The Clark and Hecht reading looked at how children learned to use the -er suffix to formulate both agent (e.g. "baker") and instrument ("cutter") nouns in English. The study found that older children had more of a grasp on these concepts, and also that all the children used various different responses to the questions.
I was very intrigued by the variety of responses, as they show how we deal with language without the hand-hold of convention; "spontaneous word
innovations," as Clark calls them. One device that children use very early on, and to a high degree, is compounding, where one combines words to create a word that shares their meaning. We see these everywhere in English; Clark gives "doghouse" and "painkiller" as examples; we also see "dishwasher," "lawnmower," "caregiver," etc., etc. German is also infamous for its compound words; Krankenwagen, for instance, means "ambulance," literally meaning "sick (krank) car (wagen)." Another great example is "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz," which means "the law for the delegation of monitoring beef labeling."
German is very closely related to Old English, which abounds with compound words. What do you call a king, the person who gives out gold and rewards in the mead-hall to his favorite thanes? Well, a bēahġifa, or "ring-giver," of course! A warrior? "Raven-feeder," since, well, ravens were said to eat the dead on battlefields. These types of words were known as kennings, from kenna, which means "to make known, to name." So, if you knew what these things were, in an essential way (i.e. their essential properties--that they feed ravens, or give rings) you could name them.
What is not always clear, in both -er words and compound words, is the actual mechanism of the word. For compound words, this is in the relationship between the words; If a garbage truck collects garbage, what does an icecream truck do? What, then, does a firetruck do? A dogsled isn't a sled for dogs, but a sled driven by dogs, but a doghouse is a house for dogs.
For -er words, I can understand why children would be confused; it can act as either an agent or instrument. A typewriter isn't the person who types the words, but is the instrument used to type them? Is a "chopper" a person who chops, or the instrument used to chop*? (As an aside, it's also a helicopter.) Finally, what about the comparative? "Closer," for instance, could mean "a thing that closes," "a person who closes (a deal, or a store, or a door, etc.)," or it could mean "more close"!
In light of English not really making much sense, I would say that the innovations of children are just as valid as what convention would have us say--it's just that convention's been around longer. I think it's kind of a shame, in fact, that "children consistently relinquish
their own innovations in favor of the conventional words for those meanings," as Clark points out. However, I suppose we have to reach some kind of standard.
*This makes the kitchen appliance called the "Slap Chop" particularly linguistically interesting, as it should be called the "Slap Chopper"
Thanks for your comments, Dylan. I thought your overall post was really well thought out and very interesting, especially your analysis on the relationship between words that form part of compound words. Also, I agree with your thought that what children say can be as valid as what convention has made people get used to saying.
ReplyDeleteConventionality is what makes a “gh” sound like an “f”, as in “tough”; or not be pronounced at all, as in “fought”; or sound like an actual “g” and an “h” put together, as in “ghost”. It is often hard to make sense of patterns like these. While changing the rules of an entire language to replace some of these conventions can be complicated and perhaps impractical, I believe it is important to at least recognize the consequences of conventionality. It allows us to reach a standard but also holds us back on other fronts (language is harder to learn, inconvenient pronunciations, etc). This is an effect that is present all around us, not only in linguistics, so I believe it is important to constantly ask ourselves whether we're not sacrificing too much in our attempt to reach a standard.
That is really interesting about "raven feeder," Dylan! This makes me think that there are some rules we cannot learn because in fact there is no rule for how to form that word, regardless of how much we understand -er suffixes (or the like). Context plays a role that is separate from, but deeply intertwined with our vocabulary and the rules we understand for word formation. And yet... how else could i learn "raven feeder" as the translation of warrior except for learning through context/being told via a blog post! It's hard to even contemplate a different way to learn through concepts/rules. So thanks for sharing the knowledge!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that much of English doesn't make sense. However, I think that this is what makes these kinds of conventions so interesting. They don't make sense when you look at them all together, however we can easily see what they mean. I think that this is one of the most interesting phenomena in the English language.
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting to compare English and German, given that they are fairly closely related. It is interesting to see how different conventions developed in these similarly structured languages over time - it would be interesting to look at when these changes occurred in English if possible to see, and look at outside factors to see if there was any particular influence one one language that changed the English conventions.
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