This section describes the differences and similarities of spoken and written language systems.
Spoken and written language are two forms of communication in human interaction, but they differ in the way they operate due to the specific nature of their system. Although both use language as a means of communication (sending message and receiving feedback) there are certain points where they differ while sharing similar rules in certain circumstances. This section is divided into two subsections, namely, the description of similarities of spoken and written language and the presentation of differences between them.
One of the objectives of this study is to find out how extended verbs behave and the extent to which verb extensions are used in spoken and written forms in Kuria. Therefore, it is very important before starting the analysis to have an idea of the differences and similarities of these two forms; not necessarily in Kuria or in Bantu but in language in general. Chafe and Tannen state that,
[l]inguists have been late to realize that differences between spoken and written language are worth their attention. For more than two thousand years the systematic study of language in the West focused largely on language as it was written, a natural enough bias (1987, p. 383).
Chafe and Tannen’s argument inspired me to investigate into how the extended verb behaves in these two systems which differ at some points. Before getting into detail with regard to differences, let us start by looking at the similarities between these two forms.
2.4.1 Similarities of Spoken and Written Languages
Spoken and written language are both ways of presenting someone’s ideas, opinions or thoughts.
The main function of language is to communicate between two people or a group of people (in my case). Therefore, successful communication is when two communicators understand each other.
This can be used in different ways by speech or by writing. As Halliday argued, a language has three strata, namely, “meaning, wording, and expression; and expression may take the form either
47 of sound or writing” (1990, p. 14). Regarding written language, he went on to explain that:
“Writing is a part of language. More specifically, it is one kind of expression in language—an alternative sound” (Halliday, 1990, p. 14). Halliday assumed that whatever is spoken can also be written—that writing is simply an alternative form of expression to speech (Halliday, 1990, p. 29).
Chafe and Tannen (1987) showed that the strategies associated with writing could also be found in spoken language. They stated that the “way of speaking could be a preparation for expository writing, and that strategies associated with orality could be found in writing” (Chafe and Tannen 1987, p. 394). From their views, one can see how they try to connect these two forms, as they conclude that,
[u]nderstanding the relationship between ordinary and literary language is at the heart of the health’s parallel investigations of the uses of and attitudes toward language among Black and White-class communities … Central to both studies is the observation that no written materials have meaning, use, or currency apart from oral interpretation (Chafe and Tannen, 1987, p. 396).
Chafe and Tannen attempt to show the connection of spoken and written and the importance of spoken language in the interpretation of the written language. This means that they can be considered as two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated, although they may diverge from each other at some point.
2.4.2 Differences between Spoken and Written Languages
Although expression can be presented in the form of written or spoken language, these two forms differ on how they operate. The differences between spoken and written language can be categorized in relation to a number of factors, such as age, universality, structure and linguistic basis, change, record keeping, generation of feedback, contextual influences and the level of complexity. For instance, in terms of age, spoken language is older than written dating back to the very origin of human existence, whereas written language is a later development. As Halliday comments:
Linguistics has played a significant part in sanctifying the written language. It is only after language is written down that it becomes an object accessible to conscious attention and systematic study; so grammar begins with writing, and it codifies the written language. The so-called ‘traditional grammar’ that came into the ‘grammar school’ was a theory of written language (1990, p. 97).
48 Spoken language is more universal compared to written language. Everyone is endowed with the capacity to speak but writing demands specific skills, techniques and training. Thus, the latter requires particular principles and stricter rules. In the spoken language, the speaker needs an immediate participant partner, while in written forms the writer and the reader are not necessarily meeting at the same place and time.
On the basis of linguistic issues, in spoken expression there are some features which cannot be found in written and vice versa such as prosodic features, i.e. intonation, stress, and pitch, and sometimes facial expressions or corporal gestures. For instance, someone can agree or disagree by nodding or shaking his or her head respectively, a paralinguistic feature which is not possible in written language. Written language should be punctuated systematically and well organized to allow for the logical flow of thoughts and ideas in a text. This has also been explained by Halliday (1990). Although Halliday viewed spoken and written as alternative uses of language, he discussed some features which are not found in written language, such as prosodic and paralinguistic features which distinguish these two forms. He argued that “prosodic features are part of the linguistic system; they carry systematic contrasts in meaning, just like other resources in the grammar, and what distinguishes them from these other resources (such as word endings) is that they spread across extended portions of speech, like an intonation contour, for example” (Halliday, 1990, p.
30). Written language is more precise, for example, though certain punctuations like a ‘comma’
can be replaced in oral utterance by a pause, the demarcation is subtler in the written, giving room to different punctuation signs that mark different kinds of pause.
In record keeping, written language has been used for cross linguistics research as a source of data such as previous studies are used in some researches, because it is easy to keep record for subsequent users. Meanwhile, it is not possible to preserve the spoken with the aid of vaious technological methods of tape-recording. Another difference can be seen in getting feedback: in spoken language the speaker gets feedback immediately while in the written form the feedback is not usually instantaneous. There is usually a time-lapse between script and the response. This occurs for instance when someone reviews or uses the document as a source of data in a subsequent research. In other cases, the writer might not get any feedback at all, because not all readers intend to give feedback.
49 Another difference is about structure and syntactic categories as can be seen in Chafe and Tannen (1987, p. 383) where they investigate the relation between spoken and written language in different sources. The research aimed at describing the structural differences between spoken and written forms and the influence of context on construction and use of these two forms. They found some features which differentiate both forms of communication. For instance, in France, students “asked to speak and write about a set of pictures, finding that the number of words and the verb/adjective ratio were higher in speaking, whereas the type/token ratio was higher in writing” (Chafe and Tannen, 1987, p. 384). They also reviewed another study by Harrell (1957) that deals with comparison of oral and written expressions and they established that written expression contained more adverbial and adjectival clauses, while spoken speech had more nominal clauses (Chafe and Tannen, 1987, p. 384).
Another difference is contextual influences whereby the speaker(s) and interlocutor(s) are conditioned by specific factors. They depend on the topic, relationship, time, location and their intentions. The spoken language is more context-bound than the written language. By this I mean that the spoken language depends much more on context than the written language. Chafe and Tannen (1987) argue that “the orality-literacy hypothesis posits that writing makes possible verbatim memory and abstract and sequentially logical thought, and that written discourse is decontextualized or autonomous, whereas non-literate culture is associated with constructive memory and concrete and rhapsodic thought and that spoken is context-bound” (pp. 391-392).
Other scholars such as Bleich (31[1987]) and Bruner (41[1978]) as cited in Chafe and Tannen (1987, p. 392) argued that “if nonliterate people do not perform on experiments in a way that experimenters feel exhibit abstract or logical thought, it is not because they are incapable of such thought but because they do not deem it appropriate to talk in that way in such a situation” (1987, p. 392). Thus, their argument is that sometimes in spoken language people do not speak in logical sequence and in an abstract manner because they do not think it is appropriate to speak in that way.
On the other hand, Chafe and Tannen (1987, p. 391) believe the contextual influence increases the controversy and divides the body of literature concerning spoken and written language as
50 exemplified in three research endeavours: the classicist body of knowledge (Ong, 1958 – 1982), anthropologist (Goody 1968 – 1982), and psychologist (Olson 1977). However, I will not go into the detail of these literatures. Rather, it would be more incumbent on me to find out how context influences these forms.
In terms of complexity, Halliday (1990, p. 62) argued that spoken and written expressions differ in terms of density in which the information is presented. Halliday views the written language as dense and the spoken language as sparse (1990, p. 62). Halliday went on to assert that:
We could have looked at the same phenomenon from the other end. We could have said that the differences between spoken language and written language is one of intricacy, the intricacy with the information is organised. Spoken language is more intricate than written (1990, p. 62).
In concurrence to the above view, Halliday stated that,
(...) the phenomenon of intricacy—which is in fact a related phenomenon, but seen from the opposite perspective. From that point of view, it will appear that spoken language is more complex than written. The conclusion will be that each is complex in its own way.
Written language displays one kind of complexity, spoken language another (1990, p.
62).
From Halliday’s point of view, both spoken and written are complex phenomena in their peculiar ways. He argued that, “the complexity of written language is lexical while that of spoken language is grammatical” (Halliday, 1990, p. 63). He viewed the lexical as ‘content words’. This is also supported by Chafe and Tannen (1987) when they concluded that,
(...) it does seem plausible to suppose that different conditions of production as well as different intended uses foster the creation of different kinds of language. … Conversation is after all, the one kind of language that all normal people produce quite naturally most of the time; all other kinds whether spoken or written, require some special skill or training (p. 390).
In a general sense, this section intends to present a summarised picture of these two forms of communication. As the survey and discussions above have shown, spoken and written language are both essential in human communication and are related to each other. Although they share certain traits in common, they differ to a large extent. I agree with Halliday’s view that spoken and written expressions are complex in their own ways. This might be connected to a number of factors. Foremost amongst these factors is the level of understanding of the addressee/audience of
51 the message both in spoken and written. Another factor is the intention of the message. The present study examines how extended verbs behave and the extent to which they are used in spoken and written Kuria. Therefore, it is connected to this section in one way or another. In any communicative situation, people use words and more specifically verbs. These verbs are associated with a number of nouns or noun phrases which are in turn extended or reduced by some operations (suffix/affix-driven). Thus, my intention is to find out how these systems affect the process of verb extensions and vice versa. See Chapter Seven for discussion and clarification.