The six elements that comprise our linguistic competence help to explain how children learn and communicate language. Equipped only with their instincts and the desire to understand and be understood, infants endeavor daily to comprehend phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. To my mind these elements explained neatly linguistic competence until Professor Sumner shared with us the cute little story of her daughter and the broken vase. The story was simple enough. One day her daughter accidentally dropped a vase which shattered into myriad pieces making a thunderous crash! When Professor Sumner looked her daughter’s way to observe the wreckage her daughter, who is pre-school aged, threw up her hands in disbelief and exclaimed, “the vase broke!” This was a clear example of a young child’s mastery of the six elements. With no formal prescriptive grammar training, she used language in a fairly sophisticated way to deflect blame. Prescriptive grammar, however, is derived from the deliberate time and study of the way one can use language to achieve an outcome or make a specific impression. Before one can arrive at the knowledge of what kind of an impression a sentence can have on the listener, the communicator must have a strong suspicion that the listener will share her belief of the likelihood of that impression. Put another way, the young Miss Sumner had to believe beforehand that her mom would find it plausible that the vase broke on its own without any additional assistance. All that would be needed was a compelling follow up sentence to cement that belief that, “the vase broke!”
Since children learn the elements of linguistic competence through instinct and observation I can’t help but wonder, how? How did the young Miss Sumner come to believe that it was plausible that a vase breaking by her hand could actually be viewed as, well, not breaking by her hand? Where did she learn that her mom might actually believe, “the vase broke!” and it wasn't caused by her? To answer this question of how, I’d like to set forth the possibility of the existence of a seventh element of language; one that children learn by instinct and later manipulate through prescriptive learning. This seventh element I will call, the “normative case.”
Children learn language through observation and mimicry. Day after day for hours their adorable little minds are fixated on learning the cause and effect that utterances, when used properly, can produce. Crying might get you fed or it might get your diaper changed. Saying “eat” however should definitely get you fed. Pointing to the cookie jar atop the refrigerator might get you a cookie or it might get you a closer look at the refrigerator magnet holding up a picture of uncle Ben at the family picnic. Pointing at the cookie jar and saying “coo-key” should definitely increase the odds of pulling down a cookie. Children also observe normative phenomena, i.e. things that ought to happen, that initially have nothing to do with language but everything to do with cognition and the way they perceive the world. These perceptions ultimately find their way into language. A child seated in a high chair who throws her sippy cup to the floor and never sees it break will one day come to believe that sippy cups do not break. Plastic bowls filled with food that hit the floor also do not break. Neither do pacifiers, stuffed animals and countless other child proof objects that parents equip them with. Eventually, most children will instinctively come to believe a normative case: if I drop something, it ought not break. Or to put in child speak, "the sippy cup and anything else I let fall to the ground won't break!" I believe we all have experienced normative cases such as these as children. Ultimately, however, we must unlearn them as we become older and recognize the truth. But the reactionary instincts created by the normative case never fully leaves us. And in unexpected circumstances, these reactionary instincts can cause children and even adults to say things that seem silly. My best friend’s dad, for example, while in a hurry to get to work, once backed his car into the garage door when it was pointed toward the street while sitting in the driveway. His excuse, “the car just went into reverse!”
I believe the normative case should be given a least a passing thought as a possible seventh element of language. Certain things we learned as children that influenced our instincts on what ought to happen and subsequently impact our words are more pervasive in our language than we care to realize. The normative case can be ascribed to deflecting blame, fibbing, and a host of other utterances that even as adults we find ourselves saying out of instinct.
I think this analysis is very insightful, but I am having a hard time believing that children have such a naïve conception of causality. If the child really did pick up the vase and let it drop to the ground, they definitely are able to see that what was once a vase is now a broken vase. In fact, their vocabulary usage affirms this (i.e. they used “break” rather than “gone”). In this particular situation, the impersonal tone of the sentence speaks more to the child’s fear of taking blame, rather than their incomprehension of the situation. That being said, I agree that the “normative” usage case of vocabulary is something central to the way language is used. Words have several different meanings, based on context, the speaker, and regional differences; these factors interfere with the speaker-recipient relationship and can lead to miscommunication. The inconsistencies of language are something we probably grow more accustomed to with age, but this still does not remove some level of uncertainty and confusion from even the “normative” usage cases.
ReplyDeleteI agree that for the most part, the child’s use of “the vase broke” instead of “I broke the vase” seems to be pretty consistent with just trying to avoid blame. However the idea that our use of lying and deflecting blame through our choice of words is very intriguing. Using one of the above examples, when a child first experiences the situation of things breaking when they are dropped, perhaps the utterance “the vase broke” at first more reflects her surprise, rather than an attempt to take the blame away from herself. And from there it’s possible that because she was not expecting the vase to break, this means that she is not at fault for breaking it. So maybe at first such utterances begin out of surprise, and then evolve into attempts to avoid blame or to fib.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments that the use of phrase "the vase broke" is used to deflect blame. I am not convinced that the child didn't know that the vase was going to brake when she dropped it mostly because I have trouble with the early premise in your argument that, "the young Miss Sumner had to believe beforehand that her mom would find it plausible that the vase broke on its own without any additional assistance." When it comes to children it doesn't seem like they say things while keeping the plausibility of their utterance in mind. Children say ridiculous and unbelievable things all the time. In the case of the vase, it doesn't seem like the girl was trying to inform her mother (of the fact she already knew) that the vase was broken but rather was trying to convince her mother that she was not the one who broke it.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent post. Just want to point out that, in terms of first language acquisition, current theories propose that each and every one of us has an evolutionarily derived language faculty; we are endowed with a set of grammatical "principles" applicable to all human languages. When exposed to outside linguistic input, infants set up specific "parameters," both syntactic and phonological (say children grown in a Mandarin environment generally cease to differentiate [b] and [p], or [v] and [w], as they don't carry meaningful distinction in Mandarin), within the principles, which take care of the differences between grammars of different languages. Thus, grammar of our native language is usually implicit (tacit, unformalized) knowledge, as opposed to the explicit knowledge that we learn at school. On the other hand, prescriptive and descriptive grammars are both explicitly formalized. It's just that descriptivists formulate their theories by observing actual language use and prescriptivists do so by whatever other fancy means. So I guess it wasn't that surprising that the young Miss Sumner was able to use language cleverly without "formal prescriptive grammar training" (or formal grammar training of any kind). As for "the vase broke" vs. "I broke the vase," I agree with the comments above and am more inclined to regard it as a natural, spontaneous utterance without much pragmatic consideration. It was more of an indication that she knew know to use the verb "break" very well. But of course, functionalists may argue that such middle voice usages resulted from humans' natural tendency to avoid blame or responsibility. Which is why pragmatics is so much more complicated than syntax.
ReplyDelete“I believe we all have experienced normative cases such as these as children. Ultimately, however, we must unlearn them as we become older and recognize the truth. But the reactionary instincts created by the normative case never fully leave us.”
ReplyDeleteI think it’s interesting to look at this statement in conjunction with the idea that children often implicitly organize their surroundings into binary oppositions. In the normative case that Virgil discusses, a child conceives two generalized possibilities: (a) when dropped, objects break; (b) when dropped, objects do not break. Gradually, we learn that things are not so black and white – that some objects break when dropped, while others do not – that maybe an object breaks when dropped from a 10-foot ladder, but not when knocked off a 3-inch ledge. We learn that there are scenarios that fall between the two extremes – that possibilities exist not in binary opposition, but along a gradated scale. We learn that it is not only that objects break or that they don’t, but that they may break or they may be broken. And we learn to tailor our language to these more specific situations.
Professor Sumner’s daughter’s distinguishing between “the vase broke” and “I broke the vase” demonstrates her coming to recognize that life is not strictly comprised of polar oppositions, and then, over time, learning to adjust her language in such a way as to be able to differentiate between “I broke the vase” and “the vase broke” – between a passive event and an active one. While these ideas draw largely on psychological and philosophical phenomena, I think it’s interesting to investigate their effect(s) on an individual’s acquisition of language, as none of these disciplines exists in isolation. Once a child begins to recognize the difference between something that occurs and something that is made to occur, how does he/she acquire the linguistic competency necessary to differentiate between those two events?
Virgil proposes a seventh element of language in the normative case, and while I think he brings up an interesting concept in the pervasiveness of early observations, I would probably attribute it more to the field of psychology than linguistics. Let me explain my line of thinking: in my understanding, the six proffered element of linguistics relate, generally, to sound, context, word and sentence formation, and deriving meaning from sounds. The proposed normative case, however, relates very specifically to early memories and the influence on blame, fibbing and a selection of other specific possibilities within languages, rather than languages as a whole. The seventh case does not seem general enough to be applied to an entire language. However, when I consider it as a psychological phenomenon—one that influences the thoughts that ultimately lead to words and gestures—it seems more plausible. There is a diagram in the textbook (page 7) that illustrates a communication chain that starts with a thought that one might want to share. From my understanding of the described normative case, the fibs that result are due to subconscious memories that influence our thoughts, thereby coming before the communicated thought itself. Maybe these memories from formative years only influence our speech because they influence the thoughts that then lead to speech.
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ReplyDeleteIn terms of the daughter's choice to use either "I broke the vase" versus "The vase broke," I agree with those individuals before me who have tied the word choice to the field of psychology. When Professor Sumner told the story, I imagined her daughter being around the age of 5-7, which may or may not be true. According to Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development, children around that age are in their preoperational stage. Not only is language development huge, but so is the concept of egocentrism, which means that children will almost always view things from their own perspective. They find it difficult to see things from other perspectives other than their own. Now, with the case of the vase breaking, Professor Sumner's daughter said exactly what she witnessed happen - "the vase broke." Her phrasing probably has to do a lot with her cognitive developmental stage. As children grow, they begin to develop more rational, mature, and adult-like thought processes. They begin to understand that not everything is seen in their perspective. Therefore, if a vase were to break, an older child might know that the other person wants to know who broke it, so they say "I broke the vase" (if they want to be honest, that is). The biggest difference in these two scenarios is the idea of being able to see things from other people's perspectives - shifting the choice of words/phrasing of the children.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the “normative” element of language that you propose isn’t so much an element of linguistics but, with some modification, an element of rhetoric. How to communicate a message to a listener, and how to understand the message of a communicator, is aptly within the bounds of the six components of language competency. I think it’s a very different science, however, to study/ how messages are tailored to convey subtleties in meaning and persuade a listener.
ReplyDeleteThere could be some grey area between these two areas, especially in pragmatics. I propose then, for the sake of having a more defined boundary, that linguistics deals with the mechanisms by which messages are created and understood, and that rhetoric deals with how speakers and listeners modify and interpret the lexical contents of the message itself, e.g., diction, logos/ ethos/ pathos, etc.
I also disagree with the statement that, “Before one can [understand the] impression a sentence can have on the listener, the communicator must have a strong suspicion that the listener will share her belief of the likelihood of that impression.” I think people, particularly salesmen, make statements that they don’t expect others to believe all the time.
I agree with Keep, and find the ways that we change the way we speak when lying or bending the truth is quite fascinating. Recently, I watched Pamela Meyer's Ted Talk on "How to Spot a Liar." In this TED talk, Meyer describes some of the major (mostly unconscious) patterns that are typically used when lying. She says: "We know that liars will unconsciously distance themselves from their subject using language as their tool." I think that "The vase broke" rather than "I broke the vase" is an example of this: The girl is distancing herself from the vase. It would be interesting to see/hear the girl's response when explaining exactly what happened to a parent.
ReplyDeleteMeyer goes on to outline other mechanisms we use when lying. Formal vs Informal language - when someone is "overdetermined in their denial", he or she tends to use formal language and break apart contractions. For example, in Bill Clinton's denial of relations with Monika Lewinsky he says "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie." Here, Clinton breaks apart "Didn't" into "Did not" and distances himself from Miss Lewinsky by first referring to her as "that Women". The talk is very interesting and can be found here: http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar
Virgil pointed out an interesting alternative explanation for little Sumner's use of the sentence, 'the vase broke', instead of 'I broke the vase'. Our original explanation in class was that little Sumner was trying to distance herself from her action to escape blame.
ReplyDeleteI think another more possible explanation is that children first say 'the vase broke' when they are indeed very surprised and don't know who is responsible for breaking the vase. By learning from adults and by actually using this expression themselves, they understand that there are two ways to express the same result--one involving themselves and the other distancing themselves. Then, more of a psychological reason, as children grow up, they learn to use the form that distances themselves from the result to not only escape blame, but also to 'cheat' themselves that they are not responsible.
In little Sumner's case, I think young kids know the 'physics' deeply enough to understand glass breaks easily but plastics don't, therefore little Sumner probably has used the expression to escape from blame and/or guilty.