PicoBlog

My good dog is not very happy with me.

I am sitting still and tapping the computer, again.

Sorry, darling. I have to keep going today. There’s too many thoughts in my head, and I have to get them out.

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Did you know that:

• All known human languages, including Signed Languages, are each capable of expressing an infinite number of concepts and ideas?

• That you could, if you lived forever, write a never-ending sentence?

• That almost all of the things you say, have never been said before, in the way you said it?

• That when mapped, human language looks like tree roots?

I find these things meaningful, and not a little lovely.

We begin each utterance with the smallest unit of meaning; the morpheme, and we build up - or down, thinking of tree roots - to syllables and words, phrases and sentences, paragraphs and stories, to conversation, to oratory and dialectic, jokes, poetry and song, science, philosophy and the exchange of ideas.

We structure our societies with language. It allows for eloquence and specificity, simultaneously. Language has infinite potential, in and of itself.

It is the mechanism we all use to pass on our cultures to our children; culture being the sum total of our knowledge and wisdom.

We don’t even think about it, most of the time.

Anyone who has raised a child knows that they are unbelievably fast language learners when they're small. They'll stare at you, with wide eyes, listening with their full attention. They’ll move your hair out of the way with their tiny sticky fingers to stare into *your* eyes.

They speak baby language; a babbling sound, made up of consonants and sibilants, vowel sounds and squeaks, with the cadence of the language they are learning - and we speak it back to them.

For a while, only their mothers can understand them when they begin to speak - and then suddenly, poof! They're doing it, and everyone can understand.

They are absolutely intent on working out how to communicate with language. It is innate to the human animal.

Did you know:

• That the neural pathways for sound and meaning begin to develop in the human brain before we are born, as we listen to our mothers’ voices in utero?

• That grammar is universal to all human languages, including Signed Languages?

All human beings acquire the grammar of our mother tongue long before we learn all the vocabulary and concepts that come with it. We have our grammar almost perfectly learned by the time we are five.

We can correctly use verbs, adverbs, proper and common nouns, adjectives, pronouns, articles both definite and indefinite, conjunctions and prepositions. We can structure a sentence and formulate a question.

We understand how to use tenses: ‘past, present, future’. We know the pronouns ‘I, me, you, we, him, her, she, he, they, us and them’, as well as we know how to run.

We know all this and more by the time we are five. We don’t know what it’s called, but we don’t need to.

We know our stuff so well by the end of childhood that attempting to teach grammar to teenagers invariably results in rolled eyes and defiant young people.

“Why are we learning this?”, and “This sucks”, are comments on grammar class that every English teacher has heard. They plough on, grateful for the word-nerd, agog in the corner.

Bilingual children often take a year or so longer to acquire the grammar of both languages because it’s such a tremendous mental task.

It's very common for a child to resist speaking one language in favour of the one that more people whom they know are speaking, especially at kindergarten and school.

For those who are lucky enough to acquire two or more languages, I firmly believe that their cultural knowledge and interpretation of the world is enriched by the internal exchange of ideas and perspectives.

‘Grammar acquisition’ is also why it is so essential that babies with hearing loss are identified early - within 24 hours of birth, for the initial check.

Because the window of time for grammar acquisition is finite. If you have not learned a full grammar by the time you hit puberty, you never will. Not ever.

Your birthright - language; the way you communicate with other human beings - will never fully function.

I knew a Deaf man, twenty years ago, who was robbed of a proper grammar, for life. What happened to him was profoundly terrible.

Forbidden to use NZSL, New Zealand Sign Language - his mother tongue, beaten for it by nuns right here in New Zealand (in the 50s-60’s, from memory) - and with a hearing loss too profound to ever speak English fluently, he had been left with incomplete language acquisition.

The drive to speak language with other people is extremely powerful, and my friend had cobbled together ‘Total Communication’, (a made-up forced language) his own signing, and painful verbal speech, that cost him to use. He studied sign language as an adult, and he tried hard to read and write, but it was hard for him.

It was very, very difficult for him to communicate. He frequently became angry and distressed and incoherent. I am very grateful for the time I got to spend with him, and his trust in me when we spoke. He gave me an insight into language that I never forgot.

Grammar is the framework on which language rests, and every human brain is wired for it. Every single one. Human language is amazing.

We describe languages in terms of ‘living’ or ‘dead’. Living languages change, and get spoken every day. Dead languages do not.

Language, like anything else that is living, and expanding, must be allowed to be free.

Occasionally, governments attempt to compel and control and perform topiary on the common language of The People, without their express permission, for various reasons. It never ends well. I cannot think of a single example in history where that worked out.

It's one of the few things that will drive a whole population to resist. We don't all know how to describe grammar, but we do all know what the words mean and where they go and what they do. They're our words, that we learned as babies, with our mothers.

Languages can die like that, and we know there are places in the world right now where making words disappear also means making people disappear.

Innocent people.

People like to say now: “They Are Us”.

I say “Our Languages Are Us” - and unity is more commonly expressed with “We”.

A line I saw recently: “Luke….I am your Non-Birthing Parent”.

My son instantly quipped “So…like…are you my Stepdad, or….?” Lol.

Next up, Linguistic Codes in New Zealand. What's a linguistic code? Go on, find out.

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics2/chapter/from-constituency-to-tree-diagrams/

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