Q&A 2 – Week 3

November 8, 2021
Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain

What are the domains that we should not confuse with

language (i.e. what language is NOT)?
Answer:
i. Written Language
• It is invented.
• It has to be learnt through construction and schooling.
ii. Proper Grammar Language (Prescriptive Grammar)
• It is prescriptive.
• Dialects often contradict with one another:
• He be workin’. vs. He is working.
iii. Thought
• Babies (and other mammals) communicate without speech.
• Types of thinking go on without language.
• We use tacit knowledge to understand language and remember the gist.
• If language is thinking, then where did it come from?
Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain

It’s “Plato’s problem”, not

mine. I solved it!
Tip:
What is the
evidence that
children are born
with universal
grammar?
Answer:

It is the poverty of input*, which is a theory proposed by Chomsky (1980)

and a start point of the claim “universal grammar”. It states that the
input children receive is insufficient to explain their knowledge of a
language. The sentences children are exposed to do not include the
information they need to have to understand the structure of language.

*The argument’s original title is the poverty of stimulus.

Also known as “Logical Problem of Language Acquisition”, ”Projection problem”, and
“Plato’s problem”.
According to Chomsky, where would you place the
boundary for the mental grammar? Why?

4
Answer: Mental grammar covers our knowledge of sounds,
morphemes, syntactic structuring and semantic meaning.
Pragmatic and discursive levels are not included in mental
grammar.

2
How do we identify the prescriptive and
descriptive rules? What are some key elements to
them?
Answer:
Prescriptive rules are known to…
• Make value judgments about the correctness of an utterance,
• Try to enforce a usage that conforms with one formal norm.

Descriptive rules are known to…

• Accept the patterns a speaker actually uses and try to account for them,
• Allow for different varieties of language.
What is the function of prescriptive
grammar? What are some of its uses?
Answer:
• Received Pronunciation (RP) / BBC English / Queen’s English
“… they avoid non-standard grammatical constructions and localised
vocabulary characteristic of regional dialects. RP is also regionally non-
specific, that is it does not contain any clues about a speaker’s
geographic background. But it does reveal a great deal about their
social and/or educational background. The definition of ‘received’
conveys its original meaning of ‘accepted’ or ‘approved’ – as in
‘received wisdom’. ” (Robinson, 2019, British Library)
• Political Use: “Preserving” a language is an issue of politics, too.
Look at the
second tweet.
What kind of
grammatical
understanding
is at work here?
Why?
Answer:
• The tweet exemplifies prescriptive grammar as a political tool for
“preserving” language. While the word “detay” has been in use in
Turkish since 1930s, purists still do not recognize the word as a part of
Turkish lexicon and they propose “ayrıntı” as a substitute for its
meaning.
Arbitrariness
• What do we mean by arbitrariness?
What is arbitrary?

• What are the arguments/evidences for

arbitrariness of language?

• What are the arguments/evidences

against arbitrariness of language?
Answer:
• The connection between form and meaning is ARBITRARY.
• Evidence FOR arbitrariness:
• Multiple languages having different phonetic and orthographic representations
(FORM) for the same entity or concept (MEANING)
• A single language having different representations (FORM) for the same entity or
concept (MEANING)
• A single language having same or similar representations (FORM) for different
entities or concepts (MEANING)
• Evidence AGAINST arbitrariness:
• Onomatopoeic words (e.g. slurp, hiss, buzz)
• Phonesthemes (e.g. gl- for light and vision, as in "glance", "glare", "glass", "gleam",
"glean", "glimmer", "glint", "glisten", "glitter", "gloaming", "gloom", "gloss", "glow”)
If we take Peirce’s theory of
signs into account, are
phonesthemes considered as
icons, indices, or symbols?

Answer:

According to Peirce’s theory, a phonestheme is

considered to be an ICON. It has the necessary
association to the meaning they represent. Once
heard, it makes people think of the phenomenon
it stands for although it is the first time they hear
it used in that certain word.
Language Files > File 1.4 (page 55)

19) Consider the following sign meaning ‘no-smoking’:

The sign has two components: meaning ‘no,’ and a picture of a

cigarette meaning ‘cigarette/smoking.’
Does each of the components have an arbitrary or an iconic relation
with its meaning? Please briefly explain your answer. Be sure to discuss
each of the two elements separately.
Answer for Q19:

The picture of a cigarette does not have an arbitrary relation with the
meaning ‘cigarette’ because it bears a physical resemblance to the type
of object that it signifies, and that object is closely linked with the
concept of smoking (although there is a certain amount of arbitrariness
in a cigarette being chosen as opposed to, for example, a cigar or a
pipe). The relation between the picture of a cigarette and the meaning
‘cigarette/smoking’ is therefore iconic. By contrast, using the no sign to
mean ‘no’ has an arbitrary relation with its meaning ‘no’; this concept
could be expressed by different symbols in other cultures, and this
symbol could be used to indicate different concepts in other cultures. So,
for example, the no smoking sign could mean ‘Please smoke,’ if the
cultural norm were for the sign no to mark a desired activity.
Language Files > File 1.4 (page 56)

23) Onomatopoeic words often show a resistance to change in their

pronunciation over time; for example, in earlier stages of English the
word cuckoo had roughly the same pronunciation as it has now [kuku],
and it failed to undergo a regular change in the pronunciation of vowels
that would have made it sound roughly like cowcow [kɑʊkɑʊ] (compare
the word house [hɑʊs], which used to be pronounced as [huːs] before
this change). Similarly, the word babble has had b sounds in it for over
2,000 years and did not undergo the sound shift characteristic of all the
Germanic languages by which original b came to be pronounced as p.
Can you suggest a reason for this resistance to change with respect to
these (and similar) words?
Answer for Q23:

Onomatopoeic words often resist change because they are imitative of

natural sounds, and the natural sounds that they imitate do not change.
In the acquisition of language, each generation of speakers “recreates”
these iconic words. Because the relationship between form and meaning
is generally not arbitrary in expressive words, the connection is more
fixed than in an arbitrary relationship and the form is therefore less likely
to change over time.
Important Announcement
• In order to cover Week 4’s Q&A before the Midterm I, the exam will
be held on Nov 19, 2021, Friday, 18:00.