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Goodshoot/Thinkstock
The Nature of Language
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to accomplish the following objectives:
• Define language and describe the difference between language and communication.
• Explain the four attributes of language.
• Describe how cognition relates to language.
• Explain the difference between language and dialect and the connection between culture and
language.
• Explain why language acquisition is a natural process that can be difficult to teach.
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Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
J
acob spends more than half of each 24-hour day sleeping. When he is awake, he is often
content to sit on the kitchen floor trying to fit lids onto plastic containers, with only
limited success much of the time. When he fails, he will sometimes throw the objects
or cry out in frustration. He is incapable of dressing himself, although he will extend his
arm in an effort to assist—sometimes. He pulls himself up by holding onto the leg of the
kitchen table, and if he walks, it is only when he can hold onto something—a hand, a
piece of furniture, or an oversized toy. Even then, his steps are unsteady. Sometimes Jacob
curls up on the living room floor and falls asleep cuddling a soft furry stuffed animal.
Other times, he flatly refuses to sleep at all. Jacob is 14 months old, and he is typical of
other children his age. He has come a long way from the newborn who slept between 16
and 18 hours a day and couldn’t turn over much less walk, didn’t yet know his name or
the name for anything else in his world, and whose only vocalization was crying. Today,
he certainly knows his name and a great deal more. He responds to much of what is spoken to him. He can point to his body parts when they are named. He understands when
his mother tells him it is time for a nap or lunch; and when the phone rings, he will say
“Dada,” having learned that it is likely his father checking in. He has at least four other
identifiable words of his own—mama, teddy, nana, and truck, although his pronunciations
of teddy and truck are imperfect.
In just six months’ time, he will be running as much as he is walking, holding onto nothing or nobody, and his interests will have expanded to include almost everything in his
environment. Animals, trees, cars, and puzzles will fascinate him. Linguistically, he will
have been very busy, indeed. His productive vocabulary, or those words he is heard to
speak, will be close to 100 words, articulated well enough that most people can understand him, and he will be used to making complete sentences. It’s true that most of those
sentences will have only two words, but to the toddler Jacob, they will constitute full sentences. He will be fairly effective at communicating his meaning, and when he can’t, he
may show signs of frustration. His receptive vocabulary, or those words he understands
but does not necessarily produce, will be much larger. As a language learner, he is making
giant strides, but he is by no means finished.
By the time Jacob blows out six candles on his birthday cake, he will have learned, on
average, five new words per day, giving him a receptive vocabulary between 10,000 and
20,000 words (Rhodes, D’Amato, & Rothlisberg, 2010). He will be able to use most of those
words in complex sentences that seem to run on forever. He will make mistakes occasionally, but those mistakes are likely to be evidence that he has over-learned a rule or two. For
example, he might say, “I didn’t broughted that,” marking the verb bring for past tense not
once, but two times. He will be able to recite the alphabet, identify a number of written
words, and write his name.
Jacob’s is a remarkable accomplishment, yet there is nothing remarkable about him at
all. He is a typical human child growing up in circumstances and an environment that
are not at all unusual. That is exactly what is so fascinating about human language. It
is complex and difficult, yet children learn it largely without purposeful intervention
by other humans.
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CHAPTER 1
Pre-Test
Language is so much a part of the human experience that Steven Pinker calls it an instinct.
Moreover, it is this instinct that has made possible much of human accomplishment: “A
common language connects the members of a community into an information-sharing network with formidable collective powers. Anyone can benefit from the strokes of genius,
lucky accidents, and trial-and-error wisdom accumulated by anyone else, present or past”
(Pinker, 2010, p. 3).
In this chapter, we introduce the aspects of language and language learning that will be
covered in greater detail throughout the remainder of the book. Beginning with a definition of language, we go on to describe the attributes of language that set it apart from
other forms of communication including its unique association with thought and cognition and the many varieties of language that exist.
Pre-Test
1. The primary means by which humans communicate is
a. texting.
b. facial cues.
c. language.
d. body movements.
2. Representing ideas or symbols with words is
a. semanticity.
b. representation.
c. pictograph.
d. syntax.
3. Language
a. is unrelated to thought.
b. follows thought, but does not lead it.
c. is strongly linked to thought.
d. leads thought, but does not follow it.
4. “Standard” dialect
a. is free of jargon and slang usage.
b. uses popular slang of the time.
c. includes grammatical inaccuracies.
d. consists of the most correct dialect.
5. The story of Helen Keller demonstrates that
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a. people can overcome obstacles to learn languages.
b. sign language uses different cognitive structures than does spoken language.
c. even those who lack an innate desire to learn develop language skills.
d. children do not need stimulation to learn a language.
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Section 1.1 What Is Language?
CHAPTER 1
Answers
1. c. Language. The answer can be found in Section 1.1.
2. a. Semanticity. The answer can be found in Section 1.2.
3. c. Is strongly linked to thought. The answer can be found in Section 1.3.
4. a. Is free of jargon and slang usage. The answer can be found in Section 1.4.
5. a. People can overcome obstacles to learn languages. The answer can be found in Section 1.5.
1.1 What Is Language?
B
efore we can discuss language and how children learn to function effectively with
it, it is necessary to consider just what language is. We know it when we hear it and
we know when we are using it, but defining it proves a little more difficult. That is
because language is a complex system that humans all over the world learn in its many
varieties. Basically, it is a mode of communication, or the means by which messages are
transmitted, and it has, as we shall see, certain unique properties. Closely connected to
cognition and thought, language is part of what sets us apart from the rest of the animal
kingdom. To appreciate the unique complexity of the human brain that created language
as well as the complexity of language itself, and, most importantly, to begin to appreciate the enormity of children’s accomplishment in acquiring language, it is important to
understand just how special human language is.
Defining Language
Language is the principal means by which humans communicate, but not the only one.
Communication is the activity of a sender conveying a message, usually with meaningful information, to a recipient, and the communication may occur across space and time.
Figure 1.1 illustrates the interactive nature of communication, which is complete when the
recipient has received and understood the intended message.
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CHAPTER 1
Section 1.1 What Is Language?
Figure 1.1: Interactive model of communication
Encoder
Source
Decoder
Message
Feedback
Source’s field of
experience
Decoder
Source
Encoder
Receiver’s field of
experience
This graphic represents the interactive model of communication in which both encoder and decoder are
human participants.
Source: Adapted from Wood, J.T. (2009). Communication in our lives (4th edition). Belmont, CA: Thompson-Wadsworth.
In humans, language is the usual medium for communication, but crying, screaming, gestures, bodily movement (as in pantomime), and facial expressions can also be used to
communicate, either on their own or supplemental to spoken language. Communication
as a means for transmitting information is not unique to humans—many other animals
have means to communicate, but as we shall see, these differ in fundamental ways from
human language.
Human Language vs. Animal Communication
Many species of animals can communicate, and some species do so with more complex
systems than others—dolphins and whales, for example, use systems that more closely
resemble human language than birds or bees, although each is capable of communicating
what its species needs to communicate. Even the most complex of these systems, however, pales in comparison to what a 2-year-old child is able to do. Many pet owners do not
agree. Mrs. K. is a case in point.
Mrs. K. was a widow who lived alone with her dog, Calvin. She insisted that Calvin not
only responded to her commands or requests but that he initiated some kind of exchange,
that he could, in her view, “talk.” Calvin could sit, fetch, or lie down in response to the
appropriate verb or gesture, just as any well-trained dog will do. He fetched his leash
when she went to the closet for her coat or boots. He clearly understood some of what she
said, and he was able to signal his wishes.
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CHAPTER 1
Section 1.2 Four Attributes of Language
Mrs. K. insisted that the dog didn’t just respond to her, but sometimes initiated “conversations.” For example, he would retrieve and bring her his leash when he wanted to go for a
walk, and she maintained that his bark when he wanted to go out was different from his
bark warning her of an approaching car.
Mrs. K.’s neighbor wasn’t convinced and asked, “What does he do when he’s hungry?”
Mrs. K. responded that he would go to his food dish and either wait or emit a short bark
to remind her.
Could Calvin communicate? Yes. But is this language? No.
This dog communicates with his owner by
bringing her his leash when he wants go
out. How is this not a representation of
language?
Humans are not alone in their ability to communicate. Bees are able to exchange information
with other bees about the location of tasty pollen and about potential dangers. Not only are
humans not alone in their ability to communicate, they are not the only animals to vocalize.
Bird songs, for example, appear to have some
degree of structural complexity that might bear
some resemblance to natural language. Velvet
monkeys use calls to warn of predators, using
distinctive calls to distinguish one predator
from another—a different call to warn of a snake
than to warn of a leopard or other four-footed
creature, for example. So what is the difference
between animal communication and human
language? The distinction between the systems
animals use to communicate and the language
that humans use rests primarily in the complexity of human language in comparison to other
systems. In Chapter 2, we will see how human
language is characterized by layer upon layer of
complexity, but there are four attributes of language that essentially define its uniqueness.
Exactostock/SuperStock
1.2 Four Attributes of Language
T
here are four attributes of language that set it apart from other systems of communication: arbitrariness, semanticity, productivity and displacement. Before examining these attributes more closely, we should note that our emphasis here is on
spoken language, or oral-aural. It is important to note, however, that there are modes of
language other than the oral-aural. Some human languages are visual-gestural, meaning
that they are perceived visually and transmitted via gesture. American Sign Language is
an example of a visual-gestural language. These languages, like spoken languages, have
internal structure; they are not the same as pantomime, which is a way of acting out or
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Section 1.2 Four Attributes of Language
CHAPTER 1
drawing pictures with the hands, without the use of words. Visual-gestural languages do
have words. In fact, except for the way they are transmitted and received, visual-gestural
languages have the same four attributes as spoken languages.
Arbitrariness: Form and Meaning Are Unrelated
First, and foremost, language is completely arbitrary. It is one of the unique design features of language that a word’s meaning is not predictable from its form, or vice versa.
With the possible exception of a
few onomatopoetic words (i.e.,
words that sound like what
they mean, usually representations of animal sounds such as
baa), there is nothing in the way
a word sounds or looks that
makes its meaning clear. Water,
agua, l’eau, or nựớc all stand for
the same thing, depending on
the language, but there is nothing that makes one of them a
better representation of H20
than any other. In contrast, the
waggle dance of the bee is not
characterized by such arbitrariness—it is iconic in that its form This sign illustrates both arbitrary and iconic forms of
directly represents its meaning. communication. Which is language?
Universal signs for No-Smoking
and the sign shown in the folBelinda Images/SuperStock
lowing image are two examples.
Semanticity: Ideas Are Represented With Words
Semanticity in language refers to its capacity for representing ideas, objects, or events with
symbols. A case might be made for semanticity in bees’ communication, because in their
movements they represent an object (pollen or nectar) or possibly an event (danger lurking). Semanticity in human language, however, refers to the unique relationship between
an arbitrary symbol and something in the real world. The noun car to represent a vehicle
with wheels and some kind of an engine, the verb walk to indicate the action of moving
one foot ahead of the other in progression, the adjective red to describe the color of a stop
sign or a fire engine (in some places!)—these are wholly arbitrary designations agreed
upon by speakers of English. French has different words to represent the same tangible
objects, actions, or attributes, as do Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and so on.
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CHAPTER 1
Section 1.2 Four Attributes of Language
Productivity: Infinite Sounds, Words, and Arrangements
Productivity in language refers to the capacity of speakers to produce an infinite number
of distinct utterances. Productivity is possible because language is discrete (i.e., it consists
of separate elements that can be rearranged and recombined to form new and unique
utterances). This is true at all levels of description—the three distinct sounds in cat can
be reordered to produce tack (remember that we’re talking about sounds not letters). At
the word level, it is easy to demonstrate how productive language is. Even if we could
identify the number of possible verbs that could be paired with all the nouns in English,
there would still be adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and so forth that could be added to the
sentences. Then, even if we could, using some complex mathematical formula, compute
the number of all possible one-, two-, three-, four-, or five-word sentences in the language,
the language still possesses the ability to add an and or a but or an or and keep that sentence going. This property is called recursion and is one important aspect of productivity.
Another aspect of productivity is the capacity of the language to add words and to change
or add meanings to existing words. Many words have entered the lexicon in recent history. Modern English is approximately 500 years old, so “recent” may refer to any time in
the past few decades. Daycare and airbag are recent additions, as are a great many words
associated with space travel and wireless technology. The word processor has taken on new
meanings in the computer age (as, indeed, has computer), and while cell has long existed in
English, its use to refer to a small wireless telephone is much newer. Indeed, human language is created by humans and serves the changing needs of humans.
Displacement: Discussing Things That
Happened Last Week
Displacement involves the ability to
talk about things not in the immediate
environment. By talking with someone
who is not present, this child is
demonstrating another aspect of
displacement.
Photodisc/Thinkstock
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Displacement, the fourth attribute that sets human
language apart from animal communication systems, refers to its capacity to generate meaningful
utterances not tied to the immediate environment.
Language gives us the ability to talk about what
happened last week, last year, or, indeed, about
things that never happened at all. Not even the
staunchest believer in animal language claims that
they can talk about the superiority of the daisy
pollen last season or speculate about how the
drought in Florida will affect honey futures on the
New York Stock Exchange. While many animals,
possibly all, have some form of communication
system, none, not even the most sophisticated of
these meets the four basic criteria of arbitrariness,
semanticity, productivity, and displacement that
define human language. Humans are able from a
very early age to communicate imaginatively, as
illustrated in A 5-Year-Old’s Language Use, because
human language is inextricably linked to human
cognition (i.e., to thought).
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Section 1.3 Language and Cognition
CHAPTER 1
A 5-Year-Old’s Language Use
Claudine, who is 5 years old, was 3 when her sister Monique was born. With a Francophone mother
and an Anglophone father, both Claudine and Monique have been acquiring two languages since
birth. Understanding a child just learning to talk is often a challenge, so often Claudine would be
asked to “translate” Monique’s speech that was incomprehensible to adults, because Claudine
appeared to understand her sister. On one occasion when Monique had just turned 2, the following
dialogue occurred:
Grandmother: Claudine, can you tell me what Monique is saying?
Claudine: She wants to play in the water.
Grandmother: What language was she speaking?
Claudine: I don’t know.
Grandmother: Then how do you know she wants to play in the water?
Claudine: Because she always wants to play in the water.
Grandmother: So you were guessing?
Claudine: Yep. [Speaking to Monique] Do you want to play in the water?
Monique: Yes.
Grandmother: Can you ask her in French?
Claudine: Why? She already told me. She wants to play in the water.
Reflection Questions:
hat does this dialogue tell you about the role of context in Claudine’s language? How does this dialogue
W
illustrate semanticity, productivity, and displacement? What does it tell you about Claudine’s awareness
of language?
1.3 Language and Cognition
D
efinitions of cognition differ slightly, depending on the dictionary, medical professional, psychologist, or educator one consults. All agree, however, that cognition refers broadly to the mental process of knowing, which involves awareness,
perception, reasoning, memory, and conceptualization. We will examine these aspects of
cognition in greater detail in Chapter 5 where we also look at how brain development
relates to language and cognition. To begin understanding the interrelatedness of language and cognition, it is useful to look at an example provided by Isabelle learning to
make pancakes.
By the time she was 30 months old, Isabelle knew the recipe for pancakes. She learned it
by helping her grandmother make them. Her grandmother, allowing Isabelle to participate
as much as possible, would also talk them through the task. “First, we crack the eggs and
put them into the bowl. How many eggs?” Isabelle would always answer “two.” “Then we
add the oil,” and they would continue. It was clear that Isabelle couldn’t have learned and
remembered how to make pancakes either as an exclusively kinetic process—by watching
and doing—or as an exclusively verbal one. At that age and for another year or so, if she
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Section 1.3 Language and Cognition
CHAPTER 1
had been asked to recount the recipe on the phone, she would have had difficulty doing so.
Unlike Martha Stewart or Wolfgang Puck, she could not have said to beat two eggs, add one
tablespoon of oil and six ounces of milk, and so forth. But in the kitchen, she would go to
the refrigerator, get out the eggs and lay aside two for her grandmother to crack. She knew
that the milk was mixed with the eggs and oil before the dry ingredients were added, and
although she didn’t know in formal terms how much baking powder to use, she would
demonstrate “this much” in the palm of her little hand. If her grandmother left out a step,
such as spraying the griddle with a nonstick spray, Isabelle would tell her to do it. Moreover, when she assisted with the making of the pancakes, she invariably “talked her way
through it,” saying as she had heard her grandmother say, “First we break the eggs into
the bowl, and then . . .” right to the point that the pancakes were ready to turn. “You have
to watch for the bubbles,” she would say every morning, “and then it’s time to turn them
over.” Yet, when she tried to recite the recipe in the absence of the real objects (i.e., outside
the situation), she did so very imperfectly. By the time she was 5, however, she could recite
the recipe with a high degree of accuracy without being in pancake-making mode. Her cognitive development had reached the stage at which she could remember and retell a fairly
complex process without the kinetic assistance she had needed earlier. In learning how to
make pancakes, Isabelle was using language to shape, store, and recall the experience of
making pancakes—strong evidence that language and memory develop in tandem.
Isabelle shows us what we know, almost intuitively: There is a strong link between language and thought. Without thought, there can be no language, and although thought is
clearly possible without language, language development and cognitive development are
so intricately related that some psychologists and educators believe that they run along
a parallel and predictable course in children. Opinions about the exact nature of the relationship between linguistic and cognitive development are wide ranging, and intellectuals from many different disciplines—from philosophy to physics—weigh in. We will
examine some of those views in far more detail in Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 9. For now, what
we need to remember is that language, particularly talk, helps to shape thought. As teachers, we know that language is
not just critical to but likely lays
the foundation for conceptualization in all the other subjects
in school. We know that all academic success depends on reading ability, but what we should
also appreciate is that oral language development is essential
to success in reading as well as
to cognitive growth. In fact, children’s reading and writing can
only be built upon a foundation
of oral language, so we must
pay particular attention to the
tandem nature of linguistic and
As she makes cookies with her granddaughter, this
cognitive development.
grandmother is helping her to develop cognitively and
linguistically.
Blend Images/Corbis
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CHAPTER 1
Section 1.4 Varieties of Human Language
1.4 Varieties of Human Language
A
nimal communication systems seem to be fairly consistent across the entire species, but human language has many varieties. Linguists use the term language
variety to refer to different languages (e.g., Mandarin, English, and Portuguese) as
well as to the way a specific group of speakers within a language speak (e.g., Appalachian
English or New England English) and sometimes to differences among individuals, which
they refer to as idiolects. We will concentrate here on the first two.
How many distinct languages are there? That is impossible to answer. One answer is
“fewer than last year,” because languages are becoming extinct at a rapid rate. It is not
only language loss that makes the tally difficult, though. No one is sure how many distinct
languages exist in Africa among tribal populations, and sometimes there is disagreement
about what constitutes a distinct language and what is simply a dialect. Still, the Linguistic Society of America estimates put the number at somewhere between 6,500 and 7,000
languages (Anderson, n.d.).
Even in the United States, where English is the only language spoken by more than 285
million people, many other languages are spoken. In fact, Hispanics make up an estimated
19% of the U.S. population according to 2010 U.S. Census data, and as high as 35–45% in
some states. The 2010 U.S. Census reports that more than 35 million people speak Spanish
or Spanish Creole (the “mixed language” that occurs when speakers of two languages are
in close contact). The next most popular language in the United States is Chinese with an
estimated 2.6 million speakers, with Tagalog, French, Vietnamese, and German following
closely behind (see Table 1.1). With this kind of diversity, it is unlikely that any teachers
will know all of the languages spoken in their classrooms.
Table 1.1: Languages spoken by speakers over the age of 5 in the United States
Language
Number of Speakers
English only
285,797,345
Spanish or Spanish Creole
35,468,501
Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese)
2,600,150
Tagalog
1,513,734
French
1,305,503
Vietnamese
1,251,460
German
1,109,216
Korean
1,039,021
Source: United States Census Bureau, 2010.
Within distinct languages there is also variation, the principal one of which is dialect. A
dialect is a variety of language defined by either geographical factors or social factors such
as class, religion, and ethnicity. So while most Americans speak English, they speak many
varieties of it.
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CHAPTER 1
Section 1.4 Varieties of Human Language
Dialects
Among native speakers of English, most dialectal variety is associated with geographical
regions (see Figure 1.2). Such variation initially occurs because of geographic isolation,
and then further change occurs over time as new people join the community and their language influences the local language. The difference between American and British English
provides a good example. Broadly, we speak of them as separate dialects, and they are, but
both have evolved many dialects of their own. The dialect of British English spoken by the
original British settlers influenced the dialect spoken by people living along the East Coast
of the United States, and that depended on where in England they came from.
As those settlers moved away from the East coast and became geographically isolated, their
language evolved in different ways, was influenced by settlers from other countries, and
thus developed its own character. As people joined the community, they learned but also
brought their own flavor to the local dialect. The people of southeastern Pennsylvania, for
example, speak a dialect of English influenced by the German language. This is not to say that
everyone speaking the dialect of that region is of German heritage, but rather that they have
adopted the local way of speaking. Similarly, the dialect of English spoken in some Miami
neighborhoods is heavily influenced by Haitian Creole and Spanish, although many of the
people in the community are from neither a Haitian nor a Spanish-language culture.
Figure 1.2: Regional dialects of the United States
Northern
New England
Northern
North Central
Boston area
Northeastern
Western
NYC area
Pitts. Phila.area
North Midland
Ohio-plains
South
ArkansasOklahoma
West
Texas
Virginia
Appalachian
North
Carolina
South
Carolina
Midland
Mississippigulf
GeogiaFlordia
Southern
This map shows the main dialect regions of the continental United States.
Source: Dr. C. George Boeree, 2004. Dialects of English.
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Section 1.4 Varieties of Human Language
CHAPTER 1
How Dialects Differ
Most people think about differences in dialect as affecting the sound of the language—
the “accent” one uses when speaking. Certainly, sound is the easiest aspect of a dialect
to identify. Where I live in Florida, for example, I regularly recognize New Yorkers from
the cadence of their speech. If I lived in New York, I’d probably be able to differentiate
Brooklyn from the Bronx or Queens in terms of accent. Many Northerners don’t hear the
difference between North Carolina and Georgia accents, but put them instead into the category of “Southern” along with Mississippi, Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana,
South Carolina, and Texas. To those who live in these areas, however, a Virginia accent is
as different from a Louisiana accent as it is from a New Jersey accent. The different geographical accents are remarkably resilient and have generally resisted the influence of the
media. If television had had the effect it is sometimes assumed to have, for example, after
the more than six decades it has been in American homes, we would expect it to have
eradicated most accents. It has not.
But dialect affects other parts of the language as well. When I left my Ozark home and
moved to New England, I lost my Ozark accent very rapidly. I made a conscious effort to
“fit in” with my college classmates, and by Christmas I had lost the elongated syllables
that characterized my original dialect. (I used to joke that when my mother said dance,
it had three syllables.) Once I lost the accent, I was never identified with any particular
region because I had not replaced the Ozark sound with a particular New England one,
but something more generic. In New Hampshire or Maine, people usually assumed I was
from Connecticut or somewhere else in New England. What marked me as a non-New
Englander was not the way I “sounded” but the words I used. It was a lexical difference
that gave me away. One day in the faculty lounge of the high school where I was teaching
English, I referred to the container for my lunch as a “paper sack” instead of a “brown
bag,” which is what all my peers carried. Interestingly, it is at the word level that the mass
media have had a marked influence. Situation comedies, cartoons, and even political commentary have introduced new words, or more commonly, new uses for existing words
into the national lexicon. Until recently, the word demagogue was rarely used as a verb.
During the last presidential campaign, however, politicians began to accuse one another
of “demagoguing” issues, whether Social Security or Medicare. Tweeting, retweeting, sexting, and LOL may not be in the Oxford English Dictionary this year, but in 10 years they
may well be, and if they are, it will be the result of their frequent use by younger people
for whom they are already in common usage.
Any discussion of dialect eventually leads to the question of whether or not there is a standard dialect. While the term usually refers to the variety of language used by the media,
by political leaders, and the one taught in school, it is also associated with “prestige”
language.
Standard Dialect
If there is a standard dialect in the United States, it is the one used in the mainstream print
media and, principally, in the publishing industry, particularly textbooks. The standard
dialect is the “grammatically correct” one that most teachers demand in students’ written
work. It is generally devoid of jargon (language associated with a particular occupation,
hobby, or sport) and slang (language used in informal settings, often indicative of the
relationship between the speakers). (See Jargon and Slang for more on the distinction.)
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Section 1.4 Varieties of Human Language
CHAPTER 1
The spoken language, however, is a different matter. A few decades ago, so-called “East
Coast Broadcast English” was considered the standard. Following the same strict rules of
usage and as accent-free as possible, broadcast English was supposed to be geographically neutral. In recent years, however, broadcast media have become more tolerant of
regional accents, and anyone who surfs through the many channels available on satellite
radio knows that there is a broader acceptance of what would be considered nonstandard
grammar as well.
Jargon and Slang
Although the terms jargon and slang are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not the same. Both
differ from standard usage mainly at the word level, but jargon refers to language associated with a
particular field of study, job, sport, or hobby. Terms such as audible, crackback block, and balanced line,
for example, have particular meanings associated with football. Jargon is intelligible to its users but may
leave outsiders scratching their heads. Professional jargon is sometimes used to impress those outside
the profession. “Rhinitis sounds a lot more serious than ‘a runny nose.’ Rhinoplasty sounds a lot more
serious and professional than a ‘nose job’” (Mihalicek & Wilson, 2011, p. 412).
Slang, on the other hand, is far less formal. While jargon might be appropriately used in résumés or
letters of reference, slang would not. Slang also tends to be a less permanent feature of a dialect or
language, although some slang vocabulary finds its way into the standard dialect—fan, originally a
shortened form of fanatic, has entered the mainstream as have websites and TV (instead of television).
There are two kinds of slang. One is common slang, the neutral, informal usage that will be understood
by virtually any speaker of the language. The other is in-group slang, which Mihalicek and Wilson define
as the informal language that
. . . can be used to keep insiders together and to exclude outsiders. . . . Slang
responds to a need in people to be creative in their language use and to show
group membership (often unconsciously). These observations liken slang to some
feature in the nature of being human and of interacting with humans. For these
reasons, slang is found in all languages (even in Ancient Greek of 2500 years ago,
for instance). (2011, p. 412)
Reflection Questions:
Look at the following terms. Identify those that are jargon and the field from which they come. Identify
those that are slang and whether they have common or in-group usage. Do any have multiple meanings
depending on the group using them? Do any of the terms qualify as both slang and jargon?
Torte
Dust-up
Fed-up
Vitals
ASAP
FAQs
Mirandize
Shrink
STAT
Backup
Clean Skin
AWOL
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Section 1.4 Varieties of Human Language
CHAPTER 1
Just as speakers around the world function in two languages, many people function in
more than one dialect. In the university where I work, for example, a significant number
of students speak a variety of English that is heavily influenced by Haitian Creole. However, when they are in class interacting with their professors, they switch to a much more
standard English, the same language expected of them in their writing. Any language
variety that does not conform substantially to the standard is considered a nonstandard
dialect. Both standard and nonstandard imply value judgments that we must try to avoid.
It is simply not the case that one dialect is superior to any other. Nor is one more “correct”
than the other. As teachers, whether our students are in kindergarten or graduate school,
we have a responsibility to honor the language they bring with them, whether it be a different distinct language or a different dialect. We have the right to insist that they learn
the standard dialect for writing—eventually—but we have to find ways of respecting and
honoring dialectical variation at the same time. Sometimes it requires a little extra effort
on the part of the teacher who may be unfamiliar with some of the dialects children bring
to the classroom, but we need to think of the standard dialect as one that is being added
to rather than replacing the child’s own dialect. It is important to respect those differences
rather than try to change them, a topic to which we will return in Chapter 7 and again in
Chapter 10.
Language and Culture
Language evolves to meet the needs of the people who speak it. A people who live in a
fishing economy develop the vocabulary they need to talk about catching and selling fish.
People who live on a tropical island create, over time, the language appropriate for talking about heat, sand, and hurricanes. To a significant degree, then, language is culturally
determined because different cultures have different perceptions, different beliefs, and
different communicative needs that their languages must serve.
Within cultures, there are subcultures, or cultural groups that exist within a larger cultural
community. Subcultures have particular interests, and they often develop ways of using
the dominant language that serves their needs but may be unintelligible to those outside
the group, demonstrating again how language is culturally determined. For example, people who surf the waves use words and expressions that are relevant to surfing but have
little meaning to those who have no interest in the activity and which bear little resemblance to the vocabulary used by people who surf the Internet. The hip-hop subculture
is another that has developed a rich dialect, which is used in lyrics and to talk about the
music. It has also influenced mainstream English. Each group has shaped the language to
fit its particular needs and to identify itself as a member of the subculture.
We do not have to look to subcultures, however, to find examples of how language use
evolves. Children born in this century have learned words such as computer, remote control,
cell phone or even iPhone at a much younger age than their parents or grandparents simply
because those words are relevant to the world in which they were born. These are living
examples of how flexible and expansive language is, of how it is created by and modified
to meet the needs of the people who use it.
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Section 1.4 Varieties of Human Language
People who fish a lot may form a subculture with its own
language. They may have language for talking about fishing
that people who live away from the water may not know.
CHAPTER 1
Culture shapes language, but is
the reverse true? Does the language a people speak influence
how they perceive the world?
There have been theorists who
believe this to be the case. Benjamin Whorf, for example, held a
rather extreme view that perception was limited by language;
most linguists in the latter half
of the 20th and in the 21st centuries have found his evidence
suspect. Still, there is no doubt
that an inextricable relationship
between language and culture
exists (Swoyer, 2010).
For our purposes, what is important to remember is that many
BananaStock/Thinkstock bilingual children are also bicultural, comfortable in both the
minority and the dominant culture. On the other hand, those children who begin school
as beginners in English are likely to be acquiring both a new language and a new culture.
As they acquire the language of their community, children are also acquiring the community’s customs as well. Cross-cultural communication thus presents great potential for
misunderstandings or miscommunication; since language is culturally bound, no exact
translation is ever possible, so until learners understand the culture of a new language, it
is likely they will make mistakes in communicating in that language. Even among people
who speak the same language, customs and thus the language used, can vary. Anyone
who has ever listened to teenagers talk at the mall knows this to be true! The teenage boy
heard to say, “Dang, Girl, I ain’t seen you for a minute!” actually means that it has been a
long time since he has seen the girl. The girl who tells a friend to watch out for the 5-0 is
warning about the presence of police. Slanguage, as language use of this kind is called, is
only one kind of dialectic variation. Geography also accounts for differences, such that a
teacher who has grown up and been educated in the rural Midwest has the potential for
miscommunication with her students in urban Chicago or New York City.
The Structure of Language
Students who pursue graduate degrees in linguistics often spend many hours working out
the intricate “rules” that govern the structure of different languages. In phonology classes,
they might spend weeks writing accurate descriptions of the sounds that are meaningful
and how they can be combined in Finnish or Aleut. In syntax classes, they might work for
an entire semester writing the “rules” for word order in Old English or modern day Urdu.
Can they speak all or, indeed, any of these languages? Usually not. But most students of
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Section 1.4 Varieties of Human Language
CHAPTER 1
linguistics are fascinated by the intricacies of language structure. Although not everyone
has such an intense level of interest in the structural properties of language and would
rather have a root canal than spend two hours in a traditional “grammar” class, most of us
do possess some curiosity about how the language we speak is put together.
Each language, and to some degree each dialect, is structured differently. We tend to
think of the differences between languages as differences in the words, but the differences
between languages occur not just at the word level. Most of us know that Spanish uses
the word casa to refer to what English speakers call a house or home. There is also a difference in word order. In English, for example, adjectives usually come before the noun
they modify (as in the big, old, blue car), but Spanish is a little more complicated. Some
adjectives come before the noun (mucho tiempo or “much time”), but others come after
the noun. So the same sentence would be rendered El gran coche azul de edad, or literally,
“the big car blue of age.” In Chapter 2 we will look at some of the properties of English
syntax and other aspects of language structure that children ultimately learn so that we
will have a common basis and vocabulary for discussing and understanding the process
of language development in children.
Some animal communication may possess structure. Scientists who study bird song, for
example, believe that there is structure to the song of birds. Perhaps there is, as it might
be possible to identify structure in the movement of bees. None, however, is as complex
as the structure of human language. Usually, when we think about language structure,
we think about sentence structure. Linguists refer to this as syntax. In fact, language is
intricately structured at every level, from individual sounds, to syllables, morphemes, or
minimal units of meaning, and words. It would take an entire book to describe, even in a
rudimentary way, the structure of English at any one of these levels. We will nevertheless
have a cursory look at how English is structured in the next chapter.
The complexity of human language mirrors the complexity of the human brain, but as
complex as language is, children learn most of it without being taught. So why are we
bothering to study language and language acquisition?
The simple answer is that early learning sets the stage for later learning, and teachers and
early caregivers play an important role in that learning. The remaining chapters in this
book provide information that helps to make clear why that is true. Following Chapter
2, which examines the enormity of the task in terms of structure, Chapter 3 examines
the task from the meaning-centered perspective of the child. For example, both language
environment and innateness play significant roles in language learning, but the relative
importance of each depends to some degree on the theoretical perspective one adopts.
Chapter 4 considers some of the same issues in second language learners, both simultaneous bilinguals, which refers to children who acquire two languages from birth, and successive (or consecutive) bilinguals, which refers to children who learn a single language
at home and add a second language later, usually in school (Lightbown & Spada, 2006;
Meisel, 2011). In Chapters 5 and 6 we see how language and cognition develop in tandem
and look at the developmental milestones that help teachers to know when a child is on
track and when a special intervention might be required.
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CHAPTER 1
Section 1.5 Language Is Easy to Learn (but Hard to Teach)
Language involves much more than learning to
articulate clearly and produce well-formed sentences. Chapter 7 explores the different functions
that language plays in children’s lives and looks
at how they learn the conventions of conversation
and how to tell stories. In acquiring the structures
and functions of language, some children face
greater challenges than others, and in Chapter 8 we
identify some of those challenges and gain some
insights on how to distinguish a slight developmental difference from a possible disorder.
As teachers, our ultimate goal is to provide children with the best education possible. Because
language and cognition are interdependent processes, as we shall see in Chapter 9, so are language and the development of academic skills.
Helping children to develop those skills requires
that we understand how home language and
school language differ, whether that difference be
in function—children use language to achieve different outcomes at home and at school—or in culture. Chapter 10 examines how teachers can build
on the language of the home to set children on the
path to success in school.
Early childhood educators help children
to continue growing in oral language and
early reading skills.
Tetra Images/Corbis
1.5 Language Is Easy to Learn (but Hard to Teach)
C
hildren the world over learn language—often two or three languages at a time—
and while some parents are of the mistaken belief that they somehow “teach” their
children to talk, the truth of the matter is that children don’t need to be taught. The
evidence is compelling: The order and speed of language acquisition (i.e., the speed and
order in which parts of a particular language are learned) is very similar in all children
who acquire that language despite the environment in which they acquire it. If parents
were responsible for the feat, it would mean that they had followed a common curriculum, either for parenting or language teaching. We know, of course, that this is not the
case. Parents and caregivers vary greatly in the amount of talk they direct to their children
and in the amount and kind of talk to which children are exposed. We can chart language
development broadly but with a great deal of accuracy precisely because children are
predisposed to learn language. In fact, if parents did have to teach their children to talk,
the task would be daunting, and most would fail. What they do need to do is to talk with
their children. Even though children would likely learn some language just from hearing it and figuring out meaning from context, the most effective way—what constitutes
“exposure”—is purposeful, meaningful talk.
Although some scholars might quibble with the assertion that language is “natural,” at
least in the same way that biological processes such as cell differentiation or cell aging are,
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Section 1.5 Language Is Easy to Learn (but Hard to Teach)
Helen Keller is an extreme example of the
human ability to acquire language. Despite
being blind and deaf, Keller developed
a form of language that enabled her to
communicate with others.
Science Faction/SuperStock
CHAPTER 1
there is no doubt that the human brain is designed
to acquire language. True, children are not born
talking—language is a learned behavior—but all
that children with normal or near-normal physical and mental abilities need to accomplish that
learning is exposure. A language-rich environment (i.e., one in which the child is exposed to a
great deal of talk about many subjects and to books
from a young age) is ideal, but even children from
linguistically impoverished environments learn
language. Most of the English-speaking world is
aware of the story of Helen Keller and the extreme
circumstances she overcame to acquire a form of
language. Certainly, much of her accomplishment is attributable to her teacher, Anne Sullivan,
but without an innate need to communicate, she
would not have been able to gain such impressive capabilities. Many less-extreme cases exist
that demonstrate the human capacity to learn
language. In my book, Language and Learning: The
Home and School Years (Piper, 2007), I tell the story
of Grace who acquired normal spoken English in
a home where both her parents were nonhearing
and communicated only through sign language.
Children can and do overcome major obstacles to
acquire language, and in Chapter 8 we will meet
some children who, like Grace, do just that.
As teachers, we have particular reasons for caring about language and language learning. Over the years as I have studied children’s language learning, both as a linguist and
as a parent and grandparent, I have continued to marvel at the enormity of the young
child’s accomplishment in learning the language. As I have talked and written about how
children are predisposed to acquire language, students have often posed the question, “If
language is so natural and easily learned, what is there to teach?” Answering that will
take the remainder of this book, but basically, these are the reasons:
• If by “language teaching” we mean drilling parts of speech or teaching 5 year
olds to parse sentences into nouns, verbs, and modifiers, then we absolutely
should not teach it.
• However, if we take “language teaching” to mean creating a rich verbal environment that exposes children to a variety of language—new words, different
functions, an array of structures and usage—then understanding how language
is acquired becomes very important to a teacher.
• Language is the medium by which children learn everything in the curriculum.
• Children build literacy on the foundation of oral language.
• Language development is inextricably linked to cognitive development. Growing
language fosters cognitive growth as well.
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Post-Test
CHAPTER 1
Conclusion
L
anguage is uniquely human, and children are born with the necessary “equipment”
to learn it. Other animals use rudimentary systems of communication, but language
differs in the intricacy of its structure and its capacity for complex communication.
This chapter defined language in terms of arbitrariness, semanticity, displacement, and
productivity, properties that distinguish it from other communication systems. The fact
that human cognitive and linguistic development are so intricately bound together, that
human language does not exist independent of culture, that it has many varieties and
is as complex as the human brain itself—all these set human language well above other
systems of communication. While children do not need to be taught language, teachers
need to pay attention to language development, because it is closely linked to cognitive
development and foundational to all future learning.
Post-Test
1. Which of the following species uses language that most closely resembles human
language?
a. Dogs
b. Whales
c. Bees
d. Snakes
2. “Buzz,” “croak,” “bark,” and “wham” are all examples of
a. synonyms.
b. palindromes.
c. semantics.
d. onomatopoeia.
3. The broad mental process of knowing, including memory and perception,
defines
a. metacognition.
b. cognition.
c. processing.
d. language.
4. Subcultures are
pip80380_01_c01_001-024.indd 20
a. subversive cultures.
b. cultures embedded within cultures.
c. the lowest form of culture.
d. cultures that borrow aspects from several other cultures.
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Critical Thinking Questions
CHAPTER 1
5. In language learning,
a. children must be explicitly taught the rules and use.
b. parents follow similar methods for teaching.
c. there is no evidence for a predisposition for learning.
d. the order and speed of learning tends to be the same in all children.
Answers
1. b. Whales. The answer can be found in Section 1.1.
2. d. Onomatopoeia. The answer can be found in Section 1.2.
3. b. Cognition. The answer can be found in Section 1.3.
4. b. Cultures embedded within cultures. The answer can be found in Section 1.4.
5. d. The order and speed of learning tends to be the same in all children. The answer can be found in Section 1.5.
Key Ideas
• Communications systems exist in many species of animals.
• Language is the uniquely human system of communication.
• Language is an arbitrary system characterized by its semanticity, displacement
(or the ability to talk about abstract ideas or things not present), and productivity
(or the ability to create an infinite number of new utterances).
• Language is intricately related to human cognition.
• Human language does not to be taught; children will acquire it given adequate
exposure.
• Humans are born with the capacity for language but not language itself.
• Language and culture are inextricably linked.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. What are some new words or new uses of words that have entered the language
because of television or the Internet during your lifetime?
2. Bees, in communicating the location of nectar, cannot deceive other bees—they
cannot lie. What does the fact that humans have the ability to lie say about the
difference between human language and animal communication systems?
3. What evidence can you provide for the statement, “Thought is clearly possible
without a language”?
4. Language is often the medium for human communication. What are other means
of communication that humans use, and to what degree do they meet the criteria
for language?
5. Spend some time in a preschool class and identify how the teacher’s interactions
with the children help them to expand their language.
6. Children’s receptive vocabulary is always larger than their productive vocabulary. Why must this be true?
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Key Terms
CHAPTER 1
Key Terms
arbitrariness One of the four attributes
of human language, referring to the fact
that words are not predictable from their
meanings. The animal known in English as
pig is represented by other words in other
languages.
cognition The mental process of knowing, which involves awareness, perception,
reasoning, memory, and conceptualization.
phonology The branch of linguistics concerned with the description of the sound
system.
productive vocabulary The words that
a child speaks, as opposed to those he
understands but may not be heard to
speak.
communication The activity of a sender
conveying a message to a listener.
productivity An attribute of human
language, referring to the capacity of language to create an infinite number of new
and unique utterances.
dialect A variety of language defined by
either geographical factors or social factors, such as class, religion, and ethnicity.
receptive vocabulary The words a child
understands but may not necessarily produce in speech.
displacement An attribute of human
language, referring to the fact that language is capable of generating meaningful utterances not tied to the immediate
environment.
recursion An aspect of language productivity that allows a speaker to add infinitely to a sentence.
idiolect The idiosyncratic speech of
individuals.
jargon Language associated with a particular occupation, hobby, or sport.
language variety A term linguists use to
refer to different languages (e.g., Mandarin
and English) as well as to the way a specific group of speakers within a language
speak (e.g., Appalachian English or Boston
English) and sometimes to differences
among individuals.
semanticity One of the four attributes of
human language, referring to the capacity
of language to represent ideas, objects, or
events with symbols.
simultaneous bilinguals Children who
learn two languages from birth or before
the age of 2 to 3 years.
slang Language used in informal settings, often indicative of the relationship
between the speakers.
morpheme The smallest unit of language
that carries meaning.
standard dialect A term used to refer to
the variety of language used by the media,
by political leaders, and the one taught in
school, and sometimes considered to be
the “prestige” variation of a language.
nonstandard dialect Any language variety that does not conform substantially to
the standard.
successive (or consecutive) bilinguals Those who add a second language
after the first is largely established.
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CHAPTER 1
Weblinks
syllable A unit of pronunciation consisting of a single vowel and any consonants
that cluster around it.
syntax The branch of linguistics concerned with sentence structure.
word A unit of language consisting of one
or more spoken sounds, or their written
representation, that is a principal carrier of
meaning. A word must contain at least one
morpheme but may have more.
Weblinks
Although animal communication is not the subject of this chapter or this book, many find
the topic fascinating. This website offers further information on dolphin communication.
http://www.dolphins.org/marineed_communication.php
This site provides a thorough discussion about how language and communication differ.
http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~chrisw/Psych357/L28Animals.pdf
A concise description of language and how it differs from speech is available on the
American Speech-Language Hearing Association site:
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/language_speech.htm
Visit this site for an interesting perspective on the uniqueness of human language and on
how languages are related:
http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/human-language/
For an account of the Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.html
For a description of how American dialects differ and a dialect map of the continental
United States:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html
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2
Associated Press
How It’s Built:
The Structure of Language
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to accomplish the following objectives:
• Describe how consonants and vowels sounds are organized in English and how we know which
are important.
• Define morpheme and explain the difference between lexical and function morphemes.
• Identify the main constituents of a sentence, and explain the importance of word order in English.
• Define and explain the difference between semantics and pragmatics.
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Introduction
CHAPTER 2
Introduction
A
fter her first day of preschool at age 29 months, Isabelle and her father had the following conversation about the rabbit named Bela who shared the classroom with
Isabelle and nine other children:
Isabelle: Papa, Bela bite Jason.
Papa: Who is Jason?
Isabelle: At my school.
Papa: Oh, and Bela bit him.
Isabelle: Yes. Bela bitted him.
Even though her language was still a work in progress, Isabelle had already, without being
aware of it, mastered much of the language structure that will be described in this chapter.
In Chapter 1, we began to see how impressive a feat this is. In 29 months, Isabelle had
grown from an infant who did not yet know her name and whose only vocalization was
crying, to a little girl who could make herself understood talking about something that
had happened in the past. True, some of her forms were imperfect, but she was already
well on her way to being a proficient language user.
In order to understand and appreciate what she and children the world over accomplish
in the first few years and how teachers can build on that accomplishment in the school setting, it is useful to understand how language is organized. Many people consider themselves experts on language by virtue of the fact that they have been using it successfully
for a number of years and may have become quite proficient in it. Attaining proficiency
does not require speakers to have a conscious knowledge of the formal structure of language—and certainly most children do not—but it takes a linguist to understand and
explain the underlying mechanics of language that we all take for granted (Bauer & Trudgill, 1998). Actually, it would take many linguists and several volumes because there are
so many aspects of language to be described. Here, we will take only an introductory look
at how language is structured in order to begin to appreciate the magnitude of children’s
accomplishment.
Children learn language in order to express meaning and to communicate with people
around them. The miracle of the infant brain is its capacity to acquire all of the structures
of any language spoken on earth. Children do not learn the components of language separately or in isolation. They don’t master the sound system and then move on to learning
words and then sentences. Nor do they learn the structures of the language as a cognitive
exercise. In order to learn to communicate effectively, children master the complex structures of their language. Watching them do so is fascinating. In Chapter 3 we take a closer
look at how children acquire the structures of language. For now, let’s look at how the
English language is structured.
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CHAPTER 2
Pre-Test
Language has several components—sounds (phonology), words (morphology), and sentences (syntax). These are descriptors that adults use. Children, at least at the beginning,
are happily unaware of either the structure of language or the need to learn it.
Languages differ in many other ways. Have you ever tried to master the sounds of French,
the syntax of German, or the tones of Mandarin? Mandarin speakers also struggle with the
sounds of English, finding the l/r/w distinctions especially confusing. Speakers of Arabic
have trouble mastering English prepositions because there are only about 20 prepositions
in Arabic but 57 in English. Beginning learners often try to understand a new language in
terms of their first language. Arab speakers of English cannot readily translate and have
difficulty getting the troublesome little English words right. Indeed, almost all non-native
speakers struggle to some degree with English prepositions.
All languages can be described using the same categories and the same descriptors. Phonology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the description of the sound system.
Morphology is the branch concerned with word structure, and syntax refers to sentence
structure. Semantics refers to meaning, and pragmatics refers to the functional use of
language in real-life settings.
Pre-Test
1. In comparison to consonants, vowels
a. use less air obstruction in their production.
b. are more often the reason children are referred for speech therapy.
c. exist in greater numbers in the English alphabet.
d. are produced with more impediments in air stream.
2. Inflectional morphemes are types of
a. function morphemes.
b. lexical morphemes.
c. content morphemes.
d. function words.
3. The two major considerations of syntactic learning are
a. the order of words and the relationships among aspects of sentences.
b. to whom the speaker is speaking and the time frame of the information.
c. the number of words needed and the time needed to communicate.
d. the tense of the verbs and the number of objects.
4. Which of the following is true of semantics?
pip80380_02_c02_025-052.indd 27
a. Semantics can differ within the same language.
b. Words in some languages do not mean the same thing in others.
c. Individual and cultural variations do not affect language.
d. Language has fairly rigid conventions for communication.
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Section 2.1 The Sounds of English: Phonology
CHAPTER 2
Answers
1. a. use less air obstruction in their production. The answer can be found in Section 2.1.
2. a. function morphemes. The answer can be found in Section 2.2.
3. a. The order of words and the relationships among aspects of sentences. The answer can be found in Section 2.3.
4. b. Words in some languages do not mean the same thing in others. The answer can be found in Section 2.4.
2.1 The Sounds of English: Phonology
A
t age 3, Isabelle’s pronunciation of yellow was “lalo.” She couldn’t manage the
initial “y” sound, nor did she get the first vowel quite right. It wasn’t that she was
unable to produce the “y” sound or the correct vowel—the word yes, for example,
with the same vowel and initial consonant, gave her no problem at all. But in the word
yellow, she couldn’t quite get all the sounds right. The reason is that the process of learning the sound structure of English is not just a matter of learning individual sounds, it
is learning the system—all of the sounds and how they are combined and pronounced
in various environments. For a child, the “environment” of a two-syllable word is very
different from that of a single syllable, and she simplified the pronunciation according to
certain predictable processes. In this section, we will look at the sounds of English, which
ones are distinctive and which are not, and some of the rules for combining them. We will
also look briefly at stress, or the force with which a syllable is articulated, and intonation,
or the rhythm of the language, and the role they play in English.
Linguists who study the sounds of a language are called phonologists. In general terms,
phonology is concerned with the physical, or acoustic, properties of speech sounds and
the rules that govern how those sounds are combined in speech. From the child’s point
of view, the business of phonology is figuring out how to produce those sounds that are
necessary for making meaning. When children are very young, it is unlikely that they can
focus on any unit smaller than the word, at least not directly. As soon as they understand
that cat and hat are different words conveying very different meanings, however, they
have unknowingly recognized that the /k/ sound is different from the /h/ sound. This
is a good example of a minimal pair, or two words that differ by only one sound, which
is an important concept in determining which sounds are separate phonemes, or sounds
that native speakers perceive to be different, in English.
Sounds and letters are different. There is a somewhat predictable relationship between the
sounds of English and the letters used to represent them in print. For the most part, the sound
/m/ is represented by the letter “m,” and we can usually count on the letter “b” to represent
the sound /b/. But the sound-symbol correspondence in English is far from perfect, as any
second language learner or anyone who struggles with English spelling can testify. The sound
/f/, for example, can be spelled in four different ways, as illustrated by fame, tough, phone, and
puff. Moreover, the word of has the letter “f” but the pronunciation is /v/. For now, we are
concerned with the sounds of English with only passing reference to the alphabet.
How Speech Sounds Are Formed
Human speech can be described in acoustic terms, or the nature of the disturbance to the
airwaves that occurs when we speak. Each vowel and consonant sound has distinctive
acoustic properties that can be measured on a sound spectrogram. How and why do speech
sounds differ from each other? Here is an example from a grade-school science class. If we
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CHAPTER 2
Section 2.1 The Sounds of English: Phonology
take two identical, glass soft-drink bottles and pour 4 inches of water into one, leave the
other empty, and then blow into them, as if blowing a flute or piccolo, the sound produced
by each will be different. The sound produced by the bottle with liquid will be of a higher
pitch than the sound produced by the one without liquid. That is because the resonator
(i.e., the soft-drink bottle) has changed with the addition of liquid; vibration occurs above
the level of the water only. The water has effectively shortened the resonator and caused
the sound to have a pitch. The human head is also a resonator, and because we are all a
little different from each other, our voices and speech sounds tend to be unique. But there
is enough similarity that we can understand each other because we produce the speech
sounds of our language in more or less the same way. Each speech sound is distinguished
from the others by the shape of the resonator (i.e., the vocal apparatus) during speech.
When we speak, the airstream—the same one used in breathing—is modulated, or
changed, by the articulators as it moves from the lungs upward to exit through the oral or
nasal cavity (or both). The articulators, as shown in Figure 2.1, are of two types. Passive
articulators, which include the teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, velum, uvula, and pharynx (or pharyngeal wall) remain static during speech. Active articulators move to create
different speech sounds. The tongue is the most important of these, but the glottis and the
lips, particularly the lower lip, also play roles in speech production.
Figure 2.1: Articulators involved in speech
Nasal cavity
(Soft Palate)
Velum
Aveolar ridge
Lips
Teeth
ity
cav
al
r
O
Body
Apex
Root
Tongue
Pharynx
Epiglottis
Larynx
(vocal cords)
Esophagus
This figure shows the parts used to form verbal speech patterns.
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Section 2.1 The Sounds of English: Phonology
CHAPTER 2
How We Know Which Sounds Matter
The human vocal apparatus is capable of creating an almost infinite variety of sounds. Every
child born with normal hearing and speech organs is born with the capacity to learn the
sounds of any language. Anyone who has heard an infant babble will have heard sounds
that may be difficult for an adult
to reproduce and which may
bear little resemblance to the
speech sounds that adults use.
A child’s job in the first years of
life is to figure out which sounds
of language are meaningful and
how to produce them. Children
are not linguists, but in order to
understand what they accomplish, it is useful to look at how
adult speakers know which Blowing into these bottles would create a different sound for
sounds are meaningful in a lan- each because of their different shapes. This is similar to what
guage. How is it that we come to happens when we move our tongue or jaw during speech.
recognize the two broad categoHemera/Thinkstock
ries of speech sounds known as
consonants and vowels?
Generally speaking, consonants are sounds that are produced with more obstruction of the air
somewhere in the vocal tract than vowels, which are produced with a relatively unimpeded
airstream. English has many more consonants than vowels, and they are harder for children
to learn than vowels. When children are referred for speech therapy, it is often because an
adult has identified a problem with how some of the consonant sounds are produced.
Unlike consonants, vowels are produced with very little obstruction of the vocal apparatus but simply by changing the shape of the resonator. Vowels get their distinct character
from the placement of the tongue in the mouth during articulation and whether or not
the lips are rounded. Vowels are highly resonant, making them easier to hear and to distinguish from one another. When Sarah, at 27 months, pronounced butterfly as “fuhfly,”
she showed perfect control of the vowels, although she left out the middle syllable, but
simplified the consonants to two, “f”and “l.”
For a representation of how the change in tongue placement produces actual vowel
sounds, see the Weblinks at the end of the chapter for a video.
The Consonants and Vowels of English
Infants are capable of producing the sounds of any human language. Gradually, they
learn which ones are relevant to the language they are learning and which are not. As
adult speakers of English, we already know which sounds are meaningful, but children
have to figure out what to pay attention to and what can be ignored. If children were
linguists, they would look for minimal pairs. Consider these words: cat, hat, bat, sat, mat,
fat, gnat, pat, rat, tat, vat. Ten words, all with different meanings, tell us that English has at
least 10 consonants, because as we change the first sound of each word, we also change
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Section 2.1 The Sounds of English: Phonology
the meaning. If we were to consider the words bat, bit, bet, beat, boat, boot, bought, and but,
we would readily see that English has at least eight different vowel sounds, because that
is what distinguishes one word from the other. Continuing to act as linguists, if we were
given the words trite and trout (or light and lout), we would have evidence for two more
English sounds. These are also vowels, but they are called diphthongs because they are
created by one vowel gliding quickly into another.
While children are not little linguists, as they learn the meanings of words and understand
that hat, cat, and bat all have different meanings, they sort out the relevant sounds of English. Table 2.1 shows the consonant sounds of standard American English, and Table 2.2
shows the vowels with the phonemic symbols linguists use to identify them.
Table 2.1: English consonant phonemes and common spellings
Phoneme (symbol)
Common spellings
Exemplar words
/p/
p, pp
pit, tipple, sip
/b/
b, bb
bib, kibble, stub
/t/
t, tt, th
time, little, thyme
/d/
d, dd
dust, puddle
/s/
s, ss
sister, miss
/z/
z, zz, s
zap, jazz, houses
/tʃ/
ch, tch
check, which, witch
/d�/
j, dg, g
jelly, grudge, gel
/∫/
sh, ss, t(i),ch(e)
shell, session, nation, panache
/ʒ/
z, s, g
azure, lesion, beige
/f/
f, ff, ph, gh
father, waffle, phone, rough
/v/
v, f
vote, evolve, of
/θ/
th
thick, thin, myth
/ð/
th
this, that, lather
/k/
k, ck, c, ch , q
kit, pick, cat, ache, quick /kwIk/
/g/
g, gg, gue
wig, wiggle, fatigue
/w/
w, wh
win, wile, while
/l/
l, ll
laugh, alive, doll
/r/
r, rr
range, arrange, far
/y/
y
yes
/m/
m, mm, mn
mix, summer, rhythm
/n/
n, nn
nine, penny
/ŋ/
ng
long, singer
/h/
h
high, ahem
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CHAPTER 2
Section 2.1 The Sounds of English: Phonology
Table 2.2: English vowel phonemes and common spellings
Phoneme (symbol)
Common spellings
Exemplar words
/l/
i
kit, sit, quit
/¡/
ee, ea, ey, ie, ei, e
keep, leaf, key, lien, receive,
decide
/ /
e, ea
set, led, tell, threat, lead (as in
“lead pencil”)
/eI/
a, ay, ai, ei
made, may, maid, weigh
/æ/
a, ai
sad, matter, plaid
/ /
e
u, ou, e
cut, bubble, trouble, double,
the
/ /
ou, au, o
caught, cause, thought
/a/
o
cot, shot, got
/ow/
o, ow, oa
comb, shown, coat
/uw/
oo, u, ew
moo, prune, strewn
/ /
�
u, oo
put, foot
/ j/
oy, oi
boy, boil
/aj/
ie, ai, i, uy
tie, Thai, time, guy
/aw/
ow, ou
cow, bough
e
�
�
Some readers will not be able to hear the difference between the vowels in caught and cot.
There is no need to have a hearing test, though, since these vowels are the same in some
dialects of American English.
Whether a child is learning English, Portuguese, or Mandarin, the task is the same—
figuring out which sounds are meaningful and learning how to produce them. That is
not the only task; part of learning the sound system is learning the stress and intonation
patterns of that language.
Stress and Intonation
Stress refers to the force with which a syllable is articulated. In fact, stressed syllables are
not only louder, they also have a slightly higher pitch and are longer in duration than
nonstressed syllables. Sometimes, stress is distinctive. Consider the two pronunciations
of the word convict. The noun, as in The convict was released from prison, has stress on the
first syllable. The verb, however, as in The jury took only two hours to convict the defendant,
is stressed on the second syllable. In this way, stress is phonemic because it contributes to
the meaning. Stress in these examples occurs at the word level. The stress pattern of each
word is part of its identity, just as its phonemes are. So the word bluebell is always stressed
on the first syllable, and specifically, on the first vowel of the syllable. That is because
syllables, by definition, must have a vowel (and only one vowel), and it is the vowel that
carries the stress.
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Learning the stress pattern of a word is part of learning that word, and it is an aspect
of phonological learning that causes young children less difficulty than mastering each
of the individual sounds. In fact, very early on, at the babbling stage, children “create”
words that are nonsensical but somehow sound like the language of the adults around
them. They are able to do so, in part, because they have picked up the stress patterns of
the words they have heard. As evidence, children attend to stressed syllables more than to
unstressed ones. Consider again Sarah’s pronunciation of butterfly as fuhfly. She reduced
a three-syllable word to two, and the syllable she left out was the middle, unstressed one.
At the same time, her correct pronunciation of the French equivalent, papillon showed that
she was capable of producing three syllable words. In the case of the French word, however, the middle syllable carries more stress than the middle syllable of butterfly, so she
was not as likely to leave out the syllable.
Although English words spoken in isolation have syllabic stress, there is also a level of
stress associated with the rhythm of continuous speech. Intonation, sometimes called
prosodic stress, refers to the rhythm of the language as it is spoken or read—the rising and
falling pitch that occurs in connected speech. Although explaining the rules for assigning
English stress in sentences is difficult, learning them appears not to be difficult at all. Even
at the babbling stage, before they have sorted out the individual phonemes and before
they can articulate words, children babble in streams that have many of the prosodic qualities of the adult form of the language they are learning.
Syllables
How many syllables does the word chocolate have? In most American English dialects, it
has two, although many people would say that it has three because they are aware of the
written form and think it should have. If asked to read the word in isolation, many people
will carefully produce that middle syllable. If asked to read a sentence such as “Do you
want chocolate or vanilla ice cream?” most people will pronounce only two syllables. So
what is this thing called the syllable?
In English, syllables have several different “shapes,” or structures, depending on the configuration of vowels (V) and consonants (C). The one thing every English syllable must
have is a nucleus, usually a vowel but sometimes /r/, /m/ or /ŋ/, or /l/ (as in the second syllable of little). English syllables need not have any consonants. The word amazing,
for example, has three syllables, and the first one consists only of a vowel. The other two
illustrate two additional syllable shapes in English: vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) and
vowel-consonant (VC). There are eight other possibilities in English, as shown in Table 2.3.
Table 2.3: Possible English syllable structures
V
VC
eye, oh am,
eyes
pip80380_02_c02_025-052.indd 33
VCC
CV
CCV
CVC
apt, ilk
me,
woe
play, sty did,
make
CCVC
CCVCC
CCCV
CCCVC
CCCVCC
plaid,
stall
plaids,
brains
splay,
straw
splayed, straps,
straws screams
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Section 2.2 The Building Blocks of Words: Morphology
CHAPTER 2
Syllable structures vary from language to language—the only universal is that every syllable must contain a nucleus. Beyond that, languages differ widely. In Mandarin, the usual
syllable structure is CV. When Mandarin-speaking adults are learning English, they tend
to “drop” the final consonant in words such as cat because that is the syllable form that is
most familiar to them.
Children with normal hearing tend to be aware of syllable structure and reproduce it
fairly accurately, even at a very young age. Evidence can be found in their ability to produce rhymes, which usually require them to create new forms with the same number of
syllables, if not the exact same structure. A child’s ability to rhyme bad with sad and mad
shows that she can exchange the initial consonant, and when pronouncing glad, the child
provides strong evidence that it is the syllable that is the salient unit, and not the individual sounds. In fact, nearly all preschool children can produce rhymes, even nonsensical
ones, but if asked how many sounds in a word, they often falter.
The components of the sound system—sounds, syllables, stress, and intonation—are
not learned in isolation. They are learned in the contexts of words, and words are made
up of morphemes.
2.2 The Building Blocks of Words: Morphology
A
mother, asked if her infant is talking yet, might well respond, “Yes, she has three
words already!” To most people, at least those who are neither English teachers
nor linguists, the smallest unit of language that has meaning is the word. Certainly, words are essential building blocks of language, and it is true that the word is the
smallest unit that can stand alone in speech or writing. The smallest unit of meaning,
however, is not the word but the morpheme, and the study of how morphemes are categorized and combined is morphology. English morphology is fairly complex—perhaps
even more complex than the sound system. But it is also easier to understand because
morphemes are more easily recognized than individual sounds. Most of us know a great
deal about the different kinds of morphemes and how they are combined into words. It is
the language for talking about them that gets a little complicated. Nevertheless, in order
to appreciate what children accomplish in learning to make and use words, it is necessary
to understand something about the morphology of English.
Identifying Morphemes
First, morphemes and words differ, although a word can be a single morpheme. The word
of, for example, is a single morpheme, but it is still a word. Often, however, a word consists
of more than one morpheme. Words such as helpful, eyeball, and toys consist of two morphemes while helpfully and eyeballs consist of three. How do we know? With of, we know
because we cannot break it down further and be left with anything that makes sense. With
eyeball, on the other hand, we can clearly see that there are two parts to the word that have
meaning: eye and ball. Then, adding a plural suffix, -s, we add a third element of meaning
and thus have three morphemes. Similarly, toys has two meaning elements: toy and the
plural suffix.
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Section 2.2 The Building Blocks of Words: Morphology
CHAPTER 2
What the adult knows about morphology, however, is not what the child knows. Returning to the word eyeball, for example, a 3-year-old who knows the meaning of the word
and uses it will not be aware that it has two components, nor does she need to. For her,
it is a single word, a single morpheme, and it has one specific meaning. For this reason,
when linguists or teachers study children’s language in terms of MLU (mean length of
utterance), they normally consider compound words such as eyeball, baseball, or cupcake as
a single entity.
English words can consist of many morphemes. The word predictability, for example, has
four: pre- (a prefix meaning “before”), -dict- (meaning “to say”), -able (meaning “capable
of”), and -ity (making the word a noun). Notice that these four morphemes have different kinds of meaning. That is because not all morphemes are created equal. Some carry
a great deal of meaning, and others are merely grammatical conventions; still others fall
somewhere in the middle.
Different Kinds of Morphemes
Broadly speaking, there are two types of morphemes: content, or lexical morphemes, and
functional morphemes. To distinguish between them, let’s return for a moment to the
word eyeballs. As noted, it consists of three morphemes. Most of the meaning is borne by
eye and ball. We see both morphemes in many other English words such as baseball, ballgame,
birds-eye, and eyeglasses. Because they have meaning that can be understood independently
of any other morpheme, they are called lexical morphemes. The remaining morpheme is
of a different type. It indicates that the noun is plural and is thus called an inflectional
morpheme, and is one kind of functional morpheme as shown in Figure 2.2. The function
words and the inflectional morphemes are the little workhorses of the language. They do
not carry a great deal of dictionary-type meaning, but their presence is necessary for constructing meaningful sentences. They essentially carry out grammatical functions. Function words stand alone as words,
but unlike other words in the
language, they cannot usually
have other morphemes attached.
The exception is with the personal pronouns, which can have
number or case indicators as in
he, him, his, you, your, yours, etc.
and certain prepositions that
can be combined, such as into
and within. All the others stand
alone; there is no suffix or prefix
that can be added to the or of.
Inflectional morphemes serve
similar purposes to function
words in English sentences; they
carry grammatical information.
In English, most inflections are
suffixes but some require an
internal change—the plural of
pip80380_02_c02_025-052.indd 35
When this child produces his first word, it will be a lexical
morpheme. Why do you think this is true?
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CHAPTER 2
Section 2.2 The Building Blocks of Words: Morphology
mouse, for example. Inflectional suffixes are added to lexical morphemes to indicate more
information and include familiar forms such as the past tense marker (usually spelled as
-ed) and the plural marker (usually an -s or -es). The most common English inflections are
shown in Table 2.4.
Table 2.4: Examples of grammatical inflections in English
Tense
Aspect
• s /-es (walks, • ed, with
talks, fixes)
a form of
-d/-ed
have (have
(walked,
walked, has
talked, fixed)
talked, had
• Vowel
fixed)
change
• No change
(write/
(have
wrote; bring/
brought; has
brought;
shot)/
sing/sang,
Vowel
shoot/shot)
change (has /
sung)
• en (with an
auxiliary
have or be)
(written,
driven)
• ing (with a
form of be)
(is writing,
was singing)
Number
Possessive
Case
• s /-es (cats,
• s (Bob’s,
fits, horses,
children’s)
boxes)
• Vowel
change
(mouse/
mice; goose/
geese)
• en (Oxen)
• um (singular
in words
such as
medium
datum)
• a (plural in
words such
as media,
data)
Comparative
Superlative
• e r (funnier,
meaner)
• e st
(strongest,
liveliest)
Inflections are not the only suffixes in English. English also has a number of morphemes
with sufficient content meaning to be considered lexical but which cannot stand alone.
These include prefixes such as bio-, morpho-, phono-, and multi- and suffixes such as -logy, i,
and -ful. Because they cannot stand alone but must be “bound” to other morphemes, they
are thus considered bound lexical morphemes (see Figure 2.2). English, then, has a number of different ways of forming words: by adding prefixes and suffixes—whether lexical
or inflectional—and by compounding (combining lexical morphemes). Other languages,
however, have different processes.
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Section 2.2 The Building Blocks of Words: Morphology
Figure 2.2: How morphemes are categorized
Morpheme
Significant content
meaning?
Yes
Lexical
Morpheme
No
Function
Morpheme
Can morpheme
stand alone?
Can morpheme
stand alone?
Yes
Free Morpheme
(Content Word)
No
Bound Lexical
Morpheme
Function Word
Inflectional
Morpheme
Can morpheme
carry most of the
word meaning?
Yes
Bound Lexical
Morpheme
No
Derivational Morpheme
This diagram shows the criteria used for categorizing morphemes.
Morphology in English and Other Languages
In terms of how they combine morphemes to form words, the world’s languages fall along
a continuum with analytic languages at one end and synthetic languages at the other. A
strictly analytic language would have one morpheme per word while a strictly synthetic
language would combine all the morphemes needed to make the meaning of a sentence.
Although there are no strictly analytic nor strictly synthetic languages, Mandarin and
Vietnamese are highly analytic while Turkish and Russian are highly synthetic. English
is usually categorized as an analytical language, although with its inflectional affixes and
compounding, it too has certain synthetic properties.
English is the way it is because of its history. Every country that ever invaded the British
Isles left behind some of its language. Three Germanic tribes—the Angles, the Jutes, and the
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Section 2.3 How Sentences Are Made: Syntax
CHAPTER 2
Saxons—arrived in less than friendly fashion around 450 CE and left behind the Germanic
foundation of the English language, Anglo-Saxon. Words surviving into modern English
include earth, dirt, sheep, and tree, along with many of the 100 most commonly used words in
English today as well as most of the words that our mothers tried to keep us from using. The
next major influence on English, still felt today, came with the Norman Invasion in 1066. In
other words, the Latin influence came through the French language spoken by the invaders.
Every language that influenced English had a different way of forming words, and English somehow accommodated most of them, much to the frustration of adult learners of
the language. Fortunately, children have no expectations about this, and for the most part,
they figure out how morphemes fit together without difficulty. They do experience some
confusion. Carter, at age 5, will say, “I forgotted that,” adding the regular past tense form
to a verb that already has the
irregular form. In all likelihood,
he does this because he learned
forgot before forget and has yet
to make the connection between
the two forms. In time, he will
sort it out just as he will figure
out that the past tense of bring
isn’t “bringed,” and the plural
of goose is geese.
Carter and other children his age
are not terribly concerned about
the correctness of the form. He
How would you help Carter tell his story about the geese flying
is far more interested in talking
over him?
about the geese that he saw flying
in formation across the sky
iStockphoto/Thinkstock
than with the fact that the word
goose comes from Anglo-Saxon along with its plural form, largely unchanged. To tell his
story about the geese, he needs more than individual words; he needs to be able to combine them into sentences, the next level of language structure.
2.3 How Sentences Are Made: Syntax
I
n everyday conversation, we sometimes speak in sentences and often speak in fragments. But even when we speak in shortened or truncated forms, we tend to mentally
“fill in” the missing parts. In elementary school, most of us were taught that a sentence
must have a subject and a verb or, depending on the precision of our teacher, a subject
and a predicate. That is true—not terribly helpful, but true. It is just the beginning of the
story. English sentence structure, or syntax, is about word order. More precisely, English
sentence structure is about how morphemes are combined to form meaningful utterances.
Basic Sentence Structure
All human languages were created by humans as a way to express meaning, and there
are many experiences that all humans have in common. Thus, it is not surprising that all
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Section 2.3 How Sentences Are Made: Syntax
CHAPTER 2
languages share certain structural properties. They all use
sentence structures with a subject, a verb, and an object, but
the order in which those elements appear differs from language to language. In some languages, word order is flexible
because the role the word plays
in the sentence is indicated by
an affix—a morpheme indicating whether a noun serves
as a subject or an object, for
instance. Most of the languages
of the world, however, are either
subject-verb-object (SVO) or Humans use language to communicate meaning. As diverse as
subject-object-verb (SOV) lan- we are, our languages share certain structural aspects. Why do
guages. SOV is the most com- you think this is?
mon word order in terms of the
number of distinct languages
Alex Treadway/National Geographic Stock
that employ it (Mihalicek & Wilson, 2011). Japanese, Korean, and Turkish are all SOV languages. SVO is the most common
word order in terms of the number of people who speak a language, since it is employed
by English, all of the Romance languages, and Mandarin. Not all SVO languages have
exactly the same structure, but the major constituents tend to be ordered in the same way.
There is far more to sentence structure and syntax than the ordering of the major constituents. Look at the following sentences. Can you explain the kinds of differences apparent
in them?
a. Sarah builds sandcastles.
b. Isabelle builds sandcastles.
c. Sarah built sandcastles.
For the moment, let’s ignore the likelihood that Sarah, at age 2, is more apt to sit down
in the middle of her sister’s sandcastle than to build one. Think about the differences
between sentences (a) and (b) and between (a) and (c). Sentences (a) and (b) have exactly
the same structure but profoundly different meanings: It is Sarah who is building the
sandcastle in (a) but Isabelle in (b). The two sentences have different subjects. Sentences
(a) and (c) have a syntactic difference that changes the meaning. The morphemes in sentence (a) can be described as follows:
•
•
•
•
Sarah (a lexical morpheme)
build (a lexical morpheme)
the present tense inflection, -s, indicating habitual or current activity
three additional morphemes: the nouns sand and castle, which form a compound
word and the plural inflection, -s.
Sentence (c) has the same major constituents as (a), but instead of the present tense marker,
there is a past tense morpheme changing build to built. The difference here is syntactic.
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Section 2.3 How Sentences Are Made: Syntax
The difference between sentences (a) and (b) is easier for children to understand than
the difference between sentences (a) and (c). The “players” are different—it is a lexical
difference that has a great deal of meaning. With (a) and (c), the difference is grammatical, a change in tense. Because tense is related to time, the difference is one that adults
readily understand, but it takes a while for children to learn it. It takes longer to learn not
only because it is a very subtle change in form (build to built is not even easy to hear) but
because very young children have a shaky notion of past time.
There are, then, basically two kinds of syntactic learning that children must accomplish:
the order in which words are put together to form sentences and the relationships that
exist among the different constituents. In sentences, not all words are of the same magnitude of importance. Consider this sentence from Isabelle at age 5:
Papa winned the race.
Even though Isabelle regularized the past tense of win to make it sound like other regular
verbs such as talks and runs, she had all the elements of a perfectly formed sentence. I have
used a bracketing convention that linguists sometimes use to show the major constituents,
subject and predicate:
[[winned the race]]
We learned that English is an SVO language, so we will break down the predicate further.
From this point, it is easier to see the syntactic constituents of Isabelle’s sentence using
a tree diagram, although the tree and brackets convey the same information. Figure 2.3
represents the basic SVO constituent structure of the sentence.
Figure 2.3: Basic sentence structure
S
(Sentence)
Papa
winned
the race
Basic sentence constituents for Papa winned the race.
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Section 2.3 How Sentences Are Made: Syntax
If Isabelle were asked when her Papa won the race and she answered in a full sentence,
the same structure would be expanded as in Figure 2.4, which shows all the morphemes
in the sentence and their relationship to each other.
Figure 2.4: Constituent sentence structure
S
NP
VP
Verb
Vtrans
Papa
win
Adverb
NP
Tense
Past
Article
the
Noun
N
Number
race
Ø
yesterday
Constituent structure of Papa winned the race yesterday.
Learning Sentence Structure
The task of learning sentence structure involves learning the conventions for word
order and constituent structure or, from the child’s perspective, which bits of meaning
fit together and how. Until children learn at least rudimentary syntactic rules, they cannot make themselves understood, but it is learning that begins very early. When a child
barely able to walk says, “Want cookie,” she is already demonstrating SVO word order.
Although she has left out the subject noun, it is clearly understood to be “I.” From this
point on, syntactic learning progresses very quickly. Graham, at age 2 years 10 months,
produced the following sentences:
a. Calley hit me ‘cause it hurt.
b. Mama give me time-out ‘cause I bit Melissa.
Both sentences are complex, meaning that they have two clauses—two units, each with a
subject and a verb. In sentence (a), he gets the word order within each of the two clauses
right but the order of the two clauses themselves wrong, likely because he has an imperfect
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Section 2.3 How Sentences Are Made: Syntax
CHAPTER 2
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