Language has no structures/rules

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Language has no structures/rules

Postby Raymund Palayon » 12 Sep 2017 15:34

Good afternoon to all! I would like to address this issue to everyone especially to Aj. Richard for more clarification and understanding. :) :)

I was sick two weeks ago because of the weather. And now I am sick again not my body but the nodes in my brain particularly in my linguistic network after I received this issue or information from TLL class in Connectionism topic, saying that language has no structures/rules or it’s not governed by structures/rules. Language Acquisition Device does not exist in our brain. There’s a probability generator that generates our language every time we expose ourselves in a situation where the target language is being used (Please correct me if my understanding is wrong). That’s why we came up with a conclusion that learners must be exposed or should have more exposures to the target language through activities for them to learn or acquire the language effectively (I agreed to this point).

I just want to clarify here that I am not really a big fan of LAD by Chomsky but I still believe that there’s language faculty in our brain that operates the language when we learn or acquire it (I will refer you to this video about my belief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cymZq1VblU0)

Based on my experience as a second language learner of English, my foundation of knowing this language was really learning and not acquisition (learning vs. acquisition process) where I learned English formally or by its structures in schools. So, that time my speaking communication skills were very limited. When I started working in the Philippines and in abroad as a teacher, everything in English I learned from schools before has been activated and become useful especially in speaking. So, I’ve realized that learning the language by its structures helped me a lot to become what I am today particularly in my communication skills.

My questions are:
1. If language has no structures/rules, how does it compose?
2. If we view language, let’s say English, has no structures/rules, meaning to say, we don’t need to acknowledge ungrammaticality of our students when they are in the stage of learning process?
3. If language has no structures/rules, how can we introduce or teach it especially to the beginners (second language learners)?

Could you please enlighten me regarding this issue? All feedbacks are highly appreciated. Thank you (^_^)
Raymund Palayon
 
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby hayoreinders » 12 Sep 2017 15:47

Hi Raymund - no wondering your 'linguistic network' is hurting, it's a difficult topic and one that many people disagree on :-)

I think you'll find the work of Nick Ellis very useful here, as he answers some of your questions in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cKaX57tEXc
:D
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby Richard » 13 Sep 2017 08:09

The idea that language consists of probabilities of patterns without any clear rules (at least in the traditional sense) is a challenging one. A key problem is that it's almost impossible to show whether a 'rules + LAD' model or a 'pattern probability' model is the reality, since any research conducted into this area will usually have a bias towards the preferred model. So whether language is rule-governed, rule-influenced or pattern-based is largely an issue of personal beliefs. Nevertheless, I think it's important for researchers to be aware of alternatives to dominant traditional models (in ELT, probably language is rule-governed).

Your questions (especially in my view, Q3) do highlight certain challenges to the ideas of usage-based linguistics. For Q2, taking a pattern-based approach does not mean that anything goes. There are still sequences of words that are highly likely to be used and other sequences that are highly likely to never be used. These latter sequences are the 'ungrammatical' ones and so could still be viewed as errors. For Q3, if learning a language largely consists of acquiring lots of multi-word units (or likely patterns), then there is a major challenge that learning is simply rote memorisation of lots of fixed phrases (which doesn't seem likely to be effective).

Generally, then, usage-based approaches, to me, seem well-founded theoretically, but there are still major issues in what they mean for teaching and learning. For the practical implications of a pattern-based approach for teachers, the best sourcers are probably still Michael Lewis' 2 books from the 1990s (The Lexical Approach, and Implementing the Lexical Approach). These were, and still are, highly controversial books, but they're very thought-provoking and worth reading for ideas about how ELT would work without any rules.
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby punjaporn » 13 Sep 2017 09:56

Your questions make my brain sick too!! :lol:

I believe that a language undoubtedly has a certain (but limited) set of rules. Based on the rules, human can teach AI to produce the language. However, human themselves use language more naturally because they don’t just follow the rules, but also have ability to invent, generate and choose several different choices and patterns of use. So, I would think rules and use are in the complex system and cannot be separated. While rules and structures are induced from natural use, the use of language is also based on some set of rules.

Is this the case why corpus-based grammar and studies of lexical patterning have a large impact on grammar description?
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby Raymund Palayon » 13 Sep 2017 14:13

Thanks a lot for all your inputs! I'm inwardly relieved now. :D :D :D
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby sgtowns » 17 Sep 2017 17:50

Hello Raymund.

These are really interesting questions and concern what I think is one of the most interesting concepts that I learned about as a student at KMUTT. I think that instead of having an innate knowledge of grammar (which is what I understand the LAD to be), our brains are instead amazingly good pattern matching machines. We know what a chair is because we have seen so many chair patterns and our brain quickly learned the meaning of this object. (And we probably learned what a chair is before we learned the word "chair"). Acquiring a language is the same way. As children we hear the patterns and our brain somehow, amazingly learns the patterns.

So do languages have grammar rules and if so, what are they? To me, a grammar rule is merely a pattern that a huge majority of the people agree is the "correct" pattern. So a grammar rule like "adjectives come before nouns" in English is a pattern that most English speaking people have agreed on for most situations. I don't see how this pattern can be an "innate" rule in our brains because obviously not every language follows it.

There are also lots of language patterns that grammar rules don't cover, like collocations (Example Word X often goes with Example Word Y), sentiment (Example Word Z is usually found with positive nouns/verbs), and lexical and syntactic choices based on genre or register (for example). If you want to read more about these kinds of things, Michael Hoey's books "Lexical Priming" and "Patterns of Lexis in Text" are a great place to start.

Your questions about giving students feedback open up a completely different can of worms. Lots of research has been done (and it seems to be a current research topic too) about whether or not grammar feedback is useful. A good starting point here is the article by John Truscott, "The Case Against Grammar Correction in L2 Writing Classes".

So what should teachers teach? I'll leave that to the English teachers to talk more about. But it seems to me that exposure to reading and listening, and practicing speaking and writing gives our brains the chance to pick up and learn the patterns. Explicit instruction and feedback on grammar rules doesn't seem to me to be the most effective way to learn a language. Of course it is helpful in some ways, but communication is certainly much more complex than any set of grammar rules in a textbook.

Stuart
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby Richard » 22 Sep 2017 07:15

Stuart says "So a grammar rule like "adjectives come before nouns" in English is a pattern that most English speaking people have agreed on for most situations. I don't see how this pattern can be an "innate" rule in our brains because obviously not every language follows it."

From a Universal Grammar perspective, this is not an issue. In UG a key idea is the distinction between principles and parameters. Principles are innate, but parameters vary by language. The best analogy to explain this point that I've read is that every country requires people to drive on one side of the road only (the principle), but which side this is varies from country to country (the parameter). In Stuart's example, the principle might be 'There is a fixed sequence between adjectives and nouns', and for English the parameter is 'adjective before noun'. Looking at http://wals.info/feature/87A#2/18.0/152.9 over 90% of languages have a fixed sequence for adjectives and nouns (the principle); of these 30% are adjective - noun, and 70% are noun - adjective (the 2 dominant parameters). Strangely, these figures pretty much match the analogy - about 70% of countries use right-hand traffic, and 30% use left-hand traffic.
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby sgtowns » 22 Sep 2017 16:16

Thank you Richard for reminding me about Chomsky's principles and parameters. I am curious about how the principles and parameters theory fits in with the features on the WALS website that you linked to. It seems like there might be some overlap, but not a one-to-one mapping. I think that parameters are supposed to be binary settings, so I am not sure how we would explain the 10% of languages that don't have a fixed noun-adjective order (for example). Or maybe there another principle involved in this case? And I wonder about all the other features on the WALS website, some of which have up to 28 different possibilities.

To try to answer these questions, I looked for a definitive list of Chomsky's principles but was unable to find anything. There only seem to be a handful of example principles that get used every time the topic is brought up, such as the principle that every sentence has a subject. Does anyone know of a list of principles of UG?

In any case, I definitely agree with the opinion that Chomsky's theories are headache-inducing. So let's have a cup of tea at http://wals.info/feature/138A#2/25.5/143.8. Did you all know that the word for tea in 84 languages are derived from "te" in Min Nan Chinese, while 109 languages derive the name of the drink from the Sinitic "cha"? And Thai isn't even listed here so that means that speakers of at least 110 languages prefer "cha".

(Seriously though, the http://wals.info website that Richard cited is fascinating. Check it out!)
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Re: Language has no structures/rules

Postby daronloo » 25 Sep 2017 06:44

Hi All, it’s been a while since I contributed. Stuart has taught me how to subscribe to the threads to receive alerts. Hopefully I will be more active!

I read through the issues pointed out, and brought it to my class for a discussion (do note though that my students are not studying applied/linguistics). The module I am teaching this semester is the basic level graduate research writing course. In this course, graduate students (master’s and doctoral degrees) are taught several rhetoric moves, on top of improving students’ grasp of the English language, specifically, English pertinent to the world of scholarship and publication.

I explained to them the concept of “language acquisition device”, and asked them what they thought about it. I also pointed out that they have been exposed to English usage in different domains (formal and informal). Nonetheless, with a great amount of input of supposedly correct or acceptable English, these graduate students are still making errors which I think is unacceptable (given that they know the rules so well). In the discussion, the students pointed out that they are able to follow the different grammatical concepts of English (e.g., they know what a noun is, they know what a verb is, etc.). However, it is when they are expected to produce, things get messy. There are several explanations given by my students. Some said it is because they’re essentially not English speakers. Another issue is that they are not really motivated. Some also said that the heavy focus on grammar rules in their past experience makes communicating really difficult, because they are constantly monitoring themselves. There were also those who weren’t too concerned, because they know they could solicit help through language editing services. Some of the students’ supervisors helped them revise language comprehensively (and students have no part in this process).

Looking at how my students view the English language, it appears to me that while some of them may be good at grammar rules, what is more important to them is to get their meaning across. For some, this does not require complete accuracy. Also, people around them offer some sort of accommodation. In other words, my students' status as a second or third or fourth… language speaker of English is accepted, and justifies their incapability of communicating at a high level of accuracy or proficiency.

Having said this, I think (response numbers correspond with Raymund’s questions):
1. Like what Richard said, I think it really goes back to a person’s belief about how language is structured. My students have a hard time accepting this, especially when we do simple data-driven exercises in class to analyze writing (particularly texts which have been published in their field). Writing manuals/books would recommend that writers do not begin sentences with “And” or “But”; students, however, are seeing this type of usage in published research work. This is too ‘fuzzy’ for them to accept.

2. I think we are accommodating the type of production our students make. Let me throw in another anecdote, while some think that Singlish is not ‘standard’, many think that Singlish is a crucial social identifier. Singlish is very prevalent and it crosses through different domains of language use. I think, at least in my context, we are so used to listening to people produce English (in certain settings) that does not necessarily match that of what is considered a standard, that we disregard this type of production even in a setting where it is expected that language use is done accurately.

3. Over the past few years, I have become interested in written corrective feedback. Like what Stuart had mentioned, Truscott has some interesting ideas, and it was his 1996 paper that ‘rocked’ my view on written corrective feedback. There are some ways that I use to teach ‘correct usage’. The first is to take a data-driven approach, where students do simple analyses (can be corpus) of how a phrase or a word is used. In this particular module this semester, I am trying to get students to use metalanguage to understand why they did something wrong, and how it can be corrected. This type of reflective practice has been quite difficult to implement because students are so used to looking at grammar as black and white, as a set of ‘rules’. To address your question of how beginners should be taught. There are several considerations that need to be made. For example, the age of these beginners, e.g., though my current students may be considered beginners since they are at the basic level, they are capable of analytical thinking. This informs my teaching methods. Another issue is the purpose of language learning. My students are pressed for time to publish so they can graduate; hence, they are concerned with practical and efficient feedback (because of this, analytical processes are deemed a waste of time). Another issue the socialization of students into ways to deal with feedback. I have noticed that many teachers assume that students know how to respond to feedback. For example, I cross or underline a word in a student’s essay because the word is wrong. Does student know what to do with the crossed or underlined word? It is almost always the case where teachers do not teach students how to deal with feedback.

To add to the discussion, perhaps another issue worth considering is the level of difficulty for a particular grammar form. I am trying this out this semester. I began with the easiest, which are forms that are pretty universal across languages. We spent about a week on this. At the moment, though, we are looking at articles. English language learning books have typically talked about articles as being definite or indefinite. Nevertheless, students are oblivious when it comes to generic and non-generic uses of the article.

Another issue we have at the moment is meaning through grammar. One aspect that we are looking at is the use of both present tense and past tense within a (complex) sentence. Writing manuals typically advice students to maintain the tense throughout the essay. However, in the research writing genre, it is quite common to find long complex sentences which contain different clauses with different tenses. All these tenses actually have a meaning (e.g. indicating previous studies, stating a generalization, etc.).
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