Nine Ideas About Language Clark 5 1 Children

Nine Ideas About Language Clark 5

1. Children learn their L 1 swiftly, efficiently, and largely w/o instruction Prewiring? v Children are not ‘taught’ to talk v Discover underlying rules v Not imitation, but hypothesizing v By school age, have already learned majority of NL governing rules v

2. Language operates by rules Arbitrary - sounds, grammar v Agreement among speakers to use features/patterns consistently v Variations are still governed by rules, and are mutually intelligible v

3. All languages have 3 major components Phonology v Lexicon v 2 definitions of grammar v

4. Everyone speaks a dialect Dialect - variety of a particular language which has a set of distinguishing lexical, phonological, and grammatical rules v How do dialects occur? v No dialect is inherently superior v

5. Speakers of all languages employ a range of styles and a set of sub-dialects or jargons Ability to adjust language forms to social context - part of native understanding v Sociolinguistic rules v Learned late v Jargons v Martin Joos - 5 basic styles v Halliday - 7 main functions v

6. Language change is normal Sounds/grammar change more slowly than lexical changes v Causes v – Simplification – Regularization – New ideas/inventions – Unknown/spontaneous

7. Languages are intimately related to the societies and individuals who use them L is shaped by its speakers and their needs v Conversely, speakers are shaped by their language v Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis v

8. Value judgments about different languages or dialects are matters of taste Every language is a ‘fully formed, logical, rule-governed variant of human speech’ v Prestige for the standard is the result of prestige for its speakers/ prejudices of the dominate speech community v No intrinsic shortcomings of nonstandard forms v

9. Writing is derivative of speech v v Talking for half a million years, writing less than 5, 000 years Only 5% of languages have indigenous writing systems Shifts in formality occur in writing, changes in speech habits are reflected in writing Beliefs about writing are bound to literary tradition

JOURNAL TOPIC ONE: Did you bring any misconceptions/ generalizations/ prejudices about language into this class? Is there anything new you have learned in regards to language? v One page, double-spaced, typed response for Wednesday, September 1 st v