What is Language? - LIN 201 Spring 2025

1 What is Language? LIN 201, Spring 2025 Syracuse University Kenji Oda  2 What’s The difference between language and Language covered Properties of Language today  Language distinguishes us from other...

1 What is Language? LIN 201, Spring 2025 Syracuse University Kenji Oda  2 What’s The difference between language and Language covered Properties of Language today  Language distinguishes us from other creatures. What is this thing called LANGUAGE? When we consider this question, we must consider two different questions. What makes 1. What is a language? (with the lower-case “l”) us human? (A) language – a particular variety spoken in a community. 2. What is Language? (with the upper-case “L”) The system that allows us to communicate one another. What is a language? 4  What language do you speak at home? How many languages can you speak? Digression: How many human languages are spoken/signed in the world? How many A. Less than 100 B. 100–500 human C. 500–1,000 D. 1,000–5,000 languages? E. 5,000–10,000 F. 10,000–25,000 G. More than 25,000 Answer – 7,105 (or 7,151 by Ethnologue: https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/how-many-languages) 5  Is English a language? Is Spanish a language? What is a Is Navajo a language? language? Is American Sign Language a language? - Or what Are English and Chinese two different counts as a languages? Are American English and British English language? two different languages?  British English and American English are the same language. (American) English and Chinese are two different What is a languages. language? How do we know this? One criterion is mutual intelligibility. --- Or what Referring to the ability of people to understand counts as a each other. If two varieties of speech are mutually language? intelligible, they are strictly dialects of the same langauage; if they are mutually unintelligible, they are different languages. (Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics) What is a language? - Or what counts as a language? What counts as a language has political, religious, or cultural factors associated with it. “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” – Max Weinreich Consider Scandinavian countries. What is a language? “Yesterday there were mice in the bathtub” a. I går var det mus i badekaret (Norwegian) b. I går var der mus i badekarret (Danish) c. I går var det möss i badkaret (Sweden) The three are mutually intelligible, but they are considered different languages for longstanding political and historical reasons. 9  An opposite case? https://youtu.be/UGRcJQ9tMbY?t=58 (SNL skit with James McAvoy) What is Language? 11 What is Language All languages differ with respect to their inventory of sounds, vocabulary, word order, types of affixes etc., but they all have a common set of traits. Arbitrary Hierarchically organized A constrained but creative system Quintessentially human & genetically endowed Displacement 12 What is Language? – Arbitrariness Language has semanticity, or the ability to convey a meaning. Language is a system of signs that are associated with meanings. A conventional sign can be a string of sounds (for spoken languages) or a gesture (sign languages) /kæt/ (cat) is associated with a meaning 13 The sign/meaning connection is arbitrary Other languages have a different set of conventional signs: English: cat French: chat This is because the sign-meaning Vietnamese: mèo relation in human language is Hawai’ian: pōpoki arbitrary. Finnish: kissa No intrinsic connection between a Innu: minush particular set of sounds and a Mandarin: mao particular meaning. Japanese: neko Icelandic: köttur 14 Language is hierarchically organized Language combine smaller units into larger units that are arranged in a particular order. Examples include: sequences of sounds form words: k + æ + t → cat sequences of words form phrases: the big cat sequences of phrases form sentences: The big cat ate a fish. 15 Language is a creative system Languages substitute or add units to create new meanings and express infinitely many new ideas. /kæt/ ‘cat’ vs. /bæt/ ‘bat’ the cat vs. the big white cat The big cat vs. the small cat A dog bites a man vs. A man bites a dog. 16  But this creativity is constrained by a language’s grammar Rule-governed creativity Grammar: the mental system that allows Rule- human beings to form and interpret the sounds, words, and sentences of their governed language (O’Grady et al. 2012) creativity E.g., In English, adjectives (American, tall, smart) typically precede the noun that they modify. The American man vs. *The man American 18  Grammar is not about “proper” vs. “improper” usage, pronunciation, punctuation. Rule- Grammar is not just about words and governed sentences. flib vs. fbli … which sounds more like an creativity English word? 19  Displacement: What you can communicate is not limited to things that are here or now. It will rain tomorrow. The Halifax Explosion happened in 1917. Linguistics is the scientific study of Other language. properties of Genetic endowment: All human children Language have the same, equal capacity to acquire language. First language acquisition is so efficient that many believe we are born with an innate Universal Grammar (UG), a template for learning a language. 20  The ability for a language speaker to produce, perceive, and understand concepts and to render judgments about their grammaticality or acceptability is Competence known as linguistic competence vs. performance Competence is entirely different from (linguistic) performance, or the ability to use language to communicate. Effective performance can be impeded by stress, nerves, memory slips, exhaustion, substances like medication or alcohol, among other factors. 21