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INTD0112 Introduction to Linguistics

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INTD0112 Introduction to Linguistics Announcements INTD0112 Homework 7 due tomorrow by 4pm. Speaking of Homework 7, please solve the Introduction to first exercise assuming that the following Linguistics statement holds true (at least for this exercise): "A glottal stop is more likely to change into another stop, than vice versa.“ Lecture #21 May 3rd, 2007 Course response forms next week. Summary from Tuesday’s class But, … Whereas linguists and sociolinguists love variation, this is not the case with everyone else in Sociolinguistically, a language is a collection society in general. of dialects that are mutually intelligible, but Under the influence of prescriptive injunction and which systematically differ lexically, “purism,” one dialect in a speech community typically acquires a higher status and social phonologically, morphologically, and prestige and gets to be viewed as the “correct” syntactically. way of speaking. This is what is typically referred to as the “standard” dialect”. The remaining dialects then become nonstandard. My dialect is “more equal” than My dialect is better than yours yours–Orwell’s style Linguistically, all dialects are equal. Each is a It’s reminiscent of the situation in Orwell’s linguistic system with a lexicon and a Animal Farm: grammar. “All animals are equal, but some animals But sociopolitically and socioeconomically, are more equal than others.” dialects are, quite irrationally, not treated equally. Same here: “All dialects are equal, but some dialects are more equal than others.” 1 My dialect is better than yours Class agenda: Debunking These lucky “more equal” dialects are typically those of “prestigious” groups, and they are the ones that are typically referred to as the “standard,” “correct,” and “proper” way Ok, there is a lot of “bunk” when it comes to of speaking. the issue of standard vs. nonstandard dialects, The remaining unlucky dialects now become so we need to do some “debunking” here. “less equal” and for that they get punished by the label “nonstandard,” “substandard,” “wrong,” or “inferior” dialects. I am rich and powerful, therefore I I am rich and powerful, therefore I speak standard speak standard First, it can’t be really an accident that in every If this is the case, it would be really quite society around the world, the so-called absurd to even suggest that “standard” has standard dialect is always that of the educated, anything to do with the linguistic properties wealthy, and those in power. Have you ever that a dialect has. But this is exactly what we heard of a standard dialect spoken by the blue- hear: Standard is “more correct” and “more collar inhabitants of the impoverished southern proper”. Even “purer” and “more logical” region of a country? when the absurdity goes too far. Standard dialect and prescriptivism Standard dialect and prescriptivism Second, the so-called standard dialect is often the one Besides, what’s wrong with stranding your that conforms to the prescriptive rules in books of grammar. prepositions? Or splitting your infinitives? And do we really need to answer “Who is it?” Ok, but many of these rules were put by people some centuries ago who believed that a language’s by saying “It’s I”? grammar must be modeled on the grammar of Latin Ok, let’s expose this fallacy. Compare and Greek. After all, these are the languages of the great Classics. a. Kim and I went to the store. But we know now that this was an erroneous with assumption. So, why are some of us clinging to these prescriptive rules? b. Kim and me went to the store. Well, to keep it “standard”! Which one do you think is standard? 2 Standard dialect and prescriptivism Language change is NOT corruption Now, do the same here: Third, this whole popular fuss over “standard” a. This is a matter between Kim and I. language is fundamentally misguided. It’s based on the very bizarre idea that change is corruption. For b. This is a matter between Kim and me. some reason, people like to think that the past forms Which one do you think is standard? of language are “better” or “more correct.” Language change is neither bad nor good. It’s not progress nor decay. Language change is just that: Many standard English speakers will actually argue Change. that (a) is the correct form, through some sort of Passionate attitudes about standard language are thus hypercorrection, i.e., the act of producing rooted in an irrational attitude about language change. nonstandard forms by way of false analogy. The “standard = logical” fallacy The “standard = logical” fallacy Fourth, they tell us that using double negatives is bad. It’s illogical. Two negatives make a positive: But here’s the more serious question: Who You don’t know nothing. said that language is a logic-governed system, Ok, let’s see. anyway? That makes French an “illogical” language. Not only What’s logical about putting your wh-phrases so, it also makes Old and Middle English “illogical”: at the front of the sentence? Wouldn’t it make He never yet no villany not said more sense to leave them in situ? In all his life to no kind of creature Too many negatives there, Chaucer! The “standard = logical” fallacy The “standard = logical” fallacy And what’s logical about putting the object after the And is it better to have more vowels or less verb? Well, if it’s logical, then almost half of human vowels? languages are illogical, since they put the object before the verb. Well, let’s see. If you have more vowels, then the phonological And what is logical about this third person singular -s system of your language is more sophisticated at the end of verbs in the present tense in English? than if you have less vowels. Why have tense morphology at all? Why can’t all Really? I thought if I can do more with less, languages be like Chinese? then I am sophisticated. Isn’t economy good? 3 The “standard = logical” fallacy The “standard = logical” fallacy And what’s logical about using a dummy And in my Arabic dialect, I have all these element like “there” or “it” in sentences like pharyngeal sounds that you guys don’t have. There is a man in the room. So, what does that make me? Superman? It is obvious where this discussion is going. And am I really at a disadvantage because my language does not have object incorporation? And how about this funny Do-support rule in And is having these long polysynthetic words English? Why would a language need to have in a language like Mohawk or Eskimo good or a dummy word to form questions and negate bad? Logical or illogical? sentences? Isn’t that kind of wacky? Nonstandard means “different”: Period Linguistic Egalitarianism But this is not over yet Well, you learned a lot about human language in this course, and you now know how languages differ and how they are the same. So, you can easily see how absurd it is to try to compare languages. And it is equally absurd to The debunking continues! try to compare dialects of the same language. There is no such thing as a “better” or a “more expressive” dialect. There’s simply a “different” dialect. So, should I drop my “r” or keep it? So, … Fifth, if there’s any sense at all to these claims about It all comes down to prestige, a totally the superiority of a standard dialect, why is it that the same linguistic feature is considered standard in one nonlinguistic concept. No dialect is dialect but nonstandard in another? inherently better or worse than another. Think of r-dropping in English dialects. What do you think of the BBC announcers dropping their r’s? Brilliant. It’s the Queen’s English. RP! Dialects are just different language Now, what do you think of New Yorkers dropping varieties. And this is just another instance of their r’s? diversity. And diversity is not bad. Hmm…! Remember that r-drop was a marker of Conformity is not required. And forcing prestige when it first appeared in New England and the south. But what about now? conformity on people is a form of lunacy. 4 Some instances of lunacy: Languicide Some instances of lunacy: Banning Russian tsars banned Ukrainian, Lithuanian, France? They have an academy to regulate this Georgian, Armenian, and anything non- absurdity: “We hereby declare le parking, le Russian. weekend, and le hotdog forbidden.” Cajun English and French were banned in Not to mention all these efforts to ban the use southern Louisiana by practice if not by law. of hundreds of local village dialects, or patois, And now they want to kill Singlish and replace including those that are separate Romance it with the “Speak Good English” nonsense. languages, or even non-Romance at all (e.g., Breton). The “change-is-corruption” fallacy The “change-is-corruption” fallacy Arabic changed like every other language did, despite Arabic? In Arabic-speaking countries, Classical the efforts by Arab grammarians to keep the language Arabic has the status of a close to divine language, “pure”. obviously because of its ties to the Quran and Islam. And when it changed, the changes were systematic, not random, again reflecting the constraints that Colloquial dialects are looked upon as “corrupt” govern what is a possible human language. versions of the “standard” language, which is still used though mainly in writing. Egyptian Arabic, for instance, developed a wh-in-situ strategy for asking questions, which did not exist in But as usual, people are totally misguided and misled Classical Arabic, in what we can explain as a process by wrong ideas from prescriptive grammarians.
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