CHAPTER 3 THE DYNAMICS OF LEARNING (GRAMMARING)

For the purposes of teaching and learning a language, I suggest that it would be better to think of
grammar as a skill or dynamic process, something that I have called grammaring, rather than as a
static area of knowledge.

Of course, the term grammar has many meanings, and certainly some of these can be homologous
with knowledge. Linguists construct descriptive grammars by writing rules to account for the
grammatical system of languages. Writers, especially, are admonished to conform to the norms of
standard usage, the rules of prescriptive grammars, such as avoiding dangling modifiers. Some
grammars are written to model internal mental grammars, what people know about their language.
Teachers ask students to learn the rules in pedagogical grammars. However, if we language teachers
make a simple equation between grammar and knowledge, then we run the risk of grammar’s
remaining inert, not available for use by our students.

Moreover, when grammar is taught solely as a body of knowledge—a collection of rules, norms, parts
of speech, and verb paradigms—it is not surprising that the mention of grammar invokes a negative
response on the part of many students. Most students find it hard to be enthusiastic about having to
learn what appear to be arbitrary facts about a language, let alone sometimes being asked to learn
them by rote.

OVER-TIME DYNAMISM

The first way that grammar and language are dynamic is that they change over time. It is common
knowledge that the language and grammar of today are not the same as the language and grammar
of several centuries ago, even though English is undeniably the same language. For example, in an
earlier state of the English language, the second-person pronoun you was defined by its opposition to
ye {ye being a subject pronoun and you being an object pronoun) and to thee and thou (thee and
thou being singular forms and ye and you plural forms). Later, you became a respectful way of
addressing one person. Languages are thus dynamic. Their state at one point in time stems from their
development over time.

Language change over time is inevitable and rarely predictable or controllable.

It is not always easy to draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not. What is the
distinction between an error and a new form, which is the product of the dynamic and relentless
process by which all new forms of language evolve? As Michael Kozden saw, acceptability of new
forms is not individually determined; it is socially defined.

REAL-TIME DYNAMISM

While we might call such evolutionary changes over-time dynamism, the second well-known way that
languages can be said to be dynamic can be referred to as real-time dynamism. To understand the
second type of dynamism, it is helpful to think of the contrast between product and process. It is true
that language can be described as an aggregation of static units or products^-for example, parts of
speech such as nouns and verbs—but their use requires activation, a real-time process. Language
users must constantly scan the environment (an immediate one in speech, a more remote one in
writing), consider their interlocutors/readers, and interpret what they are hearing/ seeing in order to
make decisions about how to respond in accurate, meaningful, and appropriate ways and then carry
out their decisions in real time— that is, they must then somehow activate what they have decided
upon. This clearly entails a dynamic process.
STATIS IN LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION

If language is dynamic in these two ways, why is it that linguistic descriptions do not reflect its
dynamism? It would be worthwhile digressing for the moment to understand that the stasis in
linguistic description is intentional. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who has been called the
founder of modem linguistics, determined that in order to define a proper object of study, the chaos
of language in use would have to be stripped away. Saying “language is speech less speaking” (de
Saussure, 1916, in Baskin, 1959: 17), de Saussure first isolated the category of langue (the abstract
system of the shared code) from the category of parole (the individual utterances of speech) and
declared the former the rightful object of linguistic investigation. In other words, he distinguished the
underlying system that makes possible particular behaviors from actual instances of the behaviors,
what I have been calling real-time dynamism.

The influential American linguist Noam Chomsky perpetuated the idealization of the language system
by making a distinction between performance and competence. The former refers to “the actual use
of language in concrete situations” (Chomsky, 1965: 4) and is not deemed the province of linguistics.
Linguistics is, for Chomsky, primarily concerned with explaining homogeneous invariable competence,
or the idealized speaker’s knowledge of his or her language system. Chomsky’s competence is not a
social construct, as was de Saussure’s langue, but rather psychological, a genetic endowment in each
individual. Nonetheless, they both adopted a similar dichotomy of knowledge and behavior and
proposed that it was the former that was within the scope of linguistic inquiry.

INTRODUCING DYNAMISM INTO LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION

In the following table, adapted from Hopper (1998), the contrast is made clearly between a
Chomskyan rule-based grammar, which Hopper calls an a priori grammar, and one that is emergent.
Thus, from Hopper’s emergent grammar perspective> “language is a real-time activity, whose
regularities are always provisional and are continually subject to negotiation, renovation, and
abandonment” (Hopper, 1988: 120). We can see from Hopper’s words that he finds no
incompatibility with the notion of grammar and the contingent, provisional disorderliness of its use in
real time.

ORGANIC DYNAMISM

Thus far we have spoken of two notions of the term dynamic: change over time and language use in
real time. There is yet a third type of dynamism that it would be worth our while to consider: the
dynamic connection that is made at the intersection of the first two types. After all, when we say that
language changes over time, what do we really mean? Language does not change of its own accord.
On the other hand, changes in a language are not usually the product of willful attempts on the part
of users to alter the code. This is not to deny that a user may from time to time deliberately strive to
create linguistic innovations, as I have done by coining the term grammaring. The point is that
individuals may not intentionally seek to change language, but they do so by their day-to-day
interactions in using it.

Rudy Keller (1985) observes that language is a phenomenon whereby change in the macrolevel
system results from the microlevel behaviors of individuals unintentionally acting to bring about such
consequences. Thus, the behavior of the system as a whole is the result of the aggregate of local
interactions. I will refer to this third type of dynamism as organic dynamism.

Variation is the heart of the scientific study of the living world. As long as essentialism, the outlook
that ignored variation in its focus on fixed essences, held sway, the possibility of evolutionary change
could hardly be conceived, for variation is both the product and foundation of evolution. (Değişkenlik,
canlı dünyanın bilimsel çalışmasının kalbidir. Temelcilik (essentialism) sürekli değişkenlik yerine sabit
özencelere odaklandığı için, evrimsel değişimin olanakları pek düşünülemezdi; çünkü değişkenlik,
evrimin hem ürünü hem de temelidir.)

Linguists recognize Futuyama’s statement as the “Labov principle” (named for the sociolinguist
William Labov), which attests to the link between (synchronic) variation and (diachronic) change. To
put it in plain language, “the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules” (Gleick, 1987:
24). James Gleick wrote this when he was describing what insights chaos theory yielded concerning
naturally occurring systems, such as the weather and the rise and decline of animal species. I have
applied many of these insights to language (Larsen-Freeman, 1997), feeling that language too is a
naturally occurring system that, like the other systems with which chaos/complexity theory deals,
involves dynamism, complexity, systematicity, flexibility, and interconnectedness. One of the promises
of this way of looking at language, therefore, is that it connects real-time processing to change over
time.

THE DYNAMISM OF INTERLANGUAGE

Sfard offers the “participation metaphor.” In the participation metaphor, rather than talking about
acquiring entities, attention is given to activities. According to the participation metaphor, learning a
language is conceived of as a process of becoming a member of a certain community. Learning is
taking part and at the same time becoming a part of a greater whole. What Sfard describes is very
much in keeping with a Vygotskyan sociocultural view of language learning in which language use and
language learning are not perceived as different processes. Indeed, from this point of view, the
phrase target language, which is commonly used, is misleading, because there is no endpoint to
which the acquisition can be directed. The target is always moving. To me the term grammar fails to
capture the process nature of language—its dynamic character. It is fundamental to understand that
language can be described both as a collection of products and as a process. However, since the
product view has dominated in recent times, I have given the other side more attention in this
chapter. Besides, I believe that “organism” is a better general metaphor of developing interaction
among humans.