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An Introduction to Language and Linguistics This accessible new textbook is the only introduction to linguistics in which each chapter is written by an expert who teaches courses on that topic, ensuring balanced and uniformly excellent coverage of the full range of modern linguistics. Assuming no prior knowledge, the text offers a clear introduction to the traditional topics of structural linguistics (theories of sound, form, meaning, and language change), and in addition provides full coverage of contextual linguistics, including separate chapters on discourse, dialect variation, language and culture, and the politics of language. There are also up-to-date separate chapters on language and the brain, computational linguistics, writing, child language acquisition, and second language learning. The breadth of the textbook makes it ideal for introductory courses on language and linguistics offered by departments of English, sociology, anthropology, and communications, as well as by linguistics departments.
RALPH FASOLD is Professor Emeritus and past Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. He is the author of four books and editor or coeditor of six others. Among them are the textbooks The Sociolinguistics of Society (1984) and The Sociolinguistics of Language (1990).
JEFF CONNOR-LINTON is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University, where he has been Head of the Applied Linguistics Program and Department Chair. He supervises a multi-section introductory linguistics course and the pedagogical training of graduate students in the Linguistics Department. 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page ii sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder: 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page iii sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
An Introduction to Language and Linguistics
Edited by RALPH FASOLD AND JEFF CONNOR-LINTON 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page iv sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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First published 2006 6th printing 2013
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ISBN 978-0-521-84768-1 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-61235-7 Paperback
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Contents
Detailed contents vii Acknowledgments xvi
Introduction 1 Ralph Fasold and Jeff Connor-Linton
1 The sounds of language 13 Elizabeth Zsiga
2 Words and their parts 55 Donna Lardiere
3 The structure of sentences 97 David Lightfoot and Ralph Fasold
4 Meaning 137 Paul Portner
5 Discourse 169 Deborah Schiffrin
6 Child language acquisition 205 Kendall A. King
7 Language and the brain 235 Michael T. Ullman
8 Language change 275 Shaligram Shukla and Jeff Connor-Linton
9 Dialect variation 311 Natalie Schilling-Estes
10 Language and culture 343 Deborah Tannen
11 The politics of language 373 Ralph Fasold
12 Writing 401 Jeff Connor-Linton 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page vi sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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13 Second language acquisition 433 Alison Mackey
14 Computational linguistics 465 Inderjeet Mani
Glossary 493 References 519 Index 533 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page vii sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
Detailed contents
Introduction 1 Universal properties of language 1 Modularity 2 Constituency and recursion 2 Discreteness 3 Productivity 4 Arbitrariness 4 Reliance on context 5 Variability 6 The descriptive approach 7 Defining language 9 The diversity of linguistics 10 How to approach this book 11 1 The sounds of language 13 Key terms 13 Chapter preview 13 Goals 14 Articulatory phonetics 14 The tools of phonetics 14 The vocal tract 14 Articulation 17 Manners of articulation 18 Writing sounds: transcription 20 Consonants 22 Vowels 25 Suprasegmentals 28 Length 28 Tone and intonation 29 Syllable structure 30 Stress 31 Acoustic phonetics 32 Sound waves 32 Simple and complex sounds 33 Hearing 34 Measuring speech 35 Phonology 38 Phonemes and allophones 38 Phonotactics 41 Alternation and allomorphs 43 Types of phonological alternations 44 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page viii sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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Phonological theory 47 Chapter summary 49 Exercises 50 Suggestions for further reading 53 2 Words and their parts 55 Key terms 55 Chapter preview 55 Goals 56 What is a word? 56 Morphology: the study of word-structure 59 Morphemes 61 The forms of morphemes 64 Some morphological operations of the world’s languages 66 Affixation 67 Other types of affixation 66 Reduplication 69 Ablaut and suppletion 71 Tone and stress 72 Two purposes of morphology: derivation and inflection 72 Derivation 74 Inflection 80 Acquiring inflectional contrasts 90 Chapter summary 92 Exercises 93 Suggestions for further reading 96 3 The structure of sentences 97 Key terms 97 Chapter preview 97 Goals 98 Poverty of the stimulus 98 The amazing robot basketball player 98 Applying the metaphor to the structure of sentences 99 Compositionality 100 Projection 100 Merger 101 Adjunction 107 Movement and deletion 109 Grammars are finite; language is not 111 Recursion 112 The significance of recursion 113 Restrictions 113 You can do without that, but not always 113 Heavy Determiner Phrase movement 116 The Binding Theory 117 Summary 121 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page ix sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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Differences in syntax across languages 122 Head–complement order in Hindi 122 Immobile-WH-words in Thai 123 Gender in languages 123 Functional Syntax 126 A functional analysis of pronouns 126 Contrasting formal and functional analyses 128 Chapter summary 129 Exercises 131 Suggestions for further reading 135 4 Meaning 137 Key terms 137 Chapter preview 137 Goals 138 Speaker’s meaning and semantic meaning 138 Semantics 139 Fundamental semantic concepts and compositionality 140 Subjects, predicates, and arguments 141 Thematic roles and lexical semantics 143 Logical words 146 Modifiers 147 Quantification 149 Intensionality 152 Semantics summary 156 Pragmatics 1: meaning and context 157 Indexicality, context-dependency, and anaphora 157 Presupposition 158 Pragmatics 2: meaning and the intention to communicate 159 The Gricean view of meaning 159 Implicature 160 Speech acts 162 Pragmatics summary 163 Philosophical issues 163 The psychological view 163 The referential view 165 Chapter summary 166 Exercises 166 Suggestions for further reading 168 5 Discourse 169 Key terms 169 Chapter preview 169 Goals 170 Language use above and beyond the sentence 170 Data: language use in everyday life 172 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page x sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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Spoken and written discourse: a first look 175 Spoken discourse 176 Sequential and distributional analyses 177 Repair and recipient design 178 Comparing transcripts 180 Adjacency pairs 182 Participation frameworks 183 Narratives 184 Summary: spoken discourse 185 Written discourse 186 Fragmentation and integration 186 Writing to be read 187 Language functions 192 Planes of discourse 194 Participation framework 195 Exchange structure 195 Act structures 196 Information state 196 Idea structure 196 Linking together planes of discourse 197 Chapter summary 198 Exercises 199 Suggestions for further reading 202 6 Child language acquisition 205 Key terms 205 Chapter preview 205 Goals 206 Gathering data on language acquisition 206 Parental diaries 206 Observational studies 207 Experimental studies 209 The data: milestones in child language development 210 The first sounds 210 The first words 212 First sentences: morphological and syntactic development 213 Crosslinguistic and crosscultural aspects of language acquisition 219 Explaining the data 224 Behaviorism 224 Nativism 225 Connectionism 227 Social interactionism 228 What’s at stake in the child language debate? 230 Chapter summary 231 Exercises 231 Suggestions for further reading 233 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page xi sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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7 Language and the brain 235 Key terms 235 Chapter preview 235 Goals 236 The biology of the brain 236 The cerebrum 237 The cerebral cortex and its neurons 238 Cytoarchitectonics: the distribution of neurons in the cortex 238 The cerebellum, subcortical structures, and networks in the brain 241 Questions about the biology of language 242 Biological substrates: what are the biological bases of language? 242 Biotemporal dynamics: what does brain activity during language use look like? 244 Separability: do different language functions depend on different biological substrates? 244 Domain specificity: are the biological substrates of language dedicated exclusively to language? 245 Methods in the study of the biology of language 246 The lesion method 247 Hemodynamic neuroimaging 248 Event-related potentials 251 Magnetoencephalography 253 Direct brain recording and stimulation 253 Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation 254 Evidence and explanations 255 The lexicon, conceptual-semantics, and phonology 256 Syntax 264 Morphology 270 Chapter summary 273 Exercises 273 Suggestions for further reading 274 8 Language change 275 Key terms 275 Chapter preview 275 Goals 276 Languages change 276 Causes of language change 277 Articulatory simplification 277 Regularization 278 Language contact 278 Kinds of language change 280 Phonological change 281 Morphological change 283 Syntactic change 284 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page xii sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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Semantic change 284 Mechanisms of language change 285 Sound change 285 Borrowing 294 Analogy 296 Linguistic reconstruction and language families 298 The comparative method 300 Internal reconstruction 303 Historical linguistics and culture 304 Chapter summary 305 Exercises 306 Suggestions for further reading 310 9 Dialect variation 311 Key terms 311 Chapter preview 311 Goals 312 The nature of dialect variation 312 Languages, dialects, and standards 312 The regular patterning of dialects 314 Why are standards held in such esteem? 314 Why dialects? 315 Inherent variability 316 Levels of dialect variation 319 Lexical variation 320 Phonological variation 321 Morphosyntactic variation 323 Pragmatic variation 324 Shared features among dialects 324 Types of dialect variation 326 Social class and social network 326 Gender-based patterns of variation 328 Ethnicity-based variation 329 Dialect and style 332 Age-based variation and language change 333 The fate of dialect variation 334 Chapter summary 337 Exercises 337 Suggestions for further reading 341 10 Language and culture 343 Key terms 343 Chapter preview 343 Goals 344 Culturally-influenced aspects of language 344 Language, culture, and framing 347 Crosscultural miscommunication 349 Politeness and interaction 351 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page xiii sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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High-involvement and high-considerateness styles 354 Overlap 354 Back-channel cues 356 Turn-taking 357 Asking questions 360 Indirectness 361 Mutual stereotyping 362 The ritual nature of conversation 362 Language and gender 363 Complementary schismogenesis 365 Language and cultural relativity 366 Chapter summary 369 Exercises 370 Suggestions for further reading 371 11 The politics of language 373 Key terms 373 Chapter preview 373 Goals 374 Identity politics and language 374 Identity in language 375 Key concepts 375 Interpreting some of the cases 377 Language standardization 378 Minimum and arbitrary standards 380 Nonstandard language: Ebonics 381 Language issues in China and Singapore 383 The politics of standardization 385 Diglossia 385 “Languages” and “dialects” 386 The politics of languages and dialects 388 Official English 389 Language rights in the United States 391 Bilingualism 391 Bilingual maintenance: continuing immigration 392 Bilingual maintenance: group identity 393 Controlling the content of speech 395 Blasphemy and cursing 396 Hate speech 397 Chapter summary 398 Exercises 399 Suggestions for further reading 400 12 Writing 401 Key terms 401 Chapter preview 401 Goals 402 Writing and speaking 402 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page xiv sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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Types of writing systems 404 Logographic systems 405 Syllabic systems 409 Alphabetic systems 411 Consonantal alphabetic systems 414 The development of writing 416 Protowriting 416 Cuneiform 419 Egyptian hieroglyphs 421 Early alphabets 423 The consequences of literacy 425 Conservatism 425 Democratization 426 Standardization 427 Relative advantage 428 Chapter summary 429 Exercises 430 Suggestions for further reading 432
13 Second language acquisition 433 Key terms 433 Chapter preview 433 Goals 434 Theories of second language acquisition 434 Behaviorism 434 Comprehensible input and the natural order hypothesis 435 The interaction hypothesis 438 Socioculturalism 440 Universal grammar 441 Frequency-based approaches 443 Summary 445 Individual differences in second language acquisition 446 First language (L1) 446 Age 446 Gender 447 Working memory 448 Motivation 448 Context of second language learning 449 SLA processes 450 Attention 450 Developmental sequences 450 Fossilization 452 Instruction 454 Teaching methods 455 Bridging the theory–pedagogy gap 458 Task-based language teaching and learning 458 Chapter summary 459 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page xv sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
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Exercises 460 Suggestions for further reading 463
14 Computational linguistics 465 Key terms 465 Chapter preview 465 Goals 466 The computational perspective 466 Morphological processing 467 Tokenization 468 Morphological analysis and synthesis 468 Syntactic processing 471 Context-free grammars 471 Parsing 472 Part-of-speech tagging 474 Beyond context-free grammars 474 Statistical parsing 476 Semantic processing 478 Word meaning 478 Sentence meaning 479 Natural language generation 481 Probabilistic theories 482 Related technologies 484 Information extraction 485 Speech recognition 485 Speech synthesis 486 Machine translation 487 Major challenges in computational linguistics 488 Chapter summary 489 Exercises 490 Suggestions for further reading 491 0521847680pre_pi-xvi.qxd 1/11/06 3:32 PM Page xvi sushil Quark11:Desktop Folder:
Acknowledgments
Chapter 6 Child language acquisition Aaron Newman, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, David Poeppel, Brenda Rapp, Ardi Roelofs, Ned Sahin, Thanks to Donna Lardiere, Alison Mackey, and Karsten Steinhauer, Tamara Swaab, Michael Gigliana Melzi for their many helpful com- Thomas, Sharon Thompson-Schill, John van ments on this chapter, and to Rebekha Abbuhl Meter, Jill Weisberg, and particularly Matthew for excellent research and editorial assistance. Walenski, for useful suggestions and help in preparing this chapter. Chapter 7 Language and the brain This chapter was written with support from NSF Chapter 9 Dialect variation SBR-9905273, NIH R01 HD049347, and research Thanks to: grants from the National Alliance for Autism Philip Carter, North Carolina State University Research, the Mabel Flory Trust, and Pfizer, Inc. Kirk Hazen, West Virginia University The author thanks Paul Aisen, Sherry Ash, Aida Premilovac, Georgetown University Harriet Bowden, Stefano Cappa, Alfonso Ryan Rowe, North Carolina State University Caramazza, Jeff Connor-Linton, Antonio Daniel Schreier, University of Regensburg Damasio, John Drury, Ivy Estabrooke, Angela Walt Wolfram, North Carolina State University Friederici, Jennifer Ganger, Matthew Gelfand, Jordan Grafman, Yosef Grodzinsky, Gregory Chapter 14 Computational linguistics Hickok, Argye Hillis, Peter Indefrey, Edith Kaan, Amy Knight, Sonja Kotz, Alex Martin, Robbin Thanks to Jonathan Frank for comments on a Miranda, Matthew Moffa, Susan Nitzberg Lott, draft version of this chapter. 0521847680int_p1-12.qxd 1/10/06 6:34 PM Page 1 pinnacle Raj01:Desktop Folder:CUUK414-fasold-sushil:
Introduction
RALPH FASOLD AND JEFF CONNOR-LINTON
“History is universal and basic,” a history professor said during a faculty meeting, “It’s about every event that involves all people at all times and in all places.” “Yes,” observed his colleague from linguistics, “but how would you record and interpret that history without language?” Indeed, it is hard to imagine how there could even be history without language, without a means to pass a record of what has happened from one gener- ation to the next through retold stories and sagas, even before written records. Much of the history (and prehistory) of the human species con- sists of the development and adaptation of various tools to meet a broad range of needs: think of the wheel, the domestication of animals, the steam engine, computers and the internet. The development and refine- ment of these and all other tools could not have been accomplished with- out language. The human capacity for self-awareness and abstract thought is facilitat- ed by language, if not dependent upon it. The ability to transfer complex information, to discuss the meaning of events and possible outcomes of alternative actions, to share feelings and ideas – all these are impossible without language. The origins of language are shrouded in obscurity, but archaeological records suggest that communication with language emerged about 200,000 years ago. The ability for an individual to model the world for him/herself and to communicate using language was proba- bly the single most advantageous evolutionary adaptation of the human species.
Universal properties of language
Over thousands of years of evolution, the human species developed a vocal tract flexible enough to make a wide range of distinguishable sounds and the ability to perceive differences among those sounds. But most impor- tant, the human species developed the ability to use these sounds in sys- tems which could communicate meaning. No one knows just how this happened. Perhaps mental capacities that had evolved for a variety of other adaptive purposes (like fine motor hand–eye coordination) were “re-purposed” to support a complex symbolic and communicative system. Perhaps some mental capacities are exclusively dedicated to language and evolved more gradually along with the increasing complexity of human communication. Or perhaps once they reached a certain level of neurological 0521847680int_p1-12.qxd 1/10/06 6:34 PM Page 2 pinnacle Raj01:Desktop Folder:CUUK414-fasold-sushil:
2 Introduction
and cognitive complexity, the synapses of the brain “reorganized” them- selves, making the development of language possible. In any case, language is a distinctive attribute of the human species. Although languages differ in many ways, they are all made possible by the same genetic information, they are all processed by the brain in basically the same ways, and, not surprisingly, they all share certain fun- damental “design features” and structural characteristics that enable them to work the way they do. For example, although different languages use dif- ferent sets of sounds, their sounds are organized and combined according to just a few principles. If there were no shared, universal features of lan- guage, we would expect the sounds of languages and their combinations to vary randomly. Instead, the sounds of languages and their combinations are limited and systematic. Likewise, all languages follow similar constraints on how they can combine words into phrases and sentences. Understanding and explaining the properties which are universal to all languages – as well as those which vary across languages – is the funda- mental job of the linguist.
Modularity Most linguists believe that language is a modular system. That is, people produce and interpret language using a set of component subsystems (or modules) in a coordinated way. Each module is responsible for a part of the total job; it takes the output of other modules as its input and dis- tributes its own output to those other modules. Neurolinguistic studies show that different regions of the brain are associated with different aspects of language processing and, as the following chapters show, divid- ing language into modules facilitates linguistic analyses greatly. Some modules have been central to linguistics for a long time. Phonetics is about production and interpretation of speech sounds. Phonology studies the organization of raw phonetics in language in gen- eral and in individual languages in particular. Larger linguistic units are the domain of morphology, the study of structure within words – and of syntax, the study of the structure of sentences. Interacting with these modules is the lexicon, the repository of linguistic elements with their meanings and structural properties. In recent decades, philosophers have developed the formal study of semantics (the detailed analysis of literal meaning), and linguistics has incorporated and added to semantics as another module of language. Still more recently, discourse – organization of language above and beyond the sentence – has been recognized by most linguists as another important subsystem of language.
Constituency and recursion All languages are organized into constituents, allowing more complex units to enter structures where simpler ones are also possible. So we can say in English, “She sat down,” “The smart woman sat down,” “The tall, dark- haired, smart woman with the bright red sweater and pearl necklace sat down.” Being composed of constituents gives language a balance of structure and flexibility. Constituents can be replaced by other constituents, but you 0521847680int_p1-12.qxd 1/10/06 6:34 PM Page 3 pinnacle Raj01:Desktop Folder:CUUK414-fasold-sushil:
Introduction 3
can’t replace a constituent with a series of words that is not a constituent. So you can’t replace she with smart with the bright red sweater (“Smart with the bright red sweater sat down” doesn’t work). Constituents can be moved, but you can only move a complete constituent. She is very smart is possible and so is Very smart, she is, but not Smart, she is very. Being composed of constituents also allows languages to be recursive. Recursion is the property of language which allows grammatical process- es to be applied repeatedly, combining constituents to produce an infinite variety of sentences of indefinite length. Recursion is what allows some- one to expand a short sentence like He was tall into longer sentences like He was tall and strong and handsome and thoughtful and a good listener and . . . or to embed clauses, as in This is the mouse that nibbled the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built. The recursiveness of language has profound impli- cations. It means that no one can learn a language by memorizing all the sentences of that language, so there must be some other explanation for how human beings are able to learn them. The human brain is finite, but recursiveness means that it is capable of producing and understanding an infinite number of sentences.
Discreteness Another property of all languages is discreteness. The range of sounds that human beings can make is continuous, like a slide whistle. For exam- ple, you can slide from a high “long e” sound (as in feed) all the way down to a low “short a” sound (as in bat) and then slide back to a “long o” sound (as in poke) – all in one continuous glide. But all languages divide that con- tinuous space of sound into discrete, incremental territories, just as most western music divides the continuous range of pitch into discrete steps in a scale. Sounds that are discrete in one language may not be discrete in another. In English, for example, we distinguish “short a” from “short e,” so that pat and pet are different words. The same is not true in German, so German speakers have trouble hearing any difference between pet and pat. At the same time, German has a vowel that is like the English “long a,” but with rounded lips, spelled ö and called “o-umlaut.” The distinction between the vowel that is like English “long a” and this rounded vowel is responsi- ble for the meaning difference between Sehne (‘tendon’) and Söhne (‘sons’). This distinction is as easy for German speakers as the pet and pat distinc- tion is for English speakers, but it is hard for English speakers. Precisely what is discrete varies from one language to another, but all languages have the property of discreteness. Discreteness also shows itself in other modules of language, for exam- ple, meaning. The color spectrum is a clear example. Color variation is a continuum – red shades through red-orange to orange to yellow-orange to yellow and so on through the spectrum. But all languages divide the color spectrum into discrete categories, although languages differ in how they divide those continua into words. In some languages there are only two basic color terms, roughly meaning ‘light’ and ‘dark;’ others add red, yellow, and green, whereas still others, including English, have developed words for many more colors. Likewise, although the claim that Eskimos 0521847680int_p1-12.qxd 1/10/06 6:34 PM Page 4 pinnacle Raj01:Desktop Folder:CUUK414-fasold-sushil:
4 Introduction
have hundreds of terms for snow is overstated, the languages of Native Americans living in the far north do distinguish more kinds of snow than do languages which have developed to meet the needs of peoples living in warmer climates. Similarly, American English has a range of words for different types of automotive vehicles (sedan, sports utility vehicle, minivan, convertible, wagon, sports car, for example) related to the importance of the automobile in that culture. Language is composed of separate sounds, words, sentences and other utterance units. The fact that we hear speech as a sequence of individual sounds, words, and sentences is actually an incredible accomplishment (and all the more incredible for how instantaneously and unconsciously we do it). Acoustically sounds and words blend into each other. (If you have tried to learn a second language as an adult, you know how hard it can be to separate words spoken at a normal conversational pace.) Remarkably, babies only a few weeks old are able to distinguish even closely related sounds in the language of their home from each other and to distinguish the sounds that belong to the language they are learning from the sounds in other languages at a very early age. Furthermore, chil- dren in the first year or two of life learn to pick out words from the stream of speech with no instruction.
Productivity Another key feature of language is productivity. When people hear a word for the first time, they often ask, “Is that a word?” If they ask a linguist, the answer is likely to be, “It is now.” If the novel word is formed accord- ing to the morphological and phonological rules of its language and it is understandable in context, it is a bona fide word, even if it’s not found in a dictionary. Languages can systematically combine the minimal units of meaning, called morphemes, into novel words, whose meaning is nonetheless deducible from the interaction of its morphemic compo- nents. Imagine each speaker in the world coining just one new word, and you’ll have some idea of just how productive a language can be. Most of these spontaneous coinings – inspired by a particular context – are not used frequently enough to ever make it into a dictionary, but some coin- ings do become part of the lexicon because they meet a new need. Productivity is one way in which languages change to meet the changing communicative needs of their speakers. The productivity of language comes from more than just the ability of speakers to coin new words. Sentences can become indefinitely long, by adding modifiers (A great big huge beautifully designed, skillfully constructed, well-located new building . . .) or by including one sentence in another, over and over again (He said that she said that I said that they believe that you told us that . . . .). Since languages place no limits on the use of these recursive processes, all languages are potentially infinitely productive.
Arbitrariness The productivity of languages derives, in large part, from the fact that they are organized around a finite set of principles which systematically 0521847680int_p1-12.qxd 1/10/06 6:34 PM Page 5 pinnacle Raj01:Desktop Folder:CUUK414-fasold-sushil:
Introduction 5
constrain the ways in which sounds, morphemes, words, phrases, and sen- tences may be combined. A native speaker of a language unconsciously “knows” these principles and can use them to produce and interpret an infinite variety of utterances. Another fundamental property of language is its arbitrariness. With few exceptions, words have no principled or systematic connection with what they mean. In English, the first three numbers are one, two, three – but in Chinese they are yi, er, san. Neither lan- guage has the “right” word for the numerals or for anything else, because there is no such thing (Bolton, 1982: 5). Even onomatopoetic words for sounds, like ding-dong and click, that are supposed to sound like the noise they name, actually vary from language to language. The linguist Catherine Ball has created a website listing the sounds various animals make in dif- ferent languages around the world (http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ ballc/animals/dog.html). In English, for example, a dog says bow wow or maybe woof woof, but in Hindi it says bho: bho:. Greek dogs say gav and Korean dogs say mung mung. People perceive these sounds through the arbitrary “sound filters” of their respective languages, so even something as seemingly objective as a dog’s bark is in fact represented arbitrarily in language. Even the speech sounds of a language are arbitrary. English is spoken using only 36 different sounds (a few more or less, depending on how the English sound system is analyzed). But, as you will learn in detail in Chapter 1, the sounds used in English are not all the same as the sounds needed to speak other languages, nor are they put together in the same way. These 36 sounds are in turn arbitrarily represented by 26 letters, some of which stand for two or more sounds (like g in gin and in gimp) while other sounds are spelled in two or more different ways (consider c in center and s in sender or c in cup, k in kelp, and qu in quiche). The patterns into which words and sounds are arranged are also arbitrary. We know perfectly well what tax means but any English speaker knows without a doubt that there is no such word as xat. Adjectives go before nouns in English – so it’s fat man; in French nouns go before adjectives, making it homme gros. Arbitrariness is a property of sign languages as well as spoken language. Some visual signs in sign languages are iconic – they look like what they mean – but most signs give not the slightest clue to their meaning. It’s important to remember that arbitrariness doesn’t mean random- ness. It means that, for example, the sounds that one language uses and the principles by which they are combined are inherently no better or worse than those of any another language. Likewise, it means that the principles of one language for arranging words are inherently no better or worse than those of another.
Reliance on context A corollary of arbitrariness – of association between sound sequences and meanings or in the order of words in phrases – is duality. Because there is nothing about the pronunciation of the word one (transcribed phonetically – as it sounds – it would be [w