The Graduate College
A research paper handed by: Mahmud Embarak Omran
to fulfillment of the requirements of MA degree in English language
Dec. 2006
Acknowledgements
The researcher highly expresses his gratitude to his advisors: Professors: Mustafa S. Mustafa, Ibrahim M. Al-Faki and Amna Badri Graduate College, Nile Valley University, Sudan, and to Dr. Hussien R. Mahmoud, and go to all those who have, knowingly or otherwise, help to shape and materialize the notions and concepts, that have gone into this treatise: His thanks are due to The Nile Valley University Staff. Special and faithful thanks go to; Mr. Idris M. Etterkawi for his amiability, civility and acumen that has an eminent role to give the computerized shape to this work. He is also grateful to Dr. Saleh Ben Sassi and Mr. Mohammad Enwaijy and all the staff of Omar Al-Mukhtar University in Libya, in particular: Miss Iman Mansour and Mr. Jumma Abdul-Aliem. Finally, his thanks and appreciation go to The University of Gar Yonis; Faculty of Education in Baida, that has qualified him to be able to do such a work, and Mr. John Swales; The University of Aston in Birmingham, Language Studies Unit, England, who has encouraged him. Unlimited love and faithful appreciation to Mrs. M. Embarak for being patient during preparing this treatise.
The Researcher
i A Brief Abstract
On the strength of this thesis the researcher has dealt with some aspects and concepts that have an important role in the field of studying the reality and identity of English Language, commencing with a historical tracing in order to clarify the background of English Language, and touching on with the influences the invaders had acted on this language through the ages they had lived and settled in Britain. Also, there would be a brief hint on the effects those invaders had left among the speakers of this language Likewise, the attempts of some linguists to develop this language through trying to keep it strong and powerful ,are touched on through their studies. As it will be seen the effects of the political ,regional and cultural factors have acted some variations among the speakers of this language appeared through accents and some other aspects of the language such as spelling and structure. However, this language has withstood and established a strong base leading to be a universal language. So that, clarifying the differences between standard English and some other forms are to be represented. This point is supported by some obvious examples and models of the variations used commonly among the speakers of this language. Therefore, some extensions of variations used in the language either inside or outside British Isles or among the speakers of this language in different areas ,where it has been spoken as the first or the second language, are dealt with. As the mentioned variables are found in day-to-day usage of this language , the need for modern and significant routes and modes to be taught with arise and to inform the foreign learners with them, these variables must be dealt with and simplified as an attempt to give them a chance for learning English language easily and fluently.
ii An Arabic Brief Abstract
لقدتعرض الباحث يف هذه الدراسة هلوية اللغة اإلجنليزية واستهالالت تكوهنا وظهورها كلغة هلا كيان مرموق بني اللغات األخرى ، حيثثث ن هثثذه اللغثثة و تكثثع وليثثد ال ثثر واحثثد وال ةثثًت امتيثثة واحثثد بثث وثثا ت مكوااتثثا الثث ال ثثور توالثث ةيهثثا التثثدااليات الثقاةية واالوتماالية والسياسية واجلغراةية اليت كان هلا األثر الكبري يف تشكي اللغة اإلجنليزية متأثراً بآثار الغزا الذيع استوطتوا وزا ً خمتلفة مع بريطاايا يف كيااات اوتماالية وسياسية متفرد ك متها الع اآلخر ، حبيث وود مناطاً خمتلفة مع اللغة ختتلف مع متطقة إىل خرى . و يكثع للثإ إبابيثاً يف كث األحثوال حيثث د لى للثإ إىل تعثدد اللهظثات وظهثور مثا يعثري بلغثة لليثة و إ ليميثة هلثا متحدثوها متشبثني بآرائهم و ةكارهم لاولني بك السب اشر منطية لغتهم يف لاولة ملواوهة املتاةسات األخرى .اللى سبي املثثال التدما بد الغزو مع القار األوربية ووص الغزا إىل األرض ال يطااية ، كااث صثول هثاال الغثزا ختتلثف حسث االاثاه و املتطقثة الثثيت وصثثلوا متهثثا ز ةثثالغزا مثثع حتثثال وربثثا رثثدثوا بلغثثة تتفثثرد الثثع ولاثثإ الثثذيع وصثثلوا مثثع وسثثطها و وتو ثثا . وحثثاول هثثاال الغثثزا ةثرض لغثتهم وثقاةثاتم اللثى السث لكان األصثليني الثذيع و تكثع لثديهم القث والكاةيثثة ملواوهثة هثثاال الغثثزا األ ويثا . واتيظثثة املتاةسثثة القوية بني هاال الواةديع إىل بريطاايا ظهثرت اللغثة كيلثين مثع صثول التيتيثة وةراسثية وإوريقيثة و إسثكتدااةية الاالث هلثا وثذورها حىتال راا هذا مبا يعري يف اللغة اإلجنليزية بتعددية مظاهر اللغة مع هلظة وكلمات وتركيبات هلا واةر األثر والووود ذه اللغة . اسثثتمر ال ثثراث الثقثثايف واالوتمثثاالس والسياسثثس ةثثًت طويلثثة حثثىت يكثثع السثث لكان األصثثليون مثثع التغلثث اللثثى الغثثزا وإبعثثادهم الثثع بالدهم ، إالل إهنم و يستطيعوا التيلص مع آثارهم يف اللغة والثقاةة اليت هس الوالا الثذي يظهثر مثالح بوضثوح ، ومثع و وبعثد ن ظهثرت بريطاايثا كقثو صثتاالية والسثكرية اسثتطاال اشثر افولهثا يف العديثد مثع بقثاث العثاو لاولثةً اشثر اللغثة اإلجنليزيثة بثني سث لكان املتاطق املستعمر ، ووص األمر إىل متح العديد مع س لكان تلإ الس لكان اجلتسية ال يطااية كدالم وترسيخ للغة اإلجنليزية . وبالفع ااتشرت اللغة اإلجنليزية ب ور واسثعة بثني الكثثري مثع املسثتعمريع و دى للثإ إىل ظهثور وتعثدد هلظثات وديثد ومالمثح و تكثع يف م اللغة اإلجنليزية مع ب ، اتيظة ميول سياسية والر ية وإ ليمية و يسه التيلص متها و التغل الليها .وملا ظهرت حركات التحرر يف العثثاو واسثثتقل الثثدول املسثثتعمر بعثثدت مواطتيهثثا الثثذيع ملثثون اجلتسثثية ال يطاايثثة إىل بريطاايثثا وبالتثثا صثثبحوا مثثع سثثكان بريطاايثثا ومواطتيهثثا و دى للثثإ إىل تكثثون كيااثثات وديثثد داخثث احتتمثث ال يطثثال ورثثدثوا اللغثثة اإلجنليزيثثة مبالمثثح وديثثد و تكثثع معهود لدى متحدثيها األصليني مع ب . واتيظةً للمعطيات السابقة تعددت اللهظات بني متحدثس اللغة اإلجنليزية ، ب وص ألمر إىل ووود لغات لليثة )Dialects( ختتلثف مثثع متطقثثة إىل خثثرى وهثثذا مثثا دةثث الباحثثث للًتكيثثز اللثثى هثثذه االختالةثثات سثثوا ٌ كااثث باللهظثثة و يف الًتاكيثث واملظثثاهر التحوية األخرى ، وتعرض هلا لاوالً ح ر وذورها ومسبباتا وآثارها بثني متحثدثس هثذه اللغثة وكيفيثة التعامث معهثا والسثب املتاحثة للمتعلم األوتيب هلذه اللغة لكس يتكيف م هذه اللغة ، وكذلإ تعثرض الباحثث لرصثد السثب الثيت يكثع هثذا املثتعلم مثع التحثد ا وةهم مع خياطبه ا ، كما ن الملية استمالك هذه اللغة صبح تتطور وتساير التطثور العلمثس والتغثري الثقثايف ، لثذا لثزم األمثر التعرض لسب تعلم واستمالك اللغة اإلجنليزية سوا ٌ اللى املقاالد الدراسية و اتيظةً مليالطة ه اللغة . كمثثا ن الثثدور الثثذي تلعبثثه اللغثثة اإلجنليزيثثة كوسثثيلة ات ثثال وتفثثاهم بثثني الشثثعو واألةثثراد و ضثثحى يتتثثامى ويثثزداد كلمثثا ااداد الثثدد متحدثس هذه اللغة اتيظةً للسب املتاحة واملتوةر ب ور ويد وا ت ادية لتعللمها واشرها بني العديد مع ةراد احتتمعثات امليتلفثة ، حيث ن هذا االاتشثار كسث اللغثة اإلجنليزيثة مكااثة مرمو ثة وصثل ثا ألن تكثون لغثةً الامليثة تسثتيدم بشثك واسث يف الثاالت العلم وال تاالة والتظار واالت ال والتياط مدالمة برصيد ثقايف ودالم سياسس كبرييع . Contents
iii Acknowledgement ……………………………………………..……………….………… i A Brief Abstract ……………………………………….……………..………………………. ii An Arabic Brief Abstract ……………………………………..……………………… iii Contents ……………………………………….……………..…………………………………….. iv Symbols used in this work ……………………………………..…………………… xi CHAPTER ONE 1 1. Introduction ……………………………………….…………………………………….
1.1. The Background of the English Language ……………..…… 1 1.2. The Statement and the query of the problem ……………..… 1 1.3. The aims of the study …………………………….…………………………… 3 1.4. The hypothesis of the study …………………………….………………… 3 1.5. The significance of the theme …………………………….……………… 3 1.6. The limits of the study …………………………….…………………………… 3 1.7. The methodology of the research …………………………….………… 5 CHAPTER TWO 6 2. Literature View …………………………………………………….……………
2.1. How English language is influenced by the invasion 10 2.1.1. Latin influence …………………………………………………….………………………. 10 2.1.2. Scandinavian influence ………………………………………………….…………… 11 2.1.3. French influence …………………………………...……………………..……………… 12 2.1.4. Greek influence …………………………………………………..………………………. 13
2.2. The aspects of the mixed nature of English vocabulary 13
iv 2.3. Vocabulary change …………………………………………………………………… 14 2.3.1. Inner resources ……………………………………………..…………………………….. 14 2.3.2. Quotation ………………………………………………………….…………………………. 15 2.3.3. Semantic transmutation ……………………………………………………………… 16 2.4. The historical aspects of English language spelling 17 2.4.1. English Spelling Improvement ……………….….……………………………… 17 2.4.1.1. Affixes …………………………………………………..…………………………………. 19 2.4.1.2 Prefixes …………………………………………………………………………………….. 19 2.4.1.3. Suffixes …………………………………………………………………………………….. 20 2.5. Prefixes …………………………………………………………………………………………. 20 2.6. Suffixes ………………………………………………………………………………………. 22 2.7. some other difficulties in spelling selection ……………………… 25 2.7.1. Similar words …………………………………………………………………………….. 25 2.8. Rules and spelling …………………………………….…………………..…………. 27 2.8.1. Grammar …………………………………………………………………..…………………. 27 2.8.2. Spelling and pronunciation ……………………………………………………… 29 2.8.3. Designed spelling ………………………………..…………………………………..… 32 2.9. The Historical identity of the seven ages of English 32 language ………………………………………….………………………………………….
2.9.1. Pre-English (… – C AD 450) …………………………………………………… 32 2.9.2. Early Old English (450 – C 850) ……………………………………………… 33 2.9.3. Later Old English (C 850 – 1100) …………………………………………… 33 2.9.4. Middle English (C 1100 – 1450) ……………………………………………… 33 2.9.5. Early Modern English (1450 – 1750) ……………………………………… 33 2.9.6. Modern English (C 1750 – 1950) ………………………………….………… 34
v 2.9.7. Late Modern English (1950 – ….) …………………………..……………… 34 2.10. English language particular problems of bilinguals 35 2.10.1. Aspects of language situation in Wales ………………………………… 36 2.10.2. Standard English ………………………………………………..……………..……… 41 2.11. English language as a universal language …..………..………… 44 2.11.1. Who speaks English ………………………………………………..……………… 45 2.12. The accents and dialects in British Isles ……..…………………… 45 2.12.1. Kentish ………………………………………………….………………………..………… 46 2.12.2. Southern …………………………………………………….……..……………………… 46 2.12.3. Northern …………………………………………………….…………………………… 47 CHAPTER THREE 49 3. The characteristics of British English ……………………..…
3.1. The setting of British English …………………………………………… 50 3.2. The region of British English ………………………………………… 50 3.3. The social linguistic issues of British English ……… 51 3.4. Relation between social and regional accents in England 51 3.5. Some aspects of English Language beyond the British 53 Isles ………………………………………………………………………………..………………………
3.5.1. English language in North America ………………………………………… 53 3.5.2. American and Canadian English …………...………………………………… 53 3.5.3. Australian and New Zealand English ……………………..……………… 56 3.5.4. The English of India-Pakistan ……………..……………………….………….. 58 3.5.5. African English ………………………………………………………………………… 58 3.6. The future of English ………………………………………………….…………… 60
vi 3.7. International English ……………………………………………….…….………… 62 3.8. Cultural aspects ………………………………………………………………………… 63 3.8.1. Instinct and culture in language acquisition ……………………….…… 65 3.8.2. English language and social contact …………………………………….….. 65 3.9. What's meant by communication? ………………………..…………….. 67 3.9.1. The aspects of English language as an international medium 70 of communication …………………….…..…………………….…..…………………….……….
3.9.2. English language to communicate …….…..………………………….…….. 71 3.9.2.1. Between two English people …………….…..…………………….…………………. 71 3.9.2.2. Between two strangers …………….…..…………………….…………………………. 74 3.9.3. English language and medium ………..…..……………….………………….. 75 3.9.4. The problems of acquiring English Language for 77 communication …………….…..…………………….……………………………………………… 3.10. The importance of communicative competence of 80 English language speakers …………….…..…………………….………………
3.10.1. Semiotics ……………………………………………………….…………………… 87 3.10.2. Register ……………………………………………………………………………… 89 3.10.2.1. The study of register concepts ……………………………………..…….…… 91 CHAPTER FOUR 93 4. English Language variations ……………………..………………..………
4.1. Previous Studies ……………………..…………… ……………………………… 93 4.2. Where the variations come from ……………………..…………………… 94 4.2.1. By sex …………………………………………..……………………………………………… 96 4.2.2. By geographical and regional factors ……………………………….……… 99 4.2.3. By age …………………………………………………….….………………………………… 103
vii 4.2.4. By multiple negative ……………………………………………………..…………… 104 4.2.4.1 The main aspects of multiple negative …………………………………………..… 105 4.2.5. By ethnic groups ………………………………………………………………………… 106 CHAPTER FIVE 112 5. English Language acquisition ……………………………………………
5.1. Language for living and Language for learning ……………… 112 5.2. Why do we learn a foreign language? ………………………………… 117 5.3. The aspects of English language acquisition …………………… 118 5.3.1. General Introduction …………………………………………………………… 118 5.4. The child's reaction towards the language acquisition ..… 120
5.5. First language acquisition ……………………………….……………………… 122
5.5.1. First language acquisition and behaviourism ………………………….. 123
5.6. The inbred language-acquisition ability …………….……………… 128
5.7. The grammatical development of children ……………………… 129
5.7.1. Telegraph speech…………………………………………………………….…………… 129
5.7.2. The developing of declension and function words ………………… 131
5.7.3. The developing of alteration ……………………………………...……………… 134
5.7.4. Epistemic factors in the first language acquisition ………………… 137 5.7.5. To what extent has the child been affected by the 138 surroundings? …………………………………………………………………………………………
5.8. Foreign language acquisition ………………………………………………… 142
5.8.1. General concepts in second language acquisition …………………… 142
5.8.2. What's meant by second language acquisition? ………………………. 142
5.8.3. Second language acquisition as a systemic phenomenon ………. 143 5.8.4. Second language acquisition versus first language acquisition 143
viii 5.8.5. The mediation of syntax and morphology ……………………………… 144
5.8.6. Competence versus performance ………………………….…………………… 144 5.8.7. The difference between learning and acquiring second 145 language …………………………………………………………………………………………….……
5.8.8. Individual learning difference ……………………………..…………….……… 145
4.8.9. The function of the input …………………………………………………………… 148 5.9. The manners of English Language acquisition in the 151 school and community ……………………………………………………………………..
5.9.1. Learning vocabulary ………………………………………………………..………… 152
5.10. Models of actuating suspense and motivation ……….…… 153 5.11. Worthy concepts that must be regarded in vocabulary 155 learning …………………………………………………………………………………………
5.12. Some characteristics of vocabulary introducing …………… 157 5.13. Some guide-notions the choice of vocabulary can be 157 based on …………………………………………………………………………………………
5.13.1. The most common words ………………………….…………..……………… 158
5.13.2. The learner's language ……………………………………………….…………… 158
5.13.3. The learner's lack (the necessity) …………………………..…………… 159
5.13.4. The subject ambit ……………………………………………………..………… 159
5.13.5. The concerned construction …………………………………...……………… 159 5.14. The sound systems acquisition in English language 160
5.14.1. Intonation ……………………………………………………………………….………… 160
5.14.2. Stress ………………………………………………………………………………….……… 161
5.14.3. Rhythm ……………………………………………………………………………………… 163
5.15. Structure acquisition ……………………………………………………………… 163
ix 5.15.1.The relation between structure and grammar ………………………… 164 5.16. The task of official learning in foreign language 164 acquisition …………………………………………………………………………………………… 5.17. The difference between naturalistic and classroom 166 foreign language acquisition …………………………………………………………..
5.18. The structure acquisition for active use ……….…………………… 167
5.19. English grammar acquisition ………………………….…………………… 170
5.19.1. Age …………………………………………………………………………………..………… 171
5.19.1.1. The effects of age ………………………………….………………………….………… 171
5.19.1.2. The critical period hypothesis ……………………..……………….…………….… 173
5.19.1.3. The epistematic interpretation ……………………………………………………… 174
5.19.1.4. The sentimental ……………………………………….…………………….…………… 175
5.19.2. Brilliance and desire …………………………………………………..……….…… 175
5.19.3. The effects of cognitive style …………………………….…………………… 177
5.19.4. The stances and motivation …………………………….……………………… 178
5.19.5. Personality ………………………………………………………………………………… 179
The Conclusion ………………………………………………….…………………………… 181
The results and assumption of the study ………………………… 185
General Recommendation ………………………………………………………… 186
Bibliography ………………………………………………………………….………………… 188
x Symbols used in this work
1. Consonants:
// as p in peat // as t in treat // as ch in cheat // as k in kite // as b in bite // as d in date // as j in jute // as g in gate // as f in fate // as th in though // as s in site // as sh in shout // as h in hate // as v in vote // as th in that // as z in zoo // as l in late // as r in right // as w in wait // as y in yet // as m in meet // as n in neat // as ng in long
Note: For RP vowels see next page
2. Vowel
xi
// as in pit // as in pet // as in pat // as in put // as in putt // as in pot
// as in beer // as in bear // as in bird // as in bard // as in board // as in poor
// as in bee // as in bay // as in buy // as in boy // as in boot // as in boat // as in bout
xii 1. Introduction 1.1. The background of the English language English language is like other languages with which people can communicate easily. However, this communication has certain features appear throughout a collection of concepts, ideas and aspects which make this language more vivid, convenient and vital to meet and serve the speakers' needs and the requirements of communication process. Consequently, English language has passed through ages and periods which have caused somewhat of change led to a manner of developing that makes it to be spoken all over the world. Those who have been concerned with this communicative means have deemed that the concern and solicitude of language evolvement, modernization and learning it are fundamentals to make and render this language profitable and wholesome. Nowadays, we receive this language and use it in order to grant the needs and understand one another with satisfactory, intelligible and acceptable mode or manner. However, we are concerned to be learners of English language not natives of this language from the very beginning; in other words from our earlier ages. This concept makes up a justifiable concern with its history, development and its existence in our society, trying to adapt the exceptional circumstances for our new generation to learn this language and use it with an effectual and developed formula. Moreover, that the function of the language and its significance in the combination between acquaintance of information and mass communication with regard to work promenading, medical cure and common interests make the language acquaintance one of the constituents of culture and cooperation among people and nations. 1.2. The statement and the query of the problem As a matter of recapitulating the statement of the problem discussed within this work, the researcher would try to touch on with the tribulations and the foreign interventions, that English language has been 1 subjected to, during critical junctions, and how this language has struggled to be powerful. Consequently, by the end of this work it would be possible to clarify how this language has reached us with its present admissible mode, and what suggested routes that make this language accommodated to these variables to suit all the purposes in different spheres, and satisfies all those who speak it. Accordingly, the assumption that would be concerned with in this study is that; to wm[hat extant the foreign English learners can speak English fluently without regarding the data mentioned this study. 1.3. The aims of the study Consequently, the main aims of this study can be expanded extensively as follows: 1. To clarify the influences of the social and cultural permutations upon English Language. 2. Explicating, how English Language has challenged the forced alterations, that have been impacted upon it. 3. Studying of how the speakers of this language, in one community, make use of two quite distinct dialects in the moral course of their day-to-day activities which is known as some kind of bilingualism. 4. Expressing the variations existed among the native speakers of English Language. 5. Showing to what extent, English Language has been influenced by some variables such as social, cultural and regional factors. 6. Bringing into view the surroundings influences upon spoken English, in most areas, where this language has been considered to be the first or the second language. 7. Expressing the main universal standard data which interest many individuals to learn English.
2 8. Clarifying the factors which help to make English Language has this wide spreading and has become a global language, since it has an extensive usage within all the spheres of actions and fields of activities. 9. Evaluating the effects of the ethnic inclinations upon English Language‘s identity. 10. Some of these variables have stood as remarkable problems, which are considered to impede the foreign learner or speaker of English, as it would rather be presented considerably, and then present the possible routes which make it able to overcome these problems. 1.4. The hypothesis of the study The researcher presumes that the Arab Youths in the Arab world are in a low level of achieved English Language and they could deal with English language well. As a result of some factors that are found through ages. These factors such as political , cultural , and regional act as difficulties for English Language acquisition in the Arab World. To clarify the difficulties which arise according to the previous factors , the researcher hopes that this thesis will be the guide for Arab Youths to be acquainted with accesses and routs which make them be able to have a good language and use it fluently. 1.5. The significance of the theme: Thus, through these aims the significance of this study mainly arise as to inform, how to deal with and learn English language within these existed variations which are found as a result and under the risk of the foreign effects, national inclinations and cultural interventions. 1.6. The limits of the study Thus this project will concern with some concepts, aspects and knowledge that the researcher has believed they would be important enough to be regarded or acquired. He has started this study with a literature view as a
3 base of this modern language, then the function of the language, communicative competence and its acquisition. There has been marked social as well as political crises that any society or nation would have passed through. The English society – at this juncture in the history – may be liable to some critical ordeals and tribulations. Moreover, the nation would be subjected to severe political or cultural coercions which lead to a strong and effective change. As society is reflected in language, – because it is the main means to carry on culture, literature aspects and communication features – a forced alteration has impacted upon this language, and it would be the first element which would be influenced by the new change(Hoenigswold 1960:140). Wars and immigration are other factors which cause cultural permutation within the language. Those many who moved to or reached Britain from farthermost areas, specially those who have tenacitied with their customs and culture have founded an existence of new accents and dialects inside the British community, in addition to some local languages. These aspects had happened for many years, but their influences still exist up to date. For instance a study on bilingualism in one community has been made. Wales was the region where this study took place, a study of how people in one community make use of two quite distinct languages in the moral course of their day-to-day activities. The particular interest of the study in this situation in Wales is that the two languages concerned are so very different in their relative status. Likewise, there has been other regional variation in non-standard varieties either among the British society members or between those who speak and use this language outside England. These variables will be dealt within the later topics. Consequently, there are some reasons which cause these problems as the researcher mentioned before, so studying of such concepts and ideas however, makes the learners able to know how this language has reached them. To be more convinced and acquainted on the reality of English
4 language performance, such features must be studied and how these variations happened upon this language. Since this language and its aspects and features are the main theme in this work, the researcher will try to give brief historical glimpse to this language. Then he will give some justifications and excuses of why these pints have to be studied and how this language is learned. Furthermore, the functions and role which English language has had in communications would be concerned with. Consequently, there are the four chapters which form the board generalizations or assertions that are thought they are the specific materials which are intended to be supported. Although the reader feels at the first blush that these four headings are not connected but, in fact, they form an extension and a complement to each other, in other words, each chapter forms the outputs or required and necessary followed stage of the previous one. 1.7. The methodology of the research 1- the researcher followed the inductive model. As it is known in the inductive approach of researching , theory , are developed from the analysis of research data. 2- The information and research data in the present study and the illustration about English Language was drawn primarily from historical facts on English Language development. 3- The researcher hopes that this analysis of historical tracing of English Language sustains the degree of support of the data provided for the hypotheses of the study. He hopes that this degree of support is significant. 4- The qualitative approach was adapted in this study in order to spirally or hierarchically be more convinced and acquainted on the reality of English Language performance and how variations happened upon this language.
5 2. Literature View Limitation: Reasonably, so far, the need for some kind of limitation of the areas which will be covered within this study or thesis arises. These items will be mentioned successively commencing with; how English Language is influenced by the invasion, the aspects of the mixed nature of English vocabulary, the historical aspects of English language spelling, the aspects of English literature ages, English Language particular problems of bilinguals, the accents and dialects in British Isles, the characteristics of British English, variations between social and regional accents in England, some aspects of English Language variations and English Language acquisition. Moreover, this thesis will concern with some specific items that they will be limited at the beginning of each chapter. Thus, in chapter one, there are specific items which will be dealt with as: Latin, Scandinavian, French, Greek influences, vocabulary change, English spelling improvement touching on with prefixes, suffixes, and some other difficulties in spelling selection, rules and spelling, spelling and punctuation, designed spelling. In addition to the aspects of English language ages. As an example of the bilinguals problems, the aspects of language situation in Wales, Standard English Language as a universal language. Furthermore, as a result of these variables, there are some aspects arise to be dealt with as: who speaks English and how the accents such as (Kentish, Southern, Northern) are found in England. By the end of this chapter, it would be possible to clarify the effects and importance of these items on the English Language, and what are the roles of the linguists to help the speakers to have a good English. An examination of the European and some of the Asiatic languages has shown that they can be divided into several groups, the members of which resemble one another because they were derived from the same original tongue (Baugh1957:157). Thus English, with German, Dutch, Norwegian,
6 Danish…, belongs to the Germanic group of languages. All of these tongues were developed from the primitive language spoken in prehistoric times by the early Germanic tribes. Similarly, French , Italian, Spanish, Portuguese …etc – called Romance languages, because they are derived from the speech of Romans(Pyles1964:150) – are the off spring of Latin, which was one of the Italic family. Irish, Welsh, Scots, Gaelic, Manx and Breton belong to the Celtic group; while Russian, Polish, Serbian … belong to the Slavonic group. Now it is found that not only do the various members of any one of these groups of languages exhibit strong resemblances one to another, but that members of different groups also show slight marks of kinship; European languages even show likenesses to the languages of India Persia. These facts have been accounted for by assuming that there existed thousands of years ago a primitive language, called Indo-European, which was the common origin of the various groups we have described. The relationship of the various languages belonging to the Indo-European family is shown by the following (abridged) genealogical tree(Warrdhaugh1977:193). Indo-European
Germanic Italic Celtic Greek Slavonic Certain Asiatic Languages
West Germanic Scandinavian Gothic
Old English Old High German The English language was brought to Britain by the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes)who settled there in the fifth and sixth centuries. Old English (The researcher means the language spoken in England before the Norman Conquest) differed greatly from the present English language in 7 pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar; in fact, a passage of English written in the time of King Alfred is intelligible to a modern reader. Old English, like Latin and Greek, had a complicated system of inflexions; that is to say, noun, pronoun, adjectives, verbs(Pink1980:2), …etc. had many different forms according to their grammatical relationship. The vocabulary of the language was almost purely Germanic: very little borrowing from other languages had taken place. The following two examples clarify, how different old English from the modern one. In example ( I ) the verses contain a vocabulary which is not understood to modern readers. So that, the intended meaning is hardly extracted and the general intention is understood by the experienced and acquainted. Example ( I ) Bot than kerpede the kynge, sayd, kythe what ye hatten, And whi the hates aren so hote. youre hertis by-twene. If I shall deme you this day, dothe me to here, Now certys, lorde, sayde that one, the sothe for to telle, I hatt wynnere, away. that alle this werlde helps, For I leds cane lere, thrugh ledyng of witt. Vocabulary: Some words are not used nowadays. They look like idioms. Some dictionaries have not contained these words (verbs, nouns, pronouns, … etc.) for instance the following words are used in the verses above, but they can not be in modern poems. These verses are from a poem in the age of "Chaucer". The words in the poem Their suggested synonyms kerpede spoke kythe custom to ye you, the whi why deme people "G"
8 dothe does here army, army Some educated and acquainted people or experts would understand the meaning of such words throughout the text, so the learners or students who have the desire to study English literature do depend on the explanatory notes. Meaning: "Kythe what ye hatten" = make known what you are called. "If I shall deme you this day" = If I shall judge you today, causes me to hear. "I hatt wynnere, away" = I am winner, a man that all this world helps for I can teach people through leading of wit. Example ( II ):
She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of dove A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: ******* A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is singing in the sky .. Vocabulary: The two stanzas (Alxander1979:10) are selected from o modern poem. The words are clearly understood and they are used in the daily language. every word can be looked up in the ordinary dictionary. The only two words that may need concentrating on are: The word The synonym
- dwelt lived - untrodden unfrequented "little known"
9 Meaning: The simple words make it easy for most of the readers to understand the meaning. The poet described a young girl as she was very pretty shining like a star. - "Fair as a star" = very beautiful - "… among the untrodden ways" = none was like her During the last thousand years English has undergone great change, which may be classified thus: (a) Pronunciation: As this applies only to the spoken language, we may omit any consideration of it here. (b) Grammar: Most of the old English inflexions have disappeared, and the grammatical machinery has been simplified. (c) Vocabulary: Large additions to vocabulary have been made through the influence of invaders who have settled in England (Danes and Normans) and through borrowing from literary source – specially Latin and Greek. This question of the development of English vocabulary need detailed treatment. 2.1.How English language is influenced by the invasion 2.1.1. Latin influence "on English vocabulary": A. Latin began to influence English language while the English forefathers were still in their continental homes. The Germanic tribes were in contact with the outposts of Roman civilization and borrowed a few words which are still to be found in the different branches of the Germanic group of language: e.g., English words Latin words - street strata (via) - cheese caseum 11 - mint moneta B. When the English tribes came to settle in Britain, they came in contact with a people (the Britons) that had for long been part of the "Roman Empire". It is probable that the educated population of the British towns spoke a form of Latin. Certainly a large number of Latin words passed into the language of the new conquerors. Latin borrowings of this period are distinguished by their form, because the Latin spoken in Britain had undergone considerable modification: e.g., English Latin Old English Chester castra ------cowl cucullus cugele provost praepositus prafost C. In the sixth century, Christianity was reintroduced into England by Roman missionaries. As the new religion spread, the English language adapted a large number of Latin words to express new ideas connected with the faith: e.g., English Latin Old English Pop Papa ------D. In later times, especially since Revival of Learning in sixth century, (which led to wide study of Latin and Greek literature), Latin words have frequently been borrowed from the literary language. Such words have undergone little change in front in passing from the one language to the other. 2.1.2. Scandinavian influence "on English vocabulary": From the end of the eighth century to the time of Alfred, the Danes made continual raids upon the English coasts(Pink1980:4). Mercia and the southern part of North Umbria were invaded and settled by them, and the invaders, who, after overrunning Wessex, were defeated by Alfred, retired to East Anglia and settled there(Baugh1957:210). A century later the Danish King Svein invaded England, and eventually his son Cnut became king of the English. 11 These extensive Danish settlements were not without their influence on the language. Many words were borrowed by the English , such as(Pyles1964:3): skin, skill, ill, get, leg, Thursday and the forms of the third person pronoun beginning with (th) as: they, their, them, 2.1.3. French influence "on English vocabulary": It is to be noted that French influence is indirectly Latin influence, since the French language is derived from Latin; and also that a very large proportion of English vocabulary is thus, either directly or indirectly, of Latin origin: A. After the Norman conquest the French language, as spoken by the Normans, was the tongue of the ruling classes in England, and was also used largely by Englishmen. Moreover, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century much French literature was translated into English. A large number of French works were thus incorporated in English language. Classified examples are: (i) Words for the flesh of animals used for food: beef, mutton, veal, pork However, the names of animals which produce these kinds of animal flesh are of English origin; the names of the living animals: ox, sheep, calf, pig (ii) Words connected with the household: master, servant, dinner, banquet (iii) Words connected with law, government, and property: court, assize, prison, custom, rent, price (iv) Names of titles: duke, marquis, viscount, baron (v ) Military terms: battle, siege, standard, fortress (vi) Words for the remoter relationship: uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, cousin 12 B. The Norman conquerors of England spoke the French dialect of Normandy and Picardy. When the Angiven dynasty came to the throne of England in the twelfth century, the dialect of central France became the language of the court, and the incorporation of French words in English continued. Some words were borrowed twice, first from one dialect and then from the other: catch chase, warden guardian, wage gage C. In the reign of Charles II there was a close intimacy between the English and the French courts, and a knowledge of French language and literature was fashionable in England. Many French words thus passed into English, and the process has continued ever since that time. e.g., campaign, memoir, prestige 2.1.4. Greek influence "on English vocabulary": The Greek element in the English language is chiefly of modern origin, and is used mainly to express scientific ideas. New words from this source are constantly being introduced because it is very easy to coin words from Greek roots: telegraph, philology, geology, gramophone, cybernetics 2.2. The Aspects of the mixed nature of the English vocabulary As an instrument of expression, the English language has been enormously improved by its borrowings from other tongues. It surpasses most other languages in its wealth of synonymous words and hence in its power of drawing precise and subtle distinctions. Very often we have a choice between a native English word and a synonym of Latin or French origin: - almighty - omnipotent - blessing - benediction - bloom - flower; - calling - vocation; - manly
13 -virile; - womanly - feminine In the course of centuries, many of these originally equivalent terms have acquired slightly divergent meanings, and our means of expression have consequently been increased. 2.3. Vocabulary change The exposing of some vocabulary differences in the previous form, from old English, and middle English, serves as an intimation of vocabulary change. Such change occurs in a variety of many ways by: - developing the inner resources of the language - borrowing - semantic change 2.3.1. Inner resources: The inner resources of English language are used in such an action as assembling when some existing words are brought together to give a compound one as in: - strongman - highball - downgrade - bloodhound Sometimes an intricate rather than a compound word executes when a derivational affix is used on a root on which it has not been previously used as in: - disaffiliate - inflationary While back formation happens when a word is formed by removing part of it which looks like an affix, but which is not: - burgle from buglar - denote from donation However, when the speakers have the stem with complete meaning as in :
14 - when we omit the morpheme // from "pinch" it will give us another word which is "inch" and it gives another word. - when the speakers omit the morpheme // from the word "beach" it will also give them another form which is "each" and this new word has another different meaning. In other words when the speakers can create a new word with a new different meaning as a part of this word is removed. The technical term for a new creation by the previous process is a "neologism". Other procedures to produce or form new words or vocabulary items from the inner resources of the language exist. Some vocabulary items can be made by certain techniques as: abbreviations to form a defined word such as; "North Atlantic Treaty Organization". When this word is abbreviated it gives or creates a new word "NATO" which is not known or did not exist in English Language before(Wardhough1977:209). 2.3.2. Quotation (borrowing): Borrowing is an additional way of adding new vocabulary items to English Language. The speakers of this language usually have communicated with speakers of different languages. Suppose a speaker of one of these languages does not have a specific, suitable and accessible word for something in the setting or in his language, and the speaker of the other language does, the first speaker usually borrows an equivalent one from the second speaker's language. For example, the first earlier settlers in North America had contact with the "Red Indians" who had their own names for things, particular places, particularly used in the North America continent. Consequently, the settlers borrowed such words as;(Wardhaugh1977:209), Massachusetts, Oshkosh, Chicago for certain places that they did not name. The kinds of contact speakers have with each other might often be valued from the exact items that are borrowed or quoted. As we saw before many words and expressions are borrowed from French, German, Latin …etc. These resources have provided English Language with the richest vocabulary 15 items. At different times speakers of certain languages have shown noticeable resistance to borrowing words and they have preferred either to exploit native origins or resort to loan translation instead. Extracts are also compared and assimilated to different degrees, sometimes an excerpt is pronounced in an obvious foreign way for a while, however, it is usually immediately treated according to native sound patterns if it happens repeatedly and continuously. 2.3.3. Semantic transmutation: Many words inter in the language (no matter what their origin) they are subject not only to the rules of pronunciation of that language but also semantic change, that is, change in meaning. There are many different procedures of semantic change and many styles to classify changes. The researcher will try to illustrate some kinds of them as: (a) Narrowing: Some words were used to refer to more than one item, but now it refers to one particular item. For example; the word "meat". The following quotation shows that it means different kinds of food: " And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat."Wardhough1977:211) Also the word "deer", as it is known it refers to one particular animal, however, in the quotation it means more than that: "But mice and rats and such small deer have been Tom's food for seven long years .In this quotation the word "deer" refers to animal in general.
(b) Widening:
16 A word would mean or refer to a general meaning. For example; the word "bird" does not refer to a specific type of birds but to the species in general, however, "robin" refers to a specific type 2.4. The historical aspects of English Language spelling The sounds of spoken language are represented in writing by means of symbols known as the letters of the alphabet. In a perfect alphabet, every letter would be a phonetic symbol representing one sound and one only, and each sound would have its appropriate symbol. Judged by this standard, the English alphabet is obviously defective. 2.4.1. English spelling improvement: A writing system develops chiefly from attempts to standardize and innovate and from the political and educational movements rather them from the linguists process itself . The English Language spelling has had an interesting development. It was introduced in its earliest form from about the middle of the fifth century by the Angles , Saxons ,and tribes from the northern part of Germany. These invaders eventually founded kingdoms of their own ,and from the language of these Teutonic settlers developed the national tongue. As it was said , this Anglo- Saxon period , usually called ―The old English period extended until about 1100. When ‗ the Middle English period ‗ began and which continued until 1500 . Of the three English periods – old , Middle , and Modern – the middle period had the most effect on the writing system as it is known it today . There were gradual changes in spelling to correspond better with various sounds. There were sometimes several different developments of phonemes which produced striking inconsistencies in modern English spelling . From the twelfth century until well into the fourteenth century many who wrote in English were extremely proficient in French and brought many of the aspects of the French language into English . For example , they borrowed
17 the French ― ou ― to replace the English ― u ― ( as in house or found ) ; they borrowed whole words from the French (see page 18 in this treatise) . Also Greek words were borrowed during this period , (see page 19 in this treatise) and although the Greek alphabet was related historically to the Latin alphabet , it was different enough to cause some problems, as : - The Greek letters had to be represented 1 by Roman letters . - in this representation decisions had to be made about the original or altered pronunciation and spelling . - The familiar silent ― P ― at the beginning of such words as :- . psychology . pneumonia or the ― F ― sound of ― ph ― in some words such as . philosophy . sophomore can be linked to this period of borrowing from the Greek. In the latter part of the middle English period Latin loan words remained virtually unchanged , resulting in the addition of more rules to those already in use from old English and French .An interesting point concerning Latin and French during the period of development is the spelling of several English suffixes these suffixes , however often causes spelling difficulties. Today these difficulties appear through some similarities such as; ―able; and‖ "ible". These two suffixes often cause spelling difficulties, specially, for the foreign speakers today. They were the French spelling, from the Latin ― abilis ― or ― ibilis‘ , the choice of which depended on the stem vowel of the Latin verb. For these reasons , the researcher will deal with the different kinds of suffixes prefixes and affixes in English spelling pointing out that they are considered as main sources of supplying English language with more vocabulary , and give more enrichment for the English spelling . As these variables are difficult to be learned and always form some kind of
18 troublesome for the learners of this language , the researcher deems that , it is better to deal with them in order to eliminate expected misspellings . So that the need for studying spelling improvement through these variables presses as an answer to the question " why should one bother to spell correctly?" To answer , this question , is to clarify the confusion which may be caused as a result of using the affixes in general , and how these affixes enrich English spelling . First the researcher tries to give some definition of these affixes : 2.4.1.1. Affixes ( in general ) An affix is a bound morpheme that occurs before or after a base , there are two kinds , prefixes and suffixes , which the researcher will touch on in some detail. 2.4.1.2. Prefixes: Prefixes are those bound morphemes that occur before a base , as in : - import - prefix - reconsider Prefixes in English are a small class of morphemes , numbering about seventy five . Their meanings are often those of English prepositions and a verbal. 2.4.1.3. Suffixes : Suffixes are bound morpheme that occur after a base , like : - shrinkage - failure - noisy - realize - nails - dreamed Suffixes may pile up to the number of three or four , whereas prefixes are commonly single , except for the negative (un-) before another prefix . In normalizes the researchers perhaps reach the limit with four : the norm plus the four suffixes : - al - ize - er 19 - s When suffixes multiply like this , their order is fixed .As it is dealt with these variables by showing their general definitions , what difficulties they may cause for a foreign English learner . To answer such a question it had better deal with each of them a part . 2.5. Prefixes " Confusing one prefix with another is easy to do but learning not is just as easy . But how can that be … ? by becoming aware of the part that pronunciation and meaning play in adding prefixes to the beginning of words , you can overcome this confusion quickly and surely . Misspelling certain words containing the Latin prefix – ad – is also easy to do , but by learning about assimilation you can easily eliminate such misspellings". However , what kinds of prefixes that may be faced and how could the learners choose the correct prefix for particular root words ? To know how to write correctly a number of commonly misspelled words is one of the main objective . The researcher will try to clarify through this part the role of pronunciation in spelling . Then writing or choosing correct meanings for these and other troublesome prefixes is another goal that will be tried to express , and here the researcher deals with some prefixes that are similar on form but give different meanings when they are added to a root. In certain words the prefixes "dis" , and , "de" have so similar a pronunciation that it is easy to substitute one for the other . The sound of "i" in "dismiss" and "e" in "describe" is the same : the short sound of "i" Because the sound is identical , the "s" following the "e" in describe provides the prefix "dis" means apart. The prefix also means not . To dislike some one is not to like him or her . The prefix "de" has two meanings – First, it means off (or away ). For example, to descend a dollar is to take it off ( or away ).
21 Down here the researcher will try to deal with some prefixes added to a defined "root" and then we will see the differences that occur : The prefixes are: dis – de – pre – per – pro –, for example: 1- we choose the " secribe " which means an other or wither however when the prefixes - per - in - der – por, the meanings are different. prescribe means to advice for another cure: - when my cousin had a severe reaction to the new drug , the doctor prescribed another drug. describe means qualify and characterize: - I hesitate to describe him as really cleaver. inscribe means to write or mark. - They inscribed the names of the dead soldiers on a war memorial. proscribe = means to put one out of the protection of the law. - The fugitives are often proscribed from the protection of law. Moreover, these prefixes may be added to some other roots and give different meanings for example: - Even though I missed a month of school , the teachers decided to promote me. - Instructors perform duties pertaining to their professions. However, most of the spelling problems with the prefixes" mis–", " di – ", and " un–" come from forgetting that the prefix and the root are two entities. For example:
21 - The prefix " mis-" ends in "s" and the root "spell" begins with "s" when they are combined , both "s,s" must be kept , so the word will be "misspell" some other examples: - mis + state misstate - dis + solve dissolve - dis + service disservice - mis + step misstep The same procedure with the prefix "un" The prefix ends in "n" and the root begins with "n". Both "ns" must be kept: For example: - un + nerved unnerved - un + numbered unnumbered Likewise, some forms create some kind of difficulties in sound as a result of adding the prefix to the root. Some words are derived from a Latin root and the prefix is added to from a new word. When we pronounce first letter of the root doubled, but we do find the sound doubled. For example: - The prefix is "ac" and the roots are "quire" and "quaint" , when we combine them we will get: - acquire and – acquaint; the /k/ sound of "quaint" and "quire" is the same as the hard sound of "c" in the prefix. So such variables were studied to be free of the poor spelling and this a factual reason which makes me touched on to them aiming to have a learner and a speaker with no misspelling for any word for long. 2.6. Suffixes Another feature of misspelling appears through the usage of the suffixes. These items are always confused the writers. When such suffixes are met (able – ible – ary – ery – ance or – ence) how can the learner guises is "able" correct or is it "~ible?" should it be " ~ ary " or ~ ery ~ ance or ~ ence? When suffix alternatives sound alike, how can the learners tell or choose which one is right?
22 As it is known, questions like these arise daily, and without some forthcoming answers, it is difficult to spell words with these suffixes accurately. In this part the speaker will be helped to have an answer to his inquiry. For some of these elements there are rules; for others, there are only tendencies for certain vowels or consonants to take this or that ending. However, whether they are rules or tendencies, they will guide us to better spelling. During this portion the researcher will try to: - apply rules or follow tendencies in the spelling of a number of useful words with suffixes. - practice and use these words in and out of context. - identify those words that do not follow rules or tendencies. - from state definitions , recognize and write the required words. Moreover, this part will furnish a background needed for spelling other words with troublesome suffixes, aiming to stimulate the writer and speaker's curiosity about language and spelling in general: 1- Generally, If the root is a full word it will take the suffix "-able" if the choice is among them, for example, the verbs: eat drink read form or stand as complete words , so they take the suffix "-able" to form: - eatable - drinkable - readable conversely , if the root is not a full word , it will usually take "-ible" informing: - permissible - possible
23 as the bases are the permiss and poss. Because they are not complete words, the "~ible" ending is correct. 2- Complete words ending in " y " preceded by a vowel also take "-able".For instance, the verb "enjoy" when we are to add one is "-able" as: - enjoyable However, there is an acceptable exception for choosing "-ible" or "- able" with the word "rely" it is a complete word , but it ends in "y" preceded by a consonant "L". Usually words like "rely" change the "y" to "L" before a suffix beginning with a vowel so , "rely + ed" would be = "relied". Although "~ible" also begins with a vowel , adding it to "reli" would produce a peculiar looking and sounding word "unreliable" so "-able" must be added to have. - "reliable" Then we are to give one of them "~able" or "~ible" to these words: - justify - play - rectify - employ to have the previous variables in account these forms will be achieved: - justifiable - playable - rectifiable - employable 3- Also if a noun is formed by adding "~ tion" the adjective will probably be formed , by adding "~able", the adjectives from these "~ tion" nouns as: - commendation commendable - consideration considerable - admiration admirable But if the noun is formed by adding "-ion" the adjective forming probably achieved by adding the suffix "~ ible". For example: - permission permissible
24 - admission admissible - repression repressible - perfection perfectible 4- There would be a probable exception to the use of "able" that is when the word derived from the Latin verb "evitare" when it means "avoid". The derived forms would be: evitare + (suffix) evitable So far dealing with these variables , needs a close study to the tendency or rule which is used to select the correct suffix , in order to get right spelling . 2.7. Some other difficulties in spelling selection 2.7.1. Similar words : words that are similar in appearance or sound can also be confused for example the pairs: - accept - except - affect - effect are often used interchangeably when they should not be. By noting differences in spelling, sound, and particularly meaning, the learners can quickly eliminate any hesitation in choosing the right word of such a pair or set as the case may be. By the end of this part, it will be able to distinguish between alternatives by their meaning and spelling gaining the route to establish mode for spelling other confusing words. The researcher will bring some similar words side by side in a comparative mode to clarify the meaning through utterances: Access / Excess Access is a noun meaning a way of approaching or a right to enter. Excess is a noun meaning the act of going beyond since both of them are nouns and similar in sound, the learners must concentrate on the meaning to
25 choose either of them correctly. When there is a choice between them in using such a sentence: - access (not excess) is directed to the stage, while in: - what shall be done about the excess (not access) of basket-balls ? So the criterion here is the meaning not the sound to choose the world with the correct spelling. Prophecy / Prophesy In this case the situation is different because the first one is a noun and the second is a verb for example: - All were astonished by her prophecy . - He needed time to prophesy but they refused. Personal / Personnel This pair always confused the learners "Personal" is an adjective and related to something done for a person , while "Personnel" is a noun denoting to a body of people employed in an organization . For example: - He resigned for personal reasons . - The factory personnel want representative to discuss their needs. Here are some other similar pairs which often confuse the writer and lead to misspelling: - affect effect - whether weather - cede ceed (ac/ex) - stationery stationary - loose lose - quite quiet - advice advise - except accept - casual causal
26 2.8. Rules and spelling Many learners might face some problems in spelling , because of the odd manners of some aspects in English . Most of the foreign speakers used to follow some rules when deal with certain items of grammar and according to their knowledge about plural forms , adverbs , or forming nouns and adjectives , for instance they probably make mistakes in other words , they misspell words. So that what mistakes might be accrued in following fields: 2.8.1. Grammar : What are the misspelling forms that might be occurred when singular nouns are altered into plural forms? (a) Generally , the main rule denotes that if the noun ends in f , fe , ff usually , theses ( f , fe , ff ) are turned into " ves " . However, there are some nouns that they don't follow this aspect and then the speaker or writer would fall into a mistake . So these nouns have only " s " to form plural instead of " –ves ": - roof – gulf – cliff – reef – proof – chief – hoof – turf – safe – dwarf – grief – belief As it is important to spell the singular as well as the plural correctly , when the procedure is reversed , it must be a ware to the correct spilling too. (b) the same procedure would be occurred with ending " o " words . it is usually to add " es " in plural forms , however , if this rule is followed with such noun , some nouns may be misspelled . So that these words are exceptions: - - piano – photo – dynamo – magneto – kilo – memento – solo Although the " o " is not preceded by a vowel , the " s " is added without an " e " before it. (c) In cases the word ends in " c " and the suffix begins with " e ", in this case the writer might make a change of pronunciation , if he adds the " e " only , so to have a right spelling the " k " is added . For example: Traffic + er must be spelt as "Trafficker"
27 (d) some adjective end in a silent " e " ( an " e " that is not pronounced ) . In adding " –ly " to form an adverb this " e " is kept . For example the word: accurate would be accurately, however, if this rule is followed with all similar words , some words will be misspelled so that the following words considered to be an exception: - due duly - true truly - whole wholly - simple simply (e) In modern spelling if the word ending in "y" forming a long /e/ sound the "y" is dropped and /i/ is used instead , for example: - easy easily - hungry hungrily but if the "y" with the previous sound form a diphthong , the "y" would not be dropped , for example: - coy coyly - sly slyly However , in some words with this aspect (according to the modern usage) the "Y" is dropped (in some accents both of them are all right) for example :- - dry dryly or drily - shy shyly or shily (f) To most adjectives ending in /ic/ the suffix "—ally" must be added instead of "—ly" . For example : to form the adverb from the adjective "basic" the suffix "—ally" is usually added to be basically . Likewise , this rule can not fit all such words , otherwise we misspell some words because not all similar word may apply this aspect : for instance: public + ly publicly (g) Generally , words ending in silent " e ", the " e " is usually dropped before a suffix beginning with a vowel , however , if this rule is applied to all similar words , some words might be misspelled . In order to have the same
28 sound which is at the end of the root , there would be exceptions in the spelling forms that , they must be put in one's account when any suffix beginning with a vowel is added . The soft sound of " c " presents a slightly different problem . In regard to the syllables of the word and to keep the same pronunciation the previous rule can not be applied to all similar words . For example , in the word "space" ," e " must be changed to " i " not only to preserve the soft sound but also the pronunciation of the last s space + ous spacious yllable the word "space" + ous will be "spacious". So , in the following words " e " must be replaced by " i " with suffix: grace + ous gracious 2.8.2. Spelling and pronunciation If the speakers ask themselves a question like , "Is there relations between spelling and pronunciation?" To answer this question , it must be known that , the letters which are used in writing , are symbols to reflect sounds to give meanings . And this is a general aspect for all languages . So that languages are reduced to writing by means of three kinds of writing systems . Some systems , like Cherokee , use one symbol for each syllable . Others , like Chinese , use one symbol for each morpheme , the smallest segment of an utterance that carries meaning . However , most languages , including English language , use an alphabetic , that is to say , a phonetic system . This means that the letters stand for phonemes. An ideal alphabetic writing system would be one in which each letter always represented by the same letter. Such a two – way one-for-one correspondence between letters and phonemes does not exist in any standard alphabet now in general use. Of course such a phonetic system has been being used in this subject , but systems like this are used only by the relatively few who are students of language. 29 English is far from the ideal writing system , as anyone with spelling difficulties is well aware . In face , English language has twelve vowels phonemes and twenty-four consonant phonemes , thirty six in all. And to represent these thirty-six it has only twenty-six letters , of which three are superfluous . A few illustrations will reveal this inadequacy of the alphabet "a" , represents at least eight phonemes , as noun by this series: dame / / jare / 3: / pan / / father / : / ball / / pillage / i / lunar / / opera / / for the other way, from sound to letter, it is found that nearly all phonemes have form two to over a dozen spellings. In this respect the vowel phonemes are worse offenders than the consonants. Here are some ways in which the phoneme / i : / is spelled . - ee feet - e me - ae caesar - eo people - ea beat - ei deceive - oe amoeba - ie relieve - I ravince - ey key Illustrations like this make that the sound can not give a method of spelling comprehensively. This is to inform that English spelling is unpredictably capricious. However , if all English spelling were like this , it would be virtually useless as a writing system – Yet it was succeeded in representing the spoken language with English spelling ; witness the fact that most persons can read aloud with little trouble . Furthermore, when (written) words are met in reading, the speakers hear new words (specially the long ones) for the first time , the learners probably have a difficulty in writing (spell) them. Up to this point it has been seen that English spelling contains both regularities and irregularities. Robert Hall (in his excellent, sound and spelling 31 in English) divides English spellings into three groups; the regular, the semi regular, and the downright irregular. He put some kind of classification of the phonemes that have regular sounds reflected by certain letters. Equivalents in the way symbolize one or two phonemes of a word, as he used this form, the problem a raised that these spellings fall into subsets which are consistent within themselves. However, the downright irregular are relatively few. For example: 1. The sound /h/ in "who" must be preceded by the silent /w/ in spelling. 2. The sound /f/ in "elephant", "laugh", "giraffe" can not be represented by a single and individual segment or item for itself, but it is produced as a result of a combination between two items / - ph - /, / - gh /, / - ff - /. Subsets like these are manifold. However, in some case the rules shorten or decrease the possibility of misspelling words. For example: 1- One of the basic rules taught into school is "i" before "e" except after "c" a though it is often accompanied by a list of exceptions but it make less misspellings. 2- Referring to the previous example of /f/ sound, it can be said that, if a word begins with the phoneme /f/, the learners know automatically that it begins with either, /f/ or /ph/ but never with /ff/ or /gh/, so that the possibility of misspelling this morpheme would be 50%. The researcher may conclude that English spelling is far removed from an ideal phonemic system with a two-way one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, but despite the uncertain and insecure relations between spelling and pronunciation, it does have much regularity that are available to the alert writer. But, downright the pronunciation can not be solely used as an infallible guide for spelling.
2.8.3. Designed spelling
31 As the Americans are ones of its speakers, and they always tend to have their own characters to be distinguished among the other nation all over the world, they have tried to act some changes in spelling to give the English language an American mien. This is to be accented as one of the modern changes in spelling. The Americans depend on the sound in spelling of some words, so that their spelling to these words comes contrary to the usual spelling to these words. Since there are some inclinations, either political or educational the Americans have tried to give their English new identity. They have built new aspects of spelling according to the sound these words have not according to the formal and usual spelling these words usually have. The new form of spelling usually makes some kind of confusion since the writer finds different forms of spelling for one word. The following examples would clarify these renewed forms of spelling: The designed spelling The usual spelling (American form) (The British form) program programme color colour plow plough center centre lissome lissom So this is one of the problems that troubles the writer when seeking for right spelling . 2.9. The historical identity of the seven ages of English Language 1.9.1. Pre-English (--- C AD 450): This period would be up to the year (C.AD 450) which was known as "pre-English period". The main languages at that time would be local languages. The local languages in Britain at that time were supposed to be Celtic. After the Roman invasion C. 55 BC. Latin became the dominant
32 language of culture and political affairs. Many communities in Britain are bilingual from the Celtic and Latin Origin. 2.9.2. Early Old English (450 – C 850) This is the time of Anglo-Saxon invasion. Their arrival to Britain would be in the year C. AD 499 when the Romans departed. Those new settlers had brought a variety of other dialects such as Germanic dialects from the European continent. This period was distinguished of being the appearance of literature. First English literature appeared nearly after the year C. AD 700. In this period English borrowed many words from Latin through the help and efforts of the "church". (see Latin influence). 2.9.3. Later Old English (C 850 – 1100) Spacious existence of invasion and settlement from certain parts of the European continent, such as Scandinavia, appeared. In north of England the language influenced the invader's language, so in that part of England, the dialects of English became sharply influenced by Scandinavian languages. While, in south King Alfred arranged for many Latin texts to be translated. 2.9.4. Middle English (C 1100 – 1450) During the Norman conquest and Norman rule, English vocabulary and spelling then were affected by French, which became the official language in England. Educated English people from French, Latin and English origins appeared such as Chaucer. 2.9.5. Early Modern English (C 1450 – 1750) This period included some distinctive stages; the Renaissance, the Elizabethan era and Shakespeare's age. What distinguished that period, the role of the church which had an increasing influence, and also the effects of French and Latin retreating which made a room for the English language to be the language of science and governmental treatments. This age was really distinguished for many causes:
33 - Britain had a strongly commercial base and had acquired some overseas colonies. - English language has been taken to the new colonies such as America, India, Australia and some other small islands in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. - The existence of English creoles has appeared which was carried by some slave trade which carried black speakers of African languages and accents to the Caribbean and America and some parts of England which gave an arise to the variations in English language. - English language attained a typographic identity with the arise of printing works. - The first and earlier attempts to "standardized and confirmed English language" with the first efforts to have dictionaries and grammar aspects. 2.9.6. Modern English ( C 1750 – 1950) In this period Britain has become an industrial country. Britain reinforced an imperial power and this has been followed by an introducing of English language as a medium of communication and educational process in many parts of the world. During this period English became the international language of advertising and consumerism. 2.9.7. Late Modern English (C 1950 - …) Many countries that were British colonies have been independent. Many immigrants and labors have reached Britain with their ethnic identities. They brought new accents and dialects with them, also many countries used English as the first or second language. And English has become the universal language of communication and technology. However, American English arises to be the dominant world variety.
34 2.10.English Language particular problems of bilinguals As society is reflected in language, the social change can have clear effects on the language. In other words, the social change or effects can produce corresponding linguistic changes in language, and this what can be applicable to English language. More and more cultures came to Britain during centuries leaving a great deal of inherited aspects. There has been an existence of some variations in speaking English language in England. Likewise, there are some evidences to clarify the existence of these hereditaries among the English community, which English language was effected with. These effects had lead to remarkable foundation of bilinguals inside the British community. The existence of some dialects or a Gaelic has raised as a social phenomenon. Many efforts have been spent as an attempt to containment to these features. In bilingual situation certain of the arguments take on an added significance, for any realistic statement of bilingual learning and using a language must allow for the fact that the majority of bilinguals will use one of their two languages, usually the second language, mainly in its spoken forms. Certain qualifications must be born in mind, though; until very recently in Wales which it would be dealt with later. For example, some official business would be conducted only in English, because bilingual government forms were not printed. Some bilinguals, of course, will enter professions in which literacy in both languages is essential, as in some academic circles or parts of the civil service. For these and other reasons, an emphasis on racy as a prime objective must not lead to a neglect of reading and writing in the second language. In England there are certain and clear examples for the bilingual communities. These bilingual communities include Wales, Ireland, Scotland and some other regional existence of these manners; effects on the language in
35 the previous areas have been described as earlier forms. However, there is another type of bilingual community, usually of more recent development as far as it concerns the classroom today, brought about by the comparatively large mass immigration of groups from other lands with other mother-tongues. such groups are found in England particularly in large cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester. When the two types are put (early and modern forms) it will be found that some similarities between the two. They are marked, mainly because similar processes have taken place in different periods of history, but there are also features which distinguish the two, such as the more urgent need of the immigrant to learn the language of his new home. As it will be seen, the speakers dare to say that the nature of bilingual communities is a fascinating topic for discussion. It must be sufficient at this point to state that each bilingual community is unique and has its own language problems, for this reason the researcher will give some examples in order to show some of these problems. The researcher will start with the most obvious existence of them, as the first example, which is the language situation in Wales and the other varying degree of bilingualism in other parts such as Scotland, Ireland as the second example. 2.10.1. The aspects of language situation in Wales: Although bilingual community such as Wales is unique; there would be certain aspects of English language learning and teaching in Wales, which make it clear – for those who are concerned with problems of English language – that there is a finding of using two languages in Wales, as a result of the emigrant culture. In this complex situation it can be said that the teaching, learning and using of English have not received enough consideration; for Welsh, the language of the minority. Though historically the national language, has had to press its clans forcefully in order to survive and hopefully to be developed.
36 It is understandable that most attention in recent years has been given to the learning of Welsh as both first and second language, that in some places, there has been an emotional reaction against English which is strong enough to take care of itself. This attitude, however, is less than fair to the pupils who study or learn Welsh, who deserve the best methods and materials which can be devised for all their studies. English language approaches, though except in the early stages and for purposes of discussion, these can not be completely separated for they merge increasingly as the child's proficiency in English develops. The first language – in Wales – problems are equally presents in second-language work in the later junior school stages and in the secondary school, because the speakers of the second language in Wales have considerable and increasing contact outside the school with native language uses of English particularly on radio and television. The real debate, then, is between those who favour an educational policy of bilingualism with its obvious extension into the life of the principality, and those who would prefer to see English Language as the sole official language in the schools and life of Wales. Scholars deemed that, for solutions to the language problems of Wales are not to be reached by logical analysis alone. However, the gloomiest forecasts suggest that Welsh will have disappeared as a living language by the end of this century, and many who are less pessimistic are deeply concerned about the struggle for continuous and extended existence of a minority language in competition with a major language which is the native language of the majority of the population. There are some other dialects or accents in other parts of England, but they are not as strong as Welsh. These factors have been effected by some factors, (political, geographical, original, social, cultural) that they are clearly found inside the English society and they are not standard English dialects. The dialects and accents have raised as an effect of inter-relationship between
37 language and society. In other words – as a result of the above factors – some other accents and local dialects have appeared as cultural aspects of substandard forms of English. However, they are used in day-to-day English language. This second example clarifies other varieties of English language forms. Throughout this example, some common dialects in addition to many accents can create other concepts and notions that can be described as local or original polyglot and social multilingualism, (Irish, Scottish, North, South, …etc.) for instance there are some grammatical varieties as(Trudgill1979:18) North "You need your hair cutting." South "You need you hair cut" Moreover, the English speaker will be able to estimate the relative social status of the following speakers solely on the basis of the linguistic evidence given here: Speaker A Speaker B - I done it yesterday. - I did it yesterday. - He ain't got it. - He hasn't got it. - It was her what said it. - It was her that said it. If the learner heard these examples (speakers) say these things, it would be guessed that there are mistakes either in structure or in grammar. However, if the hearer is an English speaker, he would say that speaker "B" was of higher social status than speaker "A", and he would almost certainly be right. When the learner thinks deeper, first he will ask this question, "How is it that, we are able to do this sort of thing?" The answer lies in the existence of varieties of language which have come to be called "Social-Class Dialects". There are grammatical differences between the speech of these two speakers which give the clues about there social backgrounds. It is also probable, although this is not indicated on the printed page, that these differences will be accompanied by the phonetic and phonological differences, for example:
38
London Manchester Hyde Cheshire
brush // // // such // // // tough // // // put // // //
Three areas with three different forms of speaking English Language
This interesting example is due to the spread of linguistic features of the communication network, and of linguistic features from one area to another, which is therefore not dependent solely on proximity. an innovation starting in London is quite likely to reach "Bristol" before it reaches rural "Wilshire", although the later is nearer. The speech of Manchester too is in many ways more like that of London than of nearby rural Cheshire. The Manchester and London forms are not identical, but there is a regular relationship such that all London // and // vowels correspond to Manchester // vowels. In the case of Hyde forms there is no such regular correspondence. Distance, then is clearly and important factor in the spread of linguistic and bilingual forms, although in many cases social distances may be as important as geographical distance, as it has just been seen; two towns may be socially "closer" to each other than they are to the intervening stretches of countryside. Likewise, a similar kind of substratum effect can be found in the English of Scotland, which would be described as ethnic groups effects more than social ones. Most Scots today tend to think of themselves as simply "Scottish", but historically speaking they represent descendants of two distinct ethnic groups. To simply things somewhat, it can be said that "Highland Scots" were Gaels, and spoke "Gaelic", as many of them still do in the "West 39 Highlands" and on the islands of the "Hebrides", while "Lowland Scots" were English speakers(Trudgill1971:30). Now that English is spoken by nearly everyone in Scotland, this difference still survive in the time of English one can hear in different parts of the U.K. "Lowland Scots " speak either a local dialect or Scotland English with a local accent(or something in between). "Highlanders", on other hand, speak either standard Scots English (which the group as a whole initially learnt as a foreign language) or something not too far removed from this (not nearly so far from it) as the Lowland dialects, in any case while the researcher was a student in English the researcher still remembers those two speakers when the researcher was in Edinburgh. One who came from the far north said "I dinna ken," when he was asked about a place in the city. When the researcher returned to the college he asked one of the tutors about this exciting answer which was meant "I don't know,". His tutor said that there was often, however, a certain amount of substratum influence from "Gaelic" in the English spoken by "Highlanders" which might identify them as coming from the Highlands. So far it can be said that each bilingual community is unique, just as every situation in which language is used unique. This is not to deny certain similarities amongst communities, whether it is being looked at large areas and the effects of the immigrant populations. From this example, it can be seen the similarities between formal and informal English in certain areas-: British "It needs washing." Scottish "It needs washed." From the accents and speech, the speaker can be known what part of England he came from. If it is, at this point, returned to purely linguistic facts, a further distinction now needs to be made. The term "dialect" refers, strictly speaking, to differences between kinds of language which are differences of vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation. The term "accent" on the other hand refers solely to differences of pronunciation and it is often important to distinguish clearly between the two.
41 The materials which have been dealt with, so far, gave some glimpses about the backgrounds of the events that English Language has effected with, but it can be got an answer to the question, "How is English Language organised to meet the individuals' desire to communicate? ". In the following close pages the researcher will try to touch on to the effects of these varieties of accents and dialects showing the imbrications, overlap and the inter- relationships between those forms, as social phenomena. The main problem is that, each ethnic group tries to cling and cleave to their dialects, however, these dialects would not accord or correspond and harmonize with each other. This situation has not been neglected by many linguists, who have concerned with this language "English Language" as a universal and global means or medium of human communication. From the long cultural contact between those dialects, and accents, the need for one certain, specific, particular linguistic mould or form becomes important, and this is what makes the linguists insisted to have or organize a combined system or device to fulfil and suffice for the needs of those who have used this language either the natives of English Language or those who speak English as a foreign one. So they have reached to establish what has been known as "Standard English". This is particularly true the context of English in the case of the dialect known as formal English with its (R.P.) received pronunciation. 2.10.2. Standard English: In many important respects, this dialect (S.E.) is different from other English dialects and some people may find it surprising to see it referred to as a dialect at all. However, in so far as it differs grammatically and lexically from other varieties of English, it is legitimate to consider it a dialect. So standard English is that variety of English language which is usually used in print, and which is normally taught in schools and to non-native speakers learning the language. It is also the variety which is normally spoken by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other similar situations. The 41 differences between standard and non-standard, it should be noted, has nothing in principle to do with differences between formal and colloquial language, or with concepts such as "bad language". Standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants and Standard English speakers swear as much as others. (It is worth pointing this out because many people appear to believe that if someone uses slang expressions or informal turns or phrase, this means that he is not speaking Standard English.) The given examples clarify, that there are many slang or colloquial words used in Standard English and be found within English Language dictionaries also. It is often heard that they have been used in news broadcasts, moreover they have been used in printed works. Some of those words have the same meaning, either in colloquial or standard English, while others have had two meanings; that is to say, if they are used in colloquial expressions, they carry different meanings as they are used in standard forms, for instance the following two groups express this idea: A. Colloquial words used with the same meanings as they have in Standard English: B. WORDS MEANINGS (in both in slang or S.E.) - copasetic - very satisfactory - schnook - unimportant person (dolt) - copycat - imitate - schnorrer - beggar "one who wheedles others into supplying his wants" C. Some other slang words, used in Standard English but if they are used in Standard English, they carry or give different meanings: WORDS SLANG SATNDARD ENGLISH - coop - to escape from prison - a small building or housing poultry - babe - a woman/girl - a naïve/inexperienced person - bean - dollar, brain - any of several plants beating
42 - cooler - prison cell - container in which things are cooled (wine, butter … etc.) - cotton - understand/to accord - soft, white fibrous substance, round the seeds of the cotton plant … etc. The point of this example is to illustrate that in some cases, the overlap and imbrications between formal and informal language in one tongue is a social phenomenon. This point can be amplified by reference to the kinship vocabularies of other bilingual communities as what have been expressed in the previous pages. Moreover, the preceding examples illustrate the extent to which judgements concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties and features are social rather than linguistic. Because language as a social phenomenon is closely tied up with the social structure and value systems of society, different dialects and accents are evaluated in different ways. Standard English, for example, has much more status and prestige than any other English dialect. It is a dialect that is highly valued by many people, and certain economic, social and political benefits tend to accrue to those who speak and write it. The RP (received pronunciation) accent also has very high prestige, as do certain American accents. In fact the conventional wisdom of most English speaking communities goes further than this. So conventional accents are Standard English and the prestige accents that they are widely considered to be correct, beautiful, nice, pure … and so on. While many speakers and linguists specially who speak Standard English by acquisition, in other words it is not their mother tongue, consider the other non-standard, non-prestige varieties are often held to be wrong, ugly, corrupt … etc. So that most of linguists, educated people and scholars have deemed that Standard English moreover, is frequently considered to be the English language, which inevitably leads to the view that other varieties of English are some kind of variation from a norm, the divination being to laziness, ignorance or lack of intelligence.
43 The fact is, however, that Standard English is only one variety among many, although a peculiarly important one. Linguistically speaking, it can even legitimately be considered better than other varieties. 2.11. English Language as a universal language In fact there are many proposals and ideas, but no specific factor for why learning English Language. Formerly the need, or an excuse for English Language learning had not been well informed. When the world wars (I – II) ended and the strength of economy and commerce had a strong influence, the need for communication appeared. A number of converging trends were planned to spread this language, wider than the natives. These effects created a new mass of people who had the desire to speak English Language not for fun or a fashionable prestige, because of its becoming the clue to global intercourse of technology and trade. Moreover, there are some factors which helped to make English Language has its own existence as a universal language. After the Second World War an unprecedented revolution in trade and technology took place, as these items are the most important requirements of progress generated new aspects of life while demands an international language. Consequently, the coming suggested factors have played the main role to make this language the first global one: The increasing of learners number of this language all over the world. The fast develop of its linguistic learning progress. The wider existence of using this language in the international currencies, transactions and intercourse. The more comprehensive developed and cheaper arrangements for the acquisition of this language. Its accepting as a universal language of technology by businessmen for their business and the artisans who have to read the available instruction manuals in an understood language for them.
44 As the result of the British colonialism, many colonized countries had to speak this language and use it in their day-to-day correspondence and communication. The satisfaction of many nations to have it as a second language. It is accepted by many educated scholars and students whose courses are only available in English. For the previous the factors would be the answer of the question How English has become a global language. 2.11.1. Who speaks English? It should be noticed that English language does not necessary mean English English or American English. There is a great number of other formal forms of English, for there are several English-speaking countries in each of which there is a Standard English peculiar to that country. In addition to these two nations (Britain & USA) there are many speakers of English language; some of these is their official first or second language and others speak it fluently as the natives of English do, and some others speak it with some other accents or manners differ from Standard English. 2.12. The accents and dialects in British Isles As the researcher has mentioned that English language does not , necessarily , mean English English , but there are many "English" , in other words there are many who speak English language with a private or distinguished identity , which is bestow lavishly upon it as a result of cultural , social and geographical considerations or ethnic inclination . These variables beget (produced) some kind of different accents , dialects and to some extent local or regional tongues as it was seen in "the aspects of language situation in Wales", however , this example would be considered as a part of British local British . In this part I'm going to look in greater deceit at the different areas of people who, speak this language chiefly.
45 The language is always described as a living human behavioral aspect . So that language often responds the indications which speakers tend to. Through this part the researcher will touch on to these dialects: - Kentish - Northern - Southern - East-midland and west-midland 2.12.1. Kentish : This type was initially of found in the all southeastern areas of Britain , covering London and Essex , however , through the middle English time , this area was firmly dwindled (decreased) by the overstepping of the East midland dialect , specifically after London became an East midland-speaking area , in late middle English the Kentish dialect was confined to Kent and Sussex . Moreover , in the early modern period , after the London dialect had begun to replace the dialect of neighboring areas. After that time Kentish died out leaving no users , Kentish is interesting to linguist because , on the one hand its sound system shows distinctive innovations , but on the other its syntax and verb inflection are extremely conservative. 2.12.2. Southern : The southern dialect of middle English was spoken in the area west Sussex and south and southwest of the Thames . It was the direct descendant of the west Saxon dialect of old English , which was the colloquial basis for the Anglo-Saxon court dialect of old English . Southern middle English is a conservative dialect (though not as conservative as Kentish) which shows little influence from other languages , however , the most importantly was that there was no Scandinavian influence . Descendants of southern middle English still survive in the working-class country dialects of the extreme southwest of England. 2.12.3. Northern :
46 In compare with these southernmost dialects Northern middle English developed swiftly ; the declension system of its nouns and verbs were already sharply diminished by 1300 , and its syntax is also romantic. These developments were probably the result of Scandinavian effect . In the aftereffect of the great Scandinavian invasions of the 870's , large numbers of Scandinavian families settled in northern and northeastern England . when the supporters of king Alfred the Great of Wessex re- conquered those areas, the Scandinavian settlers , who spoke Old Norse , were obliged to learn Old English . however , in some areas their settlements had so completely displaced the preexisting English settlements that they can not have had sufficient contact with native speakers of Old English to learn the language well . they learned it badly , carrying over into their English various features of Norse , and also producing a simplified syntax that was nether good English nor good Norse . Those developments can be clearly seen in a few late Old English documents from the region such as the glosses on the Lindisfarne Gospels (ca.950) and the Albdrough sundial ( late 11Th century ) . None of this would have mattered for the development of English as whole if the speakers of this " Norsified English " had been powerless peasants , but they were not . most free holding farmers , and in many no rather Districts they constituted the local power structure-thus their bad English became the local prestige norm , survived , an eventually began to spread much later . East-Midland and West-Midland The East-Midland and West-Midland dialects of Middle English are intermediate between the Northern and Southern/Kentish extremes. In the West Midlands there is a gradation of dialect peculiarities from Northern to Southern as one moves from Lancashire to Cheshire and then down the Severn valley. This dialect has left modern descendants in the working- class country dialects of the area. The East-Midland dialect is much more interesting. The
47 northern parts of its dialect area were also an area of heavy Scandinavian settlement, so that northern East-Midland Middle English shows the same kinds of rapid development as its Northern neighbor. But the sub dialect boundaries within East-Midland were far from static: the more northerly variety spread steadily southward, extending the influence of Scandinavianzed English long after the Scandinavian population had been totally assimilated. In the 13th century this part of England, especially Norfolk and Suffolk, began to outstrip the rest of the country in prosperity and population because of the excellence of its agriculture, and - crucially - increasing numbers of well-to-do speakers of East-Midland began to move to London, bringing their dialect with them. By the second half of the 14th century the dialect of London and the area immediately to the northeast, which had once been Kentish, was thoroughly East-Midland, and a rather Scandinavian zed East Midland at that. Since the London dialect steadily gained in prestige from that time on and began to develop into a literary standard, the northern, Scandinavian zed variety of East-Midland became the basis of standard Modern English. For that reason, East-Midland is by far the most important dialect of Middle English for the subsequent development of the language.
Limitation: So far, the accents and dialects are touched on as general concepts. In this chapter the researcher thinks that it would rather give the characteristics of British English specifically. So that the following (mentioned) items (fields) will be dealt with as: relation between social and regional accents in England. As this language is spoken in different areas in addition to England, the situation requires to deal, English aspect beyond the British Isles; in North America, Canadian English, Australian and New Zealand English, English in India and Pakistan. However, the African English is more impressive and distinguished. There are some other topics that they are important enough to 48 be touched on such as: the future of English, international English. Some other variables which have an influence on this language like; cultural aspects, English and social contact. This subject leads to a need for mention something about communication like; the aspects of English as an international medium of communication, English Language to communicate, English Language and medium, the main problems of acquiring English for communicating. Also there are some other fields that have a relation with the previous fields as; the importance of communicative competence with a brief hint to the roles of register, semiotics in communication. By the end of this chapter, the difference of speaking English in the areas where this language is spoken will be clarified and the aspects of communication and the manners of speaking it between the speakers will be clarified too. 3. The characteristics of British English consequently , the dialects in the British Isles cover all the parts of Great Britain , but not all the countries , where English Language has been spoken so that British English dialects do not sand for all English language dialects existed all over the world . through the following thoughts the researcher will try to discuss the main characteristics of British English accents and dialects.
3.1. The setting of British English: The size of the British Isles often leads people to assume that the language spoken in its countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland is somewhat homogeneous and first time visitors are often surprised to find that they have difficulty in understanding the accents and dialects of certain regions. Even within the country of England alone there is great diversity of dialect both regionally and socially, believes that for the majority of English people "where they are from" is very important to them. Accents are clues to where people were born and where they grew up. Although some people may change the way they speak during their lifetimes, most people "carry at least some 49 trace" of their accent and dialect origins throughout their lives: In addition to the regional accents of England, there can also be class differences reflected in the different accents. 3.2. The region of British English: The term "British English" can occasionally be confusing depending upon the regions included by the term British. (See note I for .further explanation) For the purpose of this project the current study of British English will concentrate on dialects and accents found within the country or England itself and will not include those found in Scotland, Wales. Northern Ireland and Ireland. Although there is an abundance of different dialects within England that can be referred to as "northern" or "southern" for example, they do not really follow any sharp boundaries or coincide with any county lines. Dialects form a continuum and as Trudgill, describes(Trudgill1979:6). they can be differentiated on a "more-or-less" basis rather than an "either-or" one. It is common in Britain for people who display particularly broad accents to be labeled by terms such as "Geordie' , "Cockney". "Jock" or "Scouse." All of these identify a specific regional accent, most of which are recognizable to many of the people in the country. 3.3. The social linguistic issues of British English: In Britain. "people are often able to make instant and unconscious judgments about a stranger's class affiliation on the basis of his or her accent. Both the words and pronunciation of many individuals reflect that person's social position. It is agreed that in England. the "phonetic factors assume a predominating role which they do not generally have in North America". Traditionally, it has been acknowledged that in England. the relation between social and regional accents can be diagrammed as follows: 3.4. Relation between social and regional accents in
51 England
Geographical variation is represented along the broad base of the pyramid while the vertical dimension exhibits social variation. It can be seen that working class accents display a good deal or regional variety, but as the pyramid narrows to its apex, up the social scale, it's also apparent that upper class accents exhibit no regional variation.(Wells1982:35). Thus by definition, any regional accent 'would not be considered upper- class and the more localizable the accent, the more it will described as a "broad" accent. Wells purports that broad accents reflect: . regionally, the highest degree of local distinctiveness . socially, the lowest social class. Also cite consistent findings of listeners evaluating anonymous speakers with standard accents more favorably for such status traits as intelligence, success. confidence. In Britain the middle class is associated with having not only a standard accent but with also speaking in a more "formal and abstract style than working class." Accents are often characterized by British speakers themselves as either "posh" or "common" accents. Most speakers of British English would recognize these labels and create a fairly accurate image of the sound of these far ends of the spectrum. Conservative or U-"Received Pronunciation" representing the "posh" end and a less broad version of Cockney representing the "common" accent. The significance of accents and their cultural and social associations is well represented in films and on television in Britain. The critically acclaimed 1964 file My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw's 1912 play, Pygmalion is often referenced in linguistic discussions as a wonderful example of how social class and accent were, and are still, inextricably linked in Britain. Over the past years. numerous television series have also provided viewers with a glimpse of the lives and accents of the Cockney population of
51 London. The Cockney English section talks more about the current. very popular long running television series East Enders. As language change continues to take place within Britain and within England, there are some who claim that a relatively newly established accent, "Estuary English" (EE) is due to replace the traditional educated accent of England Received Pronunciation" (RP) Estuary English is reported to be used by speakers who constitute the social "middle ground". It must be emphasized, however, that there are many features in common among these more prevalent accents that are present in England and that they must be thought of as existing on a continuum rather than having strict, non fuzzy boundaries. The many regional accents within the British Isles are not currently discussed on this site. However two of the most commonly known and researched accents (RP and Cockney) will be included as will Estuary English as evidence of recent language change. Moreover , "Queen's" English , Estuary English , would be mentioned as matter of mentioning not for numerating.
3.5. Some aspects of English Language beyond the British Isles Since this language has been spoken over many areas, countries and states, the need presses to mention some of its characteristics and aspects in these areas, and where the main variations of English is existed , in other words the variations meant, are the types or forms of English. When it is said that there are some types of forms of English, it is meant that this language has been named according to the areas it is spoken in.
52 3.5.1. English Language in North America The establishment of English-speaking colonies in North America at the beginning of the seventeenth century was the first decisive stage in the colonial expansion of England . The first English attempt at settlement in North America in 1584 proved a failure , but in 1607 a second expedition established the colony of Jamestown in Virginia and was followed by several others , of which the most famous was the group on board the " Mayflower " who became known as the " Pilgrim fathers' " and who settled in " Plymouth " and " Massachusetts " . Those settlers ,for being far from their mother land ,most of them tend to associate accents of their English with different speakers. So that new aspect of a sound began to arise. The mechanism by which new pronunciations spread from community to community across the continental and from area to an other. That aspect is known later as " regional diffusion " . There are varieties of English that are influenced by such factors . These varieties has been described as "Englishes " that is sounded odd to the foreign speakers. In the following pages the researcher will touch on with these named regional Englishes, and where they are spoken specifically. 3.5.2. American and Canadian English: The dialect regions of the United States are most clearly marked along the Atlantic littoral, where the earlier settlements were made. Three dialects can be defined: Northern, Midland, and Southern. Each has its sub-dialects. The Northern dialect is spoken in New England. Its six chief sub- dialects comprise northeastern New England (Maine, New Hampshire, and eastern Vermont), southeastern New England (eastern Massachusetts, eastern Connecticut, and Rhode Island), southwestern New England (western Massachusetts and western Connecticut), the inland north (western Vermont and upstate New York), the Hudson Valley, and metropolitan New York. The Midland dialect is spoken in the coastal region from Point Pleasant,
53 in New Jersey, to Dover, in Delaware. Its seven major sub dialects comprise the Delaware Valley, the Susquehanna Valley, the Upper Ohio Valley, northern West Virginia, the Upper Potomac and Shenandoah, southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, western Carolina, and eastern Tennessee. The Southern dialect area covers the coastal region from Delaware to South Carolina. Its five chief sub-dialects comprise the Delmarva Peninsula, the Virginia Piedmont, northeastern North Carolina (Albemarle Sound and Neuse Valley), Cape Fear and Pee Dee valleys, and the South Carolina Low Country, around Charleston. These boundaries, based on those of the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada, are highly tentative. To some extent these regions preserve the traditional speech of southeastern and southern England, where most ofthe early colonists were born. The first settlers who crane to Virginia (1607) and Massachusetts (1620) soon learned to adapt old words to new uses, but they were content to borrow names from the local Indian languages for unknown trees, such as hickory and persimmon, and for unfamiliar animals, such as raccoons and woodchucks. Later they took words from foreign settlers: "chowder" and "prairie" from the French, "scow" and "sleigh" from the Dutch. They made new compounds, such as "backwoods" and "bullfrog," and gave new meanings to such words as "lumber" (which in British English denotes disused furniture, or junk) and "corn" (which in British English signifies any grain, especially wheat). Before the Declaration of Independence (1776), two-thirds of the immigrants had come from England, but after that date they arrived in large numbers from Ireland. The potato famine of 1845 drove 1,500,000 Irish to seek homes in the New World, and the European revolutions of 1848 drove as many Germans to settle in Pennsylvania and the Middle West. After the close of the American Civil War, millions of Scandinavians, Slavs, and Italians crossed the ocean and eventually settled mostly in the North Central and Upper Midwest states. In some areas of South Carolina and Georgia the
54 American Negroes who had been imported to work the rice and cotton plantations developed a contact language called Gullah, or Geechee, that made use of many structural and lexical features of their native languages. This remarkable variety of English is comparable to such "contact languages" as Sranan (Taki-Taki) and Melanesian Pidgin. The speech of the Atlantic Seaboard shows far greater differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary than that of any area in the North Central States, the Upper Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, or the Pacific Coast. Today, urbanization, quick transport, and television have tended to level out some dialectal differences in the United States. The boundary with Canada nowhere corresponds to any boundary between dialects, and the influence of United States English is strong, being felt least in the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland. Nevertheless, in spite of the effect of this proximity to the United States, British influences are still potent in some of the larger cities; Scottish influences are well sustained in Ontario. Canada remains bilingual. One-fourth of its people, living mostly in the province of Quebec, have French as their mother tongue. Those provinces in which French is spoken as a mother tongue by 10 percent or more of the population are described as "federal bilingual districts" in the Official Languages Bill of 1968.
3.5.3. Australian and New Zealand English The English settlement of Australia and New Zealand occurred nearly two centuries later that of AMERICA . Penal colonies on the south-east coast of Australia were founded in 1788 . Many of the convicts freed , became smallholders . They gradually coined a vocabulary to name new colonial identities and distinguished themselves from the population Aboriginal . The convict population came mainly from London and the south-east of England(warren2000:20). 55 So that Australian pronunciation is very close to cockney , except that initial /h/. Unlike Canada, Australia has few speakers of European languages other than English within its borders. There are still many Aboriginal languages, though they are spoken by only a few hundred speakers each and their continued existence is threatened. More than 80 percent of the population is British. By the mid-20th century, with rapid decline of its Aboriginal tongues, English was without rivals in Australia. During colonial times the new settlers had to find names for a fauna and flora (e.g., banksia, iron bark, whee whee) different from anything previously known to them: trees that shed bark instead of leaves and cherries with external stones. The words brush, bush, creek, paddock, and scrub acquired wider senses, whereas the terms brook, dale, field, forest, and meadow were seldom used. A creek leading out of a river and entering it again downstream was called an anatomizing branch (a term from anatomy), or an anabranch, whereas a creek coming to a dead end was called by its native name, a billabong. The giant kingfisher with its raucous bray was long referred to as a laughing jackass, later as a bushman's clock, but now it is a kookaburra. Cattle so intractable that only roping could control them were said to be probable, a term now used as a synonym for "angry" or "extremely annoyed." A deadbeat was a penniless "sundowner" at the very end of his tether, and a no-hoper was an incompetent fellow, hopeless and helpless. An offsider (strictly, the offside driver of a bullock team) was any assistant or partner. A roustabout was first an odd-job man on a sheep station and then any kind of handyman. He was, in fact, the "down-under" counterpart of the wharf laborer, or roustabout, on the Mississippi River. Both words originated in Cornwall, and many other terms, now exclusively Australian, came ultimately from British dialects. "Dinkum," for instance, meaning "true, authentic, genuine," echoed the "fair dinkum," or fair deal, of Lincolnshire dialect. "Fossicking" about for surface gold, and then rummaging about in general, perpetuated the term fossick ("to elicit information, ferret out the facts") from
56 the Cornish dialect of English. To "barrack," or jeer noisily, recalled Irish "barrack" ("to brag, boast"), whereas "skerrick" in the phrase "not a skerrick left" was obviously identical with the "skerrick" meaning "small fragment, particle," still heard in English dialects from Westmorland to Hampshire. Some Australian English terms came from Aboriginal speech: the words boomerang, corroboree (warlike dance and then any large and noisy gathering), dingo (reddish-brown half-domesticated dog), galah (cockatoo), gunyah (bush hut), kangaroo, karri (dark-red eucalyptus tree), nonda (rosaceous tree yielding edible fruit), pokutukawa (evergreen bearing brilliant blossom), wallaby (small marsupial), and wallaroo (large rock kangaroo). Australian English has slower rhythms and flatter intonations than RP. Although there is remarkably little regional variation throughout the entire continent, there is significant social variation. The neutral vowel II (as the a in "sofa") is frequently used, as in London Cockney: "arches" and "archers" are both pronounced [a:tz], and the pronunciations of RP "day" and "go" are, respectively, [di] and [gu]. Although New Zealand lies over 1,000 miles away, much of the English spoken there is similar to that of Australia. The blanket term Austral English is sometimes used to cover the language of the whole of Australasia, or Southern Asia, but this term is far from popular with New Zealanders because it makes no reference to New Zealand and gives all the prominence, so they feel, to Australia. Between North and South Islands there are observable differences. For one thing, Maori, which is still a living language (related to Tahitian, Hawaiian, and the other Austronesian [Malayo-Polynesian] languages), has a greater number of speakers and more influence in North Island. 3.5.4. The English of India-Pakistan In 1950 India became a federal republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, and Hindi was declared the first national language. English, it was stated, would "continue to be used for all official purposes until 1965." In 57 1967, however, by the terms of the English Language Amendment Bill, English was proclaimed "an alternative official or associate language with Hindi until such time as all non-Hindi states had agreed to its being dropped." English is therefore acknowledged to be indispensable. It is the only practicable means of day-to-day communication between the central government at New Delhi and states with non-Hindi speaking populations, especially with the Deccan, or "South," where millions speak Dravidian (non- Indo-European) languages--Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. English is widely used in business, and, although its use as a medium in higher education is decreasing, it remains the principal language of scientific research. In 1956 Pakistan became an autonomous republic comprising two states, East and West. Bengali and Urdu were made the national languages of East and West Pakistan, respectively, but English was adopted as a third official language and functioned as the medium of interstate communication. (In 1971 East Pakistan broke away from its western partner and became the independent state of Bangladesh.) 3.5.5. African English Africa is the most multilingual area in the world, if people are measured against languages. Upon a large number of indigenous languages rests a slowly changing superstructure of world languages (Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese). The problems of language are everywhere linked with political, social, economic, and educational factors. The Republic of South Africa, the oldest British settlement in the continent, resembles Canada in having two recognized European languages within its borders: English and Afrikaans, or Cape Dutch. Both British and Dutch traders followed in the wake of 15th-century Portuguese explorers and have lived in widely varying war-and-peace relationships ever since. Although the Union of South Africa, comprising Cape Province, Transvaal, Natal, and Orange Free State, was for more than a half century (1910-61) a member of 58 the British Empire and Commonwealth, its four prime ministers (Botha, Smuts, Hertzog, and Malan) were all Dutchmen. In the early 1980s Afrikaners outnumbered Britishers by three to two. The Afrikaans language began to diverge seriously from European Dutch in the late 18th century and has gradually come to be recognized as a separate language. Although the English spoken in South Africa differs in some respects from standard British English, its speakers do not regard the language as a separate one. They have naturally come to use many Afrikanerisms, such as kloof, kopje, krans, veld, and vlei, to denote features of the landscape and occasionally employ African names to designate local animals and plants. The words trek and commando, notorious in South African history, have acquired almost worldwide currency. Elsewhere in Africa, English helps to answer the needs of wider communication. It functions as an official language of administration in Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland and in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, and Kenya. It is the language of instruction at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; at the University of Nairobi, Kenya; and at the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania. The West African states of The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria, independent members of the Commonwealth, have English as their official language. They are all multilingual. The official language of Liberia is also English, although its tribal communities constitute four different linguistic groups. Its leading citizens regard themselves as Americo-Liberians, being descendants of those freed blacks whose first contingents arrived in West Africa in 1822. South of the Sahara indigenous languages are their domains and are competing healthily and vigorously with French and English. 3.6. The future of English Geographically, English is the most widespread language on earth, and it is second only to Mandarin Chinese in the number of people who speak it. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has five official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. The influence of 59 these languages upon one another will inevitably increase. It is reasonable to ask if changes in English can be predicted. There will doubtless be modifications in pronunciation, especially in that of long vowels and diphthongs. In weakly stressed syllables there is already a discernible tendency, operating effectively through radio and television, to restore the full qualities of vowels in these syllables. This tendency may bring British English more into line with American English and may bring them both a little nearer to Spanish and Italian. Further, it may help to narrow the gap between pronunciation and spelling. Other factors will also contribute toward the narrowing of this gap: advanced technological education, computer programming, machine translation, and expanding mass media. Spelling reformers will arise from time to time to liven up proceedings, but in general, traditional orthography may well hold its own against all comers, perhaps with some regularization. Printing houses, wielding concentrated power through their style directives, will surely find it in their best interests to agree on uniformity of spelling. Encyclopedic dictionaries--computerized, universal, and subject to continuous revision--may not go on indefinitely recording such variant spellings as "connection" and "connexion," "judgment" and "judgement," "labor" and "labor," "medieval" and "mediaeval," "plow" and "plough," "realize" and "realize," "thru" and "through". Since Tudor days, aside from the verb endings -est and -eth, inflections have remained stable because they represent the essential minimum. The abandonment of the forms thou and thee may encourage the spread of yous and youse in many areas, but it is not necessarily certain that these forms will win general acceptance. The need for a distinctive plural can be supplied in other ways (e.g., the forms "you all, you fellows, you people"). The distinctions between the words "I" and "me," "he" and "him," "she" and "her," "we" and "us," "they" and "them" seem to many authors to be too important to be set aside, in spite of a growing tendency to use objective forms as emphatic subjective pronouns and to say, for instance, "them and us" instead of "they
61 and we" in contrasting social classes. Otherwise, these distinctive forms may remain stable; they are all monosyllabic, they are in daily use, and they can bear the main stress. Thus they are likely to resist leveling processes. Considerable changes will continue to be made in the forms and functions of auxiliary verbs, cat native (linking) verbs, phrasal verbs, and verb phrases. Indeed, the constituents of verbs and verb groups are being more subtly modified than those of any other word class. By means of auxiliaries and participles, a highly intricate system of aspects, tenses, and modalities is gradually evolving. In syntax the movement toward a stricter word order seems to many to be certain to continue. The extension of multiple attributives in nominal groups has probably reached its maximum. It cannot extend further without incurring the risk of ambiguity. In vocabulary further increases are expected if the present trends continue. Unabbreviated general dictionaries already contain 500,000 entries, but even larger dictionaries, with 750,000 entries, may be required. Coiners of words probably will not confine themselves to Greek and Latin in creating new terms; instead they are likely to exercise their inventive powers in developing an international technical vocabulary that is increasingly shared by Russian, French, and Spanish and that is slowly emerging as the universal scientific language . 3.7. International English "As a language changes, it may well change in different ways in different places. No one who speaks a particular language can remain in close contact with all the other speakers of that language. Social and geographical barriers to communication as well as sheer distance mean that a change that starts among speakers in one particular locality will probably spread only to other areas with which these speakers are in close contact." It can be sorted the forms of spoken English all over the world as follows: 61 1. Australian English 2. New Zealand English 3. South African English 4. Welsh English 5. US English (Eastern) 6. US English (Mid-Western) 7. Canadian English 8. Northern Irish English 9. Southern Irish English 10. West Indian English 11. West African English 12. Indian English However, Standard English has been described as "prestige variety" of the language. It is also depicted as variety with agreed norms and conventions that can be used as a model for education and for public use or media. It also refers to a variety that has been represented in dictionaries and formal grammar. In addition to England and USA, this language is spoken in Canada, Australia, Irish Republic, New Zealand and Hawaii as the mother tongue, also it is used as an official second language in Senegal, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Mauritius, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Togo, most of Pacific Ocean Islands (such as Fiji …etc.) and most of Atlantic Ocean Islands (such as Malaysia, Philippines and Hong Kong). In other areas it is spoken as the mother tongue with co-exist with other languages, such as South Africa, and Quebec in Canada. However, English is spoken with different and numerous variations. Linguists have distinguished different standard varieties, for example; Standard English English, Standard American English, Standard Australian English Standard Indian English. Consequently, this form which is widely
62 known as Standard English English or Standard International English, are all found in the literature. Then Standard English cannot be regarded as discrete varieties. Some linguists accept that English needs to function as an international language. However, they debate that those who create policy resolutions about English language acquisition need to take account of the realities of how English is used and how its speakers feel about it. As English has this notable position and also this extensive spread, it is worthy to stress its diversity use among millions of speakers as: 1. As a global language, English is extremely used for communicating between non-native speakers rather than between native and non-native speakers. 2. In many areas English is also used as a language of international communication, as in (Dubai) in Arab Emirates for example, where speakers are exposed to local norms and make commercial treatment easier. For these considerations, English challenged and takes part of many indigenous languages in several parts of the world, although it being challenged by some nationalisms in many areas over the world. 3.8. Cultural aspects Language and culture are inexorably intertwined language is at one outcome or a result of the culture as a whole and also a vehicle by which the other facets of the culture are shaped and communicated. The English Language people learn (from childhood) give us not only a system for communication, but more important, it dictates the type and form of the communications people make. The universe is ordered in accordance with the way it is named . The sounds and patterns of English Language that we have learned, cause what have been described as linguistic blind spots; to give more detail about this point, it has to make humble comparison between first language (Arabic) and the foreign language (English) which people have learned. The Arabic language reflects many cultural aspects and thoughts, that people have inherited as social variables their ancestors had left for them . The 63 mother tongue can be shaped or formed speakers' language to reflect and reveal their cultural activities. However, speak English Language in a different way; they use English Language with a remarkable and distinct status. Our acquaintance of English Language is free from the cultural treatments with inherited procedure, for instance, which English people have, can not be existed among us, because of various factors, such as religion, beliefs which reform and shape the cultural and social aspects. So English Language for the speakers, is like a vehicle or any device to carry information only. The remarkable evidence of this principle is that, the researcher has not found a marvelous and wonderful sonnet or magnificent poem written by an Arabic author, in the case of ignoring songs or descriptive verses, which have been formed by some of those who lived in the centuries of emigration. This is because, that, some speakers ( foreign ones) do not live this language with its factual, cultural and social mood or sense. Since this language (English Language) and culture are imitatively bound together, it is not surprising that there are also cultural blind points that are ignoree when this language is spoken . This is not that the speakers are impotent to develop their abilities to gain or acquire English Language, but the main reason is that we learn English Language for specific purposes. So there would be a disparity between learning English as a language of interlocution and our acquisition of it as an emotional device to express our feelings and senses. 3.8.1. Instinct and culture in language acquisition This is opposed to genetic transmission, and it has to do with that fact that the ability to speak a particular language is passed on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning, rather than by instinct. The researcher needs not here to discuss the question whether a knowledge of the move general aspects of the grammatical structure of language is genetically, rather than culturally, transmitted.
64 Even the strongest form of the hypothesis that children are born with a knowledge of certain universal principles which determine the structure of language is acquired by learning. At the same time it must be recognized that much of the signaling behavior of other species that was once though to be purely instinctively is now known to be acquired by combination of instinct and learning. It has been demonstrated, for example, that the general pattern of speaking process may be determined by instinct but that is more elaborate development and correction depends upon the variety of language acquisition processes. 3.8.2. English Language and social contact A culture and the language used by it are inseparable. Most of the cultural attitudes which a native speaker has built into him are reflected in his speech patterns, through the expressions and phrases. Some linguists always complain of why does English Language have no phrase like "Bon appétit!"?(Labov1996:30) which is a French origin. Such phrases are often a source or a provenance of worry and anxiety to those linguists. The question, "Has it ever occurred to you that there is no simple way of expressing your hope that someone enjoy what he is about to eat? " Once it was a subject of discussion in "The Language Studies Unit in the University of Aston in Birmingham – England", while the researcher was a student there in 1980. There was a vehement disputation, whether, it is a kind of deficiency in English Language not to have such phrases, or it is a kind of clinging with the loved inherited concepts to use these foreign expressions. As other similar phrases were presented, there would be proposals to express English phrases instead. However, those forms were not free or away from criticism. For example, If one is entertaining his guest as he puts his dinner (any meal) before him, he says, "I hope you like it!", but this phrase was criticized as, his guest will probably think one of two things: - either that there is an element of doubt about the meal, or - that there is an element of doubt about him! 65 that the food is perhaps unusual, and he will not be enough of gastronomic sophisticate to appreciate it. One can be certain of one thing, he will be interpret "I hope you like it!" in same way that the Frenchman interprets "Bon appétit!", as a wish that focuses itself on the eater, and not on what is to be eaten. Those opposed to English cooking will not doubt explain the lack by pointing to the quality of food in England. In other words, it is so bad, they will say, that no one ever really believes that it could be enjoyed. Moreover, that discussion included some other phrases in compare with the other European countries and their languages and in the Arab countries "There was an objection about the Arab World! :(Lander1969:53). - In France it might be said: "À votre Santé!", - In Germany: "Prosit!" - In some Scandinavian countries: "Skâal!" - In European Peninsula: "Salud!" - In the Arab countries it might be said: "Haneyan!" However, in England the possible phrase would be, "Good Health!" but those who are described as "renews or modernizers" deem that this phrase is an old fashioned and stuffy, and it doesn't fit their social class. So they would refuse to hear such a phrase. If one says this phrase among them, surely will hear "Pardon!" to mean that they don't understand, because it sounds something out of their age and they prefer to hear or say, "Cheers!" which is a form of the foreign word "Cheerio!" (Algo1966:120). Mr. Daniel John Kane who was a senior lecturer in The University of Birmingham at that period wrote this paragraph: " These examples by no means exhaust the areas in which the English Language does not exactly help social contact. They have been called 'linguistic gaps' and tend to turn up in some way or another in most languages." While some other scholars added that English speakers are in some way victims of some strange deficiencies in their valedictory vocabulary. For
66 example, the standard term "Goodbye" is both too formal and too final. It may be just the job for ushering someone out of the individual's life altogether; but most leave-taking, for better or worse, are temporary affairs. Perhaps in an attempt to escape implications of finality, many people now say, "Bye Bye" instead; other try to make this particularly nauseating bit of baby-talk more acceptable by shortening it to "Bye". They have deemed that these forms make it able for the colloquial expressions and phrases to unroll within the day-to- day English Language usage. 3.9. What's meant by communication? Before talking about the role of language as a communicative means, it is worth to state and expound some concepts which relate to the relationship between communication and meaning. To deem that language attends as an instrument of communication is to emit an axiom. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive any satisfying definition of the term 'language' that did not incarnate some reference to the thought of communication. Furthermore, it is a factual junction between meaning and communication, such that it is inconceivable to account for the antecedent except in terms of the latter. However, what's communication? The words 'communicate' and 'communication' are used in plainly and clearly wide range of contexts in their everyday, pre-theoretical sensation. The speakers .talk as willingly and promptly of the communication of feelings, moods and attitudes as the speakers do of the communication of effective information. There can be no distrusting that these different senses of the word are connected; diverse definitions have been determined which have sought to bring them under some very general, but theoretical, concepts defined in terms of social interaction or the response of an organism to a stimulus. It will here be taken the optional approximation of giving to the term 'communication' and the resemble terms 'communicate' and communicative' a somewhat narrower explanation than they may tolerate in everyday using. The narrowing consists in the binding of the term to the intentional transmission of 67 information by means of some stabilized signaling system, and initially at least, It will be manacled and restricted the term still further to the deliberated transmission of actual or resolved, information. The chief signaling systems appointed by human beings for the transmission of information, though, not the only ones are languages. The researcher shall be debating the resemblances or similarities and differences that exist between linguistic and non-linguistic signaling-systems in the next text. The concepts and terminology introduced here are aimed to be applicable to both. It will be presumed and supposed that the sense in which the terms 'signal', 'sender', 'receiver' and 'transmission' are being appointed in this subject is clear enough from the context. The main notion would be, a signal is communicative, it would be said, if it is intended by the sender to make the receiver aware of something of which he was not previously aware. Whether a signal is communicative or not rests then, upon the possibility of choice, or selection, on the part of the sender. If the sender can not but behave in a certain way, then he obviously can not communicate anything by behaving in that way. 'Informative' therefore means 'meaningful' to the receiver. Under a fairly standard idealization of the process of communication, what the sender communicates and the information derived from the signal by the receiver are assumed to be identical. The communicative component in the use of language, important thought should not overemphasized to the neglect of the non-communicative, but nevertheless informative, component which is of such importance in social interaction. The successful communication depends, not only upon the receiver's reception of the signal and his appreciation of the fact that it is intended for him rather than for another, but also upon his recognition of the sender's communicative intention and upon his making an appropriate behavioral or cognitive response to it. One of the most characteristic features of natural language is their capacity for referring to or describing the situation or clarifying the meaning from the sender to the receiver, in order to give a clear image and a
68 meaningful view. So this intended meaning is expressed throughout the directed speech, which is the chief means of communication among the speakers. However, the elucidator, expositor and the conductive to this meaning are the systematic process of communication and this, what makes the language the chief medium of communicating. Thus the relationship between the notions of communication and the meaning of the information would be operated and applicated by means of the language, therefore, this is what makes the language plays the factual and effective attitude in communication. Now there would be a so clear picture of the crucial part played by language in communication demands an appropriate linguistic perspective towards language which would be available to every person to look at the practical problems of his own situation. As English Language is one of the spoken languages all over the world, it can be deeply deemed that what is said about the other alive languages apply to it, but it has an international interest and concern because of the wide diffusion which this language has had. Therefore, English Language acquires and options the priority to be the spoken language nowadays, and used in different communicative processes and it has been used in the commercial, political, economic and cultural or educational treatments. However, the communicative mood differs from those whose English is the mother tongue and those who use it as a foreign language. In the following aspects it will be seen how this language (English Language) is used as a communicative means between English people (the natives) and the strangers or foreigners (not natives). 3.9.1. The aspects of English Language as an international medium of communication Language is a means of communication. Although it is not the only form of communication among human beings, it is certainly the most important. The speakers entire elaborate social structure is mediated through
69 language, and it is inconceivable that it could have been constructed so complex social interaction if the speakers had not spoken and latterly written language at their disposal. Language is central to human experience and if the speakers are to understand the process by which men communicate with one another, they must look closely at the human capacity for language and at the particular qualities of language which enable it to play so powerful role within us and between us. It might be begun by considering just how successfully the speakers do communicate through language. It would be found in fact that the speakers have a remarkable versatility. People never know what they are going to need to communicate and yet when the time comes, as mature speakers of the language, provided the necessary knowledge and experience itself is not lacking, the speakers have no difficulty in expressing whatever it may be they have the need to express. Whether the speakers are involved in day-to-day interaction with members of the family, in complex explanations of unforeseen events, in emotional reactions to unexpected happenings, in the familiar or unfamiliar alike, Speakers can quite unconsciously apply their knowledge of language to meet the demands of what they need to say or write. None of this in some way a feat of memory. The foreign speakers do not know how to express themselves because they have often had to do so in the same or similar ways in the past. It is very rare that what is wished to express now exactly the same as something the speakers have wanted to say previously. There is usually some difference of emphasis, of conviction or of situation at the very least. In other words, the demands that people want to place on language are virtually limitless. It is perhaps the most important characteristic of language that it is formed in away that enables the speakers to meet these demands. Just as life itself places them in situations which are never twice quite the same. So language enables the speakers continually to express novel prepositions. The speaker's faculty of language is a faculty of linguistic creativity. Most of the
71 sentences the speakers utter have never been constructed by them previously and many, indeed, have never been constructed by anyone else either. There is literary no limits to the number of sentences that can be created in English. The term language which has been dealt with so far mentioned language as a medium of communication in common. However, what has been said about the language in general also, has been applicable to English Language. As the talk generally starts between two individuals in order to understand each other, using a language in this process of communicating, it will be seen how English Language is used in communication beginning with those two natives of this language who may meet for the first time. 3.9.2. English Language to communicate 3.9.2.1. Between two English people: Everyone knows what is supposed to happen when two English individuals who have never met before come face to face in a railway compartment, they start talking about the weather, but their means of interlocution is of course, English Language. However, why they follow this procedure. In some cases this may be simply because they happen to find the subject interesting. Most people, though, are not particularly interested in analyses of climatic conditions, so there must be other reasons for conservation of this kind. One explanation is that it can often be quite embarrassing to be alone in the company of someone the hearer is not acquainted with and not speak to them. If no conversation takes place, the atmosphere can become rather strained. However, by talking to the other person about some neutral topic like the weather, it is possible to strike up a relationship with him without actually having to say very much. Railway compartment conversations of this kind do happen – although not of course as often as the popular myth supposes – are a good example of the sort of important social function that is often fulfilled by language. Language is not simply a means of communicating information, about the weather or any other subject. It is also a very important means of establishing 71 and maintaining relationships with other people. Probably the most important thing about the conversation between our two Englishmen is not the words they are using, but the fact that they are talking at all. There is also a second explanation. It is quite possible that the first Englishman, probably subconsciously, would like to get to know things about the second, for instance, what sort of job he does and what social status he has. Without this kind of information he will not be sure exactly how he should behave towards him. He can, of course, make intelligent guesses about his companion from the sort of clothes he is wearing, and other visual clues, but he can hardly ask him direct questions about his social background, at least not at this stage of the relationship. From this kind of using English Language as a means of communication, the speakers could discover each other through certain topics to be used as a key or a statement of understanding the character, each meets without any kind of imposing ideas or questions upon the second one. As it clear, this kind of conversation is then likely to find out certain things about the origins. The first man may discover and detect what part of the country the second man comes from, throughout his accent and the form of language he uses. His dialect and the features of the English Language and speech generally show what part of England he comes from, and what sort of background he has. In other side the second one would have or give some indications of certain ideas and attitudes, and all of this information can be used by the people to help them formulate an opinion about the others. These two aspects of language behavior are very important from a social point of view: First, the function of language in establishing social relationships; Second, the role played by language in conveying information about the speaker. More attention will be given, for the moment, to the second point; but we should not forget that both these aspects of linguistic behavior are
72 reflections of the fact that there is a close inter-relationship between language and society. It would be clear that the second form gives a good a clear image of communication, in other words, it clarifies the role of the language as a medium used between people to discover each other. When the speakers study how the speech was started between these two Englishmen, it may be grasped that they understand each other's background, throughout the accent, dialect or the use of vocabulary which would reflects his social class, (educated or uneducated). In seeking clues about his companion the Englishman is making use of the way in which people from different social and geographical backgrounds use different kinds of language. If the second Englishman comes from Cardigan in Wales, for example, he may use Welsh while if he comes from Blackburn in Scotland, he would use Scottish accents or Gaelic words and expressions and so on. That is to say, he will probably use the kind of language spoken by the people from that part of the UK. If he is also a middle-class businessman, he will use the kind of language associated with men of this type. It can be seen that kind of language of this sort are often referred to as dialects, the first type in the case being a regional dialect and the second a social dialect consequently, the two Englishmen would communicate (understand) each other; know the place (part) each comes from, what social class he is, without any use of questions such as; Where do come from? or What qualification do you have? However, the language can clarify the ambiguity and solve many problems easily and clearly. In this point , it can be confirmed and assured that the usage of English Language between those people wherever they come from has an important role in communication between two strangers. 3.9.2.2. Between two strangers: While the situation is different if these two individuals are not English, in other words, they are not from the same country and moreover, they do not speak the same language either. They may start their interlocution by using
73 one's language , in order to understand each other. But let us expect that each of them would make any kind of gestures or motions which expounds that he could not speak the other's language. Then the situation demands another medium for transmission. In fact there are so many further heuristics to the international transmission of factual or propositional information. The first possible choice is to use another language which would be nearer to his language, because of the social, cultural, political or geographical factors, however, let's imagine or assume that those two people are, one from Libya and the other is from Finland at the far north of Europe. Factually, there is no affinity or convergence between them, either cultural or social. The possible and probable way to communicate or to know one another, is to use one of the alive languages. As English is a wider spread language and has become the accepted international language of technology and commerce, it would be the language they ought to use, as it is nearly spoken and taught in any country all over the world (with special respects to all other languages). However, they do not start their speech as those two Englishmen did, as it was seen before. They may start their speech in a different way; the weather would not be their topic of speech, and they can not discover each other through accents or dialects because they probably use Standard English as they have been taught in schools. The previous aspects (accents … etc.) are not important in this situation and dialects may not exist. Therefore, they need to ask direct and forthright questions, otherwise they would not have a clear or suitable opportunity for real and factual manner for communicating. The signification of this proffer or representation is not to see what words, accents and dialects they use, but to have an idea and gain important objective attitudes towards linguistic forms in communication. From those two examples, it can be seen that , the differences and effects of the culture, (without any extent of diminishing of the value of other factor's importance), and the social situation portrayed in both previous examples, in order to gain how English Language is used in communication. These examples make it is
74 worth to display and evince the relationship among the language and the cultural and social inherited as they judge or control the process of communication. 3.9.3. English Language and medium Spoken English can be transmitted in writing. It is one of the cardinal principles of modern linguistics that the spoken language is basic. This does not mean, however, that language is to be identified with speech. For we must draw a distinction between the language and the medium in which the language is manifest. The concept of medium is related to, or must be distinguished from the notion of the channel of communication. According to a common formulation of the relationship between speech and writing, though not very satisfactorily in the normal orthographic script; and the written language can be transmitted, and commonly is nowadays, along many different channels. It requires but a moment's reflection to appreciate that there are many complexities that need to be accounted for in relating medium to channel. Many formal lectures, for example, are delivered orally and have the phonological structure of the spoken language, are composed, as far as grammar and vocabulary are concerned, in the written medium. Verbatim transcripts of spontaneous conversation illustrate the converse possibility, in other words, at the level of orthographic structure they are in the written medium, but in grammar and vocabulary they are constructed according to the principles which determine the selection and combination of words in the spoken medium. Passages of dialogue in novels, on the other hand, are frequently rather unrealistic; and much of what is written in newspaper or in advertisements (and it is intended to be read) is strongly influenced by the spoken language. Despite these complexities, the fact that the spoken language can be written and the written language spoken is important; and it depends upon the principle of duality and upon the relative independence of the two levels of structure. Some indications of this 75 interrelationship and of the fact that ordinary native speakers are aware of it may be given here simply mentioning the everyday employment of the terms 'bookish' on the one hand, and 'colloquial' on the other. Having emphasized the fact that languages are to some considerable degree independent of the medium in which they are manifest, now due recognition must be given to the functional and structural differences between spoken and written languages. There are in fact important grammatical and lexical differences between the two, and the prosodic features of speech are only crudely and very incompletely represented by punctuation marks and the use of italics, … etc. in writing. Written texts may be composed, reflected upon the edited, before any part is transmitted; and the fact that they are more enduring than spoken utterances and have therefore been used throughout history in literate communities for the codification, preservation and citation of important legal, cultural and religious documents has contributed to the greater formality and prestige of the written language. Any account of language and the role it fulfils in modern society must recognize that written language, despite the fact that they have in all cases derived from spoken language, now have a considerable degree of structural and functional independence. This implies that sound, and more specifically phonic sound is the natural, or basic medium in which the language-system is realized and that written utterances result from the transference of language from this primary phonic medium to a secondary graphic medium(Chomsky1959:38). It should be noticed that the speakers have used the term 'phonic' (the range of audible sound which can be produced by the human speech organs) for the medium of spoken language, however, "vocal-auditory" for the channel along which it is normally transmitted. The reason why it is important written language can be transmitted along a variety of different channels. For example, a message written in Braille is decoded by means of the sense of touch, rather than sight. But it is composed of configurations of dots in one-to-
76 one correspondence with the letters of the written language, and the word- forms of Braille are also in one-to-one correspondence with the word-forms of the written language. In short, a message written in Braille and a message written in the normal orthography are structurally isomorphic; and this is the crucial point. When the speakers use the term 'medium', rather than 'channel', they are concerned, not with the actual transmission of signals, but with the systematic functional and structural differences between written and spoken language. Many of these differences, it is true, can be attributed, in origin at least, to physical differences in the characteristically distinct channels of transmission employed for spoken and written language. But they are not necessarily determined by the actual channel of transmission on each occasion of utterance. 3.9.4. The problems of acquiring English Language for communication The main problem is latent in the English Language acquisition, either by teaching or by the normal process of communication. However, many scholars or teachers, in some range, ignore the methods and approaches of language acquiring(Lyon1979:607) which makes it is worth that the researcher should regard a problem in the teaching of English Language which has come into particular prominence over the past few years, and to suggest a way in which it might be resolved. The problem is that a great number of foreign speakers and learners frequently remain deficient in the ability to actually use the language and understand its use, in normal communication, whether in the spoken or written mode. It seems to be generally assumed that teachers and constructors or guides do not do their jobs properly; in other words, they do not follow the approach to English acquisition which is taught to them in training colleges and on in-service courses, and which is embodied in the prescribed textbooks. The assumption is that if only educators could be persuaded to put this
77 approach into practice, then the problem would disappear. It is seldom that the validity of the recommended approach is called into question. What the researcher wants to suggest is that the root of the problem is to be found, in fact, in the approach itself. In general, the recommended approach might be characterizes as one which combines situational presentation with structural practice. Language items are presented in situations in the classroom to ensure that their meaning is clear, and then practiced as formal structures by means of exercises of sufficient variety to sustain the interest of the learner and in sufficient number to establish the structures in the learner's memory. The principal aim is to promote a knowledge of the language system, to develop the learners competence by means of controlled performance. The assumption behind this approach seems to be that learning a language is a matter of associating the formal elements of the language system with their physical realization, either as sounds in the air or as marks on paper. Essentially, what is taught by this approach is the ability to compose correct sentences. The difficulty is that the ability to compose sentences is not the only ability the speakers need to communicate. Communication only takes place when the speakers make use of sentences to perform a variety of different acts of an essentially social nature. Thus the speakers do not communicate by composing sentences, but by using sentences to make statements of different kinds, to describe, to record, to classify, or to ask questions, make requests, give orders. Knowing what is involved in putting sentences together correctly is only one part of what it is meant by knowing language, and it has very little value on its own; in other words, it has to be supplemented by a knowledge of what sentences count as in their normal use as a second kind value. What the researcher tries to suggest is that the contextualization of language items as represented in the approach the speakers are considering is directed at the teaching of signification rather than value, and that it is for this reason that it
78 is inadequate for the teaching of English as communication. However, what about those who gain the language (concepts, items, … etc.) out the classroom; in more detail in organized situations the learners may react against to some designed features either by giving forms of selected sentences or by comparing forms of grammar and structures. But for those who acquire the language freely, the contextualization of this kind, then, does not demonstrate how sentences are formed in front of them in certain place and with a planned procedure (as it is in the classroom), by the behavior of the speaker – in anywhere – is their guide to acquire the language. So what has been taught is signification, not value. The reaction of many speakers or users to this observation will be to concede that contextualization of this kind does not teach what has been chosen to call value, but the assort that in the restricted circumstances of the situation. Moreover, some linguists may feel that it is not necessary to teach value for communication. As it has been implied, it seems that it is a radical mistake to suppose that knowledge of how sentences are put to use in communication follows automatically from knowledge of how sentences are composed and what signification they have as linguistic units. Learners (that will be speakers) have to be taught what values they may have as predictions, qualifications, reports, descriptions, and with similar attitudes. In fact there is no simple equation between linguistic forms and communicative functions. Affirmative sentences, for instance, are not always used as statements, and interrogative sentences are not always used as questions. The linguistic form can fulfill a variety of communicative functions, and one function can be fulfilled by a variety of language forms. What the researchers would like to suggest is that English Language speakers should consider ways of adapting the present approach to the acquisition of English so as to incorporate the systematic constructing of communicative value. The researcher would propose that, in the process of limitation, grading and presentation the speakers should think not only in
79 terms of linguistic structures and situational settings, but also in terms of communicative acts. 3.10. The importance of communicative competence of English Language speakers One way of embarking upon the analysis of context is to ask what kind of knowledge a fluent speaker of a language must possess in order to produce and understand contextually appropriate and comprehensible utterances in the dialect (language). "Hymes" in an important and influential discussion of this subject, has introduced the term communicative competence to cover a person's knowledge and ability to use all the semiotic systems available to him as a member of a given socio-cultural community – linguistic competence, or knowledge of the language – system, is therefore but one part of communicative competence. "Hymes" raises four questions, which, he suggests, are relevant for language and for other forms of communicative: Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available. Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible. Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated. Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails. The researcher will be concerned with the third theme which may many others are as concerned with as him. If the speakers think of the linguist's model of the language-system as a set of rules which generates all the well- formed system-sentences of a language, this can be conceived as being incorporated within a more comprehensive model of language- competence, which contextualizes these system-sentences according to certain conditions
81 of appropriateness. No person, of course, has a perfect mastery of any language; there are degrees of fluency, and there are variations of different kinds in English Language-community. The selected model of English Language competence, however, will be based upon the knowledge possessed by what might be described as an ideal omni-competent speaker of this language, where 'omni- competent' implies, not only perfect mastery of the rules which determine the well-formedness of sentences, but also the ability to contextualize them appropriately in terms of the relevant variables. Under this head an understanding of certain universal logical principles can be included, and of the general conditions of appropriateness that "Grice" has called conversational implications. According to what have been said, the main important concept which should be in mind, is knowledge of the kind that determines particular phonological, grammatical and lexical options within the language-system in particular contexts of English Language use. Let's list some of these options: i. Each of the participants must know his role and status. Linguistically relevant roles are of two kinds: Singular (deictic) Collective (social) Singular (deictic) roles derive from the fact that in normal language- behavior the speaker addresses his utterances to other individuals (or other people) who are present in the situation and this speaker may be referred to as the stimulative, however to other persons and objects (even they are not in the situation) not by means of a name or description, but by means of a personal or demonstrative pronoun, whose reference is determined by the participation of the referent in the language-event, at the time of the utterance. The social roles are culture-specific functions institutionalized in a society and recognized by its members. The most obvious effect of social roles as a contextual variable, lies in its determination of terms of address. The speaker in using such expressions "My Lord" , "Doctor", "Sir" accepts, and
81 shows that he accepts, his role. These expressions are with vocative function in English. In many languages (not only in English Language) there is a richly differentiation set of terms of address which the speaker must control if he is to produce appropriate utterances in various situations. Social role may also determine the selection of personal pronoun and associated components of the grammatical structure of utterances. By social status is meant the relative social standing of the participants. Each participant in the language-event must know, or make assumptions about, his status in relation to the other (a communicative manner) and in many situations, status will also be an important factor in the determination of who should initiate the conversation. The participants may not agree about their relative status: each speaking to the other as superior-to-inferior. Once again, The most obvious correlate of social status in English Language behavior, as far as the utilization of this language-system is concerned, is in the use of particular terms of address and personal pronouns. It is supported and confirmed by such paralinguistic phenomena as eye- movement, gestures, posture and physical contact or proximity, for instance, the importance of status in the selection of certain terms of address in American English has been demonstrated in a now classic paper by Brown and Ford, and their work has been carried further by "Ervin-Trip". Other two factors, sex and age, They are so often determinants of, or interact with, social status that they may be conveniently mentioned here. The terms of address employed by a person of one sex speaking to a person of another sex, or by a younger person speaking to an older person, may differ from those who would be employed in otherwise similar situation by people who speak this language (English Language) of the same sex or of the same age. This phenomenon is so pervasive and so apparent even to the casual observer of English Language behavior that exemplification is unnecessary. ii. The participants must know where they are in space and time. At first sight, this might appear to be an unnecessary condition to impose
82 upon the appropriateness of utterances. The speaker of English Language must control and be able to correlate at least two different systems of spatiotemporal reference: one is the individual (deictic) system whose co-ordinate is created by the fact of utterance itself; the other is a culture-specific system for referring to time and place which is lexicalized in the (language) dialect he is speaking. In more details, when the speaker uses utterances that are not related to the place or time, he must find more justifications to what he is saying; foe example: Place: When an Englishman, who lives in Edinburgh says, "We are having a fine summer here in Edinburgh this year." Consider, however, an utterance taken like this, produced by this Englishman in Edinburgh in December. It is grammatically and semantically well-formed, but situationaly inappropriate, in other words, it is, for this reason, un- interpretable. (if except, under rather special circumstances). Time: Imagine another Englishman says, "Good afternoon!" to a colleague arriving late to work in the middle of the morning time. His utterance will be understood as situationaly appropriate, but ironical. The use of the language terms always expresses an idea intended by the speaker, for instance, irony (such as in the example above) depends upon and presupposes the participant‘s knowledge of the normal conditions of situational appropriate-ness. The speaker and addressee are normally in same location; and it is probably true to say that all languages not only English Language are designed, as it were, to operate in such circumstances. iii. The participants must be able to categorize the situation in terms of its degree of formality. But it is intuitively clear that there is a scale of formality, not only in English, but probably in all languages. It is
83 recognized that certain utterances would be phonologically, grammatically and lexically stilted if used in certain informal of intimate situations. The ability of members of such language- communities to pass from one dialect or variety of the language to another according to the situation of utterance may be referred as code-switching. Code-switching is by no means restricted to language-communities in which two or more recognizably distinct are regularly employed(Cherry1957:118). iv. The participants must know what medium is appropriate to the situation. As we have already seen, this is not simply a matter of being able to control the peripheral transmitting and receiving mechanisms involved in speech and writing. No more need be said about this question at this point, except to emphasize that there are medium-dependent differences of grammar and vocabulary that have a bearing upon the situational appropriateness of particular utterances. v. The participants must know how to make their utterances appropriate to the subject- matter; and the importance of subject- matter as a determinant in the selection of one dialect rather than another in bilingual or multilingual communities has been stressed by many linguists or writers such as, Haugen, Weinreish and Fishman. More recently, however, Fishman has pointed out that the greater appropriate-ness to subject-matter of one dialect rather than another in multilingual settings ―may reflect or be brought about by several different but mutually reinforcing factors‖, and he has suggested that the selection of one dialect rather than another may be simply a consequence of the fact that ― certain socio-culturally recognized spheres of activity are, at least temporarily, under the sway of one dialect (language) or variety.‖
84 If the conversation in which the utterance occurs is concerned with the layout or appearance of a garden, it will presumably be taken to have a different meaning from the meaning that the same utterance would have in a conversation devoted to the architectural merits of a group of factory buildings. But, in principle, the omni-competent speaker can take about anything, what-ever occupational or professional activity he happens to be engaged in the time whether social role he happens to be performing. There is another aspect of subject-matter, which relates to the expressive function of language (dialect). This is the selection by the speaker of elements which make the utterance appropriate to his attitude towards, or his emotional involvement in, what he is talking about. He may be ironical, enthusiastic, skeptical, reserved, scornful, sentimental. Although the speaker‘s attitude towards the subject-matters may be influenced by such other situational factors as degree of formality and the interpersonal relations subsisting between him and the addressee. It is in principle, distinguishable from these other factors. vi. The participants must know how to make their utterance appropriate to the province or domain to which the situation belongs. There are two terms which appear: (a) Province (b) Domain The term “Province” has been introduced with its definition by Crystal and also the researcher selected this term from what Davy used in his writings as a new important notion reflected in many situations throughout the language use(Davy1982:109). The term “Domain” as a ―cluster of social situations typically constrained by a common set of behavioral roles‖ and it relates it to ―those- generally termed-spheres of activity which have more recently been independently advanced by others interested in the study of acculturation, inter-group relations and bilingualism‖ while the other two terms, “Register” and “Semiotic” will discussed later.
85 Scholars who have been concerned with systematic variation of the kind that are referred to here would be among the first to admit that whatever technical terms they may imply; their theoretical discussions and classification of the phenomenon are tentative and provisional. However, Fishman relates the concept of the domain of English Language behavior, on the one hand, to the subject matter, and on other, to local and role relations. Province likewise is narrower in scope than domain; and it fits into somewhat different analysis of the major situational variables. For example, conversational is regarded as province, but the point is made that ―conversational is different from all other provinces in that it is the only case where conventional occupational boundaries are irrelevant‖. Other provinces in English include the language of public (Informal English) worship advertising, newspapers reporting, science and law. Now in addition to these different kinds of competence, there are two aspects that have an importance in communicative competence. They are described as factual terms in the role of using English Language in communication. These terms are: (a) Semiotic (b) Register 3.10.1. Semiotics Semiotics has been defined as the study of the way in which human beings interact using all the communication devices available to them. In semiotics, an act of communication is viewed as the transmission from one person to another; but this information is seen as a composite, as a mixture of meanings, deriving from the simultaneous use of some or all of the modalities of communication: taste, smell, touch, sight and, of course hearing and voice. In a single act, one might be speaking, making a gesture, using a particular facial expression, and be touching someone; and only by studying the totality of these actions, semiotics claims can the meaning of the whole event be ascertained. The object of semiotic study is thus to analyze and compare the various patterns of bodily activity which a community systematically and conventionally make use of in order to communicate. 86 The researcher thinks the first point which must be emphasized is that, while some aspects of semiotics have been noticed in the past, teachers generally speaking have quite underestimated the overall complexity of the semiotic situation. to take the case of facial expressions and gestures sited above, it was only when scholars actually tried to write down what people did with their faces and bodies when they communicated with each other, and developed a visual kinetic transcription, that it was realized just how many and varied these activities are, and how central they are to understanding the meaning of the speakers' behavior. Many of the cues which signal our attitude towards the person who is being addressed, towards the subject matter of the utterance, or even towards ourselves, are visual in character; and extremely subtle, involving such matters as slight movements of the eyebrows, movement of the nostrils movement of single fingers in specific directions and soon. Moreover, these cues are not instinctive; they are learned, conventional activities which vary from culture to culture. Indeed, so complex is this area that it has been given its own label within semiotics. It may be a surprise to some to realize that even the distance stood from people when the speakers are addressing them is to very great extent controlled by specific cultural considerations, for example, in some cultures one is permitted to stand closer to the addressee than in others. These and related matters would be studied. Then again, one might consider the various tactile methods of communicating information that societies have evolved; in other words, it is conventional to touch on meeting someone, and if so, which part of the body does one use, and where does one touch the other person? Not to follow the expected patterns of behavior can lead to a great deal of embarrassment, and in some places even danger! The importance of these matters to the foreign language speaker should be clear. For after all, if a foreigner fails through ignorance to respect a behavior pattern which the first language community consider obligatory, then
87 he may well offend the company so much that it will never allow him to use the beautiful pronunciation and syntax well. The researcher is convinced that the reason why so many foreigners get off on the wrong foot when they arrive in a country is because they are ignorant of some of these semiotic patterns. The speakers are all familiar with the cliché which tries to summarize the way in which a language's intonation can subordinate – the literal meaning of sentence – an utterance, because not what he said, but the way he said it. In more detail, what is equally common is the related comment, "It is not what he said, nor the way he said it, but the way he looked when he said it." Very often, kinetic information overrules the linguistic information in an utterance; because the influence of visual actions speak or act very much louder or clearer and more impressive than words or intonation patterns. The point is usually under-rated or ignored in standard intonation manuals, and in my view there is one reason of why such linguistic features and intonation are so difficult to gain for the non-native speaker. It is often said, for instance, that the low rising tone in English has a very complex range of meanings. And on looking in the textbooks, one finds that this does seem to be the case, that the idea or concept is presented through the act of the tone is more used to draw the attention, because the tone is sometimes interpreted as unfriendly. When presented with what is an apparently contradictory state of affairs, then one might well forgive any foreigner who concluded that English language intonation was un-learnable. However, of course, this would be a faulty conclusion, the reason for this being that the different meanings are nothing to do with the low rising tone at all, but are conditioned by different facial expressions. As smiling face, for example, on the utterance "really" will produce the friendly range of interpretations; another example of clarifying meanings; a frowning face, on the same contour, will produce the unfriendly
88 range. There will, of course, be cases of ambiguity; but these do not affect the basic principle when one considers this. 3.10.2. Register A dialect is a variety of language distinguished according to the user which means, different groups of people within the language community speak different dialects, which was dealt with in the previous chapter. It is possible to recognize varieties of language along another dimension, distinguished according to use. Language varies as its function varies; it differs in different situations. The name given to a variety of language distinguished according to use is register. The category of register is needed when the speakers want to account for what people do with their language. When language activity is observed in the various contexts in which it takes place, differences in the type of language selected , is found as appropriate to different types of situation. There is no need to labor the point that a sport commentary, a church service and a school lesson are linguistically quite distinct. One sentence from any of these and many more such situation types would enable speakers to identify it correctly. It is known, for example, where 'an early announcement is expected' comes from and "apologies for absence were received"; these are not simply free variants of, what we ought to hear soon, and was sorry he couldn't make it. It is not the event state of affairs being talked about that determines the choice, but the convention that a certain kind of language is appropriate to a certain use. It should be surprising, for example, if it was announced on the carton of the toothpaste that the product was "just right for cleaning false teeth," instead of 'ideal for cleaning artificial dentures.' The crucial criteria of any given register are to be found in its grammar and lexis. Probably lexical features are the most obvious. Some lexical item suffice almost by themselves to identify a certain register.
89 Often it is not the lexical item alone but the collocation of two or more lexical items that is specific to one register. For example; the usage of words as they appear individually is different from the usage of this word when it is used with another; "kick" is presumably neutral, but "free kick" is from the language of football. Purely grammatical distinctions between the different registers are less striking, yet there can be considerable variation in grammar also. Sometimes for example, in the language of advertising, it is the combination of grammatical and lexical features that is distinctive. Registers are not marginal or special varieties of language. Between them they cover the total range of English language activity. It is only by reference to the various situations and situation types, in which English usage is used that the speakers can understand its functioning and its effectiveness. English Language – in general – is not realized in the abstract, with more explanation. It is realized as the activity of people in situations, as linguistic events which are manifested in a particular dialect and register. 3.10.2.1. The study of register concepts As the attitude vary in conforming with situations, the speech manners would be multiplex too, and lead to some kind of difference in using words according to the position and jobs of the speaking individuals. This is what makes it is worth to scrutinize the register techniques as an important aspect of communication. One can also study "registers"; the particular vocabulary choices made by an individual or a group to fulfill the variety of language functions that add up to communication. There are technical registers, social registers, and perhaps even regional registers. Look at these examples: When a professor speaks he uses a certain kind of language according to the situation he lives. When he speaks to or with an academic peer, he would use the words suits the situations and serves the attitude. However, when he speaks with his daughter or son (his children) he uses another kind of
91 words. Moreover, when he speaks to a close friend, there would be another manner of using the words, and when this professor speaks with his friend at a football game. The jobs or positions and situations are different but he is the same person; the professor, the parent, and the football fan are the same person, but the particular words and expressions used vary considerably according to the context and audience. The usage of these different kinds of words and the variation of selecting vocabulary is the existence or the term "register" The study of registers raises questions additional to those raised the study of other terms such as, "semiotics", "collocations", because with registers a subtle or invisible interplay or reaction of syntax and meaning occurs that is extremely difficult to investigate. Linguists have tended to focus their attention more on questions of dialects' differences than of register differences, having devised techniques to handle the former. Consequently, those aspects or register which can be subsumed or included under dialect tend to be explored and the others ignored. Again this consequence or result follows from the absence of a well-defined theory of register.
4. English Language variations Limitation: As an attempt to specify the fields which may be important to clarify the variations in English Language, these subjects had better dealt with, where these variations come from, concentrating on sex, geographical factors, age, multiple negative and the effects of the ethnic groups. And then by the end of this chapter, it will be able to gain the main effects, manners and problems which these variations act upon the performance of English either among the natives or the foreigner speakers and learners. 4.1. Previous Studies
91 The real debate is between those who favor an educational policy of bilingualism, with its obvious extension into the life of the principality and those who would prefer to see English Language as the sole official language in the schools and life in the all different parts of Britain, otherwise these variations in dialects or regional accents would be considered as independent, separate and autonomous languages for their own. In the previous sections, from time to time the term English Language variation was mentioned as a deep-rooted inveterate phenomenon among British society. Linguists have tended to disregard such variation in favor of linguistic models that stress unvarying system and regularity. For instance, some have concerned themselves with describing the speech of only one speaker, concentrating on his speech or what is called "idiolect" and disregarding certain stylistic variations that occur in such a sample. Others, particularly (Trager and Smith)(Tragger1971:270), have attempted to describe an overall system for a language for which individuals select a system. An overall system does allow for variation in a language, but only within a super-system. Still others, notably, (Chomsky1957:256), stressing a distinction between linguistic competence and linguistic performance, have taken for their goal the description of an ideal linguistic competence and considered many kinds of variation to be instances of linguistic performance and therefore, of only peripheral concern. Even historical work, the comparative method of reconstruction and the family-tree model of genetic relationships work best when it is disregarded most kinds of variation. Although it has been tended to ignore linguistic variation because of the need to develop models to account for what is general and universal in language rather than for what is individual and idiosyncratic, a commonsense view of the facts that tell , that considerable variation does occur within language. 4.2. Where the variations come from:
92 1. By dropping a morpheme or a syllable of a word or a part of a phrase: This term is known as (loss),(Bolinger1975:389). This aspect of variation happens when the speaker omits, forgets, ignores, elides, or skips any part from a word which gives the word its formal aspect, or makes it nearer to the informal form. For example: - Some speakers would say: (a) "Deed I do." for "Indeed I do. " The underlined morphemes are dropped (a syllable from a word) (b) "You like it?" for "Do you like it?" A part of a clause is omitted, however this form is a "declarative- type question" - There is common phenomenon of saying the nicknames, for example: (a) Meggy for Margaret (b) Phil for Philip (c) Fred for Fredrick 2. (To mingle): Many speakers mingle between similar words as a result of rapid speech. This is known as (Assimilation), for instance: (a) "gunboat" for gumboat (b) "congradulate" for congratulate (c) "bay" for pay (mispronunciation) (d) "pin" for pen (mispronunciation) 3. Transposition of two phonemes: A speaker often moves a full segment or morpheme within a word, from its normal position, so that it gives another word with a different spelling and it might have no meaningful form. This term is known as "Metathesis". For example:
93 (a) "snop-shots" for "snap-shots" (Bolinger1975:392) The substitution between the two morphemes cause some kind of variation. (b) "Is the bean dizzy?" for "Is the dean busy?" This form cause a confusion in the meaning. 4. The development of dissimilarity between two identical or closely related sounds in a word. (Dwight Bolinger) gave examples to clarify this term. The researcher quoted some of them as:* "This strikes me about as hopeful a project as an analysis of the food value of manna". Sometimes a speaker omits the (as) before "hopeful". This aspect is known as "dissimilation" which means the act of making dissimilar. 5. Other existence of malapropisms: Sometimes the speaker uses substandard forms either adding an extra morpheme to the word or by other uneducated blend. These forms cause some kind of variation in the language, which creates a foundation of informal features and aspects used in the language. Mistakes at this level are from wide range whimsical results. These aspects are known as ―Sporadic Changes‖. For example: - Yeah for yes - Bye for goodbye - Ellum for elm So far the mentioned variations comes under a general concept. In specifying the denotation, it would be very important, for scholars or any other educated speakers, to perceive and acquaint with the sources of this variation. As it was mentioned, the social, cultural, geographical, political causes have created such differences in the usage of English Language among the native of this language. This variation is clearly marked and it has been
94 existed among the ethnic groups and also it has been related and ascribed to: age, sex, occupation, function and the ethnic group. In fact, when the researcher talks about English Language , it is not necessary to be inside Britain or among British people or in the USA or Ireland, because English Language has been spoken in other countries or areas even as a first language or a second or acquired language. For example; India, Pakistan, Ghana, South Africa(Wardhaugh1977:219),…etc. All these countries use English widely, however, there is an extremely and intelligible existence of the English Language variation either in spoken or written forms. In this chapter the researcher will try to give more detail about the sources of this variation, and then what types of variation that have an influence of the English Language. 4.2.1.By sex: Here the researcher shall be dealing with an aspect of linguistic differentiation that does not appear to be susceptible to the same kind of explanation. However, the researcher will depend on some studies that were made to support this notion. It is known from linguistic research that in many societies the speech of men and women differs(Trudgill1979:93). In some cases the differences are quite small and are not generally noticed; they are probably taken for granted in the same way as, say, different gestures or facial expressions. For example; in many accents of American English it has been found that women‘s vowels are more peripheral than men‘s. In other cases the differences may be quite large, overtly noted, and perhaps even actively taught to young children. For example; in some parts (Gros Ventre),(Trudgill1979:84),an American Indian language (dialect) from the north eastern USA palatalized dental stops in men‘s speech correspond to palatalized velar stops in the speech of women. men = // a colloquial word for bread. women = // 95 Generally , differences of this kind can not be explained in terms of social distance. In most societies who speak English, men and women communicate freely with one another, and there appear to be few social barriers likely to influence density of communication between the two sexes. It can not, therefore, be accounted for the development of sex varieties in language in the same way as class, ethnic groups or geographical dialects. The classic example of linguistic sex differentiation, well-known to students of language, comes from the West Indies. It was often reported that when English people first arrived in the “Lesser Antilles” and made contact with the “Carib Indians” who lived there, they discovered that the men and women spoke different languages when those people learnt English and speak it, they have followed the same habit(Bolinger1975:387). In other words men try to be different from women as a result of some social factors. Some linguists ascribe this to phenomenon such as ―taboo‖. However, such social phenomenon had vanished because of social changes and cultural factors and then “taboo” is not a particular good explanation of sex dialects(Bolinger1975:87).But the main reason is that some people either women or men became familiar with some expressions and certain vocabulary, which are used as a habit, that they have inherited from the childhood. From (Thorn and Henley‘s),(Wardhaugh:218), studies the researcher can excerpt and extract an evidence to confirm that there is a difference between male and female aspects of language as a result of social prestige. Those two linguists scrutinized some girls and boys‘ pronunciation of selected words given as a standard or criterion and gauge to pinpoint the countenances of the variation of language between women and men. The selected words are: ―gate” “can‟t” “out” “boy”
96 They concentrated on the vowels these words contain, compared to R.P. The results, giving the percentage of boys and girls using each variant in each case, are given in the following table(Trudgill1979:93): R.P. None R.P. gate boys 0 100 - - girls 62 38 - - Can't boys 0 100 - - girls 62 38 - - out boys 25 17 58 - girls 85 15 0 - boy boys 0 16 42 42 girls 15 38 47 0
It can be seen that the boys are much more likely than the girls to use non-standard local pronunciations. In different parts of the English-speaking world then, just as it is clarified by the previous example, that female speakers have been found to use forms considered to be better and more correct than those used by males. As far as English-speaking societies are concerned, intelligent guesses can be made along the following: First, sociological studies have demonstrated that women in English society are, generally speaking, more status-conscious than men. For this reason, they will be more sensitive to the social significance of social-class related linguistic variables. Second, it seems that working-class speech, like certain other aspects of working-class culture in English society, has connotation of or associates with
97 masculinity, which may lead men to be more favorably disposed to non- standard linguistic from women. It would be therefore able to explain the sex differentiation of linguistic variations areas because, as it has already been seen, language as a social phenomenon is closely related to social attitude. Men and women are socially different in that society lays down different social roles for them and expects different behavior patterns from them. This social fact has been reflected by the language. So men and women's speech as it has been , demonstrated is not only different; women's speech is also socially better than men's speech. Sex varieties, then, are the result of different social attitudes towards the behavior of men and women, and of the attitudes men and women have to language as a social symbol. 4.2.2. By geographical and regional factors: In previous parts it was seen that there is a relationship in Britain as well as English Language world between social dialects and geographical dialects variation, such as that regional linguistic differentiation is greatest at the level of varieties most unlike Standard English. The social and linguistic reasons for the development of regional differences or variations of this type are more complicated. They are clearly the result of language change in different ways in different places. Regional dialects of geographical features such as barriers and distance are very important to be discussed. Distance, is an important factor in the spread of linguistic forms, although in many cases social distance may be as important as geographical distance as it will be seen when the researcher puts some areas in compare later; that is to say, two towns may be socially closer to each other that they are to the intervening stretches of countryside; the barriers are social or geographical. For example; the River Humber had formed a strong geographical barrier – for many years in the past – to the diffusion of lingual aspects in the north of Britain.
98 When a linguistic innovation, (a new word, a new pronunciation, a new usage) occurs at a particularly those nearest to it, so long as no serious barriers to communication intervence. The English Language has been influenced by some aspects and features, for instance, the dialect used in "Belfast" is distinguished from what is in "London", because what would be in London can not easily reach "Belfast" in north "Ireland"(Trudgill1979:156), (This is due to the Irish sea). The geographical pressures involved in the diffusion of linguistic innovations are, of course, a good deal more complex than those associated with fashions. The following aspects illustrate the extent to which judgments concerning the correctness and purity of linguistic varieties and features are geographical than others. All accents of English have an // sounds in words such as "rat", and "rich" and, most have an // in "carry", "sorry". On the other hand there is a number of accents which have no // in words like "cart" and "war". These words formerly had an // sound, as the spelling shows, but in these accents the // has been lost except where it occurs before a vowel while in American English the // is a pronounced segment of the word. This what makes some speakers are not able to generalize that the phoneme // is not pronounced except before a vowel. Also in England, however, this concept can not be applied to all accents of English in the areas and countries where English language is the first language. Accents which lack postvocalic // include a number in the USA and West Indies and also many in England-Wales, and New Zealand, and all in Australia and South Africa. For example; in these accents pairs of words like "ma" and "mar" are pronounced in exactly the same way. There is no particular social or political factor, which would be used or considered as a reason for this variation, this aspect can be found in some parts and not in the others in the same country. And also there is nothing inherent in postvocalic
99 // that is good or bad, right or wrong, sophisticated or uncultured. When we try to restrict the areas where this phenomenon is found, There is no logical reason that can be found to cause it except the geographical factors which it can be realized when the map of UK is studied to show the areas where postvocalic // in "yard" and "farm" in conservative rural dialects in England. This information(Trudgill1979:79), is based on the survey of conservative rural dialects carried out under the direction of Harold Orton at the University of Leeds. It shows the areas of England where loss of postvocalic // in the pronunciation of the words "farm" and "yard" have not yet taken place. Sociolinguistically speaking, this map represents a considerable simplification of the state of affairs concerning postvocalic // in England. For example; some studies and surveys of English dialects show that the postvocalic // is pronounced in words such as "farm" and "yard" specially in Surrey in England, however, this is not the case for the majority of the population. From the study which Harold Orton made the researcher can extract the following main points: First, it is confined to only two words: an examination of data for other words would reveal additional areas, such as parts of east Yorkshire where postvocalic // may be pronounced. Second, it is socially very incomplete all along the eastern edge of the south-western area. For instance, it is only older speakers from the lowest social groups who are r-pronouncers, and even they are likely to use an // less frequently and pronounce it less strongly than speakers further south and west. Third, the map gives information only about rural linguistic varieties. For many urban areas, particularly the large towns, the impression given is very inaccurate since, unlike the rural areas, they may be entirely r-less, for example; this is true of Liverpool. The reason for this difference between urban and rural accents is that linguistic innovations, like other innovations, often spread from one urban 111 center to another, and only later spread out into the surrounding countryside. This is due to the general economic, demographic and cultural dominance of town over country, and to the structure of the communication network. From the following examples below, it can be ascertained that there are some aspects of variation in English Language as a result of geographical or regional factors that can be clarified as presented in:
London Manchester Hyde Cheshire
much // // /i/ book // // // rough // // //
The result is that the spread of linguistic features from one area to another is therefore not dependent on proximity. An innovation starting in London is quite likely to reach Bristol before it reaches rural Wiltshire, although the later is nearer. The speech of Manchester too, is in many ways more like that of London than of nearby rural Cheshire. The geographical barriers often cause or create a certain kind of language variations. Dialectologists have found that regional-dialects boundaries often coincide with geographical barriers such as mountains, swamps, oceans, rivers … for many years. Although people nowadays can overcome these hindrances easily, the effects of these obstacles are still found. For example; the River of Humber (between Lincolnshire and Yorkshire) in the North of the UK does not make a hard-cross partition which prevent individuals to communicate in these days, however, its effect (as a difficult hard-cross barrier for hundred of years ago) is still appeared in some aspects and features of spoken English in some parts at the north of Britain, which create a clear varieties between or among the population of that area. This river had acted as a geographical barrier to the spread of linguistic features among people who have lived around it. For instance, the word
111 "house" has had two pronunciations among the speakers there. Some pronounce it as /:/ like "hoos" some others say // as it is known in English Language, and this according to their local dialects and as a result of un-contact between people in the past. So it seems to be, the case that the greater the geographical distances between two dialects the more dissimilar they are linguistically. Then dialectologists began to incorporate social as well as geographical information into their dialect surveys. 4.2.3. By age: Although the researcher has tended to disregard the tiny provenances of English Language Variation like those which have occurred as a result of age ethnic group or as an effect of social barriers, but there is an aspect which worths the first concern. It can not be ignored or skipped the speech of youths in compare to old people; as it is known the old people always try to be conservative (Bolinger1975:384) while the young often try to be fashionable or liberal to be free of the shackles of their ancestors' patrimonies. Of course, this is another kind of English language variation. However, these features would disappear as the result of the progress of language acquisition. Linguists believe that changes in age bring about change in usage, and as certain usage become appropriate to specific ages, and this is described as a phenomenon known as "age-grading"(Wardhaugh1977:219). As English Language is like other modern languages which have to be acquired by every generation and although the speakers already desire to allege and state that specific types of essentials that do not have to be gained, because they are inbred enough, they must be achieved, so that variation between generations is likely to occur. Consequently, those who concern with English Language authenticity believe that this language must be protected and shielded from foreign ethnic group and social or regional features that are inconvenient and might damage and impair it. To solve or confront such problems, they have deemed that 112 youths specifically the younger ones have to learn this language in their community (be convinced that it is their official, national and first language) where they are supposed to be born in. Otherwise this language would be completely inactive and fixed existence, that might form a pasture-land for the negative variations, and those who concern with this language also, insist not to forget any attempt to convince the young generation not to tend to have their own fashionable prestige of speaking which might make their miss of its dignity and sobriety. 4.2.4. By multiple negative: The grammatical variations in English language are numerous and manifold. They are existed from clear aspects to tiny forms that cannot be noticed by many learners or English language foreign speakers. It is difficult to provide a comprehensive list of all the grammatical differences to be found between Non-standard English dialects and Standard English. The researcher will start with the most common forms and point out the kinds of differences to be used in different areas. These forms would be found in most parts of England and in some other countries, where English language is their mother tongue. 4.2.4.1. The main aspects of multiple negative: A good example of this is the grammatical morphology which is well known throughout the English speaking world as the "double negative". If a sentence like: - We have some tea. It can be noted that there would be two possible or different ways of making it negative: 1. The verb can be negated as: We do not have any tea. 2. Or as: We have no tea. These sentences have different stylistic concepts and connotations; however, the latter is more formal, although they mean almost the same thing. The prominent point is that, in Standard English a speaker can perform one or 113 other of these processes but not both. However, in most other English dialects, the speaker might use both of these forms at once. The result is as origination or creating a new structure which is not used in Standard English as multiple negative like: - We don't have no tea. Linguists favour the terms "multiple negations" or "negative concord" to be more common "double negative". Since this process is not limited to two negatives, it is possible to see three or more negations at once, as: - I cannot get none nowhere. In fact it is secure to think that structures of the kind "We do not have no tea." are used by a great number of English language speakers. This structure was found in the standard dialects too, although, it is considered to be "wrong" by many individuals in the English-speakers world, but these forms have low prestige, because it is like most non-standard grammatical forms, and most typical of working-class speech. People who believe them to be "wrong" are probably making what is essentially a social aspect rather than linguistic judgement. On the other hand, the regional variation should not be forgot in the type of constructions in which "Multiple Negations" are permitted. For example: → "We haven't got only one", while in Standard English we find: → "We've only got one", but when it is heard: → "He went out without no clothes on", The situation is different because this type is used in most English language dialects and accents 4.2.5. By ethnic groups: This side has attracted many linguists' attention, so that they have paid much care and interest to the variations in English language which have been 114 caused by this variable. In fact this manner has been arose as a result of British colonialism; when Britain seized a lot of countries, they aimed to spread out and diffuse strong basis and foundations for the British culture and to augment their followers to have much support, they granted the British nationality to many people from the colonies. When these colonies became independent, those who have had the British nationality began to emigrate to England forming what is known as "ethnic community". Another factor which forms or increases ethnic groups in England and USA is the need for cheap employees. So many individuals from other nations move to these two countries. These ethnic groups or most of them use their mother tongue when they were at home although they can speak English. However, when they move to England they use English with their accents, influenced by their ethnic lineages, whereas, the mother tongue became important as a means of maintaining ethnic identity and in securing certain material advantages. So they speak English with new characteristics of ethnic- group membership, and this aspect has become very common in English Language world scale. When linguists decided to study the effects of the ethnic groups on the speaking of English language, in the beginning, there would be some kind of floundering in their dealing with them. To prove this, it would be rather to touch on to the earlier suggestions which carried out in the USA in the last century. The earlier suggestions (which makes these people do not speak English as the native speakers of English do) was almost funny; as it is known that the earlier ethnic existence in Britain and USA are Negroes from Africa, and their notable defect is speaking English language appeared with pronunciation of the postvocalic // in words such as, ―Carol‖ (Ca‘ol) and ―Paris‖ (Pa‘is). The critics – at that time – due this to illogical reason, whereas, at recently as 1949, one writer claimed that Negroes, ―could not pronounce // because of their (Thick Lips)‖. Later this opinion was
115 explicated as some kind of apartheid against them. Some black people objected. Because of the legacy of the ―different-equals-inferior‖ position, some black people still feel that the academic discussion of the Blacks‘ English variation is an attempt to discriminate against them, and would prefer that the subject not be discussed, and they claimed that the lack in Blacks‘ English variation as in R.P. of postvocalic //, however, they were mistaken, because the postvocalic // in R.P. is not dropped out between two vowels (see the example above). Another experiment was carried out in the USA in which a number of people acting as judges were asked to listen to tape-recordings of two different sets of speakers. Many of the judges decided that speakers in the first set were black, and speakers in the second set were white, and they were completely wrong, since it was the first set which consisted of white people, and the second of Negroes. And they were wrong in a very interesting way. The speakers they had been asked to listen to were exceptional people; the white speakers were people who had lived all their lives amongst blacks, or had been raised in areas where Negro cultural values were dominant; the black speakers were people who had been brought up with contact with other Negroes, in predominantly white areas. The fact was that white speakers sounded like blacks, and the black speakers sounded like whites, and the judges listening to the tape-recordings reacted accordingly. As the whites who live among the blacks produced the same sound pitches and vice versa with blacks, the listeners could not give good judgments in order to distinguish between the races according to the sound pitches they produced. There is, then, no inherent or necessary link between language and race. It remains true, however, that in many cases language may be an important, or even, essential concomitant of ethnic-group membership. This is a social fact, though, and it is important to be clear about what sort of process may be involved. In some cases, for example, and particularly
116 where languages rather than varieties of a language are involved, linguistic characteristics may be the most important defining criteria for ethnic-group membership. The latest studies, however, could give an evidence to show, to some extent, the effects of the ethnic-groups on English language. Some linguists pointed out that ethnic-groups could make a clear variation in English, for instance: 1. Most of the emigrants who had come from African origins (and their mother tongue was not English) often do not have //, as in "thing" //, or //, as in "that" //. In initial position they are often merged with // (rarely) and // respectively, so that "this" // will be "dis" //. 2. Other speakers' errors can be found among the ethnic-group speakers such as: - She be nice and happy. - He usually be around. This form is known or so-called "invariant be". Although some English accents accept some of these forms, but they are not accepted as Standard English. 3. Some other variations appear clearly in the ethnic-group speech as: - He be busy right now. This kind of distinction in the verb is certainly reminiscent of Creole languages. In Caribbean Creoles, – verb aspect, the distribution of an event through time (whether it is repeated, continuous, completed, …etc.) tends to be of greater importance than the tense – the actual location of an event in time. At the same time, it should be said that this sort of habitual-non-habitual distinction is not unknown in British dialects. 4. There are, however, two other respects in which the aspectual system of ethnic-group English variation differs from that of Standard English. The ethnic-group speech variation and Standard English have in common a present perfect verb form: 117 - I have talked. and past perfect form: - I had talked. but the ethnic-group speech has in addition, two further forms as: - I done talked. Which has been called; ―completive aspect‖, indicating that the action is completed; and another form: - I been talked. Which is known as the ―remote aspect‖, indicating an event that occurred in the remote past. 5. There are some other final grammatical characteristics of non- English origin speakers worthy of mention are: - non-English origin speakers‘ question inversion, that there would be ―existential it‖, and ―negativized auxiliary pre-position‖ is a common aspect among those speakers. Rules for question inversion in indirect questions in those speakers English differ from those in Standard English, and the result in sentences such as:(in Standard English): I asked Mary where did she go? and I want to know did he come last night. The existential it occurs where Standard English has there. For example: It‟s a boy in class named Joey. (Standard English There‟s …………) It ain‟t no heaven for you to go to, (Standard English There is no………) Doesn‟t nobody know that it is a God. This last example also illustrates negativized auxiliary pre-position. In those speakers‘ English, if a sentence has a negative (doesn‘t, can‘t) can be placed at the beginning of the sentence such as: Can‟t nobody do nothing about it. Instead of: Nobody can‟t do nothing about it. (a multiple negative) and the other form as: 118 Wasn‟t nothing wrong with that. (a multiple negative) However, the difference would be clearly suitable with statement intonation. 6. Another aspect of ethnic-group language variation relates to the grammar aspects, for instance: - Standard English = We were eating and drinking too. - Ethnic-group variation = We was eatin‟ and drinkin‟ too. This is a general aspect or variation in most of ethnic groups English language variation, however, with certain English Creole speakers from isolated part of the Coastal American South, the situation is different for example: For those who come from Jamaica and Surinam the previous example sounded different as: - Jamaican c: We ben a nyam „an we a drink too. - Surinam : We ben de nyam „en we de dringie too. They often use words from their local language which is a mixture between English and French . In such case this form is known as a dialect more than some kind of variations. 7. Another ethnic-group which came from India and Pakistan, however, English Language is their official second language. It can be said that Pakistani and Indian English is a self-system [follows its own set of rules]. The system is closely correlated to the essence grammar of English English. As Indians and Pakistanis are different socially from English people, English is spoken there accordingly. The language process of this socio-regional dialect or accent lies in the fact that, its essential linguistic systems are the same as those of English English. However, Indian English lies in the fact that within the overall general structure of the systems of English English, it manifests specific distinguishing phonological features; for example:
119 - in RP in Indian forms station // // or // In terms of linguistic efficiency, these forms are as good as any other. They are not perverted, but rather different forms of that same language. In short, the English language speakers in both countries have had a clear different accent, that when you hear one from these two countries speaking English, you will recognize him soon, if you are familiar enough with English dialects and accents.
5. English Language acquisition Limitation: Since English is an important global language, the need for learning it arises as a modern, needed language. So the aspects of acquiring this language must be touched on. Thus, English Language acquisition is the theme in this chapter. However, the field that would be covered will be, as an introduction what is the difference between learning English for living? and English for learning would be clarified. Hence, there are some other items or subjects that would be dealt with like; the aspects of English Language acquisition, and a topic, why people learn English. Also, the manners of English Language acquisition in the school and within a community is important, in addition to the sound systems acquisition in English Language, the task of official learning in foreign language acquisition, English grammar acquisition. These topics will be discussed with more detail and specification through the text. Consequently, by the end of this chapter, the routes of acquiring this language, the problem which will face the learner, the differences between the first language and the second language acquisition will be clarified. 5.1. Language for living and language for learning: 111 The term language for living referred to may have made some readers uneasy. It might seem to suggest a too heavily emotional attitude towards the part played by language in the lives of men and their society. Nothing of the kind is intended, however. The phrase is offered as a simple descriptive label for the fact that men use language in some way or other throughout the whole spectrum of their activities as individuals and social beings. It does, however, imply a particular view-of the nature and function of language, a view that regards language as the defining characteristic of man as a species and therefore as a crucial element in his ability to survive, individually and collec- tively. Professor Max Black a philosopher whose central interest is the part played by language in our capacity to function as thinking animals, puts it this way, Man is the only animal that can talk. . . He alone can bridge the gap between one person and another, conveying thoughts, feelings, desires, attitudes, and sharing in the traditions, conventions, the knowledge and the superstition of his culture. On this essential skill depends everything which would be called civilization. Without it, imagination, thought-even self-knowledge are impossible. What Professor Black says is obviously the case. The trouble is that it is so obviously the case that is constantly being led to overlook its implications, because lived them out in every aspect of people's lives, every day that we live. This very obviousness can become a serious liability when the question of the part played by language in education is concerned with. As the researcher has suggested elsewhere: When something enters into every aspect of the people's lives in the way in which language does, its very familiarity is a barrier to exploration. Existing understanding will always seem sufficient, and exploration merely a process of elaborating an abstruse disguise for what is commonplace and familiar. One major aim of language study is to show that it is precisely the
111 commonplace and the familiar in the use of language for living which is most in need of exploration. It is needed to be able to create a climate of opinion in which no teacher would be willing to accept that his everyday familiarity with language, as a competent native speaker, was sufficient in itself to provide him, as a teacher, with what he needs to know about its nature and function. If it is now considered the second of the terms, language for learning, it can be seen that the learner finds himself in a similar situation, because his competence as an eager learner will not if itself provide him with what he needs to know about language for learning. In other words, the understanding of the nature and function of language which is derived from the capacity to use it as competent native or foreign speakers does not make it easy for the speakers to reflect upon their knowledge of the language, or their knowledge of the use of the language. People learn language in such a way that their knowledge of it, and of its use, are necessarily intuitive. They function successfully as users of language just because they do not need to deploy an explicit body of knowledge in so doing, as they do if they wish to function successfully as users of Social Science.. In particular, the researcher draws a basic distinction between 'knowledge OF a language' and 'knowledge ABOUT a language' in these terms: Knowledge OF a language derives solely from the process of learning language, while knowledge ABOUT language embraces the intuitions of folk-linguistic and all kinds of knowledge about that are conscious and explicit. This distinction between' knowledge OF a language' and 'knowledge ABOUT a language' is crucial to the idea of language for learning. When the learners want to focus upon the question of learners' needs in the context of learning situations, they must be very clear about the kind of 'knowledge' that would be relevant. are competent speakers of a language because they have acquired a natural language in the process of growing up as ordinary members of a human community. It is this 'knowledge OF the language' which they bring with them into the class-room. It is operational knowledge of the
112 language in the sense that it provides each learner with a capacity to use language for living. This means that he is in a position to produce spoken utterance or written text in so far as he can read the situation in which he finds himself. His ability to read a situation and then draw upon his operational knowledge in order to meet its demands necessarily depends, therefore, upon his intuitive assessment of how he can use language to live. It follows from this that an individual's knowledge of his needed language can only become operational for him in so far as he is able to form an intuitive assessment of what using language might look like in a particular situation. Unless the educators are prepared to show learners, therefore, what using language for learning really looks like, they must not be surprised if they are unable to deploy their knowledge of the language effectively to meet the linguistic demands of the learning situations in which we meet them. An individual's knowledge of his language, therefore, becomes operational when he adds to his fundamental knowledge of the language a corresponding knowledge of the use of the language. These two 'knowledges', can be spoken , then, as different aspects of an individual's linguistic resource, and together we can say that they provide him with his capacity. The speakers possess a very strong intuition that this distinction is a real distinction and their sense of it has entered into a whole range of everyday expressions. Consider what is meant mean by 'words failed me', 'I was lost for words', 'I just didn't know what to say', 'I can't find words to express it', 'I was speechless', 'He hadn't a word to say for himself'. A common element in all these expressions is surely the sense that the 'words' are there, but the learners can't lay their tongues on them at that precise moment in that particular setting. What the intuition points to is the fact that the learners may indeed be aware that they possess relevant intuitive knowledge of the elements and structure of the language, but be quite unable to deploy them on occasions, because the learners or speakers seem to lack a correspondingly relevant intuitive knowledge of how they might be used.
113 There is, however, yet another factor to be considered in relation to language for learning; it is the pupils' folk-linguistic intuitions about language and the use of language. These intuitions constitute a third kind of 'knowledge', and influence our capacity to language effectively just as much as either of the other two. They are, however, knowledge ABOUT language rather than knowledge OF language, although, as will be seen, it is knowledge ABOUT of a rather special kind. Consider for a moment popular views about accent or dialect; about the relationship between spoken and written language; about correctness in speech or writing. Consider the fact that many people write and talk about language as though it were made up of 'words' only; that others regard their favoured form of the written language as the correct form, a form of which speech is but an imperfect copy; that others regard usage acquired from another language as necessarily a sign of linguistic decline. Think of the implications of phrases like 'Actions speak louder than words', 'What is wanted is action, not words', 'Mere talk', 'Don't bandy words with me', 'Don't answer back'. All of these express a particular view of how the speakers use language to live and, even more importantly how some of them think how they all ought to use language to live. What these views reveal are attitudes and assumptions about the nature and function of language which enter into a person's whole way of regarding the part language plays in his life. He has acquired them by growing up as a member of a particular social group within a particular human community. In that sense they are a product of cultural learning; they are intimately a part of the way in which he looks at the world. This idea can be tested by challenging the expression of such views. The reaction is likely to be very strongly felt. It is also likely to imply that the challenge must be unserious, because the views expressed are so obvious to the holder that he can conceive of no other way of looking at the topic to which they refer. These views are intuitive, therefore, in the sense that they do shape a speaker's own use of language, and his response to how others use it, without his being continuously conscious of the fact. At
114 the same time, however, they are knowledge ABOUT language rather than knowledge OF language, and consequently it is possible to create a situation in which people can be made aware of what their own folk-linguistic views might be. It is even possible to create situations in which they can go on to modify their folk-linguistic attitudes in the light of a new perspective on language. The researcher wants to draw together this discussion of language for living and language for learning by suggesting how the different factors he has looked at come together to create a particular climate for language activity within the environment of school or college. In doing this, the researcher hopes he will be able to show that the need for Language Study arises out of the very nature of language activity itself and its relationship to the environment people create for themselves as social beings. 5.2. Why do we learn a foreign language? Initially English Language for the Libyans is a foreign language not a second language, although there had been many efforts, at the time of British colonialism to make this language a factual one specially in correspondence, communication and in official intercourses and transactions. It is known, however, that there had been remarkable necessity to learn this language, otherwise, they would not catch up with one of the means of technology which has been needed in their day-to-day life. So learning such a language has become a pressing and compulsory need. The aim of gaining a foreign language, unless it is simply that of getting learners over an important educational hurdles, is to enable the learner to act in such a way that he can deal conclusively with some degree, and for certain purposes, as member of a community other than his own. The degree to which any particular learner may wish to proceed independently, will vary. He may solicit to read only technical literature, or he may desire to exhort or preach the evangel in a foreign country. These varying degrees of contribution
115 involve dissimilar levels of skills in language representation. They also include some partition of linguistic acting into different types of skill. If any disputation of language acquiring that might be talked about developing skills such as speaking or understanding speech, it will be deemed a psychological view of language, in other words the learners are considering it as a matter of personal and singular behavior. Whether they consider that acting to be a set of habits or probable responses, a body of knowledge, or a set of rules depends on the particular psychological account that they embrace of the language behavior of the individual and how it is acquired. It will, for instance, be pointing the attitude to the function and usage of exercises and drills; the using of grammatical explanations, the value of repetition and learning by heart, the benefit of dictation and significance of hearing. No matter what the resolution that has been had in the field of methods includes the assuming of a view of language as a phenomenon of individual psychology. What explicated termed traditional language acquisition, was not very much that it lacked a consciousness of the psychological dimension of language, as that it restricted the extent of manners aimed at. However, this would not be a cause for being critical of the language. The skills it tried to promote were, probably, those which community cerebrated convenient and suitable at that period. What one can nowadays justifiably say about traditional language acquiring is that its procedures are no longer suitable to a new collection of claims and anticipations. In foreign language acquiring the learners try to participate some other communities their language other than their own, to play a part or fulfill a role in that community. Thus they aim to interact and communicate satisfactorily with other members of the communities who have this language. Moreover, the speakers have planned not to misunderstand the others, otherwise they will be ludicrous and laughable among the members of that community. In addition, the language acquisition must be factual to those
116 who have aspired to be wives or husbands with members or natives of that language, and for some others, who are contented to be acquainted with that required language. In this stage or level, English language acquisition is like all other languages acquisition. The researcher means that the child's acquisition of this language, in some extent, has been similar to the other moods of other language acquisition. 5.3. The aspects of English Language acquisition 5.3.1. General Introduction: In fact the child's ability to speak a language has based on the genetic transmission as he was born with the natural instincts. If it is mediated attentively the child's acquiring of language between the earlier ages and the school age, the first thing the learners might pay attention to is that the amount of language required is enormous. The child would be in relation with language for most of his waking time. His contact with the language will take different aspects. Some of it will be language, directed at the child by other people, particularly relatives. A powerful endeavor will be created to guarantee and insure that this language is meaningful to the child. This might be made by manifesting nearest objects impacts and actions of surrounding environment, by an intuitive efforts; at facilitation of the language, or in the later stages, by effective explanation. Moreover, there might be other language that the child is subjected to, in the sense that it is done in his presence, but which will not be addressed to him and most of which will not be meaningful to him, at least in the earlier phases of his language acquisition. Then, there will be language which the child himself yields. Part of his language will be directed to other people, however, it might be a fault to believe that such language typifies all of the child's language production. At a particular level in his language extension he
117 is probably to spend many hours in soliloquy and fanciful dialogue, unaware of whether there would be anyone else present to incite him to speak. There are some other important factors about the language that the child is subjected to. First, of course, spoken free language. Second, the surrounding effects, which make or become an uncontrolled source of language for the little child. These factors represent the main Character of language acquiring for him. The child acquires his language without having it suitable for him in this way, while adults always make some attempts to simplify the produced language for his benefit of the child, but what is produced in presence of the child remains (structurally) various and in some way would be more complicated for this little child. As a result of closed observation which has been made, it is discovered that the child might play games with language by repeating the same kind of pattern perhaps with some kind of replacements and alterations. The language in the child's surroundings is also undirected and it is not controlled in the sensation that it is not created of perfect samples of syntactical speech. Like all natural speech it is a subject to many deformations, mistakes and contradictions. It is never a forthright repercussion of the somewhat idealistic aspect of language which is depicted in grammars. However, the child, instead to learn from it. A slightly clear point is that the child learns whatever language he is subjected to. Most children are in relation with one language only and they, of course, become monolinguals. It must not be forgotten that where children are brought up in a symmetry bilingual environment, they acquire both languages simultaneously, though with some retardation when compared with monolingual children. There is a fundamental consolidation of the two languages, however, later, they are seceded and remain functionally quite discrete.
118 5.4. The child's reaction towards the language acquisition It has already been seen that when the child is adequately exposed to language, he will produce language himself. More interesting probably than the language to which the child is exposed is his reaction to it. In part what he produces is an imitation of what he has heard and this is a process which adults often try to stimulate, but opposite to what has generally been taught, a good deal of his language production is not imitative at all. Not only he has the ability to take words and phrases that he has heard and use them in new collective forms, but also he actually produces parts of that he could heard them from the other people in his environment. The supplying that is provided by other people carries out more than inform the child whether or not his message is correctly formed. It also clarifies and represents to him that his language has an effect on the attitude of others, and so, rather than being at the mercy of the surrounding through language, he can bring the surrounding effect under his own control. It might be clearly meaningless to say that this instigates him to gain the language. This means that he becomes conscious enough of the regulative function of language. As his language is simple and limited he can meet his needs, such as his needs for permission or receiving advice. As long as suitable exposure to language is provided, the process of language acquisition that has just been described will be followed by all children who do not suffer from, to some extent, some physiological or psychological defect. However, these levels of acquisition would not be analogous, but they might not be spaciously different either. By the school age a factual consistency of the grammatical system of the language will have been controlled by the child himself. For this age children may have construct states according to their natural talents to build
119 up their linguistic development that they have the similarities in acquiring language skills through a very striking and captivating process. So far it was dealt with the inception and the rise of self-acquisition of language as a human aspect, without any kind of dealing with the programmed and planned acquisition of the foreign language. Consequently, it would be rather touched on with arranged and organized acquisition of the foreign language. In this part the researcher will deal with aspects of English Language acquiring. The main features that they will be discussed, will be based upon the latest studies and notions in this field. As the researchers will deal with English Language acquisition, either as a second or a foreign language the researcher can dare to say that the second language can be acquired either by teaching or through social situations as it has been spoken by many inhabitants in the same country or community, but the foreign language would be learned through programmed procedures as a subject taught in schools or in other educational institutions. The fundamentals that have judged the English Language acquisition, are obtained from a lot of experts and specialists' thoughts and experiences that the researcher could be acquainted with. 5.5. First language acquisition The studies on the first language acquisition has had a great impact on the studying of second language learning specially at the theoretic and the practical standard. However, The theoretical level has some characteristics which make it more distinguished; so that this level, scholars, and research workers in first language acquiring have been working with stimulative modern notions about language and its leaning process. Some notable conception as imitation and habit-formation have, to some range, been commuted by some concepts which corroborate the child's own creation in forming his acquaintance of his language. These thoughts have excited research workers to study second language learning from an identical perspective and to search for an actual and veritable evidence to support this 121 view. Likewise, at the practical level, first language research workers have promoted new technicalities for controlling and analyzing child's speech. In addition to these notions and ideas other techniques have been used in the field of second language learning to collect information and gather evidences about the sequences and processes that are involved. By this constricting of the gap between theories and methods in the two fields, it is not surprising that successive theme has been to consider the similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition. Often the scholars' increased data of first language acquisition has acted as a background for realizing and understanding new facts about second language acquiring. Moreover, some research workers understand their far extent aim as to produce an individual theory of language acquisition, that may account for first and second language learning within one cadre or field. Nonetheless, the two expertises are both aspects of the general human ability to learn and use the language. 5.5.1. First Language acquisition and behaviorism Nearly in the middle of the last century, the concern and analysis of the child's language was ruled, in the first step, by the behaviorist oncoming and method to language and learning. The most famous supporter of the oncoming was one of the most famous linguists B. F. Skinner.(littlewood1981:8). The chief title Skinner had composed was under the title "Verbal Behavior" which contained the essential nature (essence) of the behaviorist approach to language acquisition. He deemed that language in general is not an intellectual phenomenon, and according to his beliefs the language acquiring would happen by what's known as "habit-formation". Moreover, he said that language is like other aspects of human behavior; it has been judged by the habitual creation that has the main role of language acquisition, in which the major efficiencies are:
121 1. The child gains the language through imitation, as he imitates the voices and utterances he could hear in the surroundings he lives in. 2. As relatives notice what the child has produced, they try to fortify and embolden him to be similar to them; trying to repeat the sounds in front of him, in case, the child makes a mistake and they may reward this little child if he makes acceptable or right reaction. 3. As the attempts are continued, either by the child himself as a result of the encouragements he receives from the adults or by the adults as some kind of training him to act like what he hears. 4. Consequently, the child can produce a verbal reaction and advances step by step until he can develop the habitual acquisition of language utterances, which to some extent, coincides with his age growth and to suit the adults models. These notions support the habitual forming of language learning, as the human beings were born with inborn aspects of predilection and tendency to communicate with the others. However, the process of first language acquisition through or by habit-formation is not free of passive aspects, because acquiring the information with this style at this level, is not codified or systematic, moreover the child may pronounce (say) some words wrongly and he has them as a habit unless he receives, in somewhat, a procedure of correcting his errors. So if he continues his own performance without any help and guiding, he may acquire wrong utterances, and his executions were seen as a faulty version of adult speech. The mistakes were simply the result of imperfect learning. For these reasons, the behaviorist approach of learning the first language, is sometimes described to be inadequate. This opinion made a strong argument among many linguists. These are some of the arguments that may convince the scholars of the inadequacies of the behaviorist approach:
122 - The radical and fundamental image of language is no longer admitted, because "language is not verbal behavior".(Littlewood1981:6). - The language is based on a complicated system of rules that can not be achieved without teaching. - Language contains an absolute number of clauses, that children may not face before which need explanation and simplifying. - The information the child gains by himself would be out of observation and the child does not have enough competence to make him able to speak the language correctly. - The activity of excerpting absolute information from the felt examples can not be expounded by habit-formation. - This task takes place at early age, so that the child needs more explanation to understand the meaning. The arguments have been continued to make an inquiry arises, which is "Is language learned or inherited? " The genuine question was whether human beings come already supplied with a genetic plan for language. This theme has been discussed since last century, and it was stated by Horation Hale(Littlewood1981:150). He had proclaimed that young children have an instinct for language acquisition. However, he deemed that the instinct is not just one for fast gaining and spontaneous what ever existing language a child is exposed to, but one that would enable two children to invent a language out of nothing. It is known that there are some innate willingness at birth, or people could never learn to speak. But how can this notion be explicit? A part of the answer can be deduced from those resemblances that are very widespread among cultures everywhere as to make it unthinkable that they arose by accident. What may reflect and support this notion, are these two concepts; "intonation and sound-symbolism". These two concepts can be acquired orally, by exaggerated intonation with greater ups and downs of pitch. It is the first part of language that a child learns, and it has patterns in similar ways in all languages all over the world. A possible example to clarify
123 this would be; when mother asks her child about something she thinks it may harm him, she may say, "Where did you put it?" The expected answer might be; eat ate I it. or I it. Sometimes his answer is without the pronoun ( I ) and the verb receives a strong intonation. Such patterns can be gained quickly and the child becomes used to use them. So intonation, in compare to the other aspects of language, is even more deeply entrenched, moreover, it is also connected with the physiology of speech and with the nervous system in general. Given such beginnings, it was only natural for these audible effects to be simulated. The grammar of language is held to contain an extremely elaborate abstract system of rules. If the child is too young from such rules, then he must inherit them in some form or other. And to counter the opposing argument that even with feeble abstracting powers the child still might build the rules from observation, it is pointed out that what he hears is too defective to serve as a model. Accepting this reasoning, one can admit almost any degree of explicitness in the language capacity that comes packed in our genes. It can be viewed everything that a child hears his parents say as mere, "raw material,"(Lenneberg1967:140) affecting the appearance of a language much as the kind and amount of nutrients will affect the appearance of a plant, without altering its essential structure. An example from English grammar is the rather, or with a greater reason, remarkable fact that when children learn English as a first language they never seem to make any mistake in the use of the progressive (---ing), always attaching it to just the right verbs, for instance; "walking in (He is walking)", but not "owning in (He is owning)." Though they make plenty of mistakes with other verb forms. Some linguists describe how this might
124 happen from the most native point of view, which assumes an inborn knowledge of the appropriate verb classes. The child presumably would already be using the verbs onto which he must later attach the (--- ing). However, if when the verbs are first learned, the child grasps not only their individual meanings but their underlying kinships, each verb will be properly tagged as "state" or "process". Then when the first progressives are formed, the ground has already been laid for attaching (--- ing) only where it belongs. The child hears other people using the progressive appropriately and notes that the (---ing) in this construction is attached to just those forms which he has already categorized in his mind as "process verbs". He does not have to experiment and makes no mistakes. The nativist, thus, assumes that people are born with some capacity to sense the division of verbs into process verbs and state verbs. Nevertheless it is clear that human beings in some sense are programmed for language. The proofs are indirect, but there are too many to be ignored. The psychologist Eric Lenneberg sums them up asLennenberg1967:131). 1. The speech process which demands wide exact and swift or quick motions of the tongue, and lips all well harmonized, arranged and concerned with larynx and respiratory process, is all but fully, promoted when most other mechanists skills are far below their levels of next achievements. 2. The levels of development are proportionally manifest and are latent in children anywhere in the world. 3. Specific ailments like muscular emaciation and deafness (either for the children themselves or their parents), affect other dynamic skills, however, may not necessarily adjourn language performance, acting an acquisition. However, Ritchie believed that, since a child acquires his native language, "… at a point in his life when his general ability to acquire abstract
125 systems is not particularly highly developed." and " … with access only to fragmentary and degenerate data…," it follows that the inherited language capacity must be highly specific. Thus the nativist theory has found many adherents among linguists, particularly those who follow Noam Chomsky. There is no question that human infants come into the world with vastly more performed capacity for language than used to be thought possible. There is an evidence that even a four week old infant is especially tuned to react to speech sounds as against other sounds. But whether or not the genetic design contains elements that are explicit linguistic hinges on the overall question of explicitness. There is no much interdependence in the unfolding of our capacities that it can not be sure that the linguistic ones do not start as nonlinguistic, only to be made linguistic by features of the environment. Suppose that language and tool using have the same basic mechanisms, as some anthropologists maintain. At certain point the infant discovers that he has hands and he discovers objects. This is an event external to his brain, but at the same time it is inevitable, and along with other external events it molds capacities around the use of tools. At the same time or later the infant discovers words as objects. He is already equipped to use objects, and a simple transfer molds this capacity around a subject and predicate, a thing and what you do to it. It is not necessary to have a predisposition to grammatical subjects and grammatical predicates; that can take shape from the objects that lie around the child as he matures, whether they are things, of nature, cultural artifacts or words. 5.6. The inbred language-acquisition ability The inbred tendency to talk and have a language is the most important factor for first language acquiring. As the child depends on his innate abilities to develop a set of words and utterances as the first attempt to speak his mother language. Likewise, factors such as those that have just been discussed briefly above, led many people (scholars) to believe that children are born with an innate capacity for acquiring language. To describe this capacity, the 126 term Language Acquisition Device(Finocchiaro1974:3) was coined by researchers. Some characteristics of the language acquisition device would be as: 1. It is particular to the human species (and never flops) to act in normal human beings, from beginning to about the school ages. 2. The language acquisition device supplies children with a medium of acting the speech in the surroundings so that they can build up its fundamental system. 3. In order to operate very quickly, the process may include some of the general aspects which are found in all known languages like the usage of word order signal meaning or basic grammatical relationships (like that between subject and object). The factual term L.A.D. has now missed a lot of its spreading, but few concerners would suggest the essential concept that children have an inbred and innate ability to gain language. The basic argumentation now relates with the extent which there is a particular capacity earmarked for language alone. The other view is that language acquiring can be explained in terms of the same cognitive capacity used by children in making sense of other aspects of their world. The truth may, of course, lie in between. First language learning may be partly a result of general cognitive capacities and partly a result of specific language-processing mechanisms. If there is a special language- learning capacity and if this capacity declines at about the age of twelve, this is obviously significant in helping to explain why second language learning, unlike the first language learning, is often successful. If there is no such critical period for language learning, however, the causes for failure must be sought elsewhere, perhaps in other psychological factors or in the nature of the learning situation. 5.7. The grammatical development of children As the child was born with some kind of systemization of language acquisition emergence, and this emanation has been led by his innate tendency 127 to speaking, many people especially those who concern with child‘s ability to react towards human characteristics, assume that, the child in the school age would be able to build up, to some extent, a set of knowledge, which helps him to form his own character and individuality. Thus, and commencing from this age the child would be able to acquire the primary grammatical concept of his mother language. For many years there have been a great number of researches and studies which have tested child‘s language not only from the perspective of the adults‘ system, but also in terms of his own underlying system. They have shown how children develop their grammatical system until it corresponds, eventually, to that of the adult community. In this part, the researcher will epitomize some of the principal stages in this pointed development: 5.7.1. Telegraphic speech: The primary or early speech of the child is frequently depicted as telegraphic. This is because it lacks inflections and many of the small function words, such as articles, prepositions and conjunctions. as it is known, the earliest stage language consists of one-word utterances. The following examples from the child‘s language clarify these utterances: 1. Suppose the child is asked to answer the question , ―Where is the ball?‖, it may be expected to hear, as an answer, ―ball chair‖ ignoring the articles and prepositions. 2. ―More sweet‖ when he asks an adult for more candy. It is obvious that because the expressions are very decreased, the situation plays a significant role in clarifying the meaning. The result is that the same two words might convey very different meanings in different situations. For example; and as it was seen before, the child forms his utterances from two words (see the example above) without any grammatical aspects or rules. However, this utterance he forms does not form a full pattern of a sentence although it is understood for his parents or close people. 128 Even at this stage it can be seen that children use the language creatively, since they use utterances or expressions, which they can never have actually heard. It can not be alleged that the forms he uses are simply deficient attempts to imitate what the child might have heard from other people. It can not be expected the adult to say, ―ball chair‖ because this form utterance is not grammatical although the hearers realize what the child means. It is obviously the child‟s own creation(Finocchriaro1974:6). Like the adult, then, the child is already making use of an ability to combine items from limited set order to communicate meanings. Attempts to write grammars for children‘s two-word utterances have generally tried to do so in terms two main classes of word: - limited axis class and - a much greater class (unrestricted class) But these endeavors have not employed to happen for all the two-word forms which children have been heard to produce. A more beneficial method has been to concentrate on the meanings which the utterances clarify. Another famous analysis of children‟s speech in the field of its communicative jobs is that which are studied and represented by Michael Halliday. He debates that language acquiring happens since the child perceives he is able to do specific things with language, and that he gains these dissimilar functions in expected order as: 1. The child utilizes language to obtain what he wants. This stage is described as ―instrumental function‖. 2. There he employs the language to dominate other individuals‘ deportment. This process the child‘s mechanism of language acquisition is known as ―the regulatory function‖. Halliday‘s method ―the functional approach ‖ has concerned with language learning, and this approach has a remarkable effect in the process of foreign and second language learning and teaching. The effort on the meanings and jobs of children‘s speech has encouraged many scholars to play
129 down a factual role of a particular language- acquisition capacity in clarifying the child‘s development. 5.7.2. The developing of declension and function words: As it was mentioned, the ―telegraphic speech‖ stretches beyond the two-word level. For instance, when the child‘s processing capacity grows, it can be found longer forms (utterances) that are still telegraphic. These forms are created are found through the child‘s creativity. They are also free of any grammatical restriction. For instance,: - ―Dog stand up chair‖ In this example the child could not master the inflection; he does not care for the ―s‖ in ―stands‖ also the omission of the article ―a‖ or ―the‖ that are important morphemes, and they possess their signification from the meaning they serve. The latest studies refer to these small items (a / the …etc) are morphemes, even though in normal linguistic terminology, ―morpheme‖ is a much wider concept. Some scholars studied how a group of children acquisition of the earlier aspects of the first language. Their findings have come to have a wider influence not only studies in first language acquisition but also in the field of second or foreign language learning; children do not master each morpheme suddenly, from one day to the next, but gradually, over a period of time. A problem is therefore to decide at what point a morpheme should be counted as ―acquired‖. The standard the one of those scholars used (Brown1974:110) is that a child must produce it on ninety per cent of the occasions when the adult grammar requires it. This process through these stages and levels is usually known as ―so-called obligatory contexts‖. When Brown implemented this ―criterion” standard, he found that the morphemes he aimed at his studies were acquired in a consecution that was noticeable alike for the group of children.
131 The morphemes which are used, put into an order according to the children‘s mistakes. From the studies acceptable sequence could be assigned as: 1. present progressive ---ing (as in She is running.) 2. preposition (on) 3. preposition (in) 4. plural ---s (as in two books.) 5. irregular past forms (as in She went.) 6. possessive „s (as in daddy‟s hat) 7. un-contractible copula (as in Yes, she is.) 8. articles (the and a which were classified together) 9. regular past forms ---ed (as in She walked.) 10. regular third-person singular ---s (as in She runs.) 11. irregular third-person singular forms (as in She has.) 12. un-contractible auxiliary be (as in She was coming.) 13. contractible copula (as in She‟s tired.) 14. contractible auxiliary be (as in She‟s coming.) Brown also cherished the connected repetition of these morphemes in the speech of the children‘s relaters specially their parents. He discovered that the sequence of frequency does not connect with the sequence of acquisition that consequently can not be clarified easy ―habit-formation terms‖. This is an additional evidence, then, that the child is an effective participant to the acquisition procedure. Brown‘s study was described as ―longitudinal‖. It was meant by this that he studied the group of children‘s acting over the factual period of time when they were controlling the morphemes. Other research workers (Jill and Peter) studied the morphemes in the speech of twenty-one children in a cross- sectional study. That is, those research workers examined the speech of the children at one part in time. They then studied how well the children acted with the
131 morphemes and registered each morpheme according to how perfectly the children produce it. They discovered that the accuracy sequence which they attained by this method was similar to the acquisition sequence which Brown had reached to. The work or attempt of those two scholars has been taken as an important from some aspects of points of view: - it appears to corroborate Brown‘s detection in the field of the acquisition sequence for the selected morphemes. - it looks to vindicate the supposition that the accuracy sequence gained from a cross-sectional study can be regarded as the tantamount of the acquisition sequence which longitudinal study may have known and revealed. However, neither of these points is necessarily right. These two ideas have not been free of some criticisms, whereas that it is potential that ―accuracy order and acquisition order are two different notions‖, in which case the Villiers‘ study may verily be taken as ―contradiction‖ that of one to make, because a cross-sectional study demands less time to complete than a longitudinal one. Children‘s acquiring conjunction of verbs shows some specifically interesting evidence for their factual participation to the learning process. These children made some mistakes or wrong attempts to get walked the past form of walk, they form or say went, and, come instead of the correct form. At this level, these shapes are ―individual words‖ for the child. They don‘t come as a result of the child‘s ability for productive rule for forming the past tense. The deviant that children, in this stage, accepted to do as: For the past simple: "Where it goed?" "It comed off." The child made these mistakes as he used to act with other forms as walked from walk and liked from like. However, these forms, at a higher level, are not signs of regression, but of progress in the child's developing system.
132 Then gradually he would master the rules and would be able to correct the errors, since ―go‖ and ―come‖ are exceptions to the ―ed‖ past forming rule. 5.7.3. The developing of ―alteration‖: In this level the child would be able to master his utterances, and give suitable or acceptable forms. He is also increasing his dominion of lexical, syntactic and grammatical process. They are augmenting their capacity to implement ―transformation‖ on the principal sentence structure, in order to produce more complicated expressions. The child‘s gradual development of negations and interrogations has built up a particular attention, that many scholars have paid closer attention to the child‘s utterances. The child was regarded as he makes some kind of developing to acquire both of these structures. Children were found that they seem to follow similar sequences of development. The following example expresses the sequence that has been observed for the acquisition process of negations: 1. The child could not give an individual aspect of the negation device, but he gives the structure as one element. For example; the negation ―element‖ he uses is not a part of an utterance or the built of the clause. It may occur at the beginning or at the end of the clause as in: - it may be heard: - ―No eating candy1.‖ - ―No bit I.‖ 2. As he develops his acquisition of the language, the negation device is inserted in the expression. However, he does not comply to rules of manners or rules of grammar. In this stage we might hear or expect the child to say: - ―I no want toast.‖ -―He no take it.‖ In this stage the child may use factual forms; instead of (no/not) we may hear (do not/can not) however, the child does not make difference between persons or tenses. 133 3. In this stage children would be able to produce the suitable form of the conditionals, modal verbs according to tense of number (one person or more). We may hear: - ―You don‟t some supper.‖ - ―See, John didn‟t cry.‖ - ―I am not a dog.‖ In this level children are able to give factual utterances and connect inflections as they are approaching to the full knowledge of the language. So they would use the grammatical forms as: - When he speaks, for example, about his toy: - ―I can not fix it.‖ - The same pattern (utterance) but in this case he uses the intonation for inquiring or to express his emotions towards a specific situation, for instance: - When his toy is broken, he may say:
You can‟ t fix it?
See blood!
Then he graduated of using ―Wh‖ questions in addition to ―Yes/No‖ questions. However, the problems the child may face would be the sequence of morphemes. The children master the use of ―inversion‖ with ―Yes/No‖ questions, but not with ―Wh‖ questions; for example: - Can I sleep? (full form) ,but - Where I can sleep? (the inversion is probable). Consequently, children gain their first language gradually and they develop it under the influence of their parents and companions. The main important notion is that the evidences are not sufficient enough, to determine whether all children pass through these stages. As a result of the close observation it can be said that, the development of transformations provides interesting evidence that:
134 1. Syntactical development is partly a matter of growing competence (in more specific, underlying knowledge). 2. In addition it would be partly a matter of increasing ―performance capacity‖. As a brief conclusion, with the morphemes studies discussed in the previous observation, the work carried out on negatives and interrogations has had considerable influence in the field of second language acquisition. At latest stage in linguistic development in which the child was not restricted and became unleashed to act as his cognitive ability lead him, then he would be able to perform processes of more and more complicated. Whereas, he would be able to produce single clauses, these include the joining of two or more clauses into a complex sentence. There is an evidence that this latter development starts with clauses used as objects of the verb. Also he reacts with social situations. This stage almost starts at the age of ten, when the child is in a position to make distinction between some clauses or expressions such as: - John asked Bill to come. (Bill will come.) ,but - John promised Bill to come. (John will come.) From the example, the child can make a distinction between the deeper meanings and he realizes the relationships between utterances and then builds up his own character to master his first language which is spoken within his community, with some kind of influence of local dialect to make him lack to some programmed process to judge or master the formed language of his society. However, there are some cognitive factors in first language acquisition which some scholars discussed and observed their influence on the first language acquisition. 5.7.4. Epistemic factors in the first language acquisition: 1. As language is a human phenomenon, it should have a relationship with social concepts. In the first position, language development has depended on the concepts that children form about the surroundings and the meanings 135 which they feel stimulated to communicate. Children build up an imitate relationship between cognitive and linguistic development. It was found that the English perfect tense (for instance, He has walked …etc) was not used before the age of five although parents use this pattern in everyday speech in the presence of their children, but the child can not realize the meaning. 2. Likewise, conceptual development leading to language development, it is likely that the influence also works in the other direction. For example, the reality that ―present relevance‖ is incarnated in the perfect tense assists to agitate the English-speaking child to produce the concept. 3. The second form in which cognitive factors to act upon first language acquiring is the ―language learning mechanisms ‖. It has been seen how children make sequence in the language knowledge they confront. For instance, they shape rules or build new contexts, however, these rules, or contexts are necessary to be correct (such as comed instead of came, ―syntactical errors‖, or mouses instead of mice ―contextual error‖). Here, cognitive factors are determining not what meanings the child grasps and utters, but how he creates sense of the linguistic system himself. One of the latest studies suggested that the child has some operating principles for making sense of language information. The following points are proposals of these studies: 1. Some principles might be described as ―avoid exceptions‖. However, this principle would consider for the trend to over-generalize rules. 2. The earlier meaning relationships must be specified with lucidity. To clarify this point it was remarked that the child makes some mistakes when he constructs passive forms; there seems to be natural tendency to prefer the first noun in a clause to be the doer and the second to be the object. 3. In first language acquisition, the learner (child) must initially look for a system that is considered that: - it should be rule-governed in a consistent way. - in which the clues to meaning are clearly represented
136 - to point out that each item of distinction has definite function in communicating meaning. These points have interpenetrated in second as well as first language acquisition. Children would have difficulty when items of language do not correspond clearly to items of meaning. This would be clear in the structure of complex sentences and the use of relative pronouns and relative clause. For example: it might be heard: -The kid which ball is missed left. instead of: -The kid whose ball missed left. or: - The boys they played yesterday played today too. Instead of: - The boys who played yesterday played today too. 5.7.5. To what extent has the child been affected by the surroundings?: The child‘s surroundings has been considered to be seen as an exerting major influence in language acquisition. This surroundings supplies both the models which the child imitates and the rewards which make learning happens. On the other hand, motivation and suspense are paid to the child‘s internal acting. These processes are stimulated by the environment, as it provides the materials the child may tend to use. These principles support the habit-formation procedure of the child, so they play a remarkable role in first language acquisition because they stimulate the child and make him react towards them. The nearest or closest element, for the child, in his environment is his mother. Therefore, there has been a number of observational studies of the language directed to young children by mothers, other relatives or older companions. These studies clarified that these people‘s speech has a number of characteristics which distinguish it from typical speech between adults. These peculiarities make this type of speech described or characterized as: 1. It is generally spoken more slowly and distinctly. 2. It contains shorter utterances. 3. It is more grammatical, with fewer broken sentences or false starts.
137 4. It contains fewer complex sentences. 5. There is less variety of tenses. 6. The range of vocabulary is more limited. 7. There is more repetition. 8. The speech is more closely related to the ―here and now‖. However, the main aspect of observer‘s speech seems specifically organized to suit or to help the child to learn the grammatical rules and the intended meanings of the language. It is more distinct to realize that the child has time to become accustomed to a limited range of language, and the meaning is made clear by repetition as it is closer with his caretaker. Thus, the child is encouraged by some-kind of simplification his character makes. So by these concepts the child can master his first language not in arranged institution but by observation, imitation and his own operating at the time. However, it may be true that acquiring a language requires the operation of an innate capacity possessed by all human beings and that this capacity will function most affectively when certain external conditions are met, success in learning a foreign language through instruction will vary from individual to individual and from community to community, no matter how achievement is measured and no matter how the language is acquired. These efforts, as it is known, are not free of some-kind of criticism, because most of available materials are given or introduced orally. Also not all of caretakers are well educated so the child would acquire the language with the same mistakes he hears. These earlier steps or stages in ―First Language Acquisition‖ relates to the child‘s innate tendencies. They are built on his abilities in acquiring his mother tongue. All the notions and thoughts mentioned, depended on a set of principles about the way the child behaves as this process (language acquisition) has not got any rivalries in his mind from the languages, so it would be pure in his mind, and he will gain it quickly. His process of language acquisition connects with the human nature that no person would
138 stand without a language. The first language has a factual role which makes it more important. However, to answer the question, ―What is the role of the first language?‖ it can be said that, starting in the post-war years and carrying on into the 1960s, there was a strong assumption that most of the difficulties facing the second language learning were imposed by his or her first language. It was assumed that where there were differences between the first language and the second language, the learners of first language knowledge would interfere with the second language where both of them were similar, however, the first language would actively aid and support the second language learning. The process that was held responsible for this was called ―Language Transfer‖. In this case of resemblance between the first and the second language, it acted positively, while in the case of the dissimilarities, it acted negatively. Caretakers (of the children were encouraged to concentrate their procedure of teaching in the fields of difficulty found by negative transfer. They have been incited to implement considerable practice to surmount these difficulties. In order to recognize the positions of difficulty, a procedure called, "Contrastive Analysis" was developed. There was existed in the faith that it was not impossible, by determining the linguistic differences between the first language and second language learner, to foretell what problems the learner of a particular second language would face. As we saw, the first language serves the second language acquisition, and the process of communication which would be needed in both languages has been established on the innate tendency of the first language acquisition, although there have been some notions which deem that the transmission is passed on by learning rather than by innate instinct. However, there has been an argument which is the most important, the instinct or culture in language acquisition. Likewise, this opposed to genetic transmission, and it has to do with that notion that the ability to speak a particular language is passed on from one generation to the next by teaching and learning than by instinct. The
139 researcher need not here to discuss the question whether a knowledge of the more general aspects of the grammatical structure of language is genetically, rather than culturally, transmitted. Even the strongest form of the hypothesis that children are born with a knowledge of certain universal principles which determine the structure of language is acquired by learning. At the same time it must be recognized that much of the signaling behavior of other species that was once thought to be purely instinctively is now known to be acquired by combination of instinct and learning. It has been demonstrated, for example, that the general pattern of speaking process may be determined by instinct but that is more enable development and correction depends upon the variety of language acquisition process. As a matter of fact, the caretakers are striking similar in that they want their children to become more effective speakers. Non-native and native English speakers alike express the hope that they can develop communication competence in their children, despite what some consider their own linguistic limitations. In fact they want to motivate their children, so that these will find language acquisition a pleasurable, successful activity. Since children have lived like all other individuals, they need to communicate factually. Their parents or any other caretakers tend to teach them another vital language, in addition to their mother language. Many parents and educators, for this aim, advise to teach their children an alive language. So, this is what makes it important to take an interest in foreign languages acquisition. Then, within the coming parts the researcher will feel interest in the foreign language acquisition. 5.8. Foreign language acquisition
141 5.8.1. General concepts in second language acquisition:
Second language acquisition is a complicated process requiring many correlated elements. This section will relate to the prominent concepts that have emerged in the study of this process. It will start by regarding what is meant by ―Second Language Acquisition‖ and continue to debate briefly the concepts that have occupied second language acquisition by many scholars and research-workers.
5.8.2. What is meant by second language acquisition?
In an effort to study second language acquisition, it will be significant to stabilize clearly what is meant by this term. A number of main questions need to be discussed so that the learner realizes what situations researchers have taken in order to debate how a second language is acquired. The notions considered later are central to an understanding of researchers have set about examining second language acquisition.
5.8.3. Second language acquisition as a systemic phenomenon:
Second language acquisition is not invariable and foretelling phenomenon. There is no single way in which learners acquire a knowledge of a second language. Second language acquisition is the findings of many factors appertain to the learner on the one hand and the learning process on the other hand. It is significant, therefore, to commence by identifying the complication and the variety that ensues from the interplay with these two sets of elements. Different learners in different situations learn a first language in different ways. Though, although the variability and individuality of language acquisition need to be confirmed, the study of second language acquisition presumes interest only if it is possible to determine the identity of aspects that are proportionally constant consequently generalizable, unless to all learners,
141 then at least to large groups of learners. The concept "Second Language Acquisition" is used to refer to these general aspects.
5.8.4. Second language acquisition versus first language acquisition:
Second language acquisition appears in comparing to the acquisition of the first language. It is the debate of how speakers learn a supplemental language after they have acquired their mother tongue. The study of language- learner, language started with debate of first language acquiring. Second language acquisition study has purposed or tended to follow in the strides (footsteps) of first language acquisition debate, both in its methodology and in many of the issues that it has treated. It is not surprising that a key issue has been the expansion to which second language acquisition and first language acquisition are similar or different processes.
5.8.5. The mediation of syntax and morphology:
Second language acquisition refer indirectly to all the features of language that the language learner needs to control. But, The focal point has been on how second language learners acquire and gain grammatical sub- system, like negative and interrogative, or grammatical morphemes such as the plurals and the articles. A study has trended to ignore other levels of language. Second language acquisition research workers have only lately turned their concern to how speakers acquire the ability to communicate and began to examine how learners of the second language use their information to communicate their thoughts and intentions. A number of research workers would now accept that not only it is important to gain about other features of second language, but also that these other features need to be studied in order to find out about the acquiring of grammatical aspects.
142 5.8.6. Competence versus performance:
A difference is made between competence and performance in the study of language. Depending on Chomsky's(Chomshy1959:25) studies; competence consists of the mental representing of linguistic rules which form the speaker-learner's spontaneous grammar. The execution is composed of the apprehension and the out put of language. Language acquisition studies, are interested in how competence is developed. But because the rules the learner has internalized, and they are not open to immediate inspection, it has been requisite to check out, how the speaker acts in production. So, the speech that the learner of the second language produces is dealt with as opening through which the internalized rule system could be observed. In a certain sensation, therefore, second language acquisition is about performance, it seems at effectual utterances. However, these utterances are treated as evidence for what is going on inside the second language learner's mind. One of the principal problems of second language acquisition researches has been accurately to what range competence can be deduced from performance.
5.8.7. The difference between learning and acquiring second language:
The term "acquisition" has been used to refer to gaining a second language through exposing, while the term "learning" is used to refer to the deliberate study of a second language. Thus second language acquisition is often compared with second language learning on the presumption that these are different processes. But the researcher wishes to be aware, whether, this is a real difference or not, so that he will use acquisition and learning alternatively, unconcerned of whether intended or spontaneous processes are involved. If the researcher desires to use either of these terms with more specific meaning, they will be marked clearly and their reference would be made veritable.
143 5.8.8. Individual learner difference:
As the researcher has dealt with some kind of differences between the nature of the approaches, within the two languages (first and second or foreign), he will try to keep an open mind about the learners of the foreign language, and how the speakers would develop their achievement of English language as a foreign language. The variability in language-learner, language is the result of the language acquisition process, not the contextual principles only. This aspect also happens, because of singular differences in the way learners learn a second language, and the process they use their second language data. It is perhaps precise to say that no two learners learn a second language in completely the same way. The learner (speaker then) agents that may act upon the way of development are possible absolute and very difficult to categorize in a trusty aspect. Some scholars have examined five common factors, that participate to personal learner differences in some range. These concepts are: age, aptitude, cognitive, style, motivation, and personality. A case that has emerged trustworthy attention, is whether adults acquire a second language in the same way as children. A common sense method to this matter proposes that second language acquisition of adults and children is not the same. Adults have more abundant memory capacity and are also to concentrate more easily on the purely formal aspects of a language. However, these distinctions need to lead to distinctions in the course through which learners pass along, which would be the output of a language capacity which does not change with age. The comparison of child and adult of second language acquisition needs to be dealt with in two parts: 1. It requires to be demonstrated whether the learning course differs. Is there an inbred way for adults and a various one for children.
144 2. The average at which adults and children learn needs to be scrutinized. The commonly held view that children are more successful learners than adults may not be reinforced by experimental study. It is probable, therefore, that distinctions exit with regards to both course and range of learning. It is also enabled that distinctions appear in the range, but not in course. However, propensity is to be compared with brilliance. Brilliance refers to the prevalent ability which controls and masters how well we master a whole rate of skills, either, linguistic and non-linguistic. Likewise, the influences of aptitude have been measured in terms of proficiency scores achieved by classroom learners. Some researchers(Gardner1980:30) have stated that aptitude is a chief factor defining the level of success of organized and programmed language learning, however, suspicions stay about the value of such researches, chiefly because it is not completely clear what epistemic abilities form aptitude. The learner may have other factors which play an important role in language acquisition. Consequently learner incitation desire and needs have often had a centric position in approaches of second language acquisition. Some learners who are concerned with the social and cultural consuetude of native speakers of the foreign language they learn, are probable to successful. Another concept, ―similarly‖ this may or usually occur when learners have a powerful instrumental need to learn a second language, they will possibly succeed. ―Conversely‖ there is another observation, that learners with little desire and concern in the route of life of native speakers of the second language or with low instrumental motivation can be expected to learned slowly and to stop learning some way short of native speakers competence. So the role of motivation has been examined in some of studies of research workers. A complete elucidation of the task played by ―motivation‖ and needs requires an account of how these affects the procedure of learning. Likewise, exposition has been equipped by some scholars(Duly1974:12).They suggest
145 that the learner has what is known as ―socio-affective filter‖ that masters how much of the input passes through to the language processing mechanisms. As a production of ―conscious and unconscious‖ incentives or needs, attitudes or sentimental states, the learner is endeared or alienated to the second language. So, once, learners have a gained adequate second language data to meet their communication and sentimental needs, they would stop learning. However, is not more, that is known about how ―personality‖ and ―cognitive‖ style act upon the second language acquisition, although there is common some kind of persuasion that both of them are greatly important. One of the principals of examining both personality and cognitive style is the lack of testing instruments that can reliably measure different types. These efforts are to achieve good results. Therefore, non-native and native English speakers alike express the hope that they can develop communicative competence in their children, although what some consider their own linguistic limitation. Parents and caretakers (either, teachers, educators or constructors) want to motivate children, so that these will find language learning pleasurable and successful activity. Then the children (who are known now as the learners of the second or foreign language) must have a good input to obtain and reinforce their ability to speak the language, since the role of the input is very important. If we want our children have a typical output, it will be very significant to take care of the input the child would gain.
5.8.9. The function of the input:
It is intelligible that second language acquisition has means to achieve second language input. This input would be in the shape of exposing in inborn putting or typical learning, either to be spoken or written. However, what is the main task the input plays in second language learning? The past study styles of second language studies of second language acquisition has based on the concept of "habit-formation" within action and consolidation, emphasized the significance of the input. The whole procedure
146 of learning might be mastered by demonstrating the second language in the correct form does and ensuring that the learner continued to perform until each aspect was "over-learned". It is clearly known that learning a second language had been like any other kind of learning. It was made up of constructing chains of "stimulus- response" links that would be mastered and formed by consolidation. This is to say that in the "behaviorist view of learning" there would be a little space for efficient acting by the learner. Then language acquisition (first, second or foreign) was an exterior not interior phenomenon. This notion doesn't contradict with what we mentioned before, that the child was born with some kind of innate elements to speak, but forming of the language has been acquired as he lives among the members of his community. This could be best clarified by assumption a set of mental processes inside the "input" and transferring it into a shape which the learner (child) could apprehend and store and then deal with in production. There has been an important concept, which is whether the input forms and masters learning or just a stimulate. At present, there is a remarkable concern in the input, which is directed both, how native speakers talk to second language learners and what part is played in second language acquisition by the way they talk. Learners seem to need second language data that are specially suited to whatever stage of development they would be at. There is, to certain extent, less agreement, about accurately, what establishes an alternative input. Specifically, is it an input selected and graded according to formal and logical standard or is it a matter of "comprehensible input", supplying learners with language that they can understand?(Krashan1981:15). So, "the role of input in the process of second language acquisition remains one of controversial issues in current studies. So far the researcher has dealt with language acquisition through the learner's cognitive process, concentrating on the innate aspect of the child as a young learner of a language, either this language is his first or second
147 (additional) language, however, this procedure of language acquisition will be changed as the child grows up and the language skills gaining more and more complicated. This manner, can not be depended of for achieving good results and outcomes which will lead to a full form of a spoken or written forms of the language, specially, if the aimed language is not our first language (mother tongue). Therefore, the need for a programmed, modernized and scientific methods and manners or procedures has arised. So that many scholars, linguists, and researchers have paid remarkable efforts to constitute an acceptable and beneficial procedure and route for acquiring and learning the desirable language. Since English language acquisition is my first goal in this section, the researcher has to deal with latest notions, studies, and methods that are suggested and recommended to help and enable the learners to develop and consolidate English language acquisition, (either as a second or foreign language) not ignoring the difference between these two concepts! These developed programs include; developing the process of learning the skills of English, and how this language is taught in schools or in other similar places, even these institutions are concerned with or serve the elementary or higher levels and stages. In the uniform English program whether it starts in the elementary or in the secondary school or in the university, the researcher will talk about some achieved goals. He aims to give the learner: 1. The developed capability to grasp and understand the English, the learner might use at his age when spoken by a native English speaker. 2. The developed capability to continue a discourse with a native English speaker on themes of concern to individuals of his age group. 3. The developed capability to peruse material in English with inclusion tranquility, fruition and apprehension. 4.The developed capability to write properly and creatively in English.
148 5. The information, knowledge, attitude and insight to appreciate the cultural similarities and differences of English speaking people. A bridged comment is to be made here. The culture need not and must not be taught systematically. When a word or a concept appears that needs special explanation, and you know the explanation, give it by all means. However, specially at the earlier stage, we ought to try to remember that language is culture, and that culture is learned mechanically as the language is developed. As an English-learning schedule or procedure may begin in the elementary institutions, the secondary school, or the higher levels (university). It is desired to talk about ―levels‖ of English learning. The first level is the starting level of English Language learning; the second level is the intermediary level; and the third stage may be deem the advanced stage or level. In the regular high school procedure, the required level is the first year of secondary school (in most of the Arab countries). If the language learning is started in the lowest level (junior high school), the first level would be the first two years of the junior high school. This means that learners graduate step by step in a regular system in the programmed language acquisition. However, this program is mastered by some factors such as age and the learner‘s ability and desire to acquire the principal skills of the language. Since then, it has been discussed and surveyed the main notions about the characteristics of English language acquisition and the language growth, whatever, the approach or method is used in learning or teaching this language. Some studies have decided that main factors in language acquisition in the earlier stages have depended on the child‘s innate inclination. However, the problem is that, language acquisition in this stage would not be free of some blemishes and some kind of insufficiency as we saw in the previous sections. To avoid and restrain such imperfection or the shortcoming, some linguists have assigned factual and vivid aspects and ideas to have this language acquired perfectly. In the coming sections the researcher will outline
149 the styles, the language skills and linguistic concepts have been learned with, and then, he will deal with some current thoughts he deems, are very significant, also he will admit on process of developing the language skills and cultural insights, then he will touch onto the latest notions and concepts in English language acquisition.
5.9. The manners of English Language acquisition in the school and community
As there is a distinction between language acquisition through organized and prepared institutions and through habit-formation, the researcher would rather give some features about both of these spheres of action, and the language learning within their environments. Since in the self- formation of language acquisition, the quantity of language information is limited as it is mastered by what the caretaker has in his mind, because the child (learner) would not acquire the language through intensive programs, while, in school, learning is usually provided through intensive programs, for example, in schools, there would be three or four years course or any period, what would be deemed to serve the attitude. Moreover, in schools, the curriculum is often divided into various subjects supplied through units, and sometimes one, particularly, specialized teacher is charged with a specific level and material, whereas, outside the school the present people may participate in transferring the language to the child. Sounds (intonation, stress, rhythm …) are taught in school through language laboratories, and recorded materials, however, the chance in self- formation is more vivid because the learner receives the pure original sound directly. Meanwhile, in school there is a testing program, so the identification on the weak point would be reached easily, while out side of school there is no organized programs for evaluation, also in school correcting process is available but in self-formation the constructor depends on the influence of the 151 community or surroundings, where it is very strong in self-formation, but it is weak with those who acquire or learn language in an institute. In the verbal behavior that the learner touches on with the material as it is barely produced, the learner gains the language features either wrong or correct, however, in educational institutions, language is introduced in logical and formal manner which makes us able to say that, in schools there is no chance for learning an aspect of the language wrongly. Consequently, it is time to look the features of English language to be gained or taught.
5.9.1. Learning vocabulary
Here are some techniques and procedures in which it can be supported and helped the learner to realize the implicit meaning of the word by using different methods: 1. Substitution: by - showing an object or cutout a figure - gesture - performing an action 2. Pictures: by - using photographs, blackboard drawings, illustrations cut from magazines or newspapers 3. Explanation: by - description - giving synonyms or opposites - putting the word into a defining context - translating the educators can aid the learner to associate the form of a word with its meaning by showing the form and meaning together, so that the learner knows how they are related to each other, and this information is strongly established in the learner's mind according to his automatic reaction.
151 5.10. Models of actuating suspense and motivation
If there is not a rouse of an interest, the learner would not be interested enough in learning new vocabulary. To give full attention and eagerness and fervor to the aim without desire, the learner may not be conscious of the explanation. An interest and eagerness can be added to the learning process by: - some kind of excitement instead of introducing the meaning of the word directly. - some kind of gesticulation for the form of the word. - showing or presenting the relationship between the meaning and the required form. I mean by the previous concepts that the constructor (teacher, caretaker, observer, educator …) emboldens and elicits the leaner to think deeply, in order to follow his reasoning and interpretive capabilities to extract the correct answer. This style or procedure would be represented by somewhat of playing games, however, the educator must make some kind of help to make the learner wins the game. These notions can be simplified through the following examples and commentary as: 1. The interest would be added to the learning of the form of a word as the examples (below): -Turn the upside down word to get the correct form: - The article is printed (the adverb from neat) - The truth is sought through investigation. (a verb conjunction) - Team our yesterday well played. (word order in a sentence) Moreover, changing the arrangement of a word by commingling the letters of the word, when the scrambling is used, the letters can be written out of order on the board and the learners would be asked, in turn, to guess the first letter…second … or the word might be pronounced, and the learners are
152 asked to write it down. (spelling drills), or say the word and make an emulation who writes first (dictation). 2. Making possible choices, makes it possible for teachers to the learner a chance to choose an item from among other available choices. The most common example of this access is demanding the learner to pick words in a passage that match the set of meanings given at the end of the passage. The constructor can make the form easier by putting the meaning in the same order as the words appear in the passage, or little harder by mixing up the order. Another form is to write many words on the board, then as the teacher swiftly says any of the words, written on the board, a learner should indicate the appropriate word. To make this process more effectual it should be carried out with more speed. 3. The mime work: It is possible for the language learners to annex suspense to the teaching of the meaning of a word by making it hard for the learner to realize the meaning. For instance, when the real objects are used, they can be enfolded in a paper and let the child (the learner) guess what the object is. When the teacher uses presentation to teach the meaning, he can represent a given action in such a way so to slightly ambiguous and the learners guess in turn what the meaning is. The process is known as the "the mime work". After that the teacher examines by asking the learners to translate the new word into their mother tongue. 4. Presenting through cut-outs (illustrations): When it is decided to use drawings, the teacher may draw a concatenation of dots on the board and call the learners in turn to connect the dots up in such a way as to make a picture of what the word means. The teacher can refine this aspect by letting the individual learner draw one line at a time, and continuing to draw only as long as he draws each succeeding line correctly. As a matter of fact when verbal explanations are to be used the speakers can employ many of the techniques used to introduce interest and motivation when teaching the form of the word. For instance, the synonyms
153 can be used, opposites or description, in code or with scrambled letters. Omitting some of the letters which can be used. The most difficult procedure, is that the teacher may ask direct questions such as "What is it? What does this mean in English? What do we call this? or What is this in English?".
5.11. Worthy concepts that must be regarded in vocabulary learning
There are many premises, comments and notions which are connected with the vocabulary acquisition and have been pointed out as a base for successful performance. Let me list some of them: 1. Not all of the words a learner hears during any lesson need to become a part of his active vocabulary during that lesson or even in later ones. Some words in the new language will remain passive that is people understand them when they hear or read the words. However, the speakers would not use these words themselves in talking or in writing. The vocabulary for active use must be systematically presented and practiced. 2. Vocabulary must often be learned in regular speech utterances. 3. New vocabulary elements must be given in understood forms or clauses. 4. When it is possible, the vocabulary elements must be centralized about one theme. Vocabulary about food would be introduced in one topic, however, the vocabulary on clothes and words about food, clothing and reaction must not be given at one time or at one period. But other vocabulary items with the same symmetry would be added when they befit logically with the other "socio-cultural" themes being presented. In the starting levels the same connection (attitude or theme) must be acted with the new vocabulary item so that learners will know how to associate the word with attitude where it is often used.
154 5. When an unusual word is found in the new text, it is to be simplified and practiced. A revision of the understood meaning of the word must be made so that learners will realize the contrast. 6. Words must be taught in the same procedure each item else is given with. The learners must taught an understanding of the meaning in several ways. (dramatizing, illustrations, mime-work,…). In other words any appropriate technique should be used. 7. When the structure is practiced and revised, the vocabulary must be practiced as well. 8. The new words must be repeated many times within the structures and in similar attitudes. 9. The learners would be evoked to be able to use the derivations and parts of speech: nouns, verbs, objects … starting with nearest or the same stem. For example; this aspect would be presented as: NOUN VERB ADJECTIVE ADVERB difference differ different differently The procedure may be acted by dropping one of the derived morphemes, then they would be asked to complete. As it is noticed above, the significance of meaning has received prevalence in the last period. Every-what that has been said to this subject requires an elementary vocabulary or semantic base. Signals between speakers and listeners (communication) must contain meaningful words.
5.12. Some characteristics of vocabulary introducing
The choosing vocabulary introduced to the learners is to some range conditioned by the text book used, and it is pertinent for the learner. A difference must be made between active vocabulary and passive vocabulary: 1. Passive vocabulary means: words that the learner realizes and understands when they occur in a context, but which he can not produce correctly himself.
155 2. Active vocabulary means: words which the learner understands, can pronounce correctly and uses constructively in speaking and writing. Here are some characteristics of vocabulary introducing: i. If a lot of words are given in one time, learners will be hampered by the need to imbibe too many words. ii. Sometimes both learners and educators presume the antonyms, because massive groups of words presented in the lesson give a sense of visual exuberant commutation of progress. iii. Extensive vocabulary without the structure and idiom to convey it, does not attract superiority of language.
5.13. Some guide-notions the choice of vocabulary can be based on
The learners' attention must be turned first to vocabulary reflected the relative lack of influence of linguistic on language acquisition. In any case misguided choice of vocabulary for learning is so striking that the urgency to correct it is strongly felt. At worst vocabulary may not be selected in any real sense at all. The words learned will be those that happen to occur in reading passages (which themselves are not written with the learners' needs in mind), those which are needed for grammatical purposes, and these may include words that are extremely rare but are taught as examples of a rule or exceptions to a rule, also those that are learned as lists related to given topics of varying degrees of usefulness. However, in any lesson unit the number of new words is commonly very large, demanding as much as of the learners' time as the grammatical content. Therefore the choice of vocabulary is very important, so here are some guidelines on which the choice of vocabulary can be based: 5.13.1. The most common words:
156 The first important group of words the learner must be taught is that the vocabulary which is commonly used. So the common words, specially in the earlier stages, are to be chosen carefully, and they are the words that the learner needs. Any extraordinary word the learner is given, will take place of a useful one in the learner's mind. The text books, or any reference to serve graded vocabulary, in this level, would be useful. 5.13.2. The learner's language: As now the subject is related to teaching English language as a foreign language, the learners are expected (the group in the class) to speak one language if they come from one nation, or they might speak different languages if they come from different nations. If a circle is tutored from one language group, the information of their language will tell the learners which words are similar in their language and English, and therefore easily learnt. In other side, the learners must be aware enough to the words that sound the same in the learner's language, however, refer to something quite different in English.
5.13.3. The learner's lack (the necessity): If the learner desires to learn certain words, it is often deserving teaching that sort to him, because instigation will guaranty that the learner recollects it. However, such an item must not be taught to the whole group if not all of them will feel it is useful. These terms related with the specialization, because not of all that desire to learn English, they do not desire to specialize in English but they may learn it for special purposes. Such a situation needs more specialized vocabulary, because a real problem appears when the educators have a group with members who are interested in a distinct feature of economic, commercial, material or technical English.
157 5.13.4. The subject ambit: In any how, it would be available and easy to construct a vocabulary that relates to one topic of gradation. When the topic is chosen, there are many interrelated words arise, for example, synonyms, antonyms, similar words. Also we teach, for instance, diseases, the related words: doctor, hospital, clinic, injection, …etc. The learners will, possibly, greet that because they would feel that they are acquiring many quantitatively. However, the problem is, that the learners will forget, or will not use most of what they have been taught. 5.13.5. The concerned construction: A lot of utterances require a special vocabulary related to their own aspects and meanings. Suppose the subject which is taught is about the using of the form "have got", the possible utterances would be built up through clauses contain names with their possessions. This is the most possible way to select the vocabulary items, however, the most important aspect is to choose meaningful and common words.
5.14. The sound systems acquisition in English Language
In this area (position) the researcher will not prolongate or expatiate upon the protracted explanations, also, he will not tend to the common and known aspects of sound, to avoid any kind of tendency to padding, and pleonasm which would be concerned as a matter of redundancy. Therefore the sound symbols, the speech organs, the phonetic transcription, voiced or voiceless modes …etc., would be ignored to some extent. However, the researcher's concern would be on the chining of meaning as a result of sound alteration. One of the significant features of sound the researcher will deal with in English sound system, is how the sounds are made to give particular
158 meaning, specially, those which may cause distinction in meaning in the language: 5.14.1. Intonation: The learner should be reminded of that not all of English words normally receive rising intonation(Eugene1974v.12:306),and they must realize that some words usually receive falling intonation, which are: possessives, pronouns, auxiliary verbs and negative "not". When these words receive rising intonation, it is for the purpose of contrast, for denying or correcting a statement, or for a change of emphasis. Examples: By changing intonation levels, and thus the emphasis of the sentence, it is possible to change the meaning as in: I'd like to see him do It.
This is a matter of fact statement that uses the normal intonation pattern. However in: I'd like to see him do it This intonation pattern emphasizes the idea of "linking". The sentence now means "I'd like to see him do it, even though you think I don't want to." Both of these patterns are normal ones. However, in the following patterns the situation is different: That's my book.
She is typing these letters.
He is not a graduate student.
I did walk to work this morning.
In all the previous sentences a word is emphasized which would not be normally stressed. Note that they receive a rising intonation and the rest of the 159 sentence receives a falling intonation. The words which receive this unusual stress in these sentences are, possessives, auxiliary verbs, and the negative (not). Moreover, this device (intonation) is very important in clarifying the meaning, because any misusing of it leads to misunderstanding. 5.14.2. Stress: Stress is the denotation given to the adjacent echelon of higher sound of a part in word (syllable). The stress may act in the whole word as it consists of one syllable. The sound movement within a word may change the meaning, specially with noun-verb-words such as in ―desert‖ in the following example: - He went to the 'desert. The stress is on the first syllables ―a noun‖ means wasteland. - This cottage is deserted for many years. The stress shifts to the next syllable and changes the word to be ―a verb‖ means forsake but in: - This shanty has been deserted for many years. The stress shifts to the next syllable. (verb) This is to say that stress makes it easier to recognize which part of speech the morpheme is, as it was seen above. Likewise, the adjectives, adverbs, prepositions …etc. have their own form of stress, but if there is even a slightly changed, that means the speaker gives a wrong pronunciation. In the researcher's intention it would rather to make a distinction between the two types of stress, which are: - A word stress. - A sentence stress. In ―word stress‖ each word has one primary stress. This type applies on all parts of speech as: - again // adverb
161 - never // adverb - apple // noun - go // verb - pretty // adjective - This type of stress is “phonemic” and often called “accent”. In English there are four types of stress: - The loudest, called primary, it is usually marked by this sign ( ) on the stressed syllable within the word. - Next to the loudest, there is another type which is called secondary and it is usually marked by ( ) on the stressed syllable. - The third loudest or medium soft is called tertiary and it is usually marked by ( ). - The last loud type is called weak and it is usually marked with ( ) however, most of authors do not mark the weak stress The learners should be informed by the importance of stress in spoken English, and also they (specially for those that English is a foreign language) should be acquainted that in discussing the culminative nature of stress it was stated there can be only one primary stress per word. In some longer words it might seem as if there is more than one degree of stress. Also the learner must know the difference of using stress with isolated words and if the word is a part of an utterance. The main characteristic of the stressed syllable, is always louder than unstressed one. In this part the researcher has to refer to this device as an important feature in speaking and then in spoken language acquisition, not to touch on with stress in detail. 5.14.3. Rhythm: Since rhythm is a regular consecution of weak and strong stresses, accents, sounds or movement in speech it would depend on the stressed syllables in any utterance. This device is often ignored upon the power of stress or intonation, so most of curriculum or language acquisition courses one
161 in lack of the aspect. This aspect can be clearly felt when the speaker moves from one stressed syllable to the next stressed syllable in the same utterance. The learner must gain that in speaking to attempt to comply to the influence of two adjacent stresses in the utterance, the need for rhythm arises. In case to retain the rhythm, weak (unstressed) syllable are pronounced faster. That would be acted by congregated the unstressed syllables together. Therefore, the usage of rhythm does nor appear as an individual aspect but by the power of the stressed items. So far the researcher has touched on the sounds as the very distinguished aspect of the spoken English. All of these features are very significant in realizing and speaking English language, likewise all of them should be taught to the learner in order to produce a good English.
5.15. Structure acquisition
The choosing of structures to be acquired is often determined for the learner by structural grading of the texts used. The learner should be able to realize that, tentatively, the principal difficulty is the distinction between spoken language and written forms. Or else, English language is the one that can be learned faster in the early stages than many other languages. During the intermediate levels, the language aspects become more disconcerting, because rules would be complex by idiomatic exclusions. Moreover, the formal English educator, sometimes, has the obstruction of not having learned the syntax of his own language well. The structure is introduced through utterances contain grammatical forms. In the earlier stages the learner (the child) has built up his structure on what he hears. However, in the advanced levels structure always derives from items that the learner and trainees have met in reading, conversation or what appears through involved explanation, and the texts, and correcting composition. According to my point of view, this would be a better method to introduce the involved structure to the learners.
162 5.15.1. The relation between structure and grammar
In fact , structure can not be separated from grammar acquisition, because grammar should be introduced through utterances. Some linguists suggest that this relation is central in understanding how English language acquisition progresses. They have shown, for instance, that learners might use a particular grammatical form to express a range of meanings. Therefore acquisition involves gradually sorting out which meaning could be realized by a particular form in the largest language.
5.16. The task of official learning in foreign language acquisition
Since the learner has exceeded the stage of ―habitual-formation‖, he would be now in an educational institution (school) subjected to some regulations and systems and rules to organize the language learning process. The instruction might be arranged through planned programs and procedures. Therefore, the task of normal instruction in English language (as a foreign) acquisition, would lead the learner to acquire grammatical knowledge, by means of some rules to help him to internalize instructional methods. As a result of many linguists efforts, a lot of approaches and means have been assigned to conduct and formalize language learning to be commensurate with the learners individual omnipotence, as they are mastered by their personal differences and capacities. This would not be the case of deductive methods, in self-acquisition form or process. However, it is also true in ―habit- formation‖ method such as audio-lingualism, as the purpose of the practice provided is to focus on specific linguistic forms, which the learner is encouraged to induce and which ultimately he will form a more or a less conscious mental representation. In order to study the effects of instructional processes, it is significant to distinguish different aspects of foreign language acquisition. The role of
163 formal instruction in foreign language acquisition must be deliberated separately in terms of the effect the normal instruction has upon the way of development or the succeeding of development. To this end instruction is taken to imply some form of consciousness-raising targeted at specific linguistic features. This stage would be different from that in the earlier levels; the learner now in the classroom with a certain time and some other data. Now the learner is in the classroom under the observation of specialized tutor and prepared prematurely curriculum, where the instruction is very formal, and the learners are continuously being forced to produce structures, they are not ready for. Consequently, some scholars have deemed that the learners in this situation or level, solve the problem that the classroom poses for them in one or two procedures: 1. They select casually from the structures in their hoard, irrespective, of syntactic or semantic suitability. or 2. They follow the same rules that characterize the early stages of naturalistic language acquisition.
5.17. The difference between naturalistic and classroom foreign language acquisition
The only dissimilarity between naturalistic and classroom foreign language acquisition, that could be perceived, was that some transitional patterns were prolonged, while some other structures were slow to emerge; for instance, the usage of response as a reaction of yes/no inquiry would be extended. While the usage of the tenses (past, present perfect) might be slowly instructed. Some explanation was given to this, as the result of the perverted utterances of communication when it takes place in the classroom. Moreover, a particularity of classroom input is that present transitory reference reigns. Also, it was observed that instruction influenced the learner‘s production only in test-like situations, while normal communication remained unaffected. 164 Consequently, the formal instruction varies if it happens in the classroom or not as: 1. When classroom learners are involved to form structures (complete utterances) beyond their efficiency, peculiar forms are likely to appear. 2. The misstated input might prolongate particular levels and stages of development and decelerate the rise of some grammatical aspects. 3. The classroom learners would be able to make use of information acquired through formal instruction when they are concentrated on form. 4. The formal instruction does not encompass the procedure amenable for the sequence of development intelligible transitional formal structure such as: negatives interrogatives both of them in naturalistic foreign language acquisition. These differences of distinctions arise as a result of effect of the formal instruction upon the foreign language acquisition. However, the avail of formal instruction aids the success of foreign language acquisition. While, the latest studies deem that, it is so difficult to presume that whether it is formal instruction by itself or some other associated factors like motivation which is a dependable source for the noticed effects, either, positive and negative ones, in other words, whether the effects observed, would be the result of the formal instruction per se, or simply of more junction chance. Moreover, there is another aspect which is the learner‘s motivation. This feature (the learner motivation) could act upon the results in many ways. This is to say that learners that are, to a high extent, motivated would be more possible to ask for more formal instruction, than those who are not very motivated, so the efficiency of motivation will be detested with those who aid the notion of effect of the instruction per se. However, it is not lucid enough in what extent, formal instruction is assumed to help foreign language acquisition.
165 5.18. The structure acquisition for active use
The process will be found useful in representing structure for vivid use would be assigned as : 1. To motivate the forms of structure: As the learner receives a classroom language acquisition which is described as formal learning, the tutor should motivate the learner to gain the new forms of structure desirably. This may be done by dramatizing a situation by some aspects: a. reminding the learners of a usual conversation. b. narrative an essay or a passage in which it was used. c. by asking the learners how they say some thing in their mother tongue. 2. Revise shortly, the usual language aspects which will be needed in order to make clear, show, characterize, and demonstrate the new language skills and items. This form or concept and can be represented by: a. in presenting or introducing adjectives, it is better to review related words. b. in presenting tenses, it would rather to review expressions of time (day, year, past, …) c. in introducing a specific form of tenses (present perfect) for instance, the auxiliary ―have‖ would be revised and contrasted with the main form. 3. The structure should be introduced in normal utterances. This is to clarify the meaning and to make the learner feel reality in their process. 4. The given or introduced utterances must be understood by the learners. This could be made clear and vital by: a. the action should be dramatized and repeated many times. b. by picturize the situation (still pictures, motion pictures, cartoons) c. using usual examples with familiar words to build up an understood utterance. d. if these are not enough the educators may tend to use the learners native language equivalent.
166 5. The utterance itself, would be repeated several times. This is useful with the sounds which carry formal structure, because the quantity of repetitions would depend on the understood sound and sound sequence in given form. Gestures, mouth movements are very important to be seen. a. The role of the learners comes, by presenting the utterance repeated in chorus by the whole group, many times. However, a model must be given first. b. The prolongated utterances must be divided into smaller elements in order to make it easy for practice. The main important aspect in this form is to keep the information in the right level. The tutor may need to slow down the utterance pronouncing, in order to make the learners distinguish each item clearly. c. As a matter of practice, the learners would be asked to repeat the structure through utterances, after they are divided into groups, the utterance should be repeated with different sides (from the end, from the middle, …) d. The aimed structure by now would be understood, so the learners would be able to build up structure for their own. Corrections may be made. e. As an action of evaluation, the learners should be asked individually, more repetition is required. f. The last stage can be reached by making the learners use their vocabulary to give new forms of structure and form new full sentences. Simple sentence utterances should be used first. Then through these processes the grammatical patterns must be dealt with and presented through the items given. Word order, tense forms, …etc. must be observed well and continuous practice is needed. So far the learner could be able to intensify his habitual-formation of the foreign language acquisition. Then grammatical items, semantic meanings, derived forms, that are presented within the new utterances must be observed with special care from the tutor. This is the most suitable process for constructing and acquiring formal structures in the classroom. At the end of
167 this stage the learner comes to what is known as ―later linguistic development‖ which has been the theme of little intensive study than that of the early stages. However, it is obvious that the limited informing on the learners demonstration become less restrictive and that he would be able to form utterances of a more complicated mode. By this stage the learner would be able to form utterances of his own by joining two sentences to create a complex sentence. The expected formation of this stage is how to use a clause as a subject. For instance: I believe he is the murderer. The underlined clause is the new form which the learner is expected to use. The main intention in this forming is the social situation. Thus the learner improves the increasing of information of the conventions for varying language acquisition according to the social situation. This encourages us to deem that, both the capacity to form a complicated (full utterances) language and the capacity to use a specific styles are domains in which development will be likely to happen continuously well into the adult‘s life.
5.19. English grammar acquisition
There are some long longitudinal researches of the development of English grammar in learners‘ talk. J. P. B. Allen and H. G. Widdowson, observed some learners performance of English Grammar. The learners were living in an English speaking environment, but their mother tongue was not English. They learned English as a foreign language. In respect to teaching theories, the researchers tended to observe English grammar acquisition according to the ―habit-formation‖ of the foreign learners. They assumed that English acquisition theory has carried for emphasizing the prompted development automotive speech habits, and the need to discourage learners from thinking perspectively about the implicit grammar rules. Supporters of the ―oral-method‖, ―audio-lingual method‖ and ―multi-skill method‖ of language acquisition in their powerful aspects have assumed that language
168 acquisition is an ―inductive‖ more than a ―deductive‖ process. For this notion the most effectual approach of learning a language would be to supply a big deal of oral and written drills, therefore, learners gain to use the language automotively without the lack for general grammatical analysis. Recently, however, an alteration of situation has been visible among authors on foreign language learning methods. The experience of a big number of tutors for more years proposes that a unification of singular and deductive procedure makes the best outcomes. It is now generally conceded that language is not simply and automotive process of ―habit-formation‖, but a procedure which requires the active cooperation of the learner as a thinker individual. Far from being the passive receivers of incentive in the form of drills learners gain in a selective manner, looking for the data they want to discover the system of the language being gained. After making a detailed scrutiny to the stages and steps of English language acquisition (either as a foreign or a second language) and how learners graduate in achieving the language aspects such as vocabulary, sounds, and grammatical or formal structure, there would be some general factors which have an influence on the foreign language acquisition. These factors are known as prevalent characteristics that can master language acquisition. These elements can be generally enumerated as: 1. age 2.aptitude 3. cognitive style 4. motivation and 5. personality. 5.19.1. Age: Pursuant to the results of the specialized studies in English language acquisition, the researchers have determined to inform us that age is the variable that has been most clearly considered in discussions of individual differences in second and foreign language acquisition. This credibly due in part to the ease with which it can be measured, unlike all the other variables, it can be described reliably and accurately. Another cause, is the need to subdue to experimental analysis, the commonly assumed belief, that children are better foreign language learners than adults. Although there is a lack of 169 agreement in the conclusion reached by some researches such as (Hatch, Stern) but their studies have created some kind of, to some extent, encouragements to study the complexity of the age affair. In this side the resaetrcher will try to heed to the effects of age with various notions that are related to this factor. 5.19.1.1. The effects of age: In fact when this variable is discussed, there would be some standpoints which would be taken in mind firstly. It is requisite to dissociate between the effects of age on the way of foreign language acquisition and the effects of the age on the rate or success of foreign language acquisition. Most of the studies that have investigated the role of age have concerned with the latter. That is, they have examined the extent of the connection between length of learning period and measures of proficiency achieved. However, there have been a number of both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies that have considered whether the natural route differs from the age of the learner. Consequently, here the researcher will examine some studies that dealt with the effects of this variable. The obtainable evidence assumes that age does not alter the way of acquisition. Here are some studies that support this opinion: Dulay and Burt(Burt1980:150) studied the order in which adults acquire the same set of grammatical morphemes. Their studies have suggested that, there is a similar order with adults in the morpheme studies with morpheme studies of children. However, another researcher (Fathman)(Fathman1976:159), suggested that the sequence of acquisition process of some grammatical items (the points of grammar that have been used as themes of study) remained regular and stable in her sample of some children aged from 6 to 15 years. In both studies, the method used was to equate accuracy and acquisition sequences, so that there would be methodological doubts about the validity of the results. Moreover, longitudinal studies also indicate that age
171 does not produce a different sequence or order of development in transitional structures such as negatives and interrogatives. More studies have that, child, teenager, and adult learners went through the same stages. In this way learners seem to produce and process linguistic information in the same way, irrespective of how old they are, however, none of those researchers can generalize these results to include all the language aspects. On the other hand rate and success of foreign language acquisition seem to be strongly influenced by the age of the learner. Where rate is concerned, there is an evidence to deem that older learners are better. This is to say that, if learners at different ages are contrasted according to the amount of period they have been exposed or dealt with the foreign language, it would be the older learners who reach advanced levels of proficiency. In compare to the previous opinion (about the route of foreign language acquisition) it can be found that some-kind of generalization, however, needs to be described in two significant ways: First, the learners who progress most rapidly might be adolescents. (Snow and Hoefnagel),(Snow1982:411), studied the language acquisition among three different age learners; adults (15 years and older), children (6 to 10 years) and teenagers (12 to 15 years). They found that the adults outperform more than both of the other two groups, however, the adolescents (12 to 15 years) learnt more rapidly than the adults and children. It would appear that although age improves language learning capacity, performance may dwindle in the teens, after which performance retrogresses. The second modification to the generalization concerns the aspect of language that is being investigated. The study of both scholars (Snow and Hoefnagel) is also relevant here. They found that age was a factor only when it came to morphology and syntax. There would be very little differences on pronunciation tests. But, even where pronunciation is interested, the general belief that younger learners are superior was not advocated. Whereas success
171 of foreign language acquisition is interested, the general finding is, not surprisingly, that the longer the exposure to the foreign language the more native-like foreign language proficiency becomes. Another aspect is important that those who are exposed to foreign language in the primary levels have better achievement of skill than those who did not start until the secondary level. This is to support the function of the amount of time spent on studying that language. Thus the immigrants acquire the foreign language better than those who are learning the same language in their own countries, in the case of irrespective of age. To give an explanatory apposition to the previous investigations there would be a handful of the theorizing about the effects of age on foreign language acquisition. These thoughts would appear through these concepts: 5.19.1.2. The critical period hypothesis: The critical period hypothesis asserts that there is a period when language acquisition happens naturally and effortlessly. From these studies the researcher can argue that the optimal age for language acquisition falls within the first fifteen years of life. Scientists deem that during this period the brain keeps pliancy, however, with the commencement of puberty this plasticity begins to disappear. This is due to the lateral concentration of the language function in the left hemisphere of the brain, because for some people, the neurological capacity for understanding and producing language is slowly concentrated in the left hemisphere of the brain. Some evidence to support the critical period hypothesis was supplied by (Lenneberg1967:310). Lenneberg found that casualties to the right hemisphere caused more language problems in children than in adults. He gave another evidence to show the difference of the age in language acquisition that he suggested that, in case of children who were operated of the left hemisphere, no speech disorders resulted, whereas with adults almost total language loss occurred. As a result, this suggested that the neurologic basis of language in children and adults was different, however, his evidence does not
172 substantiated that it is easier to acquire foreign language before puberty, but what about the cognitive interpretations. 5.19.1.3. The epistematic interpretation: A clear difference between the younger child and the adolescent or adult is the ability of the later to understand language as a formal system. However, older learners can acquire about language by perceptional studying linguistic rules. They can also use these rules when they use the language. In compare, younger children, while not completely lacking in attentiveness are not so interested, or disposed to respond to language as it is in its formal aspects. For those individuals language is an instrument for indicating meaning. The researcher would rather to point out that, the young child reacts not very much to what language is as to what it does or acts. Therefore, it is possible that age differences in foreign language acquisition can be interpreted in terms of the different adaptation to language of younger and older learners. However, the younger child sees only similarities, because he lacks flexible thinking. This stage is known as the pre- requisites of automatic language acquisition, because the age can not make the younger child reaches the met-awareness level. Also the child does not know that he is acquiring a language while the adults are able to develop social attitudes towards the usage of the foreign language. This cognitive explanation may make it clear that, there would be a clear difference between young and old learners in foreign language acquisition. 5.19.1.4. The sentimental: Another possibility that has been arised, is that differences in the affective states of young and older learners account for age differences in foreign language acquisition. In this field the language acquisition is related to the ability of the learner to respond easily to the foreign language culture. This is to say that, when the learner is able to apprehend the foreign culture of the language, he would be able to gain this foreign language very fast and perfect.
173 So when the learner is affected by the culture, he might have the desire to learn that language. According to this notion, the adults will have a good chance more than children because they will be able to acquaint with the aspects of the foreign culture through media or further reading, however, the younger learner will reach higher levels more than adults if they are much more strongly motivated by films and motion pictures or interesting and emotional educational cartoons, and games to be accepted by their peer groups. Whereas the adults are very glad to maintain a foreign accent. 5.19.2. Brilliance and desire: Learning a foreign language in a classroom demands two sets of intellectual capabilities. It involves what would be called a general academic ability which is known as ―Brilliance‖. The other kind of capabilities consists of specific cognitive qualities (specially needed for foreign language acquisition), this term is always referred to as ―desire or aptitude‖. The intelligence is the term used to refer to a hypothesized common factor, which underlies the learners‘ abilities to control and apply a whole range of reasoning skills. But, to what range does the brilliance factor influence foreign language acquisition. To answer this question it can be said that the intelligence factor of language proficiency is identical with the general factor of intelligence(Oller1980417). This point of view is not free of some kind of criticism. One of the problems of this point of view is that the general factor does not come out to be a substantial factor in first language acquisition. Younger children (in exception of those who are severely mentally retarded) prosper to develop ―grammatical competence‖ in their first language. If intelligence is not an essential factor of the first language acquisition, it may be that, it is also not very significant in foreign language acquisition, specifically when this language is acquired naturally. To see the influence of this variable on the acquisition of some skills associated with foreign language
174 acquisition, it will be found that it is a powerful indicator of prosperity in classroom foreign language acquisition. However, the effects of aptitude (ability) on foreign language acquisition learning have been measured in terms of the proficiency levels achieved by different classroom learners. The usual process is to get aptitude scores using of the tests used by Carrol and Sapon(Caroll1959:210), and the proficiency scores consisting of the results of the foreign language test of teachers‘ grades. Although, the results of studies such as referred above can be used to support claims about the importance of aptitude as a significant factor in foreign language learning, many doubts remain. It is not clear what cognitive processes are classified under the label of aptitude. The structural measures that have been sued to obtain aptitude scores hardly seem adequate, as foreign language learning demands, not only a capability to acquire sound and grammar process, but also the capability to apply these systems to communicate meanings. Thus the notion of ―aptitude‖ lacks to be broadened to take account of these communicative features of the foreign language learning. Moreover, it is not intelligible to what range ―intelligence‖ (Brilliance) and ―aptitude‖ (capability) are separate concepts. In specifying the role of ―aptitude‖ in foreign language learning, it is once again profitable to separate out the test of the route of language acquisition from those of its rate and success. Just as all children acquire their first language according to a universal pattern, so also second language learners operate the same basic cognitive processes in foreign language acquisition. Aptitude, however, can be expected to influence the rate of development, specifically where formal classroom learning is concerned. Aptitude might be age-related. It may develop along with the general ability for abstract thinking. It is also likely to affect plenary success in foreign language acquisition. 5.19.3. The effects of cognitive style:
175 The cognitive style is an expression to point out to the way in which learners comprehended, conceptualize, arrange and remember knowledge. Each individual is supposed to have much or less symmetrical mode of cognitive functioning. Various elongations of cognitive style have been identified. These are usually presented as two-dimensioned or as two bifurcations. The dichotomy which has received the greatest attention where foreign language acquisition is related, is that of field dependency and field independency are related to the learners‘ adaptation. The distinction is in equilibrium as to which style is most suitable of pave the way for learning. This is to say that, it is supposed that whereas ―field independents‖ will fulfill some functions more operatively than ―field dependents‖, the opposite will be true for other tasks. There is a number of assumptions about the task of field dependence and field independence in foreign language acquisition. One of the most existing is substantiate most facilitation in natural foreign language learning, however, field independence will lead to greater in natural learning the greater social skills of the field-dependent learner will lead to more reiterative contact with native speakers and so to more input, while in classroom learning, the greater ability to analyze the formal rules of the language will be significant. It is too difficult to dogmatize, what aspect of English language learning as a foreign language is influenced by cognitive style. There has been no research into the effects of cognitive style on route of English language acquisition. However, the language learning is similar since language is a social aspect, and English language is one of world family languages, it may be able to claim that English language foreign learners might depend on their cognitive ability to form this language structure and build good utterances in order to speak English as their second or foreign language. 5.19.4. The stances and motivation: The difficulty of determining stances or attitudes and motivation deserve a worthy consideration. A common-sense view is that an individual‘s 176 demeanor is mastered by specific needs and desires which influence how this individual actually act, but these needs and wishes can not be directly regarded. They are inferred from what he actually does. It might not be existing, therefore, to deem that the study of attitude and motivation in English (as a foreign language) learning has involved the development of concepts, specific to language learning. So the concepts have been derived from the behaviors of language learners. The most spacious research into the role of attitudes and motivation in foreign language learning has been conveyed by Gardner and Lambert(Gradner1972:210). Where ―motivation‖ is concerned, they made an essential distinction between an ―integrative‖ and an ―instrumental‖ adaptation to foreign language learning. The former happens when the learner desires to become identical with the culture of the foreign language community. This kind of motivation is extension of some other researchers, account of motivation in first language leaning. There can be a little evidence that motivation is a powerful factor in foreign language learning. Its effects are to be felt on the rate and success of foreign language learning, more than on the route of learning. It is only possible to show a relationship, not the direction of the relationship in learning a foreign language. 5.19.5. Personality: Personality becomes a main element in the acquisition of communicative competence. Personality variable such as (shy / assertive / venturesome …) can affect the communicative skills. However, the warm personality has an essential role in quick grasping of new concepts. The main problem or difficulty caused by cool personality appears in sound pattern learning or producing. However, the individual or learner with an assertive character will be able to: 1. react to the community dynamic process of the learning attitude, otherwise, it might develop some-kind of fiasco and inhibition. 177 2. look for all chances for using the aimed language. 3. make a complete usage of the chances that are given or provided to practice listening skills, responding to sound patterns of the foreign language provided to him. 4. consummate the learning that originates from direct communication with the speakers of target language. This aspect demands attention to forms and structure. 5. be aware enough to the grammatical patterns for rabid development. This would be suitable for the adolescent or adult rather than younger learners. 6. have enough analytical skills to comprehend, arrange and store the linguistic aspects of the foreign language he learns, and be able also to observe mistakes. 7. have a powerful desirable cause for learning this foreign language, and should react positively to the learning goals and roles provided. 8. if learning that language is not compulsory, or obligatory, the learner must be prepared to be tested by having an instrumental motivation. 9. be able to accommodate to various learning situations and conditions. As it was see , these characteristics are a mixed bunch. Most of them apply more to classroom learners than to natural learning, because, some of them might be beyond the learners‘ own control.
178 The Conclusion
Through this treatise, the researcher has already initiated an attempt of studying some aspects and concepts which have been very important to make English language has defied a lot of challenges and troubles, and has struggled for its existence, commencing with a historical hint, dealing with the influences of the invaders and the efforts of many scientists, authors, researchers and literates who had participated in developing this language since its early ages up till now. Their endeavours in literature, building an acceptable vocabulary which has been suitable with the invaders' language and the English culture and traditions. Then, now the borrowings could be used to suit English language. However, the French, Latin and Greek's influences have been still noticeable until these days. Some examples of linguistic activities are given to clarify the changing in vocabulary. The spelling, alphabet are also changed. Some parts in England were affected by the invaders who had been settling there. This action has generated some kind of local dialects and accents. The researcher has adduced Welsh, Scottish dialects and accents as a clear example to prove that those effects are still existed nowadays. These facts have generated the bilingual communities. Then he has touched on with opinions, thoughts suggestions which have arose to solve the problems of this phenomenon. The researcher has dealt with the language situation in Wales, with some details because it is a more distinguished bilingual region in Britain. However, in Scotland arose another aspect of dialects which is known as "Gaelic" because the dialect there has strongly influenced by "the Gaels" who had settled in that area, at the time of invasion. Consequently, these works have lead to found a universal mood of this language which made it the language of communicating, nearly all over the
179 world. Therefore, it is spoken in many countries and areas. So this language has a remarkable role in social contact. Because it has become a language of communicating and has a task for specific social contacts, it has certain aspects and manners of using it as a medium of communication. This language differs from person to another in using it as a means of opinions commutation and acquaintance. So when it is used between two native speakers, it has a certain adaptation either in choosing the words or terms or in using the topics or the talking inception, and this is what makes me educed certain patterns of communicating, between different speakers. However, some non-native speakers may face some difficulties in acquiring English for communication. So that is the importance of communicative competence of English language speaker has to deal with, such as the problems of using colloquial words, grammatical forms, word order in sentences, his/her ability to invent or create a meaning, full utterances, appropriately either of depending on the function (province) and the task of the speech or the field of using the language by showing the words, utterances and expressions to suit the situation and to attract the hearer. Some other aspects and concepts that have been perused about which have had an effective concern in the communicative competence of English language which gives the speaker a vital confidence to use the communicative devices available such as semiotics which is given, and has an important role, and has special task to transmit the information from person to another. The researcher has touched on with this device, because its object relates to the analysis of data systematically which would create an atmosphere or situation for the speaker and hearer to understand one another avoiding any kind of misunderstanding, paying attention to the use of sound devices: intonation, stress, tone, which reflect the friendly or unfriendly speech. Likewise, the study of (register) as a term is very important in controlling the distinction in English language variations. So that the chief
181 cause of dealing with this theme, is related to its role in the convention that adapts a certain kind of language to be appropriate to a specific use. For example the use of vocabulary items; in other words, a single word may carry a different meaning when this (same) word associated with another item as the researcher pointed to the word "kick" and "free-kick". The study of this theme is very important in understanding the language of advertising, because the grammatical and lexical features would be loose, and this is the point which makes the study of register not marginal. It also has a worthy task in the vocabulary choices to fulfil the variety of language functions that make communication easier and our though understandable instantly. In part two the researcher dealt with some estimable opinions and important studies of the leaders of English language thinkers (linguists) in the field of variations which language faces. The variation appears or arise in English language as a result of some aspects which the speaker triggers when he is speaking, mingling among the morphemes, dropping a segment in a word, transposition if two similar phonemes and curtailment of words or coining of words or phrases that are not used or even familiar to the standard language speaker. These variations have an existence through sex, regional factors, age, multiple negative and ethnic presence. The study of this concept has an importance in order to understand speakers, who do not use standard English either in Britain, USA, Ireland or in other areas where English language is the first or second language, because some of these aspects are used by a great number of English language speakers. Some learners who used to speak formal English as it has been taught to them in schools will face a problem in understanding those who use such variation in their day to day speech. The outcome of these variations is some kind of loose language and neglected words or extrinsic structure used by a group of speakers as a result of cultural or social fanaticism to some beliefs and thoughts that are related to uneducated origin and ethnic inclinations. So
181 that the main role of studying variations in English language is for the purpose of making the learners or foreign speakers acquainted with these aspects and would be able to confront any difficulties he might face in using the language in the communicative process. Successively, in part three, the researcher has presented another material, which relates to English language acquisition. As this language has a wide diffusion and has become the language of communication in many fields, and has been used for many purposes, why not it is learned. However, this language acquisition has certain routes the learners have to be acquainted with, to obtain an acceptable process of teaching it, and to make our English language acquisition modern and undefective. As it is clear that this, language has a universal spread, it has become an urgent need and a very important necessity to study it; the researcher has discoursed both of teacher and learner, telling them that this language's acquisition must depend on the earlier stages of age, when the child follows to be able to speak, and those notions are very important. Therefore, they should be acquainted with the early stages and levels of the child's acquisition of his mother-tongue, in order to build a correct and intact methods of learning this foreign language. As the child partly depends on his innate faculties in learning to speak, the teacher must concentrate on these variables to obtain good results. This concept makes me adduce the main significant factors and concepts for both, first and second language acquisition, and the researcher deems that the applying of these variables in English language acquisition is a very beneficial technique. Consequently, the researcher's aim of presenting the material in this chapter is to emphasize the fact that good results cannot be obtained by chance and the studies that have been carried out in these fields are worthy to be touched on. Therefore, when the stages of the child's acquisition of language are affiliated, it can be seen that he/she starts with acquisition of the
182 easier forms, and it is not necessary to give formal and lexical structures, however, he/she corrects him/herself gradually with a help from the parents or relatives, and this notion or route would rather be followed in teaching grammatical concepts with teacher's help instead of parents and the classroom is the ideal and optimum alternate. The results and the assumption of the study
Through the presenting of the material in this study, there would be some kind of evaluating to the achieved results that may appear to be the results that must be registered in this field that they could be mentioned as : 1-English Language has not been formed in one specific or limited age. 2- The invaders who had settled Britain in far past ages had acted linguistic and lingual base which was influence by the invaders culture and thoughts. 3These effects are still existed up till date to form the shape or reality of English language. 4- English Language can be spoken with more than one accent and there would be more than one dialect. 5- English Language is spared all over the world as a result of political ,cultural and commercial factors. 6- English Language is not a language of one community or country only, but is a universal language and used in many fields and for many purposes 7- English Language learning far of its culture is not sufficient enough to make it be able to acquire the reality and moral mode of this language. So that the researcher's assumption would arise as ,that the Arab learners are in lack of these conceptions , otherwise, they might speak this language fluent less.
183 General Recommendations and the Suggestions
As the researcher has presented through this treatise which have composed the factual aspects that make English language little difficult for the foreign speakers to understand some of its mystery and ambiguity. The researcher would rather adduced some recommendations that have to be taken in account at the time when English language learning is intended. As a matter of fact the pressing recommendation which the researcher has to inform the speakers of this language with, is that; they must confront the penetration of any equivocal and corrupted vocabulary and structure. Otherwise, these strange aspects would make this language poorer of its real identity. Moreover, to get this language well formed, it would rather to recommend with: 1. When the language is studied, it would better for the learner to be acquainted with the historical background of the language. 2. The learners of English would rather study the variations existed in the language in order to detect the perfect and intended aims. 3. From the studying of the variation aspects the learner discovers that learning the words individually is not sufficient to posses a good language. 4. The development of the learner's competence is very important to acquire an eloquent language. 5. The grammatical patterns must be introduced through perfect utterances and consummate structure. 6. English language studying and learning requires not separate between the language and its society's culture. 7. The ethnic inclinations must not be used as a criterion to evaluate English language identity. The assiduity in the treatment of the language's negative variations must be based on its native speakers' opinions, because the foreign speakers may be
184 influenced by their cultures, their race, or their inherited ethnic inclinations towards their languages in building the ideas of the integrated data processing.
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