Contemporary linguistics A personal view, from Jeffrey Kallen

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Contemporary linguisticsA personal view, from
Jeffrey Kallen

• What linguistics (alone) does NOT do
• Imply that linguists know many languages
• Decide whether it is best to say It is me or
  It is I
• Account for animal communication systems
• Explain the development of language in children
• Prevent languages from dying out
• Predict the direction of language change
• Set out plans for language teaching or learning

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Chomskys view of adequacy

• Noam Chomsky, (born 1928), arguably the most
  influential linguist of the modern age. Landmark
  works Syntactic Structures (1957), review of
  B.F. Skinners Verbal Behavior (1959) Aspects of
  the Theory of Syntax (1965) Rules and
  Representations (1980) The Minimalist Program
  (1995). Shifts the focus of linguistics to
  generative grammar.

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Observational adequacyChomsky (1964 2829)

• 'The lowest level of success is achieved if the
  grammar presents the observed primary data
  correctly'. But note that 'what data is relevant
  is determined in part by the possibility for a
  systematic theory ... the fact that a certain
  noise was produced, even intentionally, by an
  English speaker does not guarantee that it is a
  well-formed specimen of his language'. 'Speech is
  subject to various, often violent distortions
  that may in themselves indicate nothing about the
  underlying linguistic patterns'.

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Descriptive adequacy

• A 'higher level of success is achieved when the
  grammar gives a correct account of the linguistic
  intuition of the native speaker, and specifies
  the observed data ... in terms of significant
  generalizations that express underlying
  regularities in the language' (Chomsky 1964 28).
  Implicit is the view that grammars should be
  generative, i.e., they should 'express structural
  relations among the sentences of the corpus and
  the indefinite number of sentences generated by
  the grammar beyond the corpus' (Chomsky 1957
  49).

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Explanatory adequacy

• 'A third and still higher level of success is
  achieved when the associated linguistic theory
  provides a general basis for selecting a grammar
  that achieves the second level of success over
  other grammars consistent with the relevant
  observed data. ... In this case, we can say that
  the linguistic theory in question suggests an
  explanation for the linguistic intuition of the
  native speaker' (Chomsky 1964 28). See King
  (1969 13) 'given any number of observationally
  adequate grammars, explanatory adequacy selects
  the descriptively adequate grammar'.

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Some fundamental questions

• How does linguistics relate
• Form and meaning
• The individual and society
• System and use
• Different historical stages of a language

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Ferdinand de Saussure

• Swiss linguist (18571913) influential in
  historical linguistics, but best known for the
  Cours de linguistique générale (1916), assembled
  by his students at the University of Geneva
  (appeared in English in 1959, re-edited 1986).
  Saussure saw linguistics as part of a wider field
  of semiology, the science of 'the life of signs'.
  Signs relate the signifier (outward form) to the
  signified (concept or idea) in a particular way.
  

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Saussure sign signifié signifiant

• 'I propose to retain the word sign signe to
  designate the whole and to replace concept and
  sound-image ... by signified signifié and
  signifier signifiant'.
• Principle I 'The bond between the signifier and
  the signified is arbitrary', i.e., 'the
  linguistic sign is arbitrary'. (Saussure 1916
  1974 67)

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Saussure the social system

• 'In separating language langue from speaking
  parole we are at the same separating (1) what
  is social from what is individual and (2) what
  is essential from what is accessory and more or
  less accidental'. Langue 'is the social side of
  speech, outside the individual who can never
  create or modify it by himself it exists only by
  virtue of a sort of contract signed by the
  members of a community' (Saussure 1974 14).

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Saussure separating synchrony and diachrony

• 'If we considered langue in time, without the
  community of speakers la masse parlante ... we
  probably would notice no change time would not
  influence language. Conversely, if we considered
  the community of speakers without considering
  time, we would not see the effect of the social
  forces that influence langue. (Saussure 1974
  78)

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Franz Boas

• Born Germany (1858), died New York (1942).
  'Grounded anthropology and linguistics in
  fieldwork' and 'continually argued that all
  languages are equally viable vehicles for the
  expression of thought, in spite of their formal
  differences, which might reflect differences in
  cultural interests'. Also stressed that 'the
  principles of a language's construction remain
  largely unknown to its speakers' (Foley 1997
  195).

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Mary Haas

• Born 1910, died 1996. Studied linguistics under
  Edward Sapir (student of Boas). Fieldwork on
  Native American languages of the southeast
  (Creek, Choctaw, Alabama, etc.), then in
  California and elsewhere. Pioneered linguistic
  description and historical reconstruction of
  undocumented languages. Said to have trained more
  American linguists than Boas and Sapir put
  together.

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The anthropological tradition

• Strong emphasis on description, working with
  native speakers
• Psychic unity the fundamental relationships
  between language and mind are universal
• Leads to an interest in comparative and
  typological cross-linguistics study

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Leonard Bloomfield

• Born 1887, died 1949. Influenced by Boas, Sapir,
  and Saussure, Bloomfield stressed the importance
  of scientific description in linguistics. 'In all
  sciences like linguistics, which observe some
  specific type of human activity, the worker must
  proceed exactly as if he held the materialistic
  view'. 'Above all, he must not select or distort
  the facts according to his view of what the
  speakers ought to be saying' (Bloomfield 1933
  38).

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Bloomfield early postulates

• 'The totality of utterances that can be made in a
  speech community is the language of that
  speech-community'.
• 'We are obliged to predict hence the words "can
  be made". We say that under certain stimuli a
  Frenchman (or Zulu, etc.) will say so-and-so and
  other Frenchmen (or Zulus, etc.) will react
  appropriately to his speech. Where good
  informants are available, or for the
  investigator's own language, the prediction is
  easy elsewhere it constitutes the greatest
  difficulty of descriptive linguistics'.
  (Bloomfield 1926 155)

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Roman Jakobson

• Born Moscow 1896, died Boston 1982. Foundational
  to Moscow Linguistic Circle and Prague Linguistic
  Circle (19261939). In US, worked with Boas,
  Bloomfield, Morris Halle, et al. Work covered
  nearly all aspects of linguistics (especially
  phonology), and poetics, semiotics, discourse
  analysis, structural approach to folklore,
  aphasia, language acquisition, and linguistic
  universals.

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Jakobson the system

• 'I do not believe in things, I believe in their
  relationship' (Georges Braque). 'It is not things
  that matter, but the relations between them'
  (E.T. Bell) 'Attention must be paid not to the
  material units themselves but to their relations'
  (Jakobson 1973). (Waugh and Monville-Burston
  1990 5)

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Putting Jakobson in context

• 'Linguists should ... not abstain from synchronic
  investigation (as did the Neogrammarians) they
  should not dispense with the study of semantics
  (contra the American structuralists) or eliminate
  it from the domain of syntax (as early
  transformational grammarians did). Language
  should not be overemphasized to the detriment of
  parole (as for Saussure), nor competence to the
  detriment of performance (as for Chomsky).
  Furthermore, one should not concentrate on the
  cognitive or referential function of language to
  the prejudice of the other, primordial functions'
  (Waugh and Monville-Burston 1990 32).

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Chomsky a look at the fundamentals

• Form and meaning
• 'The person who has acquired knowledge of a
  language has internalized a system of rules that
  relate sound and meaning in a particular way. The
  linguist constructing a grammar of a language is
  in effect proposing a hypothesis concerning this
  internalized system' (Chomsky 1972 26).

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System accounts for intuitions

• (1) John is eager to please
• John pleases someone
• (2) John is easy to please
• someone pleases John
• (3) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
• follows grammar but meaning is anomalous

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The individual and society

• If each individual has an innate capacity to
  construct a grammar of whatever language(s) are
  found in the environment, then each individual
  reflects the universal characteristics of
  language. 'If something is true for an
  individual, I'm sure it's true for a society'
  (Chomsky, UCD lecture).

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System and use

• 'Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an
  ideal speaker-listener, in a completely
  homogeneous speech-community, who knows its
  language perfectly and is unaffected by such
  grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory
  limitations, distractions, shifts of attention
  and interest, and errors ... in applying his
  knowledge of the language in actual performance'.
  'We thus make a fundamental distinction between
  competence (the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his
  language) and performance (the actual use of
  language in concrete situations)'. (Chomsky 1965
  34).

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Linguistics only as good as the data

• Adherence to descriptive aims, not language
  prescription.
• Explicit description in phonetics needs the
  International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
• Morphology and syntax need explicit systems of
  description, ideally cross-linguistic
• What will the data be intuition or
  naturally-occurring data? Individual or societal?

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Linguistics which system of rules?

• Chomsky from (revised extended) Standard Theory
  to Minimalism
• Optimality Theory
• Functional Discourse Grammar
• Role and Reference Grammar
• Systemic Functional Grammar
• and new theories of phonology ...

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Linguistics where does it stop?

• Is language unique to humans?
• How does first language acquisition relate to
  cognitive development?
• How and why does language change?
• How do people use language to achieve things in
  the world (make friends, win arguments, promise,
  apologise ...)
• Do different gender groups use language
  differently?
• How can writing systems be designed and adapted?
• Why do people have strong feelings about some
  languages?
• Is access to language access to power?

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So many topics to research ...