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MMediazione Linguistica e Communicazione Letteraria |
Lingua e Traduzione II° anno Module A |
a.a. 2007/2008 Kate Riley |
Lessons 1 & 2
What is Language?
(Lecture notes – N.B. These are my notes and may not always be clear!!)
§ Language is used to communicate ideas/thoughts. What came first, thoughts or language. Countless different ideas. e.g. 18th century lexicographer Samuel Johnson said “Language is the dress of thought” whilst Percy Shelly the 19th century poet thought differently “He gave men speech, and speech created thought.”, Another 19th century poet and writer, Samuel Butler thought the two were not connected at all, but rather speech was a mechanical/physiological capacity: “Thought is no more identical with language than feeling is identical with the nervous system.” More recently George Orwell saw a more negative relationship: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Language did not seem to help the scientific thought of Einstein: “ The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.” To end on a more positive note - without speech where would our thoughts be “Language is the light of the mind.” John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and not forgetting the great Italian, Dante “If we clearly consider what our intention is when we speak, we shall find that it is nothing else but to unfold to others the thoughts of our own mind.” And “Since language is as necessary an instrument of our thought as a horse is of a knight, and since the best horses are suited to the best knights, … the best language will be suited to the best thoughts.”
§ Language and development – hand in hand. Use of fire from nature lead to social developments - sitting round a fire for warmth meant that people started communicating more which enhanced the development of language.
§ Necessity of language for human development: Trask Language the Basics 1999 “Without language, we could hardly have created the human world we know. Our development, of everything from music to warfare, could never have come about in the absence of language.” Or more succinctly: “Language … makes progress possible.” S. I. Hayakaqa, 1939 Language Thought and Action Ch 1 “ Language, the most valuable single possession of the human race” C. F. Hockett, 1958, A Course in Modern Linguistics.
§ Men communicate not only for practical reasons, they are socially driven to communicate. (Put two strangers in a room together and they will feel the need to communicate – if not the desire) “Man does not live on bread alone: his other necessity is communication” ibid Ch 64 also one of greatest linguists of last century Sapir “Language is a great force of socialization, probably the greatest that exists.” Edward Sapir, 1033, ‘Language’ in Encycopedia of the Social Sciences Or, on a lighter note: “Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain” Lily Tomlin, American comedienne, quoted in Steven Pinker, 1994, The Language Instinct
§ Language as a means of expressing and communicating thought is peculiar to man. Animals communicate but in a highly limited way. Even those with severe learning difficulties can communicate better than the most intelligent animals. As Oscar Wilde said : “It is only by language that we rise above them [the lower animals] – by language, which is the parent, not the child, of thought.”
§ Displacement: we can talk about things which happened millions years ago, and what might happen millions of years into the future.
§ Abstraction: we can talk about our thoughts/feelings/desires/needs.
§ Openendedness/Creativity of language. “Knowledge of a language enables you to combine words to form phrases, and phrases to form sentences... Knowing a language means being able to produce new sentences never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before.” Fromkin and Rodman An Introduction to Language.
§ All humans are able to learn a language to a highly proficient level, even the blind, deaf and dumb.
§ Still no one theory to describe how we all learn a language – which is in fact a highly complex process but one we all take for granted.
§ Chomsky – generative grammar vs. Skinner - tabula rasa (nature vs nurture) Probably a combination of the two. Certain properties are innate – the ability to formulate and apply rules from limited input.
§ Speed with which small children (even 12 months) acquire new words seems to imply an innate mechanism for learning words. Meaning from context/environment.
§ Totally different sound systems for each language. All able to produce all sounds at birth (though child gets used to sound systems even in the womb). Lose ability as myelination advances. (physiological reason) but also as ‘foreign’ sounds never heard or practised.
§ By the age of 3 most children have mastered not only the basics but also complex language structures.
§ Children learn grammar rules with apparent ease e.g. differences s between stative and non-stative verbs (never say “I am liking”), difference between various ways of expressing future in English, gender in many languages (without ever having had concept of agreement explained)
§ 20th century Philosopher Wittgenstein: “…we don’t use language according to strict rules – it hasn’t been taught us by means of strict rules, either.” This is true of L1 learning, so why can’t it be true of L2 learning? Learning by concepts instead of rules???
§ Children also learn concept of appropriacy and pragmatics – culture bound language.
§ Arbitrariness of language – groups of sounds given to name objects generally arbitrary, can see this by looking at different languages. Very small percentage of onomatopoeic words. concrete words easier to deal with, but abstract words difficult – implications for translation as words in individual languages are used to represent a specific concept, which may or may not be the same concept as in another language. Not a simple 1:1 mapping. E.g. “hot” for an English person is entirely different to “caldo” for an Italian when referring to the weather! Italian birra definitely not same as English ‘beer’ – or tea!!
§ Not only lexicon arbitrary, also grammar e.g. Japanese has no future tense, German no continuous tenses and English uses present perfect where most other languages use simple present.
§ Even in different varieties of English there is no one system which is the same between the different varieties. This is obvious with the sound system (phonetics), but also with the grammar and writing systems. Even letters of the alphabet not pronounced in the same way e.g. Zed vs Zee.
§ Language universals: whatever form they take, all languages have systems of phonology morphology, semantics, syntax and lexicon – this is the ‘grammar of language’ in its broadest sense.
§ Ironically there is no one feature of these systems, (phonetics, phonology, morphology, grammar, semantics or syntax) that is universal e.g. not all languages have a past tense, not all languages have prepositions, not all languages have subject pronouns, not all languages have diphthongs, not all languages have different adjective and adverb forms, not all languages have inflections etc.
Premise: I am British and therefore always use Standard British English in all examples unless stated.
§ English has over 330 million speakers + millions and millions of learners.
§ English words used in most other languages of the world (though process is reciprocal)
§ Which English to learn British /American/Strain/Eurospeak?
§ Given U.S. political, economic and social position world-wide would perhaps seem obvious which form will eventually prevail, especially as other forms of English e.g. Canadian and Australian, often more similar to American than British (though not always).
§ Australian English perhaps more ‘fun’ than other geographical varieties, they are particularly fond of hypocorism (which we will deal with in lesson 8 or 9), for example breakfast is ‘brekky’, journalist is ‘journo’, mosquito is ‘mossie’, postman ‘postie’ etc – they also use a lot of ‘metaphor’! so fish& chips are ‘fish and greasies’:
§ British English is inundated with words and expressions from the States, especially to do with youth culture from films and tv shows e.g. baby-sitter, teenager, hangover, stunt, hold up, to register (in a hotel), joyride, radio, striptease, and of course the most international of all O.K.– the list is endless
§ going the other way are fewer but very significantly: smog, weekend, gadget, miniskirt, gay (in the sense of homosexual), miniskirt.
§ Some words gone full circle i.e. went across the Atlantic were maintained in the U.S. but dropped from use in Britain and are now crossing back to Britain e.g. ‘trash’, maybe, chore,
§ American English has preserved more archaisms than British English (in a sense fossilised at the same time as moving on) e.g. gotten rather than got, snuck for sneaked, dove for dived etc.
§ SBE and AE. Are the two really so different? Loads of websites giving egs (braces and suspenders suspenders and garters) just type American vs British English into Google. See my website for some examples http://people.lett.unitn.it/riley/Module%20C%20Course%20Materials.htm (Module C course materials Lesson 1)
§ Many, e.g. Webster, the compiler of the first major American English dictionary in the 19th century, thought that American would evolve into a completely separate language as Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. This didn’t happen for three reasons: a) social mobility, b) the intermingling of peoples, and c) the strong desire for a common national identity, especially by second and third generation immigrants. The language became a unifying factor – though regional variations do exist. There was also the fact that there was only one written form being taught in schools, and as the education system began to include children from these 2nd and 3rd generation families, then at least in the written form there was a single language.
§ Various attempts – with official bodies – at simplifying English – to no avail. Language evolves irrespective of attempts made to shape it –(cf. attempts made in France, Germany and even Italy to protect national languages) Jonathon Swift, along with many others, including Daniel Defoe, in the 17th century proposed that an Academy, similar to the ones in Italy and France, be founded with the specific intent of cementing the language, and providing a standard form all could emulate. As Crystal explains: “In 1712, he wrote a letter to the Lord Treasurer of England, ‘A proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English tongue’:
What I have most at heart is that some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language for ever, after such alterations are made in it as shall be thought requisite. For I am of opinion, it is better a language should not be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually changing.” Crystal 2002 p 223
There were of course those who saw things in a totally different light, such as Samuel Johnson writing 40 years later, though a lexicographer himself, said:
“May the lexicographer be derided who shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language… With this hope, however, academies have been instituted to guard the avenues of their languages…but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain…to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride.” Quoted in A World empire by other means ‘The Economist’ December 20 2001.
§ Is there a new international English developing? Crystal dedicated whole book to question English as a Global Language Cambridge University Press 1997
§ “The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers.” (Bill Bryson Mother Tongue page 3) “No other language has so many words all saying the same thing. It has been said that English is unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture: popular, literary, and scholarly – so that we can, according to our background and cerebral attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a stairway, shrink in fear, terror, or trepidation, and think, ponder or cogitate upon a problem. This abundance of terms is often cited as a virtue. And yet a critic could equally argue that English is an untidy and acquisitive language cluttered with a plethora of needless words.” Someone who is poor, can be described as needy, deprived, underprivileged, disadvantaged and till not have any money!
§ Despite large of number of words, there is still great deal of polysemy, which makes English more complicated, especially for learners, especially such words as ‘get’ which changes meaning depending on its companions in the phrase.
§ One reason for abundance of words – historical development. England (more than Britain) invaded by many peoples. Perhaps surprisingly there is very little of the Celtic language which was spoken by the natives before the Roman invasions, who themselves had very little linguistic influence (Latin was to make its mark on English much later. Indeed the are much greater traces of the languages of the successive tribes which settled in England, namely the Danes (Old Norse) Angles, Saxons, Normans, it is in fact Norman French and learned borrowings we have to thank for the many words of Latin to be found in modern English.
§ English used to be an inflected language (e.g. it had 6 plural endings of which children, and oxen are examples). It also used to be phonetic!
§ Not going into detailed history in class as can be studied alone. Brief history if English in Materials File B (Which will be included in written exam). Those particularly interested in history of Eng. can study the chapter from Crystal for oral exam.
§ English always been very open to other languages, absorbing words throughout the centuries. “One cannot but be impressed by the hospitality of the English language.” Robert Burchfield, 1985 The English Language, Ch. 3 Dealing with this on lesson regarding new word formation.
§ Shakespeare – most influential person – coined more than 2,000 new words and many phrases still in use today e.g. to be in a pickle, budge an inch, to be cruel to be kind, tower of strength etc.
§ Despite its large vocabulary English still considered a more succinct, direct, pragmatic language than many others – though it is impossible to measure the quality and efficiency of a language.