Notes on Language, Writing, Prescriptive Grammar, and Modality (1.3–1.5)

1.3.1 What Language Inherently Is and Is Not

• Language knowledge (competence) = vast mental knowledge about using a language to communicate ideas.

• Non-essential aspects of language that can cloud what it means to know a language: writing and prescriptive grammar.

• Goal: show that writing and prescriptive rules are related but not fundamental to “what you know” when you know a language.

• Writing and prescriptive grammar are not primary focus of linguistics (though Chapter 15 discusses writing systems).

• Writing and prescriptive rules often have prominent roles in other classes about language(s).

1.3.2 Writing Is Secondary to Speech (And Not Necessary for Knowledge of a Language)

• Speaking/signing vs writing are two forms of communication with different functions; neither is superior. Writing is not a more perfect form of communication.

• Language, as in File 1.2, consists of mental knowledge: a lexicon and a mental grammar.

• To reveal linguistic knowledge, speakers must perform language; speech is the primary manifestation of language.

• Modern linguistics treats speech (spoken or signed) as the primary object of study; writing is the representation of language in a different physical medium.

• Speech is considered primary because it is more immediate; writing adds a step: idea → mental grammar → written form.

• Modern technology blurs the line (texting, email, recordings can preserve speech; recordings can preserve speech; text can be transmitted quickly).

• For data, linguists prefer spoken language as the best source of data and object of description (except for languages with no native speakers, e.g., Latin).

• When illustrating examples, conventional written transcriptions of audio forms are used, with phonetic conventions given in Chapter 2; audio icons indicate recordings (see File 1.1.5).

• Reasons why speech is more basic than writing:

  • a. Writing must be taught; spoken language is acquired naturally. Children learn to speak naturally; writing requires explicit teaching.

  • b. Writing does not exist everywhere spoken language exists

  • c. Neurolinguistic evidence shows that writing processing/production overlays brain areas involved in speech.

  • d. Writing can be edited before sharing, while speech is often spontaneous; this shows immediacy of speech.

  • e. Writing arose later historically than spoken language (writing in Sumer ~6,000 years ago; spoken language likely hundreds of thousands of years).

• Misconception: writing is more perfect than speech. Several reasons contribute:

  • a. Writing can be edited and thus appears more polished; writing often results from deliberation and revision; speech is spontaneous.

  • b. Writing is associated with education and the standard variety; this can give the impression that writing is the norm, though standard writing is not inherent to language.

  • C. Writing is more physically stable (written forms persist) and spelling appears less variable than pronunciation; however, this stability does not indicate that writing is more fundamental.

• Note: linguists focus on spoken language; writing relates to language in fascinating ways (Chapter 15).

1.3.3 Language Is Not Prescriptive Grammar

• Three kinds of grammar:

  • (a) mental grammar: the linguist’s actual understanding in individuals or groups.

  • (b) descriptive grammar: the linguist’s description of how a language is spoken.

  • (c) prescriptive grammar: socially embedded notions of what is “correct” or “proper.”

• Descriptive grammar describes actual usage without judgment; prescriptive grammar judges usage as “correct” or “incorrect.”

• Prescriptive rules illustrate what people think should happen, not what actually happens. Examples of prescriptive rules (1)–(1c):

  • a. Do not end a sentence with a preposition. NO: Where do you come from? YES: From where do you come?

  • b. Do not split infinitives. NO: to boldly go where no one has gone before; YES: to go boldly where no one has gone before

  • c. Do not use double negatives. NO: I don’t have nothing. YES: I don’t have anything. I have nothing.

• Prescriptive rules make value judgments about correctness; but mental grammar rules are what actually exist and can differ across speakers.

• Descriptive statements illustrate language competence without normative judgments:

  • a. Some English speakers end sentences with prepositions.

  • b. Some English speakers split infinitives.

  • c. Some English speakers use double negatives for negation.

• Descriptive grammars may vary by speaker groups (e.g., Ohio State University undergraduates may produce constructions like The room needs painted, which are grammatical for some speakers but not for others — adaptions occur over time as mental grammars learn from exposure).

• Prescriptive rules may persist because they are linked to social status and norms; nonstandard dialects can be stigmatized, affecting social mobility and identity.

• Language varieties: prescriptive rules are used to mark social identity and mobility, but they do not reflect intrinsic linguistic validity. Descriptive grammars remain the tool for discovering mental grammars.

• Historical origins of prescriptive rules (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries) include idealization of classical Latin as a pure standard; several prescriptive rules mirrored Latin rules rather than actual English use:

  • (1a) Endings with prepositions were discouraged because Latin did not end with prepositions.

  • (1b) Infinitives should not be split because Latin infinitives were single words.

  • (1c) Double negatives were viewed as nonlogical; this was extended from logic to language.

• Old English permitted double negatives; by Shakespeare’s time, double negatives were uncommon in educated speech but common in dialects. Bishop Lowth (1762) argued against doubles by logic, but usage-based descriptivism shows that many languages permit doubles; language change continues regardless of prescriptive rules.

• Prescriptive rules persist because they correlate with social status and standard language ideals, but they are not linguistically superior. Linguists rely on descriptive grammars to understand mental grammars.

• Change over time: ideas about grammaticality can change; Jane Austen’s 1818 example (The trunk is being carried down) shows that a construction once considered awkward may become acceptable.

1.4.1 How to Identify Language When We Come across It

• Defining language is difficult; one approach is to identify descriptive features that characterize language.

• Hockett’s design features of language (the design features) describe descriptive properties of language; there are nine such features. While many communication systems share some features, only those displaying all nine features can be called a language. The features are ordered from most universal to most specific; first three are shared by all communication systems; final two are unique to human language.

• The standard version of Hockett’s design features provides a framework for identifying languages and distinguishing natural languages from other forms of communication.

1.4.2 Mode of Communication

• Mode of communication = the means by which messages are transmitted and received.

• Most human languages are auditory-vocal (spoken) but many are visual-gestural (signed).

• The term language modality refers to the production and perception channel (audio vs visual).

• Sign languages are acquired as first languages in childhood and can be learned later; they are not mere codes or pantomime.

1.4.3 Semanticity

• Semanticity means that signals have meaning or function within a system; words/signs convey intended meaning.

• Examples: even unknown words/sentences carry meaning; e.g., understanding that There was a large amount of frass in the tubes with the fruit flies has meaning even if frass is unknown.

1.4.4 Pragmatic Function

• Language serves a purpose beyond meaning: it can help us stay alive (ask for food, request help), influence others, and learn about the world.

• Sets phrases (e.g., greetings like "Nice weather today" or "Hey, what’s up?") help initiate conversation and maintain social structure.

• Gossip also serves social bonding and information exchange.

1.4.5 Interchangeability

• The ability of individuals to both transmit and receive messages: everyone can produce and understand language.

1.4.6 Cultural Transmission

• Language aspects are learned through social interaction, not solely genetically predetermined.

• Children learn the language(s) or dialect(s) used by their community; lack of exposure to language in childhood prevents language acquisition.

1.4.7 Arbitrariness

• a. Linguistic Sign: Form + Meaning = Linguistic Sign. Example: pit [pɪt] = inner core of a peach (pit) in English. The form–meaning connection is typically arbitrary; the same form can have different meanings in different languages, and different forms can express the same meaning.

• b. Evidence for Arbitrariness: cross-linguistic differences; the same meaning often has different sounds across languages; there are no universally recognized forms for given meanings.

• c. Onomatopoeia: some forms imitate natural sounds, but even onomatopoetic words vary across languages (e.g., rooster sound in English [kɑkədudldu] vs Chinese [kukuku]); cross-linguistic tables show that onomatopoeia is not universally identical.

• d. Sound Symbolism: some sounds evoke meanings (e.g., high-front vowels like [i] in words meaning smallness: teeny, petite, wee, mikros, -ito); these show partial nonarbitrariness due to phonetic associations with meanings.

• e. Nonarbitrary Aspects of Language: while arbitrariness dominates, there are modest nonarbitrary aspects (e.g., poets manipulate onomatopoeia for phonetic effect; sound symbolism can influence poetic effect).

• Notes: nonarbitrariness and iconicity are limited in scope; they are present but secondary in most language aspects.

1.4.8 Discreteness

• He is fast is built from discrete units: words and individual sounds; sounds like [h], [i], [ɪ], [z], [f], [æ], [s], [t] are discrete units.

• A language has a limited inventory of sounds (roughly 10–100); e.g., English has about ~50 sounds.

• These discrete units can be recombined to form many meaningful units (words), and words can be rearranged to form larger units (phrases, sentences).

• From a small set of meaningless units, a large number of meanings can be created (potentially infinite).

1.4.9 Displacement

• The ability to talk about things not present in space/time during the act of communication (e.g., color red not present; people in different states; past/future events; fictional beings).

1.4.10 Productivity

• Productivity = language’s capacity to generate novel messages from discrete units; there is no fixed set of possible combinations.

• Humans can produce and understand an infinite number of sentences; novel sentences convey new propositions (e.g., "Funky potato farmers dissolve glass").

• Understanding of new sentences relies on knowledge of the rules for combining words and their meanings.

• All levels of linguistic structure have productive rules; these rules generate new forms for communication.

1.4.11 What the Design Features Tell Us, and What They Don’t Tell Us

• All languages exhibit all nine design features; any system lacking them cannot be a language; only human communication systems display all nine features (File 14.1 discusses animal communication in relation to these features).

• A system that displays all nine features is not automatically a natural language. Examples include formal languages (e.g., C++, mathematical logic) that cannot be acquired as a native language by children.

• Constructed languages (e.g., Esperanto, Elvish, Klingon) may imitate some properties of natural languages but are not necessarily natural languages. Distinctions are drawn between:

  • natural languages: evolve naturally in a speech community; learned by children; have evolving lexicons/grammars.

  • constructed languages: invented and may or may not become natural in a community; may aim for international communication or fictional purposes.

  • formal languages: not learnable by children as a native language; not acquired via community usage; different from natural languages.

• For purposes of the book, the focus is on natural languages; other types exist but are distinguished.

1.5.1 Auditory-Vocal and Visual-Gestural Languages

• Language is a cognitive system with rules in the brain; however, transmission depends on modality: how it is produced and perceived.

• Most familiar languages are auditory-vocal (spoken); others are visual-gestural (signed).

• Signed languages are real languages with vocabulary and grammar; they can be learned in childhood or later; they share core linguistic properties with spoken languages.

1.5.2 Some Common Misconceptions about Visual-Gestural Languages

• a. Signed Language vs. Manual Codes: myths that signed languages derive from spoken languages or are mere codes. Codes (e.g., Morse) borrow structure from spoken languages; signed languages evolve independently with distinct structure; they have native signers and are not just codes.

• Signed languages do have native signers, whereas codes do not typically have native speakers.

• See examples: SEE II (manual code for English) vs ASL; ASL is a natural language with its own grammar; SEE II mirrors English morphology and is slower (rates measured as seconds per proposition: English/ASL ≈ 1.5 s; SEE II ≈ 2.8 s).

• b. Signed Language vs Pantomime: myths that signs are just pictures or pantomime; signs do have phonological/morphological/syntactic structure; the majority of signs are not purely iconic and the form-meaning relationship is largely arbitrary, as in spoken languages.

• Signs can be iconic to some extent (e.g., KNOW sign with forehead contact or cheek touch), but over time signs become more arbitrary; signs can convey abstract concepts and not just concrete objects.

• c. Universality of Signed Languages: myths that there is a single universal sign language; there are over 150 documented signed languages, not mutually intelligible, with differences similar to spoken languages.

1.5.3 Who Uses Signed Languages?

• Signed languages are used worldwide wherever there are deaf communities; sign languages can be learned by both deaf and hearing individuals.

• Martha’s Vineyard (18th–19th centuries) and the Al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe (Israel) had substantial sign usage; large deaf populations can lead to widespread signing across the community.

• Deaf community (capital D) refers to Deaf culture, identity, and language use (ASL in the US); not all deaf individuals participate in Deaf culture or use sign language; some read lips or use other communication modes.

• The choice of communicative mode depends on social and practical factors.

1.5.4 Representing Signs in a Two-Dimensional Format

• Signs cannot be written with the Roman alphabet due to different modalities; conventions include using capitalized English words to label signs (e.g., DOG for the sign for dog).

• In addition to meaning labels, signs can be shown by:

  • photographs of signers

  • drawings of people producing signs

  • drawings showing only the hands (without the signer)

• These representations are approximations; signs cannot be captured perfectly in static two-dimensional images.

• For further resources, URLs are provided to online ASL dictionaries and sign resources (e.g., Lifeprint, Handspeak, ASLPro, SignSignSAVVY).

1.5.5 The Importance of Studying Different Modalities

• Some linguistic principles are expressed differently across modalities (spoken vs signed), but many similarities exist; modality differences help identify which aspects of language are universal and which are modality-specific.

• Example: pause duration in spoken languages has a minimum length related to breathing and cognitive planning; pause lengths in signed languages do not show a minimum length, suggesting the min-pause length is specific to auditory-vocal modalities.

• The majority of examples in this book focus on spoken languages (English) for familiarity, but cross-modal study is essential for a broader understanding of language.