Language as a Cognitive System
The major perspective we adopt in this book regards a language as a cognitive system which is part of any normal human being's mental or psychological
structure. An alternative to which we shall also give some attention emphasises the social nature of language, for instance studying the relationships
between social structure and different dialects or varieties of a language.
The cognitive view has been greatly influenced over the past five decades by the ideas of the American linguist and political commentator Noam
Chomsky. The central proposal which guides Chomsky's approach to the study of language is that when we assert that Tom is a speaker of English, we
are ascribing to Tom a certain mental structure. This structure is somehow represented in Tom's brain, so we are also implicitly saying that Tom's brain
is in a certain state.
1 What is the nature of the cognitive system 2 How do we acquire such a system?
which we identify with knowing a language?
3 How is this system used in our production and 4 How is this system represented in the brain?
comprehension of speech?
Pursuit of these questions defines four areas of enquiry: linguistics itself, developmental linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.
Linguistics: The Grammar Within
To begin to answer question (1), Chomsky identifies knowing a language with having a
mentally represented grammar. This grammar constitutes the native speaker's
competence in that language, and on this view, the key to understanding what it means
to know a language is to understand the nature of such a grammar.
Competence is contrasted with performance, the perception and production of speech,
the study of which falls under psycholinguistics. Consider the situation of a native
speaker of English who suffers a blow to the head and, as a consequence, loses the ability
to speak, write, read and understand English. In fortunate cases, such a loss of ability can
be short-lived, and the ability to use English in the familiar ways reappears quite rapidly.
Lexicon Syntactic Component
A dictionary which lists all the words found in the language, Specifies how to combine words together to form phrases and
specifying phonological, grammatical, and semantic properties sentences
PF Component LF Component
Determines the phonetic form of words in connected speech through Determines the logical form and meaning relationships between
phonological processes words in sentences
The view we have introduced implies that natural languages are infinite in scope - a native speaker of English will recognise that sequences of sentences
could be indefinitely extended. But the infinite nature of the set of English sentences does not entail that the principles of combination used in
constructing these sentences are also infinite; and it is these principles which form part of a grammar.
Developmental Linguistics: How Children Acquire
Language
First Birthday 2 Years
Children produce their first recognisable word (e.g. Children start to form elementary phrases and
Dada or Mama) sentences ("Want apple")
1 2 3 4
18 Months 2.5 Years
Speech consists largely of single words spoken in Most children produce adult-like sentences ("Can I
isolation (e.g. "Apple") have an apple?")
Chomsky maintains that the most plausible explanation for the uniformity and rapidity of first language acquisition is to posit that the course of
acquisition is determined by a biologically endowed innate language faculty within the human brain. This provides children with a genetically
transmitted set of procedures for developing a grammar.
Linguistic Experience
Innate Faculty
Target Grammar
The poverty of the stimulus argument: Children's linguistic experience is insufficient to account for their mature grammatical knowledge.
They don't receive systematic information about unacceptable sequences, yet they develop the ability to recognize them. This suggests
something must supplement linguistic experience - the innate language faculty.
The language faculty must incorporate a set of Universal Grammar (UG) principles which enable the child to form and interpret sentences in any natural
language. This ability is species-specific and unique to human beings, distinguishing us from even our nearest primate cousins.
Psycholinguistics: Language in Real Time
The psycholinguist addresses the question of how the mentally represented grammar (linguistic competence) is employed in the production and
comprehension of speech (linguistic performance). The most direct approach is to examine how a generative grammar provides an account of how we
understand and produce sentences in real time.
Lexical Semantic
Recognize words in input Compute sentence meaning
Phonological Syntactic
Identify speech sounds Build sentence structure
Garden-Path Sentences
A sentence such as "The soldiers marched across the parade ground are a
disgrace" is known as a garden-path sentence. A common reaction from
native speakers is that it's not acceptable, but this changes when they
consider related sentences.
The soldiers who were driven across the parade ground are a
disgrace
The soldiers driven across the parade ground are a disgrace
The soldiers who were marched across the parade ground are a
disgrace
Garden-path sentences show that sentence comprehension must involve
something beyond the grammar. The sentence processor has been
"garden-pathed" - sent down the wrong analysis route, suggesting that
the parser relies on additional principles beyond those determining
acceptable word combinations.
Serial Processing Parallel Processing Knowledge Integration
Different sub-components are ordered Alternative model allowing syntactic and Whether non-linguistic general knowledge
sequentially - phonological processing semantic factors to influence earlier stages about the world can "penetrate" sentence
completes before lexical processing begins simultaneously perception and guide interpretation
Neurolinguistics: Language in the Brain
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Sociolinguistics: Language in Society
Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language use and the structure of society. It takes into account factors such as the social
backgrounds of both speaker and addressee, their relationship, and the context of interaction, maintaining that these are crucial to understanding both
the structure and function of language used in a situation.
Speaker Relationships
Good friends, employer-employee, teacher-
pupil, grandmother-grandchild
Social Backgrounds
Age, sex, social class, ethnic background,
degree of neighborhood integration
Interaction Context
In bed, supermarket, TV studio, church,
loudly, whispering, phone, fax
Language Variation and Change
The study of language variation involves searching for consistent
patterns in variable linguistic behavior. Most people use both standard
and non-standard features in their speech, combining different sounds,
words, or grammatical structures depending on the situation.
William Labov pioneered a synchronic approach to studying language
change using the apparent-time method. Instead of comparing
language data from different historical periods, this approach collects
data from people of different ages within the same community at one
point in time.
Young Speakers Language Change Social Spread
If young people's speech differs from older This difference likely indicates language We can study how changes spread through
people in the same social group change in progress different social groups
This approach allows linguists to study language change as it actually takes place and understand how changes spread through society, answering
questions about which social groups lead language changes and how they spread from one group to another.
Exercises and Further Exploration
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