Linguistics Exam Practice 2

1. How is an accent related to but different from a dialect?
They are related because they are influenced by the same factors such as geographical location, age, occupation, socio-economic status, ethnic group and sex. Besides that, they are related in that they are usually used by people together in the conversation. It is frequently found that when people speak their own regional dialect they also speak it with the accent of that region. However, dialect and accent are two different things. Accent is all about pronunciation while dialect refers to a whole language like grammar (structure), vocabulary (lexis) and sometimes phonology (pronunciation).

2. Explain what are meant by horizontal and vertical definitions of dialect.
Horizontal definition of dialect means that the variety of language spoken by people are mainly caused by the differences of the location or region where they live. So, for example, there are two dialects in England, that is Northern English and Southern English.
Vertical definition of dialect means that the variety of language spoken by people are composed of the amount of education a person has, social position, etc. So, somebody from Cuba can speak a Cuban dialect but there can be still a different dialect spoken by a Cuban because of being a lawyer, teacher, doctor or based on education.

3. How do we show power or solidarity in our English conversation?
When we deal with solidarity such as when speaking with our sister/brother in the conversation we can use informal speech. However, when we deal with power such as when speaking with a Queen or the older people we can use more formal speech to show our respectful feeling.

4. How are a dialect related to a language?
Dialect is related to a language because dialect is the variation of the use of a language by people around the world. It occurs because they are in different geographical regions or social groups. Although dialect is a variation of a language, people speaking different dialects of the same language can still understand each other. Therefore, the dialects of a single language may also be defined as mutually intelligible forms of a language that differ in systematic ways from each other.

5. Give at least 3 examples of differences between Black English and General Standard American.

• Copula deletion: Black English permits deletion of be in the present tense precisely where standard English permits a contracted form of the copula.
• Habitual be: Speakers of Black English express recurring or habitual actions by using the form be.
• Existential it: Black English likes to use the expression of it is where standard American English uses there is.
• Negative Concord: Black English prefer to use double negation in expressing negative concord.

Differences in Grammatical Features	Black English	General Standard American
Copula Deletion	That my bike.	That’s my bike.
Habitual be	Do they be playing all day?	Do they play all day?
Existential it	Is it a Miss Jones in this office?	Is there a Miss Jones in this office?
Negative Concord	Don’t nobody never help me do my work.	Nobody ever helps me do my work.

Language as Innately Guided Behavior

Why language is called as innately guided behavior?

The idea is that human infants are not born speaking but they know how to acquire any language to which they are exposed. They are naturally ‘tuned in’ to language where they instinctively pick out speech sounds, and know how to build them into linguistic grammars.

Learning Language: Adults vs Children

If you do not believe in the critical period theory, why adult learners have difficulties in learning a second language while young children can easily do it?

Because adult learners have different characteristics from children. Adults learn in more concious condition than the children. Because they learn in a conscious condition in which they already have self-esteem, they sometimes worried when learning. They have less confidence to try. This attitude cause a problem in learning a second language because actually if someone wants to learn better about a second language she/he should try to use the language so that he/she can master it very well.

The Controversy of Learning and Acquisition

Learning is a conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them (nurture). Meanwhile, acquisition is an activity or a process of picking up a language (phonology, morphology, syntactic and semantic rules) from the environment unconsciously (nature).

The controversy of learning and acquisition is raised by two experts, that is Skinner and Chomsky. They have different argument about how human ‘know’ about ‘language’. The question is whether language is a product of nature (acquisition) or due to conscious learning or nurture. According to Skinner, language is solely a kind of behaviour, a set of habits accumulated over the years. All that is necessary is to provide the necessary stimuli that will prompt the speaker. Chomsky attacked that argument and proposed an idea of language as a blueprint built-in to the human mind and the child as a hypothesis maker who ‘has internalized a system of rules that relate sound and meaning in a particular way’ (Aitchison, 1989: 92).

The Innatenes Hypothesis

Chomsky has stated that the idea of innatenes hypothesis is that humans are biologically equipped with a knowledge of certain universal elements of language structure that is brought into play in the course of language acquisition. It is assumed that during the infants, children can learn language easily and rapidly because of the help of Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which makes hypotheses about language and almost always produces the right linguistic output, even in the absence of explicit input from their environment. However, some people still have little doubt about Chomsky’s argument that human brain is specially equipped for acquisition of human language grammar. In his defenses, Chomsky continuously explains that the innateness hypothesis accounts for a number of facts of language (such as the fact of its productivity; and the amazing fact that children acquire language quickly and effortlessly).

Productivity means the ability of children to form complex rules and construct grammars of the languages used around them in a relatively short time.

Children acquire language quickly and effortlessly means the ease and rapidity of acquisition despite impoverished input and uniformity across children and languages.

What is garden-path sentences?

The sentence that the reader reads is temporarily ambiguous because it may contain a group of words which appears to be compatible with more than one structural analysis.
The reader’s interpretation to the garden-path sentences varies depending on lexical items or syntax. Here are some examples:

• Put the cake on the plate in the kitchen.
  (The sentence is syntactically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that the cake is already on the plate or the cake is to be put in the kitchen in which the plate is available.)
  
• The government plans to raise taxes were defeated.
  (The sentence is syntactically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that plans can be interpreted as a verb or as a noun.)
  
• The thief goes to the bank.
  (The sentence is lexically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that the bank can mean the financial institution or the edge of the river.)
  
• The old doctors and nurses marched through the streets expressing their solidarities for three of their colleagues who were found guilty of malpractice.
  (The sentence is lexically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that the one who is old is the doctors or the doctors and the nurses.)
  

Speech Acts

Speech acts can be analysed on three levels:

A locutionary act, the performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its ostensible meaning, comprising phonetic, phatic and rhetic acts corresponding to the verbal, syntactic and semantic aspects of any meaningful utterance;
an illocutionary act: the pragmatic 'illocutionary force' of the utterance, thus its intended significance as a socially valid verbal action (see below);
a perlocutionary act: its actual effect, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something, whether intended or not (Austin 19)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act

For more information, you can also check: Speech Act Theory