“LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM”
Introduction: From our first moments on earth, humans began
constructing a worldview. Our native language has been our intimate partner
from the beginning of this journey. Each language has a unique way of coding
and categorizing events, locations, objects — everything! So, it would make
sense that language would affect how we perceive the world. But the question
is: how much does it impact us?
THE THEORY
OF LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM:
q The theory of linguistic
determinism believes that language determines how we think. That’s a significant
impact!
q A linguist named
Benjamin Lee Whorf formally introduced the basic theory of linguistic
determinism in the 1930s.
q Linguistic
determinism: the theory that differences in languages and
their structures determine how people think and interact with the world around
them.
q Anyone who knows how to
speak more than one language can personally attest to the fact that the
language you speak will influence how you think.
Example:
¡ An example of
linguistic determinism that the Eskimo language, because of the frozen
environment where it originated, has many different words for snow that
describes whether it is wet, dry, blowing, heavy, light, etc. while in
English we have only one word for it.
THE SAPIR-WHORF
HYPOTHESIS:
§ Because of their work
together, linguistic determinism is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Sapir
studied how language and culture interact with one another and believed that
language could actually be responsible for the development of culture.
§ According to this
Whorf's perspective about language, society is confined by language
because language develops thought, not the reverse (which was the previous
assumption).
§ Both Sapir and Whorf
argued that language is largely responsible for creating our worldview and
shapes how we experience the world, which was a novel concept.
TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR:
In linguistics, a transformational-generative
grammar (TGG), or transformational grammar is a device for generating
sentences in a language. It generates only the well-formed and grammatically
correct sentences of a language since it is meant to create the rules and
principles which are in the mind and brain of a native speaker.
HISTORY OF TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR:
When the influence of
structuralism reached its peak in 1957, Noam Chomsky published his book
"Syntactic Structure" (1957). In this book, Chomsky opposed a lot of
assumptions and basic arguments about linguistics.
Chomsky and his
teacher, Zellig Harris, were building up phrase structure grammar. But, Chomsky
was not satisfied with this theory; he argued that the linguistic theory could
not solve the problem of language, especially syntax.
According to Chomsky, his grammar is generative since it can generate infinite number of sentences. It can change or transform a basic or simple sentence thus given the name transformational generative grammar or TGG for short.
PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES:
Generative
grammar creates or generates sentences through certain rules called "phrase
structure rules". The rules themselves are simple enough to
understand. For example, the fact that a sentence (S) can consist of a
noun phrase (NP) followed by a verb phrase (VP) we can represent in a rule
form:
S
= NP+VP
Other
rules will similarily unpack NP and VP into their constituents. Thus, in a very
simple grammar, a NP might consist of an article (Art) followed by a noun (N);
and a VP might consist of an auxillary verb (Aux), a main verb (V) and a noun
phrase (NP).
S
= NP+VP+Aux
NP
= Art+N
VP
= Aux+V+NP
Aux
= (can, may, will, must etc)
V
= (read, hit, play. cry etc)
Art = (the, a, an)
N
= (boy, book, cat etc)
. DEEP AND SURFACE STRUCTURE:
•
Transformational
grammar transforms sentences using interrogation, negation and passivisation.
These are done through transformational rules.
•
In
1957, Noam Chomsky published a book called "Syntactic Structures", in
which he developed the idea that each sentence in a language has two
levels of representation: a deep structure and a surface structure.
•
The
surface structure is actually produced structure. It refers to
the sentence as it is written and pronounced.
•
The
deep structure is the abstract structure that allows the native speaker of
a language to know what the sentence means.
I-LANGUAGE AND E-LANGUAGE:
¡ Noam Chomsky renames
language and grammar, externalized language (E-language) and internalized
language (I-language) respectively.
¡ According to Chomsky,
E-language (language) is something abstract externalized from the actual
apparatus of our mind and I-language (grammar) is the physical mechanism of our
brain.
Conclusion: As we have
seen, Chomsky’s ideas are quite different from ours. He insists that it is not
E-language (language) but I-language (grammar) that linguistic science is
concerned with.
In conclusion, Chomsky defies the behaviorists approach and serves the mentalist approach stating that grammar is the basis of language, not the other way around.
References:
¡ https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english/linguistic-terms/linguistic-determinism/
¡ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0BPKMnmbtk
¡ https://www.slideshare.net/ShielaMayClaro/transformational-grammar-28352558
¡ https://libwww.cc.it-hiroshima.ac.jp/library/pdf/research51_017-024.pdf
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