LB281-284宜菁

LB281-284宜菁

內文：

Take the first point. Someone may hold out an opened pack of cigarettes and ask.“Smoke?”or a person may answer the question“Do you smoke?”by means of the one-word“Yes！”or the question“which one of these boys was seen to smoke?”by“Johnnie！”and so on. Countless other example are possible. In every instance，we are clearly dealing with eilipsis. The single word utterances are only interpretable by virtue of the listeners ability to supplement the omitted part of the sentence. The first instance is interpreted as the sentence,“Do you smoke?”,the second as“I smoke”(or, “I do smoke；hence“Yes, I do smoke.”)；and the third as“Johnnie has been seen to smoke.”There may ,in some instance, be ambiguity because not enough context is given to enable the listener to place the single word into the intended sentence. But generally it is correct to say that the meaning of word is uninterpretable in social commerce, unless we have enough clues with to construct a sentence for that word.

The second point is factually correct：utterances heard in colloquial English(or any language, for that matter)do not conform to what we know to be correct grammar. We must make here a distinction. There are indeed utterances that are totally“ungrammatical,”but they are also uninterpretable－we do not know what the speaker was trying to say. On the other hand, much more often we do know what the speaker wanted to say even though his utterances are clearly ungrammatical. This may be because he omitted part of the sentence or because a sentence is begun as if it were to end in one way but is actually concluded by using the second half of a different type of construction.(Several variations of this are possible.) Our capacity to understand such semi-sentences can only be due to a facility to supplement the omitted part of incomplete sentences. Thus, the interpretation of semi-sentences is not simpler than the understanding of grammatical sentence but actually requires a special ability：to supplement the missing parts of a partially concealed pattern(analogous to pattern-completion in visual perception).If a sentence is under certain circumstances﹝Osgood(1957) cites the example,“Garlic I taste！”﹞, this is not necessarily a sign that syntax may be abandoned at will rather of the existence of correspondence that do not ordinarily enter into the writing of normative grammars. The rule of correspondence in this case relates the form of the“Garlic”sentence to the form of such sentences as“I taste garlic！”The example cited is not necessarily an instance of agrammatism but merely that of an admissible rule. That the types of such rules are limited (or that the rules have a psychological reality) is seen in the fact that the words in this sentence cannot be permutated in all possible ways.

In the light of this discussion, how do we explain the onset of language development where it is a universal finding that children begin with one-word utterance? Does this mean that the observations on adult language are false? Or that they are irrelevant? I do not believe that either us the case. To the contrary, if we assume that child’s first single word utterances are, in fact, very primitive, undifferentiated forms of sentences, and that these utterances, and that these utterances actually incorporate the germs of grammar a number of phenomena may explained.

There is a period at which an infant may have a repertoire of up to 50words including such items as daddy, here, milk, up, baby, etc. He will utter any one of these words in isolation and they may mean：Daddy, come here；Daddy went by-by；no milk；more milk, please； etc. But even though the child’s memory is sufficient to know all of the 50 words. and even though he hears such phrases as here is your milk, shall daddy take you by-by, etc., he will neither join together any two words he knows nor can he be induced to do so upon request. This cannot be explained by assuming that he makes himself better understood this understood this way, that the reference of the words(that is, the association with the object)is still too narrow and fixed；or that he has no need for putting words together；or that he cannot vocalize for that long a period of time；or that thus due to poorly developed general memory. All of theses assumptions are refutable by observations. Nor would any of theses assumptions make it clear why the child suddenly and spontaneously does begin to join words into two-element phrases.

The assumption that the early single word utterances are primitive syntactic units－in a sense primitive sentences－find support in the following considerations. Semantically, and in terms communication, the single words seem to function in the same way that sentences come to function later on：they cover a complete proposition：for instance, they may stand for a statement such as, Daddy is coming down the street. phonologically they may be operated upon by a given rule. Much the way a whole string of symbols is operated upon later on；for example, one of variety of intonation patterns the utterance such as declarative, interrogative, or hortative pitch-contours. It is reasonable to assume that the formal processes that regulate the perception and production of sounds are essentially the same as those that enter into syntax and that the one-word stage is simply a transitional stage during which the rules are extended from the interaction of articulatory movements to the interaction of larger language units, namely morphemes words, and that the eventual acquisition and mastery of grammar has its origin right at the beginning of language development；otherwise we would have to assume that some day the child “discovers”grammar and makes an effort to learn this phenomenon, which seems farfetched.

(3) Theoretical Considerations

(a) Understanding-Speaking. It is easier to construct a theory that explains why adults understand sentences the way they do, than a theory that explains why or how a given seguence of words is produced by a specific person at a specific time. This is not say that understanding language is based on a separate mechanism from producing language. Both are based on the same apparatus of principles. But if we test an individual. There must be certain motor capacities, memory, motivation, a specific train of thoughts, given social conditions and factor.

It is easier to study general capacities for behavior than the specific forms that behavior will take at any one time, and it is easier to predict the capacity for understanding than the capacity for speaking, because there are fewer factors affecting the former than the latter. A similar point, but with further refinement, is made by Chomsky, Appendix A, under the headings of competence and performance.

The distinction made here is relevant to many types of behavioral studies. Suppose we wanted to make a psychobiological study of chess playing. For instance, we wanted to know ,“What are the mental characteristics necessary for this game?”or, “Can a chimpanzee learn to play it?”The empirical questions that would be asked in this research are：can a given subject learn the various moves? Can he develop a strategy? Does he see the implications of his adversary’s moves? And so on. We to know whether he can comprehend the game. If we had nothing but a catalogue of his moves without a report of what his opponent was doing(that is, how he understood his opponent’s game), we should have an imperfect idea of his competence as a chess player.

That the understanding of language is more relevant to an estimation of language capacities may also be seen from the following：we can learn to understand a language without ability to speak it. This is true of primary language acquisition, as well as the acquisition, as well as the acquisition of a second language. In these cases, the underlying principles of the language are acquired, but the development of the skills for production are lagging.

摘要：

人的語言發展，ㄧ開始時，雖然記憶力已經可以記至少50個單子，但講話時還是只講一個單子－one word stage，沒辦法把很多單子組合起來形成句子，所以這時就必須依賴聆聽者自己補充說話者省略的字，來了解說話者所想表達的意思，但若說話者是省略句子中關鍵的字眼，則聆聽者將無法明瞭說話者的意思，且也有可能會有文法、語調錯誤等等，但到了不知道什麼時候，就突然可以講兩個字－two word stage，所以語言的發展是會按照一定的順序發展的，從單字變片語在變句子。其中understanding-Speaking理論主要就是講，大人為什麼可以理解這些話語，且是從哪些字、哪些線索理解這些話。