Language and speech

Abstract

This paper is intended to serve as an introduction both to the first session and to the Discussion Meeting as a whole. I begin by distinguishing natural human languages, in relation to their apparent species-specificity, from non-natural languages and from non-human languages. I then explain the technical terms ‘language system’, ‘grammar’, ‘lexicon’, ‘competence’ and ‘performance’. Languages, as we know them, are manifest in two mediums: in the phonic medium when spoken; in the graphic medium when written. Although there are good reasons for saying that speech is primary in relation to writing, in any discussion of the psychological mechanisms of language, it is important to maintain a distinction between language and medium, as follows. (1) It is possible that the integration of syntax and phonology, though based on a species-specific biological endowment for the acquisition of language and for vocalization, is a product of the normal environmental conditions in which languages are acquired and should not be ascribed to what Chomsky identifies as universal grammar. (2) Spoken utterances have a linear, time-related, structure. Sentences, as medium-independent units, do not. What, then, are the factors that determine the linearization of sentences so that, in particular contexts of utterance, one order of words and phrases, rather than another, is adopted? Are the same factors responsible for the fixation of word-order in those languages in which the order of words and phrases has a grammatical function? More generally, do such psychological factors, including the requirements of on-line processing, have an influence upon the historical development of language systems? (3) Is the language system, including the lexicon, stored in the brain in a medium-independent format, so that it can be accessed equally well in both speech and writing and without either of them influencing the other?