Transcript Another Quick Write!

Knowledge of Language
September 22, 2010
Mission Objectives
1. Wrap up Prescriptivism ~ Descriptivism
2. Try to figure out how language can be creative.
3. One outstanding point: African grey parrots!
•
The previous problems with prescriptivism:
1. Confusion about application of prescriptive rules
•
(they’re not natural)
•
Hypercorrection
2. Standards can shift over time
3. Prescriptive rules form a poor understanding of natural
language.
Problem #3: Missing Patterns
• Prescriptivist rules do a poor job of accounting for many
of the patterns we find in natural language.
• Here’s one prescriptive rule which misses a consistent
pattern:
• “Incorrect”: I feel bad (about the accident).
• “Correct”: I feel badly (about the accident).
• Why? The verb “feel” should be modified by an adverb
(“badly”), not an adjective (“bad”).
• But is bad/badly modifying the verb or the subject of the
sentence?
Linking Verbs
• How about these examples?
• Bob is happy.
(*Bob is happily.)
• Susie looks hot.
(*Susie looks hotly.)
• The water seems fine.
(*The water seems finely.)
• I feel sleepy.
(*I feel sleepily.)
• James Brown feels good. (*James Brown feels well.)
• The verbs in these sentences are known as linking
verbs.
• They connect the subject to some property
describing the subject.
• (They do not modify the verb itself.)
Different Standards
• Rules for a standard form of a language…
• Normally describe the variety of language used by
the group in power.
• Other forms of the language are non-standard.
• And are often identified with social, regional or ethnic
groups.
• Linguists have discovered that all forms of language
(standard or not) are rule-based and orderly.
•  Non-standard forms of the language are not simply
mistake-ridden versions of the standard form.
•  There is no linguistic reason to consider one variety of
language superior to another.
Non-Standard Sentences
• How do you feel about the following sentences?
• I’m done my homework.
• My car needs washed.
• All I do anymore is work.
• Mary said that she wanted to come with.
• If someone had invited me, I would have went to the party.
• Note: the grammaticality of these sentences can vary from
group to group, or speaker to speaker.
• (In a sense, linguistics can be a “personal science”.)
Quick Write:
Appalachian English
• Appalachian English is a
variety of English
traditionally spoken in the
Appalachian mountains.
• Developed (and
maintained) unique
features due to isolation
from outside communities.
• One interesting feature:
• a-prefixing…
“a” prefixing, part 1
1. a. The man likes sailing.
b. The man went sailing.
Correct answer: (b)
(80-5)
5. a. William thinks fishing is silly.
b. William goes fishing every Sunday.
Correct answer: (b)
(77-8)
Rule: [a-] form cannot be a noun.
“a” prefixing, part 2
2. a. The woman was coming down the stairs.
b. The movie was shocking.
Correct answer: (a)
(72-13)
6. a. The movie was fascinating.
b. The movie kept jumping up and down.
Correct answer: (b)
(68-15)
Rule: [a-] form cannot be an adjective.
“a” prefixing, part 3
3. a. He makes money by building houses.
b. He makes money building houses.
Correct answer: (b)
(68-16)
7. a. Sally got sick cooking chicken.
b. Sally got sick from cooking chicken.
Correct answer: (a)
(63-22)
Rule: [a-] form cannot be preceded by a preposition.
“a” prefixing, part 4
4. a. Sam was following the trail.
b. Sam was discovering the cave.
Correct answer: (a)
(77-8)
8. a. The man was hollering at the hunters.
b. The man was recalling what happened that night.
Correct answer: (a)
(80-5)
Rule: first syllable of [a-] form must be stressed.
Note: Al-freakin’-berta
•
Lastly: 50 people got all 8 correct.
“a” Prefixing Summary
• Note: people often consider speakers of Appalachian
English to be unsophisticated
• …but the proper use of the [a-] prefix involves a
relatively complex set of conditions.
• Also: all of the [a-] forms are prescriptively “incorrect”
• …but they still exhibit consistent patterns of
grammaticality.
• You also had (for the most part) the right sense about
which forms were grammatically correct.
• …even though it may have been hard for you to
articulate exactly why.
Descriptive Benefits
• Language tends to operate in patterns, even if they are
non-standard.
• Important: Appalachian English speakers are not
just speaking English with mistakes.
• Descriptive linguistics enables us to understand how
those patterns work.
• History of economics analogy.
To Be Fair
• Standards are useful because they provide a single form
of the language to teach to non-native speakers.
• They help establish uniformity in the written language.
• They can help clear up confusions.
• for instance: supposably
• They also help to distinguish those who have mastered
the arbitrary rules from those who haven’t.
• (for better or worse)
• Otherwise:
• They are not useful for (scientific) linguistic analysis.
Linguistic Creativity (again)
• One of the crucial design features of language was creativity
(or productivity).
• Charles Hockett:
“Language users can create and understand completely
novel messages.”
“In a language, new messages are freely coined by
blending, analogizing from, or transforming old ones. This
says that every language has grammatical patterning.”
“In a language, either new or old elements are freely
assigned new semantic loads by circumstances and
context. This says that in every language new idioms
constantly come into existence.”
• How is it possible for human beings to do this?
To Infinity and Beyond
• Last week, we found out that honeybees can produce
a variety of different “dance messages”.
= “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 0
degree angle with the sun.”
= “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 45
degree angle with the sun.”
To Infinity and Beyond
• The number of different messages the bees can produce is
limited only by the number of angles they can differentiate:
• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 1 degree angle with the
sun.”
• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 2 degree angle with the
sun.”
……………
• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 359 degree angle with
the sun.”
• Q: Can the bees dance at angles they haven’t seen before?
• If so, how?
To Infinity and Beyond
• A: yes, if they dance according to rule.
 Their dances have to fit into a meaningful pattern.
• The rule = “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at X degree
angle with the sun.”
 The bees have to know the rule.
• Knowing the rule enables them to exhibit “creativity”, in a
sense.
Different Infinities
• What kind of infinities exist in human language?
• Note that we can say (translations of) everything the
bees can say:
Fly at a 1 degree angle with the sun.
Fly at a 2 degree angle with the sun.
……………
Fly at a 359 degree angle with the sun.
• We can get as detailed as we want to about it, too:
Fly at a 45 degree, 13 minute, 27.6685 second angle
with the sun.
Infinity + 1
• In addition to the infinity of things the bees can say, we can
say other things, too.
• Examples (borrowed from Ray Jackendoff):
A numeral is not a numbskull.
A numeral is not a nun.
A numeral is not a nunnery.
……………
A nun is not a nursery.
……………
An oboe is not an octopus.
Linguistic Infinities
• These are uninteresting, but novel sentences.
• In order to understand them, you must know the rule by
which they are constructed.
• Rule:
[Sentence] = A X is not a Y.
• Point:
• Knowledge of rules is more abstract than just
knowledge of sentences.
Language Model #1
• In this model, all we
A nun is not a
nursery.
Fly at a 45 degree
angle with the sun.
I like linguistics.
“know” are the individual
sentences we can use in
language.
• (no rules)
• This is a good enough
model to describe the
vervets’ “language”.
Language Model #2
A X is not a Y.
X at a Y degree
angle with the Z.
X likes Y.
• In this model, we
“know” all the rules we
can use to combine
words to form sentences
in a language.
• This is a good enough
model to describe the
bees’ “language”.
• Is it good enough for
human language?
What do you think?
• No. There are even bigger infinities.
• Check out these sentences:
Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.
Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.
Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a
genius.
Jean knows that Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill
thinks that Beth is a genius.
ad infinitum...
• Some “real” examples:
How many rules do we need?
1. X verbs that Y is a Z.
2. W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z.
3. V verbs that W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z.
•
and so on…
•
Q: Can we store all these patterns in our heads?
•
A: No, because no matter how many we store, there is
always a longer one…
•
So how do we know all of these sentences?
Language is Recursive
• Recursive = involving a procedure that can refer to itself.
• In language, rules for producing sentences can be used
in rules for producing sentences.
• Humans have to know rules of the following kind:
[Sentence] = X verbs that [Sentence]
Language Model #3
S = X likes Y.
• Jackendoff: “We know
not just patterns of
words, but patterns of
patterns.”
S = A X is not a Y.
S = X verbs that S.
• This is how we can be
infinitely creative with a
finite set of rules.
Check it out
• Included among the infinite number of things we can say is
a lot of complete nonsense.
• Examples (from Chomsky and Lewis Carroll):
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to
compose someday.
• ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…
• Check out the postmodernism generator:
• http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
What’s the difference?
• Nonsense sentences work because they fit in with the
patterns formed by the sentences that actually do make
sense.
• (and that we use every day)
• Compare with the following:
• Large green lizards sleep soundly.
• I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to
perform someday.
• ‘Twas evening, and the slimy toads
Did squirm and wiggle in the cage…
What’s the difference? (part 2)
• But the following sentences don’t work at all:
• Green sleep ideas furiously colorless.
• I’m memorizing the perform of the score I sonata to
hope someday.
• Brillig and, slithy and the toves
Wabe gimble in the gyre and did…
• Note: just because we can say an infinite number of
things, we can’t just say anything…
Technical Terminology
• The set of rules that we know for creating sentences in a
language is the grammar of that language.
• The rules of grammar that we know are very abstract.
(patterns of patterns)
• Strings of words which do not adhere to these rules are
ungrammatical.
• Q: If these rules are so abstract, how did we figure out
what they are?
• How do we learn language?