Concepts About Language

Concepts About Language &
Grammar Study
Concept #1
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Modern biolinguists find compelling evidence
to suggest that language acquisition is
strongly intuitive; from birth, we are
“wired” language. Noam Chomsky: we are
all born with a “universal grammar” – a
capacity to learn language, a learning that
takes place instinctually and largely without
instruction.
Trivia
EX: By the time a young person enters this grade, she already “knows” in the
unconscious sense just about all of the linguistic structures she will need to make
sense in her native language(s).
a) Kindergarten
b) First grade
c) Fourth grade
d) Middle School, usually by the Seventh grade
“The average child acquires language competence necessary to
produce adult colloquial speech by the time he or she is four or
five. So, all of us enter school already ‘knowing’ the grammar of
our native language” (Calderonello and Klein, “Eradicating AWK
or Grammar on the Firing Line: Its Relationship to Composition,”
68).
For Example...
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If she is a native speaker of English, she has learned (without learning any
of the grammatical terms for these things) that articles and adjectives
precede the nouns they modify:
The cat sat on a mat.
Big cats sit on small mats.
She learns too that prepositions precede the nouns (or noun phrases)
they govern:
on the mat
She would also recognize structures like these as “not English” even
though they are possible in some of the world's languages:
Cat the sat mat a on.
Cats big sit mats small on.
Concept #2
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Hence, linguistic structures—and the rules
that form them—are not only unconscious;
they are also systematic, rule–governed.
Systematic rules are part of a tacit, early–
internalized, at times unconscious
understanding that allows speakers of a
language to communicate.
Language is highly conventionalized
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The rules of language govern sound (phonetics), words (lexicon and
semantics), the arrangement of strings of words (morphemes and
syntax), and social aspects of meaning making (semiotics).
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These rules are arbitrary. There is nothing bearish about the word
“bear,” for example. Phonetically, the same idea applies too: there is no
connection between the letter b and the sound it denotes.
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And they are dependent on social and cultural conventions: i.e.,
social customs; etiquette; religious and other symbolic rites; legal
procedures; military signals, etc.).
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apple exercise
Concept #3
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Even within a particular language, different
dialects are a reality.
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Each language community has its own regional, social,
and cultural distinctions. This variety within a
particular language is known as dialect. Dialects feature
distinctions in vocabulary (soda versus pop, grinder versus
hoagie versus submarine sandwich), pronunciation (greasy
pronounced “greasy” versus “greasy”), grammatical
forms (I done it versus I did it), and other language
behaviors (cadence, pitch, speed of delivery).
Languages are always made up of various dialects or
varieties, and to speak a language (even the privileged or
“standard” varieties) is to speak some dialect of that
language.
All dialects are rule–governed and organized in
their own ways.
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“My dog name is Bark.” – In this variety,
African American English, possession is not
omitted but instead signified by adjacency
(possessor: possessed).
Think about it: Some deviations from Standard English are both
logical and grammatical.
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“Ya’ll need to go to the store soon before it
closes.” – Standard English shows no
distinction between the singular and the
plural in the second person. Southern
vernacular usage, “ya’ll” (you might also
substitute you’uns, or the northern usage,
youse), preserves a distinction between
singular and plural that the standard variety
has lost.
Concept #4
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No dialect, then, is inherently superior or
substandard.
For more information on the varieties of English, see
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/ and
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieti
es/AAVE/hooked/. See also, In what sense is “bad
grammar” bad?
Concept #5
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While all varieties are “created equal,” they are
not treated equally.
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Just as we learn a language, we also learn (from a variety
of sources) a complex set of attitudes and assumptions
about our speech and the speech of others. More often
than not, these assumptions are prejudicial or stereotypes
and do not have any direct correlation to the
language/dialect itself. However, the attitudes are real
and can have a profound effect on how people perceive
one another.
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Standard English, or “mainstream American
English,” is the most widely recognized and
codified version of English (the form that writers,
editors of books and periodicals, and national
literature follow)
The notion of standard raises questions: Standard
for whom? Everywhere? Always?
Political tool: a social yardstick for measuring
one’s value and worth.
Concept #6
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Error is a social phenomenon.
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“[T]he dialect of a language that is used in a particular
speech or discourse community also determines what is
or is not regarded as an error. Persons who regularly use
constructions such as double negatives (the “Ain’t no
man righteous!” board) or nonstandard verb forms (“I
have chose”) do not consider such forms errors because
these constructions are rule–governed variants in the
dialect of English they speak. That is, they are not
arbitrary, random, individual ‘errors’ but a predictable,
patterned variation on standard English common to a
community of users of English” (Grammar for Language
Arts Teachers, 10)
Concept #7
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Context determines both “grammaticality”
and appropriateness.
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What constitutes an “error” and what constitutes
the appropriateness of language use depends on a
number of given factors: genre and
communication medium, social context and/or
region, purpose, audience, discourse and speech
community.
Example?
Whenever anyone speaks or writes, he projects a message and an image. We use
language according to the demands of a given situation.
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If some children were assembled around a mud puddle in a playground and one child
responded to the question “Who said he could jump over this puddle?” with the standard
English reply “It was I,” rather than the colloquial “It was me,” that child should be drowned
in the puddle, a murder that would be justifiable homicide because of the child’s
scrupulousness and ostentatiousness.
On the other hand, the candidate for a journalism job who greeted his prospective employer
with the salutation “Hey baby, what’s happening?” rather than with the salutation “Good
afternoon, how are you?” would similarly convey an identical message but an inappropriate
image.
The goal of teaching grammar is to give all students a flexibility to conduct a discourse in
whatever terms the specific situation requires.
Concept #8
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We belong to many different speech and
discourse communities.
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Some of these include geographical region, family,
peer–groups, educational settings, work or
professional settings, and personal interest
groups. Since this is the case, we don't simply
speak one variety of the language but many. To
put it another way, dialects always exist along a
speech continuum that we move back and forth
across.
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The ability to adjust our speech to fix a particular
social context is something we acquire as
children. We learn not just to say things, but also
how to say them and when and to whom. This is
known as “code–switching.”
Example: Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”
Concept #9
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Language change is normal. All languages change over time. This is
inevitable for a variety of reasons, and it is the reason we have different
languages and dialects. While grammar handbooks and dictionaries (as
well as the standard dialect) work to decrease or impede this change,
they cannot stop it completely.
Just because a language is changing does not necessarily mean it is
becoming corrupted or is decaying. Sometimes the changes are good;
other times they create problems. Sometimes the changes work to
simplify or regularize the language; other times they make the language
more complex. The history of the English language is filled will examples
of these types of changes that have worked to produce the language we
are familiar with today.
Language change occurs at all levels: at the level of sounds; at the level of
words and their meaning; at the level of grammar or the rules of the
language.
Terms and Concepts
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Form versus Function
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Form: what a word looks like, the endings that can be
added to it (for nouns, the plural s and the possessive ’s;
dogs, dog’s)
Function: what a word does in a sentence
Grammaticality versus Appropriateness
Standard American English
Context
Error versus Usage

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