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Exploding Myths

Some Languages Have No Grammar

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The myth: Primitivity of languages
• Especially aboriginal, minority or unwritten
• These kinds of languages have no grammar
• Their vocabularies are simple and lack detail; or they are cluttered
with details and unable to deal with abstractions
• They may be okay for the limited context of use, but not really suited
for the 21st century demands, socially and intellectually complex
worlds (nuclear physics, IT revolution, social media)

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We have seen what constitutes grammar

• Repertoire of speech sounds and sound patterns


• Word building
• Sentence construction
• Meaning making

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If this were true… (1)
• It would be impossible to make a mistake in the language or say that a
sentence is ungrammatical
• To say something is wrong, rules have to be broken
• So for any language, if a mistake is possible or a sentence can be
deemed wrong, then that language has grammar

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If this were true… (2)
• There can be no difference between different classes of words
• Naming words, action words, describing words, relation words etc.
• There can be no pronouns (he, she, it etc.) because by definition
they stand for nouns and no other word class.
• All of the world’s languages distinguish at least verbs and nouns.

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If this were true… (3)
• There could be no rules for the placement of words in sentences. A
sentence with 5 words could be rearranged in any of 120 ways
• Rob said Pip hit Lin
• Pip said Rob hit Lin
• Rob said Lin hit Pip
• Lin said Rob hit Pip …
• And the hearer would have no idea what was meant/intended.
Communication (the speech chain) will fail entirely, become a guessing
game

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If this were true…(4)
• Then the language could not have prefixes and suffixes; being able to add
these bits involves the grammar of words.
• -s for plural could be added anywhere, then pots ~spot~psot~post
can vary freely with each other for [pots].
• Spot the pots on the post (~Spot the spot on the spot!)

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• The language could also not have these little words that link things, as
for example and, or, but etc.
• Pip and Lin like Rob ~ Pip and Rob like Lin ~ Pip Lin Rob and like …
• Grammatical words occur in specific places (Prepositions, conjunction
etc.)

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If this were true… (5)
• Intonation use to mark differences between sentences
• Pip hit Pat
• Pip hit Pat? (Did Pip hit Pat?)
• Pip, hit Pat!
• In all known human languages, such difference is signalled by
intonation, word order changes or modification of word forms
(adding bits to basic words) etc.

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Therefore
• You have grammar if you can
• Distinguish word classes
• Have rules about word order
• Create new word forms
• Use small grammatical words
• Use intonation to signal meaning change
• Else the system would be imprecise and be of very little use – your
listener would have to guess at your meaning. Precise communication
of complex messages requires grammar!

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But may be some languages have MORE
grammar? Latin…

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Sanskrit

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Latin Verbs

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Sanskrit Verbs
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Grammar = endings! More endings, more
grammar
• Many languages do not have endings
• English (he/him, she/her) and (do/does, have/has, am/are/is)
• Chinese – no such endings
• But the effect of not having endings means that you have to use other
ways to signal word relations:
• (Dog bites man) Canis hominem mordet ~ Hominem canis mordet
~ mordet canis hominem
• (Man bites dog) Homo canem mordet ~Canem homo mordet ~
mordet homo canem

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More dramatically
• Kayardild language of Bentinck Island, Queensland
• dangkaa bangaya kurrija
• The/a man the/a turtle sees
• bangaya dangkaa kurrija ~ dangkaa kurrija bangaya ~ bangaya
kurrija dangkaa (6)
• The man saw the turtle on the beach – who was on the beach?
• dangkaa bangaya kurrija ngarnnurruya (turtle)
• dangkaa bangaya kurrija ngarnnurruwa (man)
• dangkaa bangaya kurrija ngarnki (both)

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Variation in how to encode information
• Number – one/many, one-two-many, one-two-three-many,
none-some
• Definite and indefinite nouns (the/a) are marked in English but
not in Latin
• American Indian languages mark the difference between recent
actions, actions in the past and actions in the remote past; also
between that which you know from your own experience and
that which you know because you have been told
• Pronoun difference in we, I and you (inclusive) or I and some
others but not you (exclusive)
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Kunwinjku words (macropod)

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Vocabulary is simple?
• Either the vocabulary is deemed too detailed and incapable of
generalization or
• The vocabulary is too general to be precise
• Hopping variations, enables identifications (link with ecology)
• Kamawudme (male antelopine wallaroo)
• Kadjalwahme (corresponding female)
• Kanjedjme (wallaroo)
• Kamurlbardme (black wallaroo)
• Kalurlhlurlme (agile wallby)

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Not suited for the modern world
• Latin (law, theology, medicine, science, literature)
• Sanskrit (likewise)
• Romance Languages and Prakrits
• How to modernize your vocabulary?
• Use existing resources and conjoin words (downsize; duljawinda
‘ground runner’ or car)
• Borrow (glasnost, perestroika)
• Extend the meanings of words (surf; kun-denge ‘foot’ also ‘wheel’)

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Cicero and Latin: Roman orator, politician,
philosopher, 1BCE
• His contemporaries were sceptical about the possibility of Latin
being able to express the ideas of the Greeks
• He composed his work in Latin to make Greek philosophy
available to a Latin-speaking audience and created a Latin
philosophical vocabulary (with neologisms such as evidentia,
humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia) distinguishing
himself as a translator and philosopher.
• Isaac Newton wrote the Principia in Latin
• For a millennium Latin was the language of scholarship,
science, international diplomacy, literature and law. 21
Romansh

• Southeast of Switzerland, descended from the spoken Latin of the


Roman colonists
• Regions dominated by German; feeling that Romansh cannot make new
words like German can
• Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung (‘motor car liability
insurance’)

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Mark Twain and German
• Mark Twain once said: “Some German words are so long that they
have a perspective…The dictionary must draw the line somewhere […]
because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather
combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been
killed.”
• https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html#x1 (The Awful
German Language)
• The article condensed below
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language

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What does it all mean then?
• Impossible task to quantify grammar - different languages do things
differently, express/encode different grammatical features
• The myth typically pertains to the lack of written grammars and/or a
literary tradition

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