Lecture 25 - Language Instinct

Be able to describe (in general terms) the influence of culture on language.

Cultural influence on language, like English 2 words for same concept (sweat or perspiration, eat or dine, died or deceased, want or desire)

Be able to give some examples of how the Norman invasion of Britain continues to influence modern spoken English. Understand that this influence is different from the issue of how people have the ability to work with language at all.

-Normans from France successfully invaded England, became upper class, their words were more fancy/formal (urine or piss, excrement or shit)

Understand what it means (and does not mean) to say that language is an instinct.

No one teaches it in schools, its something you’re born with,

The specialized skill of human animals, humans instinctively learn it

Effortless, unconscious, procedural knowledge

Understand why the way children learn language suggests that they are not simply mimicking other speakers.

The mistakes that children make are not ones they’d hear adults make, they’re just over-applying grammar rules like “I’m felling” or “Don’t giggle me”

Pidgin

create/creation of a jargon (EX: woman ‘meri’, coffin ‘die bokus’ (death box)

(not actual words/spellings, but they are similar to original words)

not a true language, no rules, tenses, suffix/prefix, etc.

Creole

Starts as a Pidgin

children of slave workers (parents die or get separated so kids don’t learn native language) only learned the pidgin, thus developing it into a language

Understand how the development of a creole from a pidgin suggests that language is re-invented by children.

If there is a pidgin, you can convert it into a language

Language / Language learning is not imitation because kids are by themselves and learn/create their own language after developing pidgins

Understand the relation between dialects and languages.

AAVE (African American Vernacular English) vs. SAE (Standard American English)

Dialects determine words, pronounciation, grammar, accent, one language cah have multiple dialects (SAE and AAVE languages have different dialect and certain rules)

Be able to explain word dropping in AAVE and it’s relationship to contractions in SAE.

SAE allows contracts/contractions in only some situations(they are → they’re). AAVE allows word-dropping in only some situations (if you are bad → if you bad). Each dialect follows the rules, but the rules are different

Understand why there is really no “correct” English speech.

none are right, they just have different dialects of English