The Science of Language

Readings

• Bastard Tongues, chapt. 1
• "How I got into linguistics, and what I got out of it" by Bill Labov.

Linguistic Concepts

• Tacit Knowledge
  
• What is Linguistics?
  




• What is Grammar?
  

  People often think of grammar as a matter of arbitrary pronouncements (defining 'good' and 'bad' language), usually negative ones like There is no such word as ain't or Never end a sentence with a preposition. Linguists are not very interested in this sort of bossiness (sometimes called prescriptivism). For linguists, grammar is simply the collection of principles defining how to put together a sentence.

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• The Language Instinct with Steven Pinker
  (Jump ahead to about 23:00 min.)
  
  

Exercises

• State some “rules” of grammar that you’ve heard. For example, you may have been taught that It’s me is incorrect and that the correct for is It’s I.
  Now ask yourself the following questions about these “rules”:
  a. Who did you learn this rule from?
  b. Was there any rationale or explanation for using the rule?
  c. Does anyone follow this rule?
  d. What do you think about someone who doesn’t use the rule?
  e. What would you say to someone who tells you that you are saying something in the wrong way?




• A small set of words in languages may be onomatopoetic, that is, there may be words whose sounds “imitate” what they refer to: ding-dong, tick-tock, bang, zing, swish, plop are such words in English. Make up a list of ten such words. Test them out on your friends to see if they are truly “nonarbitrary” with respect to the connection between sound and meaning.




• In what way (level of grammar) is each of the following sentences broken?
  a. Jade likes to play a game called "sbilling."
  b. I done have will four years of college.
  c. Vince ate a giant sequoia for breakfast.
  d. Ian hitted the ball out of the park.
  e. Dogs are my favorite type of fruit.
  f. I just saw a movie from Aksktland.




• Is it English? Here are some sentences rendered in Standard
  orthography that we have heard spoken in various places that are referred to
  as English-speaking places. Identify differences from your own variety of
  English, if you can figure out the intended translation into your own dialect.
  Are these sentences all English?
  1. We are allowed running here. (Montreal)
  2. We are allowed to run here. (Brooklyn)
  3. I did nothing today. (Brooklyn)
  4. I didn’t do nothing today. (Brooklyn)
  5. The government has decided to raise taxes. (Montreal)
  6. The government have decided to raise taxes. (London)
  7. I’m going to the dep to get some cigarrettes and beer. (Montreal)
  8. That’s all the faster I can run. (Michigan)
  9. That’s as fast as I can run. (Brooklyn)
  10. I might could go. (Alabama)
  11. I might be able to go. (Brooklyn)
  12. He been try make me mad. (Cajun English, Lousiana)
  13. I ate a egg. (Ypsilanti)
  14. I ate an egg. (Brooklyn)

Examples

• Creole Languages
  

  A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. This understanding of creole genesis culminated in Hall's notion of the pidgin-creole life cycle. While it is arguable that creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages they phylogenetically derive from, no theory for explaining creole phenomena has been universally accepted. The relationship between pidgins and creoles and their similarities means that the distinction is not clear-cut and the variety of phenomena that arise to create pidgins and creoles are not understood very well. Likewise, efforts to articulate grammatical features (or sets of features) that are exclusive to creoles have been unsuccessful thus far.

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  Listen to an English-based creole language (Belize Creole).

People

• Derek Bickerton
• Noam Chomsky
  
• Max Weinreich