Linguistic Diversity - a variety of contextual factors

Dr Senarath Tennakoon

Any language is a system of sounds. The smallest units of discrete sounds are known as phonemes. These phonemes are arranged in an orderly grammatical manner to form words, phrases, clauses and sentences. For each language their number is unique. Generally English uses about 50, where as Papuan language has just 11, while in Botswana 110 are in use.

English phonemes comprise 24 consonants, 12 pure vowels and eight diphthongs. But there are 26 letters in the alphabet to represent 44 sounds. Hence additional symbols are required for the other sounds. In Sinhala there are 41 phonemes (14 vowels and 27 consonants) although there are 58 letter symbols in the written alphabet.

Phonemes

Although we are familiar with the terms vowels and consonants in a language these do not resemble the phonemes altogether in the same language. For instance, the word “said” becomes “sed” and “next” becomes “nekst” when phonemes are taken into account – when written in phonetic transcription. One distinguishing feature of a phoneme is that if one is substituted with another phonemes, there is an alternation in the meaning of a word. For instance if the /p/ in ‘pit’ is replaced by /b/ then ‘pit’ becomes ‘bit’ giving a different shade of meaning. So /p/ and /b/ are phonemes in English. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) provides around two hundred symbols for the sounds encountered in the world's languages, but it is based upon the Roman alphabet. English is just one among the five thousand or so languages in the world (Ashby, 1995).

There are variant forms of phonemes which are called allophones. For instance the /t/ in Tim is aspirated and the /t/ in stem is released. It is because of the elaborate but unique combination of these phonemes specific to each language that makes each language different from another language. Variety of combinations with even a finite number of phonemes is possible for an each and every language, even though not all the phonemes are used in running conversation.

Tone

Furthermore, each language has a specific feature embedded in its structure which is creativity or productivity. As such, the user is able to construct new sentences all the time without monotonous repetitions. This flexibility of a language offers diversity to arise in the functional

presentation of any language. In a toned language like Chinese Putonghua, the tone or inflection of a Chinese word is just as important as its pronunciation. In English, the tone of a word varies with the mood of the sentence; in Chinese the tone stays the same whether the sentence is a question, exclamation, or matter-of-fact a statement.

Mood is indicated by stress on certain words rather than infection. To use a wrong tone in a Chinese word would be the equivalent of saying “cat” for “dog” in English (Chen et al. 1988). The meaning of a Chinese word depends on its tone. The standard dialect of Chinese has four tones. For instance take the word “ma” which means to ‘scold’ with a falling tone, ‘hemp’ with a rising tone, ‘mother’ with a level tone and ‘horse’ in a falling – rising tone (Miller, 1991).

Varieties of English

In fact, there are many languages and dialects in use. Some are largely localized to specific geographical regions, while some are globalised. Although English is a globalised language there are different varieties of English, in England itself as well as outside England. British English, American English, Australian English and Indian or Sri Lankan English are such varieties. In Sinhala too, there are varieties that deviate from the standard variety in different parts of this small country, among the different social groups are among the different professionals.

As such, there are regional varieties, social varieties and stylistic varieties of the same language (Parker, 1996). All these three varieties may be observed in the speech pattern of a single speaker (idiolect) or in a conversation between two friends. But idiolects are considered as strict individual variations from speaker to speaker, which are idiosyncratic rather than systemic. Linguists are not much interested in idiolects.

Sounds

The scientific study of languages started just over two centuries by systematic attempts at tracing historical relations among different languages. Medieval scholars studied Latin and with Renaissance, the study extended to the study of Greek. But it was in 1786, a landmark discovery was made by Sir William Jones who was the Chief Justice of Bengal. He rediscovered Sanskrit and made a bold statement that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek sprung from a common source, perhaps, no longer existed. Later, it was agreed that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek descended from some mother language called Proto-Indo-European (PIE), a language spoken before the invention of writing now lost for ever.

Later research revealed that many other languages like Hindi, Urdu, modern Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Kurdish, Persian and English have descended from PIE and they are called Indo European languages. Rasmus Christian Rask (1787-1832) a Dutch scholar and philologist who was the first to realize that sounds rather than letters provide the evidence for linguistic evolution, compared Germanic languages.

Jacob Grimm (1785-1863), a German linguist discovered the sound laws that firmly established Germanic as a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Karl Varner, further elaborated the Germanic sound laws. But there were exceptions to Grimm’s laws and in 1878 Ferdinand De Saussure, a Swiss linguist explained the irregular behaviour of sounds in some daughter languages of the PIE family of languages.

According to his “Laryngeal theory” some sounds have been lost in the daughter languages. It was Saussure who laid the foundation for the synchronic study of languages, apart from the already established diachronic study by the 1930s synchronic linguistics became established. It dealt with three domains of languages; pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of the languages that were compared.

However, by the 1950s this anthropological approach to language study was questioned by Noam Chomsky who emphasized not on the performance of the speakers but on the linguistic competence of the speaker and named a new approach “generative grammar” for describing the explicit rules that assign structural description to sentences.

Thus Chomsky made Linguistics a part of cognitive psychology. Chomsky declared that the capacity for language is a part of genetic endowment of all human beings and this innate competence can be characterized in terms of expert principles governing the linguistic constructions that are possible – that is to say in terms of generative grammar (Miller, 1991). Although Chomsky based his observations in a homogeneous speech community, Del Hymes in 1966 introduced the concept of communicative competence in a heterogeneous speech community. He argued that like rules of grammar there are rules for language use. Ones grammatical competence is just only one facet.

Hymes argued that Chomsky’s definition of competence is too narrow linguistics should concern themselves with communicative competence; the speaker’s ability to produce appropriate utterances and not grammatical sentences. He identified four aspects of communicative competence; systemic potential; appropriateness; occurrence and feasibility (Hymes 1971). Hymes stressed on the fact of context sensitivity in the use of any language. Which is true in language acquisition by children as well. Linguistic diversity is an expression of this communicative competence which is context sensitive.

Context here refers to the circumstances in which an event occurs where language is used for contextualization, by way of a speech event or a speech act or conversation etc.

Human civilizations

History says that the original human beings lived in the southern and eastern parts of Africa. From there they have migrated to different parts of the earth for various reasons during different eras of history. There have been human civilizations associated with some great river valleys. When the human beings migrated, invariably they carried with them their genes as well as their languages with them.

Thus isolated societies adapted existing words and phrases and coined new words and over time, the changes accumulated to the point where their language was no longer intelligible to outsiders. This process of cultural evolution is similar to biological speciation, where two populations of the same species become separated from one another and diverge until they can no longer interbreed.

In the same way that the species are adapted to fit certain habitats, languages evolve to meet the particular needs of their speakers. Areas of greatest linguistic diversity tend to be in the tropics. Languages with simpler rules like English and Mandarin tend to be spoken by larger populations that have contact with lots of other societies (Robson, 2011). Linguistic diversity is amazing as the human beings are productive, imaginative and creative unlike the animals which can produce a very limited number of sounds.

Differences

There are differences between the spoken language and the written language. These differences are well marked in Sinhala. Even under a single language there are dialects. These are regional dialects, sociolects, idiolects, argot (speech in disguise) jargon, slang, journalese, motherase, baby talk professional talk, registers, as well as computer language.

But all these varieties of language are context sensitive for instance Cockney English is different from the standard English as shown by Bernard Show in his “Pygmalion” which was filmed as My Fair Lady. Show asks the question: “Why cannot the English speak proper English?” American English and British English are not identical. Americans say ‘cockie’ for biscuits, and ‘main street’ for high street. When situations change certain linguistic terms tend to change. For instance the noun ‘uncle’ in the past was used to indicate a specific family relationship.

Now in the urban settings every adult male is called ‘uncle,’especially by the children and youngsters. Language loyalists are particular about sticking to pure linguistic terms which are sometimes very effective. With ones advancing age and maturity language use also changes. The priests tend to use high level language while the lower class people use a low level dialect in communication.

The abusive use of language is regarded as very obscene and uncultured. An intelligent person would be able to identify a speaker’s social status, profession and geographical location from ones speech variety. Agricultural workers, sailers, fishing folk, miners and in particular the gem minors have specific linguistic terms often used during their operations.

The influx of modern technical terms into several professions has given a mixed language to electronic media. The schoolchildren too use English words mixed with their mother language.

The slang used in higher educational institutions is highly viable, volatile and interesting. There are opportunities for the genesis of pidgins and later creoles in a community with extensive opportunities for foreign trade and tourism.

Linguistic style

A language system is always in a process of change. There are several social factors as well as historical factors that bring about these changes and heterogeneity is the normal state of a language. Language variety involves a change in norms and speaker’s attitudes towards language. It has been found that speakers modify their speech patterns to suit that of the listeners. This is the accommodation theory (Downes, 1984).

In different types of genre like poetry, drama and novels linguistic diversity is impressively expressed. Lyrical poetry expresses the emotions or thoughts of one person, often using language and rhythm that sound song like. Lyrical prose is subjective, emotive, fluent and with features of poetic expression. An expression of linguistic diversity is observed in the style of language use in literary works.

Style includes the choice of vocabulary, the sentence structure and the use of imagery and idioms. Linguistic diversity is very prominently observed in speech styles. A high form of language style is generally observed in sermons, speeches, lectures, court proceedings, academic discussions and news broadcasts.

A low variety is observed in casual friendly conversations, political speeches and in abusive arguments. However, political discussions may occupy either of the two styles depending upon the caliber and integrity of the participants.

Halliday observes that a speaker’s linguistic repertoire consists of varieties or register distinguished according to use. Hymes suggests that it is more useful to see a speech community as comprising a set of styles. Styles have social meanings. There are stylistic modes (use of voice in various ways as in reciting poetry or singing or intoning etc) and stylistic structures (verbal forms organized into sentences and utterances) in a piece of discourse (Courlthard, 1985).

Style is largely individualistic. It is difficult to imitate another’s style whether it is Shakespeare, Milton, Eliot, Larkin or Seamus Heaney. For instance in Heaney’s collection of poetry Dealth of a Naturalist he uses alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia to create the sounds of the farm and his childhood (Darly 1996). Many critics were impressed by T S Eliot’s versatility in using different verse forms and in varying the tone since his The Waste Land appeared in 1922.

The lack of a sustained metrical form in it led some readers to conclude that Eliot smashed the traditional rules of verse and that he wrote in free verse (Macrae. (2001). The styles of Lawrence Durrell and Graham Greene are totally different. Durrell with his ornate literary turn of phrase has been accused for verbosity, while Graham Greene writes clearly and simply. (Doubtfire, 1999).