There are several possible relationships between language and

society. One is that social structure may either influence or determine

linguistic structure and behavior.

Certain evidence may support this view: age-grading phenomenon 【M1】__________

whereby young children speak differently from older children and, in a 【M2】__________

turn, children speak differently from mature adults; studies which show

that the varieties of language that speakers use reflect such matters like 【M3】__________

their regional, social, or ethnic origin and possibly even their sex (or

gender); and other studies which show that particular ways of speaking,

choices of words, and even rules for conversing are in fact highly

determined by certain social requirements.

A second possible relationship is directly opposed the first: linguistic【M4】__________

structure and behavior may either influence or determine social

structure.

A third possible relationship is that the influence is bi-directional:

language and society may influence each other.

A fourth possibility is to assume that there is no relationship at all

between linguistic structure and social structure and that every is 【M5】__________

independent of the other. A variant of this possibility would be to say

that, because there might be some such relationship, present attempts to 【M6】__________

characterize it is essentially premature, given what we know about both 【M7】__________

language and society. Actually, this variant view appears to be the one

which Chomsky himself holds: he prefers to develop an asocial 【M8】__________

linguistics as a preliminary to many other kind of linguistics, such an 【M9】__________

asocial approach being, in his view, logically superior. 【M10】_________

【M10】