Re: The reform of linguistics

Forbes — Tue, 16 May 2006 14:44:13 GMT

Imagine a language in which:

âThe man hit the table with a stickâ is

âCopoloteko tipadela tisadure asutariki bu.â

In this sentence

co = a classifier indicating that we are talking about something animate

polo = man

te = a nominative case marker

ko = the speaker wishes to emphasise the word âmanâ

ti = a classifier indicating that we are talking about something inanimate

pade = table

la = accusative marker

ti = as above

sadu = stick

re = an instrumental case marker

a = a prefix indicating that the event took place in the recent past

suta = hit

ri = a suffix indicating that the subject of the sentence is animate

ki = a suffix indicating that the object of the sentence is inanimate

bu = a particle showing respect to the person addressed

If we substitute a completely different set of phonemes throughout, so that for example âcopolotekoâ becomes âdasazaviwuâ, the morphology and syntax have not been changed. We can go a step further and make all the syllables closed so that we have âdansaszarvitwunâ, or again go further still and introduce some consonant clusters to produce âdranspaszarvlistwunâ. In each case the phonology of the language is different, but the morphology and syntax are identical.

Now of course changes in the phonology of a language go hand in hand with changes in its morphology: a classic case is where case endings for nouns are weakened and eventually dropped. But what you seem to be saying, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that you can predict the morphology and syntax of a language from its phonology. In particular, you seem to be suggesting that if a language has a small inventory of phonemes and a simple phonology (that is all syllables must be of the form V or CV or CVC where the final C is restricted to, say, /m/ /n/ and /Å/) the language must be analytic, isolating, monosyllabic and have significant tonality.

If we take Spanish, it is a language with a comparatively simple phonology. It has only five vowels and the total number of phonemes is about the same as in Mandarin Chinese. The range of consonant clusters is restricted to initial C1C2 where C2 has to be /l/ or /r/. Syllables may only end in a vowel or /Ã°/, /l/, /n/, /r/, /s/ and /Î¸/ and even then the /Ã°/, /r/, and /s/ are weak and even disappear in some speakers/varieties with /Î¸/ becoming /s/. Whilst Spanish is less synthetic than Latin, from which it derives, it is not isolating, certainly not monosyllabic and does not have significant tonality, at least not at the lexical level, though the difference between statements and questions is often marked only by intonation. Thus we have Spanish and Chinese with broadly similar phonologies (except of course that the phoneme inventories are different) but which are otherwise completely different from each other. It may also be noted that whilst French has a far greater number of phonemes and a more complex phonology than Spanish, Spanish and French have a similar morphology and syntax (at least compared to other non-Romance languages).

Unless I have completely misunderstood what you are saying, what seems to be the sum of your argument is that simple phonology equals simple language equals simple mind, which is a contention I cannot possibly accept.

Re: Inferior dialects?

Randy_Tam — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 05:16:07 GMT

MrPedantic wrote:

What are we to make of the fact that adult native speakers often "self-prescriptivise"?

Example:

"Oh, hello, MrP. MissQ was just telling Randy and me â Randy and I â about L1 acquisition."

MrP

I read your question wrong... oops.

Um, I think that does not resemble 'self - prescriptivism' at all, at least according to my definition thereof. It is, nevertheless, an instance showing an L1 speaker having the tendency to correct himself of speech errors. That he generates a nominative, instead of accusative at the objective A - position (tell sbd, that 'sbd' is the 'Object') is inexplicable with UG, except with a more careful examination as to whether, when the speaker was acquiring the language, he was given sufficient evidence as to the fact that English has an explicit accusative 1st person form. If he was not, then he would treat that inflection as a covert one, resembling the invisible case system in Chinese. If I say 'I love him' in Chinese:

(i) ææä»

without regard to the grammaticality of the translation, the clause can be roughly translated as:

(i) I love he

in which the verb is constant (Chinese verbs do not have tense morphology) and the case is covert (ie. no inflectional morphology).

If he constantly generates a nominative at objective A - position, then he has already acquired the setting that English does not have morphological case for the singular 1st person pronoun. It does not, therefore, amount to prescriptivism, but actually the acquisition of a (perhaps new?) variant of English case morphology.

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Re: The reform of linguistics

Re: Inferior dialects?