Presentation Language and the Mind PS Prof. R.Hickey SS 06

Presentation 20.6.06 Language and the Mind PS Prof. R.Hickey SS 06
Anna Dorow, Marlene Kralemann, Lina Brammen, Ines Kempken, Irina Gawenda, Thomas Demmler and Jennifer Gest

Presenters ▪ Marlene → development of the verb phrase
▪ Anna → language contact ▪ Jennifer→ language change ▪ Ines → mentalese ▪ Irina → language organs and grammar genes ▪ Lina → cognitive development ▪ Thomas → deixis

Part 1 Marlene

The development of the verb phrase
Focus on: discussion & synthesis of available research on the development of the VP in children acquiring languages Marlene Kralemann

Definition: VP The term verb phrase is used to summarize the range of auxiliaries, modals and inflections which signal temporal, aspectual or modal meaning VP differs in its extension from the whole predicate phrase, e.g. in Chomsky

VP development Catalogue of forms used
Detailed account of how the forms are used and misused by a child Comparing children's and adults´ use of VP in the same situation Every child has an individual development, it is possible to see parallels between their developments No possibility to say when a form has been acquired or when the development has stopped

VP development 2;0-2;1: most important change is the number of verbs used 2;2: first auxiliaries appear won't, can't Will turns up in questions & as a response to questions 2;4: more irregular past tense is used, first regular past tenses are noticed, present tense appears; be with –ing is used; correct temporal clauses 3;6-3;10: modal forms like should, would, could and the perfect are used

Catalogue of forms The development of forms is relatively unsystematic
Forms are apparently learned individually and separately, e.g. negative & positive will Their first appearances are often restricted to repetitions of the same sentence The syntactic environment tend to be restricted, particularly the modal forms, which are dependent on question-response sequences and tied to immediate action or inaction

Catalogue of forms Progressive and past tenses vary and are used with increasing frequency over the period considered Connection between the differentiation of past tense and future tense forms & the development of temporal adverbials and interrogatives

Some features of the three main VP systems: 1. tense
Development of past tense: regular: variously/-t/-d/-ed irregular: by vowel change, vowel change and suffix, suppletion, no change Questions: When does it appear? When is it acquired? How is it used?

Some features of the three main VP systems: 2. aspect
Progressive: the suffix –ing is the first, or at least a very early, verb marking to appear in the child's speech Reasons: its salience = it is a suffix coded as a separate syllable its regularity = there are no irregular progressive forms Perfect: period of time that stretches backwards into earlier time

Some features of the three main VP systems: 3. mood
Modal auxiliaries play an important part in VPs for the child A third of all VP forms used by children up to 3;6 contain modals can, will Range of meanings: possibility, necessity, permission, obligation, ability, volition can, can't, will, will´t, shall Relevant: question-response framework, questions are not request for information but preliminaries to activity

Conclusion Development of VP: guideline for future research
1. any work on the VP must concern function as well as form 2. forms cannot necessarily be taken at their face value

Part 2 Anna

Language Contact Anna Dorow Grundstudium LN

Language Contact - Overview
Introduction Lexical borrowing Structural borrowing Convergence Conclusion

Language Contact – Introduction
Linguistic changes are not only internally motivated. Bilingualism or multilingualism means linguistic contact: Elements are transferred from one L to another L . We will examine the effects of this transference.

Language Contact – Lexical borrowing 1
Borrowing = mixing of languages Most common motive for borrowing is necessity (Bloomfield: cultural borrowing). One group of speakers borrows an object or concept from another, and its name tends to come along too. Lexical borrowing requires only very restricted bilingualism. The borrowing speaker must understand or believe he understands the meaning of the items he is learning. Cultural borrowing into English: apartheid (Afrikaans) pyjamas (Hindi) banana (Wolof via Spanish)

Different phases of loans reflect the importance of particular semantic fields. 6th-7th century – religious field Renaissance – literary field 17th-18th century – scientific field 2nd major motivation for borrowing is social: Although cultural borrowing is frequently bidirectional, borrowings generally move from the more to the less prestigious language.

Borrowings are concentrated in the fields where the more prestigious speakers wield the greatest influence. Leech – doctor – physician Ask – question – interrogate (Germanic – French – Latin/Greek) This provides a useful source of euphemisms.

Sometimes speakers of the recipient L feel that their L is overwhelmed: The Académie Francaise parcage – parking campisme – camping English Academy (Inkhorn Controversy) resulted from the new technology of printing, loans= `inkhorn terms´ However, those attempts to save one's language are not accepted very well.

Basic vocabulary is rarely affected by borrowing (always in situations where non L is more prestigious than the other L). The majority of loanwords are nouns. Two ways of LB depending on the degree of integration into one's own system: Adoption or importation (words in donorlanguage form) Adaption or substitution (nativising the form, fit into patterns of the borrowing language) Phonic substitution Grammatical May involve a new meaning (calque/loan translation) Strategies

Language Contact – Structural borrowing 1
Under the impression of outside languages the lexicon is most easily affected, followed by the phonology, morphology and finally the syntax. It seems likely that the extent and type of structural borrowings, will depend largely on rather unpredictable social attitudes. In cases of light or moderate structural borrowing the features borrowed are those that fit typologically into the borrowing language.

In terms of Phonology widespread borrowing may introduce new phonemes into the borrowing language or alter the distribution of existing ones. Morphological material can also be borrowed, but it seems easier to borrow derivational affixes than inflectional ones. Situations with more widespread bilingualism may be adjuvant to much more widespread structural borrowing.

Hierarchy of types of borrowing (Thomason and Kaufmann 1988): Borrowing only of non-basic vocabulary Slight structural borrowing Intense structural borrowing (Dravidian language Brahui) even more widespread structural borrowing (language Mbugu): So much borrowing that L becomes `nongenetic` languages can no longer be regarded as related to the rest of their previous language family `language mixing` (Thomason and Kaufmann) Normally, alteration of the second language, not a mixing of languages.

Language Contact – Convergence 1
Definitions: Contact-induced change different from borrowing. In some sense the inverse of borrowing. Convergence only occurs in cases of: widespread and stable bilingualism and socially equal perceived languages Has its greatest effects on: syntax and morphology, rarely involves lexical items. Convergence is mutual. Not always possible to identify the source of a particular feature.

Takes place in a convergence area, linguistic area or Sprachbund: Includes languages belonging to more than one family but Showing traits in common which are found not to belong to the other members of one of the families Occurs where communication between linguistic groups is essential and all, or the majority of speakers must learn and use two or more languages Individuals have two or more grammars each with its own lexicon and its own set of rules, but They retain their own words and morphemes.

In extreme cases of convergence the grammar becomes similar and there is just one set of syntactic rules, but two sets of lexical items. This leads to ultimate intertranslatability children learn second and further languages only by learning further sets of vocabulary and by performing direct morpheme-for-morpheme translation faciliating of language acquisition and communication

Kupwar (in India) Involving a small community (3,000 inhabitants) Intertranslatability has virtually been achieved Each of the languages acts as a model for some structural changes, while maintaining their own lexical items In each case the source of innovation is clear

The Indian linguistic area Just less than ¾ are Indo-European ¼ are Dravidian A small minority are Munda A general `Indianisation` has occurred (Emeneau, 1956) Gradual convergence among these families Many of the convergence features are non-lexical (phonology features: retroflex consonants and affrication, syntax features) The languages form a geographical band Although the source and direction of innovation is not clear, There are enough innovations to justify Emeneau`s assertation that India is a single linguistic area.

The Balkans Innovation crossing linguistic and political boundaries Some transfer of lexical items (mainly from Greek and Turkish) Spread of linguistic patterns rather than units Each language uses its own lexical material Hard to establish the source of Balkanism The particular combination of features, and the fact that they are not characteristic of non-Balkan languages from the same families, establishes the existence of a Balkan convergence area Alternative Explanations (Substrate theory, Genetic factors) Often the source and direction of innovation is not clear. Incomplete explanations are a way of life for historical linguists, but we do ourselves no favours by rejecting them and substituting even less complete ones which are unfalsifiable!

Language Contact – Conclusion
Language contact and bilingualism may transfer linguistic units and patterns from one system to another. The more stable and prolonged such contact is, the more likely the resulting influence is to be grammatical as well as lexical mutual rather than unidirectional (distinguishing convergence from borrowing). All cases of linguistic contact may be modified by social factors: Languages equal in prestige are likely to show mutual influence. Languages less prestigious are more likely to borrow from a more prestigious one.

Part 3 Jennifer

Contents by Jennifer Gest GS/LN
● What is a pidgin? ● theories of origin ● pidgin structure ● What is a creole? ● morphology ● syntax ● similarities and differences ● conclusion

What is a pidgin? def.: “a pidgin is a contact language, developed in a situation where different groups of people require some means of communication but lack any common language.” Popular def.: “pidgins and creoles are inferior, haphazard, broken, bastardized versions of older, longer established languages.” Romaine(1988) : “ a pidgin represents a language which has been stripped of everything but the rare essentials necessary for communication.”

Theories of origin There are 5 theories which are most popular among linguists : 1. Nautical jargon : assumes that pidgins derived from the lingua franca used by the crews of ships through trading → might explain some similarities in pidgins 2. Independent parallel development : pidgins are similar in structure because they are restructurings of similar languages with European= superstrate language and African= substrate language

Theories of origin 3. substratum theory :
in a pidgin the superstrate language contributes the vocabulary the substrate languages the grammar 4. monogenesis theory : all current pidgins are descended ultimately from Sabir ( a fifteenth- century proto pidgin

Theories of origin 5. baby talk/ foreigner talk :
both relate pidgin origin to second language acquisition; indigenous people learned an imperfect version of the superstrate languages methods : - simplification → simplify the language to be understood ( like in motherese); → initiated by superstrate speakers

Pidgin structure ▪ Each word in a pidgin has a couple of meanings
e.g. Cameroon Pidgin: two words for animals bif → edible bushbif → sth. that is likely to eat you e.g. Tok Pisin: gras → grass ; but also sth. which grows somewhere gras bilong het → grass belong head - “hair” gras bilong maus → grass belong mouth – “moustache” gras bilong pisin → grass belong bird – “feathers” gras bilong solwara → grass belong saltwater - “seaweed”

Pidgin structure ▪ Words are multifunctional - acting as nouns, verbs and adjectives ▪ there is no compounding - complex ideas require a good deal of circomulation Tok Pisin: lilik brum bilong klinim tit - “ toothbrush” bikpela box yu faitim i singaut - “ piano”

Pidgin structure ▪ rarely exhibit inflectional morphology; no marking for gender, case, number and tense Yimas Pidgin: kundammin – “two” or manba – “many” → marking plurality after the noun namban – “towards” → marking the indirect object Tok Pisin: lacks inflections for number pik - “pig”/ “pigs” tripela pik – “three pigs” planti pik – “many pigs”

What is a creole? def.: a pidgin becomes a creole when it acquires native speakers creolisation is the inverse of pidginisation: while pidginisation involves reduction and simplification, creolisation is typical for expansion and elaboration

Morphology creolised Tok Pisin:
- Speakers use -ol to indicate plurality pidgin Tok Pisin: forms periphrastic causative constructions - uses mekim → Yu mekim sam wara boil – you make some some water boil creolised Tok Pisin: shortens the construction - with suffix -im on the main verb → Yu boilim wara

Syntax ▪ while pidgins lack sentence-embedding and have only main clauses, creoles develop embedded subordinate clauses creolised Tok Pisin uses olsem – “that” pidgin Tok Pisin: Mi no save. Ol I wokim dispela haus. creole Tok Pisin : Mi no save olsem ol I wokim dispela haus. - “ I didn´t know that they built this house.”

Syntax ▪ creoles have no syntactic difference between statements and questions although they have question words Guyanese creole wisaid - “which side”= where wa mek – “what makes” = why Haitian creole ki koté – “which side” = where Tok Pisin wanem – “what name” = what

similarities and differences
▪ Romaine says that ‘normal’ languages have approximately 25-30,000 lexical items ▪ Tok Pisin has around 1,500 ▪ pidgin and creole examples: Guyanese creole, Hawaiian creole, Papiamentu, Seychelles creole, Haitian creole, Lesser Antillean creole, Saramaccan, Sranan, Jamaican creole, Mauritian creole, Crioulo, Tok Pisin, Trinidadian creole, Lamso, Cameroon pidgin, Yimas pidgin, pidgin Zulu, Fanagalo, Bislama, Beach-la-Mar

Conclusion ▪ hard to find out when a pidgin becomes a creole
▪ jagons are the basis → pidgins when more complex → creoles most complex+ native language

Part 4 Ines

Ines Kempken (Hauptstudium TN)
Mentalese Ines Kempken (Hauptstudium TN)

Contents Definition: Mentalese
Pinker‘s arguments against thinking in Natural Language Arguments for a Mentalese Monopoly Conclusion References

Definition: Mentalese
Mentalese - A hypothetical language in which concepts and propositions are represented in the mind without words

Pinker‘s arguments against thinking in Natural Language
“We have all had the experience of uttering or writing a sentence, then stopping and realizing that it wasn’t exactly what we meant to say. To have that feeling, there has to be what we meant to say that is different from what we said.” (57)

We remember the gist of something heard, not exact words.

If thoughts depended on words, new words could not be coined.

Language could not be learned.

Translation from one language to another would be impossible.

Arguments for a Mentalese Monopoly
Ambiguity: natural language is (often) ambigous. Our understanding is not. So the medium of our understanding is distinct from natural language.

Inexplicitness: Natural Language lacks “logical explicitness”. This appears related to the Frame Problem - the example given is of a computational system that infers from “Ralph is an elephant”, “Elephants live in Africa” and “Elephants have tusks” to “Ralph lives in Africa” and “Ralph has tusks” - but doesn’t know that all elephants live in the same Africa, while not sharing the same tusks.

The “Co-reference problem”: pronouns and their antecedents co-refer, but this is not explicit in natural language.

Deixis: context determines meaning (often? always?). Example: “a” and “the” have no meaning apart from a particular conversation or text. (killing a policeman vs. killing the policeman)

Synonymy: distinct arrangements of words in natural language mean the same thing, so there must be “something else that is not one of these arrangements of words” (80)

Conclusion “People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought.” (81)

Part 5 Irina

Language Organs and Grammar Genes by Pinker
Irina Gawenda HS/LN

The two types of aphasias
Table of contents: 1. Means of investigating the brain 2. Broca‘s and Wernicke’s discoveries The two types of aphasias 3. DNA Search 4. Conclusion

Better grammar through genetics
- Genetic biologists identified the grammar gene. - Theory: Single dominant gene controls the ability to learn grammar. A child who says “them marbles is mine” is not necessary stupid. He has all his marbles. The child is simply a little short on chromosomes. (Pinker:p.297)

Could there really be a gene tied to something as specific as grammar?
Facts: brain is general-purpose learning device, void and without form prior to experience of surrounding culture. If instinct → embodied somewhere in brain, circuits, prepaid for their role by the genes that built them.

A patient with a sleeping right hemisphere can talk.
What kind of evidence could show that there are genes that build parts of brains that control grammar? Neuroscientists can actually see language in action in the left hemisphere. A patient with a sleeping right hemisphere can talk. A patient with a sleeping left hemisphere cannot.

What exactly is engaging the left hemisphere?
Bellugi’s finding: hemisphere controls - handling, abstract rules and trees underlying language - grammar, dictionary and anatomy of words, - sounds and the mouthings Human language concentrated in one hemisphere - coordinated in time but do not environmental space → words are strung together in order but do not have to be aimed in various directions.

Broca’s area is involved in the production of language.
seems to be implicated in grammatical processing in general. is adjacent to the part of the motor-control strip dedicated to the jaws, lip and tongue

Broca’s Aphasia a syndrome of a slow, labored, ungrammatical speech, which happened from a damaging of Broca’s area.

An example from a man called Peter Hogan
An example from a man called Peter Hogan. He describes what brought him into the hospital. Yes…ah…Monday…ah…dad and Peter Hogan, dad …ah…hospital…and ah…Wednesday… Wednesday…nine o’clock and ah Thursday…ten o’clock ah doctors…two…two…an doctors and…ah…teeth…yah…And a doctor an girl… and gums, an I.

Is Broca’s area the grammar organ?
Not really. Damage to Broca’s area alone usually does not produce long-lasting severe aphasia. The surrounding areas and underlying white matter (which connects Broca’s area) to other brain regions must be damaged as well.

Wernicke’s aphasia the product of an intact Broca’s area.
have a role in looking up words and funnelling them to other areas. Wernicke’s patients have consistent difficulty naming objects. They come up with related words or distortions of the sounds of the correct one: table -“chair” elbow-”knee”, clip-”plick” butter-”tubber”…

DNA-Search The grammar genes would be stretches of DNA, the code for proteins, or the trigger for the transcription of protein. These protein is located in the brain and guides, attracts, or glues neurons into networks. Synaptic tuning takes place during learning, These neurons are necessary to compute the solution to some grammatical problem.

Conclusion No one really knows what either Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area is for. For any grammar gene that exists in every human being, there is currently no way to verify its existence directly.

Conclusion !!! We will never understand language organs and grammar genes by looking only for postage-sized blobs of brain.

Part 6 Lina

How language acquisition builds on cognitive development Lina Brammen

Introduction when children acquire a first language they build on what they know children first set up conceptual representations then add linguistic representations for talking about experience

at about 12-18 months of age children start learning the language they hear
languages differ in how they represent experience

What do children already know when they embark on language?
to begin with, children build on cognitive abilities then narrow their focus to just what happens in a specific language representations of experience are given and just need to be linked to the relevant linguistic categories when the time comes alternative: children first build on what they know and then use language as well in constructing additional categories

What information do children represent?
children get their information about language from their parents and the adults around them children must set up multiple representations of experience

First: children represent experiences gathered from perceptual input, along with information from inferences in context Then: as they start to learn particular languages, their paths diverge children must work out, which categories THEIR language picks out for encoding

children learning different languages will map different linguistic forms and structures onto the same conceptual domain of experience Example: domain of space

Space and spatial language acquisition
infants can discriminate spatial distinctions beginning at months 15-18 months-olds: asked to put a toy in or on a box always placed it in the boy, regardless what the adult had said 1 - 2-year-olds: if box was lying on its side, they first turned it so its opening faced upwards

children attend to canonical orientation (box’ opening upwards) and placement (toy) but they don’t yet understand either IN or ON general conceptual knowledge is displayed in their general cognitive strategies for dealing with relations in space

How are children’s organization strategies related to the meanings of language-specific terms for space? where there is coincidence between the outcome of a strategy and the meaning of a word mapping that word onto the spatial relation is easy where there is only a partial or no match learning how to map the word onto conceptual spatial relation is hard

= consistent with acquisition of English
in ( a match for containment) on ( a match for support) under ( no match for containment or support) children’s representations of space depend on the meanings and contrasts in each specific language e.g. English: in, on, under = Spanish: en

although starting off with the same cognitive representations of spatial relations word mapping will differ from one language to another children display their first knowledge of spatial words by 18 months

when children do not understand something, they typically cope by relying on various strategies for responding children’s coping strategies reflect their initial conceptual knowledge about spatial relations

children follow a similar path as they map words for objects onto their conceptual categories of objects acquiring language: they rely on shape in sorting and grouping objects that are similar

where infants start and the path they follow depends on more than just mapping words onto pre-established categories their early verb uses are generally appropriate for the relevant categories of action: run for running events eat for eating give for giving

Emergent categories children sometimes momentarily mark distinctions that are not conventional in their surrounding language but are nonetheless common in the languages of the world distinctions = emergent categories

Emergent categories = source of information about children’s pre-linguistic categorization of objects and events offer further evidence for a common cognitive basis to most or all languages, they must be abandoned

To what extent do cognitive development and language interact as children learn more language?
1. words themselves might be regarded as invitations to form categories and to individuate object kinds 2. language can influence cognitive development through its availability as a representational resource

3. language offers children a way to make explicit different perspectives on the same event
4. children understand early on that language reflects the speaker’s intentions about how to view objects

Summary children first build on categories that have already been discriminated the conceptual representations they set up in their first year provide a broad cognitive basis onto which they can map words in acquiring a language, children must eventually attend to all the distinctions relevant in that language

Part 7 Thomas

References www.uni-essen.de/ELE Understanding language change
By April M.S. McMahon Cambridge Univesity Press (Chapter 10) Pinker, Steven (1994): “Mentalese” in:The Language Instinct, London: Penguin Press Cole, David (1997) “On Hearing Yourself Think” Cole, David (1998) “I don’t Think So: Pinker on the Thinker; mentalese monopoly in thought not vindicated”

Thanks for your attention
The End

Presentation Language and the Mind PS Prof. R.Hickey SS 06

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