1. Children learn their native language swiftly, efficiently, and largely without instruction:

a. Language is a species-specific trait of human beings. As far as we know, our
ability to speak a language distinguishes us from all other animal species.

b. While children learn a language, much of our linguistic knowledge seems
to be innate, an intrinsic part of our mental framework.

c. Children learn a language partly by imitation but also through hypothesis-
testing (eg., the construction of past-tense verbs).

d. By the time children begin school, they have already learned the majority
of rules governing their native language and can produce virtually all kinds
of sentences that it permits.  A person's ability to use language is determined
early in life.
 

2. Language operates by rules:

a. When we learn a language, we are acquiring a vast system of mostly
subconscious rules that allow us to make meaningful and increasingly
complex utterances. These rules govern sound (phonology), words
(lexicon and semantics), the arrangement of strings of words (morphemes and
syntax), and social aspects of speaking (pragmatics).

b. While all human languages share certain common characteristics, the
specific rules governing each language are different. This is because human
languages (or the rules that define them) are not natural, but arbitrary in
some of the following ways--

 *The relationship between the sounds of a language and what they represent are usually arbitrary.  There is no natural connection between a linguistic sign (or signifier) and what it signifies. The same is true for writing.

 *The grammatical rules of a language are also arbitrary (eg., past tense verbs).

c. This system of rules is the foundation of every language.  Speakers of a
language consciously and unconsciously agree that they will use certain
sounds consistently, that certain combinations of sounds will mean the same
thing, and that they will use certain grammatical patterns to convey
messages. Thus, every language is highly conventionalized.
 

3. All languages have three major components:

a. Phonology-- The sound system of a language; the vocal noises or
combination of noises that a language uses.  Children master the phonology of
a language last, after they have mastered its grammar and most of its basic
words (or word-formation rules).

b. Lexicon-- The vocabulary of a language; the words that comprise any
language. Beyond knowing individual words, children and adults are always
building and refining classes and categories of words, making connections
between words, and expanding or refining the semantic properties (or
meaning) of words.

c. Grammar-- The system of rules we use to arrange words into meaningful
English sentences, using markers such as tense, plurality and agreement. The
grammar of a language reveals how the language works, how it makes
meaning from a limited number of sounds and words.

 *Prescriptive Grammar-- Attempts to prescribe in detail the system of rules that governs how a person should speak (according to an ideal standard).

 *Descriptive Grammar-- Attempts to describe in detail the system of rules that governs how a person (or community) actually speaks.
 

4. Everyone speaks a dialect:

a. A dialect is a variety of a language which as a certain set of lexical, phonological, and grammatical rules that distinguish it from other dialects (or varieties) of the language.

b. Many of the world's languages (including American English) have a
standard dialect. The standard is usually defined as the speech of the upper- or
educated class (or those in power).  It is the language of written
communication. It is the variety of the language taught in schools or other
educational institutions.

c. The standard dialect is not inherently superior to any other dialect of the
language. It may, however, confer considerable social, political and/or
economic power on its users because of prevailing attitudes about its
inherent worthiness.
 

5. Speakers of all languages employ a range of styles and a set of sub-dialects
or jargons:

a. We don't belong to just one speech community, but many. Some of these
include geographical region, family, peer-groups, educational settings, work
or professional settings, and personal interest groups.  Since this is the case,
we don't simply speak one dialect but many. To put it another way, dialects
always exist along a speech continuum that we move back and forth across.

b. The ability to adjust our speech to fix a particular social context is
something we acquire as children. We learn not just to say things, but also how
to say them and when and to whom.

c. Three aspects of this--

 *speech styles-- the type of interaction between speakers or speakers and listeners.

 *jargon-- the specialized words or vocabulary used by certain speech communities.

 *The uses, functions or purposes of speaking-- eg., instrumental, heuristic, personal, regulatory, imaginative, interactive, representational.
 

6. Language change is normal:

a.  All languages change over time. This is inevitable for a variety of reasons,
and it is the reason we have different languages and dialects. While grammar
handbooks and dictionaries (as well as the standard dialect) work to decrease
or impede this change, they cannot stop it completely.

b. Just because a language is changing does not necessarily mean it is
becoming corrupted or is decaying.  Sometimes the changes are good; other
times they create problems. Sometimes the changes work to simplify or
regularize the language; other times they make the language more complex.

c. Language change occurs at all levels: at the level of sounds; at the level of
words and their meaning; at the level of grammar or the rules of the
language.
 

7. Languages are intimately related to the societies and individuals that use
them:

a. Every human language has been shaped by and changes to meet the needs of
its speakers.  While languages may differ, they are all complete languages.
There is no such thing as a "primitive" or inferior language.

b. Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir (1930s)--Theory of Linguistic
Relativity.  Our native language profoundly conditions our thought processes
and shapes how we perceive and experience the world around us. All of our
ideas are controlled by our language (what it allows us to think), so that our
reality is what we say rather than what actually exists (language is a "prison
house").

c. Current scholarly consensus-- We are conditioned to some degree by the
language we speak, and our language does teach us habitual ways of looking at
the world. But human adaptability can enable us to transcend the limitations of
a language, to learn to see the world in new ways and voice new concepts when
we must. We make language more than language makes us.
 

8. Value judgements about languages and/or dialects are matters of taste:

a. Just as we learn a language, we also learn (from a variety of sources) a
complex set of attitudes and assumptions about our speech and the speech of
others. More often than not, these assumptions are prejudicial or stereotypes
and do not have any direct correlation to the language/dialect itself.
However, the attitudes are real and can have a profound effect on how people
perceive one another.
 

9. Writing is derivative of speech:

a. Speech is much older that language. The earliest writing systems appeared
fewer than 5,000 years ago, while speech is probably as old as humanity itself.

b. While all human cultures possess a language, not all cultures possess a
writing system (about 5%). Writing is not an "inherent" part of human
identity like speech.

c. Despite these facts, many societies (including our own) tend to value the
written language (or standard) over spoken varieties of a language