The Rules of Language

Each of the readings this week explored concepts related to language rules and categorization. They all showed that rules and patterns are neither simple nor straightforward and require significant effort to truly or even somewhat understand.

The Atkins & Levin paper explored the problems and complications of categorization in a dictionary, and made an effort to explain how groups of verbs that have very similar meaning can still be extremely different in the ways in which they are used. It used the example of the shake verbs to illustrate this, using dictionary definitions and sample texts to show the various differing usages. It also explored the methods used to categorize and define words in the dictionary through three examples.

The Hapselmath readings explored the morphology of various lexemes and explained how they can be formed. It also broke the words down into morphemes and gave examples of various types that occur in a number of different languages like different types of affixes and also showed how these are broken down into bases, roots, and these affixes. It furthered this idea by exploring linguistic trees much like the syntax trees seen in prior weeks, but exploring morphological ideas as opposed to sentence structure.

The Slobin paper used a case study of ‘frog-stories’ to explore how different language families have substantially different approaches to motion, exploring a larger idea of rhetorical differences between languages.

All of these readings posed similar questions and presented similar concepts – the rules to language are not nearly as simple as one might think. It also made me question some of the differences between languages that I had never thought of before. Does our language influence how we perceive different things like motion? Does this have any impacts aside from the fact that things are phrased differently?