11.10.

23

What is language?

- speech
- writing
- system of signs
- means of communication
- something that distinguishes people from animals
- an aspect of culture
- factor of nation identity
- a way to express our thoughts

Language is not something that can be easily defined. It’s almost impossible to do so.

English: language vs. a language

Polish: język vs. języki

French: langage vs. langue

general ability to speak specific system

Definition nr 1:
E. Sapir: Purely human, non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotion, desires by
means of voluntarily produced symbols.
meaning: It’s something that characterises our species. it doesn’t naturally happen,
it’s rational. It's made of symbols, voluntarily - it’s decided by the person communicating.

- How about other areas than ideas, emotions, desires?

“ideas” seems problematic, trying to restrict messages into categories is a bad idea.
- Body language is the same!
People can tell things just by looking at our body, controlling emotions.
- Is it really non-instinctive?
People can say things under impulse and instinct or under emotions, when acting too
fast.

Definition nr 2:
B. Bloch, G.Trager: (...) System of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group
co-operates.
meaning: it’s vocal, we can’t answer why we say what we say (why is a “tree” named
a “tree”?), random combination of sounds and meanings. There’s a social dimension, used
to do things together.

- Does cooperation mean communication?

It’s not the same, you don;t have to say stuff to make other do something
 - Are linguistic symbols arbitrary?
hiss, buzz, splash - imitate natural sounds (onomatopoeia). that contradicts that
statement.
- How about the mental/conceptual element of linguistics symbols?
they ignore this problem

Definition nr 3:
N.Chomsky: (...) to be a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and
constructed out of a finite set of elements.
meaning: there are rules how long sentences can be/ how to construct a sentence
and what it will include.

- Is language only about sentences?

What is the purpose of the sentence?

Definition nr 4:
V. Evans, M. Green: (…) cognitive linguists, like other linguists, attempt to describe and
account for linguistic systematicity, structure and function. However, for cognitive linguists,
language reflects patterns of thought; therefore, to study language is to study
patterns of conceptualisation.
meaning: language depends on what’s happening in our mind.
​
- Isn't it more a kind of psychology than linguistics?​
- Where is language and where is cognition? How to tell the difference?

Question “What is language?” can be compared to the question “What is life?”

Definitions make sense but within their way of studying language.

Types of languages
● Natural
eg. English, Polish, Chinese. Developed naturally, over time.
● Artificial
○ Formal
eg. computer programming, mathematics, etc.
○ Constructed
Resembles natural languages, invented by people, don’t evolve naturally,
created on purpose. E.g. Esperanto (invented by 1 man to be spoken around
the world), Quenya.

Special cases of systems of communication called “languages”:

- sign language - deaf, mute people
- body language
- animal language - eg. the language of bees.
 Language-system and language-behaviour

Langue vs. Parole

(F. de Saussure)
Objective set of language rules Actual, individualistic use of “Langue”

Linguistic competence vs. Linguistic performance

(N.Chomsky)
Mastery of language Engaging in speaking, which is a
kind of behaviour

Studying can focus on rules of language or a way people use language to communicate.

Homework 1 (notes from the 1st chapter of “the study of language” by G. Yule)

There’s no evidence how language came to be. We share the ability to produce simple sounds with
other animals but that’s not human language. However, there’s many speculations about it.

In religious texts, the ability to speak seems to come as a gift from gods. To test that, an experiment
where infants were left in isolation with no way to hear any human language was carried out. In one of
them (greek) the infants after 2 years could only imitate goats they’ve been around. In Scotland, a
similar experiment showed that children would start speaking Hebrew, although it hasn’t happened in
any other case.

There’s also imitation of natural sounds, called the “bow-wow theory”. Humans would name things
after sounds they made like: splash, bang, cuckoo, buzz, hiss (onomatopeias). This doesn’t explain
how soundless or abstract things got their name. It also has been suggested that sounds may have
come from natural expressions like ouch, wow, yuck but they’re pronounced with sudden intake of
breath and talking is based on exhaling.

“Yo-he-ho theory” also included natural sounds - sounds that were made during physical effort like
grunts, hums, groans when f.eg. carrying trees, mammoths. It places the development in social
context and early people must have lived in groups which provided better protection, so
communication on some level was required. This doesn’t explain the origins of the sounds produced.
Other living things can make grunts but can’t talk.

Physical source. When humans made the transition to an upright posture, we developed certain
physical features which would become later relevant for speech: straight teeth, complicated and
flexible lips, muscular tongue. Human larynx(“krtań”, contains vocal cords and folds) is also in a
different position than other primates - it also makes us more susceptible to choking on food. Long
cavity above the larynx - pharynx increases the range and clarity of the sounds.

Tool-making source. Tool-making means the human brain was working and developing: functions that
control motor movements involved in speaking and object manipulation are very close to each other -
there may be an evolutionary connection between them. Humans may have produced noises to
indicate objects in their environment. This however lacks structural organisation. Humans may have
first developed a naming ability and then brought another noise to make a complex message.
Genetic source. The babies in the first few years of life resemble chimpanzees. That made scientists
look for something more than small physical changes. Even deaf children become fluent language
users. Innateness hypothesis, belief that humans are genetically equipped to acquire language, points
that it’s something that happened quickly.

THEORY MAIN IDEAS POSSIBLE CRITICISM

The divine source 1. Language is a gift given Experiments show that language
to people by a deity. doesn’t appear spontaneously.
2. language appears in
people spontaneously.

The bow-wow theory Language is an imitation of How about abstract concepts and
natural sounds words for soundless objects?
(onomatopoeia).

The pooh-pooh theory Language developed from These sounds are produced while
instinctive sounds inspired inhaling and have not developed
by emotions. into words.

The yo-he-ho theory Language developed to Animals use sounds to cooperate

facilitate coordination of too, but haven’t developed a
(the social interaction) work. language.

The physical adaptation Language developed thanks But why did people start speaking?
source to the evolution of the
human body.

The tool-making source Making tools influences the But why did people start speaking?
development of the motor
cortex which sends impulses
to the speech organs.

The innateness hypothesis Language is something The gene responsible for this has
people are born with – we not been discovered yet.
(genetic source) have it in our genes.
 Linguistics as science.

What is linguistics?
The scientific study of language(s).
The subject of study: natural language.
The “father” of linguistics is Ferdinard de Saussure.

Linguistics is:
1. descriptive, not prescriptive (describing factors, rules influencing language in
objective way, not judging)
2. empirical rather than speculative or intuitive. (analysing data, observing the data
-reading, speaking the language- instead of just philosophy, which is more
speculative, opinionated)
Saussure wanted to break the previous idea of how to study/use language – how it should
be used in the standard model, no dialects etc.

Linguistics is not:
1. studying a lot of languages and being a polyglot.
2. learning how to use a given language correctly.

Questions linguists attempt to answer in their research studies:

● How and why languages resemble and differ from each other?
● How and why do languages change over time, and how are they related?
● How do the categories of language relate to the world?
● How does the mind enable us to produce and understand utterances?
● How do children acquire language?
● How does language vary across different social and cultural contexts?
● How to make computers talk and ‘understand’ human languages?

Branches of linguistics

Synchronic (how they’re used today, the contemporary use of them, their present state)
vs.
Diachronic (looking at the development of languages and how they change over time, the
historical perspective on their development)

Theoretical(constructing a theory about language)

vs.
Applied(application of linguistic theories to practical tasks, e.g. language teaching,
translation etc.)
Various perspectives on linguistics:
Language only (microlinguistics): studies of structure of languages, something
independent.
Grammar(the rules governing the use of the given language):
- phonetics(more practical)/phonology(more theoretical) (the study of sounds)
- morphology (the structure of the words, their meaning, etymology)
- syntax (the structure of the sentence, the rules creating a sentence)
- semantics (the study of meaning)
- pragmatics (meaning in context)

Language in broader perspective (interdisciplinary perspective) (macrolinguistics):

- neurolinguistics (neural bases from human language)
- psycholinguistics (language processing in mind)
- bio linguistics (biological aspects of language production and reception)
- sociolinguistics (social factors influencing languages: age, background, sex, occupation,
varieties of language)
- computational linguistics (linguistics and computer science)
- clinical linguistics (the problems of language dysfunctions in a medical perspective)
- forensic linguistics (how linguistics can be used to help solve some crimes)

History of linguistics
1. early grammarians (ancient India, China, Greece, mediaeval Europe)
2. historical grammarians (W. Jones, W. von Humboldt, J. Grimm)
3. neogrammarians (K. Brugmann, K.Verner)
20th century
4. structuralism – one of the most influential schools (F. de Saussure, L. Bloomfield)
5. functionalism (R. Jakobson, M. Halliday)
6. generativism (N. Chomsky)
7. anthropological linguistics (F. Boas, E. Sapir, B. Lee Whorf)
8. cognitive linguistics (R.W. Langacker, G. Lakoff, M. Johnson)

Homework – 2nd chapter g. yule

communicative signals – behaviour that intentionally provides information
informative signals – unintentionally provides information (eg. accent, shifting in your seat, sneezing)

reflexivity – property of human language that allows language to be used to think and talk about
language itself, one of the distinguished features of human language.
The rest of the distinct properties of human language: displacement, arbitrariness, productivity,
cultural transmission and duality.

Displacement – humans can refer to past and future, allows to talk about things not present in the
immediate environment. One exception may be bee communication, although it isn’t as complex and
is very limited.
Arbitrariness – there is no connection between a linguistic form and its meaning,, e.g “dog” doesn’t
look like a dog. There are some onomatopoeic words but they are relatively rare. In animal signals, it
looks like there is a connection between the message and the signal used to convey it.

Productivity – allows users to create new expressions, also called “creativity” or “open-endedness” by
manipulating linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. Animals can’t invent new
words or signals in their language – fixed reference – every signal is fixed to a particular objects or
occasion.

Cultural transmission – we acquire language in a culture and not genetically. Process where a
language is passed from one generation to another is called cultural transmission. Animals are born
with a set of specific signals that are produced instinctively.

Duality – human language is organized at 2 levels: physical level where we produce individual sounds
like n, b, i. None of these have meaning. When combined as “bin”, we have another level producing a
meaning. We are capable of producing a large number of words with a limited set of sounds. Animal
signals have a single fixed form that can’t be broken into separate parts.

Early Grammarians
Ancient India
Translations and descriptions of Vedas - secret holy texts of Hinduism (15th cent. BC)
The oldest known grammar by Panini (5th /4th cent. BC) in India (Sanskrit)

Ancient China
One of the oldest monolingual dictionary (3rd /2nd cent. BC)

Ancient Greece and Rome (from the 7th cent. BC)

Explaining the rules of grammar on the basis of logic. Invented terms like: rhetoric, poetic,
onomatopoeia, categories, etymology.
The school of Alexandria (4th /3rd cent. BC) – descriptive and critical analysis of texts, a
big library with lots of manuscripts and people who worked with them.

Middle Ages
The language of common people was Latin, when the Roman empire collapsed, it started to
develop into other languages. Original latin didn’t die fully, it became lingua franca (an
international language) thanks to the catholic church, all the serious documents, scientific
works were written in latin.
St. Jerome’s translation of the bible from Hebrew into Latin – translation called Vulgate,
served as a reference point of grammar of Latin (347-420).
Prescriptive approach to grammar for teaching purposes – everyone should write, speak
latin the same way.

Historical grammarians
William Jones (1746-94) – a british scholar, a polyglot, studied Sanskrit (sacred old Hindu
language) – started comparing it with English and other languages to identify which shared
similarities are related. Thanks to that we know how to classify languages (Indo-European).
It is said that they come from one mother language from which they developed.

Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) – scholar in an university, has written a big book on german
grammar: “deutsche grammatik” – a shift of interest from latin to national languages.

Wilhelm von Humboldt – visited colonies and lands, interested in foreign languages, wrote
that not only Latin follows rules and is consistent, every language does.

Neogrammarians
The german school of Leipzig:
Karl Brugmann
Karl Verner
(Less grammar and more use) The object of linguistic investigation is not the system, but the
idiolect (e.g. how u pronounce words, everyone has its own). Focus on sounds: the most
important level of language.
The goal: the historical changes of languages

Structuralism
Ferinard de Sassure – taught in his works that language is something objective,
autonomous, we can focus on its rules to learn it. Language is made of units which have
hierarchy, smallest are sounds, phonemes – morphemes (phonemes with meaning) – words
– sentences – discourse. There are rules which govern each of these
Bloomfield – developed these ideas, talked of language as a perfect mechanism, we can
identify consistent rules, neglected all the problems of using language in communication.

Functionalism
Roman Jakobson – came from russia, but worked in prague (“the prague school”), focused
on functions of language in communication, listed 6 funciotns of language which are still
accepted today:
• Referral – refer to the world, talk about places, people, abstract ideas, natural
phenomenons
• aesthetic – being able to judge, to say what is good bad ugly, beautiful, expressing your
opinion
• emotive – expressing emotions,
• conative – language being used to influence people and make them do something,
teachers giving instructions, commercials, adverts, politicians
• phatic – connected with controlling of channel of communications, (…, yes? Yeah?),
check if listener is listening, the channel is open and active
• metalingual – using language to talk about language, analysing the rules of grammar,
sounds
Michael Halliday – systemic functional grammar of english – how structures in english are
used to express meaning – language is a resource for meaning, linguistics is the study of
how people…..

generativism
Noam chomsky – believed that language is a kind of structure, however wanted to look for
the source of language – in the human mind, people are born with the ability to learn
language, in our minds we have something called universal grammar and innate ability to
create sentences. We naturally generate sentences.
There are 2 levels of sentences: deep structure – created by universal grammar, how we
create sentences.
surface structure – a string of words.
Sentences that differ by surface structure can have the same deep structure:
Pat loves Chris
Chris is loved by Pat

anthropological linguistics (1st half of XX cent)

Franz Boas
Edward Sapir
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Languages are organised in completely different ways between European and indigenous
languages of America – they used directions like north, south, east, west in their languages
so they were aware of that all the time. Theory that the language we use influences the way
we think of the world.

Jerzy Bartmiński (1939-2022) – theory of the linguistic picture of the world – studied images,
way people speak. Looked for stereotypes about people, objects in grammar, idioms, texts.

Cognitive linguistics
late 1970. objection to generativism, said its not good that people focus so much on
structure, we shouldn’t overlook how the meaning is created, on how we use it and speak
the way we do. We find the source in our cognition, how we think about the world.

George Lakeoff, Mark Johnson – talking about abstract ideas (e.g. emotions, life) we use
knowledge from physical experiences and transfer that knowledge to talk about those –
“metaphors we live by”
Ronald Langacker – ((((nwm czy dobrze wstaiwone))))))))shows that our choices of grammar
depend on our cognition, how we experience the world.

1. perception (experience)
2. thought (conceptualization) - expressing what our mind produces
3. linguistic expressions
Hw “animal communication”
Communication - the passing or exchange of information - is what distinguishes living and non-living
creatures, as even plants send each other signals and animals communicate with us so effectively
that they are held to use “language”. Animals communicate not only using sounds but with scent, light,
ultrasound, visual signals, gestures, colour.

Scent - chemicals used specifically for communications are called pheromones, e.g reproductive
readiness, marking territory.
Light - lightning bug which uses flashes to indicate its identity, sex, location.
Electricity - certain eel species use electrical impulses at various frequencies.
Colour - identifying members of their own species, also territorial defence and mating readiness.
Posture - like dogs who lower their bodies when they’re submissive. Postural communication is also
found in humans and other primates.
Gesture - may be defined as active posturing, e.g. waving a hand, flicking a tail.
Facial expressions - specific types of communicative gestures. Chimpanzees have a wide and
recognizable variety of facial expressions.

A sign - unit of communication structure that consists of:

- a Signifier - word, scent, gesture,
- something Signified - that exists in the real world, is represented by the sign - its conceptual
content.
All signs are associated with meaning, e.g. “danger”, “item of furniture with legs and flat top”.
Individual instances of signs are called tokens.

The baby threw the rattle - 5 word tokens but 4 signs (the occurs twice as token but the same sign in
both instances)

Signs can be divided into 3 types:

1. Iconic - bear resemblance to their referent, e.g. a photograph, onomatopoeias.
2. Indexical - points out its referent, typically by being a representative sample of it. Its said that
there’s a casual link between an indexical sign and its referent
3. Symbolic

8.11

Animal Communication
Animals communicate in 2 ways: vocal and non-vocal.

Non-vocal:
- facial expressions (apes)
- gestures (dogs, cats)
- posture (dogs)
- movement (dance - bees)
- light (fireflies)
- scent (dogs, cats)
- electricity (eels)
- toxins (frogs)
- colour (octopus)
Vocal:
- birds: calls; song – only by male birds, it can develop and change
- whale (humpback) also sing (only male)
- bottlenose dolphins – can make 30 different sounds (English is above 40). Have a
signature whistle – each one has its own, comparable with our names.
- prairie dogs – their calls included what kind of predator is approaching, its size and
distance.
- primates (monkeys, apes) – make 16 different sounds, often use vocal
communication.

Human language vs. animal communication

Design features of human languages

Charles Hockett:
- listed the so-called design features of human languages – make our language
unique, only human language is characterised by these features.
- distinguished human language from animal communications
- defined language as a system that has all the design features:

1. interchangeability – all members of the species can send and receive messages
2. feedback - users of the systems are aware of what are they transmitting
3. specialisation – the communication system serves no other function but to
communicate
4. arbitrariness – there is no natural or inherent connection between a symbol and its
referent
5. discreteness – the communication system consists of isolatable, repeatable units
6. displacement – users of the system are able to refer to events remote in space and
time
7. productivity (creativity) – new messages on any topic can be produced at any time
8. prevarication – the system enables the users to talk nonsense or to lie
9. learnability – a user of the system can learn other variants
10. duality – two levels of language: meaningless sounds (e.g. /n/, /b/,//i/ are combined
to form meaningful units (e.g bin)
11. cultural transmission (tradition) – at least certain aspects of the system must be
transmitted from an experienced user to a learner.
12. reflexiveness – the ability to use the communication system to discuss the system
itself

Communication with animals

Clever Hans (horse) – learnt how to answer questions by tapping his hoof and nodding his
head – it read signals given by its owner and did as told.

Horses, dogs – response to a particular good stimulus

Dr I. Pepperberg's experiment with African grey parrots.

Bottlenose dolphins – were trained to understand artificial language.

Communication with primates

Sign language experiments:
Washoe (chimp) – learned to use sign language (more than 100 signs plus her own
inventions, combined spontaneously to form utterances).
Koko (gorilla) – a similar conversational ability in sign language.
Nim (chimp) – was taught to use the sign language (unsuccessful – frequent repetitions of a
small number of signs)

Non-signing experiments:
Gua (chimp) – grew up with a boy, learning to understand about 100 words.
Viki (chimp) – was trained to say English words by shaping her words – unsuccessful.
Sarah (chimp) – learned to use plastic symbols (produced simple sentences)
Lana (chimp) – learned to communicate using a system of symbols (yerkish) on a keyboard,
perhaps as a trick to get rewards
Kanzi (chimp) – learned by being exposed to the learning of Yerkish to his foster mother
Matata (developed a vocabulary of over 250 words)