Download - Language Acquisition
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1 Second Language (L2) Acquisition: the acquisition of a second language by someone who has already acquired a first language. Bilingual language acquisition: the more or less simultaneous acquisition of two languages beginning in infancy.2 Theories of Bilingual Development ➢ The unitary system hypothesis: The child constructs only one lexicon and one grammar. The reason children may not have the same set of words in both languages is that they use their two languages in different circumstances and acquire the vocabulary appropriate to each situation. 3 ➢The separate systems hypothesis:the bilingual child builds a distinct lexicon and grammar for each language. How can we explain the mixed utterances? 1. Children mix because they have lexical gaps. 2. It is similar to codeswitching used by many adult bilinguals 4 Two Monolinguals in One Head Bilingual children develop their grammars along the same lines as monolingual children. They go through a babbling stage, a holophrastic stage, a telegraphic stage, and so on. From a grammar – making point of view, the bilingual child is like “two monolinguals in one head.” 5 The Role of Inputin helping the child to separate the two languages • One input condition that is thought to promote bilingual development is “one person, one language”. It means keeping the two languages separate in the input will make it easier for the child to acquire each without influence from the other.
• Another condition is that the child should receive roughly equal amounts of input in the two languages to achieve native proficiency in both.
6 Cognitive Effects of Bilingualism Many early studies showed that bilingual children did worse than monolingual children in IQ and other cognitive and educational tests. Bilingual children seem to have better metalinguistic awareness, which refers to a speaker’s conscious awareness about language -‐ the ability to objectify language as a process as well as a thing. 7 The fundamental difference hypothesis of L2 Acquisition It is believed that L2 acquisition is something different from L1 acquisition. However, L2 acquisition is like L1 acquisition. Learners go through the same stages. They construct grammars. 8 Interlanguage The rule-‐governed language that the learner constructs between L1 and L2. It is influenced by both L1 and L2 Transfer The use of first language features or rules in the second language. 9 Factors Affecting Second Language Acquisition ➢Age ➢Motivation ➢ Cognitive Style 10 Critical period for L2 Acquiition L2 acquisition abilities decline with age and there are “sensitive periods” for the native-‐like mastery of certain aspects of the L2. The sensitive period for phonology is the shortest. To achieve native-‐like pronunciation of an L2 requires exposure during childhood. Other aspects of language, such as syntax, may have a larger window.
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1 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Language is extremely complex. All children are able to quickly and effortlessly extract the intricate system of rules from the language the hear around them and thereby “reinvent” the grammar their of parents. 2 Language was viewed as a kind verbal behavior, and it was proposed that children learn language through
imitation, reinforcement, analogy, and similar processes. B. F. Skinner claims that language is learned; it is basically a stimulus-response mechanism. 3 Noam Chomsky claims that language is innate, a cognitive system that could not be acquired by behaviorist principles. Noam Chomsky convincingly presented twelve types of evidence that language is basically innate, not learned. 4 1.Language is very complex. Consider the complexity of any complete English grammar book. 2. The model for language learning is imperfect. Mothers use caregiver language; friends use baby talk;
children use modified grammar. 3. All humans learn a spoken language (NOTE: Chomsky does not claim that written language is innate). 5 4. No animals learn a human-type language. However, some animal languages are impressive. 5. There are many human-language universals, and these are only a small subset of semiotic possibilities; computer languages don’t have these same natural-language constraints (embedding, cross-over, A over A, etc.). 6. There is a critical age for foreign-language acquisition (around puberty). 7. There is a sequence in language acquisition (holophrastic, pivot-open, telegraphic, adult). 6 8. Human language is rule-governed (like mathematics). It is not memorized. 9. Human language is very creative. Except for small-talk, almost all sentences are novel. 10. Human language has duality. A limited number of symbols are reused in many different ways. 7 11. Human language has displacement in Time, Place, and Truth. 12. Human language is not predictable. Given a particular stimulus, there is a much wider range of responses for humans than for animals. 8 Is the language acquisition process the same for all children?
All children acquire language in the same way. In order to understand child language acquisition, we need to keep two very important things in mind:1. children do not use language like adults. Acquiring language is a gradual, lengthy process, and they shouldn't be corrected, because errors will disappear in time.2. Second, children will learn to speak the dialect(s) and language(s) that are used around them.
9 Theories about how children aquire language: ▪Imitation ▪Correction & Reinforcement (behaviorist) ▪Analogy ▪Connectionism (behavior, analogy, & reinforcement) ▪Structured Input ▪Innateness Hypothesis """"""""""""
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10 First Language Acquisition Stages
11 The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition Children acquire the grammar of their language—a SYSTEM of RULES for Syntax and Morphology and Phonology, etc. with input that is “…incomplete, noisy, and unstructured. The utterances include slips of the tongue, false starts, ungrammatical and incomplete sentences, and no information as to which utterances heard are well formed and which are not.” 12
THE INNATENESS HYPOTHESIS The Innateness Hypothesis Linguists believe that children are equipped with an innate template or blueprint for language (referred to as Universal Grammar) and that this blueprint aids the child in the task of constructing a grammar of his language. 13 Development of Grammar ◆ Acquisition of Phonology ◆ Acquisition of Word Meaning ◆ Acquisition of Morphology ◆ Acquisition of Syntax ◆Acquisition of Pragmatics 14 The Development of Grammar Phonology: The sound system of a language; the component of a grammar that indicates the inventory of
sounds (phonetic and phonemic units) and rules for their combination and pronunciation; the study of the sound systems of all languages.
• First words are generally monosyllabic with CV (consonant-vowel) form.
• Children acquire the small set of sounds that are common to all languages before the sounds that are specific to child’s language.
• Acquisition begins with vowel sounds
• Manner of articulation: Nasals (m, n), glides (j, w), stops (p,t,k), liquids (l,r), fricatives (f), and affricates (t,d).
• Place of articulation: labials (lips), velars (back part of the tongue against the soft palate), alveolars (tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge), and palatals (tongue raised against the hard palate).
• Can comprehend more phonological contrasts than they can produce. (wabbit – ring, wing)
Stage Typical Age Description
Babbling 6-8 months Repetitive CV patterns
One-word stage or holophrastic stage
9-18 months Single open-class words or word stems
Two-word stage 18-24 months "mini-sentences" with simple semantic relations
Telegraphic stage or early multiword stage
24-30 months "Telegraphic" sentence structures of lexical rather than functional or grammatical morphemes
Later multiword stage 30+ months Grammatical or functional structures emerge
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15 The Acquisition of Word Meaning
• Intuitively we know children learn words when we label objects. • Children overextend words by calling all men daddy. • After child acquired about 75-100 words, begin to narrow the meanings. • Underextension – when children apply a word like “bird” only to family pet but not to animals in
trees outside. • Children learn about fourteen words a day for the first six years of life! • Syntactic bootstrapping is when children use syntax and context clues to determine word
meaning. 16 The Acquisition of Morphology
Morphology: The study of the structure of words; the component of the grammar that includes the rules of word formation.
• Overgeneralization is evidence of “rule learning”, when children use terms like bringed, goed…we know they are not using imitation to acquire language.
• Children usually go through 3 phases of acquisition of irregular forms of verbs o Phase 1 – child uses correct form (brought) o Phase 2 – when child forms rules for past tense and applies the rule to all verbs (bringed) o Phase 3 – child understands past tense and knows there are exceptions to the rule. They
use (brought) again but now understand the root of the word is bring. Children acquiring other language may also have to learn number and gender rules. 17
The Acquisition of Syntax • In a study done on children, infants tend to look longer at videos of the sentences they hear.
Results show that children as young as 17 months can understand the differences between sentences
o i.e. "The dog is chasing the cat." vs."The cat is in the tree." • Around the age of 2, children start to put words together.
o These 2 word sentences have clear syntactic and semantic relations. ▪ i.e. "mommy sock" (noun noun) expresses a subject + object relation [Mommy has
my sock] • Telegraphic speech occurs as children create multiword utterances. During this stage, they tend to
leave out auxiliaries, function words, and determiners. But the sentences contain the required words for basic understanding.
o i.e. "Daddy build house." • Between ages 2 years 6 months and 3 years 6 months, a "language explosion" occurs.
18 The Acquisition of Pragmatics
• Birth to 9 months o looking/listening to speaker (eye contact) o smiles/coos/vocalizes in response to a voice o enjoys being played with o Recognizes familiar people
• 9-1 year 1/2 months o Shakes head no, Waves o reaches to request objects o comments by pointing o teases, scolds, warns using gestures
• 1.5 years - 3 years o Verbal turn-taking o Expresses emotion
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o 2 word phrases
• 3 years - 5 years o Pretend play o longer dialogue
19 Sixteen month-old JP’s Vocabulary
[/aw] not [s:] aerosol spray [bÃ/]/[mÃ/] up [sju:] shoe [da] dog [haj] hi [i/o]/[si/o] Cheerios [sr] shirt / sweater [sa] sock [sQ:]/[«sQ:] what’s that?/hey, look [aj]/[Ãj] light [ma] mommy [baw]/[daw] down [dQ] daddy "20 Acquisition Order of Sounds Manner Place of Articulation of Articulation Nasals Labials Glides Velars Stops Alveolars Liquids Palatals Fricatives Affricates 21 Perception and Production
Linguist Neil Smith and his 2-year-old son Father: What does [maws] mean? Amahl: Like a cat. Father: Yes, what else? Amahl: Nothing else Father: It’s part of your head. Amahl: [fascinated] Father: [touching Amahl’s mouth] What’s this? Amahl: [maws] 22 Simplifying the Sounds of a Language [ pun ] spoon [ peyn ] plane [ tIs ] kiss [ taw ] cow [ tin ] clean [ pol«r ] stroller [ majtl ] Michael [ dajt«r ] diaper [ pati ] Papi [ mani ] Mommy [ b«rt ] Bert [ b«rt ] (big) Bird
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23 The Problem of Acquiring Meaning
“A child who observes a cat sitting on a mat also observes…a mat supporting a cat, a mat under a cat, a floor supporting a mat and a cat, and so on. If the adult now says. ‘The cat is on the mat’ even while pointing to the cat on the mat, how is the child to choose among these interpretations of the situation?”
24 Innate Bias in Acquiring Word Meaning 1. Whole object principle 2. Form over color principle 3. Everything has a name 4. Each thing has only one name 25 Stages of Irregular Verb Acquisition Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 broke breaked broke brought bringed brought went goed went 26 Acquisition of Morphology TOM: Where’s Mommy? CHILD: Mommy goed to the store. TOM: Mommy goed to the store? CHILD: NO! (annoyed) Daddy, I say it that way, not you. CHILD: You readed some of it too…she readed all the rest. DAN: She read the whole thing to you, huh? CHILD: Nu-uh, you read some. DAN: Oh, that’s right, yeah. I readed the beginning of it. CHILD: Readed? (annoyed surprise) Read! (pronounced / rEd /) DAN: Oh, yeah, read. CHILD: Will you stop that, Papa? "27 Morpheme Acquisition Order -ing in, on -s (REGULAR PLURAL) -s (1st PERS SINGULAR PRESENT) ’s (POSSESSIVE) 28 Two-Word Sentences allgone sock hi Mommy bye bye boat allgone sticky more wet it ball Katherine sock dirty sock
29 Chapter 7 Homework (Exercise 5, pp. 370-371) 1. don’t [ dot ] simplification: ConCl 2. skip [ kHIp ] simplify: ConsClust 3. shoe [ su ] substitute 4. that [ dQt ] substitute 5. play [ pHe ] simplify: ConsClust 6. thump [ dÃp ] substitute & simplify 7. bath [ bQt ] substitute 8. chop [ tHap ] substitute/simplify
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9. kitty [ kIdi ] ?? 10. light [ wajt ] substitute 11. dolly [ dawi ] substitute 12. grow [ go ] simplify: ConsClust "30 Chapter 7 Homework (Exercise 7, p. 371) Adult Form Child form a. children childs b. went goed c. better gooder d. best goodest e. brought bringed f. sang singed g. geese gooses h. worst baddest i. knives knifes j. worse badder "Assignment
Exercise 3: Chapter 7 in Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An Introduction to Language. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, p. 369
Resources Crain, S. & Pietroski, P. (2001). Nature, Nurture and Universal Grammar. Linguistics And Philosophy, 24(2), 139-186. "Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2007). An Introduction to Language. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Publishing. "Hill, J. D. & Flynn, K. M. (2006). Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners. [Retrieved] 5/28/2012, [from] http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/106009/chapters/The-Stag es-of-Second-Language-Acquisition.aspx. "Stages of Language Acquisition in Children. (n.d). [Retrieved]5/28/2012 [from] http://www.ling.upenn/edu/courses/ Fall_2003/ling001/acquisition.html "
L.R. Gleitman and E. Wanner. 1982. Language Acquisition: The State of the State of the Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 10.] [Reference not given in 2009, 9th ed.; given in 2003.] "
Steven Pinker. Words and Rules. New York: Basic Books, 1999, pp. 199-200.
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1 The Human Mind at Work:Human Language Processing Psycholinguistics is concerned with linguistic performance or processing, which is the use of linguistic knowledge (competence) in speech production and comprehension. 2 Comprehension Comprehension, the process of understanding an utterance, requires the ability to access the mental lexicon to match the words in the utterance to their meanings. Comprehension begins with the perception of the acoustic speech signal. 3 The speech signal can be described in terms of the fundamental frequency of the sounds, perceived as pitch; the intensity, perceived as loudness; and the quality, perceived as differences in speech sounds, such as between an [i] and an [a]. The speech wave can be displayed visually as a spectrogram, sometimes called a voiceprint. In a spectrogram, vowels exhibit dark bands where frequency intensity is greatest. 4 Speech Perception and Comprehension The speech signal is a continuous stream of sounds. Listeners have the ability to segment the stream into linguistic units and to recognize acoustically distinct sounds as the same linguistic unit. 5 If you heard someone say The cat chased the rat and you perceived the sounds as [ð ə kʰ æ ʔ tʃʰ e s t ð ə r æ t] a lexical look-‐up process would lead you to conclude that an event concerning a cat, a rat, and the activity of chasing had occurred. You could know this only by segmenting the words in the continuous speech signal, analyzing them into their phonological word units, and matching these units to similar strings stored in your lexicon. 6 Bottom-‐up and Top-‐down Models The perception of the speech signal is necessary but not sufficient for the comprehension of speech. To get the full meaning of an utterance, we must parse the string into syntactic structures, because meaning depends on word order and constituent structure in addition to the meaning of words. Some psycholinguists believe we use both top-‐down processing and bottom-‐up processing during comprehension. 7 Top-‐down processing uses semantic and syntactic information in addition to the lexical information drawn from the sensory input For example, upon hearing the determiner the, the speaker begins constructing an NP and expects that the next word could be a noun, as in the boy. In this instance the knowledge of phrase structure would be the source of information. bottom-‐up processing uses only information contained in the sensory input. According to this model the speaker waits until hearing the and boy before constructing an NP, and then waits for the next word, and so on. 8 Lexical Access and Word Recognition ➢ Semantic Priming
➢ Naming Task
➢ Shadowing Task
9 Psycholinguistic experimental studies are aimed at uncovering the units, stages, and processes involved in linguistic performance. Several experimental techniques have proven to be very helpful. In a lexical decision task, subjects are asked to respond to spoken or written stimuli by pressing a button if they consider the stimulus to be a word. In naming tasks, subjects read from printed stimuli. 10 The measurement of response times, RTs, in naming and other tasks shows that it takes longer to process less frequent words compared to more frequent words, longer to produce irregularly spelled versus regularly spelled
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words, and longer to pronounce nonsense forms as opposed to real words. In addition to using behavioral data such as RT, researchers can now use various measures of electrical brain activity to learn about language processing. For example, more commonly used words such as car are responded to more quickly than words that we rarely encounter such as fig. Subjects read irregularly spelled words like dough and steak just slightly more slowly than regularly spelled words like doe and stake. 11 A word may prime another word if the words are related in some way such as semantically, phonetically, or even through similar spelling. For example, making a lexical decision on the word doctor will be faster if you just made a lexical decision on nurse than if you just made one on a semantically unrelated word such as flower. This effect is known as semantic priming: we say that the word nurse primes the word doctor. 12 Syntactic Processing In addition to recognizing words, the listener must figure out the syntactic and semantic relations among the words and phrases in a sentence, that is “parsing.” Listeners actively build a phrase structure representation of a sentence as they hear it. They must therefore decide for each “incoming” word what its grammatical category is. Many sentences present temporary ambiguities, such as sentences in which the phrase structure rules allow two possible attachments of a constituent, as illustrated by the following example: After the child visited the doctor prescribed a course of injections. 13 Experiments that track eye movements of people when they read such sentences show that there may be attachment preferences that operate independently of the context or meaning of the sentence. When the mental syntactic parser receives the word doctor, it attaches it as a direct object of the verb visit in the subordinate clause. For this reason, subjects experience a strange perceptual effect when they encounter the verb prescribed. They must “change their minds” and attach the doctor as subject of the main clause instead. Sentences that induce this effect are called garden path sentences. 14 There are two principles that have been suggested to deal with syntactic ambiguity: minimal attachment and late closure. Minimal attachment says, “Build the simplest structure consistent with the grammar of the language.” In the string The horse raced past the barn fell, the simpler structure is the one in which the horse is the subject and raced the main verb; the more complex structure is similar to The horse that was raced. . . .. 15 The second principle, late closure, says “Attach incoming material to the phrase that is currently being processed.” Late closure is exemplified in the following sentence: The doctor said the patient will die yesterday. Readers often experience a garden path effect at the end of this sentence because they interpret yesterday as modifying will die, which is semantically inappropriate. Late closure explains this: The hearer encounters yesterday as he is processing the embedded clause, of which die is the main verb. On the other hand, the verb said, which yesterday is supposed to modify, is part of the root clause. The hearer must therefore backtrack to attach yesterday to the clause containing said. 16 Another technique is shadowing, in which subjects repeat as fast as possible what is being said to them. Subjects often correct errors in the stimulus sentence, suggesting that they use linguistic knowledge rather than simply echoing sounds they hear. fast shadowers often correct speech errors or mispronunciations unconsciously and add inflectional endings if they are absent. Even when they are told that the speech they are to shadow includes errors and they should repeat the errors, they are rarely able to do so. 17 Speech Production The units and stages in speech production have been studied by analyzing spontaneously produced speech errors. Anticipation errors, in which a sound is produced earlier than in the intended utterance, and spoonerisms, named after William Archibald Spooner, in which sounds or words are exchanged or reversed, show that we do not produce one sound or one word or even one phrase at a time. Rather, we construct and store larger units with their syntactic structures specified. """
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18 Indeed, speech errors show that features, segments, words, and phrases may be conceptualized well before they are uttered. This point is illustrated in the following examples of speech errors (the intended utterance is to the left of the arrow; the actual utterance, including the error, is to the right of the arrow): 1. The hiring of minority faculty. → The firing of minority faculty. (The intended h is replaced by the f of faculty, which occurs later in the intended utterance.) 2. ad hoc → odd hack (The vowels /æ/ of the first word and /a/ of the second are exchanged or reversed.) 3. big and fat → pig and vat (The values of a single feature are switched: in big [+voiced] becomes [–voiced] and in fat [–voiced] becomes [+voiced].) 19 Lexical Selection Word substitutions and blends show that words are connected to other words phonologically and semantically. The production of ungrammatical utterances also shows that morphological, inflectional, and syntactic rules may be wrongly applied or fail to apply when we speak, but at the same time shows that such rules are actually involved in speech production. 20 Such blends are illustrated in the following errors: 1. splinters/blisters → splisters 2. edited/annotated → editated 3. a swinging/hip chick → a swip chick 4. frown/scowl → frowl These blend errors are typical in that the segments stay in the same position within the syllable as they were in the target words. 21 Brain and Language The attempt to understand what makes the acquisition and use of language possible has led to research on the brain-‐mind-‐language relationship. Neurolinguistics is the study of the brain mechanisms and anatomical structures that underlie linguistic competence and performance. 22 The Human Brain The nerve cells that form the surface of the brain are called the cortex, which serves as the intellectual decision maker, receiving messages from the sensory organs and initiating all voluntary actions. The brain of all higher animals is divided into two parts called the cerebral hemispheres, which are connected by the corpus callosum, a network that permits the left and right hemispheres to communicate. 23 Each hemisphere exhibits contralateral control of functions. The left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere controls the left side. Despite the general symmetry of the human body, much evidence suggests that the brain is asymmetric, with the left and right hemispheres lateralized for different functions. 24 The Localization of Language in the Brain An issue of central concern has been to determine which parts of the brain are responsible for human linguistic abilities. In the early nineteenth century, Franz Joseph Gall proposed the theory of localization, which is the idea that different human cognitive abilities and behaviors are localized in specific parts of the brain. 25 Aphasia The study of aphasia has been an important area of research in understanding the relationship between brain and language. Aphasia is the neurological term for any language disorder that results from brain damage caused by disease or trauma. In the second half of the nineteenth century, significant scientific advances were made in localizing language in the brain based on the study of people with aphasia. In the 1860s the French surgeon Paul Broca proposed that language is localized to the left hemisphere of the brain, and more specifically to the front part of the left hemisphere (now called Broca’s area). 26 A decade later Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist, described another variety of aphasia that occurred in patients with lesions in areas of the left hemisphere temporal lobe, now known as Wernicke’s area.
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Language, then, is lateralized to the left hemisphere, and the left hemisphere appears to be the language hemisphere from infancy on. Lateralization is the term used to refer to the localization of function to one hemisphere of the brain. 27 The Linguistic Characteristics of Aphasic Syndromes Neurolinguists have studied the living brain as it processes language. By studying split-‐brain patients and aphasics, localized areas of the brain can be associated with particular language functions. For example, lesions in the part of the brain called Broca’s area may suffer from Broca’s aphasia, which results in impaired syntax and agrammatism (they often leave out obligatory function words and inflections). Damage to Wernicke’s area may result in Wernicke’s aphasia, in which fluent speakers produce semantically anomalous utterances, or even worse, jargon aphasia, in which speakers produce nonsense forms that make their utterance uninterpretable. Damage to yet different areas can produce anomia, a form of aphasia in which the patient has word-‐finding difficulties. 28 Language and Brain Development The critical-‐age hypothesis assumes that language is biologically based and that the ability to learn a native language develops within a fixed period, from birth to middle childhood. During this critical period, language acquisition proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external intervention. After this period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult and, for most individuals, never fully achieved. However, it is possible to acquire words and various conversational skills after this point. This evidence suggests that the critical period holds for the acquisition of grammatical abilities, but not necessarily for all aspects of language. 29 The Modular Mind: Dissociations of Language and Cognition The language faculty is modular. It is independent of other cognitive systems with which it interacts. There are children without brain lesions who nevertheless have difficulties in acquiring language. They show no other cognitive deficits; they are suffering from specific language impairment (SLI). Only their linguistic ability is affected, and often only specific aspects of grammar are impaired. 30
Assignments "1. Speech errors -‐ Ex. 1: ch.8 / p. 421. 2. What are arguments and evidence that have been put forth to support the notion that there are two separate parts of the brain? """
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1Language and Society Differences in Language Different languages Different dialects (AAE) Lingua Franca Pidgins and Creoles Styles Slang Jargon and Argot (Register) Taboo words Euphemisms
2 Dialects Every person has a unique way of speaking, called an idiolect. The language used by a group of speakers is a dialect. The dialects of a language are the mutually intelligible forms of that language that differ in systematic ways from each other. Dialects develop because languages change, and the changes that occur in one group or area may differ from those that occur in another. Regional dialects and social dialects develop for this reason. Some differences in U.S. regional dialects may be traced to the dialects spoken by colonial settlers from England. Those from southern England spoke one dialect and those from the north spoke another. 3 It is also not easy to draw a distinction between dialects and languages on strictly linguistic grounds. dialects merge into each other, forming a dialect continuum. 4 The study of regional dialects has produced dialect atlases, with dialect maps showing the areas where specific dialect characteristics occur in the speech of the region. A boundary line called an isogloss delineates each area. Social dialects arise when groups are isolated socially, such as Americans of African descent in the United States, many of whom speak dialects collectively called African American (Vernacular) English, which are distinct from the dialects spoken by non-‐Africans. 5 Isoglosses and Dialect Boundaries Isogloss is the line which represents the boundary between the areas with regard to that one particular linguistic ties. (e.g. paper bag/ paper sack) Dialect Boundary is a more solid line of a number of isoglosses. 6 Dialect differences include phonological or pronunciation differences (often called accents), vocabulary distinctions, and syntactic rule differences. The grammar differences among dialects are not as great as the similarities, thus permitting speakers of different dialects to communicate. In many countries, one dialect or dialect group is viewed as the standard, such as Standard American English (SAE). Although this particular dialect is not linguistically superior, some language purists consider it the only correct form of the language. Such a view has led to the idea that some nonstandard dialects are deficient 7 Accent and Dialect Accent is the description of aspects of pronunciation which identify where an individual speaker is from, regionally or socially. Dialect describes the features of grammar and vocabulary, as well as aspects of pronunciation. 8 The Standard Language
Standard English is the variety which forms the basis of printed English in newspapers and books, which is used in the mass media and which is taught in schools. It is more easily described in terms of the written language than the spoken language. 9 African American English ◆ Phonology ◆ Syntax ◆Vocabulary
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10 AAE Phonology 1 ◆ r-‐deletion guard god sore saw "11 AAE Phonology 2 ◆ l-‐deletion (some speakers) all awe help hep ◆ Consonant cluster simplification passed pass meant men "12 AAE Syntax 1 ◆ Multiple negatives He don’t know nothing. " ◆ Deletion of the verb ‘be’ SAE AAE He is nice / He nice He’s nice 13 AAE Syntax 2 Habitual “Be” In SAE, the sentence John is happy can be interpreted to mean John is happy now or John is generally happy. In AAE, this distinction is made syntactically; an uninflected form of be is used if the speaker is referring to habitual state. John be happy. “John is always happy.” John happy. “John is happy now.” *John be happy at the moment. He be late. “He is habitually late.” He late. “He is late this time.” *He be late this time. "14 Genderlects The linguist Deborah Tannen calls the different variants of English used by men and women “genderlects” (a blend of gender and dialect). "15 Lakoff’s Women’s Language
More hedges I suppose, I would imagine, This is probably wrong but… More tag questions
He’s not a very good actor, is he? Words showing politeness
please, thank you Intensifying adjectives
really, so "16 Sociolinguistic Analysis The linguist William Labov carried out a sociolinguistic analysis in New York City that focused on the rule of r-‐dropping/r/, and its use by upper-‐, middle-‐, and lower-‐class speakers. While most American accents are rhotic, New York (and Boston) have distinctive non-‐rhotic accent. Labov showed that rhotic use of /r/ reflected social class and aspiration, and was more widespread in younger speakers ""
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17 Languages in Contact In areas where many languages are spoken, one language may become a lingua franca to ease communication among people. In other cases, where traders, or travelers need to communicate with people who speak a language unknown to them, a pidgin may develop. When a pidgin is widely used, and constitutes the primary linguistic input to children, it is creolized. 18 Pidgins and Creoles A pidgin is a variety of a language (e.g. English) which developed for some practical purpose (e.g. trading). The English Pidgins are characterized by an absense of any complex grammatical morphology and a limited vocabulary. E.g.: plural -‐ s and possessive -‐'s are very rare in the English Pidgins. e.g.: Functional morphemes often take the place of inflectional morphemes found in the source language. (instead of your they use belong you) Your book = buk bilong yu 19 When a Pidgin develops beyond its role as a trade language and becomes the first language of a social community, it is described as a Creole. A Creole develops as the first language of the children of Pidgin speakers. Creoles have large numbers of native speakers and are not restricted at all in their uses. 20 Codeswitching is shifting between languages within a single sentence or discourse by a bilingual speaker. It reflects both grammars working simultaneously and does not represent a form of “broken” English or Spanish or whatever language. 21 Language in Use Besides regional and social dialects, speakers may use different styles, or registers, depending on the context. Slang is not often used in formal situations or writing but is widely used in speech; argot and jargon refer to the unique vocabulary used by particular groups of people to facilitate communication, provide a means of bonding, and exclude outsiders. 22 Register and Jargon A register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context, which may be identified as situational (e.g. in church), occupational (e.g. among lawyers) or topical (e.g. talking about language). One of the defining features of a register is the use of jargon, which is special technical vocabulary (e.g. plaintiff, suffix) associated with a specific area of work or interest. In social terms, jargon helps to create and maintain connections among those who see themselves as "insiders" in some way and to exclude “outsiders." 23 Slang Whereas jargon is specialized vocabulary used by those inside established social groups, often defined by professional status (e.g. legal jargon), slang is more typically used among those who are outside established higher-‐status groups, Slang, or "colloquial speech," describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests, 24 In all societies, certain acts or behaviors are frowned on, forbidden, or considered taboo. Attitudes toward specific words or linguistic expressions reflect the views of a culture or society toward the behaviors and actions of the language users. At times, slang words may be taboo where scientific or standard terms with the same meaning are acceptable in “polite society.” Taboo words and acts give rise to euphemisms, which are words or phrases that replace the expressions to be avoided. 25 Assignment
1. What are the factors that determine if a particular way of speaking is considered to be a dialect or a language?
2. Ex. 5 / ch.9: p. 482.
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