Cinema Sequels And Remakes

Cinema Sequels And Remakes Preamble: The remake is both an industrial and a critical genre. Defined primarily in relation to a body of copyright law, the acknowledged or credited remake develops from being an ethical solution to the early practice of duping to become an economically driven staple of the Hollywood industrial mode of representation. Following the Hollywood recession of 1969 and the small-and-weird-can-be-beautiful-revolution of the early seventies, the remake (along with the sequel) becomes typical of the defensive production and marketing strategies of a post Jaws Hollywood. In the case of the unacknowledged remake, the absence of a production credit shifts attention from a legal-industrial definition to a critical-interpretive one, in which the remake is determined in relation to a general discursive field [that] is mediated by the structure of the [filmic] system and by the authority of the [film and] literary canon (Frow, Intertextuality and Ontology 46). In either instance, the intertextual referentiality between a remake and its `original is largely extratextual (Friedberg 175), located in historically specific technologies and institutional practices such as copyright law and authorship, canon formation and film literacy. In their almost one thousand page long Cinema Sequels and Remakes, 1903-1987, Roben Nowlan and Gwendoline Wright Nowlan devote not quite two full pages to explaining the selection criteria for one thousand and twenty five alphabetically listed primary films and the many more associated remakes and sequels that make up their reference volume. The brevity of Nowlan and Nowlans introduction is attributable to the fact that they make little attempt to define either remake or sequel, but rather take these as received categories, i.e., their principal criterion for selection is that a film has been previously designated as a remake or sequel in any two or more of a number of unidentified but reliable source[s], which list remakes and sequels of certain genres of films (xi-xii). While this type of lax definition makes for a wide selection of material and does not preclude the inferential reconstruction of at least some of the unspecified principles of selection (through an examination of th ose films that have been included), Nowlan and Nowlans intuitive approach underscores the extent to which the remake is conceived more through actual usage and common understanding than through rigorous definition.(1) While Nowlan and Nowlan put aside problems of categorization to list thousands of films, Michael B. Druxmans more modest (in scope) Make It Again, Sam, which sets out to provide a comprehensive dissertation on the remake practice by detailing the film life of [thirty-three] literary properties (9), attempts to ground its selection in some preliminary definitions. Druxman begins by electing to limit the category of remake to those theatrical films that were based on a common literary source (i.e., story, novel, play, poem, screenplay), but were not a sequel to that material (9). This seemingly infallible signpost is however complicated by those films that are obviously remakes [but] do not credit their origins (9). In such cases Druxman adopts a heuristic devicea rule of thumbwhich requires that a new film borrow more than just an element or two from its predecessor to qualify (9). This in turn allows Druxman to distinguish between nonfiction films of a single historical incident or b iography of a historical figure (e.g., the mutiny on the Bounty or the life of Jesse James) which differ because they are based around competing versions of the same incident, and those nonfiction films of a like historical incident which are similar even though they are based upon diverse literary sources (9). As might be expected from an approximate rule which arbitrates according to whether a films borrowings are significant or only amount to an element or two, Druxman ultimately admits that there were many marginal situations [in which he] simply used [his] own discretion in deciding whether or not to embrace [a film as a remake] (9). Although Druxmans recognition of unacknowledged remakes introduces a number of methodological difficulties, he funkier grounds his discussion by viewing Hollywood remaking practice as a function of industry pragmatism, driven by three major factors. Firstly, Druxman argues that the decision to remake an existing film is primarily a voluntary one based on the perceived continuing viability of an original story. However, industry demand for additional material during the studio-dominated era of the thirties and forties and attempts to rationalize the often high costs of source acquisition prompted studios to consider previously filmed stories as sources for B pictures, and even for top of the bill productions (13). As Tino Balio points out, the Hollywood majors had story departments with large offices in New York, Hollywood, and Europe that systematically searched the literary marketplace and stage for suitable novels, plays, short stories, and original ideas (99). Taking as an example story acquisitions at Warner Brothers between 1930 and 1949, Balio notes that the pattern of source acquisition demonstrates two often contradictory goals: (1) the desire to base films on pretested material, that is, low-risk material that was already well known and well received by the public and (2) the desire to acquire properties as inexpensively as possible, especially during declining or uncertain economic circumstances (Robert Gustafson qtd. in Balio 99). In practice this meant that while Warners often invested in expensive pre-sold properties, such as best-selling novels and Hollywood hit plays, it offset the high costs of pretested properties by using original screenplays written in its screenwriting department and by relying heavily on `the cheapest pretested material of allearlier Warner pictures (99). Druxmans second, related point is that the customary studio practice at the time of purchasing the rights to novels, plays, and stories in perpetuity meant that a company was able to produce multiple versions of a particular property without making additional payments to the copyright holder (15). Canonized classics of literature, such as Treasure Island and The Three Musketeers, not only had pre-sold titles, but because they were in the public domain, had the added advantage of requiring no initial payment for their dramatic rights (18-20). While the majority of recycled, previously purchased source material (particularly from those films that had done fair to poorly at the box office) made its way into B-unit production (Balio 100), high profile titles were sometimes remade to take advantage of new technologies and practices. Accordingly, Druxmans third and final point relates to the profit potential of redoing established films in order to exploit new stars or screen techniques, e .g., Michael Curtizs 1938 version of The Adventures of Robin Hood as both a vehicle for Errol Flynn and a sound and Technicolor update of the Douglas Fairbanks silent epic, Robin Hood (Allen Dwan, 1922) (15). Druxmans initial definition and the above factors of industry pragmatism allow him to posit three general categories of Hollywood remake: (i) the disguised remake: a literary property is either updated with minimal change or retitled and then disguised by new settings and original characters, but in either case the new film does not seek to draw attention to its earlier version(s), e.g., Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh, 1949) as a disguised remake of High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941); (ii) the direct remake: a property may undergo some alterations or even adopt a new title, but the new film and its narrative image do not hide the fact that it is based upon an earlier production, e.g., John Guillermins 1976 remake of King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933); and (iii) the non-remake: a new film goes under the same title as a familiar property but there is an entirely new plot, e.g., Michael Curtizs 1940 version of The Sea Hawk is said to bear little relation to First Nationals 1924 adaptation of the Rafael Sabatini novel (13-15).(2) While Druxmans account of the remake raises a number of salient points, among them the role that credits and promotions play in the identification of remakes, the publication of Make It Again, Sam prior to the post-Jaws renovation of Hollywood and the transformation of film viewing through videotape and other recent technologies of storage and reproduction make the book somewhat backward-looking. In order to consider some aspects of the remake as a media-intertext, particularly in relation to new Hollywood remakes, it is helpful to turn to a more recent typology of the remake, Thomas M. Leitchs Twice-Told Tales.(3) Leitch begins his account by making a number of points about the singularity of the remake both among Hollywood films and even among other types of narratives: [t]he uniqueness of the film remake, a movie based on another movie, or competing with another movie based on the same property is indicated by the word property. Every film adaptation is defined by its legally sanc tioned use of material from an earlier model, whose adaptation rights the producers have customarily purchased (138). Putting aside for the moment the fact that this description immediately excludes those obvious remakes which do not acknowledge their previous source, the point Leitch wishes to make is that although adaptation rights (e.g., film adaptation rights of a novel) are something producers of the original work have a right to sell, it is only remakes that compete directly and without legal or economic compensation with other versions of the same property (138): [R]emakes differ from adaptations to a new medium because of the triangular relationship they establish among themselves, the original film they remake, and the property on which both films are based. The nature of this triangle is most clearly indicated by the fact that the producers of a remake typically pay no adaptation fees to the makers of the original film, but rather purchase adaptation rights from the authors of the property on which that film was based, even though the remake is competing much more directly with the original filmespecially in these days of video, when the original film and the remake are often found side by side on the shelves of rental outletsà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬than with the story or play or novel on which it is based. (139) Taking as an initial proposition the triangular relationship among a remake, its original film, and the source for both films, Leitch suggests that any given remake can seek to define itself either with primary reference to the film it remakes or to the material on which both films are based; and whether it poses as a new version of an older film or of a story predating either film, it can take as its goal fidelity to the conception of the original story or a revisionary attitude toward that story (142). Accordingly, Leitch outlines the following quadripartite typology of the remake: (i) readaptation: the remake ignores or treats as inconsequential earlier cinematic adaptations in order to readapt as faithfully as possible (or at least more faithfully than earlier film versions) an original literary property, e.g., the film versions of Shakespeares Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, 1948; Tony Richardson, 1969; and Franco Zeffirelli, 1990) and Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948; Roman Polanski, 1971 ); (ii) update: unlike the readaptation that seeks to subordinate itself to the essence of a literary classic, the update competes directly with its literary source by adopting an overtly revisionary and transformational attitude toward it, e.g., West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961) and China Gil (Abel Ferrara, 1987) as transformed remakes of filmed versions of Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936; Franco Zeffirelli, 1968); (iii) homage: like the readaptation, which seeks to direct the audiences attention to its literary source, the homage situates itself as a secondary text in order to pay tribute to a previous film version, e.g., Brian de Palmas Obsession (1975) and Body Double (1986) as homages to Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo (1958), and Rainer Werner Fassbinders Fear Eats the Soul (1973) as a tribute to the Douglas Sirk version of Magnificent Obsession (1954); (iv) true remake: while the homage renounces any claim to be better than its original, the true remake de al[s] with the contradictory claims of all remakesthat they are just like their originals only betterby . . . combin[ing] a focus on a cinematic original with an accommodating stance which seeks to make the original relevant by updating it, e.g., Bob Rafelsons 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946), and Lawrence Kasdans Body Heat (1981) as a remake of Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) (142-45). Leitch concludes that, unlike readaptations, updates, and homages, which only acknowledge one earlier text (literary in the first two cases and cinematic in the third), true remakes [emphasize] a triangular notion of intertextuality, since their rhetorical strategy depends on ascribing their value to a classic earlier text [i.e., an original property such as James M. Cains novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice], and protecting that value by invoking a second earlier [film] text as betraying it [Garnetts version as a watered-down film noir, probably due to limita tions imposed by the MGM studio and the Production Code of the forties] (147). While Leitchs recognition of the significance of a literary property, and in particular the relationship of a film adaptation and its remake to that property, leads to what at first appears to be a more nuanced typology than that outlined by Druxman, further consideration reveals a number of difficulties, not only among Leitchs four categories but in relation to his preliminary suppositions. Firstly, while the ubiquity of the Hollywood remake might understandably lead Leitch to conclude that the remake is a particularly cinematic form,(4) we might question to what extent it differs from the remaking of songs in the popular music industry. That is, how does the triadic relationship between (i) the Pet Shop Boys long remake (of their earlier, shorter remake) of Always on My Mind, (ii) the 1972 version of the same song by Elvis Presley, and (iii) the original property (music and lyrics written by Thompson James Christopher, and published by Screen Gems/EMI), differ appreciably from the triangular relationship for the film remake as described by Leitch? Or, to take as another example a case that underscores Leitchs overestimation of the economic competition a remake creates for a former adaptation, the Sid Vicious remake of My Way (and even Gary Oldmans remake of the same performance for Alex Coxs Sid and Nancy [1986]) competes culturally, but not economically, with Frank Sinatras earlier adaptation of a property written by Reveaux, Francois, and Anka. These examples, and others from the popular music industry, adequately conform to, and so problematize, Leitchs initial claim that the film remake is unique because of the fact that its producers typically pay no adaptation fees to the makers of the original [version], but rather purchase adaptation rights from the authors [publishers] of the property on which that [version] was based (139). A second limitation is that while Druxman at least acknowledges the difficulty of identifying and categorizing those films that are obviously remakes [but] do not credit their origins (9), Leitch remains curiously silent in this respect. For instance, Leitch considers Body Heat a true remake of Double Indemnity, but he does not comment upon the fact that the films credits do not acknowledge the James M. Cain novel as a source; similarly, Leitch takes Obsession and Body Double to be homages to Vertigo, but he fails to note that neither of the films credit either the Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor screenplay or the Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narceiac novel, Dentre les morts, upon which the Hitchcock film is based. While I will return to the question of identifying unacknowledged remakes, Leitchs insistence upon the connection between three elementsa remake, an earlier version, and a literary propertypresents a further difficulty in that it marginalizes those instances in which a dyadic r elationship exists between a remake and a previous film that is itself the original property. Although it might be objected that a published original screenplay constitutes a discrete property, the point to be made here is that the remake of an original film property, such as John Badhams The Assassin [Point of No Return] (1994), does not compete directly and without legal or economic compensation with its earlier version, but (generally) pays adaptation fees to the copyright holder of the original film upon which it is based (in this example, Luc Bessons [La Femme] Nikita [1990]).(5) The example of the American remake of Nikita not only demonstrates that a triangular relationship fails to accommodate remakes of those films based upon original stories and screenplays, but highlights the difficulty of Leitchs suggestion that remakes compete with earlier versions and his belief that successful remakes supersede and so typically threaten the economic viability of their originals (139). To stay with the example of the French-Italian production of Nikita, it seems doubtful that, having successfully played an art-cinema circuit and having been released to home video (variously under the categories of cult, festival, and arthouse), the appearance of The Assassin, initially as a first run theatrical release and then as a mainstream video release would have any appreciable impact (either positive or negative) upon the formers economic viability. Admittedly, The Assassin was not promoted as a remake of the Besson film, but even a widely publicized remake such as Martin Scor seses 1991 version of Cape Fear(6) did not occasion the burial, or even diminish the cult following, of J. Lee Thompsons earlier (1961) version. On the contrary, the theatrical release of the Scorsese film (accompanied by press releases and reviews foregrounding its status as remake) prompted first a video release and then a prime-time national television screening of the Thompson version. The reciprocity of the two versions is further exemplified by Sight and Sounds running together of a lead article by Jim Hoberman on Scorsese and Cape Fear and a second, briefer article comparing the two versions ([n]ovelist Jenny Diski watches a video of the first Cape Fear and the Scorsese remakeand compares them) and giving details of the availability of the (then recently) re-released CIC video of the 1961 version (see Hoberman Sacred and Profane; Diski The Shadow Within). While reciprocity may not always be the casein the international marketplace a local remake may supplant an earlier forei gn language and/or culture version(7)it seems that contemporary remakes generally enjoy a more symbiotic relationship than Leitchs account would have us believe. While the above examples suggest that Leitch overestimates the extent to which some remakes compete with original film versions, his recognition of the impact that innovations in television technology, particularly home video, have had upon shaping the relationship between a remake and its earlier versions should not be underestimated. Leitch states that during the studio-dominated era of the thirties and forties it was at least in part the belief that films had a strictly current value that enabled studios such as Warners to recycle The Maltese Falcon three times in ten years (Roy Del Ruth, 1931; William Dieterle, 1936 [as Satan Met a Lady]; and John Huston, 1941) and release many unofficial remakes of its own films (139), although the re-release of successful features, particularly during the late forties and early fifties, gave some films a limited currency outside their initial year of release (see McElwee), the majority of films held in studio libraries were not available for re -viewing until the mid-fifties when the major studios decided to sell or lease their libraries to television. The release of thousands of pre-1948 features into the television market not only gave the general public the opportunity to see many films that had been held in studio archives since their initial year of release, but provided the possibility of seeing different versions of the same property, produced years or even decades apart, within weeks or even days of each other. Moreover, the television broadcasting of films provided the further possibility of viewing remakes outside of the temporal order of their production, i.e., the repeated screening of the same features meant that it was inevitable that the broadcast of a remake would precede the screening of its original. While Leitch does not address the impact of television, his recognition that a remake and its original circulate in the same video marketplace draws attention to the fact that the introduction of an informati on storage technology such as videotape radically extends the kind of film literacy, the ability to recognize and cross-reference multiple versions of the same property, that is inaugurated by the age of television. The ever-expanding availability of texts and technologies and the unprecedented awareness of film history among new Hollywood filmmakers and contemporary audiences are closely related to the general concept of intertextuality, an in principle determination which requires that texts be understood not as self-contained structures but as the repetition and transformation of other [absent] textual structures (Frow, Intertextuality and Ontology 45). Generally speaking, in the case of remakes these intertextual structures are stabilized, or limited, through the naming and (usually) legally sanctioned (i.e., copyrighted) use of a particular literary and/or cinematic source which serves as a retrospectively designated point of origin and semantic fixity. In addition, the intertextual structures (unlike those of genre) are highly particular in their repetition of narrative units, and these repetitions most often (though certainly not always) relate to the order of the message rather than to t hat of the code (45).(8) While these factors yield some degree of consensus, any easy categorization of the remake is frustrated by (i) films which do not credit an original text, but which repeat both general and particular elements of the originals narrative unfolding, e.g., Body Heat as an uncredited remake of Double Indemnity and The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983) as an unacknowledged remake of The Return of the Secaucus Seven (John Sayles, 1980);(9) and (ii) films based on a like sourcea literary work or historical incidentbut which differ significantly in their treatment of narrative units, e.g., The Bounty (Roger Donaldson, 1984) as a non-remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935 and Lewis Milestone, 1962). Furthermore, the intertextual referentiality between either non-remakes or unacknowledged remakes and their originals is to a large extent extratextual (Friedberg 175-76), being conveyed through institutions such as film reviewing and exhibition, for example, th e BFI/National Film Theatres programmed describes four films from Paul Schrader scriptsTaxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977), Hardcore, and Patty Hearst (Paul Schrader, 1979 and 1988)as updates of The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) (The Searchers: A Family Tree). In the case of Leitchs typology, we have seen that the remake is categorized according to whether the intertextual referent is literary (the readaptation, the update) or cinematic (the homage, the true remake). In the latter case, Leitch states that while homages, such as The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) and Invaders from Mars (Tobe Hooper, 1986), establish direct intertextual relations to their original films, these quotations or rewards take the form of throwaway jokes whose point is not necessary to the [films] continuity, and which therefore provide an optional bonus of pleasure to those in the know (141). While this may seem consistent with Umberto Ecos account of the intertextual dialogue (i.e., the instance where a quotation is explicit and recognizable to an increasingly sophisticated, cine-literate audience), what Leitch does not sufficiently stress is that his examples of the homage (and of the true remake)all drawn from the new Hollywood cinemasuggest a historically speci fic response to a post-modern (or post-Jaws) circulation and recirculation of images and texts. This does not mean that the classical Hollywood remake never takes an earlier film as its intertextual referent, but rather that, as the continuity system develops through the pre-classical period (1908-17), direct intertextual referentiality is displaced by an industrial imperative for standardization which prioritizes the intertextual relation of genres, cycles, and stars. Accordingly, as the classical narrative strives to create a coherent, self-contained fictional world according to specific mechanisms of intratextual repetition (or alternation), direct intertextual referentiality to either and/or both literary properties (novels, short-stories, plays, etc) and earlier film versions becomes an extratextual referentiality, carried by such apparatuses as advertising and promotional materials (posters, lobby cards, commercial tie-ins, etc), motion picture magazines, review articles, and academic film criticism. What seems to happen with the new Hollywood cinema, particularly in the case of remakes, is that while the intratextual mechanisms of classical continuity are mostly respected, extratextual referentiality is sometimes complemented by what is perceivedwithin specific interpretive communitiesas the explicit and recognizable intertextual quotation of plot motifs and stylistic features, peculiar to earlier film versions. To take a general example, the narrative of Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) assumes as its primary intertexts the revisionist westerns of the sixties and seventies, and the Eastwood star persona, but (re)viewers additionally see the film as a kind of sequel (the Will Munny character as the now aged Man-with-no-name, from Eastwoods spaghetti westerns) and as a homage to the films of both Sam Peckinpah and John Ford.(10) More specifically, Martin Scorseses remake of Cape Fear may be said to work perfectly well as a conventional thriller (a psychopath attacks a normalin t his case, dysfunctionalAmerican family), but the new Cape Fear also assumes [in its reworking of the original Bernard Herrmann score and the casting of original lead players in cameo roles] that the viewer has seen the earlier one, perhaps even as recently as Scorsese himself (Hoberman 11). Another example, Jim McBrides Breathless (1983), not only quotes the Godard original (A bout de souffle, 1959) in its smallest detail (a characters name, a players gesture), but more generally embraces Godards enthusiasm for American pop-cultural iconography: the title song, Breathless, by the KillerJerry Lee Lewis; the Roy Lichtenstein-type lifts from Marvel Comics The Silver Surfer, the collectable American automobilethe 1957 Ford Thunderbird, the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado. Finally, while it is possible to find similar examples in the classical cinema,(11) the point to be made here is that the type of intertextual referentiality which characterizes (some) contemporary American film circulates in a historically specific context, i.e., the identification of, and indeed the commercial decision to remake, an earlier film is grounded in particular extratextual, institutional, or discursive practices. As in Noel Carrolls discussion of new Hollywood allusionism, the question of intertextual referentiality needs to be related to the radical extension of film literacy and the enthusiasm for American film history that took hold in the United States during the sixties and early seventies. Partly made possible by the release of Hollywood features to television (which had come to function like a film archive) and the wider accessibility of new technologies (e.g., 16mm film projection), this re-evaluation, or legitimization, of Hollywood cultural product was underwritten by such additional factors as the importation of the French politique des auteurs, the upsurge of repertory theatre short-seasons, the expansion of film courses in American universities, and the emergence of professional associations such as the American Film Institute. Accordingly, and this is evident from the above examplesUnforgiven, Cape Fear, Breathlessthe selection and recognition of films, and bodies of films, for quotation and reworking (the work of auteurs, Ford and Peckinpah; the cult movie, Cape Fear, the nouvelle vague landmark, A bout de souffle) can be located in the institutionally determined practice of film canon formation and its contributing projectsthe discussion and citation of particular films in popular and academic film criticism, the selective release and re-release of films to theatrical and video distribution windows, and (in circular fashion) the decision of other filmmakers to evoke earlier films and recreate cinema history (see Staiger 4). An understanding of the formation and maintenance of a film canon in turn goes some way toward explaining why remakes of institutionalized film noirse.g., D.O.A. (Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, 1988), No Way Out (Roger Donaldson, 1987), and Against All Odds (Taylor Hackford, 1984)are discussed with reference to their originals (D.O.A. [Rudolph Mate, 1949], The Big Clock [John Farrow, 1948], and Out of the Past [Jacques Tourneur, 1947], respectively), while films such as Martin Scorseses version of The Age of Innocence (1993) and James Deardens remake of A Kiss Before Dying (1991) defer, not to their little known, or (now) rarely seen, earlier film versions (The Age of Innocence [Wesley Ruggles, 1924 and Philip Moeller, 1934], and A Kiss Before Dying [Gerd Oswald, 1961]) but to the authority of an established literary canon: The Age of Innocence is based on Edith Whartons 1920 Pulitzer Prize winning novel; A Kiss Before Dying is adapted from a best-selling novel by Ira Levin. Indeed, and in accordance with the canonization of the work of Alfred Hitchcock, the more direct intertextual referent for the remake of A Kiss Before Dying is Hitchcocks Vertigoa clip from the film appears diegetically on a characters television screen, and in addition to the figure of the doppelganger there is allusion to Hitchcockian plot s tructure and motif: [l]iberally alluding to Hitchcock by killing off his leading actress in the first reel, Dearden includes subtler references like the washing out of hair-dye and the cop who just wont leave (Strick 50). The suggestion that the very limited intertextual referentiality between the remake and its original is organized according to an extratextual referentiality located in historically specific discursive formationssuch as copyright law and authorship, canon formation and film literacyhas consequences for purely textual descriptions of the remake, particularly those based on a rigid distinction between an original story and its new discursive incarnation (see Leitch 143). Aside from the questionable move of assuming that the unchanging essence of a films story can somehow be abstracted from the mutable disposition of its expression (see Brunette and Wills 53), demarcation along the lines of story and discourse is evidently frustrated by those remakes which repeat not only the narrative invention of an original property but seek, for instance, to recreate the expressive design of an earlier film (e.g., Obsession as a reconstruction of the mood and manner of Hitchcocks Vertigo [see Rosenbaum 217]) or to rework the style of an entire oeuvre or genre (e.

Learning How to Learn :: essays research papers

Colleges and Universities: Learning How to Learn   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Every year, millions of dollars are spent on toward education. That’s a major expense in anyone’s life. But what are we really paying for? With a hundred thousand dollars and four years, a degree can be acquired in just about any field. Imagine the greatest doctor in the world. Imagine her saving lives everyday. Now picture that same doctor not knowing how to change a diaper, pump gas, or even balance her own check book. Naturally, society would be more apt to avoid that physician. How could this be? That’s the question parents’ and professors alike are asking everyday. If colleges and universities are preparing students for the world of work, who is going to prepare them for the world?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Remember that first day of school, standing before numerous doors of vast opportunities and excitement? The possibilities seemed endless. Though as the years pass, it seems that one by one those doors begin slamming in our faces. Contrella 2 A small boy fails a fourth grade math test. He begins to get discouraged and becomes completely turned off by anything math related for the rest of his academic experience. He begins to wake up every morning for school because it is part of the routine, not because of the excitement of learning. By tenth grade, he is completely fed up with the idea of school in general. He does what is needed to get by, while getting tossed among a variety of teachers who mundanely write him off. When he is ready to enter college, he chooses classes that well trained apes could pass. (We often have to wonder how things such as ‘ultimate Frisbee’, make an enrollment list.) His main objective: Get out. With that college degree, he can find a descent job that pays enough to pay the bills and put food on the table. The cycle finally ends. It’s sad to think that this could ever happen, but reality shows us that it can happen any day of the week. Benjamin R. Barber put it best when he s tated â€Å"Americans do not really care about education - The country has grown comfortable with the game of ‘let’s pretend we care’† (75). It is almost as though society has been programmed. Birth, schooling, work, death. That describes a basic life pattern. Is that enough? What happened to self-fulfillment and genuine interest in learning?

The Meaning of Fahrenheit 451 :: Fahrenheit 451 Essays

The Meaning of Fahrenheit 451 Â   This book depicts a story about a futuristic world in the middle of a nuclear war. The government of this future forbids its people from reading or taking a part in individual thinking. During this time, the law against reading is new and the government is taken on a task of destroying all of the books. This is where we meet or main character named Guy Montag. He is a fireman. Him and his crew go around and burn books in libraries, and homes. Â   Â  I think the theme of the story is that there are many facets to a personality than is first visible. The book is narrated in third person. At the beginning of the book we see Guy Montag as a ruthless man who enjoys his job very much. Later on he discovers that he does not enjoy his life, it is merely a fake mask. He slowly discovers this in himself when he meets a teenage girl named Clarisse who is his new neighbor. She awakens a love and desire in Montag to enjoy the simple things in life. He also discovers that his happiness is fake when he discovers that he does not love his tranquilizer addicted wife who cares more about her television relatives than real life. Guy Montag slowly becomes unhappy with his life when he learns of Clarisse's death in an automobile accident and when he had to bun an old lady alive in her house because she refused to let them burn her books. Â   When we discover that Guy Montag is unhappy with his life, we start to respect that he is trying to change his way of life. When Montag goes to talk to his wife about the disadvantages about being a fireman, she offers no sympathy and tells him to stay away from her because all she knows is that books are unlawful. After awhile, Captain Beatty has a talk with Montag because he is suspicious of Montag's behavior. He tells Montag that the ideas in books are not real and they cause a dispute in people's minds. He says that ridding the world of controversy puts an end to dispute and allows people to live happy. Later on, Montag confesses that he had not just stolen one book but yet a small library.

Society Must Redefine the Meaning of Family Essay -- Argumentative Per

Society Must Redefine the Meaning of Family Society seems to have many different opinions when it comes to relationships and families and what is ideal. The ideal family may not exist anymore. We now have in our society families that are complete that do not necessarily contain the traditional material. The traditional family, as society would see it; usually consist of a married, mother and father and usually children. Moms are supposed to stay at home while dads work the forty-hour a week job. However, in our 2003 world, families exist in a lot of non-traditional ways. A lot of families now consist of single parent families, or same sex parents and their children, or even couples that are unmarried but live together. And even now, if a family contains what society sees as traditional as far as having a mom, dad, and kids, other aspects are not traditional anymore. Women now have more opportunity in the workplace than they have ever had, therefore, many moms are career moms and dads are sometimes staying at home. Years ago, t hese types of families were given labels for being dysfunctional or abnormal, however, this label is not holding up as well as it did years ago. There are many non-traditional families that are raising children in a loving, nurturing home with a substantial amount of quality love. Quality is the key in any relationship between anyone. Society is finding out that it is not the traditional image that makes a loving family, but the quality of a relationship that people give to each other is what really makes a family. In the essay "The Myth of the "Normal" Family", written by Lousie B. Silverstein and Carl F. Auerbach, they make references to the cultural idea of what a "normal" family should be and what i... ...sex relationships, or adults to children. People of any race, sex, or age that can offer unconditional love, strength, morals, values, and respect to others are more qualified to be called "normal" or having a "family" than any two people that are married, with or without children, that are not offering to others what is needed to become a real, normal, family. Families can be single moms, single dads, same sex parents, or even other relatives. What is important and what makes people have the most rewarding families are the qualities of their relationships. This type of family is the family that will stay together and function happily in our society. Works Cited * Silverstein, Lousie B., and Carl F. Auerbach. "The Myth of the "Normal" Family." * The Aims of Argument. 4th ed Ed.Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell. New York:McGraw Hill,2003, 352-355.

The Origins and Development Book

THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE This page intentionally left blank THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE S I X T H E D I T I O N John Algeo Based on the original work of Thomas Pyles   Australia †¢ Brazil †¢ Japan †¢ Korea †¢ Mexico †¢ Singapore †¢ Spain †¢ United Kingdom †¢ United States The Origins and Development of the English Language: Sixth Edition John Algeo Publisher: Michael Rosenberg Development Editor: Joan Flaherty Assistant Editor: Megan Garvey Editorial Assistant: Rebekah MatthewsSenior Media Editor: Cara Douglass-Graff Marketing Manager: Christina Shea Marketing Communications Manager: Beth Rodio Content Project Manager: Corinna Dibble Senior Art Director: Cate Rickard Barr Production Technology Analyst: Jamie MacLachlan Senior Print Buyer: Betsy Donaghey Rights Acquisitions Manager Text: Tim Sisler Production Service: Pre-Press PMG Rights Acquisitions Manager Image: Mandy Groszko Cover Designe r: Susan Shapiro Cover Image: Kobal Collection Art Archive collection Dagli Orti Prayer with illuminated border, from c. 1480 Flemish manuscriptBook of Hours of Philippe de Conrault, The Art Archive/ Bodleian Library Oxford Compositor: Pre-Press PMG  © 2010, 2005 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For product information and technology assistance, contact us at Cengage Learning Academic Resource Center, 1-800-423-0563 For permission to use material from this text or product, submit all requests online at www. cengage. com/permissions. Further permissions questions can be e-mailed to [email  protected] com Library of Congress Control Number: 2008930433 ISBN-13: 978-1-4282-3145-0 ISBN-10: 1-4282-3145-5 Wadsworth 20 Channel Center Street Boston, MA 02210USA Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada by Nelson Education, Ltd. For your course and learning solutions, visit www. cengage. com. Purchase any of our products at your local college store or at our preferred online store www. ichapters. com. Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 13 12 11 10 09 Preface The Origins and Development of the English Language, Sixth Edition, continues to focus on the facts of language rather than on any of the various contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of those facts.The presentation is that of fairly traditional grammar and philology, so as not to require students to master a new theoretical approach at the same time they are exploring the intricacies of lan guage history. The focus of the book is on the internal history of the English language: its sounds, grammar, and word stock. That linguistic history is, however, set against the social and cultural background of the changing times. The first three chapters are introductory, treating language in general as well as the pronunciation and orthography of present-day English.The succeeding central six chapters are the heart of the book, tracing the history of the language from prehistoric Indo-European days through Old English, Middle English, and early Modern English up to the present time. The final three chapters deal with vocabulary—the meaning, making, and borrowing of words. This sixth edition of a book Thomas Pyles wrote some forty-five years ago preserves the outline, emphasis, and aims of the original, as all earlier editions have. The entire book has, however, been revised for helpfulness to students and ease of reading.The major improvements of the fifth edition have be en retained. A large number of fresh changes have also been made, especially to make the presentation easier to follow. The historical information has been updated in response to evolving scholarship, new examples have been added (although effective older ones have been kept), the bibliography has been revised (including some new electronic resources in addition to print media), and the glossary has been revised for clarity and accuracy. The prose style throughout has been made more contemporary and accessible.The author hopes that such changes will help to make the book more useful for students and instructors alike. v All of the debts acknowledged in earlier editions are still gratefully acknowledged for this one. This edition has especially benefited from the critiques of the following reviewers, whose very helpful suggestions have been followed wherever feasible. James E. Doan, Nova Southeastern University Mark Alan Vinson, Crichton College Jay Ruud, University of Central Arkans as Elena Tapia, Eastern Connecticut State University J. Mark Baggett, Samford UniversityMy former doctoral student and now an admired teacher and Scholar-in-Residence at Shorter College, Carmen Acevedo Butcher, made a major contribution by suggesting improvements in the style and accuracy of the work, by providing new references for the bibliography (including electronic sources), and by reviewing the entire manuscript. My wife, Adele S. Algeo, who works with me on everything I do, has assisted at every step of the revision. Her editorial eye is nonpareil, and her support makes all work possible—and a pleasure. John Algeo vi PREFACE Contents PREFACE v chapter 1 Language and the English Language:An Introduction 1 A Definition of Language 2 Language as System 2 Grammatical Signals 3 Language as Signs 5 Language as Vocal 6 Writing and Speech 6 Gestures and Speech 8 Language as Conventional 8 Language Change 10 The Notion of Linguistic Corruption 10 Language Variation 11 Correctn ess and Acceptability 12 Language as Human 13 Theories of the Origin of Language 13 Innate Language Ability 14 Do Birds and Beasts Really Talk? 14 Language as Communication 15 Other Characteristics of Language 16 Why Study the History of English? 17 For Further Reading 18 vii chapter 2 The Sounds of Current English 20 The Organs of Speech 20Consonants of Current English 21 Vowels of Current English 25 Vowels before [r] 28 Stress 28 Unstressed Vowels 29 Kinds of Sound Change 29 Assimilation: Sounds Become More Alike 29 Dissimilation: Sounds Become Less Alike 30 Elision: Sounds Are Omitted 30 Intrusion: Sounds Are Added 31 Metathesis: Sounds Are Reordered 31 Causes of Sound Change 31 The Phoneme 32 Differing Transcriptions 33 For Further Reading 34 chapter 3 Letters and Sounds: A Brief History of Writing 35 Ideographic and Syllabic Writing 35 From Semitic Writing to the Greek Alphabet 36 The Greek Vowel and Consonant Symbols 36 The Romans Adopt the Greek Alphabet 37Later Developments of the Roman and Greek Alphabets 38 The Use of Digraphs 39 Additional Symbols 39 The History of English Writing 40 The Germanic Runes 40 The Anglo-Saxon Roman Alphabet 40 The Spelling of English Consonant Sounds 41 Stops 42 Fricatives 42 Affricates 43 Nasals 43 Liquids 43 Semivowels 43 The Spelling of English Vowel Sounds 43 Front Vowels 43 Central Vowel 44 Back Vowels 44 Diphthongs 45 Vowels plus [r] 45 viii CONTENTS Unstressed Vowels 45 Spelling Pronunciations and Pronunciation Spellings 46 Writing and History 47 For Further Reading 48 chapter 4 The Backgrounds of English 49 Indo-European Origins 50Indo-European Culture 50 The Indo-European Homeland 50 How Indo-European Was Discovered 51 Language Typology and Language Families 52 Non-Indo-European Languages 53 Main Divisions of the Indo-European Group 55 Indo-Iranian 55 Armenian and Albanian 58 Tocharian 58 Anatolian 59 Balto-Slavic 59 Hellenic 60 Italic 60 Celtic 61 Germanic 62 Cognate Words in the Indo-European Languages 63 Infl ection in the Indo-European Languages 64 Some Verb Inflections 65 Some Noun Inflections 66 Word Order in the Indo-European Languages 67 Major Changes From Indo-European to Germanic 69 First Sound Shift 71 Grimm’s Law 71 Verner’s Law 73The Sequence of the First Sound Shift 74 West Germanic Languages 74 For Further Reading 76 chapter 5 The Old English Period (449–1100) 78 Some Key Events in the Old English Period 78 History of the Anglo-Saxons 79 Britain before the English 79 The Coming of the English 79 The English in Britain 81 CONTENTS ix The First Viking Conquest 82 The Second Viking Conquest 83 The Scandinavians Become English 84 The Golden Age of Old English 84 Dialects of Old English 85 Pronunciation and Spelling 86 Vowels 86 Consonants 87 Handwriting 89 Stress 90 Vocabulary 90 The Germanic Word Stock 90 Gender in Old English 91Grammar, Concord, and Inflection 92 Inflection 92 Nouns 93 i-Umlaut 95 Modern Survivals of Case and Number 96 Modifiers 96 Demonstr atives 96 Adjectives 97 Adverbs 98 Pronouns 99 Personal Pronouns 99 Interrogative and Relative Pronouns 100 Verbs 101 Indicative Forms of Verbs 102 Subjunctive and Imperative Forms 102 Nonfinite Forms 102 Weak Verbs 103 Strong Verbs 103 Preterit-Present Verbs 104 Suppletive Verbs 105 Syntax 105 Old English Illustrated 108 For Further Reading 111 chapter 6 The Middle English Period (1100–1500) 112 Some Key Events in the Middle English Period 112 The Background of the Norman Conquest 113The Reascendancy of English 114 Foreign Influences on Vocabulary 115 Middle English Spelling 116 x CONTENTS Consonants 116 Vowels 118 The Rise of a London Standard 119 Changes in Pronunciation 122 Principal Consonant Changes 122 Middle English Vowels 123 Changes in Diphthongs 124 Lengthening and Shortening of Vowels 126 Leveling of Unstressed Vowels 127 Loss of Schwa in Final Syllables 127 Changes in Grammar 128 Reduction of Inflections 128 Loss of Grammatical Gender 129 Nouns, Pronouns, and Adj ectives 129 The Inflection of Nouns 129 Personal Pronouns 130 Demonstrative Pronouns 132 Interrogative and Relative Pronouns 133Comparative and Superlative Adjectives 133 Verbs 133 Personal Endings 134 Participles 135 Word Order 135 Middle English Illustrated 136 For Further Reading 138 chapter 7 The Early Modern English Period (1500–1800): Society, Spellings, and Sounds 139 Some Key Events in the Early Modern Period 139 The Transition from Middle to Modern English 140 Expansion of the English Vocabulary 140 Innovation of Pronunciation and Conservation of Spelling 141 The Orthography of Early Modern English 141 The Great Vowel Shift 144 Other Vowels 147 Stressed Short Vowels 147 Diphthongs 148 Quantitative Vowel Changes 149Early Modern English Consonants 149 Evidence for Early Modern Pronunciation 151 Stress 151 Scholarly Studies 151 CONTENTS xi Early Modern English Illustrated 152 Spelling 152 Pronunciation 153 For Further Reading 155 chapter 8 The Early Modern English Perio d (1500–1800): Forms, Syntax, and Usage 156 The Study of Language 157 Early Dictionaries 157 Eighteenth-Century Attitudes toward Grammar and Usage 158 Nouns 160 Irregular Plurals 161 His-Genitive 161 Group Genitive 162 Uninflected Genitive 163 Adjectives and Adverbs 163 Pronouns 164 Personal Pronouns 164 Relative and Interrogative Pronouns 168Case Forms of the Pronouns 169 Verbs 170 Classes of Strong Verbs 170 Endings for Person and Number 176 Contracted Forms 177 Expanded Verb Forms 178 Other Verbal Constructions 179 Prepositions 179 Early Modern English Further Illustrated 180 chapter 9 Late Modern English (1800–Present) 181 Some Key Events in the Late Modern Period 181 The National Varieties of English 182 Conservatism and Innovation in American English 183 National Differences in Word Choice 185 American Infiltration of the British Word Stock 186 Syntactical and Morphological Differences 187 British and American Purism 188 Dictionaries and the Facts 189National Dif ferences in Pronunciation 190 British and American Spelling 193 Variation within National Varieties 194 xii CONTENTS Kinds of Variation 194 Regional Dialects 195 Ethnic and Social Dialects 196 Stylistic Variation 198 Variation within British English 198 World English 199 Irish English 199 Indian English 201 The Essential Oneness of All English 202 For Further Reading 202 chapter 10 Words and Meanings 206 Semantics and Change of Meaning 207 Variable and Vague Meanings 208 Etymology and Meaning 208 How Meaning Changes 209 Generalization and Specialization 210 Transfer of Meaning 211 Association of Ideas 212Transfer from Other Languages 212 Sound Associations 213 Pejoration and Amelioration 213 Taboo and Euphemism 214 The Fate of Intensifying Words 217 Some Circumstances of Semantic Change 218 Vogue for Words of Learned Origin 219 Language and Semantic Marking 220 Semantic Change is Inevitable 222 For Further Reading 223 chapter 11 New Words from Old 224 Creating Words 224 Root Creatio ns 224 Echoic Words 225 Ejaculations 225 Combining Words: Compounding 227 Spelling and Pronunciation of Compounds 227 Amalgamated Compounds 229 Function and Form of Compounds 230 Combining Word Parts: Affixing 230 Affixes from Old English 230Affixes from Other Languages 232 CONTENTS xiii Voguish Affixes 233 Shortening Words 235 Clipped Forms 235 Initialisms: Alphabetisms and Acronyms 236 Apheretic and Aphetic Forms 237 Back-Formations 238 Blending Words 239 New Morphemes from Blending 239 Folk Etymology 241 Shifting Words to New Uses 242 One Part of Speech to Another 242 Common Words from Proper Names 243 Sources of New Words 245 Distribution of New Words 245 For Further Reading 246 chapter 12 Foreign Elements in the English Word Stock 247 Popular and Learned Loanwords 248 Latin and Greek Loanwords 248 Latin Influence in the Germanic Period 248Latin Words in Old English 249 Latin Words Borrowed in Middle English Times 250 Latin Words Borrowed in Modern English Times 251 Greek Loanwo rds 251 Celtic Loanwords 252 Scandinavian Loanwords 253 Old and Middle English Borrowings 253 Modern English Borrowings 254 French Loanwords 254 Middle English Borrowings 254 Later French Loanwords 256 Spanish and Portuguese Loanwords 258 Italian Loanwords 259 Germanic Loanwords 260 Loanwords from Low German 260 Loanwords from High German 261 Loanwords from the East 262 Near East 262 Iran and India 263 Far East and Australasia 264 Other Sources 265 Loanwords from African Languages 265Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, and American Indian 266 xiv CONTENTS The Sources of Recent Loanwords 266 English Remains English 267 For Further Reading 268 Selected Bibliography 269 Glossary 281 Index of Modern English Words and Affixes 301 Index of Persons, Places, and Topics 329 CONTENTS xv This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER  ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ± Language and the 1 English Language A n Introduction The English language has had a remarkable history. When we first catch sight of it in historical records, it is the speech of some none-too-civilized tribes on the continent of Europe along the North Sea.Of course, it had a still earlier history, going back perhaps to somewhere in eastern Europe or western Asia, and long before that to origins we can only speculate about. From those murky and undistinguished beginnings, English has become the most widespread language in the world, used by more peoples for more purposes than any other language on Earth. How the English language changed from being the speech of a few small tribes to becoming the major language of the Earth—and in the process itself changed radically— is the subject of this book.Whatever language we speak—English, Chinese, Hindi, Swahili, or Arapaho— helps to define us personally and identify the community we belong to. But the fact that we can talk at all, the fact that we ha ve a language, is inextricably bound up with our humanity. To be human is to use language, and to talk is to be a person. As the biologist and author Lewis Thomas wrote: The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life. Language is, like nest-building or hive-making, the universal and biologically specific activity of human beings.We engage in it communally, compulsively, and automatically. We cannot be human without it; if we were to be separated from it our minds would die, as surely as bees lost from the hive. (Lives of a Cell 89) The language gift that is innate in us is not English or indeed any specific language. It is instead the ability to learn and to use a human language. When we say, â€Å"Bread is the staff of life,† we do not mean any particular kind of bread— whole wheat, rye, pumpernickel, French, matzo, pita, or whatever sort. We are talking instead about the kind of thing bread is, wha t all bread has in common.So also, when we say that language is the basis of our humanity, we do not mean any particular language—English, Spanish, Japanese, Tagalog, Hopi, or ASL (American Sign Language of the deaf). Rather we mean the ability to learn and 1 use any such particular language system, an ability that all human beings naturally have. This ability is language in the abstract, as distinct from any individual language system. A DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE A language is a system of conventional vocal signs by means of which human beings communicate. This definition has several important terms, each of which is examined in some detail in the following sections.Those terms are system, signs, vocal, conventional, human, and communicate. LANGUAGE AS SYSTEM Perhaps the most important word in the definition of language is system. We speak in patterns. A language is not just a collection of words, such as we find in a dictionary. It is also the rules or patterns that relate our words to one another. Every language has two levels to its system—a characteristic that is called duality of patterning. One of these levels consists of meaningful units—for example, the words and word parts such as Adam, like, -d, apple, and -s in the sentence â€Å"Adam liked apples. The other level consists of units that have no meaning in themselves, although they serve as components of the meaningful units—for example, the sounds represented by the letters a, d, and m in the word Adam. The distinction between a meaningful word (Adam) and its meaningless parts (a, d, and m) is important. Without that distinction, language as we know it would be impossible. If every meaning had to be represented by a unique, unanalyzable sound, only a few such meanings could be expressed. We have only about 35 basic sounds in English; we have hundreds of thousands of words.Duality of patterning lets us build an immensely large number of meaningful words out of only a handfu l of meaningless sounds. It is perhaps the chief characteristic that distinguishes true human language from the simpler communication systems of all nonhuman animals. The meaningless components of a language are its sound system, or phonology. The meaningful units are its lexis, or vocabulary, and its grammatical system, or morphosyntax. All have patterning. Thus, according to the sound system of Modern English, the consonant combination mb never occurs at the beginning or at the end of any word.As a matter of fact, it did occur in final position in earlier stages of our language, which is why it was necessary in the preceding statement to specify â€Å"Modern English. † Despite the complete absence of the sounds mb at the ends of English words for at least 600 years, we still insist on writing—such is the conservatism of writing habits—the b in lamb, climb, tomb, dumb, and a number of other words. But this same combination, which now occurs only medially in Eng lish (as in tremble), may well occur finally or even initially in other languages.Initial mb is indeed a part of the systems of certain African languages, as in Efik and Ibibio mbakara ‘white man,’ which became buckra in the speech of the Gullahs—black Americans living along the coastal region of Georgia and South Carolina who have preserved a number of words and structural features that their ancestors brought from Africa. It is notable that the Gullahs simplified the initial 2 chapter 1 consonant combination of this African word to conform to the pattern of English speech. The lexis or vocabulary of a language is its least systematic aspect.Grammar is sometimes defined as everything in a language that can be stated in general rules, and lexis as everything that is unpredictable. But that is not quite true. Certain combinations of words, called collocations, are more or less predictable. Mild and gentle are words of very similar meaning, but they go with differe nt nouns: â€Å"mild weather† and â€Å"gentle breeze† are somewhat more likely than the opposite combinations (â€Å"mild breeze† and â€Å"gentle weather†). A case of the flu may be severe or mild; a judgment is likely to be severe or lenient.A â€Å"mild judgment† would be a bit odd, and a â€Å"lenient case of the flu† sounds like a joke. Some collocations are so regular that they are easily predictable. In the following sentence, one word is more probable than any other in the blank: â€Å"In its narrow cage, the lion paced back and . † Although several words are possible in the blank (for example, forward or even ahead), forth is the most likely. Some combinations are completely predictable: â€Å"They ran fro. † Fro is normal in present-day English only in the expression â€Å"to and fro. † The tendency of certain words to collocate or go together is an instance of system in the vocabulary.In the grammatical syste m of English, a very large number of words take a suffix written as -s to indicate plurality or possession. In the latter case, it is a comparatively recent convention of writing to add an apostrophe. Words that can be thus modified are nouns. They fit into certain patterns in English utterances. Alcoholic, for instance, fits into the system of English in the same way as duck, dog, and horse: â€Å"Alcoholics need understanding† (compare â€Å"Ducks need water†), â€Å"An alcoholic’s perceptions are faulty† (compare â€Å"A dog’s perceptions are keen†), and the like.But that word can also modify a noun and be modified by an adverb: â€Å"an alcoholic drink,† â€Å"somewhat alcoholic,† and the like; and words that operate in the latter way are called adjectives. Alcoholic is thus either an adjective or a noun, depending on the way it functions in the system of English. The utterance â€Å"Alcoholic worries† is ambiguous b ecause our system, like all linguistic systems, is not completely foolproof. It might be either a noun followed by a verb (in a newspaper headline) or an adjective followed by a noun.To know which interpretation is correct, we need a context for the expression. That is, we need to relate it to a larger structure. Grammatical Signals The grammatical system of any language has various techniques for relating words to one another within the structure of a sentence. The following kinds of signals are especially important. †¢ Parts of speech are grammatical categories into which we can classify words. The four major ones are noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Some words elong primarily or solely to one part of speech: child is a noun, seek is a verb, tall is an adjective, and rapidly is an adverb. Other words can function as more than one part of speech; in various meanings, last can be any of the four major parts. English speakers move words about pretty freely from one part of spe ech to another, as when we call a book that is enjoyable to read â€Å"a good read,† language and the english language 3 making a noun out of a verb. Part of knowing English is knowing how words can be shifted in that way and what the limits are to such shifting. Affixes are one or more added sounds or letters that change a word’s meaning and sometimes alter its part of speech. When an affix comes at the front of a word, it is a prefix, such as the en- in encipher, enrage, enthrone, entomb, entwine, and enwrap, which marks those words as verbs. When an affix comes at the back of a word, it is a suffix, such as the -ist in dentist, geologist, motorist, and violinist, which marks those words as nouns. English has a small number of inflectional suffixes (endings that mark distinctions of number, case, person, tense, mood, and comparison).They include the plural -s and the possessive ’s used with nouns (boys, boy’s); the third person singular present tense -s , the past tense and past participle -ed, and the present participle -ing used with verbs (aids, aided, aiding); and the comparative -er and superlative -est used with some adjectives and adverbs (slower, slowest). Inflection (the change in form of a word to mark such distinctions) may also involve internal change, as in the singular and plural noun forms man and men or the present and past verb forms sing and sang.A language that depends heavily on the use of inflections, either internal or affixed, is said to be synthetic; English used to be far more synthetic than it now is. †¢ Concord, or agreement, is an interconnection between words, especially marked by their inflections. Thus, â€Å"The bird sings† and â€Å"The birds sing† illustrate subject-verb concord. (It is just a coincidence that the singular ending of some verbs is identical in form with the plural ending of some nouns. Similarly, in â€Å"this day† both words are singular, and in â€Å"the se days† both are plural; some languages, such as Spanish, require that all modifiers agree with the nouns they modify in number, but in English only this and that change their form to show such agreement. Highly synthetic languages, such as Latin, usually have a great deal of concord; thus Latin adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in number (bonus vir ‘good man,’ boni viri ‘good men’), in gender (bona femina ‘good woman’), and in case (bonae feminae ‘good woman’s’).English once used concord more than it now does. †¢ Word order is a grammatical signal in all languages, though some languages, like English, depend more heavily on it than others do. â€Å"The man finished the job† and â€Å"The job finished the man† are sharply different in meaning, as are â€Å"He died happily† and â€Å"Happily he died. † †¢ Function words are minor parts of speech (for example, articles, au xiliaries, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and certain adverbial particles) that serve as grammatical signals used with word order to serve some of the same functions as inflections.For example, in English the indirect object of a verb can be shown by either word order (â€Å"I gave the dog a bone†) or a function word (â€Å"I gave a bone to the dog†); in Latin it is shown by inflection (canis ‘the dog,’ Cani os dedi ‘To-the-dog a-bone I-gave’). A language like English whose grammar depends heavily on the use of word order and function words is said to be analytic. †¢ Prosodic signals, such as pitch, stress, and tempo, can indicate grammatical meaning. The difference between the statement â€Å"He’s here† and the question 4 chapter 1 â€Å"He’s here? † is the pitch used at the end of the sentence.The chief difference between the verb conduct and the noun conduct is that the verb has a stronger stress on i ts second syllable and the noun on its first syllable. In â€Å"He died happily† and â€Å"He died, happily,† the tempo of the last two words makes an important difference of meaning. All languages have these kinds of grammatical signals available to them, but languages differ greatly in the use they make of the various signals. And even a single language may change its use over time, as English has. LANGUAGE AS SIGNS In language, signs are what the system organizes.A sign is something that stands for something else—for example, a word like apple, which stands for the familiar fruit. But linguistic signs are not words alone; they may also be either smaller or larger than whole words. The smallest linguistic sign is the morpheme, a meaningful form that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. The word apple is a single morpheme; applejack consists of two morphemes, each of which can also function independently as a word. Apples also has two morphemes, but one (-s) can occur only as part of a word. Morphemes that can be used alone as words (such as apple and jack) are called free morphemes.Those that must be combined with other morphemes to make a word (such as -s) are bound morphemes. The word reactivation has five morphemes in it (one free and four bound), as a stepby- step analysis shows: re-activation activate-ion active-ate act-ive Thus reactivation has one free morpheme (act) and four bound morphemes (re-, -ive, -ate, and -ion). A word cannot be divided into morphemes just by sounding out its syllables. Some morphemes, like apple, have more than one syllable; others, like -s, are less than a syllable. A morpheme is a form (a sequence of sounds) with a recognizable meaning.Knowing a word’s early history, or etymology, may be useful in dividing it into morphemes, but the decisive factor is the form-meaning link. A morpheme may, however, have more than one pronunciation or spelling. For example, the regular noun plural endi ng has two spellings (-s and -es) and three pronunciations (an s-sound as in backs, a z-sound as in bags, and a vowel plus z-sound as in batches). Each spoken variation is called an allomorph of the plural morpheme. Similarly, when the morpheme -ate is followed by -ion (as in activateion), the t of -ate combines with the i of -ion as the sound â€Å"sh† (so we might spell the word â€Å"activashon†).Such allomorphic variation is typical of the morphemes of English, even though the spelling does not represent it. Morphemes can also be classified as base morphemes and affixes. An affix is a bound morpheme that is added to a base morpheme, either a prefix (such as re-) or a suffix (such as -s, -ive, -ate, and -ion). Most base morphemes are free (such as language and the english language 5 apple and act), but some are bound (such as the insul- of insulate). A word that has two or more bases (such as applejack) is called a compound. A linguistic sign may be word-sized or sm aller—a free or a bound morpheme.But it may also be larger than a word. An idiom is a combination of words whose meaning cannot be predicted from its constituent parts. One kind of idiom is the combination of a verb with an adverb, a preposition, or both—for instance, turn on (a light), call up (on the telephone), take over (a business), ask for (a job), come down with (an illness), and go back on (a promise). Such an expression is a single semantic unit: to go back on is to ‘abandon’ a promise. But from the standpoint of grammar, several independent words are involved. LANGUAGE AS VOCALLanguage is a system that can be expressed in many ways—by the marks on paper or a computer screen that we call writing, by hand signals and gestures as in sign language, by colored lights or moving flags as in semaphore, and by electronic clicks as in old-fashioned telegraphy. However, the signs of language—its words and morphemes—are basically vocal, or oral-aural, being sounds produced by the mouth and received by the ear. If human communication had developed primarily as a system of gestures (like the sign language of the deaf), it would have been quite different from what it is.Because sounds follow one another sequentially in time, language has a one-dimensional quality (like the letters we use to represent it in writing), whereas gestures can fill the three dimensions of space as well as the fourth dimension of time. The ears can hear sounds coming from any direction, but the eyes can see gestures made only in front of them. The ears can hear through physical barriers, such as walls, which the eyes cannot see through. Speech has both advantages and disadvantages in comparison with gestures; but on the whole, it is undoubtedly superior, as its evolutionary survival demonstrates.Writing and Speech Because writing has become so important in our culture, we sometimes think of it as more real than speech. A little thought, howev er, will show why speech is primary and writing secondary to language. Human beings have been writing (as far as we can tell from the surviving evidence) for at least 5000 years; but they have been talking for much longer, doubtless ever since they were fully human. When writing developed, it was derived from and represented speech, albeit imperfectly (see Chapter 3). Even today there are spoken languages that have no written form.Furthermore, we learn to talk long before we learn to write; any human child without physical or mental limitations will learn to talk, and most human beings cannot be prevented from doing so. It is as though we were â€Å"programmed† to acquire language in the form of speech. On the other hand, it takes a special effort to learn to write. In the past, many intelligent and useful members of society did not acquire that skill, and even today many who speak languages with writing systems never learn to read or write, while some who learn the rudiments of those skills do so only imperfectly.To affirm the primacy of speech over writing is not, however, to disparage the latter. If speaking makes us human, writing makes us civilized. Writing has some 6 chapter 1 advantages over speech. For example, it is more permanent, thus making possible the records that any civilization must have. Writing is also capable of easily making some distinctions that speech can make only with difficulty. We can, for example, indicate certain types of pauses more clearly by the spaces that we leave between words when we write than we ordinarily are able to do when we speak.Grade A may well be heard as gray day, but there is no mistaking the one phrase for the other in writing. Similarly, the comma distinguishes â€Å"a pretty, hot day† from â€Å"a pretty hot day† more clearly than these phrases are often distinguished in actual speech. But the question mark does not distinguish between â€Å"Why did you do it? † (I didn’t he ar you the first time you told me), with rising pitch at the end, and â€Å"Why did you do it? † (You didn’t tell me), with falling terminal pitch. Nor can we show in writing the difference between sound quality ‘tone’ (as in â€Å"The sound quality of the recording was excellent†) nd sound quality ‘good grade’ (as in â€Å"The materials were of sound quality†)—a difference that we signal very easily in speech by strongly stressing sound in the first sentence and the first syllable of quality in the second. Incense ‘enrage’ and incense ‘aromatic substance for burning’ are likewise sharply differentiated in speech by the position of the stress, as sewer ‘conduit’ and sewer ‘one who sews’ are differentiated by vowel quality. In writing we can distinguish those words only in context. Words that are pronounced alike are called homophones.They may be spelled the same, such as bear ‘carry’ and bear ‘animal,’ or they may be distinguished in spelling, such as bare ‘naked’ and either of the bear words. Words that are written alike are called homographs. They may also be pronounced the same, such as the two bear words or tear ‘to rip’ and tear ‘spree’ (as in â€Å"He went on a tear†), or they may be distinguished in pronunciation, such as tear ‘a drop from the eye’ and either of the other two tear words. Homonym is a term that covers either homophones or homographs, that is, a word either pronounced or spelled like another, such as all bear/bare and tear words.Homophones are the basis of puns, as in childish jokes about â€Å"a bear behind† and â€Å"seven days without chocolate make one weak,† whose written forms resolve the ambiguity of their spoken forms. But William Shakespeare was by no means averse to this sort of thing: puns involving tale and tail, whole and hole, hoar and whore, and a good many other homophones (some, like stale and steal, no longer homophonous) occur rather frequently in the writings of our greatest poet. The conventions of writing differ somewhat from those of ordinary speech.For instance, we ordinarily write was not, do not, and would not, although we usually say wasn’t, don’t, and wouldn’t. Furthermore, our choice of words is likely to be different in writing and in everyday speech. But these are stylistic matters, as is also the fact that writing tends to be somewhat more conservative than speech. Representing the spellings of one language by those of another is transliteration, which must not be confused with translation, the interpretation of one language by another. Greek an be transliterated pyr, as in pyromaniac, or translated fire, as in firebug. One language can be written in several orthographies (or writing systems). When the president of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (later calle d Kemal Ataturk), in 1928 substituted the Roman alphabet for the Arabic in writing Turkish, the Turkish language and the english language 7 language changed no more than time changed when he introduced the Gregorian calendar in his country to replace the Islamic lunar one used earlier. Gestures and SpeechSuch specialized gestures as the indifferent shrug of the shoulders, the admonitory shaking of the finger, the lifting up of the hand in greeting and the waving of it in parting, the widening of the eyes in astonishment, the scornful lifting of the brows, the approving nod, and the disapproving sideways shaking of the head—all these need not accompany speech at all; they themselves communicate. Indeed, there is some reason to think that gestures are older than spoken language and are the matrix out of which it developed. Like language itself, such gestures vary in use and meaning from one culture to another.In India, a sideways wagging of the head indicates that the head-wagg er understands what another person is saying. When gestures accompany speech, they may be more or less unconscious, like the crossed arms of a person talking with another, indicating a lack of openness to the other’s ideas. The study of such communicative body movements is known as kinesics. Our various tones of voice—the drawl, the sneer, the shout, the whimper, the simper, and the like—also play a part in communication (which we recognize when we say, â€Å"I didn’t mind what he said, I just didn’t like the way he said it†).The tones and gestures that accompany speech are not language, but rather parallel systems of communication called paralanguage. Other vocalizations that are communicative, like laughing, crying, groaning, and yelping, usually do not accompany speech as tones of voice do, though they may come before or after it. LANGUAGE AS CONVENTIONAL Writing is obviously conventional because we can represent the same language by more than one writing system.Japanese, for example, is written with kanji (ideographs representing whole words), with either of two syllabaries (writing systems that present each syllable with a separate symbol), or with the letters of the Roman alphabet. Similarly, we could by general agreement reform English spelling (soe dhat, for egzammpul, wee spelt it liek dhis). We can change the conventions of our writing system merely by agreeing to do so. Although it is not so obvious, speech is also conventional. To be sure, all languages share certain natural, inherent, or universal features.The human vocal apparatus (lips, teeth, tongue, and so forth) makes it inevitable that human languages have only a limited range of sounds. Likewise, since all of us live in the same universe and perceive our universe through the same senses with more or less the same basic mental equipment, it is hardly surprising that we should find it necessary to talk about more or less the same things in more or les s similar ways. Nevertheless, the world’s many languages are conventional and generally arbitrary; that is to say, there is usually no connection between the sounds we make and the phenomena of life.A comparatively small number of echoic words imitate, more or less closely, other sounds. Bow-wow seems to English speakers to 8 chapter 1 be a fairly accurate imitation of the sound made by a dog and therefore not to be wholly arbitrary, but it is highly doubtful that a dog would agree, particularly a French dog, which says gnaf-gnaf, or a German one, which says wau-wau, or a Japanese one, which says wung-wung. In Norway cows do not say â€Å"moo† but mmmooo, sheep do not say â€Å"baa† but m? , and pigs do not say â€Å"oink† but noffnoff. Norwegian hens very sensibly say klukk-klukk, though doubtless with a heavy Norwegian accent.The process of echoing such sounds (also called onomatopoeia) is conventional. Most people assume that their language is the best —and so it is for them, because they mastered it well enough for their own purposes so long ago that they cannot remember when or how. It seems to them more logical and sensible, more natural, than the way others talk. But there is nothing really natural about any language, since all these highly systematized and conventionalized methods of human communication must be acquired. There is, for instance, nothing natural in our use of is in such a sentence as â€Å"The woman is busy. The utterance can be made just as effectively without that verb, and some languages do get along perfectly well without it. This use of the verb to be was, as a matter of fact, late in developing and never developed in Russian. To the speaker of Russian it is more â€Å"natural† to say â€Å"Zhenshchina zanyata†Ã¢â‚¬â€ literally, â€Å"Woman busy†Ã¢â‚¬â€which sounds to our ears so much like baby talk that the unsophisticated speaker of English might well (though quite wrongly) conclude that Russian is a childish tongue. The system of Russian also manages to struggle along without the definite article the.As a matter of fact, the speaker of Russian never misses it—nor should we if it had not become conventional with us. To a naive speaker of English, calling the organ of sight eye may seem perfectly natural, and those who call it anything else—like the Germans, who call it Auge, the Russians, who call it glaz, or the Japanese, who call it me—are likely to be regarded as unfortunate because they do not speak languages in which things are properly named. The fact is, however, that eye, which we pronounce exactly like I (a fact that might be cited against it by a foreign speaker), is the name of the organ only in present-day English.It has not always been so. Londoners of the fourteenth century pronounced the word with two syllables, something like â€Å"ee-eh. † If we chose to go back to King Alfred’s day in the late ninth century, we would find yet another form of the word from which Modern English eye developed. The Scots are not being quaint or perverse when they say â€Å"ee† for eye, as in Robert Burns’s poem â€Å"To a Mouse†: Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me! The present only toucheth thee: But och! I backward cast my e’e, On prospects drear!The Scots form is merely a variant of the word—a perfectly legitimate pronunciation that happens not to occur in standard Modern English. Knowledge of such changes within a single language should dissipate the notion that any word is more appropriate than any other word, except in a purely chronological and social sense. language and the english language 9 Language Change Change is normal in language. Every language is constantly turning into something different, and when we hear a new word or a new pronunciation or use of an old word, we may be catching the early stages of a change.Change is natural because a language system is culturally transmitted. Like other conventional matters—such as fashions in clothing, hairstyles, cooking, entertainment, and government—language is constantly being revised. Language evolves more slowly than do some other cultural activities, but its change is continuous and inevitable. There are three general causes of language change. First, words and sounds may affect neighboring words and sounds. For example, sandwich is often pronounced, not as the spelling suggests, but in ways that might be represented as â€Å"sanwich,† â€Å"sanwidge,† â€Å"samwidge,† or even â€Å"sammidge. Such spellings look illiterate, but they represent perfectly normal, though informal, pronunciations that result from the position of a sound within the word. When nearby elements thus influence one another within the flow of speech, the result is called syntagmatic change. Second, words and sounds may be affected by others that are not immediate ly present but with which they are associated. For example, the side of a ship on which it was laden (that is, loaded) was called the ladeboard, but its opposite, starboard, influenced a change in pronunciation to larboard.Then, because larboard was likely to be confused with starboard because of their similarity of sound, it was generally replaced by port. Such change is called paradigmatic or associative change. Third, a language may change because of the influence of events in the world. New technologies like the World Wide Web require new forms like google ‘to search the Internet for information’ and wiki (as in Wikipedia) ‘a Website, database, or software for creating Web sites, especially collaborative ones,’ from the Hawaiian word for ‘fast. New forms of human behavior, however bizarre, require new terms like suicide bomber. New concepts in science require new terms like transposon ‘a transposable gene in DNA. ’ In addition, new co ntacts with persons who use speechways different from our own may affect our pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammar. Social change thus modifies speech. The documented history of the English language begins about A. D. 700, with the oldest written records. We can reconstruct some of the prehistory before that time, to as early as about 4000 B. C. but the farther back in time we go, the less certain we can be about what the language was like. The history of our language is traditionally divided into three periods: Old English, from the earliest records (or from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England around A. D. 450) to about 1100; Middle English, approximately from 1100 to 1500; and Modern English, since about 1500. The lines dividing the three periods are based on significant changes in the language about those times, but major cultural changes around 1100 and 1500 also contribute to our sense of new beginnings.These matters are treated in detail in Chapters 5 through 8. The No tion of Linguistic Corruption A widely held notion resulting from a misunderstanding of change is that there are ideal forms of languages, thought of as â€Å"pure,† and that existing languages represent corruptions of earlier ideal ones. Thus, the Greek spoken today is supposed to 10 chapter 1 be a degraded form of Classical Greek rather than what it really is, a development of it. Since the Romance languages are developments of Latin, it would follow from this point of view that they also are corrupt, although this assumption is not usually made.Those who admire or profess to admire Latin literature sometimes suppose that a stage of perfection had been reached in Classical Latin and that every subsequent development in Latin was an irreparable deterioration. From this point of view, the late development of Latin spoken in the early Middle Ages (sometimes called Vulgar, or popular, Latin) is â€Å"bad† Latin, which, strange as it may seem, was ultimately to become â⠂¬Å"good† Italian, French, Spanish, and so on. Because we hear so much about â€Å"pure† English, we might carefully examine this notion.When Captain Frederick Marryat, an English novelist, visited the United States in 1837–1838, he thought it â€Å"remarkable how very debased the language has become in a short period in America,† adding that â€Å"if their lower classes are more intelligible than ours, it is equally true that the higher classes do not speak the language so purely or so classically as it is spoken among the well-educated English. † Both statements are nonsense. The first is based on the captain’s apparent notion that the English language had reached a stage of perfection at the time English-speaking people first settled America.After this, presumably because of the innate depravity of those English settlers who brought their language to the New World, it had taken a steadily downward course, whatever that may mean. One wonder s also precisely how Marryat knew what constituted â€Å"classical† or â€Å"pure† English. It is probable that he was merely attributing certain superior qualities to that type of English that he was accustomed to hear from persons of good social standing in the land of his birth and that he himself spoke. Any divergence was â€Å"debased†: â€Å"My speech is pure; thine, wherein it differs from mine, is corrupt. Language Variation In addition to its change through the years, at any given period of time a language exists in many varieties. Historical, or diachronic, variation is matched by contemporary, or synchronic, variation. The latter is of two kinds: dialects and registers. A dialect is the variety of a language associated with a particular place (Boston or New Orleans), social level (standard or nonstandard), ethnic group (Jewish or African-American), sex (male or female), age grade (teenage or mature), and so on.Most of us have a normal way of using la nguage that is an intersection of such dialects and that marks us as being, for example, a middle-aged, white, cultured, female Charlestonian of old family or a young, urban, working-class, male Hispanic from New York City. Some people have more than one such dialect personality; national politicians, for example, may use a Washingtonian government dialect when they are doing their job and a â€Å"down-home† dialect when they are interacting with their voters.Ultimately, each of us has a unique, personal way of using language, an idiolect, which identifies us for those who know us. A register is the variety of a language used for a particular purpose: sermon language (which may have a distinctive rhythm and sentence melody and include words like brethren and beloved), restaurant-menu language (which is full of â€Å"tasty adjectives† like garden-fresh and succulent), telephone-conversation language (in which the speech of the secondary participant is full of uh-huh, I see, yeah, and language and the english language 11 h), postcard language (in which the subjects of sentences are frequently omitted: â€Å"Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here. †), and e-mail and instant-messaging language with abbreviations like BTDT (been there, done that), CUL8ER (see you later), CYO (see you online), and LOL (laughing out loud). Everyone uses several registers, and the more varied the circumstances under which we talk and write, the more registers we use. The dialects we speak help to define who we are. They tell those who hear us where we come from, our social or ethnic identification, and other such intimate facts about us.The registers we use reflect the circumstances in which we are communicating. They indicate where we are speaking or writing, to whom, via what medium, about what subject, and for what purpose. Dialects and registers provide options—alternative ways of using language. And those options confront us with the question of w hat is the right or best alternative. Correctness and Acceptability The concept of an absolute and unwavering, presumably God-given standard of linguistic correctness (sometimes confused with â€Å"purity†) is widespread, even among the educated.Those who subscribe to this notion become greatly exercised over such matters as split infinitives, the â€Å"incorrect† position of only, and prepositions at the ends of sentences. All these supposed â€Å"errors† have been committed time and again by eminent writers and speakers, so that one wonders how those who condemn them know that they are bad. Robert Lowth, who wrote one of the most influential English grammars of the eighteenth century (A Short Introduction to English Grammar, 1762), was praised by one of his admirers for showing â€Å"the grammatic inaccuracies that have escaped the pens of our most distinguished writers. One would suppose that the language of â€Å"our most distinguished writers† would be good usage. But Lowth and his followers knew, or thought they knew, better; and their attitude survives to this day. This is not, of course, to deny that there are standards of usage, but only to suggest that standards must be based on the usage of speakers and writers of generally acknowledged excellence—quite a different thing from a subservience to the mandates of badly informed â€Å"authorities† who are guided by their own prejudices rather than by a study of the actual usage of educated and accomplished speakers and writers.To talk about â€Å"correctness† in language implies that there is some abstract, absolute standard by which words and grammar can be judged; something is either â€Å"correct† or â€Å"incorrect†Ã¢â‚¬â€and that’s all there is to that. But the facts of language are not so clean-cut. Instead, many students of usage today prefer to talk about acceptability, that is, the degree to which users of a language will ju dge an expression as OK or will let its use pass without noticing anything out of the ordinary. An acceptable expression is one that people do not object to, indeed do not even notice unless it is called to their attention.Acceptability is not absolute, but is a matter of degree; one expression may be more or less acceptable than another. â€Å"If I were in your shoes† may be judged more acceptable than â€Å"If I was in your shoes,† but both are considerably more acceptable than â€Å"If we was in your shoes. † Moreover, acceptability is not abstract, but is related to some group of people whose response it reflects. Thus most 12 chapter 1 Americans pronounce the past-tense verb ate like eight and regard any other pronunciation as unacceptable. Many Britons, on the other hand, pronounce it as â€Å"ett† and find the American preference less acceptable.Acceptability is part of the convention of language use; in talking about it, we must always keep in min d â€Å"How acceptable? † and â€Å"To whom? † LANGUAGE AS HUMAN As noted at the beginning of this chapter, language is a specifically human activity. That statement, however, raises several questions. When and how did human beings acquire language? To what extent is language innate, and to what extent is it learned? How does human language differ from the communication systems of other creatures? We will look briefly at each of these questions.Theories of the Origin of Language The ultimate origin of language is a matter of speculation since we have no real information about it. The earliest languages for which we have records are already in a high stage of development, and the same is true of languages spoken by technologically primitive peoples. The problem of how language began has tantalized philosophical minds, and many theories have been advanced, to which waggish scholars have given such fanciful names as the pooh-pooh theory, the bow-wow theory, the ding-dong theory, and the yo-he-ho theory.The nicknames indicate how seriously the theories need be taken: they are based, respectively, on the notions that language was in the beginning ejaculatory, or echoic (onomatopoeic), or characterized by a mystic appropriateness of sound to sense in contrast to being merely imitative, or made up of grunts and groans emitted in the course of group actions. According to one theory, the early prelanguage of human beings was a mixture of gestures and sounds in which the gestures carried most of the meaning and the sounds were used chiefly to â€Å"punctuate† or amplify the gestures—just the reverse of our use of speech and hand signals.Eventually human physiology and behavior changed in several related ways. The human brain, which had been expanding in size, lateralized—that is, each half came to specialize in certain activities, and language ability was localized in the left hemisphere of most persons. As a consequence, â€Å"handed ness† developed (right-handedness for those with left-hemisphere dominance), and there was greater manual specialization. As people had more things to do with their hands, they could use them less for communication and had to rely more on sounds.Therefore, increasingly complex forms of oral signals developed, and language as we know it evolved. The fact that we human beings alone have vocal language but share with our closest animal kin (the apes) an ability to learn complex gesture systems suggests that manual signs may have preceded language as a form of communication. We cannot know how language really began; we can be sure only of its immense antiquity. However human beings started to talk, they did so long ago, and it was not until much later that they devised a system of making marks on wood, stone, or clay to represent what they said.Compared with language, writing is a newfangled invention, although certainly not less brilliant for being so. language and the english la nguage 13 Innate Language Ability The acquisition of language would seem to be an arduous task. But it is a task that children all over the world seem not to mind in the least. Moreover, children in daily contact with a language other than their â€Å"home† language—that of their parents—readily learn to speak the other language with a native accent. After childhood, however, perhaps in the teen years, most people find it difficult to learn a new language.Young children seem to be genetically equipped with an ability to acquire language. But after a while, that automatic ability atrophies, and learning a new language becomes a chore. To be sure, children of five or so have not acquired all of the words or grammatical constructions they will need as they grow up. But they have mastered the basics of the language they will speak for the rest of their lives. The immensity of that accomplishment can be appreciated by anyone who has learned a second language as an ad ult.It is clear that, although every particular language has to be learned, the ability to acquire and use language is a part of our genetic inheritance and operates most efficiently in our younger years. Do Birds and Beasts Really Talk? Some animals are physically just about as well equipped as humans to produce speech sounds, and some—certain birds, for instance—have in fact been taught to do so. But no other species makes use of a system of sounds even remotely resembling ours. Human language and animal communication are fundamentally different.In the second half of the twentieth century, a trio of chimpanzees—Sarah, Lana, and Washoe—greatly modified our ideas about the linguistic abilities of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. After several efforts to teach chimps to talk had ended in almost total failure, it was generally concluded that apes lack the cognitive ability to learn language. Some psychologists reasoned, however, that the main pr oblem might be a simple anatomical limitation: human vocal organs are so different from the corresponding ones in apes that the animals cannot produce the sounds of human speech.If they have the mental, but not the physical, ability to talk, then they should be able to learn a language using a medium other than sound. Sarah was taught to communicate by arranging plastic tokens of arbitrary color and shape. Each of the tokens, which were metal-backed and placed on a magnetized board, represented a word in the system, and groups of tokens corresponded to sentences. Sarah learned over a hundred tokens and could manage sentences of the complexity of â€Å"Sarah take banana if-then Mary no give chocolate Sarah† (that is, ‘If Sarah takes a banana, Mary won’t give Sarah any chocolate’).Lana also used word symbols, but hers were on a typewriter connected to a computer. She communicated with people, and they with her via the computer. Typed-out messages appeared on a screen and had to conform exactly to the rules of â€Å"word† order of the system Lana had been taught, if she was to get what she asked for (food, drink, companionship, and the like). Washoe, in the most interesting of these efforts to teach animals a language, was schooled in a gesture language used by the deaf, American Sign Language. 14 chapter 1Her remarkable success in learning to communicate with this quite natural and adaptable system has resulted in its being taught to a number of other chimpanzees and gorillas. The apes learn signs, use them appropriately, combine them meaningfully, and when occasion requires even invent new signs or combinations. For example, one of the apes made up the terms â€Å"candydrink† and â€Å"drinkfruit† to talk about watermelons. The linguistic accomplishment of these apes is remarkable; nevertheless, it is a far cry from the fullness of a human language.The number of signs or tokens the ape learns, the complexity of th e syntax with which those signs are combined, and the breadth of ideas that they represent are all far more restricted than in any human language. Moreover, human linguistic systems have been fundamentally shaped by the fact that they are expressed in sound. Vocalness of language is no mere incidental characteristic but rather is central to the nature of language. We must still say that only human beings have language in the full sense of that term. LANGUAGE AS COMMUNICATIONThe purpose of language is to communicate, whether with others by