The Principles of Language-Study

by Harold E. Palmer

The principle may also be violated by paying too much or too little attention to any of the five chief branches of practical linguistics: phonetics, orthography, word-building, sentence-building, and semantics. Let us pass them in review in order to make quite sure that we understand the scope of each and have properly discriminated between them.

Phonetics teaches us how to recognize and how to make the sounds of which the language is composed; it teaches us the difference between two or more sounds which resemble each other, and between a given foreign sound and its nearest native equivalent.

Orthography (with which we may associate orthoepy) teaches us how to spell what we have already learnt by ear; it also teaches us how to pronounce what we have learnt by eye from an ordinary orthographic text.

Word-building (accidence and etymology) teaches us inflexions, prefixes, and suffixes, and how to use them, how to form plurals from singulars, accusatives from nominatives, finite tenses from infinitives; most of the mysteries of declension and conjugation are included under this heading; the collecting of word-families pertains to this branch.

Sentence-building (syntax and analysis) teaches us how to combine words into sentences, how to form compound tenses, phrases, and clauses; it teaches us the places of the various sentence-components, the nature and use of concord or agreement; it shows us the differences between regular and irregular sentences. When properly systematized (according to a special science to which the name of ‘ergonics’ has been given) this particular branch of linguistics shows us how to form the largest possible number of sentences with the fewest words.

Semantics teaches us the meaning of words, of inflexions, and of compounds; it shows us how to transform our thoughts into language, to select the most appropriate word or form, and to interpret correctly what we hear and read. It is more especially this branch which teaches us the differences in style and dialect, and enables us to distinguish the colloquial from the classical and to keep either from contaminating the other.

If we are to judge by the average teacher and the average language-course, the principle of proportion is usually violated by teaching:

(a) No phonetics at all.
(b) Too much orthography or orthoepy.
(c) Too much word-building.
(d) Too little sentence-building.
(e) Practically no semantics.

The principle of proportion may also be observed or violated in the selection of vocabularies and of grammatical material. To include in early lessons words or forms which are comparatively rare, archaic, and useless, while excluding some of the commonest and most useful items of language-material, is an offence not only against the principle of gradation but also against the principle of proportion. Too little attention also is usually paid to ensuring a just proportion between the various parts of speech. There is a fairly well defined series of laws which determine the relative number of nouns, verbs, and adjectives occurring in a given vocabulary radius, and with the growing attention which is being given to this sort of statistical work these laws are standing out more clearly and are coming to be better understood. We have also to note a regrettable tendency to give preference in vocabularies to words of special utility (such as names of plants, animals, parts of the body, tools, implements, and such-like semi-technical words) and to neglect unduly words of general utility, words which may occur in any context and which are common to any subject. This is a particularly grave case of disproportion when we consider that the bulk of any given text (probably from 80 per cent. to 90 per cent. of it) is made up of these general words.

Proportion must be observed in determining the respective quantities of drill-work and free work, of translation-work and ‘direct work,’ of intensive reading and extensive reading, of chorus-work and individual work needed; throughout the whole range of the subject there are possibilities of good or of bad proportion. It is for the teacher or for the designer of language-courses to see that the principle is reasonably well observed.