11 - USAGE

Summary

Introduction

Consider three scenarios. First, a distinguished psycholinguist discussing “language mavens” invites his readers to imagine themselves watching a nature documentary:

The video shows the usual gorgeous footage of animals in their natural habitats. But the voiceover reports some troubling facts. Dolphins do not execute their swimming strokes properly. White-crowned sparrows carelessly debase their calls. Chickadees' nests are incorrectly constructed, pandas hold bamboo in the wrong paw, the song of the humpback whale contains several well-known errors, and monkeys' cires have been in a state of chaos and degeneration for hundreds of years.

[Pinker 370, emphasis added]

Viewers would be incredulous at such reports, the psycholinguist predicts: “What on earth could it mean for the song of the humpback whale to contain an ‘error’? Isn't the song of the humpback whale whatever the humpback whale decides to sing?” The psycholinguist contrasts the predicted rejection of judgments about animal behavior with the ready acceptance of similar judgments about human language: “For human language, most people think that the same pronouncements not only are meaningful but are cause for alarm.” He says, “To a linguist or psycholinguist … language is like the song of the humpback whale. The way to determine whether a construction is ‘grammatical’ is to find people who speak the language and ask them.”