🚀 go-pugleaf

I volunteered to take over the periodic posting of the FAQ file, and
Michael Covington has graciously allowed me to do so.

Suggestions for additions and improvements are welcome; subject, of course,
to the approval of the Linguistics Gurus in the newsgroup.

One minor question for them: Is the statement below that GB is the current
manifestation of Chomskian theory correct; or should that be Minimalism?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file for sci.lang -- Revised 5 Jan 1993
Written by Michael Covington (mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu)
Maintained by Mark Rosenfelder (markrose@spss.com)

NOTE: This FAQ file is short. Many good books and many important ideas
      are left unmentioned. All readers should be aware that linguistics
      is a young science and that linguists rarely agree 100% on anything.

PHONETIC SYMBOLS IN ASCII: The scheme formerly described in the FAQ is
superseded by Evan Kirshenbaum's ASCII/IPA system, which is explained in 
separate postings.

===============================================================================
CONTENTS

 1. What is sci.lang for?
 2. What is linguistics?
 3. Does linguistics tell people how to speak or write properly?
 4. What are some good books about linguistics?
 5. How did language originate?
 6. What is known about prehistoric language?
 7. What do those asterisks mean?
 8. How are present-day languages related?
 9. Why do Hebrew and Yiddish [etc.] look alike if they aren't related?
10. What is Noam Chomsky's transformational grammar all about?
11. What is a dialect?  (Relation between dialects and languages.)
12. Are all languages equally complex, or are some more primitive than others?
13. What about artificial languages, such as Esperanto?          
===============================================================================
1. What is sci.lang for?

Discussion of the scientific or historical study of human language(s).
Note the "sci." prefix.  The main concern here is with _facts_ and
theories accounting for them.

For advice on English usage, see alt.usage.english or misc.writing.
For casual chatter about other languages see soc.culture.<whatever>.

Like all "sci." newsgroups, sci.lang is not meant to substitute for
a dictionary or even a college library.  If the answer to your question
can be looked up easily, then do so rather than using the net.
If you don't have a library, then ask away, but explain your situation.
===============================================================================
2. What is linguistics?

  The scientific study of human language, including:
     Phonetics (physical nature of speech)
     Phonology (use of sounds in language)
     Morphology (word formation)
     Syntax (sentence structure)
     Semantics (meaning of words & how they combine into sentences)
     Pragmatics (effect of situation on language use)

  Or, carving it up another way:
     Theoretical linguistics (pure and simple: how languages work)
     Historical linguistics (how languages got to be the way they are)
     Sociolinguistics (language and the structure of society)
     Psycholinguistics (how language is implemented in the brain)
     Applied linguistics (teaching, translation, etc.)
     Computational linguistics (computer processing of human language)

  Some linguists also study sign language, non-verbal communication,
  animal communication, and other topics peripheral to ordinary language.
===============================================================================
3. Does linguistics tell people how to speak or write properly?

No.  Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Linguistics can often supply facts which help people arrive at a
recommendation or value judgement, but the recommendation or value
judgement is not part of linguistic science itself.
===============================================================================
4. What are some good books about linguistics?

(These are cited by title and author only. Full ordering information
can be obtained from BOOKS IN PRINT, available at most bookstores and
at even the smallest public libraries.)

  CAMBRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LANGUAGE, by David Crystal (1987) is a good place 
     to start if you are new to this field.
  LANGUAGE, by Edward Sapir (1921), is a readable survey of linguistics 
     that is still worthwhile despite its age.
  AN INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE, by Fromkin and Rodman, is one of the best
     intro linguistics survey texts. (Read it!) There are many others.
  CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS (a series) consists of good,
     modestly-priced introductions to all the areas of linguistics.
  Any encyclopedia will give you basic information about widely studied
     languages, alphabets, etc.
===============================================================================
5. How did language originate?

Nobody knows.  Very little evidence is available.
See however D. Bickerton, ROOTS OF LANGUAGE.
===============================================================================
6. What is known about prehistoric language?

Quite a lot, if by "prehistoric" you'll settle for maybe 2000 years
before the development of writing.

Languages of the past can be recovered by comparative reconstruction
from their descendants.  The comparative method relies mainly on
pronunciation, which changes very slowly and in highly systematic
ways.  If you apply it to French, Spanish, and Italian, you 
reconstruct late colloquial Latin with a high degree of accuracy;
this and similar tests show us that the method works.

Also, if you use the comparative method on unrelated languages,
you get nothing. So comparative reconstruction is a test of whether 
languages are related (to a discernible degree).

The ancient languages Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and several others form 
a group known as "Indo-European."  Comparative reconstruction from 
them gives a language called Proto-Indo-European which was spoken 
around 2500 B.C.  Many Indo-European words can be reconstructed with 
considerable confidence (e.g., *ekwos "horse").  The grammar was 
similar to Homeric Greek or Vedic Sanskrit.
===============================================================================
7. What do those asterisks mean?

Either of 2 things.
An unattested, reconstructed word (such as Indo-European *ekwos);
or an ungrammatical sentence (such as *Himself saw me).
===============================================================================
8. How are present-day languages related?

This is an INCOMPLETE family tree of some of the world's languages.
Not all languages are known to be related to each other.
It is possible that they are related but the evidence of relationship
has been lost; it's also possible they arose separately.

  Note: English is not descended from Latin.
        English is a Germanic language with a lot of Latin vocabulary,
        borrowed from French in the Middle Ages.

  FAMILY: INDO-EUROPEAN
    SUB-FAMILY: GERMANIC
      North Germanic: Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish
      East Germanic: Gothic (extinct)
      West Germanic: English, Dutch, German, Yiddish
    SUB-FAMILY: ITALIC
      Osco-Umbrian (extinct languages of Italy: Oscan, Umbrian)
      Latin, which evolved into:
        Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Rumanian, French (etc.)
    SUB-FAMILY: CELTIC
      P-Celtic: Welsh, Breton, Cornish
      Q-Celtic: Irish, Scots Gaelic, Manx Gaelic
    SUB-FAMILY: HELLENIC
      Greek (ancient and modern)
    SUB-FAMILY: SLAVIC
      Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Czech, etc. (not Rumanian or Albanian)
    SUB-FAMILY: INDO-IRANIAN
      SUB-SUB-FAMILY: INDIC
         Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Urdu, Gypsy (Romany)
      SUB-SUB-FAMILY: IRANIAN
         Persian (ancient and modern)
    and a few others.

  FAMILY: AFRO-ASIATIC
    SUB-FAMILY: SEMITIC
      Arabic
      Hebrew   (not Yiddish; see above)
      Aramaic
    OTHERS: EGYPTIAN, CUSHITIC, BERBER, CHADIC

  FAMILY: FINNO-UGRIAN
    Finnish, Estonian
    Hungarian

  FAMILY: SINO-TIBETAN
    Chinese (all dialects: Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, etc.)
    Tibetan, etc.

  FAMILY: MALAYO-POLYNESIAN
    Indonesian
    Philippine languages
    Hawaiian, etc.

  FAMILY: JAPANESE   (connection to other languages highly disputed)
    Japanese
    Okinawan

  Several families of American Indian languages
     including ESKIMO-ALEUT, NA-DENE, ALGONQUIAN, PENUTIAN, AZTEC-TANOAN,
     GE-PANO-CARIB, ANDEAN-EQUATORIAL

  Other families of languages in Africa, etc.
===============================================================================
9. Why do  Hebrew and Yiddish
           Japanese and Chinese
           Persian and Arabic
   look so much alike if they aren't related?

Distinguish LANGUAGE from WRITING SYSTEM.
In each of these cases one language has adopted part or all of the 
writing system of an unrelated language.

(To a Chinese, English and Finnish look alike, because they're written 
in the same alphabet.  Yet they are not historically related.)
===============================================================================
10. What is Noam Chomsky's transformational grammar all about?

Several things; it really comprises several layers of theory:

(1) The hypothesis that much of the structure of human language is
inborn ("built-in") in the human brain, so that a baby learning to
talk only has to learn the vocabulary and the structural "parameters"
of his native language -- he doesn't have to learn how language works
from scratch.

This is well supported and widely believed; main evidence consists of:
  - The fact that babies learn to talk remarkably well from what seems
     to be inadequate exposure to language; it can be shown in detail
     that babies acquire some rules of grammar that they could never
     have "learned" from what is available to them, if the structure of
     language were not partly built-in.
  - The fact that the structure of language on different levels
     (vocabulary, ability to connect words, etc.) can be lost by injury
     to specific areas of the brain.
  - The fact that there are unexpected structural similarities between
     all known languages.
For detailed exposition see Cook, CHOMSKY'S UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (1988), and
Newmeyer, GRAMMATICAL THEORY: ITS LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES.

(2) The hypothesis that to adequately describe the grammar of a human
language, you have to give each sentence at least two different structures, 
called "deep structure" and "surface structure", together with rules
called "transformations" that relate them. 

This is hotly debated.  Some theories of grammar use two levels and
some don't.  Chomsky's original monograph, SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES (1957),
is still well worth reading; this is what it deals with.

(3) Chomsky's name is associated with specific flavors of transformational
grammar; the current one is called GB (government and binding) theory.

(4) Some people think Chomsky is the source of the idea that grammar ought
to be viewed with mathematical precision.  (Thus there are occasional
vehement anti-Chomsky polemics such as THE NEW GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL, which
are really polemics against grammar per se.)

Although Chomsky contributed some valuable techniques, grammarians have
_always_ believed that grammar was a precise, mechanical thing.
===============================================================================
11. What is a dialect?

A dialect is any variety of a language spoken by a specific community of
people. Most languages have many dialects.

Everyone speaks a dialect.  In fact everyone speaks an _idiolect_, i.e.,
a personal language.  (Your English language is not quite the same as
my English language, though they are probably very, very close.)

A group of people with very similar idiolects are considered to be
speaking the same dialect.  Some dialects, such as Standard American
English, are taught in schools and used widely around the world.
Others are very localized.  

Localized or uneducated dialects are _not_ merely failed attempts to speak
the standard language.  William Labov and others have demonstrated, for
example, that the speech of inner-city blacks has its own intricate
grammar, quite different in some ways from that of Standard English.

Varieties of language are called "dialects" if the speakers can understand
each other and "languages" if they can't.  For example, Scots English
and American English are dialects of English, but English and German are
different languages (though related).

Sometimes the use of the terms "language" or "dialect" is politically
motivated.  Norwegian and Danish are dialects of the same language, but
are considered separate languages because of their political independence.
The Chinese "dialects" on the other hand are mutually unintelligible
languages.
===============================================================================
12. Are all languages equally complex, or are some more primitive than others?

Obviously, the size of vocabulary and the variety and sophistication of
literary forms will depend on the culture.

But the _grammar_ of all languages is about equally complex.  Even people with
a very "primitive" material culture, such as the Australian Aborigines, speak
complex languages.

Different languages put their complexity in different places.  English has
complex, intricate sentence structure, but simple morphology (each word has
only a few forms).  Finnish has freer syntax but much more complex morphology.

The only really simple languages are _pidgins_ and _creoles_, which result
when speakers of different languages are suddenly forced to live and work
together. They quickly arrive at a very simple language with vocabulary from
both languages, and a simple grammar of a specific kind (e.g., they are
likely to use repetition to express plurals).  Such a language is called
a _pidgin_ initially, then becomes a _creole_ when babies are born who
acquire it as a native language.
===============================================================================
13. What about artificial languages, such as Esperanto?          [--markrose]

Hundreds of constructed languages have been devised in the last few centuries.
Early proposals, such as those of Lodwick (1647), Wilkins, or Leibniz, were 
attempts to devise an ideal language based on philosophical classification 
of concepts, and used wholly invented words.  Most were too complex to learn,
but one, Jean Francois Sudre's Solresol, achieved some popularity in the last
century; its entire vocabulary was built from the names of the notes of 
the musical scale, and could be sung as well as spoken.

Later the focus shifted to languages based on existing languages, with a 
polyglot (invariably European) vocabulary and a simplified grammar, whose 
purpose was to facilitate international communication.  Johann Schleyer's 
Volapu"k (1880) was the first to achieve success; its name is based on English 
("world-speech"), and reflects Schleyer's notions of phonetic simplicity.  

It was soon eclipsed by Ludwig Zamenhof's Esperanto (1887), whose grammar was 
simpler and its vocabulary more recognizable.  Esperanto has remained the most
successful and best-known artificial language, with a million or more speakers
and a voluminous literature; children of Esperantists have even learned it as 
a native language.

Its relative success hasn't prevented the appearance of new proposals, such as
Ido, Interlingua, Occidental, and Novial.  There have also been attempts to
simplify Latin (Latino Sine Flexione, 1903) and English (Basic English, 1930)
for international use.  The recent Loglan and Lojban, based on predicate 
logic, may represent a revival of a priori language construction.

See also Mario Pei, ONE LANGUAGE FOR THE WORLD; Detlev Blanke, INTERNATIONALE 
PLANSPRACHEN (in German).