Directional Verbs

Fri Mar 27 22:31:30 UTC 2009

Many of us who have spent our careers investigating child language 
development--in both speech and sign--don't buy into the innateness 
hypothesis.  Neither do most of the linguists I know around the 
world.  The obvious fact that language requires brain mechanisms does 
not mean that the brain is pre-wired for language 
universals.  Everything we do, think, and feel is based on brain 
mechanisms, so you can't get very far with that argument.  And 
current cognitive neurology hasn't found a "language center," but 
rather many different interacting systems that are involved in 
language one way or another.

Much work in the fields of grammaticalization, functional 
linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and typological linguistics has 
provided a deeper understanding of the many cognitive, communicative, 
and social interactional factors that, together, work to establish 
the forms and functions of language.  To be sure, there are 
linguistic universals.  And maybe, at the end of the day, some of 
them will turn out to be irreducible to other explanatory 
factors.  But first we have to explore all factors that seem to be 
relevant for accounting for the forms and functions of language--both 
those that are universal and those that are not.  The same sorts of 
factors work to determine the forms and functions of both signed and 
spoken languages, with special linguistic characteristics determined 
by the modality of communication.

Signed languages are "real" languages for the same reasons that 
spoken languages are: duality of patterning, ability to create 
endless new lexical items and meaningful utterances, semantic 
displacement, encoding of propositions and a range of devices to 
modulate propositional meanings, etc. etc.  The linguistic 
investigation of signed languages is important in linguistics 
generally, and it is developing rapidly in many 
countries.  Comparisons between languages is very useful, and reveals 
ways in which groups of languages function in similar ways.  So, for 
example, it is insightful to compare ASL morphology with the 
simultaneous morphology of Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew.

Sincerely,
Dan Slobin, psycholinguist

At 10:55 AM 3/27/2009, Nassira Nicola wrote:
>On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Patricia Raswant 
><<mailto:patricia.raswant at gallaudet.edu>patricia.raswant at gallaudet.edu> wrote:
>I have a question.  Why do linguists compare ASL and other signed 
>languages to spoken languages?
>
>---
>
>In addition to the other answers given, I'd offer the following 
>(sorry if it's review - I've been explaining this to my students all 
>quarter, so I'm just starting from the same amount of background 
>that they have):
>
>A great deal (not all, but a significant amount) of modern work in 
>linguistics in based on the assumption that language is at least 
>partly innate.  Obviously, it's not *all* programmed into a baby's 
>brain to start with (the vocabulary of a specific language, for 
>instance, is definitely learned) but the idea is that babies figure 
>out so much on their own, without ever being exposed to it, that 
>some fundamental parts of language have to be based in the brain, somewhere.
>
>So, a lot of linguistics nowadays revolves around figuring out what 
>characteristics all languages share underneath the surface, so we 
>can then figure out what the brain's "language center" contributes.
>
>What this means for signed languages is this: if all humans have 
>basically the same brain structure, and if the brain is what creates 
>the basic characteristics of language, then all languages should 
>have the same basic characteristics.  If signed languages *don't* 
>act like every other human language, as other people have pointed 
>out, then people who believe in the innateness hypothesis start to 
>get suspicious about whether they actually *are* real languages.
>
>Plus, if you're committed to the idea that learning things about one 
>language can help explain another (because they come from the same 
>source, and resemble each other on some level), then it's important 
>not to ignore languages that might teach you something 
>interesting.  Some of the work I've been doing on semantics in LSQ 
>was inspired by work my adviser did in Greek; I've had some great 
>conversations with a semanticist friend who works on French, helping 
>her understand weird things she's noticed in her work by comparing 
>them to CL:55-> in ASL; it's not unusual to draw (limited) 
>comparisons between ASL noun/verb pairs and certain structures in 
>Hebrew and Arabic; etc.  There's a lot of useful work to be done in 
>linguistics in general that signed languages have a role in.
>
>Of course, if you're the type of linguist that works on how long a 
>[b] has to be voiced before it stops being perceived as a [p], well, 
>signed languages may not tell you much.  But most linguistic 
>questions end up having very little to do with modality - language 
>is language, mostly, no matter what body parts you use to express it.
>
>
>Is an answer to the question you were asking?
>
>Nassira
>
>
>
>
>Nassira Nicola
>University of Chicago
>Department of Linguistics
><http://home.uchicago.edu/~nnicola>http://home.uchicago.edu/~nnicola
>_______________________________________________
>SLLING-L mailing list
>SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School
Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics

Department of Psychology        email: slobin at berkeley.edu
3210 Tolman #1650                 phone (Dept):  1-510-642-5292
University of California             phone (home): 1-510-848-1769
Berkeley, CA 94720-1650         fax: 1-510-642-5293
USA                                      http://ihd.berkeley.edu/Slobin.htm
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/slling-l/attachments/20090327/3ad2efaa/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
SLLING-L mailing list
SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l