Pragmatics & discourse, language acquisition, language change

Pragmatics

the study of how we use language in context and how context contributes to meaning

linguistic context

what has been said earlier in the conversation

extra linguistic context

context outside of a language/conversation

situational context

the local environment of the utterance

social context

the relationships and norms of the social situation

given information

assumed by the speaker because it is common knowledge. Either extra linguistic context or previously established in the discourse

new information

assumed by the speaker to be unknown or not likely inferred by the listener

grices cooperative principle

people in conversations assume that what people say is intended to contribute to the purposes of the conversation.

maxims of quality

Expectations of honesty. Say what you believe to be true, dont say something that lacks adequate evidence.

maxims of relevance

contribute to the topic, be relevant

maxims of quantity

provide the right amount of information, make contributions as informative as required, not more or less.

maxims of manner

make straight-forward contributions. Be brief, orderly, avoid ambiguity, avoid being obscure

violating maxims

someone doesnt conform to the requirement of a maxim, could be intentional or unintentional

Violating maxim example

Parent: "What would you like for lunch"

Child: "When's screen time?"

(relevance)

flouting maxims

a speaker says something that in its literal form violates a maxim but can be understood through the communication (jokes, humor)

flouting maxims example

"I'm pretty sure my tik tok is going to go viral"

"Right, and I'm going to win the Nobel Prize"

entailment

facts must be true if a given proposition is true. If A, then B (b is entailed by a)

Proposition: Monique owns a red card

Entailment: monique owns a car, monique owns things (not entailed: monique owns a sports car)

Conversational implicature

inferences made based on a language. information inferred from the non-literal meaning of a sentence. implied, sarcasm

"Ann was an okay professor"

Implicature: Ann was neither an excellent nor horrible professor

speech acts

language lets us perform actions. Assertion, question, request, order, promise, threat

direct speech act

Locution: the utterance/sentence. "I apologize for being late"

Illocution: Communicative intention. Apology? Assertion?

Perlocution: Effect on the listener. Appeased? Remorseful?

indirect speech act

Someone is blocking the door.

Locution: the utterance/sentence. Can you open the door"

Illocution: Communicative intention. Asking to open the door, not questioning ability.

Perlocution: Effect on the listener. May open door, feel annoyed, ignore it.

Milestone: 0-1 month

cooing, not true speech sounds

milestone: 6 months

Babbling (more likely to produce stops [p b m t d n k g s h w g])

milestone: 8-11 months

first signs of comprehension (can distinguish between sounds)

milestone: 11-13 months

first word production

milestone: 12-18 months

one word speech, accumulate words. Requests (juice), labels (daddy). Simplification of words, syllable deletion (potato [dedo])

milestone: 18-22 months

vocabulary spurt, 2 word speech. Location, action, theme. Baby chair, doggie bark, ken water

milestone: 2-4 years

complex syntactic structures. Man ride bus

milestone: 5-6 years

more basic syntactic structures. 12k-14k words, fluent production

competence

arent aware of the nuances of language

performance

immature phonological abilities limit input and output abilities

comprehension

cant always identify individual words and sounds

production

cant always articulate inflections. could drop a coda

Positive evidence

babies receive positive evidence from hearing grammatical sentences, not negative.

Brown & hanlon (1970)

transcripts of parent-child interactions. Found that production of approval doesn't differ based on correctness or content of the utterance

over regularization

application of grammatical rules to an irregular item

experience matters

What you grow up with, you learn; exposure. Language learning is experience-dependent.

Innateness

Humans are genetically predisposed to acquire language. Language structure is aided by neural structures.

Lenneberg (1967)

Critical Period Hypothesis - Without linguistic interaction before 5-6, language development is severely limited (link to Genie). Critical period ends around puberty.

Genie case study

13 year old found living in isolation, never learned a language because never exposed, proves nurture plays a role in language development (critical period). Vocabulary grew but syntax never developed

Poverty of the stimulus

When linguistic input is impoverished, children learn linguistic grammars that are more sophisticated and more complex than what they were exposed to.

Nicaraguan sign language

Individuals: The younger they were entering the more fluent they were. 1st cohort was 10 or older. 2nd cohord age 4.

Conclusion: children created the grammatical rules/structure to the language. Younger children take the impoverished input, regularize it, and make it more complex.

synchronic linguistics

the study of a language at a given point in time

diachronic linguistics

study of language development through time

historical linguistics

language change across time and history

language changes based on

creativity, social factors, geographic division

acronym

combining initial letters into a pronounceable word

blend

combining phonemes of 2 or more words. snow + armageddon = snowmageddon

clipping

shortening of a word. (application --> app)

coining

creating new words by combining phonemes (quark)

borrowing

cookie: dutch koek (cake) + -je --> koekje (little cake)

semantic changes

broadening, reduction, elevation, degradation

broadening

The meaning of a word broadens, incorporates a larger number of things. Cupboard - a location for cups and plates --> general purpose cabinet

reduction

meaning of a word narrows, the number decreases. Meat - solid food --> animal flesh

elevation

a word becomes more positive. Pretty: cunning --> clever --> attractive

degradation

word becomes more negative. accident: chance event --> unfortunate occurence

factors in word choice

lexical support, vocabulary convergence

lexical support

non verbal aids to build vocabulary

vocabulary convergence

natural tendency to express a concept with a single word

paradigm leveling

Taking grammatically conditioned set of forms and making the forms more similar or identical. Complete or partial elimination of variation within a paradigm.

I am = I is

we are = we is

"I weren't there" instead of "I wasn't there"

cēozan

choo[z]e

scalar implicature

A type of conversational implicature that occurs when a speaker chooses a relatively vague expression rather than a stronger, more specific one.

presupposition

something assumed in advance

Deictic expressions

Word or expression that takes its meaning relative to the time, place, and speaker of the utterance. ("tomorrow", when is tomorrow?)

morphological regularization

A pressure/preference for uniformity causes ways of speaking to become erased in favor of a dominant pattern.

phonological merger

a sound change where two or more distinct sounds (phonemes) that were once separate become indistinguishable and merge into a single sound (cot-caught, mary-merry)

deictic expression example

that, me, it

non-deictic expression example

so, cool, let, see

genie and chelsea takeaway

their vocabulary grew steadily but their syntactic abilities remained poor

home signs

the signs that deaf children who do not have access to a sign language create to communicate with their hearing family members

aglospeak

alternative spellings or code words used online to avoid algorithmic censorship — represents a form of language change driven primarily by technological and social constraints rather than by natural shifts in pronunciation or grammar.