should english slang be in the scrabble bible?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11618704/Lolz-Scrabble-adds-shizzle-ridic-and-yeesh-to-its-approved-words-list.html

A history of English Language- notes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s&feature=em-share_video_user

Anglo Saxon-

Romans leave Britain, Anglo-Saxons flood in.

Anglo-Saxon vocab is much more useful, mainly words for simple, everyday things, like hours, women, loaf and wave.

Four days of the week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) named after Anglo –Saxon gods.

Christians came, everybody was fond of them and they brought more latin words such as ‘bishop’ ‘font’ and ‘martyr’.

Vikings brought words like ransack, thrust, die, give and take.

The Norman conquest- (1066)

William the conqueror invaded England bringing new concepts such as the French language, the doomsday book. French was used for official words such as Judge (1290), Jury (1400), Evidence (1300) and Justice (1154).

Latin was still used in church but the common man used English. Words like cow, sheep and swine came from the English speaking farmers. Versions such as beef, mutton and pork came from the French speaking people.

The English absorbed around 10,000 new words from the Normans.

Shakespeare- (1564-1616)

Around 2000 new words and phrases were invented by William Shakespeare, words such as eyeball, puppy dog, alligator and the hob-nob. Also phrases like ‘flesh and blood’ ‘eat out of house and home’ ‘good riddance to the green eyed monster’. Showed the world that English was a rich, vibrant language with limitless expressive and emotional power.

The English of science- (1700)

Britain became full of Physicists. Royal society was formed. Worked first in Latin. Realised they all spoke English and could communicate easier and quicker using English. Science was discovering things faster than we could name them, such as ‘acid’ (1626) ‘gravity’ (1641) ‘electricity’ (1646) and ‘pendulum’ (1660).  Also words to describe the human body such as ‘cardiac’ (1601) ‘tonsil’ (1601) ‘ovary’ (1658) and ‘sternum’ (1667) also the words ‘penis’ (1693) and ‘vagina’ (1682).

English and Empire-

English was making its name with the world of science, the bible and Shakespeare so they decided to tour around the world and find new places, new resources, new land and people that would conform to their way of living (using the English language and following the queen). They landed on the Caribbean, discovering the BBQ, the Canoe, rum punch and the word cannibal.

India there was Yoga, bungalow and cummerbund. Africa there was words such as voodoo, and zombie. Australia there was words such as Nugget, boomerang and walkabout.

Age of the dictionary-

English was expanding in all directions, there came new men called lexicographers who wanted to standardise the spelling of the English language.

Dr Johnson- Dictionary of the English language took him nine years (1746-1755) to write it was 18”inches tall and contained 42,773 entries.

Words kept being invented so in 1857 the oxford English dictionary was started, took 70 years to be finished after the first editor resigned to be an arch bishop, the second died of TB and the third was so boring that half his volunteers quit and one of them ended up in an asylum. It eventually appeared in 1928 and has been revised ever since.

American English-

1607 the English landed in America, they needed new names for plants and animals so they borrowed words such as racoon, squash and moose from the Native Americans. The Dutch came and shared the American words coleslaw and cookies, later the Germans arrived selling pretzels from delicatessens and then the Italians arrived with their pizza, pasta and mafia. American words came back to English such as ‘’cool movies’’ and ‘’groovy jazz’’.

Internet English-

In 1972 the first email was sent, in 1991 the internet arrived. Before the internet English changed through people speaking it, but the internet brought typing back into fashion. Downloading started in 1980, firewalls in 1990 and toolbars in 1991. Conversations became shorter, people began using abbreviations allowing more time to blog and post on other networks. Abbreviations such as ‘btw’ ‘lol’ ‘rofl’ and ‘lmao’ started being used. Some changeds even passed into spoken English such as ‘FYI’ and ‘FAQ’ .

Global English-

Stole and borrowed words from over 350 languages and established itself as a global institution. Right now around 1.5bn people speak English, of these around a quarter are native speakers a quarter speak it as there second language and half are able to ask very simple questions/say simple phrases. 

Some theories for CLA

Innateness theory (Chomsky, 1965)

Noam Chomsky argued against Skinner's theory. He reasoned that children have an innate ability to acquire language through what he called a ‘language acquisition device' (LAD).

Chomsky claimed that all languages have a different surface structure - French and English sound different from each other through their differing intonations and stresses. However, he felt that all languages share the same deep grammar structure, or linguistic universals - subject–verb-object. His theory suggests we are pre-programmed with this deep structure. Chomsky's theory explains how children can understand sentences they've never heard before.

Critics such as Bard and Sachs (1977) argue that children don't learn to speak automatically. They need to communicate and interact with others – innateness alone is not enough.

Before acquiring cognitive ability, children are unable to contrast sizes and cannot use comparative language. Piaget showed that, looking at a range of sticks of differing sizes, they use words such as ‘short' or ‘long' but not the comparative terms ‘shorter' or ‘longer'.

Skinner claimed that children learn language by copying or imitating those around them.

Chomsky maintained that, whilst all languages have a different ‘surface' structure, they all contain the same deep grammar structure. His theory suggests we are pre-programmed with this deep structure as a kind of language acquisition device. Click your answer to see the options you chose.

The ‘cut-off’ age

As well as theories on how children acquire language, there are theories about when. Eric Lennenberg’s (1967) theory suggests that there is a critical period in a child’s life during which they are able to acquire language. Lenneberg’s theory claims that language acquisition is linked to maturation. He proposes that the human brain is designed to acquire language at a certain time. Lenneberg suggested that there is a cut off age around 12 or 13 years and that once this period has passed language leaning slowed down or in effect was no longer possible.

The Science

The brain begins to grow at around 18 months old. It has acquired grammar and phonology by about four years of age and it is widely accepted that an ability to acquire language probably extends this learning period up to the middle of the second decade. After this point, it is said that there is a decline in the neural plasticity of this area of the brain, severely impairing language acquisition ability.

Assessing Lennebergs Theory:

Genie’s story-

Unfortunately, there have been occasions to test Lenneberg’s theory . Studies highlight that the plight of ‘Genie’, a 13 year old American girl raised in appallingly deprived circumstances. Locked away from the world, deprived of language and forbidden to speak, she was denied human interaction. When she was discovered she did not have language as we know it- just ‘grunting’ sounds/ Despite many varied learning programmes, Genie never spoke in a fluent manner. It appears that Genie was rescued too late to acquire language within the critical period.

Victor’s Story-

Victor, often referred to as feral child was discovered at 12 years of age. Initially, he was mute and again despite extensive treatment and a loving carer he never learned to speak properly.

Criticisms-

Some ask the questions: Were Genie and Victor intellectually damaged from birth and incapable of learning how to speak? Others ask: Were the speech therapists and specialists’ methods inadequate in helping Genie and Victor? Would they have fared better in the care of others?

Has it been accepted?

It has been widely accepted that there is some truth in Lenneberg’s theory, the immense language leaning ability, which accompanies us through out early years, does seem to be shut down by some kind of genetic programming around the time of puberty. Genie and Victor’s cases would have also supported a theory by another well-known psychologist- Vygotsky. Vygotsky (1978), argued that a child is only able to acquire language when he is interacting with people in his environment and, in particular in co-operations with his peers. Obviously, neither Genie nor Victor had the opportunity to do this. 

Model answer for CLA

At three years plus Sam is using more complex language and ideas in the story on the tape. It is full of information and he is using longer and longer utterances. He is able to use verbs but the tense is still problematic (‘I drawed’ instead of ‘I drew’) where the endings are irregular. The overused rule at this stage is that children ten to assume that all past tenses end in –ed. Adjectives are used (pretty, red) and he uses conjunctions to allow additional information into the story but they are limited as shows by the repeated use of ‘and’ and ‘and then’. There is still some difficulty with irregular pluralisation (mens).

CLA quick summary

Summary

The first three stages children tend to go through in acquiring language are:

·         Crying, (a child’s only form of communications in the early weeks of life.)

·         Cooing (through which a child gains control of their vocal chords.)

·         Babbling (where reduplicated monosyllables (mama dada) often sounds like a child is calling a parent.

Further Stages that children tend to go through are:

• One word stages: first words usually reflect a child’s environment and they are often holophrastic in meaning.
•     Two-word stage: demonstrates a child’s first sentences and contains a primitive grammar.
•  Telegraphic stage: sees utterances made up of words that tell us the main message but leave small unimportant bits out.

Theories:

• Theories of child language acquisition (Skinner):  Imitations and reinforcement theory- Skinner though that children learn by imitations language. When this is successful they are rewarded by praise and are motivated to do it again. Largely discredited now.
• Theories of child language acquisition (Chomsky): Innateness theory- all children are born with the capacity to learn underlying grammatical rules which govern their language. This is called the LAD device.
• Theories of child language acquisition (Piaget): This theory emphasizes the importance of a child’s intellectual development regarding its learning of language.
• Critical period (Lenneberg): Critical period hypothesis- This theory suggests that there is a critical time in a child’s life, during which time they are capable of acquiring language. However, this time is limited- evidence suggests that the cut off age is around 13 years old. 

Stages of CLA

Year one:

The first year sees babies working on speech sounds. By the time they are six months old they are making the characteristic burbling sounds we associate with ‘baby talk'. The first year can be roughly divided up into the stages: crying, cooing and babbling. Click the stages in the timeline to find out more.

Crying:

The first sound a human baby makes is to cry. Often known as vegetative noises, this is the only way it can express pain, pleasure or hunger. It is an instinctive noise and is therefore not considered a language.

Cooing:

A baby's brain development is in front of its body development and it therefore has to exercise the 100 different pairs of muscles it takes to produce speech sound. Cooing (or gurgling) is a sound development that occurs at around six to eight weeks old. Babies experiment with ‘coo', ‘goo' and ‘ga' and gradually gain more and more control over their speech organs (or vocal cords).

Babbling:

Babbling begins at six to nine months old. It is not learned or copied but pre-programmed. The work-out of the vocal cords means babies repeat syllables over and over. Combinations of vowels and consonants, such as ‘ma', ‘pa', ‘da', are produced and repeated and therefore ‘mama' and ‘dada', known as reduplicated monosyllables, often sound like adult language, and proud parents believe it is baby's first word.

Year two:

The second year of development sees an increase in the ability to manipulate speech sounds and more of a shaping of sound into familiar pronunciations. The second year can be roughly divided up into the stages ‘one-word', ‘two-word' and ‘telegraphic'. Click the stages in the timeline to find out more.

One-word:

At this stage, children begin to concentrate on building phonemes into words, beginning largely with nouns, that reflect their needs and interests. Often words for objects a child encounters everyday are the first. Basically, they build a personal vocabulary to deal with their world. Single words convey more than one meaning - “milk!” may mean “I want some milk.” or “I've spilt some milk.” Words used in this way are called holophrases. They substitute a complex grammar.

Two-word:

This stage, during which the major speech pattern is of two-word utterances, happens around 18-24 months old. This is particularly significant because here young children are demonstrating an understanding of the rules that govern how we communicate meaningfully. An example of a two-word utterance might be “Daddy ball!” which could mean a variety of things including “Daddy get the ball”, “That's Daddy's ball” and “Daddy throw the ball”.

Telegraphic:

A few months after the two-word stage (age varying from child to child) comes what is known as telegraphic stage. Children begin to utter increasingly complex multi-word sentences and grammatical words and endings are also present. This speech is considered to be ‘telegraphic' or like a ‘telegram' in that it includes all the important function words, leaves out ‘little' words like conjunctions, auxiliary verbs and prepositions.

Year three:

By year three, children are effective language users: still needing to practice, still needing to develop additional lexis, but fundamentally with the building blocks for all future language use. At this stage they begin to crack the code of implied meaning: to understand that, sometimes, language contains messages which can seem to contradict their face value statements.

Year four:

Children are sophisticated language users by year four. They understand that language carries a multiplicity of meanings, that it can be manipulated and that different audiences require different language use including variations in lexis and intonation. In other words, by year four, their use of language is purposeful.

Year five:

A critical factor in year five is that it is the age that most children start school. So here we see a shift from spoken language as the complete focus to written language: learning to read. This shift towards literacy sees children beginning to make links between print and meaning.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jamila_lyiscott_3_ways_to_speak_english