If someone were to say
to me “[ð],” I would likely walk away from that interaction confused, and no
information would have been conveyed. (This isn’t to dismiss the value of
individual phonemes devoid of their contexts, but merely to point out that the
type of information conveyed by an isolated phoneme (or allophone) is not the
type of meaning that is exchanged in conversation. In general, throughout this
post, when I refer to a phoneme as holding no meaning, this is the distinction
I’m referring to.)
. . .
The phoneme [ð] on its
own does not convey much meaning. Add a schwa and you have [ðə] (the), which is
slightly more meaningful. Continue adding phonemes and eventually you might end
up with something like [ðə gəɹl ɹʌnz ənəˈbæʃɛdˌli], which conveys an entire
idea. Break that sentence down into its component parts, and it begins to lose
its meaning. Discrete morphemes such as [li] and [ən] still hold some form of meaning.
But continue breaking it down until you have, rather than morphemes, only
individual phonemes, and the meaning all but disappears. Neither [ɹ] on its own
nor the random fragmented sequence [ɹ], [w], [ʌ] conveys to the listener that
there is a girl, or that she is running, or that she is doing so unabashedly. .
.
We have all these theoretically discrete units of
language, of varying sizes and qualities. And it’s often tempting to look at
them as if there were an entirely linear, additive progression from one to the
next – phonemes combine to make morphemes, which in turn combine to make words,
which combine to make clauses, then sentences, then paragraphs, and so on. And
while in many senses this is true, it in no way tells the whole story;
personally I think that viewing language acquisition within this linear
construct is limiting and flawed in several ways, two of which I’ll discuss in
this post.
Firstly, language epitomizes the idea that “the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts.” Take the phonemes [ʒ] and [ə], for example. On their own, neither holds
any interpretable meaning; and yet when you combine the two you end up with the
French “je” [ʒə] (meaning “I”), which
conveys a tremendous amount of meaning. Those two phonemes, when combined in
that particular order, imply the entire concept of a self as distinct from the Other.
And it’s not that [ʒ] contains
half the concept of self and [ə] the other half; it’s that neither of those
phonemes holds any meaning until they are placed together, and, upon combination,
that meaning is suddenly created. When discussing language, it’s not as simple
as 1 + 2 equals 3. Rather, 1 + 2 equals 3 plus some other, less tangible
element which arises as smaller units are combined into larger ones.
The
second idea that isn’t quite captured by a systematic, linear view of the
process of constructing language relates to how we (humans) learn languages. As
an infant, the first type of language you are exposed to is probably comprised
of entire words and sentences, spoken between the adults around you; in other
words, before you are exposed to discrete individual phonemes, you are exposed
to the larger units of language that those phonemes combine to create. Yet the
first units of language that an infant actually produces are most likely individual phonemes and morphemes – an infant
produces these accidentally, while babbling, and later learns to combine them
in meaningful ways. And while these are the first units of language that an
infant will actually produce, they
are most likely not the first units
that he/she will understand. Most
children raised in an English-speaking environment learn to use the word “mama”
(or some derivation thereof) before they learn that the phoneme “un” usually implies negation; most children
raised in a Spanish-speaking environment will understand [mi’xita] (or [mi’hita])
(“mi hijita” [sometimes written as “mijita”] or roughly “my little daughter”) before understanding that [ita]
(or [ito]) is a diminutive suffix used to indicate smallness, cuteness, or
affection. . . .
It’s
also interesting to examine this a-linear acquisition of language in the
context of foreign language learning, and how this differs from the process by
which an individual learns his/her native
language. When you learn a second language as an adult (or as an older child),
you’ve already learnt to speak – that is, to produce organized combinations of
sound that, together, convey meaning. So you don’t usually begin by pronouncing
the individual phonemes and morphemes that exist within a language. Instead,
you often start with some common phrases. For example, if learning Spanish as a
second language, you might learn to say “Tengo
treinta años” ([teɪŋgo tʀeɪnta aɲos]) before you learn that “tengo” means “I have” and “años”
means years – and before you learn to pronounce [ɲ] as an isolated phoneme. After learning some
phrases you go back and learn individual words, and maybe as you learn grammar
you then break those words into morphemes in order to better understand their
meanings. And maybe at some point you work on pronouncing the individual
phonemes that exist in your second language and not in your native one. (All of
this is a very individualized process though; clearly this is just one of many
possible orders in which one might go about learning a second (or third or
fourth) language.)
So,
acquisition of a foreign language seems to follow just as winding and a-linear
a path as acquisition of one’s native language. Yet it isn’t the same winding path. It begins in a very
different place than does the acquisition of one’s native language. Rather than
first learning to produce phonemes and then learning to combine them in
meaningful ways, when learning a foreign language one begins by learning to understand
and pronounce (albeit badly) much larger units of meaning before then breaking
them down into their component parts. And I’m not necessarily saying that this
difference is a bad thing. Learning a language at birth and learning a language
later in life are fundamentally different – you begin each with different
knowledge and a different skill set, and so the process must necessarily be
different in order to accommodate that.
But
I think it’s interesting to look at the differences between the two acquisition
processes (and to look at each process in isolation as well) in conjunction
with the idea of language as comprised of a series of layers of ‘building
blocks’ (phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences, etc.) which combine to create
meaning.
. . .
It appears (at least to me) that learning a
language is not a linear process wherein one begins with the smallest distinct
units of sound (phonemes) and then combines them into bigger and bigger units
until eventually arriving at flowing speech. Rather, it’s a process wherein all
the different components of language are learned and relearned continually and concurrently,
starting in infancy and continuing until death.
