The Principles of Language-Study

by Harold E. Palmer

Until we know more about speech-psychology and the ultimate processes of language-study, it is doubtful whether we can embody in the form of a concrete principle the subject treated in this chapter. The writer would prefer, at this stage of our knowledge, simply to submit the following considerations in the hope that future research will throw further light on the subject and render it possible to co-ordinate it with those branches of linguistic pedagogy which are more familiar to us. Indeed, when we have ascertained experimentally the exact nature of what we shall call ‘memorized’ and ‘constructed’ speech-material, it is conceivable that the whole subject will become so clarified that it will be possible to reduce to one main principle all or most of what has been said in the foregoing chapters.

Now, whenever we open our lips to speak, or whenever we set pen to paper, it is with the object of producing one or more units of speech. These units may be short and simple, such as: Yes, No, Here, or they may be word-groups, such as: Very well, I don’t know, Yes, if I can, or they may be complete and even complicated sentences containing one or more subordinate clauses. But whatever the unit may be, long or short, simple or complex, one thing is clear: each unit has either been memorized by the user integrally as it stands or else is composed by the user from smaller and previously memorized units. This is a fundamental fact about speech which stands out clearly and unmistakably; it is not a fanciful supposition or an idle conjecture, it is an axiomatic truth.

Now let us term ‘memorized matter’ everything that we have memorized integrally, and ‘constructed matter’ everything that we have not so memorized, but which we compose or build up as we go on. Can we distinguish the two things? In most cases we can. Monosyllabic words have generally (although not necessarily) been memorized as they stand; we say and understand the word cat, because once upon a time we had the occasion to hear the word in question and the opportunity to connect it with its meaning and to retain it. The word cat is included in our memorized matter. Probably most words of two or even more syllables have been acquired as memorized matter. Great numbers of compound words have also been acquired in the same way. A considerable number of word-groups and sentences are included in our memorized matter. Such sentences as I don’t know, Just come here, Pick it up, I don’t want it, are most probably memorized with most speakers.

Now consider a unit of speech such as: I saw Henry Siddings between six and half-past at the corner of Rithington Lane. Is it the sort of unit which we should use as a result of having memorized it integrally? An actor or reciter may indeed have occasion to do so, but apart from those whose duty or hobby it is to memorize ‘lines’ it is an extremely unlikely specimen of memorized matter. The writer has just composed it, and does not even know whether there exists such a surname as Siddings or a place called Rithington Lane; there are millions of chances to one that it is an entirely original sentence. Most of the things we utter or write come into the category of constructed matter; their component parts have been memorized integrally and so constitute memorized matter; but the complete units are constructed, they are the result of rapid and probably unconscious acts of synthesis.

This is no place for statistics, even if data were available; it must be left to investigators to ascertain the relative amount of memorized and constructed matter used by the young child in his first months or years of speech. Inquiries of this sort should afford some valuable and surprising evidence; the writer has had occasion to note that a French-speaking child of about ten was even unconscious of the composition of units such as pomme de terre or quatre-vingts, just as the average adult English person is unconscious of the composition of fortnight or nevertheless.[6] What will certainly complicate such research work is the paradoxical fact that constructed matter may become memorized by dint of frequent repetition. A further complication is added by the fact that the two types of matter may also be considered from the point of view, not of the speaker, but of the auditor.

One of the questions that concerns us at present is to ascertain what should be the right proportions of memorized and constructed matter in the initial stages of learning a foreign language.

Too large a proportion of memorized matter will render study unnecessarily tedious, for memorizing work, even under the best of conditions, is less interesting than the piecing together of known units. Too large a proportion of constructed matter, on the other hand, will certainly result in an artificial sort of speech or a pidgin form, with all its evil consequences. At the present day, as in the past, the tendency in language-study is to pay far too much attention to constructing and not nearly enough to memorizing.

What concerns us still more is to ascertain definitely by experiment what is the exact nature of those processes by which constructed matter is derived from memorized matter. We must find out what really does happen in the case of young children in the first stages of their speech-experience, and by what mental processes those persons called born linguists attain their results.

There would appear to be three distinct manners of producing constructed matter; these may be termed respectively:

(a) Grammatical construction.
(b) Ergonic construction.
(c) Conversion.