Tag Archives: linguistics

Chapter 11: Teaching with Paradigms

Favorite Place on Campus to Study

Favorite Place on Campus to Study

 Before diving into discussion on how educators can use paradigms to help students comprehend course material more easily and readily, it helps to first define what exactly a paradigm is. A paradigm is something that serves as a model. When someone uses a paradigm, it shifts one’s way of thinking to another. For example, we can think about the paradigm-shift moving scientific theory from the Ptolemaic system (the idea that the earth is at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the idea that the sun is at the center of the universe), and the move from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics. As old beliefs became replaced by new paradigms, there was a change in the world view.  For millions of years, the world has been continually evolving, and there is no sign of this stopping.

While humans often try to resist difficult and inevitable change, there are ways in which society can learn through experience. Kuhn states that “awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory.”[1] In order to keep up in society, we must change our mental perspectives and allow our consciousness to transform and transcend. We must become awakened as our consciousness grows more aware of inevitable change. The human mind is not something that is entirely restricted; it too can change as things in society change. It is for this reason that paradigms become an important concept to understand and embrace in teaching.

In the educational institution, teaching children how to construct paradigms allows for them to expand their understanding of certain everyday world issues. It is possible for educators to shape children’s behavior by having children role play to model good behavior. This idea relates to the traditional behavioral paradigm psychologist John Watson established, known as conditioning. Learning is believed to occur through a process of conditioning in the exercise of repetition, which leads to memorization. Based on the assumption that learning is a function of conditioning, it is believed to be possible to shape human behavior to any desired form. It is this assumption that leads educators to place aim on the mechanics of learning and learning strategies such as competition, fragmentation of content, learning for content, cultural uniformity, technologies of learning, behavioral outcomes, and so on.[2]  

[1] Kuhn, Thomas, S., “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, Second Edition, Enlarged, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970(1962) Further reference to this source in parentheses (Kuhn, p#).

Chapter 9: Strengthening the Core

Hume and Tea Time

 

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others. 

– John Locke

 

Education is a time for wonder and reflection, a time for creativity responsibility, problem-solving, and self-motivation. It is the role of the educator to ensure all students receive and understand the necessary skills for today’s competitive and complex world. For educators, to be able to achieve in preparing their students for life after school, it is first necessary to recognize the fact that “language is undoubtedly at the heart of learning”; “language has now replaced IQ as an explanation for social and education disadvantage.”[1] An educator plays an important role in a child’s development, and can significantly make a difference in the lives of children who come from poor families. Every child, with few exceptions, learns how to talk. However, the social and linguistic environments surrounding children as they begin to acquire language competence greatly differs cross-culturally. Educators need to recognize the role they play in bridging the gap between the use of language at home and in school. I believe literacy is one of the most important skills children need to learn in school in order to be successful in today’s developed world, and from this, I feel I can accurately state that skills in reading and writing are necessary for effective communication. This is where I believe the role of metaphor comes into play. The role of metaphor can be understood on two different levels: First, educators must recognize how metaphor helps to define one’s teaching philosophy. Metaphor helps to establish teacher-student relationships and helps in the organization of the classroom. Secondly, educators should recognize that metaphors are a powerful tool in linking unfamiliar ideas with the familiar. Analogies are an effective learning tool for reinforcing thinking skills and conceptual understanding. The in-depth analysis of metaphors’ role in students’ learning illustrates how metaphor is at the core of student achievement.

Before diving into discussion of metaphor, I think it is first important to provide some background information on what children come into the school system at a disadvantage. Studies done have shown that certain factors do not correlate with language learning. For example, race and gender do not affect a child’s ability to develop language and literacy skills. However, economic advantage plays a crucial role in children’s verbal communication development. The basic finding is this: Children growing up in less economically advantaged homes are exposed to a smaller vocabulary and have fewer interactions with people in comparison to more economically advantaged children. It is crucial for schools to provide an environment where children from all family backgrounds are exposed to rich language and exposed to the uses and functions of various prints. Children reared in poverty are exposed to fewer opportunities for experiences of many kinds, language just being one of them, and it takes this realization to understand why the education system needs to make an effort to help improve the language and cognitive performance of these less advantaged children.

To understand what creates this difference it helps to look into some studies that have been conducted: In 1995, Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley conducted a study on “ordinary families” and how they talk to their young children. The study focused specifically on how social interactions affect developmental growth. Evidence indicates that despite the strong efforts from preschool programs to equalize opportunity, children from less economically advantaged families fall behind their peers later in school. This is due to stunted vocabulary growth due to limited social interaction amongst parents and children in welfare families versus the amount of communication that takes place between parents and children of professional families.

A vocabulary, the stack of words (or signs) available to a person or a language community, comprises all the words a person knows, both those a person can understand and use appropriately. [2]  Words are added to the vocabulary through experiences. These experiences also allow for the refinement or elaboration of meanings of known words. A person’s vocabulary is something that continues to grow throughout life as an individual has new experiences and gains understanding. “The more often a child hears different words, the more varied are the associated experiences and the more the meanings of the words for the child come to match the range and nuances of the meanings of the words for the speaker and the culture” (Hart and Risley, 98). The vocabulary terms parents use when they interact with their children set the foundations for the complex concepts and relationships the children will be asked to understand later on. “Children’s experiences with language cannot be separated from their experiences with interaction because parent-child talk is saturated with affect” (Hart and Risley, 101). Characteristics of language, such as tone and sound patterns, are captured by children even before they begin using words. As children develop, the exposure they have had to language shapes their motivation to learn and use words.

Hart and Riley recognized that the vocabulary an individual has reflects their intellectual resources, and for this reason rather than using an IQ test as a measurement tool, they used vocabulary growth. The measurement of vocabulary growth versus the measure of intelligence with an IQ test is culturally unbiased, allows for the obtainment of repeated measures without the child memorizing test questions, and allows for testers to infer from the child’s use of a word in context what the child took to be the meaning of the word (Hart and Risley, 6).

Hart and Riley began their study by recording each month – for 2 ½ years – one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families. These families had been categorized as professional working class or welfare families. Following the recording stage came years of coding and analyzing every utterance in the 1,318 transcripts. The data from successive observations were displayed for each child as a developmental trajectory, or a cumulative vocabulary growth curve (Hart and Risley, 7).

Findings showed that by age 3, the spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families were larger than those of the parents in welfare families. For all 42 parents, the average number of utterances to the child per hour was 341 utterances. “The parents in the professional families addressed an average of 487 utterances to the child per hour in contrast to the average of 178 utterances addressed to the child by the parents in families on welfare, and the average of 301 utterances addressed to the child in the 23 working-class families” (Hart and Risley, 66). This is a difference of almost 300 words spoken per hour between professional and welfare parents. If this number is transferred into the number of words a child would hear per year, a child in a professional family would hear 11 million words; a child in a welfare family would only hear 3 million words.

Follow-up studies done age 9, show that children’s language experience is tightly linked to large differences in child outcomes. Vocabulary growth rates were strongly associated with rates of cognitive growth. This seemed to predict that in high school many children from impoverished families lack the necessary vocabulary to understand more advanced textbooks (Hart and Risley, 11). Hart and Risley realized the goal of their intervention needed to be changing the developmental trajectory; the rate at which welfare children added words to their dictionaries in daily use needed to be accelerated. Slow vocabulary growth rates are not due merely to the lack of extensive and varied experiences, but due to a lack of adult mediation.

For this reason, “the clear message here is that the welfare of poor children can only be served by enhancing the experiences they receive at home – by making the vocabulary and language they will need for expression and interpretation, in the wider contexts of their lives, available to them from those who are for them and also care about them” (Hart and Risley, xiii).

Hart and Risley calculated that in order for welfare children to receive language experience equal to that of working-class children, the welfare children would need to receive 63,000 words per week of additional language experience (Hart and Risley, 201). “Just to provide an average welfare child with an amount of weekly language experience equal to that of an average working-class child would require 41 hours per week of out-of-home experience as rich in words addressed to the child as that in an average professional home” (Hart and Risley, 201). What needs to be done to make this happen? A national commitment needs to be made to support and provide a voice to those who are left at a disadvantage.

However, for the purpose of this paper, I think it helps to focus on a more micro level, and to think about what strategies are effective and ineffective at helping to give these struggling children a boost within the classroom setting. This is where we need to look at the first metaphoric level – the first part of being a good teacher comes from recognizing the role metaphor plays in shaping one’s teaching philosophy. There are various metaphors often used when discussing education. A common metaphor that comes up is “education is growth.” Thinkers such as Rousseau and Herbart, argue that students need to be nurtured and given the opportunity to learn in their own ways at their own pace, and if given the proper sustenance, they will act morally according to their own free will.[3] This metaphor identifies how an educator can either help or hinder a child’s learning experience. An educator can think of him/herself as a gardener and his/her students can be thought of as plants. With sunlight, good soil, and water, seedlings will grow tall and strong and blossom into colorful flowers; with the right amount of instruction, advising, and encouragement, students will grow internally.

One metaphor that I created to use when thinking about education is “education is a ship”. If education is the ship, then the teacher is the wind and the students are the sails. This metaphor identifies how an educator has the power to direct a child’s learning, and with the right amount of positive reinforcement, the time a student spends in the classroom can be “smooth sailing”.

It helps to look at Psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s social learning theory to better understand how educator’s can help children’s learning and cognitive development. According to Vygotsky, the most important learning by the child occurs through social interaction with a skillful mentor. The mentor may model behaviors and/or provide verbal instructions for the child. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions given, and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate his/her own performance.[4] Vygotsky suggests that teachers use cooperative learning exercises where less competent children develop with help from more skillful peers within the zone of proximal development. He believed when a student is at the zone of proximal development for a certain task, providing the appropriate amount of assistance, scaffolding, will give the student the necessary “boost” to achieve the task. The scaffolding can be removed once the student masters the task and can complete the task again on his/her own.[5]

As John Locke said, the human mind is a blank slate, and therefore educators furnish it with ideas to think on.[6] Humans are not born with full-fledged ideas in their heads, but rather slowly form them through the sensory input of the material world. In thinking about language, educators fill the minds of their students with the skills necessary to understand the structures of a text, assess the logic of an argument, and develop and awareness of how language is consciously deployed to achieve meaning and input.[7]

Now that we have established the role educators play in helping children develop, we can think about what strategies educators can use to help render the unfamiliar more familiar to their students.

[1] Romaine, 167

[2] Hart, Betty, and Todd R. Risley. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore: P.H. Brookes, 1995. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Hart and Risley, p#).

[3] Cook-Sather, pp. 49-50

[6] Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II Ch1

[7] CCSS

Chapter 2: Infant Intelligence

Typical Saturday at Starbucks

Chapter 2:

Infant Intelligence

What could be more exciting than hearing your baby’s first word? As that first word grows into a sentence and later into conversation, you will be watching a miracle—the miracle of language development.

~ Lesia Oesterreich

The Learning Stages of Language

Babies are born with the ability to learn language and all children, regardless of what language their parents speak, learn language in the same way. At birth, babies can already respond to the rhythm of language; they can recognize stress, pace, and the rise and fall of pitch. As early as four months, infants can distinguish between language sounds and other noise, such as the difference between a person’s voice and foot stomps. By six months, infants begin to babble and coo, a sign they are learning language. At this early stage, an infant is capable of making all the sounds (phonemes) in all the languages of the world. This is about 150 phonemes, in about 6,500 languages. However, no language uses all 150 phonemes. For example, English has only about 44 phonemes. Some languages have more, others less. This is why by the time the child is a year old, she will have dropped the sounds that are not part of the language she is learning. By eight months, babies learn this sense of phonemic awareness. Babies learn which phonemes belong to the language they are learning and which do not. By twelve months, babies learn morphemes. They learn when different sounds in a language are combined, they create meaning. For example, the sounds m, ah, m, and ee refer to the person who provides comfort and food – “mommy”. A child’s vocabulary continues to grow throughout her development, and by twenty-four months, children learn how to create sentences, specifically how to put words in the correct order. For example, in English we say: “I want to play outside,” not “Want I outside play.” By thirty to thirty-six months, about 90% of what children say is grammatically correct. With age, children continue to expand their vocabulary and develop more complex language, and by age eleven, their language fully resembles adult language.[1]

The Acquisition of Language

Now, the main question is how and why are babies able to acquire language at such an early age? How do infants determine what words mean, or how to produce grammatical utterances they have never heard before? And, why do they learn language? Is it because their parents teach it to them; or is it simply innate, and therefore they will learn it regardless of environmental factors?

Constructivism and Nativism

There are two poles in the explanation of language acquisition: At the one pole, is the Constructivist view, which argues our experience of the world is dependent upon what our minds bring into perception, and therefore language production is achieved through experience; at the other pole is Nativism, which argues language is innate, there are universal principles which govern language acquisition, and these are prewired at birth. From these two poles, many dimensions in language acquisition are formed. Modern day theorists tend to believe the basic capacity to learn a first language is innate, while particular forms/meaning connections of individual languages are acquired through exposure to a specific speech within a child’s community. The task is to find out what aspects of human language are innate, hard-wired into the infant’s brain structure, and what aspects are learned through experience. The argument in favor of finding a compromise between these two theories is referred to as Internalism and Generativity. This theory argues language development is both biological and social.

Constructivism

To better understand how these two opposite theories can be welded together to explain the acquirement of language, it helps to look at each extreme position individually and thoroughly. First is Constructivism, also referred to as Learning Theory. The main theorist associated with the learning perspective is B.F. Skinner. This theory is rooted in behaviorism, and includes classical and operant conditioning, and social learning.

Skinner’s View on Speech

Skinner argued language development is the result of external reinforcement, and verbal response was contingent on four things: reinforcement, stimulus control, deprivation, and aversive stimulation.[2] When these things interact in a child’s environment, children begin to make certain associations, which is the basis of all language. Skinner then also claimed there were four general types of speech: echoic behavior, mand, tact, interverbals, and autoclitic (Skinner).

Echoic behavior is the primary form of verbal behavior of language learners. These verbalizations include repeated utterances (Skinner):

(1) PARENT: [pointing to cookie] That’s a cookie. Can you say ‘cookie’?

CHILD: Cooookie

Mands, which are short for ‘demands,’ are utterances that are reinforced by the elevation of deprivation. For example, if a child were hungry or cold, his requests, such as saying ‘cookie’ would be considered mands. Directives such as “Stop,” “Go,” and “Wait” also are considered mands (Skinner).

However, a child may simply be naming an object he sees or repeating what he likes when he says “cookie.” These utterances are produced when the speaker is not deprived, but rather is providing information. Utterances with this underlying motivation are called tact, which is short for “contact.”

The fourth type of utterance is the interverbals. These include utterances that are not necessarily to provide information, such as “Please” and “Thank You.” This type of utterance pertains to the interactive nature of the conversation.

The final category, autoclitics, was Skinner’s attempt to deal with internal speech, or thought. Autoclitics are subject to the same effects of reinforcement as verbalized speech, and these thought behaviors influence not only current and future thought but also current and future behavior.

Skinner was strictly a behaviorist, and did not believe the brain had anything to do with language, but rather the “mind” and other phenomena were what led to language when shaped by external sources. Skinner’s theory for how language demonstrates how parents can gradually shape the child’s speech through positive reinforcement and how a child can learn how to imitate through observation, but what Skinner’s theory fails to do take into consideration the complexity of grammar.

Nativism

Noam Chomsky’s View on Language Acquisition

On the contrast, Noam Chomsky believes we do not learn or speak language by purely imitating other people, but rather we are born with the properties of a ‘universal grammar.’ The human mind is not a blank slate at birth, but instead components of the mind are innately determined. Experience does not fill the blank slate, but instead interacts with innate properties to form ‘competence’ in one’s different systems of knowledge.[3]

In his review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, Chomsky criticizes Skinner’s theory as placing limitations on the way causation of behavior can be determined. Skinner fails to demonstrate that behavior of a complex organism requires, in addition to information about external stimulation, knowledge of how the organism processes input information and organizes its own behavior. Therefore, Skinner’s explanation of Verbal Behavior is an untested hypothesis. These characteristics of the organism are a complicated product of inborn structure, the genetically determined course of maturation and past experience.[4] Chomsky claims that upon careful study of Skinner’s book, that Skinner’s claims are “far from justified;” they are metaphoric extensions” and “analogic guesses” (Chomsky). Chomsky claims that the definition of the problem rests with Skinner only concerning himself with the only data available, namely the record of inputs to the organism and the organism’s present response, and trying to describe the function specifying the response in terms of the history of inputs (Chomsky). The fact is simply that it is unknown whether or not verbal behavior is within the domain of Skinner’s system and whether the technical terms: stimulus, response and reinforcement are literally applicable to verbal behavior and functional parts of speech.

What is not unknown is the fact that children, regardless of what part of the world they are born in, acquire language through the same various stages. A child in China will follow the same linguistic patterns of language acquisition as a child in the United States.[5] For Chomsky, this is reason enough to believe that language comes from predetermined knowledge within a child. Universal grammar is a characterization of this innate principle of language faculty. This innate principle includes syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics (the study of the relation between language and the world, in particular the study of truth and reference). Acquisition of language then, is a matter of adding to one’s store of universal grammar rules, or modifying this system, as new data are processed.[6] Between the ages of three and ten, a child is the most likely to learn a language in its entirety and grasp fluency. After this critical learning period it becomes harder for a child to completely grasp a language. Another factor that supports Chomsky’s theory is that a child does not need a trigger to being language acquisition. A parent does not need to coax a child to speak; if a child is around language production, she will produce language on her own. Also, it does not matter if a child is corrected or not. The child will still grasp the language in the same manner and speak the same way.

Finding Common Ground

Now that the theories of both Skinner and Chomsky have been discussed, it is time to turn to the argument of Internalism and Generativity, which argues that the acquirement of language is both a result of biology and environmental factors; “language functions both as an internalized form of mental grammar in individual brains and as an externalized socio-cultural object existing at an intersubjective plane of reality by shifting between these two poles of reality.”[7]

Generativity and Internalism

The term Generativity was coined by Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1950 to denote “a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation.”[8] It can be expressed in many different fashions, from raising a child to stopping a tradition of drug abuse, to restoring land. You try to “make a difference” with your life, to “give back,” to “take care” of your community and your planet (Kotre). Generativity stems from a sense of optimism within oneself in regards to changing humanity for the better. The conception of the internalist approach is understood as viewing language as a mental grammar that grows and functions like a biological organ. The Internalism vs. externalism dichotomy ceases to exist once they are shown not to be alternative to each other, but rather complementary to each other (cogprints.org). Koster makes this point when he says:

“Our cultural memory is stored in, and distributed over brains, including my own, and over libraries and other collections of media. The same is true for words and other linguistic expressions. It would be absurd to say that I remain within the confinements of I-language when I produce or understand a sentence exclusively with words from my own memory, but that I embark on a short excursion to E-language if I use a dictionary for one word or another in the middle of a sentence” (cogprints.org).

Our experiences help us to create memories, and we use our internalistic mental structures to interpret the perceptions of these experiences. It takes our internal knowledge of language to extrapolate and interpret externalized knowledge of language. This is specifically important in looking at how children develop. Children become linguistically and culturally competent members of their community through interactions with their caregivers and other members of their community.[9]

Summary and Conclusion

It is through this socialization that children learn the appropriate behaviors for their community’s culture; they internalize beliefs and ideas which includes the concept of politeness. These skills are obtained from daily interaction in the home and in the community. It is this type of naturally-occurring language experience that allows for children to gradually construct their personal sense of identity. They begin to find themselves in relation to others. As children acquire their mother tongue in the home, they learn who they are as an individual.

[1] Bainbridge, Carol. “How Do Children Learn Language?” About.com Gifted Children. About.com, 2012. Web. 01 July 2012. <http://giftedkids.about.com/od/gifted101/a/language_learning.htm&gt;. Further reference to this reference in parentheses (Bainbridge).

[2] “BF Skinner, Behavioralism, & Language Behavior.” Northern Illinois University, n.d. Web. 01 July 2012. <http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2003/cogrev_skinner.htm&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Skinner).

[3] Stark, Aaron. “Noam Chomsky on Language.” N.p., Dec. 1998. Web. 8 July 2012. <http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/199812&#8211;.pdf>. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Stark).

[4] Chomsky, Noam. “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, by Noam Chomsky.” A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky.info, n.d. Web. 08 July 2012. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967—-.htm. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Chomsky).

[5] Crabtree, Elizabeth. “Noam Chomsky.” Psychology History. N.p., 1999. Web. 08 July 2012. http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/chomsky.htm Further reference to this source in parentheses (Crabtree).

[6] Liu, Ming, and Xin Sheen Liu. “Chomsky and Knowledge of Language.” Philosophy of Language. N.p., 2000. Web. 08 July 2012. <http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lang/LangLiu2.htm&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Liu and Liu).

[7] Mondal, Prakash. “Can Internalism and Externalism Be Reconciled in a Biological Epistemology of Language?” Biosemiotics. Springer Science+Business Media, 2 May 2011. Web. 15 July 2012. <http://cogprints.org/7708/1/fulltext.pdf&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Mondal).

[8] Kotre, John. “Generativity and the Generative Process.” Lives, Memories, Legacies, Stories: The Work of John Kotre. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 July 2012. <http://www.johnkotre.com/generativity.htm&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Kotre).

[9] Schieffelin, Bambi B., and Elinor Ochs. Language Socialization across Cultures. Cambridge Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1986. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).

Chapter 1: What is Language?

Trigger Attempts to Help Me Read

 

Chapter 1:

What is Language?

So this is the real mystery: Even under these loosened criteria there are no simple languages used among other species, though there are many other equally or more complicated modes of communication. Why not? …. This is an apples and oranges problem, not a complicated-vs-simple one.

~Terrance Deacon

 

The Five Key Aspects of Language

The English word language derives from the Latin word, lingua, “tongue,” via Old French. It is easily understood as the communication system that enables humans to communicate with one another. However, language is no easy system. Not only is there more than one type of communication system, but there is so much that goes into the makeup of each cognitive faculty. There are animal languages, computer languages, and human languages. Each system has its own series of signs for encoding and decoding information.

However, the purpose of this paper is not to explore these different methods of communication at large, but rather to strictly explore and analyze how language communication is more complex amongst humans. Language is often thought about in terms of the written word, because when something is written down it becomes a permanent idea. However, in linguistics, speech is valued as being more central to human language. The human ability to speak is often taken for granted. The ability to communicate effectively with one another is actually quite an intricate mental ability, and researchers today still do not have all the answers to how such a skill is possible.

Then He Goes and Rolls

While there are multiple forms of non-verbal communication amongst the human species, such as: sign language, whistle and drum languages, the focus of this paper will be on the acoustic channel, the form of communication used whenever people speak to one another. The words we wish to express at a given moment seem to emerge inexplicably from a sender’s mouth, as sound waves. Then, these sound waves travel to and hit the listener’s ear. Once the sound waves have hit the listener’s ear, an auditory signal is sent to the brain, where it is interpreted. This model seems simple enough, but it takes more valuable information to understand how the process effectively works.

Linguists typically recognize five key aspects of language: “phonology, the sounds of language; morphology, the way words are built; syntax, the ordering of words and other grammatical bits into meaningful language; semantics, the meaning system of language; and pragmatics, the way speakers use words on the basis of social contexts.”[1] Once these main features of language are explained, the significance of language becomes more apparent.

Then Trigger Steals My Food!

Phonology

There is a complex relationship between words and sounds. Understanding phonetics requires and understanding of a particular language’s sound system, an understanding of what goes on in the mouth and throat to produce speech. Phonetics deals with measureable, physical properties of speech sounds themselves, for example, precisely how the mouth produces certain sounds, and the characteristics of the resulting sound waves. When discussing phonetics, it is important to remember the letters are not what matter, but rather individual speech sounds.

IPA Alphabet

A good place to start discussion of the language system is with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. The IPA was first developed in 1886, but since then has undergone a number of revisions.[2] The aim of the IPA is to show pronunciation in a dictionary, to record a language in linguistic fieldwork, to form the basis of a writing system for a language, or to annotate acoustic and other displays in the analysis of speech (IPA, 3). Behind the IPA system are a few theoretical assumptions about speech: some aspects of speech are linguistically relevant, and others are not; speech can be represented partly as a sequence of discrete sounds (segments); segments can be divided into two major categories, consonants and vowels; the phonetic description of consonants and vowels can be made with reference to their auditory characteristics; and finally, some aspects of speech, such as stress and tone, need to be represented independently from segments (IPA, 4). These theoretical assumptions are further explored in this chapter, and a full chart of the IPA symbols can be viewed at the end of this chapter, but for now, it is easiest to focus simply on the symbols necessary to make the basic sounds of North America English, rather than to try and understand all the sounds of the world’s languages.

Vowels

It is difficult to try and understand the complex relationship between letters and sounds in the English language because in many instances, the same vowel sound is spelled differently. For example: heard, herd, turn.

Vowel sounds are produced with relatively free flow of air, and the tongue influences the ‘shape’ through which the airflow must pass. When talking about the place of articulation, linguists refer to the inside of the mouth as having a front versus a back and then a high versus a low area. Linguists would point out that vowel sounds are simply voiced air, meaning that when you produce these sounds, your vocal cords vibrate while you breathe across them. For example, the sound “EEE” is made with the tongue high in the front of one’s mouth, while the sound of “AHH” is made with the tongue low in the back of the mouth (Temple, 84). But this is only the beginning of the understanding of vowels.

There is then the difference between long and short vowels. This, for example, is the distinction between the sound represented by the letter a in mate (a long vowel sound) and the sound represented by the letter a in mat (a short vowel sound). With the pronunciation of each word, one’s mouth is doing something different. When one says a so called“long vowel,” one’s tongue muscles tense up. This is in contrast with what happens when one says a “short vowel.” When one pronounces mat, one’s tongue muscles relax. This is why linguists do not use the terms, long and short, but rather refer to the sound variations as tense and lax.

Now, there is something else Native English speakers do with their pronunciation of vowels that other languages do not do: They make double pronunciations of them (Temple, 85). Look for example at the word eye [aɪ̯]or same [seɪ̯m]. One might thing she is only pronouncing one vowel, such as the vowel “I,” but in fact, you actually run together “ah” and “ee.” These are called diphthongs.

One last common phenomenon in English but rare in other languages is vowel reduction (Temple, 85). In English, in words of more than one syllable, vowels in the unstressed syllable are called schwa; the vowel in the unstressed syllable is said to be reduced. For example, schwa corresponds to the ‘a’ in about [əˈbaʊt] and the ‘e’ in taken [ˈteɪkən].

Consonants

Another important part of phonetics to understand is what happens when breath flow is interrupted in some way. By using the tongue and other parts of the mouth to constrict and shape the oral cavity through which the air is passing, many different sounds can be created, and these various sounds are consonants. To describe the place of articulation of most consonant sounds, it makes sense to start at the front of the mouth and work back. When discussing place of articulation there are: bilabials, which are sounds formed using both upper and lower lips (e.g. pat, bat, mat); labiodentals, formed with the upper teeth and lower lip (e.g. Safe, save); dentals, formed with the tip of one’s tongue behind the upper front teeth (e.g. the, there, then); alveolars, formed with the front part of the tongue on the alveolar ridge (the bony ridge immediately behind and above the upper teeth) (e.g. the sound at the beginning of right and write); palatals, which are produced with the tongue and the palate (e..g. shout, child); velars, sounds produced with the back of the tongue against the velum (the soft palate) (e.g. car, cold); and finally, glottal, the one sound produced without the active use of the tongue and other parts of the mouth, which occurs when the glottis (the space between the vocal cords in the larynx) is open (e.g. the fist sound in who and whose) (Núñez).

The next big component in the discussion of consonants is the manner of articulation, which refers to the pronunciation of the sounds. When you momentarily stop the airstream and then let it go abruptly, you produce stop consonants or plosives, which are the sounds represented by [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g]; when you almost block the airstream and have the air push through the very narrow opening, a type of friction is produced and the resulting sounds are called fricatives, represented by, [f], [v], [θ], [d], [s], [z], [ʃ], [_]; if you combine a brief stopping of the airstream with an obstructed release, causing some friction, the sounds [tʃ] and [d_] are created, which are called affricates; nasals are described as the sounds [m], [n], and [ŋ], which occur when the velum is lowered and the airstream is allowed to flow out through the nose; glides, the sounds [w] and [j], are produced when the tongue is in motion to or from the position of a vowel; the glottal stop, represented by the symbol [ʔ], occurs when the space between the vocal cords is closed completely, then released; and lastly is the flap, represented by [D] or sometimes [ɾ] is produced by the tongue tip tapping the alveolar ridge briefly (Núñez).

Conclusion

Phonetic transcription, unlike orthography, displays a one-to-one relationship between symbols and sounds. The main purpose of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, which allows for foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, translators, etc. to better step outside of orthography and examine differences in pronunciation between dialects within a given language, as well as to identity changes in pronunciation that take place over time.

Morphology

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of a given language’s morphemes and other linguistic units. Words have parts, and each additional part provides a change to the original word, which creates a new meaning. Below three different kinds of morphemes are described:

Free Morphemes

A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone as a word; it does not require another morpheme to be attached to it. For example, Cat would be a free morpheme.

Inflectional Morphemes

Inflectional morpheme is a morpheme that can only be a suffix. It creates the change in the function of a word. In English, there are seven inflectional morphemes: –s (plural) and –s (possessive) are noun inflections; –s (3rd-person singular), –ed (past tense), –en (past participle), and –ing (present participle) are verb inflections; –er (comparative) and –est (superlative) are adjective and adverb inflections.

  • Examples:
    • Plural: Many people own cats.
    • Possessive: Jane’s cat has stripes.
    • 3rd Person Singular: She likes cats.
    • Past Tense: He liked cats.
    • Past Participle: The stolen cat was found unharmed by the police.
    • Present Participle: John told a very interesting story at dinner last night.
    • Comparative: A kitten is much smaller than an adult cat.
    • Superlative: The orange tabby cat was the smallest of the liter.

Derivational Morphemes

Derivational morphemes create a new word out of the word to which it is joined. The change can affect either the semantic meaning or part or part of speech. For example, when you attach -er to swim, you create the word swimmer. When you attach –ness to happy, you create the word happiness.

Conclusion

Understanding the role morphemes play in language acquisition is important in order to make connections between phonological and orthographic characteristics of speech. Without an understanding of the smallest unit in the grammar of a language, one can expect to be lost when trying to interpret larger concepts.

Syntax

Syntax, also referred to as grammar, refers to the set of rules that order words and their inflections meaningfully into sentences. Syntax can be understood as a type of code that allows speakers to encode meaning and for listeners to decode it (Temple, 96). Word order, parts of speech, and special uses of words all affect the meaning of a sentence or passage.

Conscious Knowledge

Syntax occurs at two levels: the conscious level and then the tacit knowledge level. At the conscious level, syntax can be thought of as the rules for how to build a sentence, such as the rule: a verb must agree with its subject in person and number. These rules throw us into a realm of technical notations. Suddenly, we are being asked to access and reiterate what a subject is, what a predicate is, and what other things are involved in constructing sentences.

Tacit Knowledge

However, this does not represent all the knowledge that allows one to produce and understand sentences. We all possess a highly intricate system that allows us to determine whether certain utterances correspond to sentences of our native language. This kind of knowledge, unattainable knowledge of language that allows one to judge whether or not a sentence is natively correct, is tacit knowledge. For example, look at these two sentences:

  • A. This book is difficult to read.
  • B. This book is difficult to be read.

One knows if one is a native English speaker that she can utter sentence A, and this corresponds to an English sentence. In contrast, a non-native English speaker can utter sentence, and while a message can be decoded from it, it does not correspond to any grammatically correct sentence of English. This kind of knowledge seems obvious, but not because of English lessons that are taught in a classroom; rather, because it is a sense of judgment acquired at a young age, that then becomes inaccessible to you.

Plato’s Problem

One might ask, so why do we call this knowledge at all? How can something be considered knowledge if nothing is being taught to anyone? Tacit knowledge appears to be more like instinct than knowledge. This discussion given the title, Plato’s Problem by Noam Chomsky, can be traced back to the fourth century BCE.[4] The argument is specifically seen in Plato’s Meno, in which Socrates demonstrates how an uneducated boy has innate knowledge, a priori knowledge, of geometric principles. Trying to close the gap between knowledge and experience involves working to explain the gap between what one knows and the apparent lack of input from experience, or the environment. Further discussion of this problem will be addressed in the next chapter, which deals explicitly with language acquisition in children.

Semantics

The third key component of language is semantics, best understood as the system of meanings in a language and the way those meanings are encoded in words (Temple, 100). Within this study of meanings, sounds, facial expressions, body language, and proxemics have semantic content. This is in contrast with syntax, which looks explicitly at the units of language without reference to their meaning. Semantic relations between words can be complex, but by going through some of the technical vocabulary that relates to semiotics, it should become a little easier to understand how words, phrases, signs, and symbols gain meaning.

Synonymy

Synonomy, in regards to meaning, refers to the degree of sameness between two terms. For example, eat and consume are two near-complete synonyms. In purely semantic terms, these two words mean the same thing (the ingestion of food), but their use depends on the context they are used in. Consume is more likely to be used by a person who is more intellectual, whereas eat is the more common word. One will find that English has a high number of synonyms because of French influence on the language.

Antonomy

Antonyms are binary oppositions, such as short and tall, big and little, right and wrong. The meaning of one term automatically rejects the other – someone who is short is not tall, someone who is big is not little, and someone who is right is not wrong. Another characteristic of antonyms is they can be gradable or not, depending on whether or not we attach inflectional morphemes to them to create a comparison: deep, deeper, deepest or, sunny, sunnier, sunniest.

Homophones, Homonyms, and Polysemes

Homophones are words that have a similar sound pattern, but are otherwise unrelated. The words may be spelled the same, such as wind (air movement) and wind (to move in a spiral course). Or, the words can be spelled differently. In this case they are also called heterographs. Examples of these include horse and hoarse; nun and none; buy and bye. Homophones are often used to create puns and to deceive the reader, seen in crossword puzzle clues, or to suggest multiple meanings, which are quite often seen in poetry and other forms of creative writing. Then there are also homonyms, which are terms that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings. Examples include: row (to propel with oars) and row (a line of arrangements); bark (the sound a dog makes) and bark (the outer layer of a tree trunk); bank (the edge of a river) and bank (a financial institution). Lastly there is a distinction to be made between homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, and polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) and mouth (of a person). For Dick Hebdife, polysemy means that, “each text is seen to generate a potentially infinite range of meanings.”[5] This, in the end changes the whole basis of creating social meaning.

Conceptual Metaphors

Now, discussion has moved away from basic language to an understanding of how descriptions are used to construct meaning. Based largely on ideas put forth by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By, a conceptual metaphor is an expression from ordinary language in which the meaning associated with a target domain is drawn from a source domain that is perceived as sharing certain traits of the target.[6] A few examples are:

  • “Anger is Heat”
    • He has a fiery temper.
    • She is about to explode!
    • “Love is a Journey”
      • This relationship isn’t going anywhere.
      • His marriage is on the rocks.

Conclusion

This is just the beginning of a complex discussion on how metaphors shape human lives. What at first appears as simple ordinary language soon is understood as transformative. “Language is what determines the meanings of words and signs and what combines them into meaningful wholes, wholes that add up to conversations, speeches, essays, epic poems. Language goes beyond that even; it’s what makes your thoughts truly meaningful, what builds your ideas into structured wholes.”[7]

Pragmatics

It can be understood at this point that language ability means more than making appropriate sounds, peaking in words, and stringing words together with understandable syntax. Hymes defined language as meaning having the ability to do things with words.[8] There is a distinction to be made between knowing language and knowing how to use language; linguists talk of language not only in terms of syntax and meaning, but also in terms of speech acts, which are attempts to accomplish things with language. This is one of the most challenging aspects of language learning, and often comes only through experience. Further discussion of pragmatics will take place later on in this paper, but for now, what is important to understand is pragmatics helps in overcoming language ambiguity, because meaning relies on the manner, place, time, etc. of an utterance.

Summary and Conclusion

With an in-depth analysis of the key aspects of language, one now has the necessary framework to begin exploration of more complex thinking. Next, one can look at children’s language-learning process. One will see how many children go through the stages of language learning in the same order, and thoughts behind this central human capacity will be discussed. Then, later on, one will see how when humans interact with one another, experiences are weaved into narratives, and special attention will be paid to words and their meaning.

[1] Temple, Charles A. All Children Read: Teaching for Literacy in Today’s Diverse Classroom. Boston: Pearson and B, 2005. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Temple, p#).

[2] Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (IPA, pg#).

[3] Núñez, Alejandro. “Phonetics and Phonology.” Phonetics and Phonology. Blogspot.com, n.d. Web. 26 June 2012. <http://alejandronunez-a-3.blogspot.com/p/c-ipa.html&gt;. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Núñez).

[4] Chomsky, Noam. Modular Approaches to the Study of the Mind. San Diego: San Diego State UP, 1984. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Chomsky, p#).

[5] Hebdige, Dick. Subculture, the Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, 1979. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Hebdige, p#).

[6] Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Lakoff and Johnson, p#).

[7] Bickerton, Derek. Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010. Print. . Further reference to this source in parentheses (Bickerton, p.#).

[8] Hymes, Dell H. Foundations in Sociolinguistics; an Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1974. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Hymes, p#).

Abstract

Where Most of My Writing Happens

 

When thinking about human communication it is easy to understand why the first humans would have developed a word for “water,” or “poison.” This terminology was necessary in order for human ancestors to fulfill basic needs and keep out of harm’s way. However, language development did not end here. This same system of symbols continued to evolve, and gave rise to a higher level of communication that articulates abstract and intangible thoughts and ideas. Why did communication not stop at the basic level? What was the language system trying to keep up with? I believe this cognitive shift occurred when humans began to develop a wider and deeper array of needs, an evolvement from less biological to more psychological needs.

Our human ancestors realized in order to find enough food for everyone to eat they needed to break up into smaller groups and develop a way to communicate with one another. Foraging in small groups worked to our ancestors’ advantage, and a sense of community amongst members began to form.[1] Now that they were able to successfully stay safe and find sustenance, relationships began to grow amongst community members and our ancestors began to develop different kinds of needs, growth needs.[2] These needs refer to intangible things – cognition, aesthetic appreciation, and self-actualization (Maslow, 372). Our ancestors began to develop needs for belonging, love, and affection; a need of respect from others to gain confidence and self-esteem; a need of morality and creativity. In order for humans to reach the greatest level of personal potential and self-fulfillment, a more specialized system of language became required.

Today, we live in a society with a great sense of social organization, and we continually communicate abstractly through the use of facial expressions and bodily gestures, as well as through the use of tropes, non-literal verbal extensions. Thinking more narrowly about non-literal forms of communication, metaphor (a figure of speech that uses a tangible object to represent some intangible quality of one idea, in terms of another) is a major trope in human perception and action.[3] People have the ability to communicate about abstract and intangible experiences because there is a close-knit relationship between metaphors and human cognition. Metaphors help to synchronize mind and body, which is necessary for the conceptualization of the real by rendering the unfamiliar more familiar. This higher level of cognition and intelligence contributes to our full humanity.

Metaphors may actually be people’s primary mode of mental operation. Because the mind experiences the world through the body in which it resides, people cannot help but conceptualize the world in terms of body perceptions. Metaphors create individual realities and therein shape human communication. Without metaphors humans would not be able to reason, create, and explore; They would lose full ability to perceive, interpret, and enhance understanding of the unfamiliar.[4] Without metaphors human minds would remain empty vessels, and would be unable to survive.

Metaphor plays an important role in the teaching-learning process. Educators should be aware of the powerful tool metaphors make when it comes to determining and expressing one’s educational philosophy. Metaphors use symbolism to link ideas about teaching and learning to something more familiar. Analogies are an effective learning tool for reinforcing thinking skills and conceptual understanding, and so educators should also recognize the large impact metaphors have on each individual’s life, and incorporate lessons on the usages of linguistic devices for both speech and writing. Good educators know how to use metaphors and analogies to make new and unfamiliar concepts more meaningful to students by connecting what they already have knowledge of to what they are learning. Education is a time for wonder and reflection; a time for creativity, responsibility, problem-solving, and self-motivation. When educators recognize that education is a journey and not a destination, students will be given the best opportunity to open their minds, develop their strengths, and prepare to explore life’s vast opportunities.

[1] Bickerton, Derek. Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Bickerton, p.#).

[2] Maslow, A.H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50.4 (1943):370-396. PsychINFO. Web. 18 Sept. 2012. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Maslow, p.#).

[3] Salzmann, Zdenek. Language, Culture, & [and] Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Boulder: Westview, 1993. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Salzmann, p.#).

[4] Hymes, Dell H. Foundations in Sociolinguistics; an Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1974. Print.

Welcome!

Me and My Boys

 

Welcome!

My name is Emily, and I am a Senior at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. I am a philosophy major and am currently working on an honors project titled, Metaphor: Making the Abstract Concrete and Visual. As I continue to work on my thesis I plan to post sections of it here on WordPress, and I would love some feedback. My project is broken down into three parts: First, I am looking into language and human evolution; second, I am looking at communication beyond the literal level; and third, I am looking at the role of metaphor in the classroom setting. Again, I would love feedback from anyone who finds this topic interesting. Share your thoughts, give suggestions, any contribution is appreciated!

Enjoy!

~ECP