Presentation

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky -

Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus)
Linguistic Theory, Syntax, Semantics, Philosophy of Language.

He wrote many linguistic articles including:

• "Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew." Master's thesis, University of Pennsylvania,1951.

• "Systems of Syntactic Analysis." September 1953

• Review of Modern Hebrew (January - March 1954)

• “Logical Syntax and Semantics: Their Linguistic Relevance.”

Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His undergraduate and graduate years were spent at the University of Pennsylvania where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1955. During the years 1951 to 1955, Chomsky was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows. While a Junior Fellow he completed his doctoral dissertation entitled, "Transformational Analysis." The major theoretical viewpoints of the dissertation appeared in the monograph Syntactic Structure, which was published in 1957. This formed part of a more extensive work, The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, circulated in mimeograph in 1955 and published in 1975.

Chomsky argued that children will never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone. Consequently, he proposed the theory of Universal Grammar: an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories, such as a noun category and a verb category that facilitate the entire language development in children and overall language processing in adults.

Universal Grammar is considered to contain all the grammatical information needed to combine these categories, e.g. noun and verb, into phrases. The child’s task is just to learn the words of her language (Ambridge & Lieven). For example, according to the Universal Grammar account, children instinctively know how to combine a noun (e.g. a boy) and a verb (to eat) into a meaningful, correct phrase (A boy eats).
This Chomskian (1965) approach to language acquisition has inspired hundreds of scholars to investigate the nature of these assumed grammatical categories and the research is still ongoing.

 

(January-March 1955).

BF Skinner

 Skinner came up with one of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition.
 A major proponent of the idea that language depends largely on environment was the behaviorist BF Skinner. He believed that language is acquired through principles of conditioning, including association, imitation, and reinforcement.
 According to this view, children learn words by associating sounds with objects, actions, and events. They also learn words and syntax by imitating others. Adults enable children to learn words and syntax by reinforcing correct speech. For example, correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words like when a child says 'milk' they will be rewarded when the mother gives it to the child. This enhances the child's language development.

 BF Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor and social philosopher. He invented the operant conditioning chamber describing how human behaviour is a result of previous consequences.

Some of his quotes: 
-A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
-I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.
-Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.
-Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
-Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

Evaluation

I believe my investigation was effective as I was able to carry out my methodology and gain some important results. However one of the limitations is that it was at times difficult to gather relevant information from the internet therefore causing me to use the Disney script instead of a written story. My investigation may help people to understand how the English language is evolving and how quickly this change is coming about. As the stories I analysed are aimed at children, it implies they are learning from a young age the changes involved in the language, causing them to perhaps speak and write differently from previous generations. My investigation can help others understand this change and that it is in some way inevitable.  

Conclusion

 My investigation has illustrated that there have been significant changes in the English language over time, especially in stories aimed at younger readers. I had initially predicted that I would find examples of change within the frameworks lexis, semantics and grammar which I was able to analysis in my investigation. I assumed that neologisms found in the Disney version would have been created through scientific process, borrowing or compounding. As well as finding examples of these methods, I also found others I hadn’t considered before including alteration, contraction and even creating new words after a person. This suggests lexical change is far more complex and therefore often hard to avoid. The amount of neologisms I had recorded was also quite surprising – only after two centuries, many words had either been created or disappeared which is a huge change in this length of time.  In terms of semantics, I assumed I would find examples of words that had become more negative or positive. Instead, I found broader meanings for the same words.  This may be because of the rise in slang. It would appear that people now use normal words as slang terms to effectively describe and mean something else. Grammar has also changed within the two versions of the story, coming to the conclusion that the English language is much more basic and informal today because of the fewer uses of subordinate clauses and the rise of contractions. In my investigation, this is perhaps because the written texts I were focusing on were aimed at a younger audience therefore they would have to be basic and easy to understand in some way. 

Data Analysis

 Within my language investigation, I have compared written data over a period of time as I have looked at both the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale of Rapunzel and the script used for the animated Disney film ‘Tangled’ based on the same character. By comparing these two sets of data, I have focused on three main frameworks: lexis, semantics and grammar.

Lexis

 It is clear that lexis was one of the most important frameworks within my investigation as not only was I able to identify the neologisms from the Disney script, I was also able to identify what words had become obsolete or less used in the story written by the Grimm Brothers. From my introduction and methodology, I assumed that neologisms would have been formed using a variety of ways. This proved to be significantly correct from the data I collected as the words I recorded from the Disney script were created by methods including compounding and scientific progress. Some of the examples of compounding I discovered were ‘line-up’, ‘fleabag’ and ‘overprotective’. Scientific progress through the means and advances in medicine and technologies have also caused some new words to be created which made an appearance in the ‘Tangled’ version such as ‘hay fever’ and ‘interior design’. All of these words did not exist before the early 1800s when the Grimm’s version of Rapunzel was published. Another method, regarding how new words are created, is borrowing. Yet, some of the words I discovered may have not been exactly borrowed by other countries but instead were influenced by them. For example, the noun ‘blah’ may have perhaps been influenced by the French term ‘blasé’ meaning bored and indifferent. The use of this word was perhaps used in the Disney film as it can be easily understand by children. Conversion is another method to explain the lexical change; however I previously didn’t mention this in my introduction and methodology. The word ‘wax’ which primarily started off as a noun became the verb ‘to wax’ in Disney’s tangled, clearly displaying the use of conversion. Further examples of neologisms I have discovered can be seen in Table 1 below. From this part of my investigation, I can see that examples of slang have already started to appear in the newer version of the fairy tale which will later be discussed in more detail in the semantics section.

Alteration	Compounding	Scientific Process	Contraction	Conversion	After a Person	Other
Mommy	Line-up	Hay Fever	C’mon	Wax	Sideburns	Blah
Gotcha	Overprotective	Interior Design				Cupcake
Yay

 As well as finding relevant examples of lexis in Disney’s script for ‘Tangled’, the type of lexis used in the Grimm’s ‘Rapunzel’ was also important to analysis. Archaisms like ‘thus’, ‘tresses’ and ‘ells’ which were used in this version yet are no longer used in modern English, therefore would be inappropriate to use in a Disney fairy tale in this present day. The adverb ‘thus’ which originated from Old English back in the year 900 has various meanings including ‘in this way’ and ‘consequently’ but has now gone out of fashion. ‘Tresses’ was a noun to describe ‘plaits’ or ‘braids’ yet these alternatives are nowadays more commonly used by children. As a result ‘plaits’ was used for ‘Tangled’ instead. ‘Ell’ was a former measurement of length but is no longer used in the English language. Trudgill says changes such as these are an inevitable process and as society and people change, so does the language. Moreover some terms may still be used, just not as much. At the beginning of the Grimm’s version the noun ‘God’ is used. As the type of generation they lived in was perhaps more religious than it is nowadays, it would explain why ‘God’ is only mentioned in the original story.

Semantics

 I also focused on this particular framework as I wanted to know if the meanings of the words had changed over time. First of all I looked at the Grimm’s version to see if any of the words had been used differently. The noun ‘enchantress’ was used to describe a woman who practises magic. Clearly this word is still used for this meaning today, however the meaning may have broadened as it can now also mean an irresistible or charming woman. Although this meaning hasn’t expanded enormously and completely differed, it is still an example of how English is developing.  I then looked at the Disney script to see if these words in the present have new meanings than before. I discovered that words that were nowadays used as slang obviously had more meanings. The nouns ‘pet’ and ‘flower’ are used by Mother Gothel when she talks to Rapunzel to express fondness or affection. As these terms are so widely used today, even younger audiences which are who this film is aimed at will be able to understand that the character doesn’t mean the literal meaning. However, these changes are not considered positive by some theorists. Guy Deutscher, a prescriptivist, believes language changed is bad as it is leading children in today’s generation to not being able to speak or write correctly. By watching movies such as those created by Disney could therefore be worrying for children because of the slang they include as they are not sticking to the standard form of the language.

Not only have I analysed the meaning of the words, I have also looked at figurative language. It is clear that figurative language was more apparent in the original story compared to the Disney version.  In the Grimm’s version of Rapunzel figurative expressions including the metaphors ‘touched his heart’ and ‘his heart had been so stirred’ were used. This type of figurative language is still used today, especially in literacy and poetry. However it may be less common to find in a modern children’s fairy tale. The only example of figurative language found in the Disney script was the idiom ‘leave the nest’.  This could also explain how the English language is becoming less complex.

Grammar

 Grammar has been one of the main changes in the English language over time, whether it be syntax, word order or spelling.  While reading the Grimm’s story of Rapunzel, it is clear to see how word order has changed significantly over the past two centuries. Some interrogatives didn’t include auxiliary verbs and were formed with a verb at the start. This can be seen in the examples ‘said she with angry look’ and ‘answered he’ which put the subject after. On the other hand, it is more common to put the subject first in Present Day English. Since 1700, sentences have also become shorter – another example of the language becoming simpler. Although Grimm’s Rapunzel was written and published in 1812, there is still evidence within the story to show more complicated sentences. For instance this sentence ‘It was, however, surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared to go into it because it belonged to an enchantress, who had great power and was dreaded by all the world’ includes subordinate clauses which are less commonly used today.

 Another grammatical issue is contractions. By the early 18^th century contractions became common in written and spoken in English and it would seem some are still on the rise. Others however, have become completely out of fashion. These include ‘twas’, ‘o’er’ and ‘e’en’. There is an example of the contraction ‘can’t’ used in the Grimm’s version yet there were significantly more recorded in the Disney script such as ‘you’ve’, ‘don’t’, ‘aren’t, ‘you’re’ and ‘we’re’.  In some ways this is becoming alarmingly similar to the type of views expressed within the language decay theory. This theory suggest that more and more people are becoming careless about their speech and are therefore becoming lazy, resulting in a much more ‘simple’ language. Writers including Jonathan Swift have also said that contractions like these are corrupting the language so people in the future are less likely to understand. These are all negative views towards the way this language is changing.

The Story

 Regarding the storyline, there have also been obvious changes between the two versions of ‘Rapunzel’. Some of the plots which occurred in the Grimm’s version may have now been inappropriate for younger audiences. For example, the father agrees to exchange his own daughter for rampion which is different to ‘Tangled’ where Rapunzel actually gets stolen. This was perhaps altered as in today’s society it may be hard to understand why any parent would give up their child and would prove to be morally inacceptable to show to young children. Rapunzel becoming pregnant and the prince (who was known as ‘Flynn’ in ‘Tangled’) being blinded by thorns was also eliminated. Again, as these situations may have been inappropriate. However both have a happy ending therefore this may be considered the most important aspect over both time periods.