Yule, G. (2014). The study of Language. U.K.: Cambridge University Press
✭ CHAPTER 1 & CHAPTER 2
✭ CHAPTER 1
✭ CHAPTER 2
Animals and human language
✭ CHAPTER 18
Language and Regional variation
The origins of language
In most religions, existed the belief that language was provided by God. In this sense, it was a gift from the Lord. The idea was then, that if the language was God-given, any human would speak it spontaneously.
Regarding the natural sound source, primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them. This type of view is called the “bow-wow” theory. Words that sound similar to the noises they describe are examples of onomatopoeia.
We might also be rather sceptical about a view that seems to assume that a language is only a set of words used as “names” for things. It has also been suggested that the original sounds of language may have come from natural cries of emotion such as pain, anger, and joy. Basically, the expressive noises people make in emotional reactions contain sounds that are not otherwise used in speech production and consequently would seem to be rather unlikely candidates as source sounds for language.
Another proposal given by the social interaction source involves natural sounds that have been called the “yo-he-ho” theory. This theory proposes that the sounds of a person involved in physical efforts may be the source of language, especially when the physical effort involved several people coordinating their interaction. So, early humans developed a set of rhythmical sounds: hums, grunts, groans, and curses. The main idea of this proposal is that it places the development of human language in a social context. As a result, groups are necessarily social organizations, and to maintain them, there was some kind of communication needed.
Besides, the social and religious origin, there are some sources connected to the physical and practical features One the one hand, the physical adaptations in which humans possess, especially those that are different from other creatures. Eg, *Human teeth: are upright, not slanting. (/f/ or /v/ sounds. One the other hand, the tool making source. From this view, language might have originated from manual gestures. Apparently, there was a migration from hand to mouth.
The last theory is the genetic source, it explains that babies are born with a special capacity for language. It is innate, no other creature seems to have it. There is an innateness hypothesis that points to something in human genetics as the source. But then, the investigation of the origins of language turns into a search for the special "language gene" that only humans possess.
✭ CHAPTER 2
Animals and human language
This chapter analyses different properties of human language in order to understand the reasons why human language is so unique and different from the animals' languages. There are several properties that make the human language unique. First, Reflexivity that explained the capacity to use language to think and talk about the language. Second, a displacement which refers to the human ability to talk about the past and future time. It allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment. Third, arbitrariness which mentions an aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and meaning. There is no natural or iconic connection but rather an arbitrary one. There is no chance to guess a word’s meaning by looking at its shape. Fourth, productivity. It is humans' ability to create novel utterances and new expressions to describe, precisely, new situations or objects. Fifth, it is the cultural transmission which is the process by which a language is passed on from one generation to the next. Language is acquired in a culture with other speakers, but it is not inherited like our physical features, eyes, or hair, for example. On the contrary, animals are born with a set of specific signals that are produced instinctively. Sixth, duality refers to Human language is organized at two levels. This is called duality. There is a physical level where humans can produce different individual sounds. However, those forms don’t have intrinsic meaning. If we combine them, we will obtain another level producing meaning. So, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and, at another level, we have distinct meanings.
Among other creatures, each communicative signal appears to be a single fixed form that cannot be broken down into separate parts. If these properties of human language make it such a unique communication system, quite different from the communication systems of other creatures, then it would seem extremely unlikely that other creatures would be able to understand it. And no other creature has been observed "using language". It is in this abstract sense that we say that language is uniquely human.
✭ CHAPTER 11
Discourse analysis
Discourse Analysis is usually defined as “language beyond the sentence” so the analysis of discourse is typically concerned with the study of language in texts and conversation. These texts have certain structures that depend on factors. On the one hand, some of them are described in terms of cohesion or the connection that exists within the text (cohesive ties). On the other hand, there must be some other factor that leads us to distinguish connected texts that make sense from those that do not. This factor is usually described as coherence.
As regards speech events, they are whatever people say and do in different circumstances, for instance, debates, interviews, conversations. In order to describe this variation, we would have to take into account the roles of speakers and hearers and their relationship. What is more, an English conversation can be described as an activity in which two or more people take turns at speaking.
There are different expectations of conversational style and different strategies of participation in the conversation. Firstly, we should take into account The co-operative principle to make our conversational contribution such as is required and make your contribution as informative as is required. Secondly, do not say that which you believe to be false or for which you lack adequate evidence. Thirdly be relevant, clear, brief and orderly.
In relation to the features of a conversation, Hedges are words or phrases used to indicate that we´re not usually sure that what we are saying is sufficiently correct or complete. Furthermore, implicatures which involve something that it is not said e.g, are you going to the party tonight? I´ve got an exam (This imply refusal to the invitation).
In order to build interpretations of what we hear or read we can use background knowledge. For instance, schema and script. The first one is a conventional knowledge that exists in memory used in the interpretation of what we experience. The second one is the series of conventional actions that take place. E.g, If you go to a restaurant you know that you have to order the food, pay for the service, etc.
✭ CHAPTER 17
Language history and change
In this chapter, the writer tries to explain the different changes that languages have undergone through centuries and particularly how English evolved from Old English to Modern English. In addition to this, the reader can learn about the “family connections” among languages belonging to the same family tree, The Proto-Indo-European language.
Investigating the features of older languages, and the ways in which they developed into modern languages, involves us in the study of language history and change, also known as philology. In the nineteenth century, philology dominated the study of language and one result was the creation of “family trees” to show how languages were related. Before all of that could happen, however, there had to be discovered that a variety of languages spoken in different parts of the world were actually members of the same family.
During the nineteenth century, a term came into use to describe that common ancestor. It incorporated the notion that this was the original form (Proto) of a language that was the source of modern languages in the Indian sub-continent (Indo) and in Europe (European). Proto-Indo-European established as a long-ago “great-great-grandmother,” scholars set out to identify the branches of the Indo- European family tree, tracing the lineage of many modern languages. Indo-European is the language family with the largest population and distribution in the world, but it isn’t the only one. There are about thirty such language families containing a large number of different individual languages.
There are Family connections among these languages. To get a clearer picture of how they are related we should look at records of an older generation, like Latin and Sanskrit, from which the modern languages evolved. For example, if we use familiar letters to write out the words for father in Sanskrit (pitar), Latin (pater), and Ancient Greek (patër), some common features become apparent.
Also, it is important to mention the meaning of cognate, which is a word in one language (e.g English) but it could be a word in another language (e.g German) that has a similar form and is or was used with similar meaning. For instance, the English words mother, father and friend are cognates of the German words Mutter, Vater and Freund. Another point to mark is the comparative reconstruction. It is a method that usually referred to a reconstruction, establishes features of the ancestor of two or more related languages, belonging to the same language family, by means of the comparative method. Eg, If in a cognate set, three words begin with a /p/ sound and one word begins with a /b/ sound, then our best guess is that the majority have retained the original sound.
The most natural development principle is based on the fact that certain types of sound change are very common whereas others are extremely unlikely. As a matter of fact, sound reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. If we were faced with some examples from three languages. we could make a start on a comparative reconstruction by deciding what was the most likely form of the initial sound in the original source of all three. Eg, language A: cantare, Language B: cantar and Language C: chanter (“sing”).
To understand better the changes that it has undergone through time, it is essential to take a look at the history of English. It can be divided into four periods: Old English (before 1100), Middle English (1100 to 1500), Early modern English (1500 to 1700)*, and Modern English (after 1700)*. These changes can be divided into sound changes and syntactic changes. First there are four processes involved in soung change, that are not reflected after 1700 :
1) Sound loss: from the middle to modern English some sounds disappeared. the initial /h/ of many old English words was lost. Eg, hlud→loud
2) When sound changes, so the METATHESIS involves a reversal in position of two sounds in a word. Eg, frist→first
3)EPENTHESIS involves the addition of a sound in the middle of a word. Eg, spinel→spindel
4)PROTHESIS this is not found in English but it’s pretty common in forms from Latin to Spanish such as, schola→escuela. That is why Spanish speakers tend to add an /e/ sound before a /s/
Second, there are some syntactic changes:
1.Word order: in old English, we can find forms where the VERB is followed by the SUBJECT, for example FERDE HE = TRAVELED HE
2.Double negative forms were also possible now we would say “YOU NEVER GAVE” rather than “YOU NOT GAVE NEVER”
3.the most sweeping change was the loss of a large number of inflexional suffixes, for example, the suffixes -e and -est: SEALDE (he gave) or SEALDEST (you gave)
To analyse the change through time, there are two different perspectives On the one hand, Diachronically is associated with the historical perspective of change through time (for example the history of English). On the other hand, synchronically refers to the differences within one language in different places and among different groups at the same time. (for example, FRENCH when the Normans conquered England, the French spoken in England was not the same spoken in France, it developed differently).
✭ CHAPTER 18
Language and Regional variation
Standard Language is an idealized variety because it has no specific region. It is the variety related to administrative, commercial, and educational centres, regardless of region. It is clearly associated with education and broadcasting in public contexts and is more easily described in terms of the written language.
Accent and Dialect are two important aspects that we have to make a difference. On the one hand, ACCENT is a distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class. Some speakers have very distinct or easily recognized types of accent while others may have more subtle or less noticeable accents. The term accent is restricted to the description of aspects of the pronunciation that identify where an individual speaker is from, regionally, or socially. On the other hand, DIALECT describes the features of grammar and vocabulary as well as aspects of pronunciation. While differences in vocabulary are often easily recognized, dialect variations in the meaning of grammatical constructions are less frequently documented. Another point to mark is Dialectology that is used to distinguish between two different dialects of the same language. Some regional dialects have many dialects that exist in the same region. That is why some of them have influences from outside the region in their speech.
There are some other terms that should be noticed. According to Isogloss which is an imaginary line that divides areas/regions, they differ in words, intonation, vocabulary, and pronunciation. When a number of isoglosses come together a dialect boundary can be drawn. Furthermore, Dialect Continuum refers to speakers who move back and forth across this border area, using different varieties with some ease, may be described as BIDIALECTAL, for example: speaking two dialects. Most of us grow up with some form of bidialectal, speaking one dialect in the street among family and friends, and having to learn another dialect in school.
According to regional variation, in many countries, it is not simply a matter of two or more dialects of the language, but it can involve two or more different languages. This situation has to do with Bilingualism, which is the ability to speak and understand two or more different languages and it tends to be a feature of a minority group. However, it doesn’t have to be the result of political dominance by a group using a different language. It can simply be the result of having two parents who speak different languages. Also, a special situation exists in some countries and it is called diglossia. This involves two distinct varieties of language and there is a "low variety", acquired locally and used for everyday affairs, and a "high variety", learned in school, and used for important matters.
Regarding this, the government, legal and educational organizations have to plan which variety or varieties of the language spoken in the country are to be used for official business. This is known as language planning and this process involves some stages. The first one is the "selection" of an official language; the second one is "codification" in which written modes establish the standard variety; the third one is "elaboration" in which this standard variety is developed for use; the fourth stage is "implementation" which is the matter of government attempts to encourage the use of the standard and finally, the "acceptance" stage in which a majority of the population have come to use the standard and to think of it as the national language.
In some areas, the standard chosen may be a variety that originally had no native speakers. It is the case of a language called Pidgin which is developed among groups of people that do do not have a language in common. But when a pidgin becomes the first language of a community, it is described as a Creole. Tok Pisin is an example of it and is spoken in Papua New Guinea. In many situations where creoles evolve, there is a range of linguistic varieties between a creole and a standard form of the lexifier (the main source of words in the pidgin). This range, known as the Post-creole continuum, usually exists in Creole-speaking communities in which the lexifier is still present and continues to have linguistic influence
✭ CHAPTER 19
Social variation in language
This chapter focuses on Social variation in language. That is why not everyone in a single geographical area speaks in the same way in every situation. People who live in the same region, but who differ in terms of education and economic status, often speak in quite different ways. This fact tells us that there are many speech communities inside a society. A speech community is a group of people who share a set of norms and expectations regarding the use of language.
The term sociolinguistics refers to the study of the relationship between language and society. It has a close connection with anthropology through the study of language and culture, and with sociology through the investigation of the role language plays in the organization of social groups and institutions. It is also tied to social psychology, particularly with regard to how attitudes, perceptions and behaviours are expressed in and out the groups.
The study of social dialects has been mainly concerned with speakers in towns and cities. In the social study of dialect, the social classes define groups of speakers as having something in common. The two main groups are generally defined as middle class, those who have more years of education and perform non-manual work and working class, those who have fewer years of education and perform manual work of some kind.
As in all dialect studies, pronunciation is a relevant feature to consider since words or structures that are regularly used in one form by working-class speakers are not used in the same form by middle-class speakers. That is why we consider class as the social variable and the pronunciation or word as the linguistic variable.
Even though each of us has an individual way of speaking, a personal dialect or idiolect, we generally tend to sound like others with whom we share similar educational backgrounds and/or occupations.
Those who spend more time in the educational system tend to have more features in their spoken language that derive from a lot of time spent with the written language. For instance: they say Mahvellous instead of Marvellous. This /r/ is one of the features that mark us as members of a particular social group, whether we realize it or not. That is why we consider it a social marker.
Speech style is also a social feature of language use. The most basic distinction in speech style is between formal uses and informal uses. Formal style is when we pay more careful attention to how we’re speaking and informal style is when we pay less attention. They are sometimes described as “careful style” and “casual style.” A change from one to the other by an individual is called style-shifting.
Style-shifting in any speech introduces the idea of “prestige”. There are 2 ways of changing the speech. On the one hand, it is Overt prestige which refers when that change is in the direction of a form that is more frequent in the speech of those perceived to have higher social status and it is considered as “better”. On the other hand, covert prestige. It a way of speech that speakers avoid changing the speech in the direction of features associated with another social group because they value the features that mark them as members of their social group.
Variation in speech style is not only a function of speakers social class and attention to the speech, but it is also influenced by their perception of their listeners. This variation is known as speech accommodation which refers to our ability to modify our speech style toward or away from the perceived style of the person we are talking to.
We can adopt a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance, described as convergence and use forms that are similar to those used by the person we are talking to. In contrast, when a speech style is used to emphasize the social distance between speakers the process is called divergence. We can make our speech style diverge from another s by using forms that are distinctly different
The register also shapes the speech style. It is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context. It may be identified as: situational (e.g. in church), occupational (e.g. among lawyers), or topical (e.g. talking about language).
The term jargon, which is special technical vocabulary belonging to a specific social group, often defined by professional status, helps to create and maintain connections among those who see themselves as “insiders” in some way and to exclude “outsiders.”
Slang is or “colloquial speech” describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interests. It is subject to fashion, especially among adolescents since they think that their expressions can “grow old” rather quickly. Eg, Older forms for “really good” such as groovy, hip and super were replaced by awesome, rad and wicked which gave way to dope, kickass and phat.
Social variations not only occur in British English and what we might call “European” American English but also in other speakers of English such as those who belong to a variety called African American English (AAE).
AAE is a variety used by many (not all) African Americans in many different regions of the USA. It has a number of characteristic features that, taken together, form a distinct set of social markers. In the case of AAE, those different features have often been stigmatized as “bad” language.
The term vernacular is used to characterize any non-standard spoken version of a language used typically by lower-status groups. Therefore, it is a kind of social dialect. For example the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or other nonstandard varieties, such as “Asian American English”.
In AAVE and other English vernaculars is the tendency to reduce final consonant clusters, so that words ending in two consonants (left hand) are often pronounced as if there is only one (lef han).
Double negative construction, as in "he don’t know nothing" or "I ain’t afraid of no ghosts" since the negative is expressed twice, these structures have been condemned as “illogical” (since one negative supposedly cancels the other).
