "of a
wild animal," from therion "wild animal," diminutive of ther (genitive
theros) "wild animal," from PIE root *ghwer- "wild" (see fierce).
Sense of "molasses" is first recorded 1690s (the connection may be
from the use of molasses as a laxative, or its use to disguise the bad
taste of medicine); that of "anything too sweet or sentimental" is
from 1771. Related: Treacly.
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So what?
• Words change meaning
• Meanings aren’t ‘natural’!!
• They also change their forms, independent of meaning
• e.g. triacula > triacle (cf singula > single)
• At each stage the form and meaning are both tightly related to:
• other forms and meanings
• culture
• We can ask ‘why?’
• and if we’re lucky we’ll find an answer
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2. Language change
English
German
Latin
French
father
Vater [fɑtər]
pater
père
mother
Mutter
mater
mère
brother
Bruder
frater
frère
sister
Schwester
soror
soeur
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generations
guessed
From Proto-Indo-European to us
*gwe:n
‘woman’
-3,500 0
PIE
Greek
γυνή /gyne:/
‘woman’
-500 120
borrowed
+600 160
+2,000 200
cwen
‘woman’
English
queen
gynaecologist
misogyny
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The Great Vowel Shift 1350-1700
before
after
bite
/iː/
/aɪ/
meet
/eː/
meat
/ɛː/
mate
/aː/
/eɪ/
out
/uː/
/aʊ/
boot
/oː/
/uː/
boat
/ɔː/
/əʊ/
/iː/
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Vowels in the mouth
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So what?
• Long vowels changed, but short vowels didn’t.
• That’s one of the reasons why English spelling isn’t ‘phonetic’
• Sometimes the spelling shows the links between long and short pairs
• /i:/ ~ /ɛ/
• deep ~ depth (weep ~ wept, clean ~ cleanse)
• same vowel-letter because they used to have the same vowel-sound
• /ai/ ~ /i/
• wide ~ width (five ~ fifth, fifty, hide ~ hidden)
• Ibiza = /aibiθə/
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3. Grammar
• The French football team
me
te
se
nous
vous
le
la
les
lui
leur
y
en
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Why I liked it
ungrammatical
• Very exotic, but also very clear
• Paul donne le frommage à Marie. ‘Paul gives the cheese to Mary’
• Paul me le donne. ‘Paul gives me it.’
• But not
• *Paul donne le me.
• *Paul le me donne.
• Paul le lui donne. ‘Paul gives her it.’
• But not
• *Paul lui le donne.
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Other languages with special ‘clitic’ pronouns
• Spanish, Italian
• Modern Greek
• Serbo-Croat
• Arabic
• ? the Mediterranean languages
• i.e. large-scale borrowing of abstract grammatical patterns
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And English?
• Non-pronouns:
• I lent a student that book.
• indirect object + direct object
• *I lent that book a student.
• NOT: * direct + indirect
• Pronouns:
• I lent him it.
• indirect + direct
• I lent it him.
• direct + indirect - NB This is ok with pronouns!
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From Nesfield, Manual of
English Grammar and
Composition, 1898!!!
4. Language analysis
In 1952 (age 12) our English teacher taught us how to analyse a sentence
I. Subject
NominatEnlarge- Finite verb
ive or
ment of
equivalent nominative
master
he
(1) the
(2) new
2. Predicate
Completion of finite
verb
object
put
the class
asked
(1) me
(2) a rude
question
complement
into good
order
Extension
of finite
verb
soon.
without any
necessity.
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But then I got to analyse a whole language:
Beja (Sudan)
First I found some speakers
They don’t write
their language.
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Then I asked how to say ...
The sister eats.
The man eats.
The sister sees the man.
The man sees the sister.
tu:kwa tamtini
u:tak tami:ni
tu:kwa o:tak rhi:ni
u:tak to:kwa rhitni
the sister tu:kwa/to:kwa sister
the man
eats
sees
man
u:tak/o:tak
tami:ni/tamtini eat
see
rhi:ni/rhitni
Word order: subject + object + verb
kwa
tak
tam
rh
‘The’
u:
+t- feminine
u: > o: accusative.
The verb
present = i:ni
i: > it if subject is
feminine.
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You could do it too!
uklo.org
• Try the UK Linguistics Olympiad!
a. ilaga diwi:ni
The male calf is sleeping.
b. do:ba:b rhitni
She sees a bridegroom.
c. gwibu
It is a mouse.
d. o:me:k ki:ke
He is not the donkey.
e. tu:ka:m b’ata
The female camel lay down.
f. iragad winu
The leg is big.
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5. Generative linguistics
• A generative grammar is one that
• is totally explicit, leaving nothing to be filled in by the user
• ‘generates’ all (and only) the sentences of the language.
• The idea was first popularised by Noam Chomsky (1957)
• Most linguists accept the aim
• but many reject Chomsky’s methods.
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A Mickey-Mouse generative grammar of
English
‘isa’
adjective
big
noun
small
verb
boys
girls
modified
adjective
like
subject
?
object
?
verb
?
hate
noun
modified
E.G.
big
boys
subject
object
like
girls
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6. Psychological modelling
• How do we represent language in our minds, as knowledge?
• The rest of knowledge is a network
• with lots of indiscriminate associations that can be tested experimentally
• and errors
• So maybe language is a network too
• that would explain why we make mistakes.
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Speech errors
Speech errors happen because network neighbours influence one
another through spreading activation:
• Radio 4: She’s an operano
• merging two adjacent planned words: opera soprano
• Spoonerisms: You’ve tasted a whole worm
• confusing two non-adjacent planned words: wasted a whole term
• Malapropisms: ... weapons of mass production (Bush Senior)
• confusing two phonologically related words: production for destruction
• Meaning confusion: tennis bat
• confusing two semantically related words: bat for racquet.
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7. Educational linguistics
• What about education?
• Education is all about language
•
•
•
•
•
learning new academic words and constructions
learning what they mean
learning how the words and concepts interrelate
learning the conventions for using them
learning the mental skills needed for
•
•
•
•
complex language
complex ideas
fast real-time communication
problem-solving
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In an ideal world ...
• Pre-school children start learning their own home language
• 5000 words, lots of grammar
• Primary children learn how this language works
• vocabulary as well as grammar
• and how to write it - even the non-standard bits
• Then they learn Standard English
• and understand how it’s different from their home language.
• Then they learn Foreign
• and understand how it’s different from English
• and enjoy learning languages in later life.
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What I didn’t talk about
• How your language influences your thinking
• e.g. spirit, nature
• How language shows social relations
• e.g. Dad is a name, but daughter isn’t.
• How learning a second language improves your mind.
• How linguistics can have an Olympiad without being taught
• And much, much more besides!
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In short,
• Language is really interesting.
• Linguistics is the Maths of the humanities and social sciences.
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Thanks
If you want to watch this show again, you can download it:
dickhudson.com/talks
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