“You are reading this and understanding it but you have no conscious knowledge of how you are doing it”. This sentence caught me completely off guard. I realized that I had a completely intuitive understanding of Language, it was something I had grown up with, learning words and forming sentences while never being taught how. This caught me significantly off guard since I am bilingual, and the idea that I had learnt two languages without every knowing why, or how, amazes me.
Chapter 1 brought to light Prescriptive (How language should be used) and Descriptive rules (How language IS used) in Language, and once again I was surprised to find the focus on how it IS rather than how it should be. The idea of Intuition as subconscious knowledge was a very important and key part for me as it made me think a lot. I re-thought about how I never learnt language (we are not trying to decipher where to put the verb in the sentence) and whether I was not bilingual and had learnt one of the languages, would this still hold true? Would my learning still be intuitive? Perhaps most importantly, would my intuition get stronger as we learn more languages or remain the same? Moreover, the analysis of gender, number and person made me think of how sentences are formed, and how this differs across across languages. To what extent does number and person vary between English and Hindi? This hinted to one of the main themes in the writing- Universal Grammar.
However, perhaps the part that struck out most to be was Problem of Traditional Definitions. In the Indian education system they highly emphasize on these traditional definitions in primary school, especially in the ISC (Indian Certificate System). Since I went to an IB School, I actually was entirely unfamiliar with these definitions and had learnt language from being spoken at home. While taking national exams with students from Local Indian Schools, I found this distinct difference between their spoken word and mine and I always thought it came from them having a more rigid definition of the role of Grammar in language. I also find similar trends between British English and American English. Therefore, are traditional definitions emphasized more when the language is not intuitive or natural? And how do we them implement trees and hierarchy, when it does not come intuitively to the individual?
I felt the same way reading that sentence at the start! I never really thought about it that way but it really is amazing how much of our understanding of language just happens. As to your point about second languages I can tell you as a current learner of a second language it is very strange to have to think about things like where the verb and subject go in a sentence after so many years of it just occurring naturally. I found the section about different word orders for different languages was interesting and wondered about what goes on when you switch between or try and learn languages with different inherent structure. I always find our readings most interesting when considering the information across multiple languages!
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you. Carnie brought to light the blissful unawareness of native language speakers to their understanding of syntax and grammar. As I read a sentence, I am not thinking about its parts of speech and its order. Rather, I just read the words and understand what they say subconsciously. I also think you bring up an important point that language is relative and evolving. Thus, trying to capture the "traditional" rules of a language proves extremely difficult, especially in a language like English, where these rules are varied and not set down definitively.
ReplyDeleteI also was struck by that sentence! What a crazy thought that you are doing something so complex without having to think about it. I'm really interested in the fact that you are bilingual, especially because I have spent a number of years trying to pick up French (in a prescriptive learning type of class). In particular, I'd be interested in somehow figuring out if when a child is learning two languages at a time, they learn one in terms of the other or independent of each other. By this I mean that when I learned the word for apple in French, I remembered it as une pomme = apple not une pomme = the thing that is green shiny and I eat as a snack. I wonder where that distinction in learning occurs and if there's any way to track that!
ReplyDeleteWhen I read that sentence I was similarly surprised! It took me a moment to just sit and absorb all that means, it really is a staggering, yet obviously true claim. Carnie seemed often to be both impressive and shocking, making the reader see how skilled they are and how naturally they comprehend language yet also dwarfed by the magnitude of language's complexity and wonder. And I find your response to the Problem of Tradition Definitions to be an interesting one, as my education and home are very different, and thus saw both similar and different trends here. My school did emphasize traditional definitions in a way contrary to yours, yet also I always felt that social conversation and home practice was the room of my language acquisition, so it makes me wonder where that line is drawn actually and where we draw it mentally (and how that could be measured!)!
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