Grammar
How Young Learners Learn Languages – True or False
(960 words)
For this writing task, I was asked to give my response to 5 statements about how young learners learn languages. I will answer true or false statements 1- 5 and explain why.
1) Babies are unable to respond until they are at least 6 months old.
Is this True or False?
2) Babbling has an element of the meaning of which the young child is aware.
Is this True or False?
3) Children may sometimes use words in a way different from an adult’s understanding of the language item.
Is this True or False?
4) Grammar rules cannot usually be taught to young children.
Is this True or False?
5) Repetition plays an important part in first language acquisition.
Is this True or False?
1) Babies are unable to respond until they are at least 6 months old. T/F
This is false. From the moment a baby enters the world to eight weeks, the process of language acquisition is in motion. They begin to cry and make little sounds; this exercises the vocal organs and gives them practice in controlling the flow of air through their mouth and nose. They respond to their mother by looking at her when she speaks. If a stranger speaks, the baby will respond differently than to their mother’s voice. The tone, pitch, volume, and intonation of a speaker’s voice make the baby respond differently. The baby shows a response by crying, body movements, babbling, and laughing.
2) Babbling has an element of the meaning of which the young child is aware. T/F
This is true. Language can be said to be a progression of the process which means that there is progressive emergence. Babbling plays a part in this. It can be said that language comes with age and with the form of the body where the child grows and their cognitive senses form. For instance, at 6-7 weeks the baby will be experimenting with coos and chuckles. Then at 3-4 months, the child will start to babble; making rough speech sounds. Most babbling consists of a small number of sounds, which suggests the child is preparing the sounds they will need to speak the language it is exposed to. The baby is aware as the babbling noises tend to closely approximate the language spoken in their environment. When they imitate adult sounds they are scaffolding their language for later development. Learning is intimately linked with the progressive surfacing of a child’s vocabulary and syntax.
3) Children may sometimes use words in a way different from an adult’s understanding of the language item. T/F
This is true. Younger children do not have an adult’s understanding of language; they have their own way of saying things as far as they approximate them. They are born with a special ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules for their language system. For example, a child can tell you in his verbal sounds that the dog their family has, has gone outside. He may say ‘doggie’ and point or say ‘doggie out’. This utterance may just be a few grunts but significantly the point of it is; is that the child is telling you the dog has exited the house. Speech in children can be recognised by the way a child generally uses one pivot word plus one or two additional words, such as ‘Mummy go shops’, ‘Give dolly’. Telegraphic speech as it is known like this is marked by its own grammar, especially in terms of structure. These pivot words tend to occupy a consistent position in the sentence and the word order reflects the order of adult utterances, the only difference being that in telegraphic speech the less semantically important words disappear.
4) Grammar rules cannot usually be taught to young children. T/F
This is true if we were to say that a teacher or parent tries to formally teach a child grammar. Grammar is acquired naturally; it doesn’t need to be taught so formally especially to younger students. Grammar rules taught formally can be just too hard for some children to comprehend. Learning can be modeled on the natural environment although learning needs to accentuate the rate of language acquisition. Role-play, games that highlight interesting and thought-provoking activities can have grammar subconsciously delivered where the learner is using the appropriate language without realizing that the teacher is teaching a specific grammar point. The child will gradually pick up the grammar rules by interaction. They are not pressured. Grammar becomes secondary to the learners actually trying to speak. Their language can be facilitated by the teacher. There is the fact that if the teacher tries to the child’s sentence to the correct version, it often fails. For example:
A child looks at their dolly and says question and answer.
Child: What colour?
Mother: (You mean) what colour IS IT?
Child: Red
Grammar is a progressive discovery. It seems that the child can only learn when the time is right.
5) Repetition plays an important part in first language acquisition. T/F
This is true. This does not mean a child will learn a language by repetition. Repetition helps by the way of the instructor, be that the mother or teacher who replies to the learner’s comments. The child speaks differently from a normal adult. The repetition is done when the child speaks and the mother or teacher repeats and reinforces the child’s speech with their way of saying the utterance.
Child: Daddy come
Mother: Yes, here’s Daddy
Child: Nice doggie
Mother: Yes, he’s a nice doggie isn’t he?
With this type of repetition, encouraging responsiveness, the child will develop. She will keep the child’s word order and add on the rest. The emphasis is on the child’s meaning and not on grammatical structures.
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What is IN a preposition?
Have you ever thought about how prepositions work in a sentence?
Prepositions can have 1. spatial, 2. temporal, or 3. abstract meanings
- I live in a house.
- I left home at 9am.
- Something came across my mind
There is a concept of Space in prepositions. How do we locate an object relative to space?
- John is at the dentist.
- John went to the dentist.
However, the scale is Relative. Look at these two sentences.
- The ant walked across his hand.
- A bus drove across the country.
What is the semantic category/communicative function?
- The balloon passed over the house.
- The balloon passed over.
- The balloon went up. (postulate)
- The balloon went over there. (landmark)
How does Spatial Awareness work?
Think about dimensions: 1D, 2D, and 3D
- John drove down the road. (a line – one dimensional space)
2. The skater twirled on the pond. (the pond is a surface, 2D)
3. The astronaut checked his equipment in the airlock. (a room has 3D and we are placing him inside)
Where is the location of space?
at – (non-directional) Amy ran at the track.
at – (core meaning, denote position) I am at school.
at – (being at a specific point) The intersection of the lines is at co-ordinates 3,4 on the graph.
How does a motion verb work with prepositions?
- John threw the ball at Mary.
- John threw the ball to Mary.
How does the preposition modify the verb?
- (place) John exercised inside the house.
- (path) John stormed inside the house.
What is a phrasal verb?
kick-off
ran into my teacher
ask out
blow up
break-in (interrupt)
break up (relationship)
How does the phrase with a preposition become idiomatic?
hold your hand up
off like a shot
in at the deep end
off the record
in the pink
English can be crazy!
- A house can burn up as it burns down.
- You can fill in a form by filling it out.
- Why is it after dark when it is after light?
Syntax – an indepth look
(6981 words)
Human communication in all its forms almost always uses words. We could say that communication is essentially the expression of thought. Every time we speak or write we are faced with a myriad of choices to explain ourselves. Within this information transmission that uses thought, we use words to express our beliefs and judgments, intentions and desires, etc. The words are used in a combination to make others understand our desired thoughts. Human languages are among several systems of human communication (some others such as gestures, symbol systems), but language has immeasurably greater communicative power than the others. The grammar we use to communicate, the context, the people with whom we are communicating with and whether we are writing or speaking have to be in a form that is fully recognized. Sentences are not unordered strings of words; rather the words and morphemes are grouped into functional constituents such as subject, predicate, direct object, noun phrase, verb phrase, and so on. It means that we take a finite number of discrete elements (words) and combine them to create larger structures that are different in meaning from the original words themselves. The choices for expression make use of many patterns in the English language. All human languages have very similar underlying structures; they all have phrase structure rules and transformational rules. The use of these words is systematized according to syntax. It is Syntax that this paper is concerned with. In this paper, I will take a deeper look at how English language syntax helps us form the complete understandable sentences that help us communicate so well.
It is clear to see that the sentence ‘Man hits animal’ is not the same as ‘Animal hits man’. We know this because we use a code, or set of rules, to translate between orders of words and combinations of thoughts. Generally speaking, this set of rules is called generative grammar. Syntax works on a prescriptive use of grammar although spoken English is not as formal as we think and works along the lines of a more descriptive method. Descriptive syntax is about understanding the rules that a speech community employs by examining the way that the members of that community actually do talk. I will try to show in this paper syntax as comprehensively as possible while recognizing that the coverage of all the details is impossible.
The English language holds rules that can create larger more complex structures. It is by learning phrase and clause structures that give us a clearer picture of syntax. These structures are what make the syntax rules. We find that it is possible to create an infinite number of sentences, all of which can express meaningful thought. Thus it is possible to construct sentences that the speaker has never used before. It can be said that English has a finite number of rules which facilitate an infinite number of sentences. Syntax shows that sentences and the relationship of their component parts works in English. To understand a sentence one cannot merely pay attention to the order of words. Communication is grounded on getting our point across. The study of language is of the formal interrelations that exist between the elements of a language (i.e., sounds, words) themselves. Syntax is the system that speakers and writers use when they combine words into phrases and clauses, ultimately creating meaning in their structures. Thus, the point of us using words is to be comprehended. English speakers show this in their syntax that is used by every English-speaking person. The old definition of a sentence was ‘a complete expression of thought’, although today this may seem a bit vague to be helpful. An English-speaking person may say ‘beautiful day!’ which is not a grammatically complete sentence, but it is our knowledge of the sentence ‘it is a beautiful day!’ that we are able to understand the utterance. So, although a person takes the language and uses it to different extremes it is our fundamental knowledge of the original grammar that allows us to comprehend incomplete sentences.
Syntax uses many components that consist of a set of rules operating upon putting into the sentence to achieve and produce an understandable result. These rules are essential language parts of syntax that are used to understand the logic of how it all works. In every sentence, certain groups of words form natural units (the constituents). These units may stand alone, be moved as a unit, or be replaced as a unit by a pronoun. We essentially have here the building blocks of language. The list below gives a few examples of the phrasal categories (noun phrase, verb phrase) and lexical categories (noun, verb, and determiner), that this paper will be using. In the following, we find that S stands for Sentence, NP for Noun Phrase, VP for Verb Phrase, Det for Determiner, Aux for Auxiliary (verb), N for Noun, and V for Verb stem.
In most English schools, they always tell you about the basic rule in the English language which is to have a Subject – Verb – Object combination, but there is much more to it than that. The subject and the object in a sentence can consist of only one word such as ‘boys like girls’, which is a simple declarative sentence. If someone says, “The boy throws the ball,” using the Subject – Verb – Object combination, it is to make whoever speaks the same language comprehend the sentence (S) without confusing him and putting across the wrong meaning. The subject and object in a sentence, name someone or something. The sentence ‘the boy throws the ball’ is known as a clause (a simple sentence) that includes a subject and predicate. The laws of syntax prevail that these words are understood in the position they are. In this initial pattern we can see that the subject comes before the verb (throws) and the object follows the verb. From the simple S-V-O pattern you can get a general picture of how a child acquires their language. There is a distinct pattern. Sentences can consist of a noun phrase either in the subject (the boy) or the object (the ball) position. We recognize a phrase as a small group of words expressing a single concept or entering with some degree of unity into the structure of a sentence, without itself being a sentence. We also find that the subject may consist of a group of words that includes the subject noun and words that modify it, for example ‘’the boy with the black hair’. ‘With the black hair’ modifies the subject ‘the boy’. As a little introduction observe the subjects in the following sentences that give a brief insight into how various subjects in a sentence can be formed.
A. The boy throws the ball. [noun as subject]
B. He throws the ball. [pronoun as subject]
C. What he threw smashed a window. [noun clause as subject]
D. Playing is fun. [gerund as subject]
E. Throwing balls in the park is fun. [gerund phrase as subject]
F. To throw a ball is fun. [infinitive as subject]
G. To be able to throw a ball is exciting. [infinitive phrase as subject]
Syntax assigns to each sentence that it generates a structural description, as are all the sentences A – G above. But before we go too quickly with too many examples, let’s get back to our original sentence ‘the boy throws the ball’. When we look at the whole sentence, we understand that the meaning of the words combined together in this sentence is quite detached from its individual parts (each word). If we arranged the words as ‘the ball throws the boy’ we would have a completely obscure sentence that isn’t the meaning that we had hoped to be put across. If a person knows what ‘ball’ and ‘throw’ mean he instinctively knows that the ball is not doing the action and structure cannot work.
The fact about language is that we want to make it interesting and colorful, a language that has character. How do we do this? We do this by using other elements that can be added to the sentence such as adverbs, phrases, clauses, and adjectives. Looking at adjectives, for example, we see that an adjective is a word designating an attribute and added to a noun, to describe the noun more fully. Adjectives or other single words that modify nouns are usually placed before the noun (the small boy throws the red ball). We can also find whole phrases acting as modifiers in a sentence. These are usually placed after the noun (the small boy in the red shirt). We also see adverbs that are normally more mobile than adjectives occurring either before or after the verb they modify (the small boy in the red shirt wildly throws the red ball), (the small boy in the red shirt throws the red ball wildly). We now get a view of how sentences get a little bit more fascinating.
So, we have words, and these need to be put into a combination to be understood. These combinations we call phrases and clauses. We do not say ‘a day beautiful is it’. We say ‘it is a beautiful day!’ or ‘beautiful day!’ In order for sentences to work with any degree of success, the rules have to be pretty much adhered to. The predominant properties that characterize each phrase and which roles they play in the sentence are determined by the properties of the principal or head word. Using syntax with the example ‘The boy throws the ball’, this sentence (S) consists of two noun phrases (NP ‘the boy’ and ‘the ball’). A noun phrase always contains a head noun. In this case, ‘boy’ and ‘ball’ are what each phrase is about. The subject is ‘the boy’ and is symbolized as:
NP → Det N (Noun Phrase → Determiner Noun)
We can see that the syntactic pattern is a determiner followed by a noun. Looking at the verb we can put it into a verb phrase that includes the noun phrase following after the verb symbolized as:
VP → V NP (VP = ‘throws the ball’).
We see that the predicate is the part of a sentence containing what is said about a subject. ‘Throws the ball’ is called the Verb Phrase/Predicate. This is so-called because it always contains a verb in a specified position. We say that the verb is the head of the Verb Phrase/ Predicate.
To give us a better picture, we can now represent the example sentence as:
S → NP + VP.
This represents the symbols of grammatical theory. The arrow itself means something like ‘consists of’ or ‘can be rewritten as. After the arrow, you will find the constituents the phrase may consist of. It is important to know in a sentence there are phrase-structure rules that make up the important parts of syntax. Phrase structure rules specify which elements can occur in a phrase, and they also specify in which order these elements (or constituents) may occur. Syntax involves Phrase Structure Rules, which yield trees (see Diagram A) with labels added to indicate the syntactic category of each constituent (e.g. Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, etc.).
Diagram A
We should not forget that the subject in ‘the boy threw the ball’ sentence includes an article (the), and a concrete noun (boy). These two words together form a noun phrase, as does the noun phrase ‘the ball’. The article in both of these noun phrases is the word ‘the’. In English, the article provides the minimum specification necessary in the noun phrase. The sequence with the article ‘the’ and a noun is that ‘the’ always holds the initial position. In our sentence about ‘the boy’, the function of the article is to provide the type of reference of the Noun Phrase and the information value of what is expressed by the noun phrase. The use of the article ‘the’, makes us think that we are talking about one specific boy and ball.
In learning about syntax, a good starting point is identifying the two basic parts of a sentence: the subject and the predicate. Every predicate in a sentence includes at least one verb. In our example ‘throws the ball’ works as a verb phrase that uses the string of symbols Verb (V) + noun phrase (NP). In our phrase structure we see the symbols:
VP → V NP.
We can also see that the subject (the boy) is put at the initial position in the sentence and the object follows the verb. Looking more closely at the sentence here, we find that the verb is transitive. Transitive means that the verb ‘throws’ must take an object after the verb. The complement after the verb is called the direct object of a transitive verb. It would be an incomplete sentence to use ‘the boy throws’. Using the verb ‘throw’ we understand that it is the action of throwing. The subject is the thrower. The subject must throw something so the object takes the place of the thing thrown. The verb dictates that there must be an object. The object ‘the ball’ becomes the direct object.
Moreover, if I said ‘the boy jumped’ this is a syntactically complete sentence that does not need an object. This sentence has an intransitive verb that requires no object after it. Of course, this does not mean the end of the sentence, using syntax we can add more meaning to it by adding, for example, a prepositional phrase (PP) that makes the sentence ‘the boy jumped on the roof’. The syntactic rule states that a verb phrase consists of a verb and an optional PP. This is of course only true for intransitive verbs, which do not take an object, but this rule can already generate VPs such as the following: ‘the boy jumped’, ‘the boy jumped on the roof’. Verb phrases are a little bit more complex because they allow a fairly wide range of phrases that can modify a verb. So, we have intransitive, one-place verbs that combine only with the subject ‘The boy jumped’ (S-V). There are also ‘two place’ verbs combining with subject and, for example, a following obligatory adverbial after the verb (S – V – A). The adverbial can express time, place, or manner. For example ‘The boy is in the house’, ‘the boy played for two hours’.
Another point just to follow up is, the ‘doer’ and the ‘receiver’ in a sentence, which was shown in ‘the boy throws the ball’. ‘The boy’ is the doer and ‘the ball’ receives the action. This is generally thought to be the rule although we can also see other constructions it varies. If I say ‘She appeared in front of him’ (S → V (PP), we propose that the other person is the doer of the action and ‘she’ received the actions of him appearing. So it follows that different verbs can be followed by different kinds of words and structures. For example ‘I have a bag’ does not involve an action but is a state. We can also show that some subjects do not have an object. For example ‘He was angry’ uses an adjective as a complement after the verb that expresses meaning to the subject (He).
We can propose that within the grammar of a language there is a hierarchy of levels. The sentence is King. At the lower level morphemes are arranged into words to form phrases, and clauses into sentences and we find meaning. As speakers of English, we recognize categories such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. These parts of speech do not actually form our language. We are more activated by patterns in our language. So, for instance, we have learned the Subject – Verb – Object sequence and we recognize this as a correct syntax pattern, but language is not so simple. For instance, we can add another object to the end of the sentence. This becomes a three-place verb, a so-called dia-transitive verb. We now read the sentence as Subject – Verb – Indirect Object – Direct Object. For example, ‘the boy throws him the ball’. We can show the sentence in these ways:
S → NP(1) + Tran V + NP(2) + NP(3)
NP(1) transitive verb NP(2) NP(3)
(subject) (predicating verb) (indirect object) (direct object)
The boy throws him the ball
As much as we recognize the ‘S – V – O’ and even ‘S – V – iO – dO’ combinations in English syntax, we can make the sentence focus more on one of the other aspects of a sentence other than the subject. Thus, in the case of our sentence, ‘the boy throws the ball’ we can now focus our attention on the ball instead of the boy. In this case, we would end up with the syntactical sentence ‘the ball was thrown by the boy’. Using our constituent S is now separated into sub constituents where we have an active sentence that reads:
S →NP1-V-NP2
(The boy throws the ball). T
The second sentence is called ‘passive’ in grammar that reads:
S →NP2 – be + en V – by + NP1.
This rule explains the grammaticality of ‘the ball is thrown by John’ given that of ‘The boy throws the ball’.
It should be observed that ‘NP1’, ‘V’ and ‘NP2’ are the parts of the context that are treated for the application of the passive rule. The passive rule involves two applications of the ‘Move NP’ rule, one moving the subject ‘NP1’ to the ‘by’ phrase, and another moving the object ‘NP2’ to the subject position. In effect, all the elements that make the passive rule specific to transitive constructions are deleted and a simpler rule (‘Move NP’) replaces it.
The passive structure has gone through syntactic transformational and movement rules, as developed by Noam Chomsky. These rules make us look at the relationship in the hierarchical tree structure into which the words of a sentence are placed. The passive sentence ‘the ball is thrown by the boy’ contains the verb ‘throw’, which as shown before ordinarily requires a direct object. But here the object is missing from its normal position; it has been ‘moved’ to the front of the sentence. This gives us a way of shifting the emphasis and quantification of a given set of participants in an event or state. The sentences ‘The boy throws the ball’ and ‘The ball is thrown by the boy’ both express the same information about who did what to what, but one of them is a comment about the boy and the other is a comment about the ball. Similarly, sentences in which a phrase is replaced by a wh-word and moved to the front of a sentence, such as What did the boy throw?, allow the speaker to seek the identity of one of the participants in a specified event or relationship. It is important for us to recognize the movement in the sentence. Transformations thus provide a layer of meaning beyond who did what to whom; that layer emphasizes or seeks information about one of the participants, while keeping constant the actual.
As shown above we can change the sentence while still leaving the same meaning. There are a number of rule-bound transformations of words in language that can change our original simple sentence into interesting and varied utterances. Because there is an underlying and simple structure to all our sentences, we can understand each other. These are the principles of syntax. Our original mentalese sentences are transformed into something besides the simple sentence. It is our power with language that we make use out of these sentences and make varied articulations. Since those transformations are rule-bound, we can make sense of each other, even with so much creativity happening. We can end with sentence like:
It is the boy who throws the ball.
The boy is the one who throws the ball.
The ball is thrown by the boy
The object thrown by the boy is a ball.
It is the moving of the sentence while adding and taking away that shows syntax at work. At this point, we can highlight case grammar that uses semantic case analysis to find the link between syntactically distinct sentences. We can say:
(A)The boy throws the ball with his left hand.
(B) His left hand throws the ball.
We see in the sentence (A) above that ‘his left hand’ works as a direct object and as a noun in the sentence (B). The fact between these two sentences is that the relationship between ball, throws, and left hand is identical in both sentences. Case grammar allows a word to have the same semantic role, despite having a different syntactic designation.
To get a better view on a sentence, an important factor to syntax is by parsing. We do this with our original sentence, as seen in Diagram A. Parsing generally describes, a word in context, grammatically, by stating the relevant part of speech, inflection, and place within the sentence structure. It resolves (a sentence, phrase, etc.) into component parts of speech for grammatical description. We can view the sentence’s grammatical structure in Diagram A repeated below. When using parsing we find the term tree is popular among linguists. Labels are added to indicate the syntactic category of each constituent. Tree is a popular word used to describe the formation of a sentence although by reading Noam Chomsky you will hear him calling them phrase markers.
Sentence: The boy threw the ball.
Subject Noun phrase: The boy
Verb phrase: Threw the ball
Article: The/The
Noun: Boy/Ball
Object Noun Phrase: The ball
Diagram A
This declarative statement above (Diagram A) can of course be used to make a question. If we look at making this sentence a question we have to run some tests on it to find its constituents. The rules of syntax can look inside a sentence and find the parts we need to form questions. Generally, this is a good way to check our understanding of the question. We can positively say the statement “the boy throws the ball” is related to the corresponding questions, “What does the boy throw?” and “Who throws the ball?” As much as statements give information, questions are sentences that seek information. They fall into two main types, depending on the reply they expect and on how they are constructed. Yes- no questions allow an affirmative or negative reply, often just a yes or no. So, we can run some tests on the sentence ‘the boy throws the ball’ to check its constituents. For example, can a constituent stand on its own? We can ask the questions:
Question: ‘What does the boy throw?’
Possible answers -‘the ball’
but ‘ball’ and ‘the’ fail the test.
We can actually use a substitution test here where we can use ‘the ball’, our noun phrase, and replace it with the pronoun ‘it’. This reveals the answer to the question.
The boy throws the ball – The boy throws it.
We can use the substitution test again on the other noun phrases to test if a pronoun could be used instead of the noun phrase.
Possible questions: ‘What does he throw? Or ‘Who threw the ball?’; ‘Did he throw the ball?’ Or ‘Did he throw it?’, and ‘Did the boy throw it?’
So, by looking at the ‘wh’ type question, from ‘the boy throws the ball’, we can look inside the sentence and see that by moving the phrase corresponding to ‘the ball’ to the front we make the question ‘What does the boy throw?’
Most questions ask for the object of a sentence: ‘The boy throws the ball”
What does the boy throw? ANSWER = OBJECT (the ball).
Regarding the question words WHO, WHAT & WHICH, if the answer is the subject, there is no auxiliary do, does, and did and the word order is the same as a statement.
Who throws the ball? ANSWER = SUBJECT (The boy).
Now let’s look at the declarative sentence from before using two objects, ‘the boy throws him the ball’. If we were to use “Wh-Question Formation Rule” for English sentences with inirect object and direct object, we would have to use a rule like this. This uses the sentence, with a missing item X.
A. The boy throws X a ball.
We need to insert the appropriate Wh-word for the expected lexical category of the answer
B. The boy throws who a ball.
Now we need to change the form of the verb to the appropriate “does X” construction.
C. The boy does throw him a ball.
We must now use Subject-Auxiliary Inversion to form an interrogative.
D. Does the boy throw him a ball?
Finally, we can move Wh-word element to the front of the sentence
E. Who does the boy throw the ball?
There are many constituents to a sentence and it is our job to notice them. We find that there is a hierarchical structure in a sentence; there is a rank scale where the sentence is at the top then broken down into clauses then phrases and words. Phrases and clauses are what language is made of. It is by joining together these patterns that give us the power to broaden our sentences further. For broadening our sentences, we can use phrases. For example, we can add to our original sentence ‘the boy throws the ball’. If we take this sentence to be complete, we can just add on to the sentence to extend our meaning though still keeping in the confines of a complete sentence. We can now form a new sentence like ‘the boy throws the ball at the tall man’. We have now added a prepositional phrase (PP) that consists of a preposition followed by its object and its object’s modifiers.
We see that PP → P NP, a prepositional phrase consists of a preposition (at) followed by a noun phrase (the tall man). It begins with the preposition and is followed by its object, ‘man’. ‘Man’ is modified by the adjective ‘tall’.
Diagram B
We can look at this sentence and notice the appearance of the prepositional phrase at the final position. The prepositional phrase follows a noun phrase (the ball). We notice that the noun phrase (NP) obligatorily consists of a head (ball), the noun, and additional optional elements, in this case namely a determiner (the), and then followed by a prepositional phrase (PP). In the prepositional phrase in Diagram B, we can see the symbols written as:
PP → P Det A N
We see a pattern of the preposition – determiner – adjective – noun (at the tall man). The noun serves as the object of the preposition. The adjective appears between the post determiner (the) and the head of the phrase (man). Nouns such ‘man’ in Diagram B can take an indefinite number of adjectives in front of it, while keeping the meaning coherent for example, ‘the tall dark fat man’. We must not forget that the adjective usually pre-modifies the noun but also can occur as a complement, for example ‘the ball is big’.
For this sentence, (Diagram B) using syntax, we can have a myriad of prepositional phrases that follow the sentence ‘the boy throws the ball’. If we write a phrase-structure rule to get our Noun Phrase, we need a rule like this:
NP -> (Det) N (PP)
(A noun phrase consists of an optional Determiner followed by a Noun followed by an optional Prepositional Phrase).
And the rule is that a prepositional phrase consists of a preposition followed by a noun phrase. Put these together and we get:
NP -> Det N PP, PP -> P NP
Using this theory we arrive at sentences like:
The boy throws the ball – in the classroom
at the window
with his right hand
on the roof
Now following the rules above we can show how the prepositional phrase is added to the noun we can end up with a myriad of ending to the sentence ‘the boy throws the ball’. Also following our rule NP -> Det N PP, we could be cheeky and have a sentence that goes along the lines of:
‘The boy at the window in the classroom throws the ball with his right hand on the roof’.
After a moment’s thought, we can see infinity here. Specifically, we see that the appearance of the NP within the Prepositional Phrase rule and the appearance of the PP within the Noun Phrase rule will let us make infinitely long Noun Phrases (or PP’s for that matter).
We can now see we are showing syntax working in the sentences and how we are forming longer sentences that have a more complex meaning. Moreover, syntax allows us to add another clause into the sentence and read it as, ‘the boy who threw the ball is in trouble’ (Diagram C below). We have now added a relative clause, adding more information to the sentence which in this case is ‘the boy is in trouble’. If we do not want to get confused we can run some tests on the sentence to check the syntax. First, what we can find out here is; what is the subject of this sentence? In this case it is ‘the boy who threw a ball’. This is the subject of the sentence. Our next job would be to isolate the main verb from the sentence. We actually have two verbs in the sentence ‘is in trouble’ and ‘who threw the ball’. The main verb here would be ‘is’.
The next question would be to ask syntax to arrange this sentence in an order to make a yes/no question. In slightly more technical terms, we have uncovered constituent structure. Specifically, the whole string of words, the noun phrase, ‘the boy who threw the ball’ is a UNIT’. This happens to be playing the role of the subject in this sentence. “who threw the ball’ is a noun complement which in English typically comes after the head: they are post modifiers. We can recognize the noun phrase more if we replaced ‘the boy who threw the ball’ which is a constituent of the sentence, with a pronoun. In this case, we could replace the noun phrase with the pronoun ‘he’. This structure does not affect the sentence, for example ‘he is in trouble’. By the same rule we could add a real name such as ‘John is in trouble’. We move the “is” that is the main verb and place it to the left of the subject. In simple terms, constituents are groups of words that act as a single unit within a sentence.
Diagram C
As we see with these sentences we are adding to our original sentence with more information that can be added to the sentence while being kept within the confines of a sentence. We see with the example, the relative pronoun ‘who’ is always placed in the first position in the relative clause. This relative pronoun has a syntactic function as a clause element in the relative clause. The word ‘who’ connects the subject to the verb in the dependant clause. This relative clause post-modifies the noun phrase ‘the boy’. The relative clause is a syntactic construction that allows us to provide more information about the referent of the noun phrase.
It is by looking at Diagram C that we see three combinations working in the sentence; a noun phrase, a relative clause, and a prep phrase. Now, how do we turn this into a question? Transformational rules help us here and it is by parsing the sentence that we find what we need to know in the sentence. We know that the yes/no question is ‘Is the boy who threw the ball in trouble?’ but why? What we have to find is the hierarchical structure in the sentence. The first exercise to do is find the subject in the sentence. The sentence is the noun phrase with the relative clause post modifying the noun phrase. This leaves us with a noun phrase that is ‘the boy who threw the ball’ which in this sentence is the subject. This leaves us knowing the main verb in the sentence. Once we have extracted the subject we find that the verb ‘is’, is the main verb and this, we place at the front to make the yes/no question in this case.
Diagram C2 (Question)
So, our sentence is getting bigger while still keeping within a syntactic structure. We have looked at the noun phrase but now we want to add to the verb phrase (VP). The headword in the VP is the verb but as we will see the verb phrase may contain elements from different verb categories such as modal auxiliaries/inflection can, may, will etc. These inflections are used to convey various types of meaning primarily the speaker’s view in the likelihood that what he says is true. The group (inflection + verb phrase) is called ‘I bar’ to indicate that it contains other things in addition. We also see that the addition of an inflection produces an ‘IP’ (inflectional phrase).
IP → NP I (a sentence consists of a noun phrase followed by an Ibar)
I → I VP (an Ibar consists of an inflection followed by a verb phrase)
Using an inflection with the example Diagram D we can now have a sentence that reads;
The boy who threw the ball will be in trouble.
IP → The boy who threw the ball will
I → Will be in trouble
We can notice that the modal ‘will’ takes an initial position before the verb as in the parsed Diagram D, below.
Diagram D
The problem is if we wish to form a question that corresponds to the assertion ‘the boy who threw the ball must be in trouble’, what must we do? We have two verbs working in the sentence. First of all, we must first find the root, which is the subject ‘the boy who threw the ball’. The consistency test we had before shows that we have a single constitute. We could substitute ‘the boy who threw the ball’ for the pronoun ‘he’. The solution is to move the auxiliary which is immediately under the right hand of the root, Diagram E.
Diagram E
Up to this point, I have been showing complete sentences, but what if we want to join more than one sentence together. What do we do? We find that using syntax; it is also possible to extend sentences by joining together complete structures. We can take our original sentence further and classify it as multiple or compound sentence; containing two or more coordinate clauses. We can use coordination and subordination as a way to do this. Co-ordination is a relation that holds between two units of equal status, two units that are on a structural level for example:
(Clause 1) (Conj) (Clause 2)
‘The boy throws the ball and the girl catches it’.
We can recognize coordinating conjunction such as and and or. This is governed by the rule
S →X Conj X
Subordination on the other hand is the relation between two units of unequal status. In this the case of clause subordination, one of the clauses, the subordinate is rank shifted. We would have a sentence that reads:
(Clause 1) (conjunction) (Clause 2)
‘The boy who threw the ball is in trouble because it hit the man’.
Looking at these sentences, we realize that two actions happened. We can look at which came first and which second. For example, we cannot say ‘The ball hit the man and the boy threw it’. Even though this sentence is in correct syntax we are actually saying that the first action was ‘the ball hit the man’ which is not the meaning we wanted. We have recognized that there are two actions even though this does not mean that one action follows another one with the conjunction ‘and’. Take the sentence ‘I sang and I danced’, this has two actions but this could mean that I did both at the same time. This sentence can be changed to say ‘I danced and I sang’ and we would still have the same meaning.
Diagram F
Diagram G
So far we have used the sentence about the boy to make different propositions. Nearly all the sentence types illustrated so far are statements.
The boy threw the ball
The boy throws the ball at the tall man
The boy who threw the ball is in trouble
The boy who threw the ball is in trouble because it hit the man
This leads us on to a further combination of syntax by using complex coordination. We can use our complete sentences to propose a different idea. We can apply this by using a marker. This marker is provided for the first and second of the coordinated elements. Correlative conjunctions are used in pairs: either…or; neither….nor; not only….but also. When these conjunctions are employed in a sentence, they must be followed by parallel construction. For instance Diagram H with either … or which show us two alternative clauses in sentences. In the sentence below, we are now talking about a choice between two possibilities.
Diagram H = S → either S1 or S2
This generates a tree such as the following below:
Diagram H
So far I have shown how clauses and phrases work to make a sentence. Then I have shown that we can expand those by adding other sentences, but how are all these words related in the sentence to give the true meaning to be understood? For example, we interpret the sentence ‘the boy throws the ball’ as having only one meaning. The sentence is about a boy who throws a ball. Let’s look at the two new sentences (a) and (b) below. Can you see the difference in meaning?
(a) They are eating apples.
(b) They are eating apples
You would not be wrong in thinking that these two are exactly the same in meaning. As you look at each sentence their syntactic structure seems to be identical. It is their surface structure which is the same but it is the deeper structure that reveals their true meaning. It is only by parsing the sentence that we get to see the sentence and how each word is working.
See Diagram I below.
Diagram I
By looking at Diagram I we see that ‘eating’ is an adjective modifying the noun ‘apples’. The noun and adjective work as a noun phrase. It follows that the verb ‘are’ is used in the present tense, this states a fact about the ‘eating apples’. The speaker wants to give the meaning that ‘you can eat those apples because they are not cooking apples’. Now look at Diagram J.
Diagram J
Moreover, ‘eating’ in Diagram J works as a verb denoting an action with the auxiliary verb ‘are’ and is included into the verb phrase. ‘Apples’ works as a single noun phrase. The speaker wants to tell someone that those people are doing an action, which is eating.
In addition, referring back to the use of relative clauses, we can show that there are two ways in which relative clauses relates to the head noun, as can be seen from these two examples below. This is where syntax shows its ambiguities. Can you see the difference?
(C) My brother who’s abroad has sent me a letter
(D) My brother – who’s abroad – has sent me a letter.
These two sentences appear to be the same but have a different meaning (C) means that one brother, who is abroad, sent me a letter but my other brothers did not. (D), on the other hand, means that he is the only brother I have and he is abroad.
Moreover, the two sentences below can be distinguished by the verbs ‘is’ and ‘are’. In (E) we see the plural noun ‘aunts’ is followed by the plural verb ‘are’. We recognize (E) as talking about more than one aunt. Thus we are talking about many aunts that visit. In, (F) we still have the plural noun ‘aunts’ with ‘visiting’ modifying it. Although this time the singular noun ‘is’ is used which gives us a different meaning to do with an activity. ‘Visiting aunts’ is what people do. I visit my aunts and the activity is boring. This is an activity which is singular in form.
(E) Visiting aunts ARE boring.
(F) Visiting aunts IS boring.
To conclude we have seen words working in many ways to complete ideas that we have and want to put into speech. This is shown in complete sentences. I have shown that sentences can be transformed from their original. We can take a sentence and extend it to give it more meaning. I have recognized that we can look at a statement and equate it to its associated question by recognizing the components inside. This is the structure that is built up in sentences. This is shown in phrases and clauses. I feel now, I can think of sentences as a series of slots. I have noticed that all sentences are basic patterns that in most regards begin with a noun phrase in the subject slot, followed by one, two, or three slots in the predicate. I can now say that in many respects there is a mechanical basis in the brain, and all thought has a syntax, or code. So, we see that our utterances represent this internal coding by way of our common syntax. I hope that by reading this paper people will a get a clearer picture of the intricacies of syntax and come to see it in a clearer light that will enlighten the whole language acquisition experience.
References:
Steven Pinker – The Language Instinct
Noam Chomsky – http://www.chomsky.info/
On Wh Movement – http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:rQOwKdRZv6EJ:www.ling.udel.edu/bruening/Courses/2001-2/610/Lecture16.pdf+tranformational+syntax&hl=th
More Transformational Grammar – http://www.cc.gatech.edu/computing/classes/cs4344_98_winter/lec06.html
Practical English Usage – Michael Swan
Language Acquisition – http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/pinker.langacq.html
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A Study of Phonology/Syntax/Morphology
(4205 Words)
Language is one of man’s greatest abilities. It is a human instinct. Where would we be without language? Language is a complex system that is used in all its complexity in many facets around the world. The function of language is to build symbols for concepts by means of sounds. We can wonder, predict, order, and ask, from the myriad of verbal uses. One language may have various dialects, which is seen by those who use them as languages in their own right. There are about 6,000 languages spoken worldwide. These languages around the world still use the same kinds of grammar although different patterns were formed from the many races of people. This is what we come to recognize, as our own colloquial methods of using language, be it by rules or duplication of others. All known languages have words or word-like elements combined in accordance with certain rules into sentences. Nouns and verbs are the two fundamental grammatical categories that appear in all these language around the globe. Nouns and verbs are used in grammar which is the branch of language study or linguistics. It deals with the means of showing the relationship between words in use. It seems so simple to speak but underneath that simplicity marks rules that show how all the vocal sounds fall into place. It is below the surface of language that I will talk about in this paper. I will focus on syntax (order of words), morphology (the form of words), and phonology (speech sounds) which are some of the specific rules inside of language/grammar. I would like to show how language works in its fascinating way, looking at these three linguistic usages.
There are rules for grammar that, if some of us can remember, were studied at school. This is what we call prescriptive grammar that lays down rules of usage. Such prescriptions amount to a kind of linguistic etiquette that we are supposed to uphold but actually bear little to the underlying grammar that makes communications possible. On the other side, there are descriptive colloquial methods that are characterized in different dialects in conversation. ‘I seen’ or ‘I done’ may not conform to the standard of correctness demanded of cultivated speech, but these expressions cultivate a meaning. This is the study of how people communicate despite the rules. Wherever we live, in each person we are given the ability to say an endless amount of sentences that may never have been said by anyone before. Linguists study this language, their aim is to describe all the permissible patterns of combinations and formulate them as abstract rules that underlie everyday linguistic behavior. These studies notice the language’s syntax, morphology, and phonology. It is noticed that between human individuals, there can be wide differences in cognitive strategies and specifically in modes of perception or action. These differences between individuals, generalized to a language community, provide the basis for differences between the lexicons and syntaxes of different languages.
This paper will try to show how below the surface of our natural English language, lies a myriad of factors that are distinguished by linguists. For example, language was described by ‘Langacker’ who makes three fundamental assumptions: ‘that language is symbolic in nature that a linguistic community creates linguistic conventions, and that grammar is a speaker’s knowledge of linguistic conventions’. It is the linguistic community that creates language and grammar. The speaker uses sentences that are built by selecting appropriate words from their vast lexicon that are learned from his local language community. These are put in an accepted order and shaped according to morphological and phonological usages in their specific language. The rules (grammar) and word sounds (phonology) are common to the speaker and receiver. The term grammar is generally used to include syntax and morphology but may also be used in a wider sense to include rules of phonology. Grammar allows an infinite expression of ideas, makes language itself possible. A grammar is a collection of linguistic rules, which define a language.
It is the use of language that is so fascinating. We can use an infinite number of patterns from a finite amount of words. This is all molded into language. Language is a process of expressing joined and singular phonological sounds that are formulated into a meaningful expression that is understood by another. Each of the sounds is called a word. The baby first learns sounds (phonology) to make noises. Then the baby learns syntax and morphology where the language is formed into understandable words and sentences. The word-learning baby has a brain that forms all the things he sees into mental categories and lumps together objects that are of the same kind. Babies are designed to expect a language to contain words for kinds of objects and kinds of actions – nouns and verbs. There are things and kinds of things and actions out there in the world. Our mind is designed to find them and label them with words. Each person’s brain contains a lexicon of words and the concepts they stand for, in their mental dictionary. The brain stores all these remembered words/phrases. These stored words/phrases are, with time when the child grows, put into an order (syntax) that is interpretable as language.
So, what is inside language? We know it is a system of human communication using words. For people to communicate language must be put into a form that both parties understand. This involves the use of syntax. Syntax is the order of words that convey meaning collectively by their connection and relation in a sentence. Most theories of language syntax assume that words are units combined by certain rules. The simplest illustration of a parameter is the choice of Headfirst or Head last; depending on which choice is made, a language can be either SOV or SVO with many associated orderings in other aspects of syntax. In the Modern English language, the order is SVO (I love you) but in Old English, it was VS (love I). Syntax has a discrete combinatorial system, building clause and phrase structures. A clause in a sentence is a distinct part of a sentence including a subject and predicate, for example, ‘The police arrested the man’. A phrase can be any syntactic unit larger than a word and smaller than a sentence, for example, a prepositional phrase ‘in the morning’. Thus in this case we have a sentence pattern that says ‘The police arrested the man in the morning’. Sentences also have the means of embedding or subordinating one sentence within another as an included clause (e.g., “the man fell” and “we helped him”: “When the man fell we helped him”; “Tony was playing football” and “Tony broke his leg”: “Tony, who was playing football, broke his leg,” or “while he was playing football, Tony broke his leg”. Linguists break these types of sentences down, they study the elements of syntax. This is the study of the rules, or “patterned relations,”. It governs the way the words in a sentence are arranged. A characteristic of a sentence is the subject that is the important word in any sentence. In the sentence ‘the police arrested the man in the morning’, ‘the police’, is the subject of the sentence. ‘The police’ can also be said to be the noun. It is known that all languages distinguish in some way, noun-like and verb-like sentence components. Using parts of speech, we can also add adjective (relieved, dangerous, early) components that are used to designate an attribute and are added to a noun. In addition, we can use adverb (quickly) components that modify the verb. Thus we have the sentence that reads ‘ The relieved police quickly arrested the dangerous man in the early morning’. This underlies the use of syntax of the sentence working in many ways, giving it new meaning. We see in a sentence that words and morphemes are put into functional constituents such as the subject (the police) of the sentence, the predicate (arrested), the direct object (the man), and so on.
Furthermore, in the following example of using syntax, the changes to these two sentences can have different meanings from a statement to a question by simple word order change. By moving the two words you and are, the first sentence says that I am sure that you are from London, but the second show that I do not know:
1. (Statement) You are from London.
2. (Question) Are you from London?
“Syntax` is literally the arrangement of words in sentences as in the example above with the four words in each sentence. It is especially the arrangement of clauses/phrases within a sentence. It specifies the grammatical rules underlying the construction of sentences. A child can make the mistake ‘me go home’ but it is our background awareness of the rules of syntax that helps us decipher and edit out the mistakes in the utterances. Language in all its forms concerns how different words such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs are combined into clauses/phrases. These, in turn, are combined into sentences. For example, a simple sentence like I love you is assembled by the rules of syntax. In English we would not say ‘Love I you’, our rules of grammar do not follow this pattern. Syntax is at the heart of grammar. Syntactic plans require knowledge of grammar rules. A person must be able to understand an utterance from another person’s mouth. The words in the sentence are not unordered they are in a sequence that is familiar to both of them. For instance, definite articles (‘the’) come before a noun, not after (‘the car’, not ‘car the’). This means the structure in the sentence must be interpreted properly. The patterning of sentence structure can also be put in a particular ‘spin’ on reality. The use of passive syntax structure can deflect attention away from other people. For example, read these two sentences;
1. The Police beat the football hooligans.
2. The rioting football hooligans were beaten by the police
In syntax these two sentences above can be symbolized by the rule (1) N1 V N2 → (2) N2 be V + en by N1. In which N stands for any noun or noun phrase, V for any transitive verb, en for the past participle morpheme, and the arrow (→) instructs one to rewrite the construction to its left as the construction to the right. Both sentences seem to say the same information. But most people find the second sentence to be sympathetic to the police. It is the use of a different syntax, not the choice of words themselves, but the syntax that changes the meaning.
To explain these sentences more linguist Noam Chomsky came up with a theory of Transformational Generative Grammar. This is a system of language analysis that recognizes the relationship among the various elements of a sentence and among the possible sentences of a language and uses processes or rules (some of which are called transformations) to express these relationships. For example, transformational grammar relates the active sentence “The police beat the football hooligans” with its corresponding passive, “The rioting football hooligans were beaten by the police.” Although sets such as these active and passive sentences appear to be very different on the surface (i.e., in such things as word order), a transformational grammar tries to show that in the “underlying structure” (i.e., in their deeper relations to one another), the sentences are very similar.
The meaning of a sentence can also be changed by the formation of words. Inside the sentence, sounds are combined into words and parts of words into bigger words that are part of the rule system called morphology. Morphology is a combinatorial system building words. For example, in English, a suffix is used. This element is placed at the end of a word or stem to form a derivative or as an inflection (e.g. want-ed, clever-est, play-ing, kind-ly, fresh-ness). Speakers of a language make morphological changes to words that change the meaning of the sentence. For instance ‘He is the bright student’ (there could be other bright students in the class) is not the same as ‘He is the brightest student’ (he is the best in the class). These examples of building words use an adjective (bright) that can change in forms by using suffixes. They can change their form through comparative (brighter) and as shown superlative (brightest) degrees. The endings -er, -est, denoting degrees of comparison, are better regarded as non-inflectional suffixes. Likewise, we can also refer to the word, prefix, that is an element (e.g. re-write, dis-organised) placed at the beginning of a word or stem to adjust or qualify its meaning or (in some languages) as an inflection. For example ‘He is happy’ to ‘He is unhappy’. By the simple addition of the prefix ‘un’, it makes the two sentences the opposite in meaning. This is morphology at work, making these words.
Furthermore, a common instance of the morphology in practice is the past tense verbs (want+ed) and plural nouns (book+s). The examples in parentheses have morphological word inflection. English inflection indicates, as shown earlier comparatives (big, bigger, biggest), as well as third person singular present tense (I, you, we, they buy; he buys), past tense (we walk, we walked), verbals (called, calling), and plural nouns (cat, cats), Language teachers use the term ‘declension’ that is the variation of form or inflection of a noun, adjective, or pronoun. This constitutes its different cases; each of the classes into which nouns are divided on the basis of these inflections; the action of declining or of setting out in order the different forms of a noun etc. They also use the term ‘conjugation’ which is the scheme of all the inflectional forms belonging to a verb; a division of verbs according to general inflectional differences. In English, verbs can have at least 13 different roles but four forms are used in all of these. English speakers use for example:
Infinitive Verb – work
Work+s
Work+ed
Work+ing
These forms are used in their different forms with:
Present tense with subjects – she, he, it – He work+s
Past tense with all subjects– He work+ed
Present Continuous with all subjects – He is work+ing
Morphology builds complex words for past tense forms (want – wanted). A simple sentence like ‘I loved you’ uses morphological rules because the verb has been inflected to agree with the past tense rule. Inflection is the modification in the form of a word by means of affixation, vowel change, etc. In English, only nouns, pronouns, and verbs are inflected. This is the change in its formation to change the meaning. It was formerly customary to explain these as part of the verb do, as though I worked was originally I work – did. These morphological additions to the verbs and the pronunciations of them are where mistakes can happen. The child who says ‘I knowed’ is trying to form the regular past tense for verbs. The pattern past tense is mistaken because there are so many verbs in English that are inflected with the ‘ed’ ending. The sentence ‘I loved you’ has the ‘ed’ morpheme ending for past tense. The ‘ed’ ending in phonological rules is pronounced with a /d/ sound with the verb ‘love’. Furthermore, the ‘ed’ ending only has two more ways of pronouncing the ‘ed’ ending. These are the sounds /t/ (watched) and /ID/ (wanted). Morphology builds these complex words by adding to the original word.
Mostly all of the endings of verbs (wanted), nouns (cats), and adjectives (friendly) require morphological knowledge. The ‘ed’ ending is associated with regular verbs; this is different to the irregular verbs in past tense that change their form (say – said, go – went). In English, there are only 150 to 180 cases of irregular verbs. A language maven called Richard Lederer highlighted an example of verbs and all their endless pronunciation and morphological changes that sometimes do not follow patterns. He wrote a poem entitled ‘Tense Times with Verbs’:
The verbs in English are a fright.
How can we learn to read and write?
Today we speak, but first we spoke;
Some faucets leak, but never loke.
Today we write, but first we wrote;
We bite our tongues, but never bote.
Each day I teach, for years I taught,
And preachers preach, but never praught.
This tale I tell; this tale I told;
I smell the flowers, but never smold.
If knights still slay, as once they slew,
Then do we play, as once we plew?
If I still do as once I did,
Then do cows moo, as they once mid?
So, it is true that words are composed of many parts (suffix, prefix, inflection) including sound changes, some complicated as above. Words are basic units of language. A person’s brain memorizes words in all their forms in their mental lexicon. All the assembled morphological words and phrases and sentences are massaged by a set of rules into a sound pattern using pronunciation. There is an interface between the language and the mouth and ear that is called phonology. A phonological component describes the sound structure of the sentences generated by the syntactical component. Any word can be broken down into sound chunks. For instance the word ‘book’ can be broken down to a consonant phoneme in the initial position such as the /b/ in this case (i.e., what is described more technically as bilabial stop), Phonetically speaking this consonant will be at least partially voiced (i.e., there will be some vibration of the vocal cords). It will be without aspiration (i.e., there will be no accompanying slight puff of air. Following is a vowel /oo/ which can be classed as a diphthong. We then end the word with another consonant /k/ (i.e., what is described more technically as voiceless velar plosive consonant). A plosive is a stop consonant pronounced with a sudden release of air. Linguists look at all these parts of a word and find distinctions.
Moreover, In English for instance, we do not find the sound /n/ followed immediately by /g/ at the beginning of a word which is opposed to Thai which has the consonant sound /ng/ to start a word. In the English language, we can distinguish one thing from more than one, such as 1 dog (singular) and 2 dog+s (plural). Most plural nouns in English differ from the corresponding singular forms in that they have an additional final segment (2 dog+s). In the written forms of these words, it is either -s or -es (e.g., “cat” : “cats”; “dog” : “dogs”; “fish” : “fishes”). This is where the phonology of the final consonant is different. The noun+s ‘dogs’ has an /s/, at the end, the phonetic sound spoken would be a /Z/ like the initial letter in the word zoo. The plural noun actually has three phonetic sounds. The /iz/ for plural nouns like ‘bridges’ and /s/ for ‘rats’. The plural noun rule for /s/ is also seen in verbs where the 3rd person singular present simple verbs take an /s/ sound. We see verbs with /s/ like; He bats (/s/) for the cricket team, He jogs (/z/) everyday, He fishes (/iz) in the sea. But staying with nouns, there are other plural nouns in English that differ from their corresponding singular forms in other ways (e.g., “mouse” : “mice”; “criterion” : “criteria”; and so on) or not at all (e.g., “this sheep” : “these sheep”). These are examples of morphology as well as phonology change.
The combinations of sounds are put into words and then sentences. Looking at sentences, they are concerned with how different words categorized as nouns (cat), adjectives (good), verbs (go), etc are combined into clauses, which, in turn, are combined into sentences. A speaker assembles all the words and phrases and sentences that are massaged by a set of rules into a sound pattern using pronunciation. A word is a pure symbol; the relation between its sound and meaning is utterly arbitrary, a wholly conventional pairing of a sound with a meaning. ‘Dog’ means dog only because every English speaker has undergone an identical act of rote learning in childhood that links the sound to the meaning. Words are in the family of phonology; phonological objects comprise units or segments called phonemes. Phonemes are idealized units of speech in that they stand-alone and need to be combined with certain effort.
The combination of a word is usually represented as a ‘sequence’ or ‘chain’ of phonemes. Some variation in the pronunciation of these sequences could be attributed to a difference of dialect or accent. Also due to the fact that the first utterances of an English language were spoken some 5000 years ago by the nomads that roamed the South Eastern European plains. After all those years it is now spoken or learnt in nearly every country in the world. This goes to show how phonology works by looking at how words have changed over the 1000’s of years of use. For example, the short vowel /e/ under certain conditions has remained since Old English times; bedd is now bed today. On the other hand, to take a fairly simple case, the /a/ in Old English stan (stone) became about 1100 a sound like /or/ in law, in central and southern England. This is all different to the present day English ‘stone’ which uses the /o/ sound as in the word ‘go’. These days the English language is a global language and phonological changes are salient from country to country where one word can have many phonological changes. A good example is the American pronunciation as compared with that of London that is noticed to be at times somewhat old-fashioned. It has qualities that were characteristic of English speech in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The preservation of the /r/ in general American and flat /a/ in fast, path etc. were abandoned in southern England at the end of the eighteenth century. In many little ways, standard American English is reminiscent of an older period in the language due to its phonological characteristics. Most Americans pronounce either and neither with the vowel of teeth or beneath, while in Britain an alternate pronunciation is now with an initial diphthong /ai/. These words still have meaning and are understood by the people using them. There is a gradual change in word phonology that cannot be noticed as it is spoken by the masses.
So, phonology can change a word in many ways. Second language students always make the mistake of saying the past participle ‘driven’ with the /i/ from the word ‘five’. They just follow on from the pronunciation of the verb drive. So in English, we have rules but they do not always follow what we think is right. For example looking at the strangeness of phonology in practice, George Bernard Shaw showed how phonological sounds vary in the English language. You can certainly see how some students get confused.
English spelling poem
A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned at fifty-five.
To conclude, it has been shown that under the surface of the English language, there is a myriad of factors. It is true that new sentences are created from all these words into syntactic processes for communication. We can see that there is a universal grammar underlying language, with auxiliaries and inversion rules, nouns and verbs, subjects and objects, phrases and clauses, cases and agreement, and so on. It seems to suggest a commonality in the brains of speakers. It is reasonable to ask if changes in English can be predicted, there will doubtless be modifications in phonology. New words will enter the lexicon. These will take forms of verbs, nouns etc. The more people talk the more we come to realize that there are many differences even in the one language that we call English. Remember, we do not all speak like the Queen of England. The global influence will also contribute toward the narrowing of the gap in languages: advanced technological education, computer programming, machine translation, and expanding mass media. Will this alter our language? I have touched on the American influence on English. This is a scratch on the surface of one variation of the English language that has millions of other English speakers around the globe. They all have their way of speaking English, using their own syntactic, phonological characteristics. The English language is no mere historical document like the bible to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past. The English language is a living entity, not constantly buried. Shakespeare and Chaucer transformed it in their time, we may fairly hope, a future still greater than its glorious past.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Phonological constraints and morphological development
Joseph Paul Stemberger, University of Minnesota, Barbara Bernhardt, University of British Columbia
Chomsky’s Revolution in Linguistics
John R. Searle – The New York Review of Books, June 29, 1972
Vowel dominance and morphological processing
Joseph Paul Stemberger – University of British Columbia
Christine Setchell Middleton
Lind, Jensen, Sullivan & Peterson, P.A.
Short Title: Vowel Dominance and Morphology
Contact Address: Department of Linguistics
University of British Columbia
E270-1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6T 1Z1
E-mail: stemberg@interchange.ubc.ca
Grammar Puss
Steven Pinker
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html
Universal Grammar and Linguistics
by Michael Albert
Words and Rules – The Ingredient of Language
Steven Pinker
Weidenfeld and Nicolson
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The Study of Linguistics – A reflection
(964 words)
My initial thought would be to give my general view of linguistics. Therefore, linguistics is the study of human languages where within this the science examines not only the structure of language but also its use and the structure in the mind. A layman may think that a linguist, the person who is skilled in linguistics, only looks at rules and grammar but it is so much more than this. The subject takes in such fields as humanity, science, society, philosophy, and literary criticism. Language is not as routine as some may think and it is astonishing to think that language came from one source which spread across the world to create 6000 more. A learner of linguistics then would be amazed how many branches of linguistics have been created. Without language where would we be?
The first recognizable factor, I found, was the highlighting of daily use of language which has to be the main dynamic in anyone’s scaffolding of knowledge. The more any speaker uses it, the more they will be able to use their fresh available knowledge of language. Reading and writing inspire to make people more creative with their writing and speaking. This is a sensible choice to further anyone’s linguistic knowledge. This would seem straightforward. However, the path that I followed was not the one that I thought and as such, I would like to draw attention to some further points.
I felt my reading took in many factors and showed me that linguistics is a broad church. I was asked where the word ‘Santa Claus’ came from and then I remembered I read about it in a book called The Power of Babel by John McWhorter who is famous for studying creoles. In it, he speaks about how it was a Dutch word that was spoken by immigrants coming to America and following their tradition they spoke about it and Americans misheard the word to be Santa Claus. This field of study in linguistics is actually called ‘Etymology’ where it recognizes the origins of words and sees how they have changed over time. I actually picked up my old copy of The Power of Babel book because I was reading a book called Introduction to Linguistics.
One chapter in the Introduction to Linguistics book spoke about how words have changed through time. They called it variation; this means that languages take on their own route. English people especially in the northern region took the word ‘butter’ and pronounced it with the ‘er’. For me, linguistics is not just about words. Language takes on its own form and even one language like English below the surface lies a myriad of factors that are distinguished by linguists. For example, I read that language which was described by Ronald Langacker who is a founder of the field of ‘cognitive linguistics’, makes three fundamental assumptions: ‘that language is symbolic in nature, that a linguistic community creates linguistic conventions, and that grammar is a speaker’s knowledge of linguistic conventions’. This gave me a better insight into the linguistic community creating the language and grammar. The speaker uses sentences that are built by selecting appropriate words from their vast lexicon that are learnt from his local language community.
Furthermore, if we are to talk about language communities, I can think back to watching the movie Sense and Sensibility. I was faced with sociolinguistics and the use of language around 1800 in England. The pioneering sociolinguist, William Labov, recognized the value of society, cultural norms, and expectation on language. As for the film, it has a language of propriety of upper-class England. What people say and what they mean can be of different meanings. People had to behave properly and women were kept in place. There is a great scene where the daughter of the deceased father has to move to another residence where the owner speaks his mind to the disgust of the quiet and proper sisters. The movie certainly purports this as the characters are of higher social standing and speak rather eloquently.
In addition, I looked up the meaning of some of the branches of linguistics and as such, I read more about sociolinguistics. I recognised that language is seen as being used in a social context and is not this thing that is external to human beings but something that makes us who we are. We could also add the branch of linguistics called ‘historical linguistics’ which actually started around the same time as Jane Austin wrote her book. This field of study grew of philology which is the study of ancient texts and documents. Not all fields of linguistics started that long ago. The name Noam Chomsky was mentioned a few times. He is an American linguist among other positions. In the 1950s, his branch of linguistics was ‘generative grammar’ which is a particular approach to syntax. He came up with ‘universal grammar’ which highlights innate properties in the brain. This means that any person born to parents from one background (i.e. China) can easily be brought up to speak another language if they were immersed into another country (i.e. America) from an early age which means that the brain is programmed to accept speech at any level. This idea went against the behavioural idea that B.F. Skinner proposed.
In this reflection, my knowledge of linguistics took many paths and found that language works in many ways. It is interesting to see the use of language that has spread over the world and the variety of new words added. I think the main factor when studying linguistics is to take it on how it is used, not how it should be used because maybe there is no clear right or wrong way; what matters is meaning.
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