Concepts About Language & Grammar Study

Concept #1  Modern biolinguists find compelling evidence to suggest that language acquisition is strongly intuitive; from birth, we are “wired” for language. Chomsky: we are all born with a “universal grammar” – a capacity to learn language, a learning that takes place instinctually and largely without instruction.

EX: By the time a child enters kindergarten, she already “knows” in the unconscious sense just about all of the linguistic structures she will need to make sense in her native language(s).  For example, if she is a native speaker of English, she has learned (without learning any of the grammatical terms for these things) that articles and adjectives precede the nouns they modify: 1. The cat sat on a mat. 2. Big cats sit on small mats.  She learns too that prepositions precede the nouns (or noun phrases) they govern: 3. on the mat  She would also recognize structures like these as “not English” even though they are possible in some of the world's languages: 4. *Cat the sat mat a on. 5. *Cats big sit mats small on.

Concept #2  Hence, linguistic structures­-and the rules that form them--are not only unconscious, they are also systematic, rule-governed. Systematic rules are part of a tacit, early-internalized, at times unconscious understanding that allows speakers of a language to communicate.

 The rules of language govern sound (phonetics), words (lexicon and semantics), the arrangement of strings of words (morphemes and syntax), and social aspects of meaning making (semiotics).  These rules are arbitrary. There is nothing bearish about the word “bear,” for example. Phonetically, the same idea applies too: there is no connection between the letter b and the sound it denotes.  And they are dependent on social and cultural conventions: i.e., social customs; etiquette; religious and other symbolic rites; legal procedures; military signals, etc.).  apple exercise apple exercise

Concept #4  Even within a particular language, different dialects are a reality.  Each language community has its own regional, social, and cultural distinctions. This variety within a particular language is known as dialect. Dialects feature distinctions in vocabulary (soda versus pop, grinder versus hoagie versus submarine sandwich), pronunciation (greasy pronounced “greasy” versus “greasy”), grammatical forms (I done it versus I did it), and other language behaviors (cadence, pitch, speed of delivery)

All dialects are rule-governed and organized in their own ways.  “My dog name is Bark.” – In this variety, African American English, possession is not omitted but instead signified by adjacency (possessor: possessed).

Think about it: Some deviations from Standard English are both logical and grammatical.  “Ya’ll need to go to the store soon before it closes.” – Standard English shows no distinction between the singular and the plural in the second person. Southern vernacular usage, ya’ll (you might also substitute you’uns, or the northern usage, youse), preserves a distinction between singular and plural that the standard variety has lost.

No dialect, then, is inherently superior or substandard.  For more information on the varieties of English, see and arieties/AAVE/hooked/. See also, In what sense is “bad grammar” bad? arieties/AAVE/hooked/In what sense is “bad grammar” bad?

While all varieties are “created equal,” they are not treated equally.  Standard English, or “mainstream American English,” is the most widely recognized and codified version of English (the form that writers, editors of books and periodicals, and national literature follow)  The notion of standard raises questions: Standard for whom? Everywhere? Always?  Political tool: a social yardstick for measuring one’s value and worth.

Concept #5  Error is a social phenomenon. “[T]he dialect of a language that is used in a particular speech or discourse community also determines what is or is not regarded as an error. Persons who regularly use constructions such as double negatives (the “Ain’t no man righteous!” board) or nonstandard verb forms (“I have chose”) do not consider such forms errors because these constructions are rule-governed variants in the dialect of English they speak. That is, they are not arbitrary, random, individual ‘errors’ but a predictable, patterned variation on standard English common to a community of users of English” (Grammar for Language Arts Teachers, 10)

Concept #6  Context determines both “grammaticality” and appropriateness. What constitutes an “error” and what constitutes the appropriateness of language use depends on a number of given factors: genre and communication medium, social context and/or region, purpose, audience, discourse and speech community. Example

Concept #7  We belong to many different speech and discourse communities. Some of these include geographical region, family, peer-groups, educational settings, work or professional settings, and personal interest groups. Since this is the case, we don't simply speak one variety of the language but many. To put it another way, dialects always exist along a speech continuum that we move back and forth across.

 The ability to adjust our speech to fix a particular social context is something we acquire as children. We learn not just to say things, but also how to say them and when and to whom. This is known as “code- switching.”  Example: Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”“Mother Tongue”

Language change is normal.  All languages change over time. This is inevitable for a variety of reasons, and it is the reason we have different languages and dialects. While grammar handbooks and dictionaries (as well as the standard dialect) work to decrease or impede this change, they cannot stop it completely.  Just because a language is changing does not necessarily mean it is becoming corrupted or is decaying. Sometimes the changes are good; other times they create problems. Sometimes the changes work to simplify or regularize the language; other times they make the language more complex. The history of the English language is filled will examples of these types of changes that have worked to produce the language we are familiar with today.  Language change occurs at all levels: at the level of sounds; at the level of words and their meaning; at the level of grammar or the rules of the language.

Terms and Concepts  Form versus Function Form: what a word looks like, the endings that can be added to it (for nouns, the plural s and the possessive ’s; dogs, dog’s) Function: what a word does in a sentence  Grammaticality versus Appropriateness  Standard American English  Context  Error versus Usage