What is “language”?

Tags

language, languages, linguistics, speakers

Sometimes we can use certain terms with such frequency that we never stop to define them clearly.  Sometimes we assume that we all agree on the meaning of a term, so we never really examine that meaning together.

One of the most interesting things to me about my first year of my master’s degree is how frequently I have been forced to pause and ask myself, “What is language?”  In several cases my textbooks authors or scholars I’m reading seem to be using the term in a way that is broader, or narrower, or sort of just to one side of how I would think of it.  One of my textbooks, for example, took into consideration such categories as body language, dress style, even physical touch and proxemics (conventions for acceptable physical distance between two people).  Is that language?  I’m still pondering that one.

Of course, dictionary definitions abound.  H. Douglas Brown defines it as “a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings.”[1]  A common introductory linguistics textbook tells us that “language is often viewed as a vehicle of thought, a system of expression that mediates the transfer of thought from one person to another. “[2]  These sound like pretty straightforward definitions, until you start to unpack them.  That first definition says language communicates ideas or feelings, but what about information, questions, curses and blessings?  The second one says that language is a means of transferring thought from one person to another; so when you say a prayer to a higher being or discuss the bad day you had with your dog, is that not language?

As you can see, following through on a scientific definition of language can quickly become an exercise in falling down the rabbit hole.  When I start to feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland, I like to read deliberately non-scientific definitions of language.  My favorite is the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson with which I started of this blog four months ago:

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

I love that quote.  It encapsulates everything I love about language, and why I think languages are important.  It captures that specifically human, collaborative, and monumental quality that is unique to language, however you want to define it.  And I love that Emerson acknowledges that it is something to which we all bring a stone, not just the masons and the architects, the master builders or, in this case, the linguists.  Not just the speakers of global powerhouses like English, but the speakers of every single language.  It is a city which we are all constructing together, and it is a city whose construction will never be finished.

So I wanted to ask you, dear readers: what is language?  You don’t have to give me a scientific definition, though you’re welcome to of course.  I know some of you are linguists, armchair or otherwise, but I want to know what everyone thinks.  Do you have a quote that you like?  A feeling you’d like to share?

What is language?

 

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[1] Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching.  (5th ed.).  White Plains, NY: Pearson.

[2] Finnegan, E. (2008).  Language: Its structure and use.  (5^th ed.) USA: Thomas Wadsworth.

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Learning a language, as an adult

Tags

language acquisition, language learning, languages, linguistics

I tend to get pretty frustrated with language-learning programs that insist you can learn a second language “just like you learned as a child!”  We all think that learning our first language was easy as pie; after all, we don’t remember the effort it took, and we’re all perfect at it now.  And let’s face it: learning a second language is hard.  And it takes lots of work.  So who wouldn’t want a method that promises effortless, perfect acquisition?

There are a lot of problems with these claims.  The first was very aptly put in this fantastic review of a certain language-learning software program – specifically, that no language learning method actually provides the true immersion experience we got as children with our first language, and even if it did, the learner would have to be “content to study the language all day every day for seven years and end up with a second-grade vocabulary and second-grade reading skills.”  (You should really go read this whole thing, there are so many perfectly stated points in it.)  By and large, adult learners are hoping for something more.  They’re hoping to achieve an adult level in their target language.  I would argue that, while this is of course ambitious, adults are actually uniquely positioned to achieve such a goal precisely because they are adults.

H.D. Brown’s Principles of Language Learning and Teaching[i] put it in a way that made me go “a-ha!” When you talk about first language vs. second language acquisition in these contexts, you’re usually actually talking about two different variables: age (child vs. adult) and language (first vs. second).  If we’re going to be good scientists, we know that we can only manipulate one variable to make a reasonable comparison.  In other words, it makes sense to talk about child second vs. adult second language acquisition, or child first vs. child second language acquisition, but child first vs. adult second is not a reasonable comparison to make.  And that’s precisely the analogy that people make all the time.

So let’s take the better analogy: child second language acquisition vs. adult second language acquisition.  When we compare these two, we find that children are better at some things while adults are better at others.  Children tend to be less inhibited and less afraid of making mistakes, which are wonderful traits for a language learner to have.  But adults are much more cognizant of their own learning styles and strategies, much more able to see patterns and use learning tools, much more able to make logical comparisons and conclusions.  To put that in another way…adults are generally smarter than children.  Shocking, right?

I’m not trying to call out any particular learning method.  I think whatever works for you is what works for you, and no one should insist otherwise.  But that’s precisely the point.  You’re an adult learner, so you can do adult things like understand what works for you, make reasoned decisions, pursue languages that interest you, and achieve remarkable success through hard work and targeted practice.  It’s good to learn like an adult!

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[i] Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching (5th ed.).  White Plains, NY: Pearson.

 

May Day!

Tags

applied linguistics, Democracy Now!, International Workers' Day, language, linguistics, May Day, Spring

The title of this post is an illustration of the fact that language is much more than words.

In applied linguistics, we say that listening and reading are not passive practices in comprehension, but are active practices in co-constructing meaning with the speaker/writer.  In other words, the way you read that title will heavily depend upon your background, your culture, and even your mood, and will also heavily depend upon what you think you know about my background, culture, and mood.

If you are a labor organizer, or an activist, or if you thought that I’d just been watching Democracy Now, you might read “May Day!” as a rallying cry.

If you live in England, or are interested in Celtic history, or if you thought I was going a little crazy with spring fever, you might read “May Day!” as a joyful exclamation.

If you are a sailor, or just watched a movie where an airplane crashed, or if you knew that I have four days to complete two final projects and I am currently undercaffeinated, you might read “May Day!” as a distress signal.

You could argue that this is particularly true in written communication, where you don’t have the benefit of intonation, facial expressions, and gesture to narrow down the precise way that I’m saying those words.  And since you are reading this at a different time and in a different place than I am writing it, you don’t have all of the context that might help you determine how I’m feeling and what I’m doing at the moment.  So instead of having all of those extra clues, you’re going to have to work pretty hard, and make a lot of assumptions, to construct the meaning of those two words I typed.

Just for the record, I mean all three things.  Please send workers’ rights, sunshine, and coffee ASAP!  May Day!

A love/hate relationship with grammar charts

Tags

grammar, language learning, Sanskrit

A couple of days ago, one of my classmates referred to me as a “paradigmist”, a word he made up for someone who believes in the value of grammar paradigms.  If you’ve studied languages before you might also recognize these as “conjugation charts” or “noun declensions,” something like that.  John and I have always gotten along pretty well, so I’m going to assume he didn’t mean it as an insult 😉  But still I would like to clarify myself, if you’ll oblige me.

First I must confess that I do love grammar charts.  I like being able to see the big picture, to have everything organized in neat and precise ways.  “Inductive” grammar of the kind that just throws you into it makes me panicky; it makes me feel like I’m lost in some dark woods with no map and no compass.  Plus as you might have guessed I’m quite a geek for language, so I like having all of that information right in front of me; I savor it, actually.

Having said that, and before you all start throwing things at me, I would like to say that even I have my limits.  I discovered this when I first encountered the Language Textbook from Hell.

(side note- I’m not going to identify precisely what book I’m talking about, because almost every Sanskrit teacher I’ve heard of swears by this book, and I really have the utmost respect for Sanskritists, so I’m going to try not to incriminate myself)

Here is an actual lesson:

Lesson 7
Full paradigm of feminine nouns ending in -i
38 bullet points about grammar (not exaggerating)
Translate this paragraph into English
Translate these 10 sentences into Sanskrit
Memorize the paradigm at the beginning of this lesson

There is a byword among current Second Language Acquisition folks, and it is this: “Grammar-Translation Method.”  This is the “method”, such as it is, that SLA researchers and language teachers have been trying to undo for the past 70 years or so.  Never has there been a more clear and perfect example, literally and maddeningly, than the method used by this textbook.  The only way my classmates and I were able to console ourselves was by gathering a few minutes before class and planning the big bonfire we were going to burn this textbook in at the end of the semester.

Part of the problem is that there was zero practice in any of the grammar.  The only practice given was “memorize this.”  Which is insane.  Consider this: Sanskrit has 3 different numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and 8 different noun cases.  Each lesson therefore opens with one, sometimes two, charts of 24 inflections that you’re just supposed to…what?  Scan with your eyeballs and instantly know by heart?  I became so desperate for some practice, some exercises, some way of getting it into my brain other than this bizarre open-brain-insert-chart non-method, that I actually started writing up my own worksheets and distributing them to my classmates on the sly.

I started to think to myself, “there has to be a better way to do this.”  I started to read a bit about how people actually learn languages.  I started to think that maybe I could do it, I could help people, or at least myself, actually acquire some Sanskrit or Russian or whatever.  When I looked at the sad, desperate faces of my poor classmates, all of whom were undergraduates who had never taken a language class before in their lives, I wanted to tell them, “Don’t give up!  It doesn’t have to be like this!  Learning a language really isn’t this hellish, usually!”

And so one year after that nightmare semester, I enrolled in a Master’s program in Applied Linguistics.  So that I could figure out a better way.

That is my long story to say that maybe I am a paradigmist, but I’m not crazy.

English pronunciation

Tags

English, French, German, humor, language, pronunciation, Spanish

I don’t know about you, but every once in a while I thank my lucky stars that I grew up speaking English.  Not because it’s the best language, and trust me I wish I had grown up multilingual like some lucky folks, but I’m grateful that at least I speak English because it strikes me as incredibly difficult to learn.

Part of that difficulty comes from the fact that English is, as one author put it, a “magnificent bastard tongue.”  I once read that as much as 60% of English is borrowed from non-English sources.  English is technically a Germanic language, and if you check out this post from earlier you can hear the similarities with our nearest neighbor on the Germanic branch, but what we speak today is so full of Latin, French, Spanish, Greek, and on and on that it seems to me a second-language learner of English must possess an incredible faculty for learning all sorts of different structures and pronunciation patterns.

Which is probably why The Pronunciation Manual is so hilarious.  I discovered this last week and I don’t know how I lived without it.  I would explain it to you, but I think Ellen does a fine job introducing it:

 

Seriously, how many of us, even native English speakers, have gotten tongue-tied at the word schadenfreude

 

or Chateauneuf-du-Pape

 

and how many times have you heard normally eloquent speakers mispronounce chipotle?

 

Once I stopped laughing uncontrollably and wiped the tears from my eyes, I then discovered another great thing about these videos: people who don’t get it!  I can be neurotic exacting about grammar and pronunciation myself, but I do understand absurdity for humor’s sake, and I love that there are people who simply must insist that that is NOT how you pronounce that word!

Please enjoy the videos, take some time to laugh at yourself for the terrible way you mispronounce words we took from French, and appreciate nonnative English speakers for the daunting task they take on.

The phonological genius of Gord Downie

Tags

English, Gord Downie, language, linguistics, lyrics, music, phonology

Have you ever noticed that some songwriters have a gift for lyrics that are not only meaningful, but also sound good?  Most of us are aware of devices like alliteration and rhyme, which have to do with the way words sound next to each other.  But since I’ve become enamored of phonology, I’ve started to notice that the very best lyricists actually employ a lot of different techniques that I wasn’t really aware of before.  It’s possible that some of this is subconscious; I’m not sure all good lyricists are also linguistics geeks.  But it’s interesting to analyze.  So…I thought I’d analyze a song for you today!  Music and linguistics, two of the best things on earth, right? 🙂

The song I chose is by Gord Downie and the Country of Miracles, a solo project of the lead singer and lyricist of the (incomparable, flawless) Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. [Side note: preliminary results of a social experiment I have been conducting reveal that the sentence “I LOVE THE TRAGICALLY HIP” is a fail-proof way to make best friends with any Canadian.]  I chose this song because the very first time I heard it, I went WOW and insisted on listening to it fifteen more times.  It is just so, so brilliant lyrically (and it’s a darn fine tune as well.)

First, a very brief lesson in phonology:

• A pair of slashes is what linguists use to show a distinct sound, or phoneme, in a language.  Spelling doesn’t necessarily correspond to phonetic notation; for example, in English, the letters ph and f would both look like this in notation: /f/.
• Phonemes are classified by how they are produced when spoken.  There are two ways to classify consonant phonemes this way: by point of articulation (which parts of your vocal apparatus you are using) and manner of articulation (how you’re using those parts to make a sound).  Some possible points of articulation are your lips, your tongue, your palate, your teeth, and that ridge just behind your teeth, known as your alveolar ridge.
• A fricative is, roughly, a sound you make with friction, by blocking most of the flow of air from your lungs but then letting some sound escape.  In English, an example of a fricative is /s/; try saying “ssssss” and notice how you’re blocking most of the air with your tongue and your gumline, and how the sound is created by the friction there.
• A stop (also known as a plosive) is just what it sounds like; it makes a distinct sound by stopping the sound altogether.  Try saying the English phoneme /t/.  Notice how your tongue is in the exact same place as it was when you said /s/, but instead of letting a little air through, you stop it completely?
• Another category of sounds are the nasals.  Nasals are formed by making the sound go through your nasal cavity (see how descriptive these terms are?) I once learned this handy tip for telling if a consonant is a nasal: start saying the consonant – for example, English /n/, so just start saying “nnnnnnnn” – and then pinch your nose shut.  If pinching your nose shut stops the sound completely, you’ve got a nasal!  (Try the same thing with “sssss” and see how it doesn’t affect non-nasals).

Got all that?

The phonemes that are important in this song are:
/f/ and /v/ – the labiodental (i.e. put your top teeth on top of your lower lip) fricatives
/m/ – the bilabial (i.e. put both lips together) nasal
/b/ – a bilabial stop

Now!  Let’s listen to some good music.

Click on the album cover below to open a music player in a new window.  The player is from the band’s official website, and streams the entire album.  The song I want to talk about is the very first one, which is called “East Wind.”  If I might make a suggestion, listen to the song just once to enjoy it, then listen again and read some of the things I noticed about it.

There are two (linguistic) highlights of this song for me.

First of all, there is the very first line from the first verse:

Hello again my friend, I’ve come to see you again.

Here is the line with a bit of phonetic notation:

Hello again /m/y /f/riend, I’/v/ co/m/ to see you again.

/m/, /f/, and /v/, those sounds that you make with your lips, I think are very comforting sounds.  Like when someone makes you some delicious food and you go “mmmm.”  And when you have occasion to say words like “life” and “love”.  All of that is evoked in this line that he’s saying to his friend.

But even more than that, and here is where I got really excited when I heard this song: this line is a perfect phonological palindrome, revolving around the word “friend.”  Do you see how on either side of the /d/ in that word, there are those labiodentals, and on either side of those, a pair of /m/s, each in perfect symmetry to one another?  That symmetry is reflected in the repetition of the word “again” at the beginning and end of the line, and also in the notes of the melody, which make a perfect arc down and then back up again.  So in this line about the symmetry of going and returning, turning on the presence of a friend, we hear that same symmetry melodically, semantically, and phonologically.

The other really clever thing about this song is in the refrain:

It doesn’t go around you, it goes through you.

It doesn’t go around you, it goes right through.

Maybe I should clarify that what I think is really clever is what is not in those lines, specifically the word “blow.”

Bilabial stops, /b/ and /p/, are common in comic book fight scenes (“Pow!”  “Bam!”) or when people are trying to vocalize loud noises (“Pop!” “Pyoopyoopyoo!” “Kablooey!”) In other words, they’re pretty jarring sounds, and they’re pretty distinctly articulated – you can actually see when a person is saying a bilabial, unlike many other sounds.  What could be more un-wind-like than a jarring, distinct sound that literally blocks airflow?  And yet the verb to describe what wind does is “blow,” so of course most poets and songwriters will say just that.  But Downie abandons this word entirely, and chooses a different verb that makes an entirely different sound.  Notice the effect this has: instead of ever stopping, the sound keeps flowing unimpeded, just like the lazy wind he’s describing.

In other words, what he’s done is choose words that not only say what they mean, but sound like what they mean.

How genius is that?

Writing as worship: Islamic calligraphy

Tags

Arabic, calligraphy, Islam, poetry, writing

Earlier this week, I had the honor of sitting in on a guest lecture by renowned Islamic calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya.  Mr. Zakariya, who has spent years practicing and studying under Turkish masters, spoke about the different styles and the history of calligraphy in Islamic art.  Already suffering from a profound weakness for the Arabic script, Mr. Zakariya’s slideshow of examples gave me goosebumps.

In the name of God, who soaks His entire creation with His mercy, who directs His mercy specifically: Truly, the promise of God is true, so do not be fooled by the life of the world, and do not let the deceiving devil fool you about God. Only God knows when the last day will happen, He sends the rain, and He knows what is in the wombs. No soul shall know what it will earn tomorrow, and no soul shall know in what land it will die. Truly, God is all-knowing, all-informed.

One thing I noticed about the lecture is that while it was scholarly and serious, it was also full of rapture and joy.  Mr. Zakariya constantly referred to the “music” of certain calligraphic pieces.  He said that a beautiful piece of calligraphy is to the Islamic tradition what the nude is in Western painting: its purity, its form, its “sinuosity” representing the height of art.  He also described it as a very “intimate piece of art”; to really grasp the beauty of a calligraphic manuscript, one has to view it while holding it in the hand, off the shelf and out from the display glass, putting one’s face right up next to the text to see how the paper was burnished, how the border was constructed, how the ink flowed from the pen.  He said that it is difficult to put into words what differentiates an excellent piece from a merely lovely one; there is an “indescribable extra,” he said, that “turns it into visual music.”  Displaying a photograph of one exquisite example he had seen in person, he said “When you see a piece like this, you can’t get enough of it.”  From my limited knowledge of Islam, particularly the mystical branches that come out of Turkey and Iran, I can see how this art reflects the religious experience: at once strict, empirical, scholarly, and dedicated, and also poetic, experimental, spiritual, and above all, ecstatic.

How does one describe the indescribable? How does one form an image of that which cannot be portrayed? That is what the hilye does…it embodies the Prophet’s moral, behavioral, and spiritual qualities as well as physical appearance.

Reading, or even simply viewing, a well-produced hilye can refresh the heart and mind. It gives us, so many generations later, a kind of intimacy with the Prophet, as though we had known him. To see him in this way is to allow him to show the way.

Of course, calligraphy is never just about pretty shapes.  As Mr. Zakariya said to me when I got to meet him after the lecture, “this is all about language.”  During his lecture, after displaying several slides of various permutations of the bismillah, the phrase that invokes the grace and mercy of God before every sura of the Quran, Mr. Zakariya noted that if you look at Islamic art or texts you’ve inevitably seen the bismillah hundreds of time.  “But,” he noted, “it is perhaps the most potent phrase in all of Islamic literature.”  Calligraphy, he says, has the ability to make a thing new; a particularly beautiful calligraphic rendering of the phrase causes the reader/viewer to stop and see the phrase with new eyes, and to reflect on its meaning once again.  “If you put the hadith,” the sayings of the Prophet, “in a beautiful setting, it allows you to look at them in a different way,” he added later.  At the same time, he marveled out loud at lines, movement, the perfect formation of a dot marking a consonant, the spacing of characters within and between words.

O cat, you left us and didn’t come back
And you were to me like a son,
So how can we get loose from the bonds of our love for you?
You were like a part of our household to us.
You would drive away harmful things and guard us
In the dark from snakes and crickets.

In Islamic calligraphy, language serves art, and vice versa.  Language, art, and religion dance together to a verbal, textual, visual music.

Photos: “Do Not Be Fooled” & “Lament for a Dead Cat”, Kaz Tsuruta
“Hilye in Red”, Mohamed Zakariya

Thanks to Sally Banks Zakariya for images, translations, and notes.

Language is

Tags

Emerson, language, quote

“Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson