ENG 227 Chapter 6 Main Points, Spring 2012

Part III: The Biology and Psychology of Language/ Ch. 6: What Is Language?  Language distinguishes humans from other animals; to some Africans, a new born is a “thing”, not a “person” because the infant has not yet learned language.  Language is much more than speech as illustrated by the sign languages of the deaf.  The arbitrary relationship between form (e.g. sound) and meaning is also true in sign languages.  Sound symbolism – onomatopoeic words – is found in most languages, but the sounds differ from language to language (e.g. cock-a-doodle doo vs kuku-kuku).  Memorizing dictionary words does not mean you know the language: you must know the grammar. Knowledge of grammar rules is generally unconscious.  Knowing a language implies creativity – being able to create sentences you’ve never heard before (no dictionary can contain all sentences of a language as the possibilities are infinite).  Linguistic knowledge/competence is different from linguistic performance, which is affected by physiological and psychological factors.  There is a difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammars.  No language or dialect (variety of a language) is superior to another. All are complex and rich; no language is “primitive”.  Language purists tend to oppose language change and deviation from “standards”.  All languages and dialects are rule-governed.  Writing, unlike speaking – which is learnt unconsciously –must be taught as it follows prescriptive rules that spoken language does not.  Additionally, it shows standardization rather than dialect variation.  Many linguists, including Chomsky, believe in a universal grammar (UG) that is biologically ingrained. A major aim of linguistic theory is to discover the nature of UG.  Sign language acquisition (including the equivalent of “babbling”) is evidence for the innateness of language.  While animals communicate it is not clear that they have “languages” that they use creatively like humans do. Bird songs and bee dances show no creativity – only repetition.  No trained chimp has achieved the qualitative language ability of a human child.  There are various theories on the origin of language: divine origin, human invention, and evolutionary development.  The spoken languages of today have been around for tens of thousands of years but the oldest deciphered written languages are less than 6000 years old.  Most theories of language origin imply that all languages originated from one source (the monogenetic theory of language origin). Opposed to this is the idea that language arose in several locations, and at different points in history.  The authors believe that language most probably evolved gradually or in one big leap.  According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, “We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.” The strongest form of the hypothesis is known as “linguistic determinism”; the weaker form is “linguistic relativism”. For example, some languages don’t have words for certain colors, and the Eskimo language Inuit has many more words for snow than English.  Studies have shown that our thoughts are not affected by the words or sentence structures of our language.  Grammatical gender enhances the human tendency to “anthropomorphize” objects, supporting the weaker version of linguistic relativism.  Advocates of politically correct language believe that changing the way we talk can change the way we think (e.g. by eliminating racist and sexist language). Still, Pinker points out that a “euphemism treadmill” effect may be created (e.g. “crippled”/ “handicapped”/ “disabled”/ “challenged”).