WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 align:middle line:90% [SQUEAKING] 00:00:02.480 --> 00:00:03.968 align:middle line:90% [RUSTLING] 00:00:03.968 --> 00:00:06.448 align:middle line:90% [CLICKING] 00:00:06.448 --> 00:00:11.408 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.408 --> 00:00:14.640 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: I was thinking about today's topic 00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:15.420 align:middle line:90% earlier. 00:00:15.420 --> 00:00:19.710 align:middle line:90% And I thought of a metaphor. 00:00:19.710 --> 00:00:21.280 align:middle line:84% I haven't tried this metaphor before. 00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:23.322 align:middle line:84% This is the first time I have tried this metaphor 00:00:23.322 --> 00:00:25.058 align:middle line:90% on people in class. 00:00:25.058 --> 00:00:26.850 align:middle line:84% It's always dangerous thinking of metaphors 00:00:26.850 --> 00:00:27.892 align:middle line:90% for all kinds of reasons. 00:00:27.892 --> 00:00:29.790 align:middle line:84% One of them is that it's entirely possible 00:00:29.790 --> 00:00:32.049 align:middle line:84% that I'm about to beat this metaphor into the ground. 00:00:32.049 --> 00:00:34.890 align:middle line:84% I'm going to talk about it for a while. 00:00:34.890 --> 00:00:37.902 align:middle line:84% But-- so I apologize in advance if that happens. 00:00:37.902 --> 00:00:40.110 align:middle line:84% It's also possible that I will tell you the metaphor, 00:00:40.110 --> 00:00:42.810 align:middle line:84% and you will wonder, what the heck is he talking about? 00:00:42.810 --> 00:00:44.083 align:middle line:90% It will be too metaphorical. 00:00:44.083 --> 00:00:45.750 align:middle line:84% But, hopefully, as the class goes along, 00:00:45.750 --> 00:00:48.030 align:middle line:84% it'll become clear what I'm talking about. 00:00:48.030 --> 00:00:49.530 align:middle line:84% Or maybe it'll be clear immediately. 00:00:49.530 --> 00:00:49.970 align:middle line:90% Who knows? 00:00:49.970 --> 00:00:50.220 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:50.220 --> 00:00:51.053 align:middle line:90% Here's the metaphor. 00:00:51.053 --> 00:00:53.280 align:middle line:90% 00:00:53.280 --> 00:00:56.700 align:middle line:84% You have to try to imagine for this metaphor 00:00:56.700 --> 00:01:00.120 align:middle line:84% that the United States is the kind of country-- 00:01:00.120 --> 00:01:05.099 align:middle line:84% bless you-- in which board games are extremely popular. 00:01:05.099 --> 00:01:07.560 align:middle line:84% Everyone plays board games all the time. 00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:09.870 align:middle line:84% It's like the standard way for people 00:01:09.870 --> 00:01:12.030 align:middle line:90% to interact with each other. 00:01:12.030 --> 00:01:15.060 align:middle line:84% So if you are on a long plane flight, 00:01:15.060 --> 00:01:16.590 align:middle line:84% you'll probably play a board game 00:01:16.590 --> 00:01:19.554 align:middle line:84% with the person sitting next to you. 00:01:19.554 --> 00:01:21.630 align:middle line:84% You go-- you move into your new dorm, 00:01:21.630 --> 00:01:23.010 align:middle line:84% and you start playing board games 00:01:23.010 --> 00:01:25.385 align:middle line:84% with your new roommate and the other people on your hall. 00:01:25.385 --> 00:01:27.120 align:middle line:84% That's just the normal way for people 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:30.370 align:middle line:84% to interact with each other-- all board games all the time. 00:01:30.370 --> 00:01:34.350 align:middle line:84% And try to imagine that there are various board games that 00:01:34.350 --> 00:01:35.190 align:middle line:90% are popular. 00:01:35.190 --> 00:01:38.250 align:middle line:84% But in the US, for some reason, the two big ones 00:01:38.250 --> 00:01:40.162 align:middle line:90% are chess and checkers. 00:01:40.162 --> 00:01:42.620 align:middle line:84% So those are the two board games that are the most popular. 00:01:42.620 --> 00:01:44.037 align:middle line:84% There are other games people play. 00:01:44.037 --> 00:01:45.850 align:middle line:90% But those are the two big ones. 00:01:45.850 --> 00:01:49.270 align:middle line:84% And the following kind of weird thing has happened. 00:01:49.270 --> 00:01:54.210 align:middle line:84% There are families in which everybody plays chess, 00:01:54.210 --> 00:01:54.990 align:middle line:90% let's say. 00:01:54.990 --> 00:01:56.460 align:middle line:90% Families specialize. 00:01:56.460 --> 00:01:59.310 align:middle line:84% So if you're born in a chess family, 00:01:59.310 --> 00:02:01.042 align:middle line:90% then mom and dad play chess. 00:02:01.042 --> 00:02:03.000 align:middle line:84% And your older brothers and sisters play chess. 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:05.310 align:middle line:84% And your uncles, and your aunts, and your ankles-- 00:02:05.310 --> 00:02:06.630 align:middle line:90% your ankles do not play chess. 00:02:06.630 --> 00:02:09.630 align:middle line:84% Your uncles, and your aunts, and your grandparents, they 00:02:09.630 --> 00:02:10.530 align:middle line:90% all play chess. 00:02:10.530 --> 00:02:14.160 align:middle line:84% And maybe nobody ever actually sits you down and explains 00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:15.720 align:middle line:90% the rules of chess to you. 00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:17.430 align:middle line:84% But you see everybody playing chess, 00:02:17.430 --> 00:02:19.380 align:middle line:84% and you eventually get to where you're pretty good at it. 00:02:19.380 --> 00:02:21.672 align:middle line:84% In fact, by the time you're old enough to go to school, 00:02:21.672 --> 00:02:23.130 align:middle line:84% you're very good at playing chess 00:02:23.130 --> 00:02:24.802 align:middle line:84% if you grow up in a chess family. 00:02:24.802 --> 00:02:26.760 align:middle line:84% And then there are the checkers families, which 00:02:26.760 --> 00:02:28.140 align:middle line:90% are the same except checkers. 00:02:28.140 --> 00:02:29.890 align:middle line:90% So everybody plays checkers. 00:02:29.890 --> 00:02:31.650 align:middle line:84% If you grew up in a checkers family, 00:02:31.650 --> 00:02:32.940 align:middle line:90% mom and dad play checkers. 00:02:32.940 --> 00:02:34.380 align:middle line:84% Older brothers and sisters play checkers. 00:02:34.380 --> 00:02:35.588 align:middle line:90% You watch them play checkers. 00:02:35.588 --> 00:02:39.060 align:middle line:84% You become a checkers expert by the time you're 00:02:39.060 --> 00:02:40.620 align:middle line:90% old enough to go to school. 00:02:40.620 --> 00:02:43.370 align:middle line:84% So there are chess kids and there are checkers kids. 00:02:43.370 --> 00:02:46.430 align:middle line:84% And then when you go to school, the following kind 00:02:46.430 --> 00:02:48.080 align:middle line:90% of weird thing happens. 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:53.240 align:middle line:84% The teachers act as though there is no such game as chess. 00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:56.210 align:middle line:84% So when they see kids playing checkers, 00:02:56.210 --> 00:02:57.202 align:middle line:90% they're like, oh, yeah. 00:02:57.202 --> 00:02:58.910 align:middle line:84% And they watch the kids playing checkers. 00:02:58.910 --> 00:03:01.100 align:middle line:84% Maybe they make tactical suggestions or whatever. 00:03:01.100 --> 00:03:03.650 align:middle line:84% Maybe the teachers play checkers with each other. 00:03:03.650 --> 00:03:06.770 align:middle line:84% Maybe they play checkers with the kids sometimes. 00:03:06.770 --> 00:03:08.930 align:middle line:84% But when they see kids playing chess, 00:03:08.930 --> 00:03:12.330 align:middle line:84% they say things like, what are you doing? 00:03:12.330 --> 00:03:15.480 align:middle line:84% That's not the right way to play checkers. 00:03:15.480 --> 00:03:19.490 align:middle line:84% You just took that one piece and you moved it a zillion diagonal 00:03:19.490 --> 00:03:20.000 align:middle line:90% spaces. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:21.110 align:middle line:90% You can't do that. 00:03:21.110 --> 00:03:24.950 align:middle line:84% You're just violating all the rules of checkers. 00:03:24.950 --> 00:03:26.750 align:middle line:90% That's not how checkers works. 00:03:26.750 --> 00:03:29.250 align:middle line:84% And what is the deal with these weird checkers pieces-- 00:03:29.250 --> 00:03:31.375 align:middle line:84% this one that looks like a horse, and this one that 00:03:31.375 --> 00:03:32.240 align:middle line:90% looks like a castle? 00:03:32.240 --> 00:03:33.410 align:middle line:90% Put all that stuff away. 00:03:33.410 --> 00:03:35.780 align:middle line:84% Get yourself a real checkers board. 00:03:35.780 --> 00:03:40.220 align:middle line:84% And play checkers like a normal person. 00:03:40.220 --> 00:03:45.170 align:middle line:84% There are tests that kids get in school where 00:03:45.170 --> 00:03:49.250 align:middle line:84% they are asked questions like "Is it OK to take a piece 00:03:49.250 --> 00:03:52.970 align:middle line:84% and move it two steps forward and one step to the right?" 00:03:52.970 --> 00:03:54.560 align:middle line:84% And the kids are supposed to say, 00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:58.820 align:middle line:84% no, it's not OK to do that, because this 00:03:58.820 --> 00:04:02.610 align:middle line:84% is a checkers test, and in checkers you can't do that. 00:04:02.610 --> 00:04:04.200 align:middle line:84% So if you're from a checkers family, 00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:06.890 align:middle line:84% this is an easy test for you because, in fact, you can't 00:04:06.890 --> 00:04:09.020 align:middle line:90% make that move in checkers. 00:04:09.020 --> 00:04:11.030 align:middle line:84% If you're from a chess family, then it's 00:04:11.030 --> 00:04:12.060 align:middle line:84% a little harder because, of course, 00:04:12.060 --> 00:04:13.400 align:middle line:90% that's how you move your knight. 00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:15.080 align:middle line:84% That's one way you can move your knight. 00:04:15.080 --> 00:04:17.810 align:middle line:84% And so maybe you made that move just this morning 00:04:17.810 --> 00:04:20.360 align:middle line:84% playing with your mom or your dad. 00:04:20.360 --> 00:04:23.630 align:middle line:84% And so kids from chess families have a tendency 00:04:23.630 --> 00:04:25.730 align:middle line:84% to do badly on this these tests, which 00:04:25.730 --> 00:04:27.800 align:middle line:84% means that when it comes time to put the kids 00:04:27.800 --> 00:04:29.660 align:middle line:90% in the checkers classes-- 00:04:29.660 --> 00:04:32.150 align:middle line:84% there are checkers classes in schools. 00:04:32.150 --> 00:04:35.570 align:middle line:84% There are no chess classes, only checkers classes. 00:04:35.570 --> 00:04:37.790 align:middle line:84% The kids from checkers families tend 00:04:37.790 --> 00:04:40.040 align:middle line:84% to be the ones who get into Advanced Checkers, 00:04:40.040 --> 00:04:42.417 align:middle line:84% and later they go on to AP Checkers where they get-- 00:04:42.417 --> 00:04:43.250 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER] 00:04:43.250 --> 00:04:44.750 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: --where they get 00:04:44.750 --> 00:04:47.840 align:middle line:84% college credit for their college checkers classes. 00:04:47.840 --> 00:04:50.150 align:middle line:90% The kids from chess families-- 00:04:50.150 --> 00:04:51.210 align:middle line:90% it varies. 00:04:51.210 --> 00:04:54.560 align:middle line:84% Some of them learn quickly how to play checkers and suppress 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:55.665 align:middle line:90% their knowledge of chess. 00:04:55.665 --> 00:04:58.040 align:middle line:84% But some of them have a hard time, and it's hard for them 00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:00.470 align:middle line:90% to switch that quickly. 00:05:00.470 --> 00:05:03.590 align:middle line:84% Every so often, you will get a teacher who's 00:05:03.590 --> 00:05:05.720 align:middle line:84% maybe a little more enlightened and admits 00:05:05.720 --> 00:05:07.790 align:middle line:84% that there is such a game as chess, 00:05:07.790 --> 00:05:10.822 align:middle line:84% and who will say to the kids, it's OK. 00:05:10.822 --> 00:05:13.280 align:middle line:84% The kids who are from chess families-- they'll say to them, 00:05:13.280 --> 00:05:16.850 align:middle line:84% it's OK for you to play chess in the privacy of your own home 00:05:16.850 --> 00:05:18.110 align:middle line:90% with your family. 00:05:18.110 --> 00:05:20.510 align:middle line:84% But it's important for you not to play it in public 00:05:20.510 --> 00:05:22.685 align:middle line:84% because people will get the wrong idea. 00:05:22.685 --> 00:05:25.190 align:middle line:84% It's really important for you to be good at checkers. 00:05:25.190 --> 00:05:26.900 align:middle line:84% Checkers is the really important game. 00:05:26.900 --> 00:05:29.080 align:middle line:84% That's what the teachers will say. 00:05:29.080 --> 00:05:30.830 align:middle line:84% And the teachers have a point because this 00:05:30.830 --> 00:05:35.270 align:middle line:84% is a version of America in which checkers is what people 00:05:35.270 --> 00:05:36.530 align:middle line:90% expect you to be good at. 00:05:36.530 --> 00:05:39.890 align:middle line:84% If you go for a job interview or in political campaigns-- 00:05:39.890 --> 00:05:42.290 align:middle line:84% presidential campaigns always involve a huge checkers 00:05:42.290 --> 00:05:45.230 align:middle line:84% tournament between the candidates, 00:05:45.230 --> 00:05:48.653 align:middle line:84% political correspondents watching the game 00:05:48.653 --> 00:05:49.820 align:middle line:90% and commenting on the moves. 00:05:49.820 --> 00:05:52.790 align:middle line:84% And if somebody tries to make a chess move in a checkers game, 00:05:52.790 --> 00:05:55.610 align:middle line:84% well, then, no one will vote for them. 00:05:55.610 --> 00:05:58.010 align:middle line:90% That's the metaphor. 00:05:58.010 --> 00:05:58.580 align:middle line:90% There. 00:05:58.580 --> 00:06:01.490 align:middle line:84% Now, if it's not yet clear what I'm talking about, 00:06:01.490 --> 00:06:02.875 align:middle line:84% hopefully it will be in a second. 00:06:02.875 --> 00:06:05.375 align:middle line:84% Are there any questions about the metaphor other than, what? 00:06:05.375 --> 00:06:07.308 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLES] OK. 00:06:07.308 --> 00:06:09.600 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: [? Is it a ?] fact that [? humans ?] see that 00:06:09.600 --> 00:06:14.530 align:middle line:84% checkers is [? used ?] [INAUDIBLE] will be superior 00:06:14.530 --> 00:06:15.030 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE]? 00:06:15.030 --> 00:06:15.360 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah. 00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:18.270 align:middle line:84% So you have to imagine that checkers is the superior game 00:06:18.270 --> 00:06:19.618 align:middle line:90% in this version of the story. 00:06:19.618 --> 00:06:21.660 align:middle line:84% I could have told the story the other way around. 00:06:21.660 --> 00:06:22.860 align:middle line:90% But I told it this way. 00:06:22.860 --> 00:06:23.740 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:06:23.740 --> 00:06:24.030 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah. 00:06:24.030 --> 00:06:24.600 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:25.720 align:middle line:90% Other questions? 00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:27.570 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:06:27.570 --> 00:06:32.130 align:middle line:90% So seemingly unrelated topic-- 00:06:32.130 --> 00:06:34.290 align:middle line:84% remember negative polarity items? 00:06:34.290 --> 00:06:37.320 align:middle line:84% Negative polarity items were these expressions 00:06:37.320 --> 00:06:42.540 align:middle line:84% that you used together with negation to say things 00:06:42.540 --> 00:06:44.973 align:middle line:90% like, "I didn't see anything." 00:06:44.973 --> 00:06:46.890 align:middle line:84% And what we said about them-- so "anything" is 00:06:46.890 --> 00:06:48.120 align:middle line:90% a negative polarity item. 00:06:48.120 --> 00:06:49.770 align:middle line:84% And to call it a negative polarity item 00:06:49.770 --> 00:06:54.180 align:middle line:84% is to say it's an expression with some restrictions on where 00:06:54.180 --> 00:06:55.330 align:middle line:90% it can be used. 00:06:55.330 --> 00:06:57.330 align:middle line:84% We talked a little bit about the different kinds 00:06:57.330 --> 00:06:59.400 align:middle line:84% of quantifiers that make it possible to use 00:06:59.400 --> 00:07:01.080 align:middle line:90% a negative polarity item. 00:07:01.080 --> 00:07:02.132 align:middle line:90% One of them is-- 00:07:02.132 --> 00:07:04.590 align:middle line:84% well, negation makes it possible to use a negative polarity 00:07:04.590 --> 00:07:05.090 align:middle line:90% item. 00:07:05.090 --> 00:07:06.810 align:middle line:90% That's how they get their name. 00:07:06.810 --> 00:07:10.320 align:middle line:84% But in a sentence like, "I saw anything," 00:07:10.320 --> 00:07:12.040 align:middle line:84% there's something wrong with that. 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:12.540 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:07:12.540 --> 00:07:14.175 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: What about, "I will eat anything?" 00:07:14.175 --> 00:07:15.133 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Ah! 00:07:15.133 --> 00:07:19.040 align:middle line:84% So negative polarity items often have another use. 00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:20.850 align:middle line:90% Let me find a piece of chalk. 00:07:20.850 --> 00:07:22.860 align:middle line:84% For some reason, this always happens. 00:07:22.860 --> 00:07:26.100 align:middle line:84% There are many erasers but no chalk. 00:07:26.100 --> 00:07:27.600 align:middle line:84% There's actually literally no chalk. 00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:30.840 align:middle line:90% Where are the-- what the heck? 00:07:30.840 --> 00:07:32.160 align:middle line:90% "I will eat anything." 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:37.270 align:middle line:90% 00:07:37.270 --> 00:07:43.550 align:middle line:84% This is sometimes called "free choice 'any.'" And it's very 00:07:43.550 --> 00:07:45.055 align:middle line:90% interesting. 00:07:45.055 --> 00:07:46.430 align:middle line:84% Notice that it's also restricted. 00:07:46.430 --> 00:07:48.982 align:middle line:84% So "I saw anything" is actually no good. 00:07:48.982 --> 00:07:51.440 align:middle line:84% You can't use either free choice "any" or negative polarity 00:07:51.440 --> 00:07:51.680 align:middle line:90% "any." 00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:53.660 align:middle line:84% But you're right there's another possible use 00:07:53.660 --> 00:07:55.220 align:middle line:90% of these kinds of things. 00:07:55.220 --> 00:07:56.870 align:middle line:84% Having admitted that you're right, 00:07:56.870 --> 00:07:58.310 align:middle line:90% let me just suppress that point. 00:07:58.310 --> 00:07:58.810 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:07:58.810 --> 00:07:59.960 align:middle line:90% You're absolutely right. 00:07:59.960 --> 00:08:01.520 align:middle line:90% There are complications. 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:02.030 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:08:02.030 --> 00:08:02.530 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:08:02.530 --> 00:08:04.850 align:middle line:90% 00:08:04.850 --> 00:08:09.380 align:middle line:84% So, plenty of languages have negative polarity items. 00:08:09.380 --> 00:08:16.077 align:middle line:84% And maybe unsurprisingly if you are using-- 00:08:16.077 --> 00:08:18.410 align:middle line:84% if you're going to answer a question like, "What did you 00:08:18.410 --> 00:08:20.000 align:middle line:90% see?" 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.520 align:middle line:84% in the language that I'm now speaking, 00:08:22.520 --> 00:08:26.720 align:middle line:84% "anything" is not a possible answer. 00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:29.460 align:middle line:84% We can be unsurprised by that in a couple of ways. 00:08:29.460 --> 00:08:31.848 align:middle line:84% One would be to say, well, yeah, this gets us back 00:08:31.848 --> 00:08:33.890 align:middle line:84% to the kinds of things we were talking about when 00:08:33.890 --> 00:08:35.600 align:middle line:90% we were talking about ellipses. 00:08:35.600 --> 00:08:39.409 align:middle line:84% So if we want to think of this as an utterance that just 00:08:39.409 --> 00:08:41.690 align:middle line:84% consists of a noun phrase-- "anything"-- 00:08:41.690 --> 00:08:45.440 align:middle line:84% then it's unsurprising that it's bad. 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:47.240 align:middle line:84% It's bad, well, because "anything" 00:08:47.240 --> 00:08:50.040 align:middle line:84% doesn't have any negation anywhere to make it happy. 00:08:50.040 --> 00:08:50.540 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:08:50.540 --> 00:08:51.770 align:middle line:90% That's what NPIs need-- 00:08:51.770 --> 00:08:54.980 align:middle line:90% Negative Polarity Items. 00:08:54.980 --> 00:08:57.050 align:middle line:84% Getting back to your point-- if the question 00:08:57.050 --> 00:08:58.640 align:middle line:90% was, "What will you eat?" 00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:01.430 align:middle line:90% a possible answer is "anything." 00:09:01.430 --> 00:09:03.560 align:middle line:84% You can also do the free choice version of "any." 00:09:03.560 --> 00:09:06.378 align:middle line:90% 00:09:06.378 --> 00:09:08.420 align:middle line:84% If we want to think about this as ellipsis-- that 00:09:08.420 --> 00:09:11.270 align:middle line:84% is, if we want to think of it as, I ask you "What did you 00:09:11.270 --> 00:09:15.410 align:middle line:84% see?" and you are in some sense saying, "I saw anything," well, 00:09:15.410 --> 00:09:17.480 align:middle line:84% that's bad because "I saw anything" is bad. 00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:19.760 align:middle line:84% There's no negation in the sentence. 00:09:19.760 --> 00:09:22.010 align:middle line:84% And I guess what we're learning-- maybe you remember-- 00:09:22.010 --> 00:09:23.510 align:middle line:84% when we were talking about ellipsis, 00:09:23.510 --> 00:09:27.530 align:middle line:84% we talked about the fact that when you do ellipsis-- 00:09:27.530 --> 00:09:35.450 align:middle line:84% when you say things like, "John likes his father, 00:09:35.450 --> 00:09:41.180 align:middle line:84% and Bill does too," there's some kind of requirement 00:09:41.180 --> 00:09:43.040 align:middle line:90% that the missing phrase-- 00:09:43.040 --> 00:09:44.840 align:middle line:84% the missing verb phrase, in this case-- 00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:46.722 align:middle line:84% be the same as another verb phrase 00:09:46.722 --> 00:09:48.680 align:middle line:84% and we talked about the fact that you sometimes 00:09:48.680 --> 00:09:51.760 align:middle line:84% have to do some work to figure out what counts as the same. 00:09:51.760 --> 00:09:54.620 align:middle line:84% So we decided that this was an ambiguous sentence. 00:09:54.620 --> 00:09:58.310 align:middle line:84% "John likes his father, and Bill does too" can mean at least 00:09:58.310 --> 00:10:02.150 align:middle line:84% two things, possibly some others as well. 00:10:02.150 --> 00:10:03.940 align:middle line:84% It's unclear whose father we're talking 00:10:03.940 --> 00:10:05.860 align:middle line:90% about in this second clause. 00:10:05.860 --> 00:10:06.590 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:10:06.590 --> 00:10:10.510 align:middle line:84% So this could mean that John and Bill both like John's father, 00:10:10.510 --> 00:10:14.020 align:middle line:84% or that John likes John's father and Bill likes Bill's father. 00:10:14.020 --> 00:10:15.520 align:middle line:84% I guess it could also mean that they 00:10:15.520 --> 00:10:17.170 align:middle line:90% both like Seymour's father-- 00:10:17.170 --> 00:10:19.090 align:middle line:90% some other person. 00:10:19.090 --> 00:10:20.300 align:middle line:90% It could mean that. 00:10:20.300 --> 00:10:20.800 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:25.750 align:middle line:84% So when we do ellipsis, we have something that's missing, 00:10:25.750 --> 00:10:29.273 align:middle line:84% that is understood as being the same as something that's there. 00:10:29.273 --> 00:10:31.690 align:middle line:84% And I guess what we're learning here is that if I ask you, 00:10:31.690 --> 00:10:34.450 align:middle line:84% "What did you see?", if we want to think of that as involving 00:10:34.450 --> 00:10:37.810 align:middle line:84% ellipsis, we want to think of ourselves as being required 00:10:37.810 --> 00:10:42.550 align:middle line:90% to fill in "I saw anything." 00:10:42.550 --> 00:10:46.180 align:middle line:84% We don't, for example, have the option of putting in 00:10:46.180 --> 00:10:47.887 align:middle line:90% "didn't see." 00:10:47.887 --> 00:10:49.720 align:middle line:84% And that's got something to do with the fact 00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:51.730 align:middle line:84% that the question doesn't have negation in it. 00:10:51.730 --> 00:10:53.150 align:middle line:90% It's a positive question. 00:10:53.150 --> 00:10:55.720 align:middle line:84% So a couple of ways of not being surprised by this fact. 00:10:55.720 --> 00:10:59.210 align:middle line:84% Is everybody sufficiently unsurprised? 00:10:59.210 --> 00:11:00.890 align:middle line:84% How do you answer a question like this? 00:11:00.890 --> 00:11:02.465 align:middle line:90% "What did you see?" 00:11:02.465 --> 00:11:07.320 align:middle line:84% Well, one way you can do it is by saying "Nothing." 00:11:07.320 --> 00:11:09.390 align:middle line:84% So we have another kind of expression 00:11:09.390 --> 00:11:12.210 align:middle line:84% that you use that's negative all by itself. 00:11:12.210 --> 00:11:13.770 align:middle line:90% It's not an NPI. 00:11:13.770 --> 00:11:17.202 align:middle line:84% It doesn't need to combine with negation. 00:11:17.202 --> 00:11:18.227 align:middle line:90% OK so far? 00:11:18.227 --> 00:11:20.060 align:middle line:84% I'm just describing facts about the language 00:11:20.060 --> 00:11:22.663 align:middle line:90% that I'm speaking-- 00:11:22.663 --> 00:11:24.330 align:middle line:84% not just the language that I'm speaking. 00:11:24.330 --> 00:11:26.820 align:middle line:84% There are plenty of languages like this out there. 00:11:26.820 --> 00:11:28.710 align:middle line:84% Here are some Greek data that are the same. 00:11:28.710 --> 00:11:33.058 align:middle line:84% So in Greek there's an expression, [GREEK],, 00:11:33.058 --> 00:11:34.100 align:middle line:90% which is like "anything." 00:11:34.100 --> 00:11:36.220 align:middle line:90% Anybody here speak Greek? 00:11:36.220 --> 00:11:36.720 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:38.345 align:middle line:84% Then I won't mispronounce Greek at you. 00:11:38.345 --> 00:11:40.200 align:middle line:90% I'm afraid I don't speak Greek. 00:11:40.200 --> 00:11:42.120 align:middle line:90% [GREEK]-- that means "anything." 00:11:42.120 --> 00:11:44.490 align:middle line:84% And it combines with the Greek word 00:11:44.490 --> 00:11:46.770 align:middle line:90% for "not," which is "then." 00:11:46.770 --> 00:11:49.260 align:middle line:84% And so you can say in Greek, literally, 00:11:49.260 --> 00:11:52.710 align:middle line:84% "He or she didn't see anything," with "not"-- 00:11:52.710 --> 00:11:55.950 align:middle line:84% [GREEK]---- but [GREEK] can't be in a positive sentence. 00:11:55.950 --> 00:11:57.930 align:middle line:84% You can't say, "He or she saw anything." 00:11:57.930 --> 00:12:00.600 align:middle line:84% And before anybody asks, I don't know how to say things like, 00:12:00.600 --> 00:12:01.980 align:middle line:90% "I will eat anything" in Greek. 00:12:01.980 --> 00:12:04.240 align:middle line:84% I don't know whether they can do that here. 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:04.740 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:12:04.740 --> 00:12:08.650 align:middle line:84% So this is just to show you when we were talking about NPIs, 00:12:08.650 --> 00:12:09.900 align:middle line:90% we were talking about English. 00:12:09.900 --> 00:12:11.220 align:middle line:84% But it's not just an English thing. 00:12:11.220 --> 00:12:13.350 align:middle line:84% It's cross-linguistically very common to have NPIs 00:12:13.350 --> 00:12:15.600 align:middle line:84% and for them to behave this way-- 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:17.340 align:middle line:90% NPIs-- Negative Polarity Items. 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:19.910 align:middle line:90% 00:12:19.910 --> 00:12:23.220 align:middle line:84% But there is another kind of language out there. 00:12:23.220 --> 00:12:26.720 align:middle line:90% Here's a Ukrainian sentence. 00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:30.050 align:middle line:84% In Ukrainian, if I ask you, "Who did you tell?" 00:12:30.050 --> 00:12:31.803 align:middle line:84% A possible response is this word, 00:12:31.803 --> 00:12:33.470 align:middle line:84% which I won't try to pronounce because I 00:12:33.470 --> 00:12:34.790 align:middle line:90% don't speak Ukrainian. 00:12:34.790 --> 00:12:37.040 align:middle line:84% We might as well translate it as "nobody" 00:12:37.040 --> 00:12:39.500 align:middle line:84% because it's a possible response that 00:12:39.500 --> 00:12:43.468 align:middle line:90% means "I didn't tell anybody." 00:12:43.468 --> 00:12:45.260 align:middle line:84% Anybody want to pronounce this word for us? 00:12:45.260 --> 00:12:45.650 align:middle line:90% Do you-- 00:12:45.650 --> 00:12:46.430 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [UKRAINIAN] 00:12:46.430 --> 00:12:47.000 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: [UKRAINIAN]? 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:47.240 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:12:47.240 --> 00:12:47.740 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:12:47.740 --> 00:12:50.320 align:middle line:90% 00:12:50.320 --> 00:12:52.450 align:middle line:84% But Ukrainian is different from English 00:12:52.450 --> 00:12:55.340 align:middle line:84% in that the same word, [UKRAINIAN],, 00:12:55.340 --> 00:12:58.100 align:middle line:90% can combine with their negation. 00:12:58.100 --> 00:13:01.460 align:middle line:90% So it's not an NPI. 00:13:01.460 --> 00:13:03.350 align:middle line:84% It can combine with their negation. 00:13:03.350 --> 00:13:05.773 align:middle line:84% And the result is a single negation. 00:13:05.773 --> 00:13:08.315 align:middle line:84% So if you want to say, "I didn't tell anybody," in Ukrainian, 00:13:08.315 --> 00:13:10.940 align:middle line:84% you say [UKRAINIAN]---- that same word that you would use 00:13:10.940 --> 00:13:13.760 align:middle line:84% to answer the question, "Who did you tell?" 00:13:13.760 --> 00:13:16.590 align:middle line:84% We could think of that word as meaning "nobody." 00:13:16.590 --> 00:13:19.260 align:middle line:84% But if you want to say, "I didn't 00:13:19.260 --> 00:13:21.240 align:middle line:84% tell anybody," in Ukrainian, you use that word. 00:13:21.240 --> 00:13:23.580 align:middle line:84% And you also use the word for "not." 00:13:23.580 --> 00:13:27.720 align:middle line:84% So you say, literally, "I didn't tell nobody." 00:13:27.720 --> 00:13:29.280 align:middle line:90% But they don't have-- 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:31.510 align:middle line:84% so the word-- that doesn't mean-- 00:13:31.510 --> 00:13:33.240 align:middle line:84% so that means "I didn't tell anybody." 00:13:33.240 --> 00:13:34.198 align:middle line:90% That's what that means. 00:13:34.198 --> 00:13:37.800 align:middle line:90% 00:13:37.800 --> 00:13:41.550 align:middle line:84% Ukrainian is not the only language like this. 00:13:41.550 --> 00:13:42.760 align:middle line:90% Italian is like that. 00:13:42.760 --> 00:13:45.660 align:middle line:84% So in Italian, if I ask you, "What did you say see?" 00:13:45.660 --> 00:13:47.850 align:middle line:84% you can say in Italian, "niente." 00:13:47.850 --> 00:13:50.680 align:middle line:84% So we can translate "niente" as "nothing." 00:13:50.680 --> 00:13:52.680 align:middle line:84% But if you want to say, "I didn't see anything," 00:13:52.680 --> 00:13:55.050 align:middle line:84% in Italian, you say, "Non ho visto niente,"-- 00:13:55.050 --> 00:13:58.590 align:middle line:84% literally, "I have not seen nothing." 00:13:58.590 --> 00:14:03.580 align:middle line:84% "I have not seen 'niente.'" So this is a different system. 00:14:03.580 --> 00:14:05.260 align:middle line:90% In English, we have these-- 00:14:05.260 --> 00:14:08.110 align:middle line:84% the language I'm speaking, in Greek as well-- 00:14:08.110 --> 00:14:10.570 align:middle line:84% we have these expressions-- these negative polarity 00:14:10.570 --> 00:14:12.430 align:middle line:84% expressions-- which aren't possible 00:14:12.430 --> 00:14:15.495 align:middle line:84% answers to positive questions like, "What did you see?" 00:14:15.495 --> 00:14:16.870 align:middle line:84% If I ask you, "What did you see," 00:14:16.870 --> 00:14:18.010 align:middle line:90% you cannot say "anything." 00:14:18.010 --> 00:14:19.600 align:middle line:90% You have to say, "nothing." 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:22.990 align:middle line:84% If we use that as a test for whether we're looking at an NPI 00:14:22.990 --> 00:14:25.480 align:middle line:84% or not-- as a test for figuring out whether we're looking 00:14:25.480 --> 00:14:28.300 align:middle line:84% at "anything" or "nothing," then Ukrainian 00:14:28.300 --> 00:14:30.460 align:middle line:84% and Italian and many other languages 00:14:30.460 --> 00:14:31.510 align:middle line:90% have a different system. 00:14:31.510 --> 00:14:34.240 align:middle line:84% One in which instead of having NPIs, 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:37.010 align:middle line:84% you have these expressions which express negation 00:14:37.010 --> 00:14:38.110 align:middle line:90% all by themselves-- 00:14:38.110 --> 00:14:40.840 align:middle line:84% [UKRAINIAN] and [ITALIAN],, which mean things like "nobody" 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:43.150 align:middle line:84% or "nothing"-- that can be answers to questions like, 00:14:43.150 --> 00:14:45.490 align:middle line:84% "Who did you tell?" or "What did you see?" 00:14:45.490 --> 00:14:49.900 align:middle line:84% But in question-- statements that are longer than that-- 00:14:49.900 --> 00:14:51.850 align:middle line:90% they don't have ellipses-- 00:14:51.850 --> 00:14:54.280 align:middle line:84% if you want to say things like "I didn't see anything" 00:14:54.280 --> 00:14:56.830 align:middle line:84% or "I didn't tell anybody," you use these same expressions. 00:14:56.830 --> 00:14:59.200 align:middle line:84% There isn't a specialized class of NPIs, 00:14:59.200 --> 00:15:02.050 align:middle line:84% at least not for this kind of sentence. 00:15:02.050 --> 00:15:04.400 align:middle line:90% Is that clear? 00:15:04.400 --> 00:15:06.780 align:middle line:90% Does that make sense? 00:15:06.780 --> 00:15:08.570 align:middle line:84% The second kind of language is sometimes 00:15:08.570 --> 00:15:10.890 align:middle line:84% called a negative concord language. 00:15:10.890 --> 00:15:14.280 align:middle line:84% And let me give you some background for that. 00:15:14.280 --> 00:15:16.290 align:middle line:84% Concord is a phenomenon which I think we haven't 00:15:16.290 --> 00:15:18.028 align:middle line:90% talked about in this class. 00:15:18.028 --> 00:15:20.070 align:middle line:84% There are plenty of languages out there in which, 00:15:20.070 --> 00:15:24.120 align:middle line:84% when you have a noun phrase that has multiple things in it-- 00:15:24.120 --> 00:15:25.860 align:middle line:84% say it has-- there are adjectives 00:15:25.860 --> 00:15:27.682 align:middle line:90% or there are demonstratives. 00:15:27.682 --> 00:15:30.366 align:middle line:90% 00:15:30.366 --> 00:15:34.170 align:middle line:84% There will be morphology on the noun of the kind 00:15:34.170 --> 00:15:36.090 align:middle line:84% that we have talked about a little bit-- 00:15:36.090 --> 00:15:39.450 align:middle line:84% morphology that indicates things like, this is masculine, 00:15:39.450 --> 00:15:40.660 align:middle line:90% or this is feminine. 00:15:40.660 --> 00:15:43.080 align:middle line:84% It tells you what noun class the noun is in. 00:15:43.080 --> 00:15:46.320 align:middle line:84% Or it'll tell you whether the noun is singular or plural. 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:47.820 align:middle line:84% Or sometimes there'll be morphology 00:15:47.820 --> 00:15:49.680 align:middle line:84% telling you the case of the noun, 00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:54.220 align:middle line:84% whether it's a subject or an object or something else. 00:15:54.220 --> 00:15:55.917 align:middle line:84% So Italian is a language, for example, 00:15:55.917 --> 00:15:57.000 align:middle line:90% in which there's concord-- 00:15:57.000 --> 00:15:59.640 align:middle line:84% the word for "butterfly" in Italian is "farfalla." 00:15:59.640 --> 00:16:02.850 align:middle line:84% And the "ah" at the end marks the butterfly 00:16:02.850 --> 00:16:05.350 align:middle line:84% as being singular and also feminine. 00:16:05.350 --> 00:16:07.200 align:middle line:90% It's in the feminine noun class. 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:09.363 align:middle line:90% It's of the feminine gender. 00:16:09.363 --> 00:16:11.280 align:middle line:84% And to say that it's of the feminine gender is 00:16:11.280 --> 00:16:13.280 align:middle line:84% to say that if you want to modify this butterfly 00:16:13.280 --> 00:16:14.910 align:middle line:90% with adjectives-- 00:16:14.910 --> 00:16:17.610 align:middle line:84% a beautiful butterfly is a "farfalla bella" 00:16:17.610 --> 00:16:21.420 align:middle line:84% So you use the feminine marker on the adjective 00:16:21.420 --> 00:16:22.585 align:middle line:90% as well as on the noun. 00:16:22.585 --> 00:16:24.960 align:middle line:84% And if you want to say, "this beautiful butterfly," well, 00:16:24.960 --> 00:16:26.252 align:middle line:90% you use that "ah" again. 00:16:26.252 --> 00:16:28.710 align:middle line:84% So "this beautiful butterfly"-- you can see there are three 00:16:28.710 --> 00:16:31.470 align:middle line:84% "ahs," all of them saying over and over again, 00:16:31.470 --> 00:16:34.470 align:middle line:84% this butterfly is feminine and singular. 00:16:34.470 --> 00:16:37.050 align:middle line:84% You don't just realize that fact on the butterfly itself. 00:16:37.050 --> 00:16:41.280 align:middle line:84% You realize it all over the noun phrase. 00:16:41.280 --> 00:16:42.750 align:middle line:90% And if any of you have studied-- 00:16:42.750 --> 00:16:46.200 align:middle line:84% this is cross-linguistically a very popular phenomenon. 00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:48.258 align:middle line:84% It's all over the Indo-European languages. 00:16:48.258 --> 00:16:49.800 align:middle line:84% English doesn't have it because we're 00:16:49.800 --> 00:16:53.580 align:middle line:84% not big on morphology in general but especially not 00:16:53.580 --> 00:16:54.135 align:middle line:90% on our nouns. 00:16:54.135 --> 00:16:57.150 align:middle line:90% 00:16:57.150 --> 00:16:58.630 align:middle line:90% But it's widespread. 00:16:58.630 --> 00:17:01.770 align:middle line:84% If you study Italian, or Spanish, or French, or German, 00:17:01.770 --> 00:17:05.130 align:middle line:84% you'll have to learn about things like this. 00:17:05.130 --> 00:17:07.390 align:middle line:84% And it's found outside Indo-European as well. 00:17:07.390 --> 00:17:09.060 align:middle line:84% So there's a Lardil example here-- 00:17:09.060 --> 00:17:11.069 align:middle line:90% [LARDIL], "this big rock." 00:17:11.069 --> 00:17:12.420 align:middle line:90% This is an accusative big rock. 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:14.520 align:middle line:84% It's the kind of phrase you'd use to say, 00:17:14.520 --> 00:17:17.010 align:middle line:90% "I picked up this big rock." 00:17:17.010 --> 00:17:17.910 align:middle line:90% It's an object. 00:17:17.910 --> 00:17:20.130 align:middle line:84% You're going to mark the rock with accusative, 00:17:20.130 --> 00:17:22.740 align:middle line:84% but also the word for "this" and the word for "big." 00:17:22.740 --> 00:17:25.290 align:middle line:90% So this is called concord. 00:17:25.290 --> 00:17:27.240 align:middle line:84% And there's an Icelandic example there which 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:29.790 align:middle line:84% I took from a paper-- "four little snails," which 00:17:29.790 --> 00:17:31.230 align:middle line:90% are nominative. 00:17:31.230 --> 00:17:33.215 align:middle line:84% "Four" and "little" and "snails" all 00:17:33.215 --> 00:17:34.590 align:middle line:84% have suffixes on them telling you 00:17:34.590 --> 00:17:38.760 align:middle line:84% that the snails are nominative and masculine and plural. 00:17:38.760 --> 00:17:44.380 align:middle line:84% So Italian has concord for number and gender-- 00:17:44.380 --> 00:17:46.170 align:middle line:90% so feminine and singular. 00:17:46.170 --> 00:17:48.450 align:middle line:84% Lardil has concord just for case. 00:17:48.450 --> 00:17:51.330 align:middle line:84% Icelandic has concord for all three-- 00:17:51.330 --> 00:17:53.230 align:middle line:90% case, number, and gender. 00:17:53.230 --> 00:17:55.737 align:middle line:90% So concord-- it's a phenomenon. 00:17:55.737 --> 00:17:57.570 align:middle line:84% It's a phenomenon with the following shape-- 00:17:57.570 --> 00:18:02.070 align:middle line:84% sometimes a fact-- in this case, say the fact 00:18:02.070 --> 00:18:04.770 align:middle line:84% that a noun is feminine, or that it's singular, 00:18:04.770 --> 00:18:07.585 align:middle line:84% or that its accusative is marked not just on the noun 00:18:07.585 --> 00:18:09.210 align:middle line:84% but on a bunch of things near the noun, 00:18:09.210 --> 00:18:11.880 align:middle line:84% and so the noun, but also adjectives and demonstratives 00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:13.350 align:middle line:90% and other kinds of things. 00:18:13.350 --> 00:18:15.900 align:middle line:90% It's called concord. 00:18:15.900 --> 00:18:19.500 align:middle line:84% And to say that these languages are negative concord languages 00:18:19.500 --> 00:18:22.647 align:middle line:84% is to say, yeah, in a language like Italian, 00:18:22.647 --> 00:18:24.480 align:middle line:84% if you want to say, "I didn't see anything," 00:18:24.480 --> 00:18:27.720 align:middle line:84% you're going to mark negation not just in what's called 00:18:27.720 --> 00:18:30.240 align:middle line:84% sentential negation-- the Italian word for "not" 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:31.680 align:middle line:90% which is "non"-- 00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:32.910 align:middle line:90% yes, you'll use that word. 00:18:32.910 --> 00:18:35.230 align:middle line:84% But you'll also mark it on the object. 00:18:35.230 --> 00:18:40.230 align:middle line:84% So you will say, in effect, "I not saw nothing." 00:18:40.230 --> 00:18:42.510 align:middle line:84% That's how you do this in Italian, or Ukrainian, 00:18:42.510 --> 00:18:45.780 align:middle line:84% or Russian, or a zillion other languages-- 00:18:45.780 --> 00:18:48.330 align:middle line:84% lots of languages that do this-- negative concord languages. 00:18:48.330 --> 00:18:51.830 align:middle line:90% 00:18:51.830 --> 00:18:55.430 align:middle line:84% Now, we have talked about English 00:18:55.430 --> 00:18:57.960 align:middle line:84% as though English has negative polarity items. 00:18:57.960 --> 00:19:01.980 align:middle line:84% And that is true of the version of English that I am speaking. 00:19:01.980 --> 00:19:04.960 align:middle line:84% But there are other versions of English 00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:08.620 align:middle line:84% in which there is, instead, negative concord. 00:19:08.620 --> 00:19:11.290 align:middle line:84% So there are versions of English in which the right way 00:19:11.290 --> 00:19:13.360 align:middle line:84% to say, "I didn't see anything," is, 00:19:13.360 --> 00:19:18.940 align:middle line:84% "I didn't see nothing," in which that's the way you say this. 00:19:18.940 --> 00:19:21.760 align:middle line:84% Has anybody encountered this version of English? 00:19:21.760 --> 00:19:24.920 align:middle line:84% Did anybody grow up speaking this version of English? 00:19:24.920 --> 00:19:25.420 align:middle line:90% Yes? 00:19:25.420 --> 00:19:25.840 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:19:25.840 --> 00:19:26.380 align:middle line:90% Sort of. 00:19:26.380 --> 00:19:27.520 align:middle line:90% So I grew up in Alabama. 00:19:27.520 --> 00:19:31.630 align:middle line:84% I was surrounded by people who spoke this version of English. 00:19:31.630 --> 00:19:33.820 align:middle line:84% I grew up in Alabama in a university town. 00:19:33.820 --> 00:19:35.410 align:middle line:84% My parents are from further north, 00:19:35.410 --> 00:19:38.660 align:middle line:84% so I have always had the accent that I have. 00:19:38.660 --> 00:19:42.460 align:middle line:84% It made-- it was the beginning of a long life of being 00:19:42.460 --> 00:19:48.010 align:middle line:84% peculiar, surrounded by people who talk differently than me. 00:19:48.010 --> 00:19:50.710 align:middle line:84% And one of the things that I did was 00:19:50.710 --> 00:19:56.290 align:middle line:84% that I spoke negative polarity item English, not negative 00:19:56.290 --> 00:19:58.480 align:middle line:90% concord English. 00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:01.510 align:middle line:84% But we were given tests when I was a kid-- 00:20:01.510 --> 00:20:04.120 align:middle line:84% I noticed recently my son, who's in fifth grade, 00:20:04.120 --> 00:20:06.160 align:middle line:84% he's also given tests and homework 00:20:06.160 --> 00:20:12.470 align:middle line:84% assignments in which he is asked to fix problems with sentences. 00:20:12.470 --> 00:20:16.030 align:middle line:84% So sometimes the sentences-- the capitalization is wrong, 00:20:16.030 --> 00:20:19.460 align:middle line:84% or there's a word that's misspelled, or the punctuation 00:20:19.460 --> 00:20:19.960 align:middle line:90% is wrong. 00:20:19.960 --> 00:20:22.660 align:middle line:84% But sometimes the sentences have negative concord in them. 00:20:22.660 --> 00:20:24.982 align:middle line:84% And his job is to say, no, that's not the right way 00:20:24.982 --> 00:20:25.690 align:middle line:90% to speak English. 00:20:25.690 --> 00:20:28.090 align:middle line:84% You should speak-- you should have NPIs. 00:20:28.090 --> 00:20:30.250 align:middle line:84% You shouldn't have negative concord. 00:20:30.250 --> 00:20:32.410 align:middle line:84% I remember taking tests like that too. 00:20:32.410 --> 00:20:34.900 align:middle line:84% Those of you who grew up in English-speaking places, 00:20:34.900 --> 00:20:37.503 align:middle line:84% do you remember being given tests like this? 00:20:37.503 --> 00:20:38.920 align:middle line:84% So these are tests in which people 00:20:38.920 --> 00:20:41.830 align:middle line:84% are checking which dialect of English do you speak? 00:20:41.830 --> 00:20:44.740 align:middle line:84% Are you from a checkers family or a chess family? 00:20:44.740 --> 00:20:46.900 align:middle line:84% And if you're from a checkers family, 00:20:46.900 --> 00:20:48.610 align:middle line:90% these tests are easy for you. 00:20:48.610 --> 00:20:50.990 align:middle line:84% Because, well, checkers is what you play at home. 00:20:50.990 --> 00:20:52.580 align:middle line:90% Yeah, it's easy. 00:20:52.580 --> 00:20:54.340 align:middle line:84% But if you're from a chess family, 00:20:54.340 --> 00:20:55.840 align:middle line:84% then you have to remember, oh, yeah, 00:20:55.840 --> 00:20:57.590 align:middle line:84% I'm surrounded by people who don't believe 00:20:57.590 --> 00:20:59.620 align:middle line:90% in the existence of chess. 00:20:59.620 --> 00:21:01.030 align:middle line:90% They only believe in checkers. 00:21:01.030 --> 00:21:04.450 align:middle line:84% And so it's your job to try to pretend 00:21:04.450 --> 00:21:06.700 align:middle line:84% to be a speaker of this other dialect of English. 00:21:06.700 --> 00:21:09.590 align:middle line:84% To put it another way, if you're growing up in the States-- 00:21:09.590 --> 00:21:11.590 align:middle line:84% and I think this is not just true of the States. 00:21:11.590 --> 00:21:14.020 align:middle line:84% This is pretty common in a lot of places. 00:21:14.020 --> 00:21:16.840 align:middle line:84% There are a variety of ways to speak the majority language. 00:21:16.840 --> 00:21:21.550 align:middle line:84% And there's a certain set of them that are approved-- 00:21:21.550 --> 00:21:23.290 align:middle line:90% that schools approve of. 00:21:23.290 --> 00:21:25.660 align:middle line:84% And there are others that schools 00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:28.120 align:middle line:84% feel it's their job to try to steer you away from, 00:21:28.120 --> 00:21:30.520 align:middle line:84% even if it's, in fact, your native language. 00:21:30.520 --> 00:21:34.660 align:middle line:84% This is a tricky position for schools to be in. 00:21:34.660 --> 00:21:38.310 align:middle line:84% Does this ring true with your experiences in school? 00:21:38.310 --> 00:21:40.370 align:middle line:90% Do you remember doing this? 00:21:40.370 --> 00:21:43.430 align:middle line:84% There's this weird disconnect between different kinds 00:21:43.430 --> 00:21:44.360 align:middle line:90% of things that happen. 00:21:44.360 --> 00:21:46.250 align:middle line:84% Negative concord is the kind of thing 00:21:46.250 --> 00:21:49.770 align:middle line:84% that I was explicitly taught not to do. 00:21:49.770 --> 00:21:51.500 align:middle line:84% And when I was growing up in Alabama, 00:21:51.500 --> 00:21:53.210 align:middle line:84% I could see why they were teaching us 00:21:53.210 --> 00:21:56.840 align:middle line:84% not to do this because, well, I was surrounded 00:21:56.840 --> 00:21:58.080 align:middle line:90% by people who were doing it. 00:21:58.080 --> 00:22:01.820 align:middle line:84% And so you could see why the teachers felt as though they 00:22:01.820 --> 00:22:02.960 align:middle line:90% had to stamp it out. 00:22:02.960 --> 00:22:05.960 align:middle line:84% Like I said, it wasn't my dialect of English, so it was-- 00:22:05.960 --> 00:22:08.540 align:middle line:90% these tests were easier for me. 00:22:08.540 --> 00:22:14.570 align:middle line:84% There are other kinds of things that are not-- 00:22:14.570 --> 00:22:18.230 align:middle line:90% not been targeted by education. 00:22:18.230 --> 00:22:20.630 align:middle line:84% And so they have a different status. 00:22:20.630 --> 00:22:22.137 align:middle line:90% This is another one. 00:22:22.137 --> 00:22:24.470 align:middle line:84% The percentage sign at the beginning of this sentence is 00:22:24.470 --> 00:22:27.800 align:middle line:84% a mark linguists sometimes use to indicate that some speakers 00:22:27.800 --> 00:22:29.048 align:middle line:90% accept this and others don't. 00:22:29.048 --> 00:22:30.590 align:middle line:84% It's what the percentage sign is for. 00:22:30.590 --> 00:22:32.240 align:middle line:84% So you guys have seen stars on things 00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:34.918 align:middle line:84% that say they're ungrammatical-- other kinds of marks-- 00:22:34.918 --> 00:22:37.460 align:middle line:84% percentage sign says a certain percentage of English speakers 00:22:37.460 --> 00:22:38.870 align:middle line:90% can say this. 00:22:38.870 --> 00:22:40.160 align:middle line:90% So I grew up with this. 00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:42.278 align:middle line:90% It's called positive anymore. 00:22:42.278 --> 00:22:43.820 align:middle line:84% This is a version of English in which 00:22:43.820 --> 00:22:45.860 align:middle line:84% you can say things like "I used to walk to work, 00:22:45.860 --> 00:22:49.540 align:middle line:90% but anymore, I take the T." 00:22:49.540 --> 00:22:52.640 align:middle line:84% Is there anybody here who can do this? 00:22:52.640 --> 00:22:53.300 align:middle line:90% Yes? 00:22:53.300 --> 00:22:54.215 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:22:54.215 --> 00:22:56.570 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: My brother talks like that a lot. 00:22:56.570 --> 00:22:58.310 align:middle line:84% And I think it has to do with the fact 00:22:58.310 --> 00:23:04.350 align:middle line:84% that in Spanish, the word "ya," and "yano," is "anymore," 00:23:04.350 --> 00:23:06.272 align:middle line:90% or "already," or "now." 00:23:06.272 --> 00:23:07.730 align:middle line:84% And it can kind of mean "anything." 00:23:07.730 --> 00:23:08.480 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, that's interesting. 00:23:08.480 --> 00:23:09.230 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:23:09.230 --> 00:23:10.188 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: OK. 00:23:10.188 --> 00:23:11.107 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:23:11.107 --> 00:23:12.690 align:middle line:84% Is there anybody else who can do this? 00:23:12.690 --> 00:23:13.890 align:middle line:84% Is there anybody who is looking at this 00:23:13.890 --> 00:23:16.590 align:middle line:84% and wondering if I suffered some kind of injury on the way 00:23:16.590 --> 00:23:19.060 align:middle line:84% to class today, and this can't possibly-- yeah. 00:23:19.060 --> 00:23:19.560 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:23:19.560 --> 00:23:22.440 align:middle line:84% So I often-- when I get to this slide in this lecture, 00:23:22.440 --> 00:23:23.610 align:middle line:90% I get these kinds of looks. 00:23:23.610 --> 00:23:25.290 align:middle line:90% They're like, what? 00:23:25.290 --> 00:23:27.715 align:middle line:84% So I don't come from a Spanish-speaking background. 00:23:27.715 --> 00:23:29.340 align:middle line:84% I come from a West Virginia background. 00:23:29.340 --> 00:23:31.080 align:middle line:84% So my mother is from West Virginia. 00:23:31.080 --> 00:23:33.270 align:middle line:84% And positive anymore is a feature 00:23:33.270 --> 00:23:35.880 align:middle line:84% of the area around West Virginia and Pennsylvania. 00:23:35.880 --> 00:23:38.560 align:middle line:84% There's this place where, if you go there, 00:23:38.560 --> 00:23:40.950 align:middle line:84% you will hear people saying things like this. 00:23:40.950 --> 00:23:44.410 align:middle line:84% It means something like, "these days." 00:23:44.410 --> 00:23:49.110 align:middle line:84% "Anymore"-- so "Anymore I take the T," means, "as of now, 00:23:49.110 --> 00:23:49.860 align:middle line:90% I take the T." 00:23:49.860 --> 00:23:51.270 align:middle line:90% For me, at least-- 00:23:51.270 --> 00:23:53.250 align:middle line:84% I was doing some googling about it. 00:23:53.250 --> 00:23:55.470 align:middle line:84% It's most common in places like this 00:23:55.470 --> 00:23:59.190 align:middle line:84% where you're contrasting the modern day with the past. 00:23:59.190 --> 00:24:00.570 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:24:00.570 --> 00:24:04.410 align:middle line:84% So here's another place where my English is odd. 00:24:04.410 --> 00:24:06.010 align:middle line:84% And I'm very much in the minority. 00:24:06.010 --> 00:24:09.430 align:middle line:84% So there's me, and there's Faith sort of, and Faith's brother. 00:24:09.430 --> 00:24:09.930 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:24:09.930 --> 00:24:11.565 align:middle line:84% And the rest of you have me outvoted. 00:24:11.565 --> 00:24:14.070 align:middle line:90% 00:24:14.070 --> 00:24:19.200 align:middle line:84% But this particular feature of a certain regional version 00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:23.130 align:middle line:84% of English is somehow not on the radar of the people who 00:24:23.130 --> 00:24:24.060 align:middle line:90% write textbooks. 00:24:24.060 --> 00:24:27.150 align:middle line:84% So I don't remember any teacher ever telling me not to do this. 00:24:27.150 --> 00:24:30.000 align:middle line:84% I think people didn't notice that I was doing this. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:31.050 align:middle line:90% I got away with it. 00:24:31.050 --> 00:24:34.230 align:middle line:90% 00:24:34.230 --> 00:24:37.830 align:middle line:84% But, yes, this is a feature of some versions of English. 00:24:37.830 --> 00:24:41.480 align:middle line:84% Or, similarly, we've talked about other things 00:24:41.480 --> 00:24:42.710 align:middle line:90% in this class. 00:24:42.710 --> 00:24:45.235 align:middle line:90% So people vary to the-- 00:24:45.235 --> 00:24:47.360 align:middle line:84% about the extent there are phonological differences 00:24:47.360 --> 00:24:49.160 align:middle line:84% between different versions of English. 00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:52.220 align:middle line:84% People vary with respect to whether the name "Mary," 00:24:52.220 --> 00:24:55.280 align:middle line:84% and the adjective "merry," and the verb "marry" 00:24:55.280 --> 00:24:56.240 align:middle line:90% sound the same. 00:24:56.240 --> 00:24:58.250 align:middle line:84% To me, they do all sound the same. 00:24:58.250 --> 00:25:01.160 align:middle line:84% But there are people for whom the verb, in particular, 00:25:01.160 --> 00:25:02.120 align:middle line:90% is "maeh-ry"-- 00:25:02.120 --> 00:25:03.660 align:middle line:90% a different vowel. 00:25:03.660 --> 00:25:05.660 align:middle line:84% And I believe there are even people for whom all 00:25:05.660 --> 00:25:07.500 align:middle line:84% three of them have different pronunciations. 00:25:07.500 --> 00:25:11.810 align:middle line:84% This is a feature of the area around New York and New Jersey, 00:25:11.810 --> 00:25:13.580 align:middle line:84% whether you speak like this or not. 00:25:13.580 --> 00:25:18.350 align:middle line:90% 00:25:18.350 --> 00:25:23.040 align:middle line:84% I grew up in Alabama where "pen" and "pin" sound pretty similar. 00:25:23.040 --> 00:25:26.210 align:middle line:90% They're both like "pin." 00:25:26.210 --> 00:25:30.650 align:middle line:84% I grew up in Alabama where the default word for a soft drink 00:25:30.650 --> 00:25:31.970 align:middle line:90% is a Coke. 00:25:31.970 --> 00:25:34.640 align:middle line:84% So a fizzy drink with lots of sugar in it-- 00:25:34.640 --> 00:25:36.800 align:middle line:90% I think-- now, let's see-- 00:25:36.800 --> 00:25:39.050 align:middle line:84% I live in a soda place now, right? 00:25:39.050 --> 00:25:42.200 align:middle line:84% Don't-- aren't we-- this is the soda part of the world? 00:25:42.200 --> 00:25:45.800 align:middle line:84% And there's a pop part of the world. 00:25:45.800 --> 00:25:48.710 align:middle line:84% Who here grew up saying soda for those kinds of drinks? 00:25:48.710 --> 00:25:51.286 align:middle line:90% Did anybody grow up saying pop? 00:25:51.286 --> 00:25:52.340 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: My mom did-- 00:25:52.340 --> 00:25:53.360 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Your mom did. 00:25:53.360 --> 00:25:53.810 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: --when she was a girl. 00:25:53.810 --> 00:25:54.545 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: And did she-- 00:25:54.545 --> 00:25:55.850 align:middle line:84% she survived to adulthood, didn't she? 00:25:55.850 --> 00:25:56.480 align:middle line:90% She's OK. 00:25:56.480 --> 00:25:56.645 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:25:56.645 --> 00:25:56.810 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yes. 00:25:56.810 --> 00:25:57.080 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:25:57.080 --> 00:25:57.440 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:25:57.440 --> 00:25:58.370 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER] 00:25:58.370 --> 00:26:01.037 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: And did anybody grow up saying Coke 00:26:01.037 --> 00:26:02.120 align:middle line:90% for these kinds of things? 00:26:02.120 --> 00:26:02.330 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:26:02.330 --> 00:26:03.890 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, well, yeah, Peter 00:26:03.890 --> 00:26:05.060 align:middle line:90% did because Peter is like me. 00:26:05.060 --> 00:26:05.600 align:middle line:90% He's from the South. 00:26:05.600 --> 00:26:06.290 align:middle line:90% Where are you from? 00:26:06.290 --> 00:26:07.220 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Mississippi. 00:26:07.220 --> 00:26:07.560 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah. 00:26:07.560 --> 00:26:08.150 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:26:08.150 --> 00:26:11.810 align:middle line:90% So Southerners-- represent. 00:26:11.810 --> 00:26:14.150 align:middle line:84% So in my version of English-- the version of English 00:26:14.150 --> 00:26:16.970 align:middle line:84% I grew up with, "Coke" was the default name 00:26:16.970 --> 00:26:17.970 align:middle line:90% for all of these things. 00:26:17.970 --> 00:26:20.700 align:middle line:84% It's kind of like "Xerox" for a copying machine or whatever. 00:26:20.700 --> 00:26:23.565 align:middle line:84% So people would ask questions like, "Would you like a Coke?" 00:26:23.565 --> 00:26:25.940 align:middle line:84% And if the answer was, "yes," the next question was, "OK. 00:26:25.940 --> 00:26:28.280 align:middle line:84% So would you like Sprite or Mountain Dew? 00:26:28.280 --> 00:26:30.920 align:middle line:90% Because that's what we've got." 00:26:30.920 --> 00:26:33.320 align:middle line:84% So "Coke" is just the default word 00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:34.760 align:middle line:90% for these kinds of beverages. 00:26:34.760 --> 00:26:37.700 align:middle line:90% 00:26:37.700 --> 00:26:42.170 align:middle line:84% Or-- and this is a place-- another place where languages 00:26:42.170 --> 00:26:44.960 align:middle line:84% or dialects of English vary a lot with each other-- 00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:48.830 align:middle line:84% English used to have a distinction between singular 00:26:48.830 --> 00:26:51.710 align:middle line:84% "you," which was pronounced "thou," 00:26:51.710 --> 00:26:55.010 align:middle line:84% and plural "you," which was pronounced "you." 00:26:55.010 --> 00:26:58.520 align:middle line:84% And the plural "you" was also used for formal. 00:26:58.520 --> 00:27:00.210 align:middle line:90% And then it kind of took over. 00:27:00.210 --> 00:27:02.780 align:middle line:84% So it got used both for singular and plural. 00:27:02.780 --> 00:27:05.600 align:middle line:84% And modern standard English-- the version of English that 00:27:05.600 --> 00:27:07.010 align:middle line:90% I'm currently speaking-- 00:27:07.010 --> 00:27:10.160 align:middle line:84% doesn't distinguish "you" singular and "you" plural. 00:27:10.160 --> 00:27:12.170 align:middle line:84% But it's handy being able to distinguish "you" 00:27:12.170 --> 00:27:13.910 align:middle line:90% singular and "you" plural. 00:27:13.910 --> 00:27:15.500 align:middle line:84% And so various dialects of English 00:27:15.500 --> 00:27:17.042 align:middle line:84% have come up with solutions for this. 00:27:17.042 --> 00:27:20.360 align:middle line:84% I come from the "y'all" part of the country. 00:27:20.360 --> 00:27:23.600 align:middle line:84% I used "y'all" until I came up here, 00:27:23.600 --> 00:27:26.030 align:middle line:84% and then I was mocked into coming up with other 00:27:26.030 --> 00:27:26.810 align:middle line:90% expressions. 00:27:26.810 --> 00:27:29.090 align:middle line:84% I seem to have fallen into "you guys" 00:27:29.090 --> 00:27:31.610 align:middle line:84% as the plural of you, which I wish 00:27:31.610 --> 00:27:33.680 align:middle line:84% I didn't have because "you guys" I think 00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:36.450 align:middle line:90% of as being markedly masculine. 00:27:36.450 --> 00:27:38.060 align:middle line:90% So I need to-- 00:27:38.060 --> 00:27:41.000 align:middle line:84% I don't know-- embark on a series of self-hypnosis 00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:43.670 align:middle line:84% sessions or something like that and get myself back to using 00:27:43.670 --> 00:27:45.140 align:middle line:90% "y'all." 00:27:45.140 --> 00:27:47.807 align:middle line:84% And then, there is, again, an area-- 00:27:47.807 --> 00:27:49.640 align:middle line:84% I think around Pittsburgh-- where people say 00:27:49.640 --> 00:27:51.970 align:middle line:84% "y'unz" as the-- or "you'ns" as the plural of you. 00:27:51.970 --> 00:27:54.470 align:middle line:84% Did anybody here grow up with an interesting plural for you? 00:27:54.470 --> 00:27:54.830 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:27:54.830 --> 00:27:55.430 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:27:55.430 --> 00:27:57.138 align:middle line:84% So, basically, when I lived in Minnesota, 00:27:57.138 --> 00:27:59.330 align:middle line:84% I grew up in a very small town with a very, very 00:27:59.330 --> 00:28:02.183 align:middle line:84% high Dutch population where a lot of people said "yous". 00:28:02.183 --> 00:28:03.350 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: "Yous"-- 00:28:03.350 --> 00:28:03.770 align:middle line:90% oh, yeah. 00:28:03.770 --> 00:28:04.820 align:middle line:90% I left "yous" out of here. 00:28:04.820 --> 00:28:06.070 align:middle line:90% Yeah, you're absolutely right. 00:28:06.070 --> 00:28:08.420 align:middle line:84% So "yous" is absolutely another option. 00:28:08.420 --> 00:28:11.380 align:middle line:84% Anybody else have another option? 00:28:11.380 --> 00:28:13.880 align:middle line:84% "Y'all"-- I think "y'all" is still markedly Southern, right? 00:28:13.880 --> 00:28:16.340 align:middle line:84% If I were to say, "y'all," people would think of me 00:28:16.340 --> 00:28:19.380 align:middle line:84% as being from Alabama, which I am. 00:28:19.380 --> 00:28:20.205 align:middle line:90% Raquel? 00:28:20.205 --> 00:28:23.340 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I've heard my mom and my uncle, 00:28:23.340 --> 00:28:26.790 align:middle line:84% who are both from Pittsburgh, saying "yenses" 00:28:26.790 --> 00:28:27.850 align:middle line:90% but like as a joke. 00:28:27.850 --> 00:28:28.590 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: "Yenses?" 00:28:28.590 --> 00:28:30.382 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I don't know if it's because they 00:28:30.382 --> 00:28:32.100 align:middle line:90% have heard people say "yenses." 00:28:32.100 --> 00:28:32.520 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Wow. 00:28:32.520 --> 00:28:34.020 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: It might have just been like a possessive thing, 00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:35.670 align:middle line:84% like "Yenses family is here" or something. 00:28:35.670 --> 00:28:36.450 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, oh, OK. 00:28:36.450 --> 00:28:36.770 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:28:36.770 --> 00:28:38.100 align:middle line:84% That I could kind of get a handle on. 00:28:38.100 --> 00:28:39.767 align:middle line:84% I thought of the plural as being "yens," 00:28:39.767 --> 00:28:41.425 align:middle line:90% but maybe there's also "yenses." 00:28:41.425 --> 00:28:43.050 align:middle line:84% This is a thing that happens, actually, 00:28:43.050 --> 00:28:44.670 align:middle line:84% that something that was already plural 00:28:44.670 --> 00:28:46.980 align:middle line:90% gets marked plural again. 00:28:46.980 --> 00:28:52.260 align:middle line:84% This is the story of "children," which plural of "child" 00:28:52.260 --> 00:28:54.600 align:middle line:90% used to be "childer." 00:28:54.600 --> 00:28:58.080 align:middle line:84% And then "-er" became a very uncommon-- in fact, "childer" 00:28:58.080 --> 00:29:00.360 align:middle line:84% was the only noun that had "-er" for it's plural. 00:29:00.360 --> 00:29:03.500 align:middle line:84% And so people just added another plural at the end 00:29:03.500 --> 00:29:05.820 align:middle line:90% that you get in "oxen." 00:29:05.820 --> 00:29:08.925 align:middle line:90% And so now it's like "childses." 00:29:08.925 --> 00:29:09.870 align:middle line:90% That's children. 00:29:09.870 --> 00:29:11.370 align:middle line:84% That's our modern word for "child." 00:29:11.370 --> 00:29:13.510 align:middle line:84% So the German plural for child, "Kinder," 00:29:13.510 --> 00:29:18.660 align:middle line:84% still has that "-er"-- that "er" suffix, [? single. ?] 00:29:18.660 --> 00:29:22.530 align:middle line:84% So big surprise-- there are different dialects of English. 00:29:22.530 --> 00:29:25.065 align:middle line:84% There are different dialects of lots of different languages. 00:29:25.065 --> 00:29:29.050 align:middle line:84% I'm bringing this up for a variety of reasons. 00:29:29.050 --> 00:29:32.040 align:middle line:84% One is that there's a model that you get exposed to-- at least 00:29:32.040 --> 00:29:37.920 align:middle line:84% in school, at least I was; let's see whether all of you were-- 00:29:37.920 --> 00:29:41.610 align:middle line:84% in which, well, there are different dialects of English, 00:29:41.610 --> 00:29:43.740 align:middle line:84% but there's a correct version of English. 00:29:43.740 --> 00:29:45.630 align:middle line:84% And then there are failures to speak 00:29:45.630 --> 00:29:47.010 align:middle line:90% the correct version of English. 00:29:47.010 --> 00:29:50.860 align:middle line:84% Like, that's the picture you're given in English classes. 00:29:50.860 --> 00:29:53.190 align:middle line:84% So you're given assignments like the one I was just 00:29:53.190 --> 00:29:54.690 align:middle line:84% talking about for my son, where it's 00:29:54.690 --> 00:29:57.282 align:middle line:84% like, fix the problems in these sentences. 00:29:57.282 --> 00:29:58.740 align:middle line:84% And some of the problems are things 00:29:58.740 --> 00:30:00.210 align:middle line:84% like, oh, this person apparently speaks 00:30:00.210 --> 00:30:01.502 align:middle line:90% a different dialect of English. 00:30:01.502 --> 00:30:02.518 align:middle line:90% We can't have that. 00:30:02.518 --> 00:30:03.060 align:middle line:90% That's wrong. 00:30:03.060 --> 00:30:05.070 align:middle line:90% We've got to fix that. 00:30:05.070 --> 00:30:08.640 align:middle line:84% Is that the picture of English that you guys grew up 00:30:08.640 --> 00:30:11.020 align:middle line:90% with as well? 00:30:11.020 --> 00:30:14.970 align:middle line:84% And so just to be clear, I mean, if we were going to figure out 00:30:14.970 --> 00:30:23.310 align:middle line:84% what counts as English, these descriptions 00:30:23.310 --> 00:30:25.260 align:middle line:84% are things that people talk about. 00:30:25.260 --> 00:30:28.110 align:middle line:84% Maybe-- and so from your reactions, 00:30:28.110 --> 00:30:30.180 align:middle line:84% I think maybe nobody had exposed most of you 00:30:30.180 --> 00:30:31.350 align:middle line:90% to positive "anymore." 00:30:31.350 --> 00:30:34.108 align:middle line:84% So don't say you didn't learn anything in this class. 00:30:34.108 --> 00:30:35.400 align:middle line:90% Positive "anymore"-- it exists. 00:30:35.400 --> 00:30:38.040 align:middle line:90% It's a thing. 00:30:38.040 --> 00:30:39.540 align:middle line:84% But these kinds of things are things 00:30:39.540 --> 00:30:41.040 align:middle line:84% that people talk about-- about there 00:30:41.040 --> 00:30:42.780 align:middle line:90% being variations in English. 00:30:42.780 --> 00:30:45.700 align:middle line:84% And people's reactions to these variations vary. 00:30:45.700 --> 00:30:50.190 align:middle line:84% So I think, probably, I never got an assignment 00:30:50.190 --> 00:30:55.050 align:middle line:84% in English class growing up in Alabama in which somebody said, 00:30:55.050 --> 00:30:58.110 align:middle line:84% fix the problem with this sentence, and the problem was, 00:30:58.110 --> 00:30:59.250 align:middle line:90% "Would you like a Coke?" 00:30:59.250 --> 00:31:02.700 align:middle line:90% "Yes, I'd like a Sprite." 00:31:02.700 --> 00:31:04.420 align:middle line:90% Nobody said, oh, this is wrong. 00:31:04.420 --> 00:31:07.770 align:middle line:84% You should change 'Coke' to 'soda' or 'pop.'" 00:31:07.770 --> 00:31:09.900 align:middle line:84% When I was growing up in Alabama, 00:31:09.900 --> 00:31:12.180 align:middle line:84% when we wanted to mock people from the North-- 00:31:12.180 --> 00:31:14.580 align:middle line:84% and it was a thing we did sometimes-- 00:31:14.580 --> 00:31:17.160 align:middle line:84% we would use words like "pop" and "soda." 00:31:17.160 --> 00:31:21.378 align:middle line:84% We thought that was funny that y'all talked this way. 00:31:21.378 --> 00:31:22.548 align:middle line:90% [COUGH] Excuse me. 00:31:22.548 --> 00:31:24.840 align:middle line:84% So there are some of these kinds of things that are not 00:31:24.840 --> 00:31:28.800 align:middle line:84% the subject of deliberate repression 00:31:28.800 --> 00:31:30.610 align:middle line:90% by the educational system. 00:31:30.610 --> 00:31:33.000 align:middle line:84% But there are others that are, like negative concord. 00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:35.125 align:middle line:84% So there are dialects of English that have negative 00:31:35.125 --> 00:31:37.860 align:middle line:84% concord-- a dialect of English in which you say, 00:31:37.860 --> 00:31:39.840 align:middle line:90% "I didn't see nothing." 00:31:39.840 --> 00:31:41.490 align:middle line:90% "I haven't done nothing." 00:31:41.490 --> 00:31:47.520 align:middle line:84% And those dialects are the subject of deliberate 00:31:47.520 --> 00:31:48.810 align:middle line:90% repression by teachers. 00:31:48.810 --> 00:31:52.870 align:middle line:84% So teachers attempt to stop you from doing that. 00:31:52.870 --> 00:31:57.270 align:middle line:84% And if you've ever heard speakers of-- 00:31:57.270 --> 00:32:00.240 align:middle line:84% I have some websites coming up on the next slide. 00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:04.560 align:middle line:84% I'll put these links up on the website. 00:32:04.560 --> 00:32:07.680 align:middle line:84% There are people who self-describe 00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:10.740 align:middle line:84% as speakers of English who I, at least, have a very 00:32:10.740 --> 00:32:12.030 align:middle line:90% difficult time understanding. 00:32:12.030 --> 00:32:13.650 align:middle line:84% So one of the websites I'll show you 00:32:13.650 --> 00:32:16.620 align:middle line:90% is to the Scots Dialect Atlas. 00:32:16.620 --> 00:32:19.320 align:middle line:84% There's this wonderful group of linguists 00:32:19.320 --> 00:32:22.170 align:middle line:84% who are going around various parts of Scotland 00:32:22.170 --> 00:32:25.290 align:middle line:84% chronicling different aspects of regional speech 00:32:25.290 --> 00:32:26.550 align:middle line:90% in various places. 00:32:26.550 --> 00:32:29.970 align:middle line:84% And these people are not speaking a Celtic language. 00:32:29.970 --> 00:32:31.590 align:middle line:90% They're not speaking Gaelic. 00:32:31.590 --> 00:32:33.990 align:middle line:84% They would describe themselves as speaking English. 00:32:33.990 --> 00:32:37.080 align:middle line:84% But, boy, you can't tell [LAUGHS] listening 00:32:37.080 --> 00:32:40.230 align:middle line:90% to some of these recordings. 00:32:40.230 --> 00:32:41.250 align:middle line:90% It's very opaque. 00:32:41.250 --> 00:32:45.000 align:middle line:90% When we-- I had a-- 00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:46.680 align:middle line:84% when I was in grad school, there was 00:32:46.680 --> 00:32:49.740 align:middle line:90% a guy in the class above my-- 00:32:49.740 --> 00:32:52.240 align:middle line:84% a really excellent linguist named Andrew Carnie, 00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:55.110 align:middle line:84% who's now teaching at University of Arizona. 00:32:55.110 --> 00:32:58.020 align:middle line:84% And he grew up in Canada, but his parents were Scottish. 00:32:58.020 --> 00:33:00.210 align:middle line:84% And they came down when he graduated. 00:33:00.210 --> 00:33:02.130 align:middle line:84% And I was sitting around with them 00:33:02.130 --> 00:33:03.450 align:middle line:90% attempting to make small talk. 00:33:03.450 --> 00:33:06.300 align:middle line:84% And I could just barely understand his mother. 00:33:06.300 --> 00:33:08.333 align:middle line:84% But his father could have been speaking Hebrew. 00:33:08.333 --> 00:33:09.000 align:middle line:90% I mean, I just-- 00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:10.080 align:middle line:90% I had no idea. 00:33:10.080 --> 00:33:13.390 align:middle line:84% And I can remember doing a lot of nodding and smiling. 00:33:13.390 --> 00:33:14.820 align:middle line:90% It was just opaque. 00:33:14.820 --> 00:33:16.350 align:middle line:84% I couldn't understand this at all. 00:33:16.350 --> 00:33:17.892 align:middle line:84% But this is a guy who would have said 00:33:17.892 --> 00:33:19.560 align:middle line:90% that he was speaking English. 00:33:19.560 --> 00:33:24.090 align:middle line:84% So-- yeah, and so here are some websites-- 00:33:24.090 --> 00:33:30.570 align:middle line:84% one to a group at Yale that's doing a study of dialect 00:33:30.570 --> 00:33:31.680 align:middle line:90% variation within English. 00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:34.710 align:middle line:84% And this other is the Scots Syntax Atlas. 00:33:34.710 --> 00:33:38.350 align:middle line:84% I'll put links to both of these up in the chat. 00:33:38.350 --> 00:33:40.860 align:middle line:84% So, I've been talking about English 00:33:40.860 --> 00:33:42.450 align:middle line:90% because here we are in America. 00:33:42.450 --> 00:33:45.600 align:middle line:84% And I had this metaphor and everything. 00:33:45.600 --> 00:33:48.005 align:middle line:84% But this is a pretty common phenomenon. 00:33:48.005 --> 00:33:49.380 align:middle line:84% There are lots of languages where 00:33:49.380 --> 00:33:51.690 align:middle line:84% there is regional variation in the way that language is 00:33:51.690 --> 00:33:52.830 align:middle line:90% spoken. 00:33:52.830 --> 00:33:56.790 align:middle line:84% And what we do in America about this-- 00:33:56.790 --> 00:34:00.090 align:middle line:84% where you fixate on particular properties 00:34:00.090 --> 00:34:03.010 align:middle line:84% of particular dialects and attempt to wipe them out, 00:34:03.010 --> 00:34:05.280 align:middle line:90% things like negative concord-- 00:34:05.280 --> 00:34:07.920 align:middle line:84% attempt, I should say, completely unsuccessfully. 00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:09.690 align:middle line:84% So negative concord has been around 00:34:09.690 --> 00:34:11.280 align:middle line:90% in English for centuries. 00:34:11.280 --> 00:34:12.400 align:middle line:90% It's still around. 00:34:12.400 --> 00:34:14.790 align:middle line:84% It's not clear that English teachers have ever 00:34:14.790 --> 00:34:16.080 align:middle line:90% had any effect on it. 00:34:16.080 --> 00:34:18.090 align:middle line:90% But they have succeeded in-- 00:34:18.090 --> 00:34:20.310 align:middle line:84% probably not just them, and society kind of generally 00:34:20.310 --> 00:34:22.560 align:middle line:84% have succeeded in making negative concord stigmatized. 00:34:22.560 --> 00:34:26.159 align:middle line:84% So we're all taught that negative concord is illogical. 00:34:26.159 --> 00:34:28.110 align:middle line:90% Two negations make a positive. 00:34:28.110 --> 00:34:31.510 align:middle line:84% Is that something you were all taught at some point? 00:34:31.510 --> 00:34:35.250 align:middle line:84% So the next time someone tells you that negative-- 00:34:35.250 --> 00:34:37.620 align:middle line:84% if you ever In casual conversation have somebody tell 00:34:37.620 --> 00:34:40.037 align:middle line:84% you that negative concord is illogical and that people who 00:34:40.037 --> 00:34:42.719 align:middle line:84% say, "I didn't see nothing," they just can't think 00:34:42.719 --> 00:34:44.370 align:middle line:90% straight-- they're not logical-- 00:34:44.370 --> 00:34:46.590 align:middle line:84% you should point them to Ukrainian and Italian. 00:34:46.590 --> 00:34:48.320 align:middle line:84% There are plenty of languages out there 00:34:48.320 --> 00:34:50.340 align:middle line:90% where this is what you do. 00:34:50.340 --> 00:34:54.980 align:middle line:84% It's just that there's a dialect of English that's like them. 00:34:54.980 --> 00:34:57.920 align:middle line:84% So-- but this is a question that comes up 00:34:57.920 --> 00:35:02.030 align:middle line:84% when people are doing things like trying to count languages, 00:35:02.030 --> 00:35:02.790 align:middle line:90% for example. 00:35:02.790 --> 00:35:04.165 align:middle line:84% so if you're trying to figure out 00:35:04.165 --> 00:35:06.530 align:middle line:84% how many languages are spoken in the world, 00:35:06.530 --> 00:35:09.140 align:middle line:84% or if you're trying to make policy decisions about how 00:35:09.140 --> 00:35:11.120 align:middle line:84% many languages are spoken in the country, 00:35:11.120 --> 00:35:14.570 align:middle line:84% or how many languages a government document ought 00:35:14.570 --> 00:35:16.490 align:middle line:84% to be translated into, for example, 00:35:16.490 --> 00:35:20.600 align:middle line:84% you have to make decisions about how many languages there are-- 00:35:20.600 --> 00:35:22.880 align:middle line:90% where to draw lines. 00:35:22.880 --> 00:35:24.350 align:middle line:90% What counts as English? 00:35:24.350 --> 00:35:25.910 align:middle line:84% What counts as Japanese or German? 00:35:25.910 --> 00:35:28.160 align:middle line:84% How do you know if two people speak the same language? 00:35:28.160 --> 00:35:30.350 align:middle line:90% 00:35:30.350 --> 00:35:31.100 align:middle line:90% What do you think? 00:35:31.100 --> 00:35:32.870 align:middle line:84% What's the answer to that question? 00:35:32.870 --> 00:35:33.800 align:middle line:90% What should we do? 00:35:33.800 --> 00:35:37.830 align:middle line:90% 00:35:37.830 --> 00:35:39.607 align:middle line:84% Are people clear on what the question is? 00:35:39.607 --> 00:35:41.940 align:middle line:84% So what's-- how do you decide if two people are speaking 00:35:41.940 --> 00:35:43.670 align:middle line:90% the same language or not? 00:35:43.670 --> 00:35:44.610 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:35:44.610 --> 00:35:48.280 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: My first guess is if two speakers-- 00:35:48.280 --> 00:35:51.010 align:middle line:84% if it's mutually intelligible, if one can understand 00:35:51.010 --> 00:35:54.033 align:middle line:84% the other when they talk and vice versa, 00:35:54.033 --> 00:35:55.450 align:middle line:84% then they speak the same language. 00:35:55.450 --> 00:35:57.283 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: That's a popular answer. 00:35:57.283 --> 00:35:58.570 align:middle line:90% Are there-- yeah? 00:35:58.570 --> 00:36:02.500 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: As a counter argument, I had a friend in middle school 00:36:02.500 --> 00:36:05.680 align:middle line:84% who I spoke German too, and he spoke Italian back to me. 00:36:05.680 --> 00:36:07.180 align:middle line:84% And I knew a little bit of Spanish, 00:36:07.180 --> 00:36:10.290 align:middle line:84% and he knew a little bit of Polish or something, 00:36:10.290 --> 00:36:12.040 align:middle line:84% so we could kind of understand each other. 00:36:12.040 --> 00:36:12.495 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. 00:36:12.495 --> 00:36:13.289 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: [? Even ?] [? though ?] [? it ?] 00:36:13.289 --> 00:36:13.860 align:middle line:84% [? wasn't ?] in the same language. 00:36:13.860 --> 00:36:14.860 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yes. 00:36:14.860 --> 00:36:15.480 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:36:15.480 --> 00:36:17.025 align:middle line:90% That is an awesome story. 00:36:17.025 --> 00:36:18.030 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHS] Yes? 00:36:18.030 --> 00:36:18.840 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:36:18.840 --> 00:36:20.940 align:middle line:84% If I run into someone who speaks Portuguese, 00:36:20.940 --> 00:36:23.140 align:middle line:84% I can get a sense of what they're saying. 00:36:23.140 --> 00:36:25.540 align:middle line:84% I don't speak Portuguese, but I do speak Spanish. 00:36:25.540 --> 00:36:26.040 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Mm-hmm. 00:36:26.040 --> 00:36:26.800 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:36:26.800 --> 00:36:29.590 align:middle line:84% So this is-- I was going to use Spanish and Portuguese in just 00:36:29.590 --> 00:36:30.140 align:middle line:90% a second. 00:36:30.140 --> 00:36:33.280 align:middle line:84% What I had heard about Spanish and Portuguese was-- 00:36:33.280 --> 00:36:35.110 align:middle line:84% and I heard this from Portuguese speakers, 00:36:35.110 --> 00:36:36.700 align:middle line:84% so I don't know whether it's true. 00:36:36.700 --> 00:36:39.160 align:middle line:84% Portuguese speakers believe that Portuguese speakers 00:36:39.160 --> 00:36:41.080 align:middle line:84% are better at understanding Spanish 00:36:41.080 --> 00:36:43.930 align:middle line:84% than Spanish speakers are at understanding Portuguese. 00:36:43.930 --> 00:36:45.550 align:middle line:84% I don't know if this is true or not. 00:36:45.550 --> 00:36:46.050 align:middle line:90% Raquel? 00:36:46.050 --> 00:36:49.840 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: My native speaker is a speaker of Portuguese. 00:36:49.840 --> 00:36:51.248 align:middle line:84% And she said that, like, exactly. 00:36:51.248 --> 00:36:52.540 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah, yeah. 00:36:52.540 --> 00:36:54.582 align:middle line:84% That's the kind of thing Portuguese speakers say. 00:36:54.582 --> 00:36:57.310 align:middle line:84% There are all kinds of reasons that it could be true. 00:36:57.310 --> 00:37:00.100 align:middle line:84% Portuguese has undergone various sound changes 00:37:00.100 --> 00:37:05.710 align:middle line:84% that have eliminated sounds that are present in Spanish. 00:37:05.710 --> 00:37:07.497 align:middle line:84% So I can-- I don't know very much 00:37:07.497 --> 00:37:08.830 align:middle line:90% about either of these languages. 00:37:08.830 --> 00:37:15.160 align:middle line:84% But for example, the Spanish word for "hot" is "caliente." 00:37:15.160 --> 00:37:17.140 align:middle line:84% And the Portuguese word for that-- 00:37:17.140 --> 00:37:18.610 align:middle line:90% I'll spell it in IPA. 00:37:18.610 --> 00:37:22.250 align:middle line:84% It's something like [PORTUGUESE].. 00:37:22.250 --> 00:37:26.440 align:middle line:84% So that's Brazilian Portuguese for "hot." 00:37:26.440 --> 00:37:28.480 align:middle line:84% And what's happened is, first of all, 00:37:28.480 --> 00:37:32.050 align:middle line:84% the A has palatalized the T, so it's become a "chuh," 00:37:32.050 --> 00:37:36.640 align:middle line:84% and you've also lost the final E. So T has become "chuh." 00:37:36.640 --> 00:37:39.400 align:middle line:90% And the final E is gone. 00:37:39.400 --> 00:37:41.253 align:middle line:90% And the intervocalic L is gone. 00:37:41.253 --> 00:37:42.670 align:middle line:84% That's another thing that happened 00:37:42.670 --> 00:37:45.400 align:middle line:84% in the course of the evolution of Portuguese. 00:37:45.400 --> 00:37:48.800 align:middle line:84% So-- and then some other fancy things happened to the vowels. 00:37:48.800 --> 00:37:51.220 align:middle line:84% So we ended up from "caliente" to [PORTUGUESE].. 00:37:51.220 --> 00:37:53.620 align:middle line:84% Actually, Portuguese isn't descended from Spanish. 00:37:53.620 --> 00:37:55.370 align:middle line:90% These are both from Latin-- 00:37:55.370 --> 00:37:55.870 align:middle line:90% "calentem." 00:37:55.870 --> 00:37:58.947 align:middle line:90% 00:37:58.947 --> 00:38:01.030 align:middle line:84% And then like that, it became both of these forms. 00:38:01.030 --> 00:38:02.680 align:middle line:84% Spanish was much more conservative. 00:38:02.680 --> 00:38:04.460 align:middle line:84% And Portuguese has done a lot of things 00:38:04.460 --> 00:38:06.190 align:middle line:84% including getting rid of sounds that 00:38:06.190 --> 00:38:08.860 align:middle line:90% are still present in Spanish. 00:38:08.860 --> 00:38:14.805 align:middle line:84% And it's probably easier to ignore sounds that are there-- 00:38:14.805 --> 00:38:16.180 align:middle line:84% which is what Portuguese speakers 00:38:16.180 --> 00:38:19.690 align:middle line:84% have to do if they want to understand Spanish-- 00:38:19.690 --> 00:38:23.500 align:middle line:84% than it is to figure out what sounds would have been there 00:38:23.500 --> 00:38:25.990 align:middle line:84% if they were not gone, which is what Spanish speakers 00:38:25.990 --> 00:38:28.000 align:middle line:84% have to do when they're trying to understand Portuguese. 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:29.958 align:middle line:84% That's one theory anyway about what's going on. 00:38:29.958 --> 00:38:34.300 align:middle line:84% Another is just that there are more situations in which 00:38:34.300 --> 00:38:36.670 align:middle line:84% Portuguese speakers need to understand Spanish 00:38:36.670 --> 00:38:39.160 align:middle line:84% than there are situations in which Spanish speakers need 00:38:39.160 --> 00:38:40.300 align:middle line:90% to understand Portuguese. 00:38:40.300 --> 00:38:40.877 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:38:40.877 --> 00:38:42.460 align:middle line:84% So that's the kind of thing that may-- 00:38:42.460 --> 00:38:44.860 align:middle line:84% I don't want to pick on Kateryna's proposal, which 00:38:44.860 --> 00:38:46.210 align:middle line:90% is a popular proposal. 00:38:46.210 --> 00:38:48.068 align:middle line:84% It's about mutual intelligibility. 00:38:48.068 --> 00:38:50.110 align:middle line:84% But there are places where the intelligibility is 00:38:50.110 --> 00:38:54.310 align:middle line:84% kind of one way, or where, in fact, people 00:38:54.310 --> 00:38:56.050 align:middle line:84% who don't understand-- don't have 00:38:56.050 --> 00:38:58.270 align:middle line:84% a common language can speak to each other 00:38:58.270 --> 00:39:00.550 align:middle line:84% through the magic of interpretive dance. 00:39:00.550 --> 00:39:01.630 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:39:01.630 --> 00:39:02.710 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:39:02.710 --> 00:39:04.990 align:middle line:90% That's a thing that happens. 00:39:04.990 --> 00:39:08.150 align:middle line:84% There are other bunch of examples here. 00:39:08.150 --> 00:39:13.270 align:middle line:84% There's a popular linguist's response to that question-- 00:39:13.270 --> 00:39:15.460 align:middle line:84% how do you know when you're looking at two languages 00:39:15.460 --> 00:39:16.510 align:middle line:90% as opposed to-- 00:39:16.510 --> 00:39:19.180 align:middle line:84% it's often phrased as, what two things count 00:39:19.180 --> 00:39:21.340 align:middle line:84% as two languages as opposed to two dialects 00:39:21.340 --> 00:39:23.320 align:middle line:90% of a single language? 00:39:23.320 --> 00:39:26.680 align:middle line:84% And there's a popular linguistic response to that which says, 00:39:26.680 --> 00:39:29.140 align:middle line:84% you should really try to stop asking that question. 00:39:29.140 --> 00:39:32.300 align:middle line:90% 00:39:32.300 --> 00:39:35.170 align:middle line:84% So here are two classic statements 00:39:35.170 --> 00:39:36.770 align:middle line:90% from linguists about that. 00:39:36.770 --> 00:39:42.520 align:middle line:84% One of them is by the great Yiddish scholar, Max Weinreich, 00:39:42.520 --> 00:39:43.690 align:middle line:90% who said-- 00:39:43.690 --> 00:39:45.130 align:middle line:90% he said it in Yiddish. 00:39:45.130 --> 00:39:47.880 align:middle line:84% "A shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey un flot," 00:39:47.880 --> 00:39:51.370 align:middle line:84% "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." 00:39:51.370 --> 00:39:55.390 align:middle line:84% So what he meant was we don't draw distinctions 00:39:55.390 --> 00:39:58.510 align:middle line:84% like is this a language or a dialect on the basis 00:39:58.510 --> 00:39:59.590 align:middle line:90% of anything linguistic. 00:39:59.590 --> 00:40:01.798 align:middle line:84% It's not about how different they are linguistically. 00:40:01.798 --> 00:40:06.340 align:middle line:84% It's about political power, whether they are spoken 00:40:06.340 --> 00:40:09.620 align:middle line:90% in different countries or not. 00:40:09.620 --> 00:40:12.740 align:middle line:84% So lots of kinds of cases, including the Portuguese, 00:40:12.740 --> 00:40:15.970 align:middle line:84% Spanish example that we talked about before. 00:40:15.970 --> 00:40:18.220 align:middle line:90% Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish-- 00:40:18.220 --> 00:40:20.917 align:middle line:84% anybody speak any of those languages? 00:40:20.917 --> 00:40:22.000 align:middle line:90% So I'm not making this up. 00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:23.770 align:middle line:90% I promise. 00:40:23.770 --> 00:40:26.980 align:middle line:90% I was once on-- 00:40:26.980 --> 00:40:28.750 align:middle line:84% I was in Norway flying to a conference. 00:40:28.750 --> 00:40:31.510 align:middle line:84% I was flying from Southern Norway up to Northern Norway 00:40:31.510 --> 00:40:32.530 align:middle line:90% up to Tromso. 00:40:32.530 --> 00:40:35.320 align:middle line:84% I was sitting next to a Norwegian linguist. 00:40:35.320 --> 00:40:38.560 align:middle line:84% And we were flying Norwegian Air. 00:40:38.560 --> 00:40:41.740 align:middle line:84% And various people were making announcements over the-- 00:40:41.740 --> 00:40:44.530 align:middle line:84% so the captain came on and made an announcement in Norwegian. 00:40:44.530 --> 00:40:48.130 align:middle line:84% A plane full of Norwegians-- all of them are understanding. 00:40:48.130 --> 00:40:51.788 align:middle line:84% The copilot came on and made an announcement in Norwegian. 00:40:51.788 --> 00:40:53.080 align:middle line:90% And then somebody else came on. 00:40:53.080 --> 00:40:54.880 align:middle line:84% And I forget-- the purser or something came on and made 00:40:54.880 --> 00:40:55.510 align:middle line:90% an announcement. 00:40:55.510 --> 00:40:57.718 align:middle line:84% And the Norwegian linguist who was sitting next to me 00:40:57.718 --> 00:40:59.920 align:middle line:90% said, "He's speaking Danish." 00:40:59.920 --> 00:41:02.990 align:middle line:84% Because there's no reason not to, apparently. 00:41:02.990 --> 00:41:05.200 align:middle line:84% If you're speaking Danish to a bunch of Norwegians 00:41:05.200 --> 00:41:07.585 align:middle line:84% on Norwegian Air, ah, they'll figure it out. 00:41:07.585 --> 00:41:09.016 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER] 00:41:09.016 --> 00:41:11.710 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: So we call them Norwegian and Danish 00:41:11.710 --> 00:41:14.840 align:middle line:84% because they're spoken in Norway and Denmark. 00:41:14.840 --> 00:41:16.690 align:middle line:84% And they are different from each other. 00:41:16.690 --> 00:41:18.400 align:middle line:84% Actually, Danish is more different 00:41:18.400 --> 00:41:21.280 align:middle line:84% from Norwegian and Swedish than Norwegian and Swedish 00:41:21.280 --> 00:41:22.130 align:middle line:90% are from each other. 00:41:22.130 --> 00:41:24.940 align:middle line:84% Norwegian and Swedish are quite similar in lots of ways. 00:41:24.940 --> 00:41:26.720 align:middle line:84% Danish is a little bit different. 00:41:26.720 --> 00:41:30.603 align:middle line:84% But, as I say, close enough that on Norwegian Air, 00:41:30.603 --> 00:41:32.020 align:middle line:84% you can announce things in Danish. 00:41:32.020 --> 00:41:34.420 align:middle line:84% It probably helps that if you're announcing something 00:41:34.420 --> 00:41:36.100 align:middle line:84% on a plane, probably the passengers 00:41:36.100 --> 00:41:39.310 align:middle line:84% know what you're saying, usually, unless there's 00:41:39.310 --> 00:41:41.670 align:middle line:90% something unusual happening. 00:41:41.670 --> 00:41:43.420 align:middle line:84% There are examples of the other kind, too. 00:41:43.420 --> 00:41:46.150 align:middle line:84% I've got Mandarin and Cantonese up here. 00:41:46.150 --> 00:41:47.350 align:middle line:90% I encounter this a lot. 00:41:47.350 --> 00:41:49.270 align:middle line:84% I work on Tagalog sometimes, which 00:41:49.270 --> 00:41:51.620 align:middle line:84% is a language spoken in the Philippines. 00:41:51.620 --> 00:41:55.270 align:middle line:84% The Philippines is a country with many, many languages-- 00:41:55.270 --> 00:41:58.120 align:middle line:84% lots and lots of related languages. 00:41:58.120 --> 00:42:01.580 align:middle line:84% But they are very different from each other in lots of ways. 00:42:01.580 --> 00:42:04.600 align:middle line:84% So I speak Tagalog, which is the language spoken around Manila. 00:42:04.600 --> 00:42:08.530 align:middle line:84% If I'm listening to somebody speaking Cebuano, or Ilocano, 00:42:08.530 --> 00:42:11.050 align:middle line:84% or Hiligaynon, or any of a zillion other languages that 00:42:11.050 --> 00:42:13.383 align:middle line:84% are spoken in the Philippines, I cannot understand them. 00:42:13.383 --> 00:42:14.980 align:middle line:84% I mean, they're at least as different 00:42:14.980 --> 00:42:17.920 align:middle line:90% as Spanish and Italian. 00:42:17.920 --> 00:42:20.830 align:middle line:84% You can tell they're related but quite 00:42:20.830 --> 00:42:22.090 align:middle line:90% different from each other. 00:42:22.090 --> 00:42:27.010 align:middle line:84% But Filipinos are used to calling them dialects. 00:42:27.010 --> 00:42:28.660 align:middle line:84% And I've had arguments with Filipinos 00:42:28.660 --> 00:42:31.990 align:middle line:84% in which I will ask one who's from some area 00:42:31.990 --> 00:42:33.845 align:middle line:84% of the Philippines far away from Manila-- 00:42:33.845 --> 00:42:35.470 align:middle line:84% I'll say, "What language do you speak?" 00:42:35.470 --> 00:42:38.890 align:middle line:84% And they'll say, "Oh, I speak a dialect of Filipino." 00:42:38.890 --> 00:42:40.330 align:middle line:84% And I'll be like, "Which dialect?" 00:42:40.330 --> 00:42:43.270 align:middle line:84% And he'll say, "Cebuano," which is OK-- 00:42:43.270 --> 00:42:47.935 align:middle line:84% related to Tagalog but not mutually intelligible with it. 00:42:47.935 --> 00:42:50.560 align:middle line:84% There's something similar going on with Mandarin and Cantonese. 00:42:50.560 --> 00:42:52.780 align:middle line:84% We tend to call those dialects of Chinese 00:42:52.780 --> 00:42:55.420 align:middle line:84% because they're both spoken in China. 00:42:55.420 --> 00:42:59.650 align:middle line:84% But-- and they do use-- it's a beauty of the Chinese writing 00:42:59.650 --> 00:43:02.540 align:middle line:84% system that if you write them down, they look very similar. 00:43:02.540 --> 00:43:04.780 align:middle line:84% But if you are speaking Cantonese 00:43:04.780 --> 00:43:07.060 align:middle line:84% to someone who only understands Mandarin, 00:43:07.060 --> 00:43:09.400 align:middle line:84% then you will have a hard time getting anything across 00:43:09.400 --> 00:43:10.390 align:middle line:90% is my understanding. 00:43:10.390 --> 00:43:12.885 align:middle line:90% They're different enough that-- 00:43:12.885 --> 00:43:14.260 align:middle line:84% they have different tone systems. 00:43:14.260 --> 00:43:17.880 align:middle line:90% They have different phonologies. 00:43:17.880 --> 00:43:20.770 align:middle line:84% The Mandarin word for "I," the first-person singular pronoun, 00:43:20.770 --> 00:43:21.460 align:middle line:90% is [MANDARIN]. 00:43:21.460 --> 00:43:23.550 align:middle line:84% In Mandarin, it's something like [CANTONESE].. 00:43:23.550 --> 00:43:24.650 align:middle line:90% They're just different. 00:43:24.650 --> 00:43:26.330 align:middle line:90% They're different languages. 00:43:26.330 --> 00:43:26.830 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:43:26.830 --> 00:43:27.553 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:43:27.553 --> 00:43:28.260 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Wait. 00:43:28.260 --> 00:43:29.520 align:middle line:90% Which one is [INAUDIBLE]? 00:43:29.520 --> 00:43:31.350 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: In Mandarin, I think it's [MANDARIN].. 00:43:31.350 --> 00:43:31.710 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Yes. 00:43:31.710 --> 00:43:32.070 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah. 00:43:32.070 --> 00:43:34.511 align:middle line:84% And in Cantonese, I believe it's [CANTONESE]---- 00:43:34.511 --> 00:43:36.136 align:middle line:84% just different, different [INAUDIBLE].. 00:43:36.136 --> 00:43:38.000 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] [? vowels ?] [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:38.000 --> 00:43:38.690 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, it's-- 00:43:38.690 --> 00:43:39.590 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:39.590 --> 00:43:40.490 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Do you-- 00:43:40.490 --> 00:43:40.700 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:43:40.700 --> 00:43:41.120 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: What is it? 00:43:41.120 --> 00:43:41.926 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:41.926 --> 00:43:43.259 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: [INAUDIBLE]. 00:43:43.259 --> 00:43:45.260 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Like, the vowel is pretty similar. 00:43:45.260 --> 00:43:45.830 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, OK. 00:43:45.830 --> 00:43:47.375 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: But that first consonant-- 00:43:47.375 --> 00:43:48.710 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: The consonant is different. 00:43:48.710 --> 00:43:48.980 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:43:48.980 --> 00:43:49.670 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:43:49.670 --> 00:43:50.300 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:43:50.300 --> 00:43:51.260 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:43:51.260 --> 00:43:52.790 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: I think it's interesting that you brought up 00:43:52.790 --> 00:43:53.860 align:middle line:90% Spanish and Italian. 00:43:53.860 --> 00:43:54.902 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah? 00:43:54.902 --> 00:43:57.490 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: Because one time I gave a story in Italian 00:43:57.490 --> 00:44:02.265 align:middle line:84% to my mom, and she understood it 100% without even trying. 00:44:02.265 --> 00:44:03.640 align:middle line:84% I was like, how do you know that? 00:44:03.640 --> 00:44:04.870 align:middle line:90% It's just like Spanish. 00:44:04.870 --> 00:44:06.078 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, yeah. 00:44:06.078 --> 00:44:06.850 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:44:06.850 --> 00:44:09.280 align:middle line:84% So your mom is clearly linguistically gifted. 00:44:09.280 --> 00:44:10.250 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [LAUGHS] 00:44:10.250 --> 00:44:11.950 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: I think if someone had-- you gave it 00:44:11.950 --> 00:44:12.938 align:middle line:90% to her written down? 00:44:12.938 --> 00:44:13.480 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: No. 00:44:13.480 --> 00:44:14.200 align:middle line:90% I just read it out loud. 00:44:14.200 --> 00:44:14.950 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, you read it out loud. 00:44:14.950 --> 00:44:15.280 align:middle line:90% Wow. 00:44:15.280 --> 00:44:16.450 align:middle line:90% So, wait, do you speak Italian? 00:44:16.450 --> 00:44:17.020 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: No. 00:44:17.020 --> 00:44:18.010 align:middle line:90% But I was just pronouncing-- 00:44:18.010 --> 00:44:19.450 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: You were pronouncing it out loud. 00:44:19.450 --> 00:44:19.950 align:middle line:90% Cool. 00:44:19.950 --> 00:44:22.550 align:middle line:90% No, that's awesome. 00:44:22.550 --> 00:44:23.050 align:middle line:90% Neat. 00:44:23.050 --> 00:44:25.172 align:middle line:84% I have had the opposite experience. 00:44:25.172 --> 00:44:26.380 align:middle line:90% I don't speak Spanish at all. 00:44:26.380 --> 00:44:27.830 align:middle line:90% I speak a little bit of Italian. 00:44:27.830 --> 00:44:30.815 align:middle line:84% And so I have attempted to speak in Italian to Spanish speakers, 00:44:30.815 --> 00:44:33.190 align:middle line:84% to which the response is always, "I don't speak English." 00:44:33.190 --> 00:44:34.362 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER] 00:44:34.362 --> 00:44:35.320 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: OK. 00:44:35.320 --> 00:44:35.710 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:44:35.710 --> 00:44:37.043 align:middle line:90% My Italian is not all that good. 00:44:37.043 --> 00:44:38.290 align:middle line:90% Maybe that was the problem. 00:44:38.290 --> 00:44:40.130 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:44:40.130 --> 00:44:42.510 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: So, aside from Mandarin and Cantonese 00:44:42.510 --> 00:44:47.490 align:middle line:84% [? being-- ?] most dialects in China, 00:44:47.490 --> 00:44:50.466 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] [? they ?] [? still use ?] the same 00:44:50.466 --> 00:44:51.460 align:middle line:90% writing systems. 00:44:51.460 --> 00:44:52.460 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yes. 00:44:52.460 --> 00:44:58.427 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] some sort of [INAUDIBLE] system. 00:44:58.427 --> 00:45:03.341 align:middle line:84% So [? could ?] I say that having almost the same [INAUDIBLE]---- 00:45:03.341 --> 00:45:07.255 align:middle line:84% does that count as [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE] 00:45:07.255 --> 00:45:08.880 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Well, so I wonder-- 00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:11.400 align:middle line:84% I mean, so Engl-- if I understood what you said 00:45:11.400 --> 00:45:13.847 align:middle line:84% correctly, there are a couple of different-- 00:45:13.847 --> 00:45:15.930 align:middle line:84% I don't know if this is what you're talking about. 00:45:15.930 --> 00:45:18.555 align:middle line:84% There are a couple of variations on the Chinese writing system. 00:45:18.555 --> 00:45:21.090 align:middle line:84% I've heard them called the traditional and the simplified 00:45:21.090 --> 00:45:21.840 align:middle line:90% characters. 00:45:21.840 --> 00:45:23.257 align:middle line:84% Is that what you're talking about, 00:45:23.257 --> 00:45:26.340 align:middle line:84% where you have slightly different ways of writing 00:45:26.340 --> 00:45:27.863 align:middle line:90% particular characters? 00:45:27.863 --> 00:45:29.280 align:middle line:84% Is that what you mean when you say 00:45:29.280 --> 00:45:32.042 align:middle line:84% Mandarin and Cantonese are using different-- 00:45:32.042 --> 00:45:32.780 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: No. 00:45:32.780 --> 00:45:38.680 align:middle line:84% It's just when they already know [INAUDIBLE] They're 00:45:38.680 --> 00:45:40.345 align:middle line:84% most definitely Chinese [? culture. ?] 00:45:40.345 --> 00:45:41.387 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah. 00:45:41.387 --> 00:45:43.568 align:middle line:84% AUDIENCE: But I can read them, actually. 00:45:43.568 --> 00:45:45.360 align:middle line:84% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, that's interesting. 00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:45.750 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:45:45.750 --> 00:45:46.320 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:48.390 align:middle line:84% So I don't know why that would be. 00:45:48.390 --> 00:45:50.612 align:middle line:84% So look-- the different-- whatever 00:45:50.612 --> 00:45:53.070 align:middle line:84% we're going to call them within China because it's not just 00:45:53.070 --> 00:45:53.970 align:middle line:90% Mandarin and Cantonese. 00:45:53.970 --> 00:45:54.970 align:middle line:90% You're absolutely right. 00:45:54.970 --> 00:45:56.640 align:middle line:90% There are many of them. 00:45:56.640 --> 00:45:58.140 align:middle line:84% They're all related to each other. 00:45:58.140 --> 00:46:02.010 align:middle line:84% They're members of a language family of the Sino- Tibetan 00:46:02.010 --> 00:46:04.690 align:middle line:84% language family, it's sometimes called. 00:46:04.690 --> 00:46:07.170 align:middle line:84% And my understanding is that most of them 00:46:07.170 --> 00:46:10.470 align:middle line:84% have a lot in common syntactically, 00:46:10.470 --> 00:46:12.750 align:middle line:84% like the basic word order is the same. 00:46:12.750 --> 00:46:15.810 align:middle line:84% And they have [INAUDIBLE],, and they have 00:46:15.810 --> 00:46:17.820 align:middle line:90% a lot of properties in common. 00:46:17.820 --> 00:46:20.700 align:middle line:84% There's a lot of careful work on the syntax of, for example, 00:46:20.700 --> 00:46:23.060 align:middle line:84% Mandarin and Cantonese showing that they're not exactly 00:46:23.060 --> 00:46:23.560 align:middle line:90% the same. 00:46:23.560 --> 00:46:25.893 align:middle line:84% There are lots of interesting distinctions between them. 00:46:25.893 --> 00:46:29.160 align:middle line:84% So, for example, Mandarin will allow you-- 00:46:29.160 --> 00:46:31.390 align:middle line:84% Mandarin has what are called numeral classifiers. 00:46:31.390 --> 00:46:34.110 align:middle line:84% So if you want to count things, there's 00:46:34.110 --> 00:46:36.750 align:middle line:84% a morpheme that goes between the number and the thing 00:46:36.750 --> 00:46:38.345 align:middle line:84% that you are counting which tells you 00:46:38.345 --> 00:46:40.470 align:middle line:84% something about the nature of what you're counting. 00:46:40.470 --> 00:46:42.780 align:middle line:84% So if you want to say three books, 00:46:42.780 --> 00:46:44.940 align:middle line:84% there's a morpheme that goes between three 00:46:44.940 --> 00:46:47.422 align:middle line:84% and books that clarifies that it is 00:46:47.422 --> 00:46:48.630 align:middle line:90% a book you are talking about. 00:46:48.630 --> 00:46:50.610 align:middle line:84% And you'll use that for anything book-like. 00:46:50.610 --> 00:46:51.840 align:middle line:84% If you're talking about three pens, 00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:53.298 align:middle line:84% there's another classifier which is 00:46:53.298 --> 00:46:57.000 align:middle line:84% used for things that are long and thin, things like that. 00:46:57.000 --> 00:46:59.160 align:middle line:84% Mandarin and Cantonese both have those. 00:46:59.160 --> 00:47:00.930 align:middle line:84% Cantonese is unlike Mandarin in that 00:47:00.930 --> 00:47:04.050 align:middle line:84% it can use numeral classifiers even when there is no number. 00:47:04.050 --> 00:47:06.360 align:middle line:84% So it can just start a noun phrase 00:47:06.360 --> 00:47:07.690 align:middle line:90% with a numeral classifier. 00:47:07.690 --> 00:47:10.860 align:middle line:84% So there are those smallish differences 00:47:10.860 --> 00:47:12.370 align:middle line:90% between these approaches. 00:47:12.370 --> 00:47:12.870 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:47:12.870 --> 00:47:13.590 align:middle line:90% You're raising your hand. 00:47:13.590 --> 00:47:13.740 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:47:13.740 --> 00:47:14.282 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: No. 00:47:14.282 --> 00:47:16.800 align:middle line:84% I just-- I was going to say something. 00:47:16.800 --> 00:47:17.310 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:47:17.310 --> 00:47:17.610 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Yeah. 00:47:17.610 --> 00:47:18.485 align:middle line:90% AUDIENCE: Never mind. 00:47:18.485 --> 00:47:20.050 align:middle line:90% NORVIN W. RICHARDS: Oh, OK. 00:47:20.050 --> 00:47:21.550 align:middle line:84% There are those kinds of differences 00:47:21.550 --> 00:47:24.540 align:middle line:84% between Mandarin and Cantonese, but they 00:47:24.540 --> 00:47:26.040 align:middle line:90% have many properties in common. 00:47:26.040 --> 00:47:28.415 align:middle line:84% And I think this is probably true of a lot of the, again, 00:47:28.415 --> 00:47:30.873 align:middle line:84% dialects or languages-- whatever we're going to call them-- 00:47:30.873 --> 00:47:32.527 align:middle line:90% within China that, you know-- 00:47:32.527 --> 00:47:34.550 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE] or whatever. 00:47:34.550 --> 00:47:36.300 align:middle line:84% There are all of these different versions. 00:47:36.300 --> 00:47:40.300 align:middle line:84% They have lots of things in common. 00:47:40.300 --> 00:47:43.740 align:middle line:84% It's a property of the Chinese writing system 00:47:43.740 --> 00:47:46.380 align:middle line:84% that if you write a character down, 00:47:46.380 --> 00:47:49.740 align:middle line:84% it doesn't matter what language you're speaking. 00:47:49.740 --> 00:47:52.620 align:middle line:84% So for that matter, if I were to write English using 00:47:52.620 --> 00:47:55.800 align:middle line:84% Chinese characters, someone who didn't speak English 00:47:55.800 --> 00:47:57.420 align:middle line:84% but could read Chinese characters 00:47:57.420 --> 00:48:00.600 align:middle line:84% would probably be able to figure out what I had written down. 00:48:00.600 --> 00:48:05.378 align:middle line:90% So if I use this symbol-- 00:48:05.378 --> 00:48:07.170 align:middle line:84% this is the Chinese character for a person. 00:48:07.170 --> 00:48:07.980 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:48:07.980 --> 00:48:10.210 align:middle line:84% My handwriting is bad in every language. 00:48:10.210 --> 00:48:12.330 align:middle line:90% But it's something like this. 00:48:12.330 --> 00:48:15.000 align:middle line:84% That's got a pronunciation in Mandarin that's 00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:17.730 align:middle line:90% something like [MANDARIN]. 00:48:17.730 --> 00:48:20.550 align:middle line:84% If I decided to write English using Chinese characters, 00:48:20.550 --> 00:48:23.190 align:middle line:84% I would use this character for the word "person." 00:48:23.190 --> 00:48:26.850 align:middle line:84% And it would be your job to read it as "person." 00:48:26.850 --> 00:48:28.620 align:middle line:90% And you'd-- if you-- 00:48:28.620 --> 00:48:30.210 align:middle line:84% again, if you knew Chinese characters 00:48:30.210 --> 00:48:32.340 align:middle line:84% but couldn't-- didn't speak any English, 00:48:32.340 --> 00:48:33.540 align:middle line:90% you'd be able to read that. 00:48:33.540 --> 00:48:35.415 align:middle line:84% Not because you knew English, but because you 00:48:35.415 --> 00:48:37.230 align:middle line:90% knew these characters. 00:48:37.230 --> 00:48:41.010 align:middle line:84% And when Mandarin and Cantonese speakers-- 00:48:41.010 --> 00:48:42.840 align:middle line:84% if you have a monolingual Mandarin speaker 00:48:42.840 --> 00:48:44.478 align:middle line:84% and a monolingual Cantonese speaker, 00:48:44.478 --> 00:48:46.020 align:middle line:84% and they're both writing things down, 00:48:46.020 --> 00:48:47.670 align:middle line:84% if they do use the same characters, 00:48:47.670 --> 00:48:49.632 align:middle line:90% they'll be able to read-- 00:48:49.632 --> 00:48:51.840 align:middle line:84% each will be able to read what the other has written. 00:48:51.840 --> 00:48:54.138 align:middle line:84% But it's not-- that doesn't have anything 00:48:54.138 --> 00:48:56.430 align:middle line:84% to do with whether they speak the same language or not. 00:48:56.430 --> 00:48:58.500 align:middle line:84% It's a property of the Chinese writing system. 00:48:58.500 --> 00:49:03.520 align:middle line:84% You're writing down not sounds but words in a sense. 00:49:03.520 --> 00:49:05.870 align:middle line:90% Does that make sense? 00:49:05.870 --> 00:49:09.320 align:middle line:84% It's a very long, involved response. 00:49:09.320 --> 00:49:10.590 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 00:49:10.590 --> 00:49:13.180 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:49:13.180 --> 00:49:13.680 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:49:13.680 --> 00:49:15.990 align:middle line:84% So various examples-- Serbo-Croatian 00:49:15.990 --> 00:49:16.890 align:middle line:90% is another example. 00:49:16.890 --> 00:49:18.750 align:middle line:84% Down here you have to be careful-- 00:49:18.750 --> 00:49:22.320 align:middle line:84% there used to be a language that was called Serbo-Croatian 00:49:22.320 --> 00:49:26.280 align:middle line:84% before the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. 00:49:26.280 --> 00:49:30.113 align:middle line:84% There are now people who are very fierce about the fact 00:49:30.113 --> 00:49:31.530 align:middle line:84% that they are distinct languages-- 00:49:31.530 --> 00:49:33.570 align:middle line:90% Serbian and Croatian. 00:49:33.570 --> 00:49:37.020 align:middle line:84% They are, again, written with different writing systems-- 00:49:37.020 --> 00:49:38.430 align:middle line:90% actually, different alphabets. 00:49:38.430 --> 00:49:42.120 align:middle line:84% And there are differences in their grammars. 00:49:42.120 --> 00:49:43.800 align:middle line:84% But the fact that people are fierce 00:49:43.800 --> 00:49:45.300 align:middle line:84% about them being different languages 00:49:45.300 --> 00:49:47.970 align:middle line:84% has to do with where national borderlines have been drawn 00:49:47.970 --> 00:49:49.275 align:middle line:90% and other things about history. 00:49:49.275 --> 00:49:52.710 align:middle line:90% 00:49:52.710 --> 00:49:56.622 align:middle line:84% So a popular linguist's response to this question, 00:49:56.622 --> 00:49:58.080 align:middle line:84% how do you know when you're looking 00:49:58.080 --> 00:50:01.830 align:middle line:84% at two languages or two dialects of a single language, 00:50:01.830 --> 00:50:03.960 align:middle line:90% is to say-- 00:50:03.960 --> 00:50:05.790 align:middle line:84% I think I did this in class-- "mu!" 00:50:05.790 --> 00:50:07.020 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:50:07.020 --> 00:50:08.880 align:middle line:90% Don't ask that question! 00:50:08.880 --> 00:50:13.560 align:middle line:84% That question contains some kind of false presupposition. 00:50:13.560 --> 00:50:17.508 align:middle line:84% Chomsky in '96, in a book called Knowledge of Language, 00:50:17.508 --> 00:50:19.050 align:middle line:84% laid out a way of thinking about this 00:50:19.050 --> 00:50:21.008 align:middle line:84% that I have always thought made a lot of sense. 00:50:21.008 --> 00:50:24.990 align:middle line:84% He said, look, there are-- and his claim 00:50:24.990 --> 00:50:27.630 align:middle line:84% was there aren't actually such things as languages 00:50:27.630 --> 00:50:29.010 align:middle line:90% or dialects. 00:50:29.010 --> 00:50:31.230 align:middle line:90% What there are are people. 00:50:31.230 --> 00:50:32.430 align:middle line:90% So there are people. 00:50:32.430 --> 00:50:34.170 align:middle line:84% We can agree that there are people. 00:50:34.170 --> 00:50:38.370 align:middle line:84% And people have mental grammars-- 00:50:38.370 --> 00:50:41.580 align:middle line:84% all the stuff we've been talking about all semester, all the-- 00:50:41.580 --> 00:50:44.870 align:middle line:84% if we knew everything about what was going on in your brain 00:50:44.870 --> 00:50:47.370 align:middle line:84% as it interacted with language-- if we knew everything about 00:50:47.370 --> 00:50:51.150 align:middle line:84% your lexicon and the phonological and syntactic 00:50:51.150 --> 00:50:53.790 align:middle line:84% and semantic status of every representation that you were 00:50:53.790 --> 00:50:55.890 align:middle line:84% messing with, and we had a perfect description 00:50:55.890 --> 00:50:57.940 align:middle line:84% of everything that was going on in your head-- 00:50:57.940 --> 00:50:59.850 align:middle line:90% imagine that we had that-- 00:50:59.850 --> 00:51:01.590 align:middle line:84% we can call that your I-language, 00:51:01.590 --> 00:51:03.510 align:middle line:84% call it your individual language. 00:51:03.510 --> 00:51:07.060 align:middle line:90% So that's your mental state. 00:51:07.060 --> 00:51:10.780 align:middle line:84% And now, Chomsky said, it is a fact 00:51:10.780 --> 00:51:15.460 align:middle line:84% about the way that people tend to interact with each other, 00:51:15.460 --> 00:51:21.010 align:middle line:84% and the way that people grow up and learn to speak, 00:51:21.010 --> 00:51:24.460 align:middle line:84% and the way that people interact with each other as adults 00:51:24.460 --> 00:51:27.250 align:middle line:84% that we tend to end up growing up 00:51:27.250 --> 00:51:30.490 align:middle line:84% in domains where there are lots of people with pretty 00:51:30.490 --> 00:51:33.070 align:middle line:90% similar I-languages. 00:51:33.070 --> 00:51:34.990 align:middle line:84% And that's what gives us the illusion 00:51:34.990 --> 00:51:36.190 align:middle line:90% of this other kind of thing. 00:51:36.190 --> 00:51:38.800 align:middle line:84% He called it an E-language, an external language-- 00:51:38.800 --> 00:51:43.780 align:middle line:84% things like English, or Mandarin, or Japanese, 00:51:43.780 --> 00:51:45.010 align:middle line:90% or French, or whatever-- 00:51:45.010 --> 00:51:47.890 align:middle line:90% 00:51:47.890 --> 00:51:54.220 align:middle line:84% these objects that are abstractions over many people's 00:51:54.220 --> 00:51:55.540 align:middle line:90% I-languages. 00:51:55.540 --> 00:51:59.530 align:middle line:84% And it's OK to talk this way as a loose way of talking. 00:51:59.530 --> 00:52:01.780 align:middle line:84% This is the way we're used to talking about languages. 00:52:01.780 --> 00:52:03.197 align:middle line:84% But we should bear in mind, he was 00:52:03.197 --> 00:52:05.290 align:middle line:84% saying, that in the final analysis, 00:52:05.290 --> 00:52:06.910 align:middle line:90% these things don't exist. 00:52:06.910 --> 00:52:09.910 align:middle line:84% They're just generalizations over lots 00:52:09.910 --> 00:52:11.480 align:middle line:90% of different I-languages. 00:52:11.480 --> 00:52:13.570 align:middle line:84% So if we knew everything about the I-languages 00:52:13.570 --> 00:52:15.910 align:middle line:84% of-- let's stick to every native speaker of English 00:52:15.910 --> 00:52:17.450 align:middle line:90% in this room. 00:52:17.450 --> 00:52:19.570 align:middle line:84% If we looked at each of us in turn, 00:52:19.570 --> 00:52:22.917 align:middle line:84% we'd discover that we have lots and lots of things in common. 00:52:22.917 --> 00:52:25.000 align:middle line:84% But that there are small differences between them. 00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:27.580 align:middle line:84% I'm apparently the only one with positive "anymore," 00:52:27.580 --> 00:52:30.661 align:middle line:90% maybe Faith too. 00:52:30.661 --> 00:52:34.870 align:middle line:84% I and a couple of other people have "y'all" as a second person 00:52:34.870 --> 00:52:35.830 align:middle line:90% plural pronoun. 00:52:35.830 --> 00:52:37.660 align:middle line:84% So there are these little differences 00:52:37.660 --> 00:52:39.105 align:middle line:90% between pairs of us. 00:52:39.105 --> 00:52:40.480 align:middle line:84% And some of us are "soda" people. 00:52:40.480 --> 00:52:41.647 align:middle line:90% Some of us are "pop" people. 00:52:41.647 --> 00:52:43.720 align:middle line:90% Some of us are "Coke" people-- 00:52:43.720 --> 00:52:45.970 align:middle line:84% little differences between pairs of us. 00:52:45.970 --> 00:52:49.693 align:middle line:84% And that's all we really need to say. 00:52:49.693 --> 00:52:51.610 align:middle line:84% So what we have are a bunch of people who have 00:52:51.610 --> 00:52:53.170 align:middle line:90% pretty similar I-languages. 00:52:53.170 --> 00:52:58.250 align:middle line:84% And if we work too hard to try to figure out, well, 00:52:58.250 --> 00:53:01.240 align:middle line:84% which of those languages is really English 00:53:01.240 --> 00:53:03.790 align:middle line:84% and which of them are deviations from English, 00:53:03.790 --> 00:53:06.400 align:middle line:84% then we're, Chomsky was saying, asking ourselves 00:53:06.400 --> 00:53:08.320 align:middle line:90% the wrong question. 00:53:08.320 --> 00:53:11.320 align:middle line:84% Trying to decide whether two people speak the same language 00:53:11.320 --> 00:53:15.130 align:middle line:84% or not, it's like trying to decide on a fall day 00:53:15.130 --> 00:53:18.040 align:middle line:84% whether two leaves are the same color. 00:53:18.040 --> 00:53:21.730 align:middle line:84% So you could look at two leaves, and say, yeah, those 00:53:21.730 --> 00:53:22.887 align:middle line:90% are both red. 00:53:22.887 --> 00:53:24.470 align:middle line:84% But if you looked hard enough at them, 00:53:24.470 --> 00:53:26.748 align:middle line:84% you'd convince yourself they're not exactly the same. 00:53:26.748 --> 00:53:28.040 align:middle line:90% One of them is a little deeper. 00:53:28.040 --> 00:53:29.920 align:middle line:90% One of them's a little browner. 00:53:29.920 --> 00:53:32.095 align:middle line:90% So what's the right answer? 00:53:32.095 --> 00:53:33.470 align:middle line:84% Well, there isn't a right answer. 00:53:33.470 --> 00:53:36.070 align:middle line:84% It's just a question of how fine-grained do 00:53:36.070 --> 00:53:37.510 align:middle line:90% you want your analysis to be? 00:53:37.510 --> 00:53:42.370 align:middle line:84% That was Chomsky's way of talking about this. 00:53:42.370 --> 00:53:48.890 align:middle line:84% I bring this up because it short circuits a lot of ways people 00:53:48.890 --> 00:53:50.760 align:middle line:84% have had of talking about dialects. 00:53:50.760 --> 00:53:54.860 align:middle line:84% So I started off with this metaphor about chess 00:53:54.860 --> 00:53:57.920 align:middle line:84% and checkers and the teachers who pretended that there 00:53:57.920 --> 00:54:00.110 align:middle line:90% was no such game as chess. 00:54:00.110 --> 00:54:01.610 align:middle line:84% And I've already talked a little bit 00:54:01.610 --> 00:54:06.620 align:middle line:84% about ways in which this metaphor has correspondences 00:54:06.620 --> 00:54:07.440 align:middle line:90% in real life. 00:54:07.440 --> 00:54:10.130 align:middle line:84% So there are dialects-- negative concord dialects-- 00:54:10.130 --> 00:54:12.830 align:middle line:84% that are the subject of deliberate 00:54:12.830 --> 00:54:14.520 align:middle line:84% suppression by the education system. 00:54:14.520 --> 00:54:16.550 align:middle line:84% And this has consequences for people who grow up 00:54:16.550 --> 00:54:18.920 align:middle line:90% speaking these dialects. 00:54:18.920 --> 00:54:22.200 align:middle line:84% There are dialects that have been particularly attacked 00:54:22.200 --> 00:54:24.470 align:middle line:90% which go by various names-- 00:54:24.470 --> 00:54:26.780 align:middle line:84% sometimes called African American English. 00:54:26.780 --> 00:54:30.200 align:middle line:84% It's also been called African American Vernacular English. 00:54:30.200 --> 00:54:32.510 align:middle line:84% Decades ago, it was once called Ebonics. 00:54:32.510 --> 00:54:34.280 align:middle line:90% Does anyone still use this term? 00:54:34.280 --> 00:54:36.080 align:middle line:84% Has anyone heard the term Ebonics used 00:54:36.080 --> 00:54:38.000 align:middle line:90% for African American English? 00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:42.230 align:middle line:84% It was an attempt to make African American 00:54:42.230 --> 00:54:44.907 align:middle line:84% English sound different from African American 00:54:44.907 --> 00:54:46.490 align:middle line:84% English-- make it sound like something 00:54:46.490 --> 00:54:49.280 align:middle line:90% you might want to study. 00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:51.680 align:middle line:84% When people first-- so people have 00:54:51.680 --> 00:54:54.470 align:middle line:84% been talking about this version of English for a long time. 00:54:54.470 --> 00:54:59.420 align:middle line:84% And a lot of the discussion has been like the teachers 00:54:59.420 --> 00:55:01.670 align:middle line:84% that I was asking you to think about in the metaphor-- 00:55:01.670 --> 00:55:03.860 align:middle line:84% the ones who said, what are you doing? 00:55:03.860 --> 00:55:05.900 align:middle line:84% That's not how you play checkers. 00:55:05.900 --> 00:55:08.750 align:middle line:84% You're just moving the pieces around randomly. 00:55:08.750 --> 00:55:11.422 align:middle line:84% Stop it and learn to play a game with some rules. 00:55:11.422 --> 00:55:13.880 align:middle line:84% So the people who talk about African American English often 00:55:13.880 --> 00:55:16.850 align:middle line:84% make a point of saying that it's a version of English-- this is 00:55:16.850 --> 00:55:20.280 align:middle line:84% William Raspberry, who's African-American, I believe, 00:55:20.280 --> 00:55:24.150 align:middle line:84% saying it's a version of English that has no rules. 00:55:24.150 --> 00:55:26.150 align:middle line:84% There's a lot of really interesting reasons 00:55:26.150 --> 00:55:31.310 align:middle line:84% and not-so-recent research on African American English, some 00:55:31.310 --> 00:55:34.670 align:middle line:84% of it by African-American linguists. 00:55:34.670 --> 00:55:37.400 align:middle line:84% There's a really excellent series 00:55:37.400 --> 00:55:40.520 align:middle line:84% of works by a linguist, Lisa Green, who 00:55:40.520 --> 00:55:42.740 align:middle line:84% I recommend that you look up if you get interested 00:55:42.740 --> 00:55:44.927 align:middle line:90% in these topics. 00:55:44.927 --> 00:55:47.510 align:middle line:84% It has a number of properties, which because we're running out 00:55:47.510 --> 00:55:49.580 align:middle line:84% of time, we probably won't get a chance to talk about all 00:55:49.580 --> 00:55:50.080 align:middle line:90% of them. 00:55:50.080 --> 00:55:52.680 align:middle line:84% But I'll run through a couple of them. 00:55:52.680 --> 00:55:55.040 align:middle line:84% First of all, to talk about it as a monolithic entity 00:55:55.040 --> 00:55:56.295 align:middle line:90% is an oversimplification. 00:55:56.295 --> 00:55:58.670 align:middle line:84% There are a lot of varieties of African American English, 00:55:58.670 --> 00:56:01.400 align:middle line:84% just as there are of non-African American English. 00:56:01.400 --> 00:56:04.190 align:middle line:84% But it's characterized by negative concord, which 00:56:04.190 --> 00:56:07.010 align:middle line:84% is one of the reasons that negative concord is picked out 00:56:07.010 --> 00:56:08.330 align:middle line:90% for abuse. 00:56:08.330 --> 00:56:11.150 align:middle line:84% It has a richer tense and aspect system 00:56:11.150 --> 00:56:13.860 align:middle line:84% than the version of English that I'm speaking. 00:56:13.860 --> 00:56:16.370 align:middle line:84% So a version of the English that I'm speaking 00:56:16.370 --> 00:56:20.850 align:middle line:84% would use the same kind of verb to express these things. 00:56:20.850 --> 00:56:22.430 align:middle line:84% So I would say for both of these, 00:56:22.430 --> 00:56:24.470 align:middle line:84% "They are usually tired when they come home," 00:56:24.470 --> 00:56:26.780 align:middle line:90% and "They are tired right now." 00:56:26.780 --> 00:56:28.700 align:middle line:84% African American English distinguishes these. 00:56:28.700 --> 00:56:31.430 align:middle line:84% So you use "be" for the habitual one, the first one, 00:56:31.430 --> 00:56:33.260 align:middle line:90% and nothing-- 00:56:33.260 --> 00:56:36.150 align:middle line:84% so "They tired right now," for the second one. 00:56:36.150 --> 00:56:39.290 align:middle line:84% Again, is anybody familiar with this dialect of English? 00:56:39.290 --> 00:56:41.900 align:middle line:84% Is this something any of you have grown up around? 00:56:41.900 --> 00:56:42.992 align:middle line:90% Have you heard this? 00:56:42.992 --> 00:56:44.450 align:middle line:84% Have you heard people saying things 00:56:44.450 --> 00:56:46.190 align:middle line:90% like, "They tired right now?" 00:56:46.190 --> 00:56:46.730 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:56:46.730 --> 00:56:48.920 align:middle line:90% So I certainly have growing up. 00:56:48.920 --> 00:56:51.530 align:middle line:84% And, at the time, I believed and was 00:56:51.530 --> 00:56:54.088 align:middle line:84% taught to believe that this was because these speakers were, 00:56:54.088 --> 00:56:55.130 align:middle line:90% you know, they were lazy. 00:56:55.130 --> 00:56:57.260 align:middle line:84% They were leaving out words that they should have said. 00:56:57.260 --> 00:56:58.635 align:middle line:84% What they were actually doing was 00:56:58.635 --> 00:57:00.583 align:middle line:84% expressing an aspectual distinction 00:57:00.583 --> 00:57:02.375 align:middle line:84% that my version of English doesn't express. 00:57:02.375 --> 00:57:06.650 align:middle line:90% 00:57:06.650 --> 00:57:09.080 align:middle line:84% This is a distinction that's also expressed in Spanish. 00:57:09.080 --> 00:57:11.090 align:middle line:84% It's a distinction between what's 00:57:11.090 --> 00:57:16.100 align:middle line:84% sometimes called stage level and individual level properties. 00:57:16.100 --> 00:57:17.690 align:middle line:84% So individual level properties are 00:57:17.690 --> 00:57:21.660 align:middle line:84% properties that hold of someone over a long period of time, 00:57:21.660 --> 00:57:25.610 align:middle line:90% so use "ser" in Spanish for-- 00:57:25.610 --> 00:57:27.680 align:middle line:84% to express individual level properties 00:57:27.680 --> 00:57:29.710 align:middle line:90% like "I'm North American." 00:57:29.710 --> 00:57:33.110 align:middle line:84% "Estar" is used for temporary properties like being tired. 00:57:33.110 --> 00:57:35.120 align:middle line:84% That's a distinction that my version of English 00:57:35.120 --> 00:57:39.710 align:middle line:84% doesn't make, but African American English does. 00:57:39.710 --> 00:57:45.320 align:middle line:84% It's also got, famously, a rule-governed version 00:57:45.320 --> 00:57:46.280 align:middle line:90% of copula drop. 00:57:46.280 --> 00:57:51.090 align:middle line:84% So I do want to talk about this in a little bit of detail. 00:57:51.090 --> 00:57:54.580 align:middle line:84% So in the context in which you can leave out the copula-- 00:57:54.580 --> 00:57:57.830 align:middle line:90% 00:57:57.830 --> 00:58:00.350 align:middle line:84% when the aspectual distinctions allow 00:58:00.350 --> 00:58:02.870 align:middle line:84% you to use the null copula in African American English, 00:58:02.870 --> 00:58:05.490 align:middle line:84% there are rules about where you can do it. 00:58:05.490 --> 00:58:08.385 align:middle line:84% So, for example, you can do it in a sentence like "He rich." 00:58:08.385 --> 00:58:10.260 align:middle line:84% But you can't do it at the end of a sentence. 00:58:10.260 --> 00:58:12.020 align:middle line:84% So you can't ask-- you can't say things 00:58:12.020 --> 00:58:14.000 align:middle line:84% like, "I don't know how rich he," 00:58:14.000 --> 00:58:17.180 align:middle line:90% in this version of English. 00:58:17.180 --> 00:58:19.690 align:middle line:84% You also can't do it in infinitives. 00:58:19.690 --> 00:58:21.980 align:middle line:84% And you can't do it in the past tense. 00:58:21.980 --> 00:58:23.720 align:middle line:84% So the past tense is "He was rich." 00:58:23.720 --> 00:58:25.580 align:middle line:90% It's not, "He rich." 00:58:25.580 --> 00:58:29.180 align:middle line:84% And you don't do it when there's negation. 00:58:29.180 --> 00:58:32.540 align:middle line:84% So there is this phenomenon of copula drop 00:58:32.540 --> 00:58:35.520 align:middle line:84% if you're describing a temporary property. 00:58:35.520 --> 00:58:38.780 align:middle line:84% But it's copula drop that's subject to these rules which 00:58:38.780 --> 00:58:40.530 align:middle line:84% I've just gone through real fast. 00:58:40.530 --> 00:58:42.630 align:middle line:84% It's not just say whatever you want. 00:58:42.630 --> 00:58:45.050 align:middle line:84% There are these restrictions which linguists 00:58:45.050 --> 00:58:47.240 align:middle line:90% have studied and figured out. 00:58:47.240 --> 00:58:49.490 align:middle line:84% These particular distinctions are of interest 00:58:49.490 --> 00:58:54.350 align:middle line:84% because they have a correspondent 00:58:54.350 --> 00:58:57.710 align:middle line:84% in the version of English that I am speaking, which is sometimes 00:58:57.710 --> 00:58:59.660 align:middle line:90% called standard English. 00:58:59.660 --> 00:59:02.660 align:middle line:84% So standard English has a phenomenon 00:59:02.660 --> 00:59:05.085 align:middle line:84% where we can contract various kinds of things 00:59:05.085 --> 00:59:05.960 align:middle line:90% including the copula. 00:59:05.960 --> 00:59:07.280 align:middle line:90% So you can say, "He is rich." 00:59:07.280 --> 00:59:10.070 align:middle line:84% But you can also say, "He's rich." 00:59:10.070 --> 00:59:12.273 align:middle line:84% And this is also subject to restrictions. 00:59:12.273 --> 00:59:14.690 align:middle line:84% So you can't, for example, do it at the end of a sentence. 00:59:14.690 --> 00:59:17.148 align:middle line:84% You can't say-- you can say, "I don't know how rich he is." 00:59:17.148 --> 00:59:20.020 align:middle line:84% You can't say, "I don't know how rich he's." 00:59:20.020 --> 00:59:24.245 align:middle line:84% And I'm about to go through all of the context 00:59:24.245 --> 00:59:25.870 align:middle line:84% that we did on the last slide, but what 00:59:25.870 --> 00:59:28.540 align:middle line:84% we're going to see is that what African American English is 00:59:28.540 --> 00:59:33.238 align:middle line:84% doing is dropping copulas under just the circumstances where 00:59:33.238 --> 00:59:35.530 align:middle line:84% my version of English-- the version of English that I'm 00:59:35.530 --> 00:59:37.690 align:middle line:90% speaking-- can contract copulas. 00:59:37.690 --> 00:59:38.980 align:middle line:90% And that's it. 00:59:38.980 --> 00:59:44.020 align:middle line:84% So they're not being lazy or stupid. 00:59:44.020 --> 00:59:46.810 align:middle line:84% They're not failing to say a word that they ought to say. 00:59:46.810 --> 00:59:48.520 align:middle line:84% They just have a version of a contraction 00:59:48.520 --> 00:59:52.090 align:middle line:84% that's a little more emphatic than the version that I use. 00:59:52.090 --> 00:59:53.830 align:middle line:84% They don't just get rid of the vowel. 00:59:53.830 --> 00:59:55.360 align:middle line:90% They get rid of the whole thing. 00:59:55.360 --> 00:59:58.270 align:middle line:84% But the restrictions on where you can do this 00:59:58.270 --> 00:59:59.830 align:middle line:90% are the same restrictions. 00:59:59.830 --> 01:00:02.200 align:middle line:84% So just like in my version of English, 01:00:02.200 --> 01:00:08.260 align:middle line:84% you can't say "He'sn't rich," doing contraction both 01:00:08.260 --> 01:00:10.480 align:middle line:84% of the copula and of negation, similarly, 01:00:10.480 --> 01:00:14.170 align:middle line:84% you can't do copula drop there in African American English. 01:00:14.170 --> 01:00:18.010 align:middle line:84% Did anybody get a chance to look at the optional reading 01:00:18.010 --> 01:00:19.202 align:middle line:90% for today? 01:00:19.202 --> 01:00:20.410 align:middle line:90% I put up an optional reading. 01:00:20.410 --> 01:00:21.952 align:middle line:84% And as I put up the optional reading, 01:00:21.952 --> 01:00:24.130 align:middle line:84% I thought, here I am putting up an optional reading 01:00:24.130 --> 01:00:27.220 align:middle line:84% for a one-day topic on the day when a paper is due. 01:00:27.220 --> 01:00:29.170 align:middle line:84% What are the odds that anyone will 01:00:29.170 --> 01:00:32.603 align:middle line:84% have a chance to even consider thinking about actually 01:00:32.603 --> 01:00:34.270 align:middle line:84% even reading the announcement that there 01:00:34.270 --> 01:00:35.290 align:middle line:90% is an optional reading? 01:00:35.290 --> 01:00:37.630 align:middle line:84% These people-- it's the end of the semester. 01:00:37.630 --> 01:00:40.060 align:middle line:84% The optional reading is still on the website. 01:00:40.060 --> 01:00:42.670 align:middle line:84% It's worth having a look at sometime when you have time. 01:00:42.670 --> 01:00:44.480 align:middle line:84% I can just describe for you what it is. 01:00:44.480 --> 01:00:47.650 align:middle line:84% It's an African-American author who 01:00:47.650 --> 01:00:51.160 align:middle line:84% is addressing arguments about how African 01:00:51.160 --> 01:00:54.340 align:middle line:84% American English ought to be treated in schools. 01:00:54.340 --> 01:00:57.850 align:middle line:84% And he has a very sophisticated set of arguments. 01:00:57.850 --> 01:00:59.977 align:middle line:84% He's replying to various people who 01:00:59.977 --> 01:01:01.810 align:middle line:84% have argued the conservative position, which 01:01:01.810 --> 01:01:06.010 align:middle line:84% is that it's fine for people to speak African American 01:01:06.010 --> 01:01:07.780 align:middle line:84% English in the privacy of their own homes, 01:01:07.780 --> 01:01:10.090 align:middle line:84% but it is important that we teach 01:01:10.090 --> 01:01:13.090 align:middle line:84% them standard English in schools in order 01:01:13.090 --> 01:01:15.010 align:middle line:90% for them to get ahead in life. 01:01:15.010 --> 01:01:17.290 align:middle line:84% He's taking issue with these arguments. 01:01:17.290 --> 01:01:18.760 align:middle line:84% But the cool thing about the essay 01:01:18.760 --> 01:01:20.968 align:middle line:84% is not just that he takes issue with these arguments, 01:01:20.968 --> 01:01:23.590 align:middle line:84% but that it's written in African American English. 01:01:23.590 --> 01:01:26.320 align:middle line:84% So the essay is written in the version of English 01:01:26.320 --> 01:01:27.940 align:middle line:90% that he is describing. 01:01:27.940 --> 01:01:31.510 align:middle line:84% And it's a cool and difficult experience 01:01:31.510 --> 01:01:33.010 align:middle line:90% attempting to read it. 01:01:33.010 --> 01:01:35.920 align:middle line:84% So if it's not your native dialect of English, 01:01:35.920 --> 01:01:39.250 align:middle line:84% it's not trivial figuring out how to read the article. 01:01:39.250 --> 01:01:40.750 align:middle line:84% So it's an interesting experience. 01:01:40.750 --> 01:01:43.900 align:middle line:90% I recommend it to everybody. 01:01:43.900 --> 01:01:45.790 align:middle line:90% Questions about any of this? 01:01:45.790 --> 01:01:48.760 align:middle line:84% Other things people want to talk about? 01:01:48.760 --> 01:01:51.130 align:middle line:84% So the goal-- and we are now in the part of the semester 01:01:51.130 --> 01:01:52.990 align:middle line:84% where I attempt as a public service 01:01:52.990 --> 01:01:56.680 align:middle line:84% to combat various things people believe about language 01:01:56.680 --> 01:01:58.850 align:middle line:84% or maybe have heard about language. 01:01:58.850 --> 01:02:02.740 align:middle line:84% So the goal of today was to get you to at least hear 01:02:02.740 --> 01:02:05.017 align:middle line:84% the idea that when people speak English or whatever 01:02:05.017 --> 01:02:07.600 align:middle line:84% your native language is in a way that's different from the way 01:02:07.600 --> 01:02:11.410 align:middle line:84% that you speak it, it's not because they're stupid. 01:02:11.410 --> 01:02:14.290 align:middle line:90% It's because languages do that. 01:02:14.290 --> 01:02:17.453 align:middle line:84% There are varieties of languages. 01:02:17.453 --> 01:02:19.120 align:middle line:84% Maybe it's because there aren't actually 01:02:19.120 --> 01:02:20.230 align:middle line:90% such things as languages. 01:02:20.230 --> 01:02:21.320 align:middle line:90% There are just people. 01:02:21.320 --> 01:02:24.000 align:middle line:84% And people are different from each other. 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:25.340 align:middle line:90% Yeah? 01:02:25.340 --> 01:02:25.840 align:middle line:90% All right. 01:02:25.840 --> 01:02:26.920 align:middle line:90% Go forth and frolic. 01:02:26.920 --> 01:02:29.260 align:middle line:84% Thank you for listening to me talk about this. 01:02:29.260 --> 01:02:33.480 align:middle line:84% And I will see you again on Thursday. 01:02:33.480 --> 01:02:38.000 align:middle line:90%