prescriptivism and descriptivism
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Prescriptivism and Descriptivism. September 19, 2012. Current Work with Bonobos. After Nim Chimpsky, funding for primate language studies mostly dried up. …although a few experiments went on. One project involves bonobos, a sub-species of chimpanzees. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Prescriptivism and Descriptivism
September 19, 2012
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Current Work with Bonobos• After Nim Chimpsky, funding for primate language studies mostly dried up.
• …although a few experiments went on.
• One project involves bonobos, a sub-species of chimpanzees.
• Bonobos Sherman and Austin have also been trained to use lexigrams.
• Kanzi learned just by watching Sherman and Austin’s training!• But the Bonobo project is now in trouble—check out:http://news.iowapublicradio.org/post/bonobo-hope-great-ape-trust-sanctuary
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Mission Objectives1. Wrap up Prescriptivism ~ Descriptivism
2. Try to figure out how language can be creative.
• The previous problems with prescriptivism:
1. Confusion about application of prescriptive rules
• (they’re not natural)
• Hypercorrection
2. Standards can shift over time
3. Prescriptive rules form a poor understanding of natural language.
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Problem #3: Missing Patterns• Prescriptivist rules do a poor job of accounting for many of the patterns we find in natural language.
• Here’s one prescriptive rule which misses a consistent pattern:
• “Incorrect”: I feel bad (about the accident).
• “Correct”: I feel badly (about the accident).
• Why? The verb “feel” should be modified by an adverb (“badly”), not an adjective (“bad”).
• But is bad/badly modifying the verb or the subject of the sentence?
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Linking Verbs• How about these examples?
• Bob is happy. (*Bob is happily.)
• Susie looks hot. (*Susie looks hotly.)
• The water seems fine. (*The water seems finely.)
• I feel sleepy. (*I feel sleepily.)
• James Brown feels good. (*James Brown feels well.)
• The verbs in these sentences are known as linking verbs.
• They connect the subject to some property describing the subject.
• (They do not modify the verb itself.)
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Different Standards• Rules for a standard form of a language…
• Normally describe the variety of language used by the group in power.
• Other forms of the language are non-standard.
• And are often identified with social, regional or ethnic groups.
• Linguists have discovered that all forms of language (standard or not) are rule-based and orderly.
• Non-standard forms of the language are not simply mistake-ridden versions of the standard form.
• There is no linguistic reason to consider one variety of language superior to another.
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Quick Write:Appalachian English
• Appalachian English is a variety of English traditionally spoken in the Appalachian mountains.
• Developed (and maintained) unique features due to isolation from outside communities.
• One interesting feature:
• a-prefixing…
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“a” Prefixing Summary• [a-] form cannot be a noun (#1 and #5)
• [a-] form cannot be an adjective (#2 and #6)
• [a-] form cannot be preceded by a preposition
(#3 and #7)
• first syllable of [a-] form must be stressed (#4 and #8)
• Note: people often consider speakers of Appalachian English to be unsophisticated
• …but the proper use of the [a-] prefix involves a relatively complex set of conditions.
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AAVE• Another variety of English that has (traditionally) been low on the prestige scale is African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).
• a.k.a. Black Vernacular English (BVE), Ebonics
• Predominantly spoken by African-Americans
• but not all African-Americans…
• and some others, as well.
• AAVE has a variety of interesting features...
• some familiar: multiple negation, ain’t as an auxiliary
• others are less familiar…
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AAVE Verbs• Verb conjugation: third personal singular verbs lack an [-s] marker.
• Ex: He look, it do, she have
• “Paradigm leveling”
• = making a set of related forms more uniform
• (similar to “he don’t”/”she don’t”)
• Under certain conditions, the verb “to be” can be deleted.
• Ex: you so crazy, she workin’, he lucky
• In the same conditions, “to be” can be contracted in standard English:
• You’re so crazy, she’s working, he’s lucky…
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To Be Deletion• What are the right conditions for deletion/contraction?
AAVE Standard English
You so crazy. You’re so crazy.
*He as nice as he say he. *He’s as nice as he says he’s.
*Here I. *Here I’m.
They mine. They’re mine.
*How beautiful you. *How beautiful you’re.
• The verb needs to link the subject to something after it.
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AAVE: Habitual Be• AAVE also has a form of “to be” that standard English does not.
• “habitual” be
• Habitual be expresses something that the subject does on a regular basis.
• Examples:
• He be working at Tim Horton’s.
• She be late. (= She is usually late.)
• She late. (= She’s late (right now).)
• Do you be tired? (=Are you often tired?)
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Descriptive Benefits• Language tends to operate in patterns, even if they are non-standard.
• Important: Appalachian English and AAVE speakers are not just speaking English with mistakes.
• Descriptive linguistics enables us to understand how those patterns work.
• Even if you want to change the world, you’re better off understanding how it works to begin with.
• History of economics analogy.
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To Be Fair• Standards are useful because they provide a single form of the language to teach to non-native speakers.
• They help establish uniformity in the written language.
• They can help clear up confusions.
• for instance: supposably
• They also help to distinguish those who have mastered the arbitrary rules from those who haven’t.
• (for better or worse)
• Otherwise:
• They are not useful for (scientific) linguistic analysis.
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Linguistic Creativity (again)• One of the crucial design features of language was creativity (or productivity).
• Charles Hockett:
“Language users can create and understand completely novel messages.”
“In a language, new messages are freely coined by blending, analogizing from, or transforming old ones. This says that every language has grammatical patterning.”
“In a language, either new or old elements are freely assigned new semantic loads by circumstances and context. This says that in every language new idioms constantly come into existence.”
• How is it possible for human beings to do this?
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To Infinity and Beyond• Last week, we found out that honeybees can produce a variety of different “dance messages”.
= “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 0
degree angle with the sun.”
= “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 45
degree angle with the sun.”
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To Infinity and Beyond• The number of different messages the bees can produce is limited only by the number of angles they can differentiate:
• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 1 degree angle with the sun.”
• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 2 degree angle with the sun.”
……………
• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 359 degree angle with the sun.”
• Q: Can the bees dance at angles they haven’t seen before?
• If so, how?
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Different Infinities• What kind of infinities exist in human language?
• Note that we can say (translations of) everything the bees can say:
Fly at a 1 degree angle with the sun.
Fly at a 2 degree angle with the sun.
……………
Fly at a 359 degree angle with the sun.
• We can get as detailed as we want to about it, too:
Fly at a 45 degree, 13 minute, 27.6685 second angle with the sun.
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Infinity + 1• In addition to the infinity of things the bees can say, we can say other things, too.
• Examples (borrowed from Ray Jackendoff):
A numeral is not a numbskull.
A numeral is not a nun.
A numeral is not a nunnery.
……………
A nun is not a nursery.
……………
An oboe is not an octopus.
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Linguistic Infinities• These are uninteresting, but novel sentences.
• In order to understand them, you must know the rule by which they are constructed.
• Rule:
[Sentence] = A X is not a Y.
• Point:
• Knowledge of rules is more abstract than just knowledge of sentences.
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Language Model #1
• In this model, all we “know” are the individual sentences we can use in language.
• (no rules)
• This is a good enough model to describe the vervets’ (or prairie dogs’) “language”.
A nun is not a nursery.
Fly at a 45 degree angle with the sun.
I like linguistics.
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Language Model #2
• In this model, we “know” all the rules we can use to combine words to form sentences in a language.
• This is a good enough model to describe the bees’ “language”.
• Is it good enough for human language?
A X is not a Y.
X at a Y degree angle with the Z.
X likes Y.
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What do you think?• No. There are even bigger infinities.
• Check out these sentences:
Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.
Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.
Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.
Jean knows that Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.
ad infinitum...
• Some “real” examples:
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How many rules do we need?1. X verbs that Y is a Z.
2. W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z.
3. V verbs that W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z.
• and so on…
• Q: Can we store all these patterns in our heads?
• A: No, because no matter how many we store, there is always a longer one…
• So how do we know all of these sentences?
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Language Model #3
• Jackendoff: “We know not just patterns of words, but patterns of patterns.”
• This is how we can be infinitely creative with a finite set of rules.
S = X likes Y.
S = A X is not a Y.
S = X verbs that S.
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Check it out• Included among the infinite number of things we can say is a lot of complete nonsense.
• Examples (from Chomsky and Lewis Carroll):
• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
• I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to compose someday.
• ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…
• Check out the postmodernism generator:
• http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
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What’s the difference?• Nonsense sentences work because they fit in with the patterns formed by the sentences that actually do make sense.
• (and that we use every day)
• Compare with the following:
• Large green lizards sleep soundly.
• I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to perform someday.
• ‘Twas evening, and the slimy toads
Did squirm and wiggle in the cage…
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What’s the difference? (part 2)• But the following sentences don’t work at all:
• Green sleep ideas furiously colorless.
• I’m memorizing the perform of the score I sonata to hope someday.
• Brillig and, slithy and the toves
Wabe gimble in the gyre and did…
• Note: just because we can say an infinite number of things, we can’t just say anything…
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Technical Terminology• The set of rules that we know for creating sentences in a language is the grammar of that language.
• The rules of grammar that we know are very abstract. (patterns of patterns)
• Strings of words which do not adhere to these rules are ungrammatical.
• Q: If these rules are so abstract, how did we figure out what they are?
• How do we learn language?
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Beneath the Surface• Note: we learn the language that we hear as we grow up, but…
• We never hear the rules.
• We can only learn from examples.
• Our knowledge of language is sub-conscious.
• Analogy: driving a car.
• This knowledge is difficult to characterize.
• (It is not explicitly taught to us.)
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How is that possible?• Theory: language acquisition is so hard that we can’t do it by just observing other language users.
• (we need help)
• Claim: every human being has a “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD)
• LAD = innate knowledge of language.
• The LAD helps us learn language as we grow up.
• Interacts with experience.
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Predictions• The LAD theory makes some important predictions.
1. Universal Grammar (UG)
• All languages should share certain features in common
• …due to the workings of LAD.
• A basic example:
• All languages have nouns and verbs.
2. Poverty of the Stimulus
• There should be properties of language that people “know” without ever having experienced them.
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A More Complicated Example• How do you turn the following sentence into a yes/no question?
• The boy who is sleeping is dreaming of a new car.
• = Is the boy who is sleeping dreaming of a new car?
• Not: *Is the boy who sleeping is dreaming of a new car?
• “The boy” is linked to the second “is”.
• Kids understand this connection without ever being taught about the link.
• They never form the question the wrong way.
• Think: baby turtles crawling towards the ocean.
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Recursion• Recursion = another universal property of language?
• which is unique to humans?
• (Noam Chomsky thinks so.)
• Remember, recursion =
• involving a procedure that can refer to itself.
• Ex: an English sentence may consist of:
• [Noun] [verbs] that [sentence].
• With this rule, we can make sentences like:
• Jean knows that Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.
• Sentences like this could be infinitely long…
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Limited Infinities• However: there are limitations on how much we can remember.
• This means that a sentence like: “I don’t know if Ross suspects that Monika thinks that Chandler hopes that Joey supposably believes that Phoebe heard that…”
• couldn’t really go on forever.
• Check out another kind of recursion:
• The boy scared Mary.
• The boy that the dog bit scared Mary.
• How about:
• The boy that the dog that the cat scratched bit scared Mary. (?!?)
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Competence vs. Performance• An important distinction:
• Linguistic Competence:
• What a (native) speaker knows about a language.
• Linguistic Performance:
• How language is actually used in speech production and comprehension.
• Word strings that are ungrammatical violate the rules of linguistic competence.
• Other strings are impossible to say (or understand) because of performance limitations.
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Performance Problems• Note: it is not impossible for native speakers of a language to make mistakes.
• Ex.: slips of the tongue.
• You have hissed all my mystery lectures.
• = You have missed all my history lectures.
• My wife made me some banana bed yesterday.
• = My wife made me some banana bread yesterday.
• Stammering, pauses, hesitations.
• What matters (for grammar) is not what you actually do so much as what you think about what you do.