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Outline
What is psycholinguistics? Essential concerns of psycholinguistics Basic concepts in psycholinguistic study
What is psycholinguistics?
Learning Vs Acquisition
Acquisition : The result of language acquisition is
subconscious. We are generally not consciously aware of the rules of the languages we have acquired. Instead, we have a feel for the correctness. Learning is conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them.
Theories of Learning
Learning: A relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge due to experience.
Theories: Behavioural
Primary Focus Observable behaviour Stimulus-response connections Assumptions Learning is a result of environmental forces Major Theorists Thorndike Pavlov Watson B.F.Skinner Principles Time/place pairings Biological basis of behaviour
formation BUT
What we say is unique so children are unlikely to remember exactly
what they have heard Children are creative in their language use: say things they will never have heard before Children overgeneralize rules, e.g. In English add ed ending to past tense of irregular verbs Evidence that children also from an early stage accommodate to their speakers Children hear vast quantities of language too much to remember everything
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environmental rather than genetic factors. His contribution: 1) extended the possible application of principles of conditioning by introducing the notion of operants, the range of behaviours that organisms performed or were capable of performing. 2) emphasized the importance of reinforcement.
was behaviourist learning theory. According to this theory, language learning is like any other kind of learning in that it involves habit formation. Habits are formed when learners respond to stimuli in the environment and subsequently have their responses reinforced so that they are remembered. Thus, a habit is a stimulus-response connection.
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All behaviour, including the kind of complex behaviour found in language acquisition, could
Learning took place when learners had the opportunity to practise making the correct
response to a given stimulus. Learners imitated models of correct language (i.e. stimuli) and received positive reinforcement if they were correct and negative reinforcement if they were incorrect.
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Mentalist approach
All humans are hard-wired to learn to speak: defining
speak more slowly, more clearly and often in complete sentences Children have huge amounts of practice Parents do direct infants attention to aspects of language Infants early own can discover the limits of their communicative competence, which may lead to further L1 acquisition
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L.A is a result of condition. L.A is a stimulus response process L.A is innate, inborn process L. is conditioned behaviour. L. is a species specific behaviour. Children learn L by imitation/analogy. Chldrn. L. by application L Lngg is mechanical L.L. is generative/creative Role of imitation,repetition Role of exposure L.A. is Nurture L.A. is result of nature
Theories: Humanistic
Primary Focus Affect/Values Self-Concept/Self-Esteem Needs Assumptions Learning is a result of affect/emotion and goalorientation Subcategories Affect Motivation/Needs Self-concept Self-esteem
Principles Individual uniqueness Self-determination Dreams and goals are vital for success
Theories: Cognitive
Primary Focus Mental behaviour Knowledge Intelligence Critical Thinking Assumptions Learning is a result of mental operations/ processing Subcategories Information Processing Hierarchical Developmental Critical Thinking
Principles Memory is limited Changes in complexity Changes over time Good thinking requires standards
Connectionism
Models based on function of the
human brain Process of adjusting the strength of connections to produce a desired output No innate mechanism
Names: Rumelhart & McClelland (1986); Larsen-
Freeman (1991)
believe that individual learner characteristics play an important role in language learning.
What are some individual
characteristics among students that would account for differences in their language learning?
Individual Differences
What are
Individual differences
People sense things differently (physical environment, sensory modalities)
Introduction
Sixth sick sheiks sixth sheeps sick. Whether the weather is cold, or whether the weather is
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) We recall how, starting with purely practical and quasi-physiological groups, the child begins by elaborating subjective groups, then arrives at objective groups, and only then becomes capable of representative groups.
Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) Every function in the childs cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people..., and then inside the child. This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals.
Second Language Acquisition Contrastive Analysis growing out of work by Fries (1945) and Weinreich (1953) most work on Second Language Acquisition in the 40's and 50's shared the assumptions of Contrastive Analysis (Lado 1957)
Contrastive Analysis based on transfer from Native Language (NL) to Target Language (TL) or First Language (L1) to Second Language(L2) shared structures facilitate acquisition distinct structures cause problems positive transfer when L1 and L2 share structures
e.g. Det Adj N structure in NP in English and German
negative transfer when L1 and L2 have different structures e.g. NP Adv VP in Urdu versus Adv NP VP in English
Hum rozana ghar jaatey hain Tomorrow we go home
so research in Second Language Acquisition
Language Acquisition was seen as developing a set of habits to be practiced in accordance with Behaviorist Theory
but researchers found errors not predictable by language differences, and the psycholinguistic process of language acquisition can't be described solely in terms of linguistic products
Selinker (1972) introduced the term Interlanguage for this individual language system
Interlanguages are highly variable, due to: limited cognitive attention, given so much to learn and remember simultaneously Learners lack of knowledge of rules simultaneous pull from L1 and L2 they represent transitional stages of development
2. Overgeneralization of L2 rules e.g. extending progressive pattern to stative verbs *I'm knowing him a long time
Error Analysis
concern with interlanguage and errors it contains and their relation gave rise to research in Error Analysis 1. Researchers first look for idiosyncrasies in learner's production
Error Analysis ends up as a method of describing data, but not a psycholinguistic theory of language acquisition
Error Analysis loses sight of the whole picture of developing competence in L2 by focusing on errors; we could instead equate knowledge of L2 with fluency and understandability rather than lack of errors or we could instead focus on what learners do right and test to see if they do it right intuitively
Innateness, Input, Natural Order of Acquisition in L2 The Innateness Debate from Child Language Research carries over to research in Second Language Acquisition Does the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) work for L2 as for L1? If the LAD is at work, there should be a Natural Order of Acquisition in L2 as in L1. Could L2 learners simply reset the parameters from L1?
Dulay & Burt (1973) posit natural order of acquisition in L2 parallel to what Brown (1973) found for L1 at least learners with the same L1 background go through the same stages in acquiring L2 1. plural -s on nouns: the books 2. progressive -ing on verbs: they driving 3. forms of main verb be: this is London, she was there
4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
forms of auxiliary be: she's driving articles a and the: a cat, the dog irregular past tenses: went, ate, came 3rd person sing pres -s: she waits possessive -s: Sally's truck
Krashen's Input Hypothesis and the Monitor Model Language Acquisition versus Language Learning subconscious acquisition like children's L1 acquisition
not affected by correction not based on formally learned rules
Input Hypothesis We acquire i + 1, the next rule along the natural order, by understanding messages containing i + 1. (a necessary but not sufficient condition for acquisition) i = current level in phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis
Bilingualism
individual bilingualism versus societal bilingualism Compare: bilingualism versus diglossia (Ferguson) balanced versus unbalanced bilingualism
dominant, usually first, native language versus weaker, second or foreign language (second or foreign language for special purpose)
lateralization of brain functions dominance of left hemisphere corresponding development of motor skills general cognitive stages of development
(Piaget)
Developmental sketch Age Language (months) 9 10 babbling first words recurrent, maintained General
crawling standing,
Age Language (months) 11 5-10 recurrent words fulfills requests like: bring me the blue ball show me the big red dog
5 distinct vowels 5 distinct consonants
General
12
General
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imitations: horse, train simple puzzles, reduplications: turns book pages choochoo, byebye, tiktik clock
General
18
General
3-word units: hangs on monkey baba ghar (aya) bars, points to also: eyes, nose, mouth haben Nicky cookie
General
verb + particle: lock up / play, 4-word units: Chacha Bazar Gaey hain Inni gute Nacht sagen
Age (months): 24
Language General
verb endings: Inni spuckt bisschen kicks soccer ball, statement: Nicky auch essen plays hide-n-seek, question: Nicky auch essen, ja? draws details: command: Nicky auch essen ears, tails, wheels word-formation: cutter knife auskleben tear apart umwrts
General
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first real narrative: It was a wooden lamby and it was on the floor in a barn and they took it home and they washed it and it wasn't ugly
builds Legos, draws people and house with chimney and windows
Age (months): 36 Phonetics voiced th: initial okay in the this etc medial v in other voiceless th: initial s in sing final f in both vocalizes final l and r mispronunciations: amimals, cimamon, pasketti
Morphology double plurals: mens, feets, mices double preterites (Past): sawed, stooded regularized Past: goed, sitted reverse word-formations: popcorner, mowgrasser Syntax negation: I see it not, That doll sits not right questions: What it did? What the lady said? counting: 1 2 3 4 5 6 20 14 fiveteen 16
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) as standard measure of first language development as opposed to age
order reflects an attempt to create the clearest possible set of distinctions at any given point, within the given physiological limits this order of acquisition also reveals parallel between different languages most salient distinction is between Vowels (V) and Consonants (C)
Vowels are characteristically open and resonant: the prototypical V is a Consonants are characteristically closed and obstruent: stops are prototypical Cs the prototypical stop is p
the prototypical syllable is CV: maximizing the C-V distinction, a child's first syllable should be pa given children's tendency to reduplication, a child's first real word should be papa
after the Cs p and m , the child usually acquires t , then the third voiceless stop k and so on: p m t k
child moves on to ever larger patterns with increasing numbers of distinctive features
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
present progressive prepositions plural irregular past tense possessive articles regular past tense
girl playing ball in water toys, dishes went, told Ann's toys a dog, the dog jumped, hugged, wanted
8. 9. 10. 11.
she goes, talks, watches she does, has be: I am, you are, she is I'm, you're, she's
order of acquisition as reflecting general learning strategies and stages of development (Piaget) or as evidence of innate language acquisition device (Chomsky)
Innateness Debate Chomsky (1986: 150) writes: What we "know innately" are the principles of the various subsystems [phonology, syntax, thematic structure etc.] of S0 [the initial state of the child's mind] and the manner of their interaction, and the parameters associated with these principles. What we learn are the values of the parameters and the elements of the periphery (along with the lexicon to which similar considerations apply).
That is: We "know innately" as part of Universal Grammar (UG) that sentences will have noun phrases and verb phrases in some order, but we have to learn the order. Chomsky argues children must know innately what they can not learn by observation.
Poverty of Stimulus Argument (POS): Some patterns in language are unlearnable from positive evidence alone (due to the hierarchical nature of languages) You are happy. Are you happy?
possible rules: 1) the first auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front 2) the main auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front
but compare:
The girl who is on the bus is happy. *Is the girl who __ on the bus is happy? Is the girl who is on the bus __ happy?
Children don't see sentences like this enough to
decide which rule works but nobody ever chooses the wrong rule
Grammaticality judgments: Who do you think Mary knows? Who do you think that Mary knows? Who do you think knows Mary? *Who do you think that knows Mary? Note translations!
Universal 1: postposed forms learned before preposed forms articles before nouns less salient than noun suffixes
Two languages in one brain Types of bilinguals Weinreich (1953) distinguished three kinds of bilingualism
both communities
L1 to L2
Notice that Weinreichs typology works only at the lexical level, but bilinguals may experience interference at all levels from phonetics up to semantics.
As Paradis (1979, 1985) shows, bilinguals come in many types Bilinguals may differ with regard to: manner of acquisition (formal, informal) mode of acquisition (oral, written) method of acquisition (deductive, inductive, analytic, global) age of acquisition (during or after critical period) stage of acquisition degree of proficiency
frequency and modes of use language-specific features of L1 & L2 sharing features and rules at various levels
on every linguistic level, structures might be shared or separate e.g. if L1 speaker produces L2 perfectly, except for phonetics, i.e. has lots of interference from L1 to L2 at the level of phonetics, we could model the situation as follows:
Language comprehension
means understanding what we hear and read comprehension as active search for coherence and sense based on expectations arising from context, not a passive item-by-item recording and analysis of words in a linear sequence.
meaning and real-world expectations play a more important role than grammar top-down versus bottom-up processing
Until the age of four, kids interpret a-d the same way; even adults require longer to respond to c, d: a. The cat chased the mouse. b. The mouse was chased by the cat. c. The mouse chased the cat. d. The cat was chased by the mouse.
Comprehension of words Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP): separate, simultaneous and parallel processes work to identify words
by pronunciation: to recognize homophones leadN and ledV pst by spelling: to recognize homographs windN and windV to recognize smell as noun or verb while hear can only function as verb synonyms like little and small antonyms like little and big hyponyms like car versus vehicle etc
by grammar:
by semantics:
Bathtub Effect: recall is best for beginnings and ends of words, like the head and feet of a person which are visible though the middle remains submerged in the tub
Comprehension of sentences Chomsky proposed Generative Transformational Grammar (TG) as a model of Competence, suggesting that psycholinguists should figure out how Performance could be related to his model Psycholinguists began to test for transformational complexity
Sentences involving more transformations like PASSIVE, NEGATION, QUESTION FORMATION etc should be harder to comprehend than sentences involving fewer transformations processing time should increase for sentences a-e: a. Judy called the boy. b. Judy didn't call the boy. c. The boy was called by Judy. d. The boy was not called by Judy. e. Wasn't the boy called by Judy?
They found that negatives were harder to process than either passives or questions, even though negation seemed like a simpler transformation Subjects seemed to have difficulty processing negatives generally. Consider the difficulty of: It's not true that Wednesday never comes after a day that isn't Tuesday.
Subjects also processed passives more easily than actives, if the passives made more sense, e.g. The struggling swimmer rescued the lifeguard.
The struggling swimmer was rescued by the lifeguard. Apparently, semantics was more important than derivational complexity as predicted by TG analysis
Garden Pathing is most obvious when we have to backtrack after an unexpected switch, as in sentence a; the addition of this in sentence b, or a comma, as in sentence c, eliminates the problem
a. Since Jay always jogs a mile seems like a short distance to him. b. Since Jay always jogs a mile this seems like a short distance to him.
c. Since Jay always jogs, a mile seems like a short distance to him.
Tests revealed other syntactic processing differences. Right-branching constructions are easy to process: This is the cat that chased the rat that stole the cheese that lay in the cupboard. Here each construction is closed before the next is added.
But left-branching constructions are difficult. The rat the cat chased stole the cheese. Left-branching requires that the listener keep the first construction open (in short-term memory) while processing the second. Adding a third makes processing impossible because of the demands it places on short-term memory. The cheese the rat the cat chased stole lay in the cupboard.
Comprehension of metaphor
metaphors consist of three parts: tenor, vehicle, ground tenor billboards are vehicle warts on the landscape
Comprehending sentences Given-New Contract (Clark & Clark 1977): Listeners expect information in a regular pattern. Coherent texts generally exhibit a characteristic information flow: begin each utterance with given information then move on to new information
e.g. The ballerina captivated a musician during her performance. The one who the ballerina captivated was the trombonist. (with the ballerina as given and the rest of the first sentence as new)
In the second sentence, all the information is given, except the fact that the musician was a trombonist. Hearing the first sentence reduces processing time for the second.
L2 utterances are Consciously planned or Unplanned Pragmatic learning is more important to the learner than semantic learning Teaching should attend to form as well as meaning
Sensory
Auditory
Vision
Language Areas
Broca Expression
Wernicke
LEFT HEMISPHERE
Suggested localization
Brain Lateralization
Hemispheric Specialization
LEFT
Symbolic thinking (Language) Detail Literal meaning
RIGHT
Spatial perception Overall picture Context, metaphor
neuronal activity in the brain) patients had corpus callosum cut to reduce seizures in the brain Lives largely unaffected, seizures reduced Affected abilities related to naming objects in the left visual field
Brain Plasticity
Brain Plasticity
The ability of the brain to reorganize
neural pathways based on new experiences Persistent functional changes in the brain represent new knowledge Age dependent component Brain injuries
Parts of Neuron
MEG
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a technique for
mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents occurring naturally in the brain.
Brain activity in Spanish-English bilinguals reading words in native Spanish & second language, English.
MEG responses to first language words, second language words, and pictures during lexico-semantic processing (~400 ms after a word is shown). Regions with arrows indicate areas where responses to pictures and L2 words are similar, but differ from the responses to L1 words.
born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. Once exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a remarkable pace.
human behaviors, the ability to acquire language is subject to what are known as critical periods. A critical period is a limited span of time during which an organism is sensitive to external stimuli and capable of acquiring certain skills.
What is psycholinguistics?
Psycholinguistics deals with the mental processes a person uses in producing and understanding language.
language comprehension (how we perceive and understand speech
completed sentence)
language acquisition (how human beings learn language).
Essential questions of psycholinguistics At its heart, psycholinguistic work consists of two questions.
What knowledge of language is needed for us to use
language?
What processes are involved in the use of language?
The teachers eyes sparkled and her lips broke into a gentle smile.
knowledge of the processes or mechanisms used in these acts (e.g. e-mailing, speech)
linguistic knowledge: about the meaning of words encyclopedic knowledge: about the way the world is
spinster: (often derogative) woman who remains single after the usual age for marrying friend: a person whom one knows, likes and trusts They are cleaning women.
Example S
NP VP
They
NP
are cleaning
women
Example
NP
VP
They
NP
are
ADJ.
cleaning
women
know about these aspects of language. We infer linguistic knowledge from observable behavior.
thinking.
and listening, we will find that considerable cognitive processing is going on during those activities.
one word at a time. (from the saying "to be led down the garden path" meaning "to be misled)
garden path sentences: the subjective impression is one
of following a garden path to a predictable destination until it is obvious that you were mistaken in your original interpretation and thus forced to backtrack and reinterpret the sentence.
The point is that in the course of comprehending language
Modularity
serial processing. If one or more of the processes take place simultaneously, it is called parallel processing.
Serial processing (sequential processing): two or more
structure of the sentence, retrieving the lexical items, inserting lexical items into the structure, determining the correct pronunciation of these lexical items. The serial model would assume that these stages occur one at a time, with none overlapping.
A parallel model: all these processes could take place at the same time.
We could be phonetically specifying one word while we search for the next word, or both of these processes could take place as we flesh out the syntactic structure.
we interpret the middle letter as an h in one word but as an a in the other despite the fact that the letter is physically identical in the two cases.
Why?
identifying the letters and then identifying a word. How can we use the word to help identify the letter?
The answer lies in parallel processing. Assume that we are identifying
the individual letters and, at the same time, actively trying to fit the letters into various possible words. Some of the identical letters enable us to recognize the word as a familiar word, and then we identify the obscured letter from our knowledge of the spelling of the word. Thus, we are processing at the letter and the word levels simultaneously.
syllables.
and syllables to retrieve the lexical entries of the words from your semantic memory. constituents and forming a phrase structure for the sentence.
At the next level, the syntactic level, organize the words into
Finally, at the highest level, the discourse level, link the meaning of a
given sentence with preceding ones and organizing sentences into higher-order units.
You simply pass the button, and the lift will take you to your They have moved 30 tons of food to the flooded village in a
single lift.
The fog lifted and the sun came out. The Japanese government rejected Washingtons demands to lift
the highest level of processing in such a way that all of the lower levels of processing operate without influence from the highest level.
A top-down processing model, in contrast, states that information at
the task is complex, one part of the task may draw substantial resources from this limited pool of resources, thereby leaving insufficient resources for other parts and resulting in overall impaired performance.
Tasks that draw substantially from this limited pool of resources are
called controlled tasks, and the processes involved in these tasks are referred to as controlled processes.
Tasks that do not require substantial resources are called automatic
tasks; processes that do not require extensive capacity are referred to as automatic processes.
automatic: breathing, blinking, shifting in your seat, daydreaming, keeping enough distance between you and the car in front of you, even scowling and cursing slower drivers." Meanwhile, you may be consciously thinking about something other than driving, or perhaps annoying other drivers by chatting with a friend on the cellphone.
Modularity
Modularity is a term taken from computer technology for a concept of
subsystems with specific tasks, which due to the fact that they function independently, can to a large extent be isolated.
For Chomsky, grammatical regularities are not based on general
cognitive principles, but on principles that are specific for language. This grammatical knowledge is independent of other kinds of knowledge. It is conceptualized as a module next to other modules such as visual perception.
Modularity
Modularity has two meanings: first, it refers to the degree to which
language processing is independent of general cognitive processes such as memory and reasoning.
The modularity position: the language processing system is a
unique set of cognitive abilities that cannot be reduced to general principles of cognition.
The alternative position stresses the interconnections between
language and cognitive processes by emphasizing the role of concepts such as working memory, automatic processing, and parallel processing in language comprehension, production and acquisition.
It also refers to the degree to which an aspect of language is
A brief summary
Brain Anatomy
First Language acquisition Second Language Acquisition
A brief summary
we have covered
definition and scope of psycholinguistics two core questions of psycholinguistics basic concepts in language processing serial and parallel processing, top-down and bottom-up processing,
language processing is not just determined by linguistic structure but jointly by that structure and by processing considerations that are independent of language.
Fundamental Question
a. What is the relationship between language and culture? b. Humans are the only animal to have culture. c. Humans are the only animal to have language. d. How do the two connect? e. What is language? what members of a particular society speak (Wardhaugh 1).
Language as Grammar
The object of a science of linguistics (Saussure).
Universal Grammar difference between surface structure and deep structure in language
Grammar
Three sub-systems
Representational
Lexical
(Syn)tactic = syntax
Language as communication
Language as Text. The Interaction of People The Interpretation of Texts What do you communicate? Ideas? Emotions? Intentions? How do you communicate? Messages: The interpretation of messages The construction of messages
Language as thing
Language as an element in social constructs. Language planning, code switching, dialect debates.
Note: to distinguish between and language and communication, look at the following questions:
1. Is language as Dawkins suggests part of the DNA of homosapiens? 2. Is there a creative component (the horrible honeybee story)
Competence v. Performance
Langue v parole Structure v event Structural v communicative universal v dialect
psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, morphology, syntax, semantics etc Sociolinguistics is the study of variation of language in use we use different words or grammatical forms depending on context
Variation
Variation is determined by social class, gender, place,
age, situation etc. Would you use the same words, syntax and phonology (or even the same language) to ask for a loan from a YB, friend, father, mother, bank, total stranger?
communicative competence. Therefore should they try to teach language as it is actually used? If so, as used by whom?
continued
Teachers need to consider the language/dialect/accent
used by their students Malay dialects(?), Javanese, Manglish, Singlish, Black English, Chinese dialects(?) May be different from teachers variety and from standard language
from you home do people speak differently? 50 miles? 200 miles To Indonesia To Rapanui (eye=mata,fish=ika, bird =manu)
continued
When do you stop understanding people?
When do people stop understanding you? How long to learn the local ?
continued
When does an accent become a dialect?
When does a dialect become a language? A linguist would say if pronunciation is the only
difference, it is a dialect, if words and grammar are different, but still still intelligible, it is a dialect.
continued
What would a sociolinguist say? Depends on social attitudes and politics
continued
But does this describe social reality? For a linguist, if two people understand one another
they are speaking the same language Serbs, Croats, Bosnians understand each other but insist they speak different languages (since 1991)
Continued
Indians speaking Hindi understand Pakistanis
speaking Urdu but claim they speak a different language Speakers of Hokkien dialect cannot understand Cantonese or Mandarin speakers, but do not claim to speak a separate language
continued
Why did Scots and Ulster Scots suddenly become
languages in the 1990s? Before then, they were only dialects but now are languages recognised by the Scottish and Northern Ireland parliaments
Is this English?
Hear all see all say nowt Eat all sup all pay nowt
for thisen
Answer
Nearly everybody would say yes. Yorkshire dialect
Is Arabic a language?
Arabic, Algerian Saharan Spoken
Arabic, Algerian Spoken Arabic, Babalia Creole Arabic, Baharna Spoken Arabic, Chadian Spoken Arabic, Cypriot Spoken Arabic, Dhofari Spoken Arabic, Eastern Egyptian
continued
National language. 246,000,000 second-language speakers of all Arabic varieties (1999 WA). Not a first language. Used for education, official purposes, written materials, and formal speeches. Classical Arabic is used for religion and ceremonial purposes, having archaic vocabulary. Modern Standard Arabic is a modernized variety of Classical Arabic. In most Arab countries only the well educated have adequate proficiency in Standard Arabic, while over 100,500,000 do not.
Answer
Arabs generally insist there is only one language.
Sociolinguists would have to agree with them but would also analyse the relationship between the different varieties.
Is English a language?
Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, West Country, East Anglia,
Birmingham (Brummy, Brummie), South Wales, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cornwall, Cumberland, Central Cumberland, Devonshire, East Devonshire, Dorset, Durham, Bolton Lancashire, North Lancashire, Radcliffe Lancashire, Northumberland, Norfolk, Newcastle Northumberland, Tyneside Northumberland, Lowland Scottish, Somerset, Sussex, Westmorland, North Wiltshire, Craven Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Sheffield Yorkshire, West Yorkshire. Lexical similarity 60% with German, 27% with French, 24% with Russian.
blurred, chamging and socially determined Sociolinguists like to talk about code and variety Avoids arguments about what is a language and what is a dialect
Is Malay a language?
Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Malayu, Malayu, Melaju,
Melayu, Standard Malay Dialects Trengganu, Kelantan, Kedah, Perak (Southern Malay), Sarawak Malay, Bazaar Malay (Low Malay, Pasar Malay, Pasir Malay, Trade Malay). 'Bazaar Malay' is used to refer to many regional nonstandard dialects. Over 80% cognate with Indonesian.
Is Indonesian a language?
Bahasa Indonesia Classification Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Malayic, Malayan, Local Malay Language use Official language. Over 140,000,000 second-language speakers. Language development Roman and Arabic scripts. Grammar. Comments Reported to be modeled on Riau Malay of northeast Sumatra. Has regional variants. Over 80% cognate with Standard Malay.
Questions
Is Malay one Language? How many dialects?
Is English?
Chinese?
Arabic?
Summary
For a linguist the rules for deciding whether a variety is
a language or dialect are simple. Can people understand each other? In sociolinguistics it is difficult to decide history, attitudes and politica have to be considered also.
Speech Communities
A group of people with the same rules about the use
and correctness of language May not coincide with language or dialect E.g. Malaysian Chinese, Arabs, Ireland
continued
Semi-speakers of dying languages Celtic languages in
Britain
Linked to communicative competence may not be
Sociolinguistic Methods
Questionnaires Interview
Observation
Participant-Observation Experiments
Analysis of Texts
Archive research
Sociolinguistic questions
How and why do languages change (and die)? How do people decide which variety to use? Are men and women different? To what extent can governments control the use of language? Does language vary with social class?
continued
To summarise sociolinguists study how linguistics
features vary When variation is extensive enough and found across domains, sociolinguistics talk about varieties and codes Sometimes these are the same as languages and dialects (as described by linguists)
continued
But sometimes not sociolinguists also consider social
1.
2.
Social structure may influence or determine linguistic structure and/or behaviour Linguistic structure/behaviour influences or determines social structure (Whorfian hypothesis)
Desperate Definitions: Sociolinguistics is an attempt to find correlations between linguistic structure and social structure
Sociolinguists
whatever it is, is about asking important questions concerning the relationship of language to society (Wardhaugh 11)
straightforward, agreed upon definition of sociolinguistics. Lets try the discussion questions on page 12 of Wardhaugh. Get into groups of 4 or 5 and take 15 minutes to go over questions 1 and 2.
Methodological principles
Wardhaugh p. 18
1. Cumulative 2. Uniformation 3. Convergence 4. Subordinate shift 5. Style shifting 6. Attention 7. Vernacular 8. Formality
Sociolinguistics (summary)
to:
What is sociolinguistics?
It studies why people speak differently according
- Whom they are talking to? - What they are talking about? - In what kind of context they are
talking?
More specifically
1. Social motivation for language variation: - socio-economic status - gender - ethnicity - region etc. 2. Language contact - Pidgin language - Creole language
Dialect continuum:
Situation in which a large number of contiguous dialects exist, each mutually intelligible with the next, but with the dialects at either end of the continuum not being mutually intelligible.
- Covert prestige
Type of prestige that exists among members of nonstandardspeaking communities that defines how people should speak in order to be considered members of those particular communities. e.g. the young boy in American Tongues African American speech community
Creole language
Creole language:
a language that develops from contact between speakers of different languages and serves as the primary means of communication for a particular group of speakers - typical in plantation setting - some of them are stabilized pidgin - different from pidgin, Creole language serves as the first language for speakers
Diglossia
Holmes: The use of two varieties in a society, distinguished by function High and Low varieties; Typical functions of the H variety:
Literature, education,
H variety used on formal/official occasions e.g. delivering a speech; holding a meeting. The H variety is usually learnt in school. L variety used for everyday, more informal purposes. L variety is usually an L1 and learnt at home.
195
Overt prestige
Covert (hidden) prestige
196
variety)
197
linguistic situation with that of Hong Kong (level of individual and societal bilingualism)
198
Case studies
r-Lessness in New York City:
lack of [r] in words as four, card etc. in New York dialect
speakers
of the dialect. - Labov: speakers vary their use of [r] according to their social status. high status: the use of [r] low status: the lack of [r] hypothesis: salespeople tend to reflect the prestige of their customers. Salespeople from the highest prestige store would exhibit the highest incidence of [r] in their speech, while those from the lowest prestige store would exhibit the lowest incidence of [r]
Sociolinguistics
Study the relationship between language and society.
1. explaining why we speak differently in different social contexts 2. identifying the social functions of language and the ways it is used to convey social meaning.
An attempt to find correlations between social structure and
linguistic structure and to observe any changes that occur (Gumpers, 1971: 223) understand one without the other. number of social factors.
1. Social
structure linguistic structure and/or behavior a. age-grading phenomenon young children speak differently from older children and in turn, children speak differently from mature adults. b. studies the varieties of language that speakers use reflect such matters; their regional, social, or ethnic origin and possible sex. c. other studies particular ways of speaking, choices of words, and rules for conversing are determined by social requirement
2. Linguistic structure and/or behavior may either influence or determine social structure (behind Whorfian hypothesis) 3. The influence is bi-directional; language and society may influence each other. 4. There is no relationship at all.
Social factors
The participants
Example I
Tom Mum Tom Mum Tom : Hi mum. : Hi. Youre late. : Yeah, that bastard Soot bucket kept us in : Nanas here. : Oh sorry. Where is she?
again.
Analysis I
Language serves a range of functions; to ask for and
give people information, to express indignation and annoyance, as well as admiration and express feelings.
Example II
Tom : Good afternoon, sir. Principle : What are you doing here at this time? Tom : Mr. Sutton kept us in, sir.
For the analysis, see Holmes, 1995: 2-3
Example III
Every afternoon my friend packs her bag and leaves her Cardiff office at about 5 oclock. As she leaves, her business partner says goodbye Margaret, (she replies goodbye Mike) her secretary says goodbye Ms Walker, (she replies goodbye Jill) and the caretaker says Bye Mrs. Walker (to which she responds goodbye Andy). As she arrives home she is greeted by Hi mum from her son, Jamie, hello dear, have a good day?, from her mother, and simply youre late again! from her husband.
Example III
Later in the evening the president of the local flower
club calls to ask if she would like to join. Good evening, is that Mrs. Billington? she asks. No, its Ms Walker, but my husbands name is David Billington, she answers. What can I do for you? Finally a friend calls Boradar Meg, hows thing?
Example IV
Sam : You seen our enrys new ouse yet? Its in alton you know. Jim : I have indeed. I could hardly miss it Sam. Your Henry now owns the biggest house in Halton. It illustrated a range of social influences on language choice.
Social dimensions
A Social distance scale concerned with participant
relationship A status scale concerned with participant relationship A formality scale relating to the setting or type of interaction Two functional scales relating to the purposes or topic of interaction
Distant
Low solidarity
The scale is useful in emphasizing that how well we know someone is a relevant factor in linguistic choice. e.g. meg vs. Mrs. Belington
low status
Low Formality
Useful in assessing the influence of social setting or type of interaction on language choice. 2. Often degrees of formality are largely determined by solidarity and status relationship. But not always.
Chaika ( 1988, 10) the context determines meaning, 1. the social status of speakers 2. the speech event and social conventions governing it; 3. the social-cultural and physical environment 4. previous discourse between the speakers or known to them 5. the intent of the speaker.
Conclusion
Our word choices depend on who we are talking to. Language choices convey information about the social
relationships between people as well as about the topic of discussion. Linguistic variation occurs at other levels of linguistic analysis: sounds, word-structure, grammar as well as vocabulary.