Showing native speakers what and why they say what they do say: Awareness raising from a semiotic point of view¹

A version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on Language Awareness at the University of Wales Bangor, April 1992.

Abstract

More often than not, native speakers use alternative ways to express the same linguistic or communicative function or message without being aware of why they choose one form over another. Examples of this phenomenon include:

1. ‘Irregular’ plurals: mass/count nouns, singular‐plural agreement;

2. ‘Quantifiers’: much/many, each/every, some/any;

3. ‘Conditionals’: if/whether;

4. ‘Connectives’ (indicating ‘Addition'): also/too;

5. ‘Restrictives’: like/just

6. ‘Adverbs of Comparison’: like X/as X;

7. ‘Comparatives/Superlatives’: X‐er/est / morel most X;

8. ‘Genitives’ or ‘Possessives’: X's Y/the Y of X.

This paper presents a semiotic approach based on the theoretical and methodological principles of invariance, markedness and distinctive feature theory to explain these and other problematic and oftentimes unexplained language phenomena. This semiotic or sign‐oriented explanation of why speakers say what they do uncovers an aspect of language awareness which may have not been previously explored in traditional word and sentence‐oriented approaches.

Notes

A version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on Language Awareness at the University of Wales Bangor, April 1992.