1. What is cognitive linguistics? Language is a mental capacity, part of our cognitive apparatus.

It is a discrete combinatorial system that utilizes arbitrary symbols and is used in human communication. Cognitive linguistics is the scientific study of this cognitive capacity. 2. What is cognition? Modern psychology roughly defines three types of processes: cognitive, conative, and emotive. They deal with thought, will and emotions, respectively. Cognitive processes deal with thoughts and information processing in the brain. Our knowledge of language is largely a cognitive process. Perhaps the best definition is given in Britannica: Cognition - the process involved in knowing, or the act of knowing, which in its completeness includes perception and judgement. Cognition includes all processes of consciousness by which knowledge is accumulated, such as perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, and reasoning. Put differently, cognition is an experience of knowing that can be distinguished from an experience of feeling or willing. It is one of the only words that refer to the brain as well as to the mind. After decades of neglect, the term cognitive became fashionable again in the 1960s, with the advent of a number of scholars, one of whom was Noam Chomsky. This period is today called the cognitive revolution. It boomed in the late 1980s and may be said to be reaching its zenith as we speak. Today, there is even an umbrella term cognitive science for disciplines studying cognition from different angles (psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, etc.) 3. What is linguistics? Linguistics is a scientific study of language. How much linguistics is a science is still an open issue. As a separate discipline, it emerged in the early 20th century. The first full-fledged book in linguistics is probably A Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure (1916). From this book onward, every school in linguistics has tried to be scientific. Linguists usually claim that only THEIR approach may be rightfully labeled scientific, in contrast to the approach of OTHERS, which is not. These disagreements have been known as Linguistics Wars (Harris, 1993). In general, criteria for something to be scientific may include: Objectivity Verifiability Hypotheses and ways to test them Experimental (or other) scientific method Accumulation and advancement of knowledge All these would have to apply to linguistics (though they rarely do).

4. Pierces theory of signs. The famous English philosopher and semiotician Peirce (semiotics is, roughly, the study of signs) claims that there are three principal types of signs that human beings use: Icons signs that physically resemble the object that they signify. (Windows OS) Indexes where the relationship between the sign and what it signifies is that of cause and effect. (Smoke-Fire)

 Symbols there seems to be no obvious connection between the sign and what it stands for. (Letters of the alphabet) Language uses a variety of symbols, which have no direct and obvious connection to what they signify, which is why we say that language is ARBITRARY. The difference between symbols in general and linguistic symbols is that the latter may be combined to form meaningful units. # + #+ +# #+# +#+ #+#+# #+#+#+# Sequences of non-linguistic symbols mean nothing in particular. But: A N AN NA ANA NANA ANAN NA-NA-NA Sequences of linguistic symbols may be creatively and PRODUCTIVELY used to create a variety of meanings. For this reason, language is also a discrete combinatorial system (Pinker, The Language Instinct). 5. How is language creative? Language is CREATIVE in the sense that the number of meaningful combinations it allows, on a variety of levels, is practically limitless. In total, language is a creative, discrete combinatorial system that utilizes arbitrary symbols and is used in human communication. 6. Schools of linguistics. There are many schools of linguistics, four of which spanned the good part of the 20th century as the most prominent: Traditional Structural Generative Cognitive Cognitive linguistics is the scientific study of language that focuses on the cognitive aspects of the language faculty. Cognitive linguists view language as a part of the human cognitive apparatus, a mental ability, part of our psychology, but also, to an extent, our biology, which all combined enables us to communicate symbolically. Cognitive linguistics (in the broader sense), can refer to all the schools in the language science focusing on cognitive phenomena. In the narrower sense, cognitive linguistics is just one of those schools. 7. Branches of linguistics. According to the old structuralist classification: Phonetics: the physical properties of speech sounds Phonology: the ABSTRACT properties of speech sounds Morphology: the ABSTRACT properties of minimal units of meaning (morphemes) Syntax: the ABSTRACT properties of units larger than words (phrases, clauses, sentences) Semantics: the ABSTRACT properties of units of meaning Pragmatics: the relationship between language and the world of experience 8. What did Wilhelm von Humboldt say? It would be equally wise to claim that we all speak one language, and also that every individual speaks his own language.

9. De Saussures principles of modern linguistics. 1. Speech vs. writing: Saussure was focusing on the linguistic sign (such as a word), seeing writing as a separate, secondary, sign system. Within the system of written signs, a signifier such as the written letter 't' signified a sound in the primary sign system of language (and thus a written word would also signify a sound rather than a concept). Thus for Saussure, writing relates to speech as signifier to signified. 2. Diachronic vs. synchronic: Language analysis across a time span vs. language analysis at a specific point in time. 3. Descriptive vs. prescriptive: Observing how language is actually used vs. fixing how language should be (normative). 10. Language vs. languages. Language (no article) the human capacity to symbolically communicate studied in order to find out something about human nature Languages similarities and differences between the languages of the world studied in order to compare them and give their accurate description 11. Macro vs. microlinguistics. Macrolinguistics studies whole-scale phenomena related to language. What is language? What does morphology study? How is tree representation relevant to English syntax? Microlinguistics studies linguistic particulars. Lists and describes all compound adjectives in Bartleby the Scrivener. Studies the use difference between On se je napio and On je se napio. 12. Theoretical vs. applied linguistics. Theoretical linguistics, obviously, studies theoretical aspects of language phenomena. Phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics More broadly: philosophy of language Applied linguistics is more practically oriented. First, second and foreign language acquisition Methodology of teaching foreign languages Psycholinguistics Sociolinguistics Neurolinguistics 13. Chomskys knowledge of language There is a big difference in natural sciences between IDEALIZATIONS and CONCRETE MANIFESTATIONS (REALIZATIONS). This is a dichotomy, in the sense that a scientific field usually discusses both phenomena: the IDEAL and the ACTUAL. Chomsky, for instance, discusses only the knowledge of language of an IDEALIZED NATIVE SPEAKER, a sort of an abstraction, not really of a true person. His knowledge of language is called LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE - an idealized capacity, which is different from LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE, the production of actual utterances. 14. Langue vs. Parole Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speech") are linguistic terms used by Ferdinand de Saussure. Langue describes the social, impersonal phenomenon of language as a system of signs, while parole describes the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a speaker. 15. Behaviourism vs. cognitivism

Behaviourists study individuals behaviour rather than looking at their brain and nervous system. Behaviour has been defined as the activities of an individual that can be observed. Cognitivists, however, study the mental processes underlying behaviours. 16. Rationalism vs. Empiricism Rationalism believes that some ideas or concepts are independent of experience and that some truth is known by reason alone. A priori: necessary knowledge not given in, nor dependent upon experience; it is necessarily true by definition. Empiricism believes truth must be established with reference to experience alone. A posteriori: knowledge that comes after, or is dependent upon experience. 17. Blank slate vs. built-in propensities Tabula rasa is the epistemological theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the "nurture" side of the nature versus nurture debate. 18. Unconscious vs. conscious Freud divided the mind into the conscious mind (or the ego) and the unconscious mind. The latter was then further divided into the id (or instincts and drive) and the superego (or conscience). In this theory, the unconscious refers to the mental processes of which individuals make themselves unaware. The iceberg.

19.

Jackendoffs fundamental arguments.

1. The Argument for Mental Grammar The expressive variety of language use implies that a language users brain contains a set of unconscious grammatical principles. 2. The Argument for Innate Knowledge The way children learn to talk implies that the human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language. 3. The Argument for the Construction of Experience: Our experience of the world is actively constructed by the unconscious principles that operate in the brain. 20. Nature vs. nurture issue Why are we the way we are? Are we born that way, or are we products of our environment; or some mixture? Using human language as a vehicle for examining the way we are for two reasons: 1. The possession of language is one of the major differences between us and the beasts. 2. The modern study of language has uncovered many complexities of the mind studied by different other sciences such as neuroscience, child development, philosophy and literary criticism. Understanding language offers the prospect of integrating biological and humanistic views of the way we are. 21. Acquisition vs. learning The fundamental arguments are based on there being some unconscious knowledge (unconscious grammatical principles). This kind of knowledge is concerned with acquisition of language as opposed to learning, which is always conscious. It appears that knowledge is always unconscious, and that only when you do something without being aware that you are doing it are you actually doing it! This means that when you, for instance, start reading you are already so much in the process that you are simply not aware that you are reading. The moment you become aware that you are reading, you are NOT reading The same applies to language. When you speak you are NOT consciously aware of the complex mechanisms (both physical and mental) that make it possible for you to speak automatically. 22. The expressive variety of language illustrated in a communicative situation. 1. Harry-Sam-Tree Harry perceives a tree The word tree is evoked from his memory Harry decides to tell something about the tree to Sam Harry produces sound waves which reach Sams ears Sams nervous system produces a visual image of a tree. 2. This process is complex enough, but if Harry wanted to say something a little more interesting than a single word sentence tree (a holophrase), for instance: A bird was in that tree yesterday or Are there birds in that tree? It just might be possible to draw pictures that represent the objects the speaker has in his mind if they refer to a single motionless, and timeless object (tree). However, it is not so easy to draw pictures of the complex propositions we just listed. These examples illustrate the

expressive variety of language we can say an infinite number of things by combining words in different ways. 3. More on the expressive variety of language: Most sentences spoken in a day are completely novel (new). They have never been heard or spoken as such before! The number of sentences we are capable of using is just too large to store individually. What we do store is individual words plus patterns (mental grammar) to put those words into meaningful and grammatical sentences of a given language. The number of both words and patterns is limited, since the capacity of our brains is very limited. However, the point about language is that these limited numbers of items can be used to make a practically unlimited number of combinations. Chomsky would say that language is a system that utilizes finite means to create an infinite number of sentences. 23. Differences between human language and animal communication. 1. Expressive variety seems to be only available to humans: none of the known animal systems (birds, bees, whales, apes) possesses an inventory of elements like words that can be combined and recombined in limitless ways to express new messages. 2. Degree of learning: human learning of language is extensive whereas animal signaling is innate, or involves limited learning. 3. Conscious control: high with humans, while none or limited with animals. 4. Contextuality: flexible, relatively independent from specific context with humans, and tied to a particular context (stimulus setting) with animals. 5. Interpretation: flexible and negotiable in human language; requires a relatively fixed response in animal communication. 6. Communicative relations: triadic (speaker-addressee-referent) with human language and dyadic (environment-subject, subject-recipient) with animals. 7. Systematicity: high in human language; none or very limited in animal communication.

24.

Mental grammar.

The capacity to combine words into acceptable patterns and create a limitless number of novel sentences is usually called mental grammar. The expressive variety of language is made possible by mental grammar. Mental grammar is stored in the unconscious part of the mind. Freud compared our mind to an iceberg. Mental grammar is not available to consciousness or introspection under any conditions, therapeutic or otherwise (such as done in psychoanalysis). An unconscious mental grammar that guides our behaviour is a good deal less threatening than an Oedipus complex or a Death instinct in fact, it is nothing but beneficial because we couldnt speak without it.

25.

The Argument for Innate Knowledge.

The way children learn to talk implies that the human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language 1) Children learn their language from the other speakers around them (e.g. a child of American parents in Israel will be a native speaker of Hebrew). 2) How do children do it?

3) 4) 5)

6)

a. Many people simply assume that the parents teach them. The idea that parents teach their children language is so omnipresent, that the language is called native or mother tongue. Obviously, parents often teach their kids words (BIRD), but they usually cant teach them words that they cant point to (prepositions), or abstract concepts (jealousy), or categories that involve objects that range in appearance (chair). b. Also, immigrant parents might never become completely fluent in the language of the country theyre living in, while their children will be native speakers. c. Besides, as a result of parental instruction children might learn words, but not relevant grammatical patterns as well. The adults simply provide the correct form and the child has to figure out the patterns behind it, that is, construct their own mental grammar. d. Children are also impervious to correction and conscious instruction, so they continue saying things wrongly even though their parents have corrected them. e. They only learn the particularities of the grammar of their language when they start school long after gaining command of the language itself. But even then they are never taught the complex rules that differentiate between John appealed to Moira to like herself and John appeared to Moira to like her (the difference between the verbs appeal and appear and the pronouns her and herself). Expletive infixation that is performed on words under conditions of extreme exasperation (uniflipping-versity) the native speaker is never taught the rule that the infix is supposed to go before the stressed syllable. Poverty of the stimulus: there are aspects of language that children couldnt possibly figure out from the evidence of the speech they hear around them these aspects, therefore, cant be learned. The conclusion is: the learning of children is backed by unconscious principles that are unavailable for conscious introspection. So on the basis of what the child hears in the environment, they manage to acquire a command of the grammatical patterns of the language. They learn just by speaking and being spoken to. Regardless of the childs nationality, race, or creed, the language it is immersed into in its early life will become its native language. The claim is that children come to the task of language learning already equipped with a body of innate knowledge pertaining to language and it is this knowledge that they use to discover the patterns and construct their mental grammar. Because this innate knowledge must be sufficient to construct a mental grammar for any of the languages of the world, linguists call it Universal Grammar (UG). a. UG is also unconscious and inaccessible to introspection. b. It is not something learned, but rather the machinery that makes learning possible. c. The Genetic Hypothesis our ability to learn is rooted in our biology. This is the most famous hypothesis in Chomskian linguistics. It is also sometimes referred to as the null hypothesis (a more general name for the starting hypothesis in any theory). It roughly claims the following: 1. The mechanism for acquiring innate knowledge is genetic transmission, through the medium of brain structure. 2. Knowledge of language is determined by brain structure, so it is present only when the supporting brain structures are present d. Like the teeth, or body hair, or walking, Universal Grammar could just as well develop at some time after birth (conditioned by a biological timetable. e. Chomsky: we dont learn to have arms rather than wings. The same is true of language.

7) All this makes language a complex combination of nature and nurture. In terms of its nature, language seems to be a genetically determined human faculty. Part of this determination has to do with a more general cognitive capacity (say, intelligence), while another part has to do with a more domain-specific ability (genetic endowment specialized for language). This is the Chomskian position that not everyone agrees with. 8) The Paradox of Language Acquisition: Thousands of linguists throughout the world have been trying for decades and with very limited success to figure out the principles behind the grammatical patterns of various languages they very same principles that children simply develop unconsciously. The reasons linguists cannot have access to the same information: a. The childs mental grammar is completely inaccessible to consciousness hence the adult linguist cant figure out the principles of mental grammar just by looking into the childs mind. b. A substantial part of the language-learning process is also unconscious, so linguists can neither observe it nor ask children about it. 9) Transformational-generative grammar: the currently dominant linguistic theory trying to formally describe the two human capacities of mental grammar and universal grammar.

26.

The main approaches to language acquisition

1. Empiricism: Language is learned entirely from experience. The mind of the child is a tabula rasa (Locke). Learning through general-purpose mechanisms: a. Habituation, b. Conditioning, c. Association-formation 2. Nativism/Rationalism: Language (and other characteristics of the human mind) is innate (Descartes). This is the view we have adopted BECAUSE we appear to know more than we actually seem to learn. A striking property of language acquisition is that children attain knowledge which, quite literally, infinitely surpasses their actual experience. (The Language Organ, Anderson and Lightfoot) 3. Constructivism: language is acquired through a developmental process that leads to higher complexity, emerging through interaction with the (social) environment, influenced by but not determined by the genes (Kant)

27.

How many languages are there in the world?

Approximately 6,000.

28.

Language: conversion between thought and sound

Harrys brain => thought => movements of his vocal tract => sound wave through the air => Sams ear => Sams brain => Sams interpretation => same thought a. The brain moves the vocal tract (lungs, vocal cords, tongue, jaw, lips) via patterns of neural firings that drive the muscles. b. As a result appears a corresponding acoustic pattern that is heard as speech. c. The hearer re-creates for himself the semantic (neural) form from which the speaker's utterance originally started. d. The form is then interpreted by the receiver who, if the transmission is successful, will have a structured neural patterning corresponding to the neural patterning from which the word-string was originally constructed. The form of the thought must be neutral between spoken and heard language: one can have a thought without speaking it, so the thought shouldnt directly drive the vocal tract. Thought also must be independent of what language it is spoken in (Le chien est mort, Der Hund ist tot, The dog is dead). But how does the brain represent words and associate them with semantic meanings? How does it categorize words and represent syntactic rules? Within the brain, all representation consists of electrochemical activity. For example, the abstract idea neurolinguistics, the picture of a tree, and speaking are all represented by different neural patterns. The image of the tree does not exist in the brain; only a pattern of neural firings representing that image. Fundamentally, everything that comes into our minds reduces to patterns of neural activities. Even though the above sentences in three different languages have different auditory patterns still they convey the same thought. Thus in order for us to be able to translate there must be constancy in the pattern of neural firings that is distinct from the motor and auditory patterns. Speech Production: Thought => motor instruction => vocal tract Speech Perception: Sams ear => Auditory patterns => Thought Language is the brains means of translating between thoughts and auditory and motor patterns. We can think of different languages as different ways of converting thought into motor patterns and auditory patterns back into thought. These three steps in the conversion are Phonological structure (sound structure) Syntactic structure (phrase structure) Conceptual structure (semantic structure) Thoughts and motor and auditory instructions are not language, and they are not legitimately studied in linguistics. What linguistics studies are the three tiers mentioned above!

Speech Production and Language: Thought === Syntactic structure === Phonological structure ==== Motor instructions Speech Perception and Language: Auditory patterns === Phonological structure === Syntactic structure ====Thought Language is not contained in any external physical entities (sound waves, movements of the jaw). It is internal. A fully mental phenomenon. Generative linguistics accepts three levels of language analysis as standard: Phonology Syntax Semantics

29.

Functionalism.

How does one study the brain? Two possible extremes: Behaviourism the mind is a black box, we know what comes in and what goes out, but we (deliberately) skip anything occurring inside. Modern neuroscience the mind is a collection of billions of neurons. Studying how an individual neuron works, and also which cortical areas are active during particular mental tasks, can help us get a general idea of how the brain works. The middle way: Functionalism is an approach to cognitive mechanisms (such as phonological and syntactic structures in our mind) that does not necessarily have to know much about how these are encoded in the brain in the form of neural firings. Functionalism is a leading strategy in cognitive sciences today. In functionalism, it doesnt matter much how a thing works, as long as it works. The functionalist approach to mental grammar tries to make experiments with testable hypotheses about the organization of information and knowledge in the brain. It doesnt care much about how the brain physically encodes this information. Chomskyan linguists are functionalists! Typically, they wish to say something about language and the brain. Also typically, they know little about how the brain actually works. However, they do not want to just skip over the brain, as if nothing was inside (behaviourism). So, they postulate theories on how the brain might work. In other words, they guess By comparing the brain to something they are familiar with, something that seems to function in a similar fashion. The Mind Metaphors Many have been used through history. All of them can be said to be functionalist, as they compare the mind/brain to a complex mechanism typical of the period. In the late 20th century, a typical metaphor of the brain was that of a computer. This is now known as the first-generation cognitive science. Hence the talk of processors in the brain, including parallel processing, computations, parsing, hardware (brain) and software (information to process), input, output Among linguists, this is still the leading approach to the relationship of language and the mind/brain. Today cognitive scientists create computer programs that do not assume that the brain is a computer, but rather simulate the work of neurons directly. These are known as neural networks and the whole movement is labelled connectionism. Some call it second-generation cognitive science. Cognitive Linguistics is similar to functionalism It is not bothered with the exact physical nature of sentences such as Amy ate two peanuts actually is. It might have to do with millions of neurons firing simultaneously throughout the brain, but we don't know for sure. Unfortunately, we cant reasonably expect to find words or phrases or verbs or nouns in our brains. The information in the brain is not stored in some readable form and when we talk about rules of grammar and terms such as subject and object or a rule the subject of a sentence precedes the verb we only state a relation among various parts of the sentence. This relation is supposedly stored in the same relational manner in the brain, irrespective of how and where. So, virtually all linguistic concepts are functional! We cant find the S, NP, VP, or passivisation in the brain. These, and many others, are theoretical constructs, devised to functionally explain an instance of the activity of the mind. If we group those concepts into a coherent whole, a system that formally works, we get a linguistic theory. Generative grammar is such a theory. Yet, how do we know that our theory makes sense, and is not just metaphysical speculation?

Experiment This is how all science works: You postulate a hypothesis and then you should test it somehow. The best way is to arrange for an experiment, which is a means to study unobservable phenomena through of things that we can observe. For instance, dropping a pencil is observable, and it proves that there seems to be a force dragging the pencil downward, which is unobservable. A linguistic experiment: serves to study unobservable phenomena of language (e.g. the rule banishing prepositions from ends of sentences) by relating them to things that can be observed (actual utterances with prepositions that native speakers use). There are generally three types of experiments in linguistics, according to their complexity: 1. Native speakers intuition This is the simplest, and very reliable, method of testing hypotheses in linguistics. Native speakers are said to have linguistic intuition, i.e. perfect unconscious control of their language. So, they can provide grammaticality and acceptability judgments for given sentences. Because through experiments they inform linguists of the suitability of their hypotheses, these people are called informants. If a linguistic structure sounds fine to them, then the linguist is on the right track. And the other way round o Amy ate two peanuts. OK o Amy two ate peanuts. (*) o Peanuts ate two Amies. (?) AMBIGUITY: This is a very important phenomenon in perception. Sometimes there is just one stimulus that we seem to perceive in at least two ways, or alternate interpretations, seeing one thing, and then the other. This is typically shown in the so-called Gestalt visual experiments. But it works for linguistic cognition, as well: PROSTITUTES APPEAL TO POPE QUEEN MARY HAVING BOTTOM SCRAPED MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH 2 SISTERS REUNITED AFTER 18 YEARS AT CHECKOUT COUNTER QUARTER OF A MILLION CHINESE LIVE ON WATER INCLUDE YOUR CHILDREN WHEN BAKING COOKIES HERSHEY BARS PROTEST Native speakers notice ambiguous sentences instantaneously. Their judgments prove that there is a distinction between the physical (one sentence, one sound wave) and the psychological (two interpretations). In Chomskys words, this means there is a difference between one surface structure (the actual sentence pronounced) and two deep structures (the unconscious cognitive principles helping us understand the meaning of the sentence/s/). So, ambiguity proves that the deep/surface structure distinction is cognitively relevant or, in Jackendoffs words, psychologically real. 2. Psycholinguistic experiments Psycholinguists conducts these experiments with children, adults, and, sometimes, language-impaired persons. They involve circling responses on a piece of paper, measuring reaction times, providing yes/no judgments for given tasks, looking at a screen, pressing buttons, etc. For these experiments, more preparation is needed, they are done in a laboratory setting, with enough participants (subjects, sample), where results are statistically processed before being published. 3. Neurolinguistic experiments Even more complex and demanding: Neurolinguists try to relate linguistic phenomena to the work of the brain direct. So, the usual procedure is to put someone in a very complex scanner and ask them to perform a task (say, listen to ambiguous sentences!) while their brain activity is measured. Typical devices include fMRI, MEG, or

PET scans. Alternatively, they do not enter scans, but have wires hooked up to their scalp. These procedures include EEG or ERP devices. Modular Theory of the Mind The originator of this theory is the American philosopher Jerry Fodor. The idea is that the brain is informationally encapsulated: there is a CENTRAL FORMAT and MODULES responsible for specialized cognitive tasks. The processor or the central format is responsible for the general cognitive capacity (say, logical reasoning, counting, doing sums). It is the centre of our intelligence. The modules are specialized devices that serve specific cognitive functions like video or audio cards, we have modules for music, vision, language. Just think about how we encode and decode sentences (Harry & Sam). Each translation from one format to another requires a specialized device. As computer components do with the processor, these modules always interact with the central format. So, language has an inborn (UG) and an acquired component (UG + acquired = MG). It is also partly a consequence of generalized cognition, and partly a consequence of the works of specialized, modular portions of the brain. Or so was thought until the mid 1990s

30.

Phonological structure.

Structuralists make a distinction between phonetics and phonology: Phonetics studies the physical and perceptual properties of speech sounds and borders on physiology, anatomy, physics, etc. Phonology studies the ABSTRACT properties of sounds, and belongs fully to linguistics. How are speech sounds produced and perceived? Speaking: There are parts of our body that help us produce sounds. However, whatever they do and whatever comes out of our mouths eventually is NOT language. Language is in the brain. In terms of speech sounds, it must contain a series of ABSTRACT vocal tract configurations that somehow make our vocal apparatus move and produce speech sounds. (Something like: if you want to say A open your mouth wide, produce the sound low and to the back, and do not round your lips). These are often taken to be smallest units of language, and are called (distinctive) features. Hearing: Here, the opposite process occurs. What the brain gets is smeary information coming from the hearing nerve, and this must then be decoded and reconstructed as the configurations of the speakers vocal tract. Indeed, the listener here perceives the phonological structure that the speaker has in mind. Again, whatever comes into the ear, and whatever the ear is doing is NOT language. Language (i.e. its phonological structure) has to do with the brains reconstruction of configurations. And they are ABSTRACT. Phonological structure Try to say WOW. Can you differentiate between three sounds W-O-W? Not really, if it is not smooth, what you get is not a sensible word of English. So, what you hear is a SINGULAR sound (seen as a tight sound wave), and your brain somehow extracts three speech sounds (phonemes, segments) from it. This is the point at which phonetics stops and phonology comes in. In other words, whatever your brain is doing to separate the inseparable sounds, has to do with phonological structure. In phonological structure, this distinction is equally relevant. I dont think its a parent. I dont think its apparent. I think we needed a cantor. I think we need a decanter. So, phonological structure is distinct from the physical properties of sounds (auditory or motor patterns). How are individual speech sounds configured in the brain? They seem to be stored compositionally, as series of binary, primitive specifications, that we call distinctive features (first introduced by the Prague school, N. Trubetskoy and R. Jakobson, just before WWII). A phoneme is a bundle of distinctive features. These are binary configurations (a feature is either turned on or turned off). The combination of a number of features provides all the speech sounds of a given language (about 44 in English). a. The sound [d]: the vocal tract is constricted, the vocal chords tensed, the velum raised, airflow through the mouth blocked, and the main constriction is at the tip of the tongue. b. The sound [r]: close to [d], except that the vocal chords are relaxed c. The sound [n]: close to [d], except that the velum is lowered so the air passes through the nose d. The sound [z]: close to [d], but the mouth is not completely blocked, so the air partly passes through

Distinctive features and universal grammar Example: voicing - consonants are either voiced or unvoiced. This is grammatically relevant in English, say, with regard to the (regular) plural forming suffix [s]: dog; book; church But the underlying rule is for plural formation on the basis of the distinctive features of speech sounds is already stored in the universal grammar. That is why we can easily make plurals even of the non-English words: kvetch, dybbuk, shmeggeggie. We dont memorize the plural rule which tells us which s for plural is supposed to go after which group of sounds we use the distinctive-feature analysis, which can extend to sounds not even present in our language (the Bachs). Native speakers do not have conscious awareness of distinctive features (it ends on the level of speech sounds), nor of underlying phonological rules, such as voicing during the formation of plurals. These distinctive features had to be discovered experimentally. Jackendoff compares the discovery of distinctive features to the discovery of the periodic table in chemistry (Chomsky often claims that generative linguistics is closely conceptually related to theoretical chemistry). The Paradox again So, what does a child need to know in order to acquire distinctive features, say plural forming? 1) That there is such a thing as plural (an abstract property common to three cats, five houses, two parents, and eleven football players on a team). 2) That there is some relation among the noises tacked onto the different names for objects (not *appleakkle, *cat-cattis, but apples, cats) 3) That there is a regularity in the use of the sounds [s], [z] and [iz] depending on the final consonant of the singular noun. This all must come from the menu of universal grammar. After birth, a child has at its disposal a vast array of distinctive-feature possibilities, only some of which will eventually become part of its native language (, , dz, [ch], schwa) We perceive the relative interrelations of sounds The sound signal that we hear contains much more than speech sounds and their combinations. First, we must infer where one word ends and another begins. Then, we must be able to understand the speech sounds regardless of who is speaking and how they are speaking. This can be slow or fast, agitated or calm, with a breathy or husky voice Over the radio, telephone, or cell phone, where numerous frequencies are cut off Even worse: from the distance, from behind the thick wall, with the mouth that is covered And, yet we are able to understand speech! Speech perception cannot just define a vowel in terms of some fixed set of pre-arranged frequencies. Rather, the frequencies have to be quickly adjusted to the overall range of frequencies we hear coming from the speaker. It is not the absolute values of sound that we perceive. It is their relative interrelations.

31.

Language classifications.

Areal: their speakers have been in contact for a long time and the languages converged in the course of the history. These are called "areal features" (European languages; Caucasian languages; East Asian languages etc.) Genetic: languages can be closely related, or more distantly related, depending on how directly they trace back to a common source. Degree of relatedness can be represented in the form of a family tree. - English and Dutch common ancestor language (Proto-Low Germanic) Proto-Germanic. - English and Latin Proto-Indo-European - Groupings of more closely related languages: the Germanic, the Romance languages, etc. Typological: classifies into the same group those languages that are not necessarily historically or geographically interrelated, but which are linked by common abstract, usually morphological characteristics: Isolating: a low morpheme-per-word ratio in the extreme case of an isolating language words are composed of a single morpheme (Chinese) Agglutinative: most words are formed by joining morphemes together and each inflection conveys a single grammatical category (Finnish) Inflectional: words are inflected to express different grammatical categories and a single inflection can perform multiple grammatical roles (e.g. case and plural) Serbian, English, Latin, etc.

32.

Syntactic structure

Syntactic structure is distinct from phonological structure An X is not a Y Since an X is not a Y, a Z is not a W. X Verbs that S. Phonological structure cant help us to describe the above patterns. It only helps us to build up speech sounds into words. What can stand for the slots marked X, Y, Verb and S? Whatever it is, its certainly not sounds. We need something similar to the traditional grammatical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. X, Y, Z and W have to be filled by nouns such as bear, woman, boy and so forth, or a larger chunk such as a noun phrase (the big black bear). Verb in pattern c has to be filled by a verb such as thinks, believes, expects and so forth. S will have to be a sentence that can stand on its own. The big black bear thinks that you wont shoot him.. As further proof that syntactic patterns cannot be treated in terms of phonological structure, we can use the very same string of sounds as different parts of speech: To rock around the clock => verb Rock around the clock => noun Syntax is therefore different from sound, which is particularly evident in strings of speech that sound the same but are completely different in terms of syntax: We still dont think its apparent (Adj/AdjC) We still dont think its a parent (NP/NC) Beth threw the ball => verb It went through the window => preposition Syntactic structure is distinct from meaning Traditional grammar defines a noun as the name of a person, place, or thing, whereas a verb is the name for an action or state of being. According to traditional grammar the units of syntactic structure are elements of meaning or thought. The subject is the agent, the object the patient, the adjective some kind of property, etc. Does each part of speech really have meaning? Does it have a consistent kind of meaning? Object = Noun (dog, skyscraper, ocean) Action = Verb (breathe, enter, provide) Property = Adjective (hot, jealous, quiet) Location = Preposition(al Phrase) = in the house, on the ceiling It is true that any word that names an object is a noun, but not every noun names an object (earthquake - this noun does not name an object, but an action). The same is true of the noun concert. Redness and size name properties, not objects, while place and location and venue name locations. Conclusion: the grammatical notion of noun cant be given a definition in terms of what kind of entity it names. In a similar way, prepositions can be used to name not only locations but times as well (after lunch, through the night, in August) and properties (out of luck, in a good mood, down and out) The very same property can be expressed by an adjective or an adverb, depending whether it modifies a noun or a verb: A violent earthquake; a beautiful concert The earth shook violently; The orchestra played beautifully

Another reason why syntax isnt predictable from meaning: we have already said that meaning or thought is independent of the language it is being spoken. Otherwise, it makes no sense to speak of translating from one language to another English verbs normally follow the subject and precede the object, but Japanese verbs always follow both subject and object In German it is possible to place the main verb before the subject, just like in Serbian. Syntactic Patterns Syntactic patterns are, therefore, not based on either meaning or phonological structure, but mental grammar they are somehow stored in our brains. The enemy rapidly destroyed the city Sub.NP Adv Verb Obj.NP After a nominalization we have the following: the enemys rapid destruction of the city sub.NP+pos. Adj Noun Prp. Obj.NP Even though the previous sentence has been modified extensively, the process had nothing to do with meaning as the meanings are parallel. The modifying process was purely syntactic. Lets take a look at some of the subpatterns now:

AMBIGUITY

The sentence The old man in the chair with a broken leg is ambiguous because both structures result in the same string of words. The difference in meaning shows in the syntactic structure, but not in the phonological structure. The totality of meaning is expressed not only in individual words, but also in how those words are inter-related through syntax, as well as by the cultural and speech context. Hershey Bars Protest Teacher Strikes Idle Kids Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant Many ordinary sentences can be structurally ambiguous as well. Consider: "Big cats and dogs must be on a leash." There are two meanings for the phrase "big cats and dogs A. "dogs and big cats; "big" has scope only over "cats" B. big cats and big dogs" "big" has scope over "cats and dogs" This problem is called the relative scope of quantifiers. It was extensively discussed in generative linguistics in the seventies. Recursion So, recursion is the repetition of the same pattern ad infinitum. Sentences can contain sentences: I believe that S - I believe that John is a student. Recursion can go on indefinitely: I believe that John is the student who wants to speak with the professor that gave the lecture on the famous linguists who propose that Because syntax is recursive, there is no longest sentence and the number of sentences in any language is infinite. Thus syntax uses a small (finite) number of rules to generate an infinite variety of sentences.

In addition to sentences inside sentences we can also find other instances of recursion: VP inside VP, PP inside PP, NP inside NP, etc. For this reason we say that language uses finite means to create infinite combinations: this is the source of language creativity and expressiveness. WH-QUESTIONS Wh-questions begin with one of the wh-words: John lost his name tag. What did John lose? When you miss some important part(s) of a sentence, you may ask one of the following questions: 1. John lost his name what? 2. John lost his what? 3. John lost what? 4. John what? 5. What? The expander "what" usually doesn't seem to pay attention to grammatical categories: A: Fiona's homesick. B: Fiona's home-what? To explain how this what can just put itself around the sentence linguists have proposed that in mental grammar there is a stage of analysis in which what really is the direct object of the verb: Beth did eat what for breakfast? Then what in some sense moves to the front of the sentence. There are two kinds of situations in which the wh-word is actually used as the direct object instead of at the front. One is the situation of incredulity: Holy cow! Beth ate WHAT for breakfast?! The other context is a quiz-show sort of situation: Mr John, for $ 64,000: on the morning of July 4, 1776, General Washington ate WHAT for breakfast? The idea then is that echo-questions and quiz-show questions represent the basic or underlying position of whwords from which they move to the front in English questions. Chomskys legacy: a sentence in the mind has an underlying structure or deep structure that is different from its surface form. Principles of mental grammar can transform the sentence by moving certain parts around (e.g. wh-words). This is the fundamental thesis of transformational-generative grammar and most Chomskyan syntax (even today). Trace theory (Jackendoff, 1977): when wh-words move, they leave behind a trace, a sort of unpronounced pronoun, in the place where they came from. I am talking to Jane. Who are you talking to t Wh-words can move to the beginning of the sentence from many different places. Harry think Nancy met at the store? Whom is understood to be the direct object of the subordinate clause: Nancy met ^ at the store Whom did

In such cases, involving a number of embeddings, the relation between a wh-word and its original or understood position cannot be expressed in terms of one-layer subtrees. This kind of relation is called long distance dependency. Still a wh-word cannot be moved from just anywhere in a sentence to the beginning to form a question. Mental grammar is very particular on this point: For $ 64,000, Mr Jones: Gen. Washington ate kippers and WHAT for breakfast? What did Gen. Washington eat kippers and ^ for breakfast? (Looks and sounds ugly!) In other words, there are some constraints on long distance dependencies. The difficulty appears to lie in the syntactic structure of the sentence(s), not in their meaning. There appears to be some kind of imperfection in our mental grammar that doesnt allow expressing our thoughts free of formal bounds. There are two other kinds of LDD, apart from wh-questions: 1. Topicalisation: That kind of movie, I would never be caught dead sending my kids to ^! 2. Adjective + though construction: Sophisticated though Susan thinks Bill is ^, shell still marry Clyde. Universal Grammar UG lets the child know that the expressive variety of language is made possible by combining local subtrees into larger assemblies. The child does not have to figure out that words are not just strung together one after another. UG also stipulates that language contains a class of nouns, that the names of physical objects (among other things) are found in this class and that a noun plus its modifiers constitute a noun phrase. But UG leaves open the issue where the modifiers are placed: is a modifying adjective before the noun, as in English, or after, as in French (le chat noir)? The child has to figure this out. UG stipulates that there is a class of verbs, and that a verb can combine with a noun phrase to form a verb phrase (or predicate). It leaves open whether the verb precedes the noun phrase (English) or follows it (Japanese). This is where the metaphor of switches comes in! Universal grammar: the switches that may be turned on or off Mental grammar: the particular combination of offs and ons in the particular language Originally, all switches are on: you may pick up cases, articles, present perfects, aorist After exposure to the particular language, some switches in the mind are turned off, and you lose this particular natural structure for good. This is the fundamental idea of what Chomsky called The Principles and Parameters Theory (1986).

33.

Sign language.

A sign language is a system of sign communication that develops naturally by the deaf. In that sense sign language is different from artificial systems that are created to facilitate communication between the deaf and the hearing community, e.g., finger-spelling or Manual English. For long, people have had all sorts of wrong ideas and misconceptions about sign language systems. These included, but were not limited to, beliefs that deaf people were mentally retarded, and that they lacked the intellectual skills that others, who had normal hearing and speaking skills, had. Of course, this position is nowadays obsolete, even openly racist. Other misconceptions relating to sign language: #1: There is one sign language spoken all over the world. Wrong. There are many sign languages all over the world, quite different from one another. The relationship of sign to meaning may not be quite as arbitrary as it is for spoken language, but there is still great room for variation. American Sign Language is different from British Sign Language, and both are different from Italian Sign Language. #2: American sign language (ASL) is just a system for spelling out English. Wrong again. ASL is its own language with its own lexicon and grammar, exhibiting features that bear no typological relationship to English. Importantly, it is a language, not a mere system of pantomime or any simplification of any spoken language! #3: Sign languages are not as complex as spoken languages. WRONG. Sign languages are natural languages with a lexicon and a grammar. They have a phonology, morphology, and syntax. They also have a full range of expressiveness of spoken languages, as evidenced by a full range of language artefacts like stories and poems. Modern interest in sign languages was sparked by William Stokoes (1960) Sign Language Structure, where he showed how ASL has a systematic organization that strongly parallels the phonological structure of spoken languages. From that time on, more work has been done on ASL as well as other sign languages. Distinctive features in sign Stokoe identified 4 components of signs in ASL: a. handshape; b. hand orientation; c. location; d. movement Change any of these 4 and you change the meaning of the word. For example, the signs CANDY, APPLE, and JEALOUS, have the same location, movement, and orientation, and are distinguished only by their handshape. The signs for CHINESE and ONION have handshapes and twisting motion identical to CANDY and APPLE, respectively, but in a different location. The signs for NAME, SHORT, and EGG are all made with the same handshape, location, and orientation. The first two are made with different motions of the right hand; the last is made with motion of both hands. Signs in ASL are somewhat related to the things they refer to in the world. In that sense, they are considered iconic. But it would probably be difficult to guess what the signs mean if we didnt know. Spoken languages, by contrast, are non-iconic. The relation between form and meaning is arbitrary. Onomatopoeic words represent a tiny fraction of words in a language.

Does it have prosody? Like in spoken language phonology, where stress, pitch of voice, and intonation represent features of speech, sign languages use similar prosodic features such as body posture, facial expression, pauses, increases and decreases of speech rate, and timing of emphasis. Outside linguistics, this would sometimes be called body language. Does it have a grammar? In some aspects, its grammar is even more complex than that of spoken English! The use of hand movements and orientation sometimes provides more expression than does the use of the vocal apparatus. This addition of all kinds of information in a single word seems strange from the point of view of English, but is surely a possibility on the menu of universal grammar. Languages that paste all this information onto a single (very long) word are called agglutinative languages. ASL signers have a mental grammar (there is a lot of expressive variety in their signing which can only be explained by postulating unconscious grammatical principles). ASL signers have innate knowledge (little if any of their language proficiency is a consequence of explicit instruction many of them are born to hearing parents who know no ASL) ASL is just like any language. The only adaptation has to do with the replacement of distinctive features of vocal articulation with the distinctive features of manual and facial articulation. But language in any case seems to be ABSTRACT. It exists in our mind irrespective of the sensory-motor modality in which it is realized!

34.

Language Acquisition

Is Language Acquisition: automatic? To a great extent, YES 1. A child does not refuse to learn its mother tongue 2. A child doesnt need specific motivation to learn language (compare eating) 3. No explicit education is needed to acquire mother tongue (compare eating with knife and fork) 4. Development mother tongue goes via different stages, quite similar for each child Main issues in Language Acquisition A. Nature or nurture NATURE Language is founded on innate ideas, not dependent on other cognitive processes. Language is acquired at a time that the child is unable to perform other complex intellectual achievements Language development is smooth, quick, and very consistent across children/cultures The language children hear is impoverished Nativists: Nurturing strategies do not fully explain the fact that children all over the world acquire language easily and rapidly in the face of impoverished data. The language children hear is incomplete, noisy and unstructured. It includes slips of the tongue, ungrammatical sentences, incomplete sentences, and there is not enough explicit information which utterances are well-formed and which not. (Poverty of stimulus argument) The main proponents of this view are rationalists/nativists, Chomsky and Pinker. Language is not learned, but grows, assisted by LAD => Universal Grammar/nature serves to make available general parameters for language. The role of language experience is to set the parameters for the language being acquired. NURTURE The human mind is tabula rasa, language is learned Empiricists/behaviourists/ learning theorists/connectionists (Skinner/Elman) Nothing special about language, part of general learning ability Language is learned by imitation, reinforcement, analogy 1. Do children learn by imitation? o A child deliberately trying to imitate the father Father: Hes going out

Child: He go out. o Imitation is involved to some extent (accent/particular vocabulary items), but child speech differs greatly from the input of adults. 2. Do children learn by reinforcement? Mother: Now listen carefully, say Nobody likes me. Child: Oh, nobody dont likes me. In general, reinforcement focuses on truth-values, rather than good syntactic formation. Paradox: Even though we teach our children to speak the truth rather than teach them how to speak grammatically correctly, they end up having speech that is highly grammatical but not notably truthful!

3. Do children learn by analogy? (Do they use particular sentences as models to produce new ones?) Tony threw out the chair => Tony threw the chair out Tony walked out the door => * Tony walked the door out The general problem of the analogy theory: some things work, some things dont

The debate goes on and there are arguments to support either side. The conclusion may be that: Children are biologically prewired to acquire a language, but exposition to language is required to get the biological program carried out. The importance of social context in language nurturing a) Child-Directed Speech (CDS; sometimes coined baby talk/motherese/ parenthese), including higher pitch, more variability in pitch, more exaggerated in intonational contours, attracts more attention from babies than adult-directed speech; b) Attachment between the caregiver and infant may not be essential but may facilitate language development. Secure attachment may promote the desire to communicate c) Size of a toddlers vocabulary depends on how much is talked to them d) More specifically, extensive replies and question-asking, amplifying childrens comments, shown to be invaluable (Cross, 1978; Howe, 1980) B. Eavesdropping in mammas belly General agreement: auditory system (i.e. the sense of hearing) functional around 7 months. Sound distorted (like covering mouth with hand & talking through that) Still rhythm (stress pattern) and intonation are picked up. Most likely from mothers voice (travelling through bones & tissue to utero). Sucking experiments: DeCasper & Spence (86). Familiar story (read by mother during the last 6 weeks of pregnancy) preferred over unfamiliar stories. C. Critical Phases EARLY CRITICAL PHASE Parameter setting: the ability to discriminate phonemes: Evidence from sucking experiments: Up till 6 months, children are able to distinguish phonetic contrasts (even though these contrasts are not part of their target language). Change in sucking rate in different situations: Japanese infants: [l] => [r] (even though the parents cant hear the distinction) Other aspects of language, e.g., grammar, are also more difficult to acquire after certain age LATER CRITICAL PHASE The ability to learn a native language develops within a fixed period, between birth and puberty Reasons: a) Neural systems subserving language are getting less flexible (some plasticity remains though) b) In learning a new language later (L2), the learner is not only required to perform new sequences of mental and motoric operations, but is also required not to perform thoroughly learned old sequences (L1) D. Four developmental phases

Prelinguistic phase From cooing (velar consonants and back vowels) to reduplicated babbling (bababababababa) to variegated babbling (bigodabu) An infant from 0-8 months does not demonstrate communicative intent: Infants produce behaviours but there is no indication that they behave in that way for any purposeful reason (e.g. to obtain an adults attention) Nevertheless, before a child demonstrates a communicative intent, adults often assume intentionality Communicative intent is slowly comes into play (8 months). Holophrastic phase First words after about 10/11 months (this is average, but varies from child to child and is not linked to intelligence. Einstein started when he was 3). Words serve three major functions a. Linked to childs own (desire for) action (e.g., up, light) b. to convey emotion (e.g., no, nice) c. naming function (e.g., dog, shoe) Words are content words, short, generally monosyllabic, and denote a lot of meanings (e.g., dad might refer to all male persons). Word spurt starts at about 18 months. 14.000 words in lexicon by age 6. This means a word is added to the lexicon every 2 hours!!! (9 a day). Two-word phase After about 18 months, children start to put words together More words become polysyllabic In general, no syntactic or morphological markers Phrases can be rather ambiguous (e.g., mummy sock might be a request for mummy to put on the childs socks, might be mummys socks themselves) Telegraphic phase If we divide language development into somewhat arbitrary stages like syllable babbling, gibberish babbling, one-word utterances, and two-word strings, the next stage would have to be called All Hell Breaks Loose (Steven Pinker, The language instinct, 1994) 3-word stage does not seem to exist From 2 years onwards Style is telegraphic: Ex. can stand up table No function words, only open-class content words 4 years they speak gramamatically 6 years they use 2,500 words, recognize 14,000 E. Development in linguistic subfields Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics

35. Language Acquisition in unusual circumstances Jerry Fodor (1983) Modularity of Mind: one general cognitive capacity (central format: intelligence, mathematics, memory, logical reasoning) + Specific modules (language, music, vision) Consequence: 1) The general-intelligence may be intact, although the specific language module is impaired ((Genie and others) 2) the special purpose language module may be intact, although the general-purpose capacity is impaired Of course, this poses a question of the genetic disposition for language Specific Language Impairment (SLI) Deficit in spoken language ability with no obvious accompanying disorder such as: Mental retardation, Neurological damage, Hearing disorder. In the USA, affects almost 7% of all children. The work of Myrna Gopnik and associates, the first (tentative) proof that mental grammar is genetically prewired! Example of a typical narrative of a young child with SLI The man got on the boat. Him jump out the boat. Him rocking the boat. Him drop his thing. Him drop his other thing. Him tipping over. He fell off the boat. What are some of the specific syntactic and semantic difficulties of children with SLI? slow development of grammatical morphemes (-ed, -3ps, irregular verbs) many pronoun errors less diverse repertoire of verb types smaller average sentence length than their peers It is a grammatical, not lexical disorder Problems with inflections: The boy eat three cookie. Yesterday the girl pet a dog. Untensed past: Yesterday he______ (Filled in: walk.) Article problems: Roses grow in the garden. (No: The roses) SLI Conclusions (1) Uniform pattern of impairment across family members (2) Randomly distributed along the children in the family (3) Results in striking inflection problems (4) Is impervious to correction (5) Persists through life Similar genetic disorders (also affecting language) Turners Syndrome: Absent female X chromosome: stuntedness, heart problems, drooping eyelids. Yet: language is normal!!! Williams syndrome: elf-like, abnormalities of many organs; rudimentary cognitive skills. Language: rich, talkative, knack for strange words!

The Critical Period Hypothesis Some specialized cognitive capacities seem to shut down after a few years, according to a genetic program. In humans language. In animals: the covered eye of a kitten 3 months no vision! Feral Children Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, 1799: 11 or 12, many cognitive skills, but never developed language Isabelle, 1940s, discovered at the age of six: Learned to speak within a year! Genie, 1970, Los Angeles (13): rapid early language development, but progress stopped there twoand-a-half-year-old level, despite general cognitive performance at a much higher level ASL (Newport and Suppala examined speakers of ASL native speakers, early and late learners: the later the language is learned the less its use is native. Creation of language: home sign Home sign is the gestural communication system developed by a deaf child who lacks input from a language model in the family. This is a common experience for deaf children with hearing parents who are isolated from a sign language community. While not developing into a complete language (as linguists understand the term), home sign systems show some of the same characteristics of signed and spoken languages, and are quite distinguishable from the gestures that accompany speech. Words and simple sentences are formed, often in similar patterns despite different home sign systems being developed in isolation from each other. Comparisons are often made between home sign and pidgins. The experience of home signers is contrasted with that of feral children who, with no human social interaction, develop no language at all. Ten children, profoundly deaf, born to hearing parents Used their own system of signs Language? Eye contact attempt at communication Tension and relaxation of movements Simulating objects and events with empty hands Susan Goldin-Meadow and associates Pointing and characterizing gestures Sometimes pointing to things not present in the environment! Stringing gestures together to make utterances! Mimicking normal language development: One-sign utterances Two-sign utterances (age 1.5) Four children progressed towards more complex utterances (aged 2.5 and over) Climb sleep point (to horse) The horse climbed and then slept. Point (to pear) point (to banana) no roll. The pear, but not the banana should roll forward. Sip point (to cowboy) point (to toy soldier) beat The cowboy sips a straw and the soldier beats a drum. How far did they get? Even by the age of six: No complex wh- questions

No recursion Generally, their utterances were no longer than four or five gestures. Pidgin / Creole Hawaii 1880 1900: immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, the Phillipines, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. Spoke their native languages at home, outside they devised an ungrammatical, barebone variant of English which came to be called pidgin. Japanese speakers put the verb to the end of the sentence: the poor people all potato eat Filipino speakers put the verb to the beginning: work hard this people: pidgin video 1 The emergence of Creole Many children born in Hawaii in the pidgin-speaking environment: 1900-1920 They used the input (they always use whatever input they have available!) to make a fully grammatical native language out of Pidgin: this is CREOLE (as studied by Dereck Bickerton) Contrary to pidgin, creole is quite uniform among the speakers It has distinct grammatical properties (sometimes very different from those of standard English) Pidgin: No, the men, ah-pau (finished) work, they go, make graden. Plant this, ah, cabbage, like that. Creole: When work pau (is finished) da guys they stay go make (are going to make) garden for plant potato an cabbage. (Creole link 2)` Even more complex than English! English the/an , Creole da/wan/no art John bin go Honolulu go see Mary (he saw her) John bin go Honolulu for see Mary (he did not see her), etc. Bickerton even claims the grammar of Creole IS universal grammar (Handout 15, Ex. 1, 2 and 3) Bioprogram Very much akin to child grammar: No like play football, these guys (Creole) I no want envelope (child English) Apes and Language 1. they can communicate spontaneously their concrete wants 2. they will initiate communication ON THE OTHER HAND: 1) unlike human children, they almost never comment on their environment 2) they do not ask why questions 3) both chimpanzees and orangutans make nonsense combinations of signs Teaching language to apes Attempts in the sixties and seventies Little actual success (many attempts, the most famous Washoe and Nim Chimpsky) Understand 3-year-old sign language Produce 1.5-year-old sign language Hundreds of signs, used quite similarly to the way we, humans, use them Yet, very little syntax and almost no expressive variety Some metaphorization! Koko: cookie rock (stale), Washoe: water bird (swan) Clip 3