Properties worksheet. Answer key

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FACULTAD DE FILOSOFIA Y LETRAS - UNT DEPARTAMENTO DE INGLES INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS - 2020 ANSWER KEY - The Properties of Language: PRACTICE A) Identify the property of language that is best illustrated by each of the following examples. Refer to Yule’s and O’Grady’s discussions. Explain each case. Note: you will find that you can relate an example to more than one property. This is because whenever language is used, there is arbitrariness, double articulation, discreteness and so on. In your answers, refer to the property that is more closely related to the example. The first one has been done for you.

1. Queen Elizabeth will make an extremely rare address to the nation on Sunday as Britain grapples with the increasingly deadly coronavirus outbreak. The property that is best represented in this example is displacement. This property allows the users of a language to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment (i.e., the context of situation: the place and time of speaking). Here we read that the queen of England is going to deliver a speech on Sunday, that is to say, we can talk about an event which hasn’t happened yet, as well as about the queen, the British nation, the coronavirus outbreak, even though we cannot see them here and now (in our immediate environment).

2.

English: horse Spanish: caballo German: Pferd Icelandic: hestur Scottish: cuddy

Arbitrariness. The fact that different languages have different, unrelated linguistic forms for the same concept (here ‘horse’) reveals the arbitrary (or conventional, as opposed to ‘iconic’/‘natural’) relation between words and what they refer to.

3. Old Spanish: Las mugieres son llegadas a Castiella. Modern Spanish: Las mujeres han llegado a Castilla.

Changeability. Languages change over time, and in this example, we can see some changes that have taken place in the Spanish language, such as the spelling of some words (mugieres; Castiella) or the use of auxiliary verbs.

4. ‘Almost as fast as the virus spread, so did instances of covidiotic behaviour.’

Productivity. Languages adjust to new situations and new inventions. Our present day pandemic situation has led to the ‘creation’ of new terms, such as “covidiotic”, (creativity: speakers say things they have never heard before) by combining the linguistic resources in the language (sounds, morphemes, pre-existing words).

5. English: man, pan, ban, fan

Discreteness. In this example, we can see that by changing one sound (the initial one in these English words), meaning changes. Phonemes are capable of distinguishing meaning.

6. Southern American English: ‘Ain't nothin' wrong with that, we's just a 'lil dif-rent from the rest a ya'll.’ Standard English: ‘There isn’t anything wrong with that, we’re just a little different from the rest of you.’

Equality. This example illustrates two varieties of Am.E. There are differences in pronunciation, syntax, and morphology, but each variety is equally capable of expressing the intended meanings, thus allowing their speakers to communicate successfully. Standard vs. non-standard varieties are the result of social or political factors, not linguistic ones.

7. A three-year-old child talking to his mom: “That boy taked my truck.”

Tacitness. In this example, we can see that a child applies the most common ‘rule’ for past tense formation (‘add –ed to the verb’). This indicates that the child (subconsciously) ‘knows’ the rule, i.e., that she or he has acquired it and knows how to apply it. Later on the child will learn that the past of this verb is different (i.e., that this is an irregular verb).

8. English: I do not go. Spanish: Yo no voy. French: Je ne vais pas. German: Ich gehe nicht. Norwegian: Jeg går ikke.

Universality. The example illustrates the way that different languages make negative sentences. We can see that even though there are differences, all of them place the negative item either immediately before or immediately after the main verb. This seems to be a common pattern (a linguistic universal) across languages.

9. /ɒ, p, s, t/  /stɒp/; /spɒt/; /pɒts/

Duality (or double articulation). The example shows that by combining four different sounds in English in different ways, we produce different words. Sounds in isolation do not have meaning (phonetic level), but their combination create different words (semantic level).

10. One day, Zeus distributed gifts to all the gods, but he didn't care much for humans. The Titan Prometheus, however, because he loved and felt sorry for humans, climbed up on Olympus and stole the fire from Hephaestus' workshop, put it in a hollow reed and gifted it to the humans.

Displacement. In this example we can see how language can be used to talk about entities and events which are not present in our immediate environment. Speakers can talk about things they cannot see (because they happened at a different time or place), or about imaginary entities and events, such as Zeus, Prometheus, or the Olympus.

11. O'odham is a language that is spoken in southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico. The English sentence The cowboy is branding the calves can be expressed in the following ways: Wakial 'o g wipsilo ha-cecposid. Generality. This example provides a clear instance Cowboy is the calves them branding. of a language that is completely different from English (and many other languages). While English Wipsilo 'o ha-cecposid g wakial. relies on word order to signal the syntactic function Calves is them branding the cowboy. of a word in a sentence (Subject, object, etc.), O'odham seems to have a free word order and Ha-cecposid 'o g wakial g wipsilo. therefore must rely on some other aspect, such as Them branding is the cowboy the calves. morphology (word endings, for example) to express this. So, O'odham and English have different grammars; but both languages have a grammar (each one has its own grammatical system).

B) Which property of language can each of the following extracts be related to? Explain. 1. Genie (born April 18, 1957) is the pseudonym for a feral child (also called wild child) who was a victim of severe abuse, neglect, and social isolation. The extent of Genie's isolation prevented her from being exposed to any significant amount of speech, and as a result she did not acquire language during childhood. Her abuse came to the attention of Los Angeles child welfare authorities on November 4, 1970. Cultural transmission. This is an example of a child who was isolated from human contact and therefore was unable to acquire language. Children need to be exposed to language, mainly through social contact with other human beings, in order to acquire a language.

2. "It is no simple matter to define the difference between a standard and a nonstandard variety of language. However, for our purposes, we can define a standard dialect as one that draws no negative attention to itself... On the other hand, a nonstandard dialect does draw negative attention to itself; that is, educated people might judge the speaker of such a dialect as socially inferior, lacking education, and so on. A nonstandard dialect can thus be characterized as having socially marked forms, such as ain't. A socially marked form is one that causes the listener to form a negative social judgment of the speaker. "It is important to understand that identifying a dialect as standard or nonstandard is a sociological judgment, not a linguistic one." (F. Parker and K. Riley, Linguistics for Non-Linguists. Allyn and Bacon, 1994) Equality. All languages and all language varieties are equally valid as means of communication.