Prescriptivism and Descriptivism

September 19, 2012

Current Work with Bonobos• After Nim Chimpsky, funding for primate language studies mostly dried up.

• …although a few experiments went on.

• One project involves bonobos, a sub-species of chimpanzees.

• Bonobos Sherman and Austin have also been trained to use lexigrams.

• Kanzi learned just by watching Sherman and Austin’s training!• But the Bonobo project is now in trouble—check out:http://news.iowapublicradio.org/post/bonobo-hope-great-ape-trust-sanctuary

Mission Objectives1. Wrap up Prescriptivism ~ Descriptivism

2. Try to figure out how language can be creative.

• The previous problems with prescriptivism:

1. Confusion about application of prescriptive rules

• (they’re not natural)

• Hypercorrection

2. Standards can shift over time

3. Prescriptive rules form a poor understanding of natural language.

Problem #3: Missing Patterns• Prescriptivist rules do a poor job of accounting for many of the patterns we find in natural language.

• Here’s one prescriptive rule which misses a consistent pattern:

• “Incorrect”: I feel bad (about the accident).

• “Correct”: I feel badly (about the accident).

• Why? The verb “feel” should be modified by an adverb (“badly”), not an adjective (“bad”).

• But is bad/badly modifying the verb or the subject of the sentence?

Linking Verbs• How about these examples?

• Bob is happy. (*Bob is happily.)

• Susie looks hot. (*Susie looks hotly.)

• The water seems fine. (*The water seems finely.)

• I feel sleepy. (*I feel sleepily.)

• James Brown feels good. (*James Brown feels well.)

• The verbs in these sentences are known as linking verbs.

• They connect the subject to some property describing the subject.

• (They do not modify the verb itself.)

Different Standards• Rules for a standard form of a language…

• Normally describe the variety of language used by the group in power.

• Other forms of the language are non-standard.

• And are often identified with social, regional or ethnic groups.

• Linguists have discovered that all forms of language (standard or not) are rule-based and orderly.

• Non-standard forms of the language are not simply mistake-ridden versions of the standard form.

• There is no linguistic reason to consider one variety of language superior to another.

Quick Write:Appalachian English

• Appalachian English is a variety of English traditionally spoken in the Appalachian mountains.

• Developed (and maintained) unique features due to isolation from outside communities.

• One interesting feature:

• a-prefixing…

“a” Prefixing Summary• [a-] form cannot be a noun (#1 and #5)

• [a-] form cannot be an adjective (#2 and #6)

• [a-] form cannot be preceded by a preposition

(#3 and #7)

• first syllable of [a-] form must be stressed (#4 and #8)

• Note: people often consider speakers of Appalachian English to be unsophisticated

• …but the proper use of the [a-] prefix involves a relatively complex set of conditions.

AAVE• Another variety of English that has (traditionally) been low on the prestige scale is African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).

• a.k.a. Black Vernacular English (BVE), Ebonics

• Predominantly spoken by African-Americans

• but not all African-Americans…

• and some others, as well.

• AAVE has a variety of interesting features...

• some familiar: multiple negation, ain’t as an auxiliary

• others are less familiar…

AAVE Verbs• Verb conjugation: third personal singular verbs lack an [-s] marker.

• Ex: He look, it do, she have

• “Paradigm leveling”

• = making a set of related forms more uniform

• (similar to “he don’t”/”she don’t”)

• Under certain conditions, the verb “to be” can be deleted.

• Ex: you so crazy, she workin’, he lucky

• In the same conditions, “to be” can be contracted in standard English:

• You’re so crazy, she’s working, he’s lucky…

To Be Deletion• What are the right conditions for deletion/contraction?

AAVE Standard English

You so crazy. You’re so crazy.

*He as nice as he say he. *He’s as nice as he says he’s.

*Here I. *Here I’m.

They mine. They’re mine.

*How beautiful you. *How beautiful you’re.

• The verb needs to link the subject to something after it.

AAVE: Habitual Be• AAVE also has a form of “to be” that standard English does not.

• “habitual” be

• Habitual be expresses something that the subject does on a regular basis.

• Examples:

• He be working at Tim Horton’s.

• She be late. (= She is usually late.)

• She late. (= She’s late (right now).)

• Do you be tired? (=Are you often tired?)

Descriptive Benefits• Language tends to operate in patterns, even if they are non-standard.

• Important: Appalachian English and AAVE speakers are not just speaking English with mistakes.

• Descriptive linguistics enables us to understand how those patterns work.

• Even if you want to change the world, you’re better off understanding how it works to begin with.

• History of economics analogy.

To Be Fair• Standards are useful because they provide a single form of the language to teach to non-native speakers.

• They help establish uniformity in the written language.

• They can help clear up confusions.

• for instance: supposably

• They also help to distinguish those who have mastered the arbitrary rules from those who haven’t.

• (for better or worse)

• Otherwise:

• They are not useful for (scientific) linguistic analysis.

Linguistic Creativity (again)• One of the crucial design features of language was creativity (or productivity).

• Charles Hockett:

“Language users can create and understand completely novel messages.”

“In a language, new messages are freely coined by blending, analogizing from, or transforming old ones. This says that every language has grammatical patterning.”

“In a language, either new or old elements are freely assigned new semantic loads by circumstances and context. This says that in every language new idioms constantly come into existence.”

• How is it possible for human beings to do this?

To Infinity and Beyond• Last week, we found out that honeybees can produce a variety of different “dance messages”.

= “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 0

degree angle with the sun.”

= “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 45

degree angle with the sun.”

To Infinity and Beyond• The number of different messages the bees can produce is limited only by the number of angles they can differentiate:

• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 1 degree angle with the sun.”

• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 2 degree angle with the sun.”

……………

• “Food source beyond 65 feet, fly at 359 degree angle with the sun.”

• Q: Can the bees dance at angles they haven’t seen before?

• If so, how?

Different Infinities• What kind of infinities exist in human language?

• Note that we can say (translations of) everything the bees can say:

Fly at a 1 degree angle with the sun.

Fly at a 2 degree angle with the sun.

……………

Fly at a 359 degree angle with the sun.

• We can get as detailed as we want to about it, too:

Fly at a 45 degree, 13 minute, 27.6685 second angle with the sun.

Infinity + 1• In addition to the infinity of things the bees can say, we can say other things, too.

• Examples (borrowed from Ray Jackendoff):

A numeral is not a numbskull.

A numeral is not a nun.

A numeral is not a nunnery.

……………

A nun is not a nursery.

……………

An oboe is not an octopus.

Linguistic Infinities• These are uninteresting, but novel sentences.

• In order to understand them, you must know the rule by which they are constructed.

• Rule:

[Sentence] = A X is not a Y.

• Point:

• Knowledge of rules is more abstract than just knowledge of sentences.

Language Model #1

• In this model, all we “know” are the individual sentences we can use in language.

• (no rules)

• This is a good enough model to describe the vervets’ (or prairie dogs’) “language”.

A nun is not a nursery.

Fly at a 45 degree angle with the sun.

I like linguistics.

Language Model #2

• In this model, we “know” all the rules we can use to combine words to form sentences in a language.

• This is a good enough model to describe the bees’ “language”.

• Is it good enough for human language?

A X is not a Y.

X at a Y degree angle with the Z.

X likes Y.

What do you think?• No. There are even bigger infinities.

• Check out these sentences:

Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.

Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.

Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.

Jean knows that Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.

ad infinitum...

• Some “real” examples:

How many rules do we need?1. X verbs that Y is a Z.

2. W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z.

3. V verbs that W verbs that X verbs that Y is a Z.

• and so on…

• Q: Can we store all these patterns in our heads?

• A: No, because no matter how many we store, there is always a longer one…

• So how do we know all of these sentences?

Language Model #3

• Jackendoff: “We know not just patterns of words, but patterns of patterns.”

• This is how we can be infinitely creative with a finite set of rules.

S = X likes Y.

S = A X is not a Y.

S = X verbs that S.

Check it out• Included among the infinite number of things we can say is a lot of complete nonsense.

• Examples (from Chomsky and Lewis Carroll):

• Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

• I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to compose someday.

• ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…

• Check out the postmodernism generator:

• http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

What’s the difference?• Nonsense sentences work because they fit in with the patterns formed by the sentences that actually do make sense.

• (and that we use every day)

• Compare with the following:

• Large green lizards sleep soundly.

• I’m memorizing the score of the sonata I hope to perform someday.

• ‘Twas evening, and the slimy toads

Did squirm and wiggle in the cage…

What’s the difference? (part 2)• But the following sentences don’t work at all:

• Green sleep ideas furiously colorless.

• I’m memorizing the perform of the score I sonata to hope someday.

• Brillig and, slithy and the toves

Wabe gimble in the gyre and did…

• Note: just because we can say an infinite number of things, we can’t just say anything…

Technical Terminology• The set of rules that we know for creating sentences in a language is the grammar of that language.

• The rules of grammar that we know are very abstract. (patterns of patterns)

• Strings of words which do not adhere to these rules are ungrammatical.

• Q: If these rules are so abstract, how did we figure out what they are?

• How do we learn language?

Beneath the Surface• Note: we learn the language that we hear as we grow up, but…

• We never hear the rules.

• We can only learn from examples.

• Our knowledge of language is sub-conscious.

• Analogy: driving a car.

• This knowledge is difficult to characterize.

• (It is not explicitly taught to us.)

How is that possible?• Theory: language acquisition is so hard that we can’t do it by just observing other language users.

• (we need help)

• Claim: every human being has a “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD)

• LAD = innate knowledge of language.

• The LAD helps us learn language as we grow up.

• Interacts with experience.

Predictions• The LAD theory makes some important predictions.

1. Universal Grammar (UG)

• All languages should share certain features in common

• …due to the workings of LAD.

• A basic example:

• All languages have nouns and verbs.

2. Poverty of the Stimulus

• There should be properties of language that people “know” without ever having experienced them.

A More Complicated Example• How do you turn the following sentence into a yes/no question?

• The boy who is sleeping is dreaming of a new car.

• = Is the boy who is sleeping dreaming of a new car?

• Not: *Is the boy who sleeping is dreaming of a new car?

• “The boy” is linked to the second “is”.

• Kids understand this connection without ever being taught about the link.

• They never form the question the wrong way.

• Think: baby turtles crawling towards the ocean.

Recursion• Recursion = another universal property of language?

• which is unique to humans?

• (Noam Chomsky thinks so.)

• Remember, recursion =

• involving a procedure that can refer to itself.

• Ex: an English sentence may consist of:

• [Noun] [verbs] that [sentence].

• With this rule, we can make sentences like:

• Jean knows that Charlie said that Sue suspects that Bill thinks that Beth is a genius.

• Sentences like this could be infinitely long…

Limited Infinities• However: there are limitations on how much we can remember.

• This means that a sentence like: “I don’t know if Ross suspects that Monika thinks that Chandler hopes that Joey supposably believes that Phoebe heard that…”

• couldn’t really go on forever.

• Check out another kind of recursion:

• The boy scared Mary.

• The boy that the dog bit scared Mary.

• How about:

• The boy that the dog that the cat scratched bit scared Mary. (?!?)

Competence vs. Performance• An important distinction:

• Linguistic Competence:

• What a (native) speaker knows about a language.

• Linguistic Performance:

• How language is actually used in speech production and comprehension.

• Word strings that are ungrammatical violate the rules of linguistic competence.

• Other strings are impossible to say (or understand) because of performance limitations.

Performance Problems• Note: it is not impossible for native speakers of a language to make mistakes.

• Ex.: slips of the tongue.

• You have hissed all my mystery lectures.

• = You have missed all my history lectures.

• My wife made me some banana bed yesterday.

• = My wife made me some banana bread yesterday.

• Stammering, pauses, hesitations.

• What matters (for grammar) is not what you actually do so much as what you think about what you do.