Four Traps You MUST Avoid as a Linguist
Linguistics is a very interesting major, yet there is a dark side to it. Let’s see what it is all about.
Every productive major has got its traps and linguistics is no exception to this rule.
Here are some of the traps to be avoided when it comes to doing research in the field of linguistics.
First Trap: Weird Dialects and Accents. gah gah gooh gooh. gah gah gooh gooh.
You may hear your instructors and or your colleagues talk about dialects and accents and how necessary it is to make research on or to document these.
If you are living in a country like Australia that some people call it ‘the haven of the linguists’, simply because there are tons of different local languages and dialects and accents in it. Well … you may want to pack your back pack and go and live among those people and document that language, accent or dialect. I have no idea about it. But don’t let it rule your time and career. Don’t just sit in your office, do nothing or watch Netflix and then, let the nostalgia for this stuff ruin the rest of your life and spread its wings over all your lectures and articles, while you actually know nothing about those languages, dialects, etc.
Second trap: the Endless question of chicken or the egg. Linguistics has got its own version of this trap. Questions like: Was it at first one language or many languages? In this regard and related to the previous trap, we can mention the questions: what is a dialect and what is an accent. Can these two words, dialect and accent, be used interchangeably? Another example is: Was it first mere voices and noises, and then language came into being or language was complete from the very beginning?
Third trap: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It concerns linguistic relativity and says every person’s language defines his or her thought and the way they look at the world. For example, if the Arabs have several different words for different types of dates, they see the world differently with the English-speaker who simply calls them dates.
Fourth trap: Noam Chomsky.
When we were kids and attended kindergarten, our teacher had taught us to think carefully before we say anything. In her own words, she used to say: Turn the words around your mouth at least once. Evaluate them. Think. Are they worth of getting out of your mouth? If yes, then say them.
Apparently, Professor Chomsky didn’t benefit from having such a sophisticated kindergarten teacher.
Chomsky at first said in his Standard theory or aspects model: “Semantic interpretation should take place at deep structure- That is to say meaning lies in the deep structure which is the abstract syntactic representation of a sentence.
This took from 1956 to 1965.
Then, in the early 1970s, in his extended standard theory EST he said: “Semantic interpretation depends on both the surface and the deep structure.
And then, roughly in the middle of 1970s in his revised extended theory, REST, he announced that the surface structure alone is responsible for meaning.
More interesting than that, in his binding theory, Chomsky talks about how a noun should precede the pronoun that refers to it. WOW! What a genius! He makes me remember my kindergarten teacher, again.
And whatever happened in the outside world, Chomsky made sure to get something from it and put it into the magnificent theory he was about to publish the next day.
If you ever miss high school grammar, instead of studying generative grammar, go see your high school teacher. He or she will be proud of you as a linguist. In this way, you help ending Chomsky’s tyranny in syntax. Some of Chomsky’s abbreviations among many others are: Universal Grammar. UG. Deep structure
D- Structure. Surface structure
S- Structure.
Phonetic form. Pf.
Logical form. LF
Transformational generative grammar. TGG.
Government and binding Model. GB.
Minimalist program. MP.
Principles and parameters theory. P and P theory. X bar. X double bar.
VP. NP. IP. CP. DP.
Peeh. Peeh. Poh. Poh. Teh. Teh. Peh. Teh.
He also talks about movements. Please don’t mistake these movements with bowel movements. By the way, do you think he has any obsession with some dark sexual enjoyments? Just note these names he gave to some of his theories:
Control theory-
government and bounding theory. Barriers. Displacement property-
c-command-
raising structure
He also had obsession with many different fields of study.
In this sentence, we use the word “had”, not because we have missed this genius. NO. We use past tense because those years have finished that Mr. Chomsky presented us with his new theory every morning.
Good old days!
May Lord Bless Panini, who at least wrote a grammar book.
Anyway, Chomsky’s obsession with other fields include: computer sciences, mathematics, physics, gardening and recently architecture. Find the examples of these obsessions in his work for yourself. We don’t ruin your joy of finding them for yourself by giving them off.
There are other linguistics and grammarians in the history of linguistics and syntax whose theories are more than some lines of definition.
To name one, we must definitely mention the Danish linguist, Louis Hjelmslev.
There were some people who didn’t officially carry the title of linguist, yet gave lectures much more profound than those of Chomsky’s. One was definitely Leonard Bernstein whose lectures in 1973 deal widely with linguistic issues.
Some scholars who are more stupid than Chomsky himself try or have tried to adopt his theories to languages other than English, unaware of the fact that they barely even work for English.
We suggest that the departments of linguistics demand the students to learn at least two languages: such as: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Or even Latin.
And also, music theory. Without music theory, linguistics is impossible.
Are you a linguist? What traps do you see in this field?
