Linguistic Diversity and Language Acquisition

• There are approximately 6,000 to 7,000 languages spoken worldwide.
• It is estimated that 50-90% of these languages may disappear within the next century.
• Some languages have as few as two vowels.
• English has around 20 distinct vowel sounds.
• Certain languages lack words for "left" and "right," instead using cardinal directions like "north" and "west".
• There exist languages with over 1.5 billion speakers, as well as languages spoken by only two people.

Myth 1: Primitive Languages

• The myth posits that "primitive" languages are less advanced and cannot effectively express complex ideas, with poor grammar and undeveloped structure.

Linguistic Fact 1

• So-called "primitive" languages do not exist in the modern world.
• Humans today are not biologically less evolved than others.
• The term "primitive language" would only be applicable to the languages spoken by Homo erectus.
• Edward Sapir discussed numeral classifiers in language in his 1921 book, "Language".
• English does not use numeral classifiers.
• Languages with numeral classifiers require additional information when counting objects, such as "1 four-legged table" instead of just "1 table"

Chol Mayan Language

• All spoken languages are linguistically equal.
• Each language can fully express ideas and experiences and evolve to meet new needs. (Lippi-Green, 1997)
• Language is a flexible tool that adapts by creating or borrowing what it needs.
• All languages have rules and structural complexity; no language is inherently better than another.
• Languages are diverse across linguistic structures.

Myths 2 & 3

• Language change is often viewed negatively, as impoverishing the language.
• Written language is mistakenly considered more perfect than spoken language.
• This myth falsely compares spoken and written languages, which are distinct.
• Writing is a technology created to represent spoken language in a material form.

Fact 2

• All spoken languages change over time in sound, vocabulary, syntax, and prosody.
• These changes do not reduce the language's effectiveness in communication.
• Language changes to better serve the communicative needs of its speakers.

Fact 3: Spoken vs. Written Language

• Spoken language predates written language.
• Spoken language is innate, while written language must be learned.
• Spoken language can be planned or spontaneous, while written language is planned.
• Spoken language is ephemeral; written language is permanent.
• Spoken language is variable; written language idealizes a standard, suppressing variation.
• Spoken and written language are fundamentally different phenomena and cannot be compared in terms of superiority.

Myth 4

• A myth states that only the "best" languages survive, while inadequate ones die out.

Assumption 1

• The flawed idea that some languages are "better" at communicating information.

Assumption 2

• The incorrect application of "survival of the fittest" to language.
• It incorrectly links language "adequacy" to its survival.

Fact 4

• Language endangerment and death are due to symbolic, socio-political, and socio-economic factors, not a language's communication ability.

Myth 5

• A common misconception is that linguists aim to correct grammar.

Fact 5

• Linguists use a descriptive approach to study language, not a prescriptive one.
• Linguistics is a descriptive field, not a prescriptive one.

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Approaches to Language

• Prescriptive rules dictate how to speak or write according to someone's idea of "good" or "bad" language. Examples include "Never end a sentence with a preposition" or "Never split infinitives."
• Descriptive rules describe what actually happens in spoken language, such as "The basic word order in English is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object)".

Design Features of Language

• Language is a communication system using sounds and written symbols, varying among regions.

Language and Communication

• Communication involves using words, sounds, signs, or behaviors to exchange information, ideas, thoughts, and feelings. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
• Human language is a specific communication form with unique features.

16 Design Features of Language (Hockett, 1977)

• Mode of Communication: The physical means of transmitting and receiving messages (vocal-auditory, gestural-visual).
• Broadcast Transmission and Directional Reception: Speech is transmitted in all directions but perceived as coming from a specific location.
• Rapid Fading: Spoken words disappear quickly.
• Interchangeability: Speakers can also be listeners (and signers can be viewers).
• Complete Feedback: Speakers monitor and modify their messages.
• Specialization: Human speech's only function is communication.
• Semanticity: Language conveys meaning through symbols.
• Arbitrariness: There is no inherent connection between a concept and its linguistic representation (Ferdinand de Saussure).
• Discreteness: Language comprises distinct units.
• Displacement: Language can communicate about things not present.
• Productivity/Openness/Creativity: Humans can produce and understand novel utterances.
• Duality of Patterning: Language is organized on two levels: meaningless sounds and meaningful parts (morphemes, words, sentences).
• Cultural Transmission: Language is culturally, not genetically, transmitted.
• Prevarication: Humans can use language to lie.
• Reflexiveness: Language can be used to discuss language itself.
• Learnability: Any human can learn any language.
• Recursion: Embedding structures within similar structures (Noam Chomsky), e.g., "Mary thinks (Peter believes (Sandy is smart))".

Piraha

• The Piraha language lacks grammatical number. Absence of a counting system ( but they have words for “many” and “few”)
• Example: Hiatihi hi Kauai bogi Bai-aaga: Possible translations - The Piraha are afraid of evil spirits, A Piraha is afraid of evil spirits, The Piraha are afraid of an evil spirit.

Color Terms

• Piraha does not use abstract color terms beyond immediate experience, only describing colors of specific objects. Red Fruit - “the red ones” wouldn't make sense to them.
• Piraha lacks recursivity (embedding).
• It has 2 "tenselike" morphemes: -a (remote) or -i (proximate)
• Few words relating to time.
• Kinship terms are restricted to two generations above and one below ego.
• There is no reference mentioned of relatives who died before one is born.
• Absence of traditional creation myths and fiction.
• Cultures that don’t believe in Prevarication will have similar beliefs
• Everett suggests that language "gaps" come from the cultural focus on immediate experience.
• The restricted communication to the immediate experience of interlocutors connected to the cultural value of living in the present

Everett Main Points

• Piraha seemingly lacks recursion, challenging Chomsky's theory about the universality of recursion.
• Piraha shows limited displacement.
• Language structure (vocabulary, grammar) is affected by culture.

Language Acquisition and Socialization

Language Acquisition Stages

• 8-10 weeks: reflexive noises, crying.
• 6 months: vocal play.
• 6-12 months: babbling, distinct sounds.
• 1 year old: intonational contours, one-word stage.
• 2 years old: multiword stage (200 words).
• 5 years old: questions, negative statements, complex sentences, displacement.

Language Acquisition Stages in Bilingual Children

• Initial stages: children build separate word sets for each language.
• Two-word and multi-word stages: language mixing occurs (e.g., "mas cookies," "mommy ven").
• End of the 3rd year: mixing declines, separate lexicons develop, but one syntax is used.
• Years 4-5: syntax becomes distinct for each language, with metalinguistic awareness and language-function associations.

The Innatist Theory of Language Acquisition (Chomsky)

• Some language aspects must be innate.
• Forms like "taked" and "gooses" show children derive grammatical rules by extending markers to words where they don't apply.

Chomsky's View of Language Acquisition

• Input: fragmented speech, false starts, distortions.
• Output: ideal theory of language.
• Primary Linguistic Data is processed through an innate "Universal Grammar".
• Broca's area is for speech production and Wernicke's area is for speech comprehension, Auditory cortex; Motor cortex; Visual cortex and Angular gyrus

Sociocultural Theory of Language Acquisition

• Language is acquired via exchange in social situations.

American (White Middle Class), American vs Kaliuau , Western Samoan

• Caregivers are Mothers compared to Mother Childs older.
• Nuclear families per household compared Extended families.
• communicative Interaction shows Cultural Conception of the.
• Position of the Child in communicative shows Dyadic Infants vs Triadic or Multiparty conversations.
• Infants are helpless, soft, lacking understanding vs Infants "papnegeage"
• CG speaks for the child
• Child encouraged of the social group to “come” towards
• Child talked to vs children Adopted
• The three stories of social development
• Biological factors play a role in language acquisition, sociocultural factors affect communication.
• Poverty of stimulus in language acquisition places too much emphasis on the natural development process.
• Although biological factors play a role, cultural factors matter also.
• Western models are not universally correct language acquisition.
• Western patterns of language acquisition (dyadic exchanges, motherese, baby talk, etc), are not universal models of language acquisition.
• Biological play a role in the social cultural

What is Culture and How do Anthropologists Study it?

• Sociocultural: study of different cultures through society.
• Physical/Biological: study of human evolution and adaptation.
• Archaeology: study of material culture through artifacts.
• Linguistic: the study of language.
• Applied: anthropology used to solve real-world problems.

Anthropology, Linguistics, and Linguistic Anthropology

• Anthropology: the holistic study of humankind.
• Linguistic: the scientific, analytic study of language to reveal its structure.
• Linguistic Anthropology: the study of language in its social context or the interaction between language and culture.

Precursors

• Travel writers like Herodotus (5th Century BC).
• European explorers and immigrants like Hans Staden (1525 - 1579)
• 18th-19th century scholars like Jefferson (1743 -1826)

Nineteenth Century

“Armchair anthropology”

• Early anthropologists collected and compared travel literature.
• Sir E.B. Tylor (1852-1917): Culture includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customer, and any other capabilities and habits.
• J.G. Frazer (1854-1941): comparative religion, believed systems proceed through magic, religion, and science.

Twentieth Century Modern Anthropology

• Franz Boas (1858-1942): emphasized fieldwork and empiricism via direct observation.
• Boas did not judge other cultures.
• Margaret Mead (1901-1978): first women to conduct fieldwork outside of her own society, was one of Boas students, used team fieldwork pioneered use of film.
• Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): fieldwork in Trobriand Islands.
• Malinowski: Kula Ring: an exchange of necklaces that happens along the trobriand island
• Mwali: white shell armbands (counterclockwise) and Soulave: red shell necklaces (clockwise)
• The more kula objects a chief possesses, the more authority he has
• Concluded kula ring helped facilitate reinforce authority social networks and social status.

Culture (Metcalf)

• Culture is what is instilled in a child by elders and peers, from table manners to religion
• Culture is not transmitted genetically.
• Holistic” : covers everything how do anthropologists study culture? -Long-term competence
• Participant observation the immersion of anthropological field workers for an extended period in the day-to-day lives of the people whom they study.
• Participant observation =/ “going native”
• Renouncing

Informant/Consultant

• The native speaker from whom the researcher collects linguistic or cultural information.
• Fluent in their native language, active participant in their culture
• Initial stages of fieldwork in traditional societies:
  • a) Female anthropologist >> female informants
  • b) Male anthropologist >> male informants
  • c) Not necessary for anthropologist studying western cultures
• Work 1/1 with consultant: linguistic data, language training

A note of Methodology

• Field notes
• Transcription of recordings of social encounters, activities, and events
• Field diary
• Interviewing (unstructured, semi-structured, structured)
• Focus groups
• Tape/ digital recordings, video recordings
• Linguistic Elicitation:
  • Obtaining from informants words, utterances, texts, and judgements concerning language

Writing a Grammar

• Grammar: a description of language at all levels of linguistic structure.
• CORPUS: collection of language data used to make a grammar
• Includes data from casual and non-casual speech, linguistic elicitation, conversations, etc.

Module Keywords

• Armchair anthropology E. Taylor, J. Frazer
• Empiricism, modern anthropology
• Franz Boas, Margaret Mead
• Malinowski, Kula Ring
• Culture
• Fieldwork, participant observation
• Going native is different from participant observation
• Culture shock
• Informat/Consultant - doing close work with an anthropologist
• Field notes, field diary, transcription
• Unstructured, structured, semi-structured interviewing , focus groups
• Linguistic elicitation, grammar, CORPUS

Explore language endangerment, linguistic diversity, and language acquisition theories. Understand how languages differ in structure and spatial orientation. Discover how cultural factors influence language, contrasting English with various other languages.