1. Based on Ch. 8 of The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
The Tower of Babel
Prof. Julia Nee
Based on Ch. 8 of The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

2. Are languages more similar or more different?
Martin Joos: “languages could differ from each other without limit and in unpredictable ways”
Noam Chomsky: a Martian scientist would conclude that earthlings, aside from their mutually unintelligible vocabularies, speak the same language
Thoughts?

3. Are these similarities or differences?
Isolating languages vs. Agglutinating languages
Isolating: Use fixed words to mark the players in a sentence.
The dog bit the man.
The man bit the dog.
Agglutinating: Add affixes to mark the players in a sentence.
Person.marker+base+aspect-mood.marker (Mixe)
Fixed word order vs. flexible word order

4. Word Order What are the possible orders for Subject – Object – Verb?
SVO and SOV account for the majority of languages
A few are VSO
Less than 1% OVS
OSV?
The fact that there are six possibilities, but only two are common and one may not even exist  is there some underlying mental grammar?

5. Theories explaining language universals
There is a “language gene” (the capacity to learn language is a part of our brain)
Language originated only once
Language developed out of a general learning strategy in our brain

6. Are we genetically wired for language learning?
What if language originated only once?
All existing languages come from the original source
Similarities come from that original language
Counter-arguments:
Creolization
New signed languages
Creolization: two languages come into contact  speakers develop a pidgin, then a creole (2 generations); follows language universals, even if those universals are not present in either of the original languages

7. Creolization
When speakers of different languages are forced to communicate, they develop “pidgins”
Pidgin: strings of words borrowed from the component languages; variable in word order; little or no standard grammar
Hawaiian sugar plantations called for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Philippinos, and Puerto Rican workers
THERE ARE NO NATIVE SPEAKERS OF A PIDGIN

8. Creolization
Ex:
Me capé buy, me check make.
He bought my coffee; he made me out a check.
I bought coffee; I made out a check
When the second generation of speakers is exposed to the pidgin, they regularize it into a language, with a standard grammar
Da firs japani came ran away from japan come.
The first Japanese who arrived ran away from Japan to here.
Complete grammar; use English verbs as auxiliaries, prepositions, case markers etc.
FLESH THIS OUT

9. Signed Languages
Naturally occurring languages that are found wherever there is a community of deaf people
Signed Languages are not necessarily related to one another
Nicaraguan Sign Language
1979: Establishment of the first school for the deaf in Nicaragua
Brought together deaf students from around the country never before exposed to sign language
Due to the Sandinista government
Trained children in lip reading and speech
Video - (7mins)

10. Signed Languages
First students brought their own systems of gesture or homesign
Combined to form a pidgin – Lenguaje de Signos Nicaragüense
Younger deaf students were exposed to the pidgin
Created a creole – Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense
Full study

11. Signed Languages
ISN was more complex and had fixed grammatical structures
Greater number of verbs with a greater number of arguments
Greater number of inflections per verb
Greater agreement on each verb
New students learn the more complex system

12. Are we genetically wired for language learning?
What if language originated only once?
Creolization
New signed languages
What if language universals reflect universals of problem solving and thought?
Why would it be easier to conceptualize things one way or another?
Rules are arbitrary in an information sense, but not in a grammatical sense
START HERE ON TUESDAY
Mice-eater vs. *rats-eater

13. Language Acquisition
Hypothesis that there is a “critical period” in language acquisition (before age 7)
Our general problem solving skills increase with age, but our language learning skills decrease with age
Children are excellent at figuring out language rules subconsciously; adults are terrible at figuring them out consciously

14. Critical Period in Language Acquisition
Need to be exposed to language input during the critical period before about 7 years old in order to develop language
Evidence for a critical period:
Immigrants
Children in captivity
Deaf children of hearing parents
Immigrants:
Living in the US at least 10 years
Shown sentences with grammatical errors: The farmer bought two pig. The little boy is speak to a policeman.
Immigrants arriving between 3-7 = American-born individuals
8-15 = worse
17-39 = worst of all
Deaf children of hearing parents
Never as good at signed languages as those exposed in early childhood
Children in captivity
Genie: discovered at age 13 (1970) in an LA suburb; kept without interaction with other humans  no language input; could only say “Mike paint. Applesauce buy store. I like elephant eat peanut.”
Isabelle: discovered at age 6.5 from her grandfather’s house where she lived with her mute mother  learned to speak normally “Why does the paste come out if one upsets the jar? Do you go to Miss Mason’s school at the university?”
IF WE’RE SWIMMING IN TIME AFTER DAY 1, GET THESE STUDIES FOR THE STUDENTS TO PRESENT THEMSELVES!

15. Immigrants Studied immigrants living in the US at least 10 years
Shown sentences:
The farmer bought two pig.
The little boy is speak to a policeman.
Immigrants arriving between 3-7 performed the same as US-born individuals
8-15 performed worse
17-39 performed worst

16. “Wild Children” Genie Isabelle Mike paint. Applesauce buy store.
I like elephant eat peanut.
Isabelle
Why does the paste come out if one upsets the jar?
Do you go to Miss Mason’s school at the university?
Genie: discovered at age 13 (1970) in an LA suburb; kept without interaction with other humans no language input; could only say “Mike paint. Applesauce buy store. I like elephant eat peanut.”
Isabelle: discovered at age 6.5 from her grandfather’s house where she lived with her mute mother  learned to speak normally “Why does the paste come out if one upsets the jar? Do you go to Miss Mason’s school at the university?”

17. Deaf Children of Hearing Parents
Deprived of language input if they are not exposed to a signed language
Develop gesture or homesign
When exposed to signed languages, they can learn, but if they are too old when they’re first exposed, they never gain fluency

18. Specific Language Impairment
Inability to inflect (plural, tense)
The boy eat three cookie.
Yesterday the girl pet a dog.
Could not pass the “wug” test
Sass  sasss
Wug  wugness
Zat  zackle
Given intensive speech and language therapy, but it didn’t solve the problem

19. Specific Language Impairment
Classic example of dominant gene: Those who have the disease have a 50% chance of passing it on
If you’re not impaired, your children are not impaired
Could the children have learned it? Not likely  same environment (even the third generation twins)

20. Aphasia Damage to Broca’s area  Broca’s aphasia
Understand what is said but have difficulties speaking (slow, ungrammatical)
Me…build-ing…chairs, no, no, cab-in-nets. One saw…then, cutting wood…working…
Damage to Wernicke’s area  Wernicke’s aphasia
Fluent speech, but doesn’t make sense
[“What kind of work have you done?”] “We, the kids, all of us, and I, we were working for a long time in the…you know…it’s the kind of space< I mean place rear to the spedwan…”
Me…build-ing…chairs, no, no, cab-in-nets. One saw…then, cutting wood…working…

21. Aphasia and ASL Speakers of ASL are affected the same way by aphasia!
Can use their hands for purposes other than signing
Can pantomime
Shows that ASL actions are organized differently in the brain than other actions

22. Teaching Language to Apes
Allen and Beatrice Gardner taught a chimp named “Washoe” a version of sign language
Francine Patter raised gorillas “Koko” and “Michael” with signs
Herbert Terrance worked with the chimp “Nim Chimpsky”
Equivalent of 3 year old English
Humans usually improve on this; even in cases where they’re exposed to incomplete language (pidgin) they add complexity

23. Teaching Language to Apes
Basic signed communication
Taught explicitly
Apply signs to larger categories
Produce new strings of signs
Equivalent of 3 year old English
Humans usually improve on this; even in cases where they’re exposed to incomplete language (pidgin) they add complexity
One learned the word for “drinking straw” and applied it to all tubes
Water bird = swan; cookie rock = stale roll

24. Teaching Language to Apes
Apes’ use of signs suggests:
They have concepts that are structured similarly to ours
They can attach concepts to external symbols (signs)
Do they have a mental grammar?
Have basic word order (“Roger tickle Lucy” vs. “Lucy tickle Roger”)
Very redundant (“give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you”)
As the utterances get longer, they don’t get more complex (unlike child speech development): play me, me Nim, tickly me, eat Nim  play me Nim, eat me Nim, eat Nim eat, tickly me Nim  eat drink eat drink, eat Nim eat Nim

25. Teaching Language to Apes
Don’t acquire vocabulary the same way as human children
Ape language learning more similar to learning a written language system like Chinese
Acquisition of signs may be the result of general learning strategies; language learning is different
Human children learn about 10 words a day to get up to 10,000 words by age 5

26. Teaching Language to Apes
Can apes communicate?
Can they acquire grammar?
Is their communication like the human use of language?

27. Why is this significant for comparative linguistics?
Look for similarities and differences that are significant
Some linguistic traits are common, so they may have arisen by chance
Traits that are more unique are more reliable for comparing related languages
If we are genetically wired for language, all languages are likely to have SOMETHING in common
End here Tuesday???

28. Why do languages change?
Freeman Dyson: “it is nature’s way to make it possible for us to evolve rapidly” by creating isolated ethnic groups in which undiluted biological and cultural evolution can proceed swiftly
But linguistic evolution does not have foresight

29. Why do languages change?
“The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel…we find in distinct languages striking homologies due to community of descent, and analogies due to a similar process of formation…Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally, according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when extinct, never…reappears.” -Darwin

30. Factors in Language Change
Related languages are the result of evolution from a common language or proto-language
Languages change through:
Variation: linguistic innovation
Heredity: ability to learn
Isolation: migration or social barriers

31. Learning in Language Evolution
Why do we need to learn languages? Why isn’t the language innate?
Communicative – we need to share our code with our communicative partners
Generation to generation, there are changes  learning language rather than having innate language allows us to adapt
Takes a lot of hard wiring to have a genetic component for EVERY linguistic element

32. Variation in Language Evolution
Borrowing
Coining new words
Reanalysis: listener interprets language differently from the speaker
“naranja”  “norange”  “a norange”  “an orange”  “those oranges”
“hammer-did”  “hammered”
Syntactic Changes: optional things become obligatory
“Give him a book” and “give a book him”
Reanalysis  we are constantly looking for rules, so sometimes we find rules where there are none!

33. Separation The majority of the language is preserved each generation
Colin Renfrew: Indo-European spread as farmers began cultivating more and more territory

34. Separation
FLESH OUT THE SPREAD OF INDO-EUROPEAN

35. Separation

36. Hittite Was spoken in present-day Turkey
Date back to 16th or 17th century BC!

37. Tocharian Discovered in 1900 in China Two distinct dialects
Texts that were found are incomplete

38. Indo-Iranian
Indic
Iranian

39. Indic Oldest is Sanskrit, specifically the Vedic language of the Vedas
Panini wrote grammar in 4th century BC
Sanskrit used (like Latin) long after it was no longer spoken
Developed into languages of modern India (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarathi, Sinahlese, Romani)
Originated in Punjab, then spread to the south
Veda = knowledge; oldest hindu religious texts
Dravidian languages (UNRELATED) are the farthest south

40. Iranian
Avestan – language used in the “Bible” of teachings of Zarathustra
Old Persian – language of King Darius of the Persian empire

41. Balto-Slavic Slavic Baltic Old Church Slavonic – oldest from c. 865 AD
First use of Cyrillic alphabet
East Slavic – Russian, Ukrainian
South Slavic – Bulgarian, Macedonian, BCS
West Slavic – Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Sorbian
Baltic
Lithuanian and Latvian
Old Prussian (now extinct)

42. Celtic Originally from Central Europe Became extinct on the continent
Only “Insular Celtic” survived
Celtic
Welsh
Cornish
Breton

43. Italic
Latin
Italian
Spanish
Catalan
Portuguese
French
Romanian
Occitan
Extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula (Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, South Picene)

44. Germanic South of Norway and Sweden, Denmark and Germany
East Germanic (Gothic)  extinct
North Germanic (Scandinavian languages)
West Germanic (English, Frisian, Dutch, German)
Angles and Saxons went to England, where they spoke “Old English”
Frisian is the closest relative of English because Angles, Saxons, and Frisians were a community in NW Germany before the migration to England

45. Conclusions
Languages of the world have profound similarities despite surface differences.
This leads us to believe that we have an underlying “language instinct” that is hard-wired into our brains.
Language evolves in a way that is similar to species evolution: innovation, heredity, and isolation contribute to new language traits.

46. Language Universals Joseph Greenberg’s survey of 30 languages
Types of Universals
Absolute – there are no exceptions to the rule
Statistical – one pattern is more likely than another
Implicational – if X, then Y
What are some of the “Language Universals” that we know? What type are they?
No languages form questions by reversing the order of words within a sentence
Subjects tend to precede objects
Verbs and objects tend to be adjacent
If SOV, then question words at end and postpositions; if SVO, then question words at beginning and prepositions

47. Gullah English-based creole
English = “target language” (language of prestige which speakers wished to acquire)
African languages = “substrate languages” (languages of speakers that served as a grammatical “base”)
About 4,000 words taken from the Sierra Leonian language Krio