Thursday 21 May 2015
Thursday 23 April 2015
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.
Wednesday 22 April 2015
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 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.
Thursday 26 March 2015
Theories
Chomsky’s LAD-
First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, the LAD concept
is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and
produce language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or
"innate facility" for acquiring language.
Deb Roy-
Professor Deb Roy of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) is recording his son's development to shed light on how babies acquire
language. The Human Speechome Project, as it is known, uses cameras and
microphones installed in the scientist's home. The project will eventually
gather 400,000 hours of material. There is still a considerable amount of
debate about how infants acquire language. Although listening to the cooing of
parents is thought to play an important part, most scientists believe it cannot
be solely responsible for the rapid progress seen in most children. Instead,
language-specific genes and environmental factors have both been put forward as
additional factors that help children to learn to speak. Until now, the
environmental influences on development have been very difficult to test
because scientists have been unable to observe a baby for long enough in its
home environment. The Speechome Project will change that by generating and
analysing vast tracts of recorded material. For example, to understand how
Professor Roy's son learnt his first words, the scientists will be able to mine
their records to see who used those words around the child, where they were and
what the child was doing at the time. Frank Moss, director of MIT's Media Lab,
believes the project has close parallels to the Human Genome Project.
"Just as the Human Genome Project illuminates the innate genetic code that
shapes us, the Speechome Project is an important first step toward creating a
map of how the environment shapes human development and learning," he
said.
How ‘gaga’ became ‘water’
Skinners operant conditioning-
Behaviour which is reinforced tends to be repeated (i.e.
strengthened); behaviour which is not reinforced tends to die out-or be
extinguished (i.e. weakened). B.F. Skinner (1938) coined the term operant
conditioning; it means roughly changing of behaviour by the use of
reinforcement which is given after the desired response. Skinner identified three
types of responses or operant that can follow behaviour.
• Neutral operants: responses from the environment that
neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being repeated.
• Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase
the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Reinforcers can be either
positive or negative.
• Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the
likelihood of a behaviour being repeated. Punishment weakens behaviour.
Michael Halliday-
Halliday functions of child language:
·
Representational - "I've got something to show
you" - language showing how they feel, declarative
·
Regulatory - "Do as I tell you" -
requesting/asking for things
·
Instrumental - "I want"- expressing
needs/wants
·
Interactional - "Me and you" - speaking to
other, establishing personal contact
·
Imaginative - "Let's pretend" - imaginative
language, used with play, to create imaginary world. Crystal talks of
'phonological' function as playing with sound.
·
Personal - "Here I come"- child expresses
their feelings/expressing personal preferences
·
Heuristic - "Tell me why"- uses language to
explore environment/ seeking information
Most commonly used in children's language is instrumental and
regulatory, which are learnt, along with interactional and personal, at a young
age. Representational is used by 6-8+ year olds.
Jean Berko ‘Wug test’-
The Wug theory: Berko drew a picture of an imaginary creature
and called it a 'wug'. She asked children what more than one wug would be
called. 3/4 of them said 'wugs', applying a rule to a word they could never
have heard before. It was designed as a way to investigate the acquisition of
the plural and other inflectional morphemes in English-speaking children.
Piaget-
Interactionalism: Linked linguistic development with an
understanding of the concepts surrounding the words' meanings, meaning that
speech development is linked to the development of the brain (cognitive
capacity). The stages were: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete
operational, formal operational. He also talked about egocentricism in children
and the idea of games such as peekaboo demonstrating the idea of object
permanence.
David Crystal-
Addition to negatives: once pragmatic competence is achieved,
youngsters learn to copy parents' use of words like 'maybe' when they really
mean 'no'.
Lenneburg-
Critical Period: Furthered Chomsky's nativist argument by
saying that there was a 'critical period' during which children should pick up
language. He argued that is they did not evolve language skills by the age of
five, full grammatical fluency is never achieved. He tested on feral children.
One example to look at is Genie. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_%28feral_child%29)
Bruner-
Bruner created and argued for the Language Acquisition Support
System (LASS). Bruner states through LASS that parents often use books and
images to develop their child’s naming abilities and their ability to get
involved in conversation.
·
Gaining attention- drawing the babies attention to a
picture
·
Query- asking the baby to identify the picture
·
Label- telling the baby what the object is
·
Feedback- responding to the babies utterances
This is also called SCAFFOLDING, where the child is supported
in their learning of language by carers and once they have learnt it, the
support is taken away.
TED talks
Anne Curzan- What makes a word real?
One could argue that slang words like ‘hangry,’ ‘defriend’
and ‘adorkable’ fill crucial meaning gaps in the English language, even if they
don't appear in the dictionary. After all, who actually decides which words
make it into those pages? Language historian Anne Curzan gives a charming look
at the humans behind dictionaries, and the choices they make.
John Mcwhorter- Is texting killing the English Language? (language change)
Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John
McWhorter posits that there’s much more to texting — linguistically, culturally
— than it seems, and it’s all good news.
Deb Roy- The birth of a word (CLA)
Debroys speechome project with his son. How the word 'gaga'
develops into 'water' over a three year period.
Thursday 5 February 2015
Bristol University Grammar Exercises
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/index.htm
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