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Variation at the Sound Level
Languages have a lot of things in common. We can start considering these by looking at the way languages are acquired. We have made that humans are endowed with the ability to acquire any language spoken within their environment. We refer to this ability as Language Acquisition Device (LAD). This device makes it possible for a child to acquire the language spoken around him/her even if language is not that of the parents. Since children acquire languages the same way, it is a universal process. Also, languages share entities such as Nouns, Verbs, etc.
Apart from what languages share, there are things that vary across languages, one of them is sound system and sound pattern. Although there are sounds that English language shares with most languages, there are also sounds that are found in English but not in Nigerian languages. Consider, for example, the sounds phonetically represented as [θ, ð] – voiceless and voiced dental fricatives (alphabetically represented as th). These sounds are found in English language but not in Nigerian languages. On the other hand, Nigerian languages have the sounds alphabetically represented as kp and gb. These sounds do not exist in English. We thus see that languages can vary in their sound system.
Languages can also vary in the way the sounds are patterned to form words. Consider, for example, the sounds /p,a,t/ which are found in English language. Although these sounds are also found in most Nigerian languages, the way English arranges them to form words differs from the way Nigerian languages may arrange them to form words. From these sounds, English may form the words pat, tap, apt. Most Nigerian languages may not form words with them in this way. Thus, the way sounds are arranged to form words differ in languages.
Take another example. English may have three consonants before a vowel in its syllable structure (CCCV). Such words like scream, splash, stream reflect this. Such consonant-cluster combinations may not be possible in most Nigerian languages.
From all these, we see that although languages may have some sounds in common, they may also differ in the types of sounds and the way in which those sounds are combined to form words.
Variation at the Syntactic Level
We have seen above that languages vary in their sound system and sound pattern. Languages also vary at the syntactic level. Popular syntactic categories in English include Noun, Verb, Adverb, Adjective, Preposition, Conjunction, and Determiners. Some languages may not have all of them. Also, the way these categories are used in English language may differ from the way they are used in other languages.
One characteristic of English language is that it is a strict word-order language. This implies that the words in an English sentence must be strictly ordered in a particular way. Consider the sentence:
1. He bought the book yesterday.
Sentence (1) is an acceptable English sentence because the words are arranged in a way permissible in English. However, sentence (2) would not be an English sentence because of the way the words are arranged. Although (2) is made up of English words,
2. *He yesterday the bought book..
It is not an English sentence because the words are not ordered in the way they should. Unacceptable words or sentences are usually starred.
Sentence (1) can be analyzed as Noun (He) + Verb (bought) + Determiner (the) + Noun (book) + Adverb (yesterday) or as Noun + Verb + Object + Adverb (NVOA). This is an acceptable order of elements in an English sentence. Sentence (2) does not follow this order and is thus unacceptable as English does not have *Noun + Adverb + Determiner + Verb + Noun word-order.
On the other hand, although some languages may have the syntactic categories that exist in English, they may not share the English ordering of these categories. Consider these examples:
English: The man is tall (Det Noun Verb Adj)
Igbo: Mmadu ahu di ogologo (Noun Det Verb Adj)
From these examples, we notice that in English determiner precedes the Noun, while in Igbo, it follows the Noun. Let us consider one more example:
English: John read the book (Noun Verb Det. Noun)
Japanese: John – ga hon – o yonda (Noun Nom. Noun Acc. read past)
John the book read ‘John read the book’
We observe from the above example that in English, the direct object (the book) follows the verb while in Japanese it precedes the verb. Thus, in English, everything in the verb phrase appears to the right but in Japanese everything in the Verb Phrase appears to the left. English is, thus, Verb-initial while Japanese is Verb-final. In parametric variation, this phenomenon is referred to as Head Parameter.
From these examples, we see that languages vary in the way elements are ordered in sentences. Syntactic categories in languages, therefore, vary. The differences are peculiar to languages and this is referred to as periphery.
CONCLUSION
We have seen in this unit that languages are similar and different in particular respects. The core elements comprise the elements languages have in common while peripheral elements comprise elements that are different in languages. The features that are not shared are said to be marked because they are not replicated in other languages.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, you have learned that:
• universal grammar consists of two major components: the core and the periphery;
• languages are similar in some respects and different in other respects;
• features shared by languages are referred to as the core while those that are different are referred to as the periphery.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
(a) Explain what you understand by ‘language variation’.
(b) Discuss two ways by which languages could vary.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Culicover, Peter W. (1997). Principles and Parameters: An Introduction to Syntactic Theory. London: OUP.
Freidin, Robert. (1994). Foundations of Generative Syntax. Cambridge, MASS: MIT Press.
Lamidi, M.T. (2000). Aspects of Chomskyan Grammar. Ibadan: Emman Publications.
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