Chapter 3

CW3.1 Languages dying out

Here is what Powell says in his paper ‘Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico’: ‘The field [studying American Indian languages] is a vast one … and the workers are comparatively few. Moreover, opportunities for collecting linguistic material are growing fewer day by day, as tribes are consolidated upon reservations, as they become civilised, and as the older Indians, who alone are skilled in their language, die, leaving, it may be, only a few imperfect vocabularies as a basis for future study. History has bequeathed to us the names of many tribes, which became extinct in early colonial times, of whose language not a hint is left and whose linguistic relations must ever remain unknown’ (in Holder 1966: 102).

CW3.2 Looking at distribution

There are various positions in a sentence that a word like sometimes (which is an adverb) can occupy. Here are two examples of the distribution of sometimes:

  1. He sometimes played the bagpipes.
  2. He played the bagpipes sometimes.

Try substituting sometimes, in both these sentences, with each of the following adverbs in turn: often, frequently, well, rarely, regularly, terribly.

Some of the sentences you form in this way will be acceptable ones, but some will not. In other words, some, but not all, of these words have the same distribution as sometimes. Which? Try to find something in common about the ideas expressed by those with the same distribution. (It would, incidentally, be easy to find exceptions to what it is that you discover.) The ‘answers’ are below.

Answers

The words often, frequently, rarely and regularly can all be put either before the verb or at the end of the sentence. The other two words – well and terribly – cannot normally go before the verb. The words with the same distribution as sometimes all express the notion of frequency – how often an action takes place. Based on these words, you can say that adverbs of frequency can be placed before the main verb or at the end of the sentence. But it is easy to find exceptions. On Tuesdays, for example, expresses frequency, but you would not normally put this phrase before the main verb.

CW3.3 Hymes’s communicative competence

The factors Hymes discusses are on the left, and there are some comments on the right.

1.   Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible

Roughly (but not exactly) equivalent to ‘systemic competence’ and what Chomskyan linguistics is concerned with

2.   Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available

The mouse the cat the dog the man the woman married beat chased ate had a white tail

3.   Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated

Related to the ‘rules of use’ discussed in 2.4.1 under the heading of ‘sociolinguistic competence’

4.   Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails

It’s a great shame versus It’s a big shame