“…a language is an infinite set of sentences which are triplets of phonetic, syntactic, and semantic properties generated by a finite abstract project, or grammar, which consists of sets of partially independent elements called rules and a lexicon or dictionary. Such grammars are represented in human neural systems and provide implicit knowledge of the language they define. A grammar is thus in certain ways analogous to a computer program in that it is a formal system partially determining the behaviour of a physical system (…)”
Nature and information
In the 20th century, neurophysiology began applying the phrase information processing to human bodily structures. Fair and square, if we see a cat or a dog, our eyes give us information on the animal being around. We are not just under an impression we see it, or experience premonition on life on Earth. At the same time, nobody would go on a lookout for cats or dogs, to tell the weather.
Program and feedback
It is natural grammar to have natural language information. This information gets operated by human nervous systems, and this in basically two modes: closed-loop or open-loop. The open-loop processes go their course as the instruction requires. They are compared to programs. Closed-loop processes are feedback.
Nature delimits on programs. Live nervous systems need to sustain in variable ecosystems. Excess program would thwart the ability to react and adapt. All biological programs depend on feedback, including the DNA for active protein.
In everyday language, feedback is associated with opinion, or physical control. Obviously, live nervous systems are not opinionated tyrannies. Feedback is a biological capability for closed-loop interaction. It becomes generated as necessary, among neural and other structures.
For the proportion on program and feedback in language, we can compare spoonerisms. The slips are segmental, and this is about the scope the nervous system allows pre-determined routines for language.
A program is predetermined from beginning to end. Natural language is infinite. There is no way to calculate all possible forms or structures, and there is no genetic program to produce literature. To manage own language skill, we need own brain logic. This logic can produce finite sets as projects, yet never as programs. Natural grammar cannot be analogous to a computer program.
What do you do, if a child says he or she is hating you? Do you say,
“No, you are not hating me. You hate me. It is a stative verb, here, in the list… ?”
I have come across a few languages in my life, and English grammars and grammarians remain the only scholarly entities to recognize stative verbs. Whatever order the British Council would enumerate on such special words to memorize, the couple in the picture do not look like rehearsing rote.
In fact, it feels quite strange to be told to parrot words from a list, for thought and emotion. It feels… a kind of a lie, and good liars do not publicize their lying rules.
Regardless of fact, English grammars would group the “stative” or “static verbs” and tell the learner not to use them with the Progressive, for the nature of the verbs.
The verbs themselves do not make separate groups or categories. To feel can serve an interesting example. We might say, “I feel fresh”, to speak about our senses. We could say, “I feel love”, to speak about our emotions. We also could say, possibly in another context, “I feel this is crude”, to say what we think.
I’vebeenloving it. But I want to keep doing different things.
(People magazine as in COCA.)
If we have a look at all Aspects as in a chart, we might be tempted to view grammar as made of options. Then, we might say, we can choose not to use some verbs with an option. Options can be mutually exclusive.
However, human brains need to be live structures for grammar, and these have simultaneous processes. When we use the Present Simple, our paths for the Perfect Progressive for example do not become “switched off”. If we use the Progressive, we do not exclude a possibility for the same thing to happen also in a manner we describe in the Simple:
“I’m loving you”,
would not mean
“I don’t love you”.
Feel welcome to the Earthling basic variable.
The word spatialization comes from the Latin “spatium”. It meant a place, space, as well as room or extent. All natural languages spatialize, which does not have to refer us to the outer space, however it also can.
Screenshot credit: Geoffrey Unsworth, Metro Goldwyn-Meyer
The little girl in the Space Odyssey says her mommy’s gone TO shopping. The girl spatializes: she relates activity and place.
Most children spatialize. The place may not be specified, especially if to think about big shopping malls. The child yet would reckon there has to be a place for a thing to happen at all.
As children, we first learn where objects, creatures, events, or people are. We learn telling when things happen later, hence the name spatialization. Our sense of time is secondary to our sense of space, and language has the process. Not only in English, there would be words we can use for space as well as time.
The phrase, “BEFORE the turn”, might tell about a place.
“BEFORE ten”, might tell about time.
Spatialization remains natural, common and sane sense, when we are grown up. Association between time and place belongs with human minds. We can use it for grammar.
We can think about natural human mapping, as with geography and travel. We live on Earth. We usually view land or seas as extents. We give at least psychological borders to areas inwhich we are. We perceive routes and ways to places. We happen to be at landmarks and places. Here are a few examples.
Simple: She meets him every month.
She reads a lot. [ON]
Progressive: She is meeting him tomorrow
She is reading now. [IN]
Perfect: She had worked hard for her success.
She will have finished the work by next month. [TO]
We can merge our values IN and TO, for the Perfect Progressive:
She has been studying for hours.
She will have been studying for 10 hours then. [AT]
Our variables together will allow cognitive mapping of all the four Aspects.
Magnifying glasses do not always make matters clearer. There has been much talk about American English in terms ancestral. Researchers have analyzed speech sounds and “derived” them with particularity suggestive of Pygmalion:
I have never pondered over any possibility to become my grandfather. Anyway, my grandfathers as well as grandmothers did not speak American, or actually any English, as far as I remember. My father spoke some English, but he had an accent and told me to pick up on my own, I was little enough to do that. If I wanted a grammar book, he would buy it for me, same for note books and other stationery, but he would not teach me. He was right, though he was a historian.
Back to deriving American:
“The main idea of the approach is that the origins of American English are somehow contained in the various regional dialects of British English…” American English, an Introduction, by Zoltan Kovecses.
Ben Trawick-Smith makes an interesting point: we might think about the British as “talking American”, as well. He includes American English with “a larger continuum of Southern England-derived dialects”. He yet adds the idea is debatable. When Did Americans Stop “Talking British”?
What American English would the talk be about? If we do not say, the American English of the 1900s, or 1800s, we say contemporary American English.
The present-day form of the language originated in the USA. Part the speech sounds, isolated, might resemble British. It is yet inevitable. We could not want a language without speech sounds, to have a language of its own. However, we always tell origins of languages by lands of emergence.
Feel welcome to my grammar Extras. They also present some knowledge about the USA to include the beginnings.
The questions and answers below are to explain on the stand my grammar approach has regarding the Universal Grammar by Noam Chomsky. Undeniably, Mr. Chomsky’s work has been of important reference in my language activity. I began inventing my grammar long before I ever heard about Mr. Chomsky, however.
Feel welcome to email me about generative grammar. Comments will be posted only by consent.
1. Is there literally a universal grammar, to learn any language of choice?
A uniform grammar for all languages in the world is impossible. I am not aware of any such postulate by Mr. Chomsky.
A grammar is generative when it tells the principles or variables a person can use to produce standard language independently, without following formulations by other people. In other words, with generative grammar, we do not consider if we use the Present Simple because a book says we do so when “we want to say this or that”. We consider the Present Simple when our own cognitive and spatio-temporal orientation encourages it.
Mr. Chomsky’s grammar tells what principles many languages would have in common. My grammar would offer variables for primarily American English.
2. Does the Universal Grammar imply there are actually Language Acquisition Devices in human brains?
Linguistically, a device may be something devised, as well as a faculty that devises. This latter meaning would apply to Mr. Noam Chomsky’s theory best.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition defines the verb to devise: “to form, plan, or arrange in the mind; design or contrive; to suppose; imagine”.
However, I do not follow the notion of the Language Acquisition Device. I follow the term of the human language faculty.
3. Could language be a result of a genetic mutation?
Mr. Noam Chomsky has used the word “mutation” with reference to language as a result of human evolution.
I think people can evolve language during lifespan, without any corresponding genetic change. Human language skills are not the same if to compare childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, while the DNA retains identity in good shape. My sense for evolving is “to achieve gradually, to work out, to devise.” I never use the term “mutation” with regard to language.
4. Is language fully explainable in terms of principles and neural models?
Natural language learning and use would not have been possible without the human person. There are no “mathematical”, “purely functional”, or “strictly logical” connectivities in human brains. Outcome of isolated neuron excitation can be considered only in terms of statistics. Without individual work, the brain would not just “start up” and produce language.
A simple example might come from a mail person: even only two, but absolutely identical postcards are unlikely.
Feel welcome to read: Feelings!
5. What is spatialization and is it universal?
Spatialization means that we can use some of the words we have learned regarding earthly space ― also for time. In English, we can say before that house at the end of the road, before that turn to the left, as well as before noon, or before twelve hours.
All natural languages spatialize, thus we could say that spatialization is universal. Every language would spatialize a bit differently, however.
Artificial intelligence has patterned after human structures for years. In consequence, artificial parsing has come to be used for teaching and diagnosis. Computers rely on programs. The work discusses human information processing, with focus to the role of feedback in language. Human information processing differs from artificial considerably.
Tests by Ladefoged showed speech and language dependence on feedback without exception.
Human DNA requires cellular feedback for active protein.
Human endurance under feedback impoverishment has been proved lower than for fasting.
Not only on these grounds, the role of feedback in human language processing can be posited to approximate a drive.
I defended the thesis in year 2000, at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, earning my M.A. degree in American English, specialization psycholinguistics.
There is an occurrence in Emily Dickinson’s verse; it is beyond mere coincidence or unaware habit. Noticed, it helps see her light musing with Greek and Latin.
(Time and Eternity, XVIII, Playmates) Latin: collusor, companion at play; condiscipulus, school-mate; angelus, a messenger, an angel; lapillus, small stone, pebble (marble?); lusus, a game; Greek: ὁμηλυσία, omelusia, companionship.
God permits industrious angels
Afternoons to play.
I met one, — forgot my school-mates,
All, for him, straightway.
God calls home the angels promptly
At the setting sun;
I missed mine. How dreary marbles,
After playing Crown!
The inspiration is morpho-phonemic. Let us try a few more pieces. (Life, XXIII, Unreturning) ἀνάπλυσις, anaplusis, washing or rinsing out; ἀνήλυσις, anelusis, going up, return; ἤλυσις, elusis, step, gait; lenunculus, a small sailing-vessel, bark, skiff (the toddling little boat).
‘T was such a little, little boat
That toddled down the bay!
‘T was such a gallant, gallant sea
That beckoned it away!
‘T was such a greedy, greedy wave
That licked it from the coast;
Nor ever guessed the stately sails
My little craft was lost!
We can compare the Greek -upo/ypo- for I asked no other thing (Life, XII, p. 213): ἰσότυπος, isotypos, shaped alike, συνυπόπτωσις, synypoptosis, simultaneous presentation to the senses; Latin cauponarius, a male shopkeeper, tradesman, ὑποπτερνίς, upopternis, a knob (a kind of a button that can twirl, in the modern use), and ὑπo, below, looking a picture up and down (as Brazil on a map).
I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled.
Brazil? He twirled a button,
Without a glance my way:
“But, madam, is there nothing else
That we can show to-day?”
William Jones was a reported hyperpolyglot. He learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, and basic Chinese, says Wikipedia, adding he knew thirteen languages thoroughly, and another twenty-eight reasonably well. This makes a total of 41 languages.
Mr. Jones wrote The Sanscrit Language, to tell that Greek and Latin had a common root with Sanskrit, and there must have been a Proto-Indo-European language, PIE as a cookie in short, that gave origin to contemporary European tongues.
Is there a root PIE vocabulary? A reasonably good acquaintance with a language should encompass words as woman, man, child, and house. Let us compare these words in Latin, Greek, English, Russian, Polish, German, French, and Sanskrit.
I do not know Sanskrit. I can only compare resources. The morpheme –man, quoted by supporters of the PIE, yet refers to thinking, not gender, whereas it is common lore that masculinity is not strictly synonymous with pensiveness. 😉
Words for children were differentiated, in Sanskrit. The language took origin in rigid social stratification for status and ancestry, says Wikipedia. “Children of men” were not sutah; they made another name, napraja, probably with regard to heirloom. We thus could not say, let us look for a common root with the PIE, because it must have been a beautiful culture.
Vir or andros, child or rebionok, woman or kobieta ― the words do not resemble one another, and they are the basic vocabulary that hardly ever changes. This is the vocabulary to compare for language grouping.
Polish and Russian could make a group. We may compare the words muzshtschina and mężczyzna. There is not much point deriving Polish from Russian or Russian from Polish, however. We can compare rebionok and dziecko. Language groups work better than language families. “Families” derive languages, one from another.
Why derive European vocabularies from Sanskrit, while Sanskrit might have absorbed loan words?
Proto-languages are constructs. They are theoretical guesswork. Taking the Russian and Polish words for children, we would have to create a verbal form that might have preceded both “dziecko” and “riebionok”, to make up a “proto-word”. Even if we created a form as *dieriebok, it would not mean such a form ever existed. Honestly, it is unlikely.
Let us think now, there is language A. Some people come around and they adopt, let us say, the grammar for verbs from A entirely. They do not refer to language A for everything, however. They develop language B. Further, the people to talk B make progress; they begin to come up with new words: language A begins to adopt from language B. Today, in reality, if we find a phrase or word in Sanskrit, it does not mean they have been there since the beginning of time.
Decent linguistic work requires original sources for linguistic evidence. The Rosetta Stone was absolutely unique. It yet covered only the Ancient Egyptian ― the glyphs (there is no need to say “hiero-glyphs”, unless one would like to pray to language, which could not be the best use for it) and the demotic ― along with Ancient Greek. The stone allowed translation, but not etymology. There never was anything like the Rosetta Stone, for “Indo-European” languages, and Marco Polo was probably not the first visitor to the Far East.
Carbon dating
Whenever possible, written resources should be carbon-dated. There is no philological method to affirm the original beyond evidence. Writings were copied in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and later, hand style and pen craft.
Oldest does not mean wisest
What rationale could we find to constructing probabilistic language forms? Linguistically, there is none. Machine or otherwise constructed, a code is not a natural language.
On the side of language psychology, I do not share in the enthusiasm or fascination with speculative ancient content. Quotient always has been a matter of the human individual and education or self-study. People were not more sophisticated in ancient times. Ancient languages were not more intelligent, and within evolutionary approaches, languages may have emerged independently, owing to human cognitive advancement. Language knowledge became shared, in the process.
Similarities in form as domus, do, and dom, or house and Haus, show geographic affinity; they are characteristic to urban or other developments, and do not decide on language grouping. Well, supporters of the Proto-Indo-European “family” have gone into making own Proto-Indo-European religion. There is not a PIE root for our home planet Earth, however.
Disclaimer: the adjacent — and colored meaningfully yellow — graphic piffle is not intended to mean the Union Jack proper. It is the British grammar nazis logo on Facebook.
The logo dubious pulchritude may be seen in its full down here, also with a click.
Let me lay out on the fundamentals of orthography. I do not spell the nazis with a big letter. Big letters, though they do not always import reverence, are reserved for proper nouns, everywhere except a beginning.
The proper noun Nazis were German nationalists. Their having bombed London during WWII might belong with the semantic field too, and further reasonably connote displeasure on the part of the British people. I mean, I do not have other people’s feelings, but thus I do reckon.
Much has been written about the second world war, including Hitler’s evident lack of linguistic finesse. Therefore, I will do some wondering only, on the British who want to be grammar nazis.
“The way they selflessly dedicate themselves to correct punctuation, for example by pointing out to the staff of a chip shop why the term >>chip’s<< is a sloppy obfuscation, confirms they are bold and righteous individuals.”
On Facebook, grammar nazis share the article and comment.
“This pleases me. A lot!”
“We are doing a service to the world in helping people be rid of their ignorance!”
“We knew it all the time!”
It is only after a few lines or whiles that thought emerges.
“I suspect someone is taking the p*ss.”
Grammar nazis do not get irony. Let me think about statistics and implications. Should there be visiting nazis on this page, I promise a brief primer on irony after this indispensable piece of advice about living on the same planet.
The site has about 50 thousand “likes”. Taking the British population alone, that would make about 50 thousand oddly deficient, among about 63 million people.
Some might say it is not so bad. It is not even one percent. Still, it could be better to think literacy, going to England: the guys are permitted to have the UK flag for their capriccio, and odd types favor big towns, as London.
However this could not mean there only odd types in big towns, before you go to London, try for a plain passport photo, that is, without brooches, scarves, ties, anything you do not always carry. The piffle shows the guys’ attention to picture specifics. 😉
Wave your hand broadly, getting a taxi. It is a simple, therefore legible gesture. Get a map with statues and other tourist attractions in large icons. It is better to take a walk from the National Museum than end up the Piccadilly, owing to small print. 😉
In hotels, always tick the boxes. Ask for those straight, should you be provided with a form without boxes to tick. 😉
Mailing letters, get the recorded. They have ID strips. Seeking directions, approach people with newspapers. They could be literate. However, never ever leave your books or papers open and unattended. They might be taken for other utilities. 😉
Now, the primer on irony. The basics are in the affirmative and the negative. You do not take them for a yes or no merely. Let me quote the Mash:
“In no way are any of these people vain, arsey pedants.”
This does not have to mean a refutation, as Wikipedia explains. Life cannot be about affirming or denying only. Let me return to the Mash.
“The way they selflessly dedicate themselves to correct punctuation, for example by pointing out to the staff of a chip shop why the term >>chip’s<< is a sloppy obfuscation, confirms they are bold and righteous individuals."
Antonyms and synonyms are the answer.
Laying all out in detail to a grammar nazi looks discouragingly big a task, hence the handful of thoughts and the primary color, yellow (adjective, reference 3).
Grammar nazis do not offer own blogs or websites, especially with serious language work, for evaluation. Their picking on people’s works has no chance to bring anything creative, sophisticated. My attitude to them as well as critics will remain the same: Where is your own, better stuff?
“Speaking a second language can change everything from problem-solving skills to personality. It is almost as if you are two people”, says Catherine de Lange.
“Mon espirit paratage — My two minds”, appeared in the New Scientist of May 5th, 2012. Ms. de Lange compares monolingual and bilingual children. The Washington Post has included the article online.
Ms. de Lange describes her testing children on syntax. Syntax is about the way we phrase our talk or writing.
“Both monolinguals and bilinguals could see the mistake in phrases such as “apples growed on trees”, but differences arose when they considered nonsensical sentences such as “apples grow on noses”. The monolinguals, flummoxed by the silliness of the phrase, incorrectly reported an error, whereas the bilinguals gave the right answer”, says Ms. de Lange.
Monolingual or multilingual, children get to hear or read fairy tales. It does not matter, if the kid speaks one or more languages. It is important that the child comprehends the words: there was a fairy land, a long time ago, where apples grew on noses.
Figurative thinking does not disturb syntax, and more, children learn early that words can have more than one meaning, also when the talk is for real. Whether in one or many languages ― but dependent on pragmatics ― we could or could not count any noses in picture 1. The Big Apple Corner in picture 2 only might have apples.
Language pragmatics deals with talk in context and with work on ambiguity.
PICTURE 1. IS THERE EVEN ONE NOSE IN THE PICTURE, IF WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT NOSES COUNT?
PICTURE 2. DO APPLES GROW SQUARE, IF WE HAVE BIG APPLE CORNERS?
Thinking psycholinguistics for the science, the task was most probably deictically misconstrued. The children did not know what noses the talk was about, and thus if to focus on syntax or pragmatics.
Ms. de Lange says she speaks English and French. Humorously, but to follow her observations, with English and French, we would have to imagine monolingual people carrying shields instead of umbrellas, for heavy rain. They would be the people to get “flummoxed” with figures of speech, and it rains halberds in French, when it rains cats and dogs in English (in which latter case we would have to think monolingual people cannot keep appointments, staying home).
We would have to dread multilingual medics, fearing they would be the people to take cardiac cases for a game of opinion. They would be the people not to care what a matter literally might denote.
Not only to a child, a test to neglect word sense would be a sort of mal a l’oreille. Without semantics, a multlilingual person would be left with some “phonological interface” only, for linguistic discernment.
What is likely to happen then (and I believe happened, in Ms. de Lange study), people go “surfing” the language form. The “surfing” is not a developmental stage. Monolingual or multilingual, very young or more advanced in age, people can learn to “surf” ― for a joke.
Natural language progress for syntax is more likely to have virtual or invented words. They have an extra advantage. They let exercise speech sounds without the flummoxing that verbal associations might bring, especially to very young minds:
[th] is the sound in mother;
[th] is the sound in father
[th] is the sound in brother;
[th] is the sound in… pother. 😉
We do not have to depend on nature; we can encourage syntax, in children as well as grown-up people. A car rolls, a doll dances, a troll hops, and a ball bounces. Toys are things. They can be “phimos”. Every phimo can bimo. Before long, a learner may tell easy, if we are correct saying,
The phimobimo;
or if we should say,
The phimobimoes. 🙂
Phimoscanbimo.
Multilingualism is becoming an everyday thing in more and more countries and cultures. I like that.
I do not like bias about language and mentality. The simple, common sense fact of life is that bread is bread, whether a person speaks one or more languages.
Generally, experimentation on children raises ethical concerns, and honestly, for language acquisition, there is no need to experiment: it is enough to listen and talk. I have never experimented, and I would have mixed feelings. When you experiment, you introduce factors that naturally would not be there. A very serious ethical concern comes with Ms. de Lange reporting infant brain scans for experimental purposes. There is no way to obtain informed consent from an infant. Feel welcome to read why I do not see sense about such scans.
Naturalness does not require we never try anything novel. The method here would not fit an experiment well. I invented it in childhood, worked on it for some 30 years for own language progress, it is complete, and it does not have the “open ends” that experimentation explores. Feel also welcome.
