Module 1
Saturday, January 29, 2022
5:43 PM
What to expect from Module 1
 Define the term “linguistics”.
 Describe 2-3 characteristics of linguistic creativity.
 Demonstrate and understanding of linguistic competence.
 Distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive grammar.
 Describe 7-8 linguistic universals.
 Demonstrate novel examples of linguistic creativity.
 Discuss linguistic competence and give examples of linguistic competence within the following
components of grammar: phonetics, syntax, and morphology.
To successfully complete this Module, you will need to:
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Read the syllabus;
Introduce yourself to your classmates on the discussion board;
Complete the linguistics pretest and share the results with your classmates
on the discussion board;
Read chapter 1 (pages 1-27) in the textbook;
View videos and read supplemental materials;
Participate in 2 other discussions - and be sure to reply to your classmates.
Lecture Notes
Minimal pairs is a set of words that differ only by one sound. Ex., MIT & KIT
Linguistic Creativity is the ability to understand a grammatical sentence we have never heard before or
the ability to be creative to form new words/phrases such as new compounds.
Grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of their language.
Linguistic Competence is your unconscious knowledge of a grammar or language. Our knowledge of
language allows us to separate possible sentences from non-sentences.
Every language has an infinite number of possible sentences.
Knowing a language enables you to create and understand a sentence that has never been uttered
before.
When a sentence is ungrammatical in a linguistic sense, it means that it breaks the rules of the shared
mental grammar of the language.
Components of Linguistic Competence
-Phonetics the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their production,
combination, description, and representation by written symbols. (the system of sounds of a particular
language)
-Phonology the study of the distribution and patterning of speech sounds in a language and of the tacit
rules governing pronunciation. (the phonological system or the body of phonological facts of a language)
-Morphology the patterns of word formation in a particular language, including inflection, derivation,
and composition. (study and description of such patterns/study of the behavior and combination of
morphemes)
-Syntax the study of the rules for the formation of grammatical sentences in a language and the study of
the patterns of formation of sentences and phrases from words.
-Semantics the study of meaning of words and sentences; the study of linguistic development by
classifying and examining changes in meaning and form.
-Pragmatics meaning in context of discourse
-Prescriptive Grammar is a traditional attitude towards language based on what is held to be correct by
socially prestigious elements and by teachers.
(this attitude disregards the way a community actually speaks where certain forms of language are seen
as more correct than others as a result of the social prestige associated with their users)
-Descriptive Grammar describes how a community actually speaks without judging.
DYSA African American English (or Ebonics) in the classroom
-"The biggest misunderstanding is the idea that we are somehow teaching African American language or
teaching Ebonics. We don't need to teach it, they already know it. Our task is to help move them
towards mastery of the language of school in its oral and written form, but to do that in a way that they
are not devalued or where they feel denigrated in any way by virtue of their cultural and linguistic
differences. When you begin to devalue youngsters and make them feel that who they are doesn't
count, then we turn them off from education."
Textbook Reading Notes
Chapter 1 What is Language?
I.
Linguistic Knowledge
a. When you know a language, you can speak and be understood by others who
know that language. This means you are able to produce strings of sounds that
signify certain meanings and to understand or interpret the sounds produced by
others. But language is much more than speech.
b. The fact that we may know something unconsciously is not unique to language.
II.
Knowledge of the sound system
a. It is unconscious knowledge in own native language. It is revealed when
speakers of one language pronounce words from another language. It is
common for speakers to substitute foreign sounds with the closet native sound.
b. Part of knowing a language means knowing what sounds or signs are in that
language and what are not.
c. Knowing the sound system of a language includes more than knowing the
inventory of sounds. It also means knowing which sounds may start a word, end
a word, and follow each other.
III.
Knowledge of Words
IV.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
a. Certain sequences of sounds signify certain concepts or meanings. When you
know a language, you know words in that language; that is, you know which
sequences of sounds relate to specific meanings and which do not.
b. Not knowing a language makes the words of that language be incomprehensible
because the relationship between speech sounds and the meanings they
represent is arbitrary (based on random choice or personal whim, rather than
any reason or system.).
c. The conventional and arbitrary relationship between the form (sounds) and
meaning (concept) of a word is also true in sign languages.
d. Sound symbolism are words whose pronunciation suggests their meanings.
e. Onomatopoeic words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or
actions they refer to.
The Creativity of Linguistic Knowledge
a. Knowledge of a language enables you to combine sounds to form words, words
to form phrases, and phrases to form sentences.
The number of sentences in a language is infinite.
The creative aspect of a language means being able to produce and understand new
sentences never spoken before.
All human languages permit their speakers to increase the length and complexity of
sentences.
Knowledge of Sentences and Non-Sentences
a. Knowledge of languages also permits us to distinguish between grammatically
and ungrammatically correct sentences.
b. Sentences are formed by organizing the words according to the rules of
sentence formation of the language. These rules are finite in length and number
so that they can be stored in our finite brains, but permit us to form and
understand an infinite set of new sentences. This also gives the ability to judge
whether a sequence of words is well-formed or not.
c. These rules are not determined by a judge or a legislature, or taught. They are
unconscious rules that we acquire as young children as we develop language
and they are responsible for our linguistic creativity.
d. Grammar is the set of rules of a language.
e. What does it mean to know a language?
i.
It means knowing the sounds and meanings of many, if not all, of the
words of the language, and the rules for their combination—the
grammar, which generates infinitely many possible sentences.
Linguistic Knowledge and Performance
a. Linguistic competence is the difference between knowledge of words and
grammar.
b. Linguistic performance is how to use this knowledge in actual speech
production and comprehension.
c. Linguistic knowledge permits us to form longer and longer sentences, but there
are physiological and psychological reasons that limit the number of adjectives,
adverbs, clauses, and so on that we actually produce and understand.
What is Grammar?
a. In linguistics, grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules
of their language--rules for combining sounds into words (phonology), rules of
word formation (morphology), rules for combining words into phrases and
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
phrases into sentences (syntax), and rules for assigning meaning (semantics).
This together with a lexicon, or mental dictionary that lists the words of the
language, represents our linguistic competence.
b. The understanding of the nature of grammar is needed to understand the
nature of language.
Descriptive Grammars
a. The descriptive grammar of a language attempts to describe the rules
internalized by a speaker of that language.
b. The descriptive grammar model is the true model of the speakers' linguistic
capacity to the extent of the linguist's description. This doesn't tell you how you
should speak; it describes your basic linguistic knowledge and explains how it it
possible for you to speak, understand, make judgments about well-formedness,
and it tells what you know about the sounds, words, phrases, and sentences of
your language.
c. A grammatical sentence means that it conforms to the rules of the mental
grammar.
d. An ungrammatical sentence means it deviates from the rules in some way.
e. In a linguistic sense, no language or dialect is superior or inferior to any other.
Every grammar is equally complex, logical, and capable of producing an infinite
set of sentences to express any thought.
Prescriptive Grammars
a. Language "purists of all ages believe that some versions of a language are better
than others, that there are certain "correct" forms that all educated people
should use in speaking and writing, and that language change is corruption
giving the rise to the writing of prescriptive grammars.
b. Prestige dialect is the variety of the language spoken by people in positions of
power.
Teaching Grammars
a. Teaching grammar is used to learn another language or dialect. This can be
helpful to people who do not speak the standard or prestige dialect, but find it
would be advantageous socially and economically.
b. This kind of grammar gives the words and their pronunciations, and explicitly
states the rules of the language, especially where they differ from the language
of instruction.
c. Gloss is the parallel word in the student's native language.
d. Although teaching grammars might be considered prescriptive in the sense that
they attempt to teach the student what is or is not a grammatical construction
in the new language, their aim is different from grammars that attempt to
change the rules or usage of a language that is already known by the speaker.
Universal Grammar
a. The universal rules are of particular interest because they give us a window into
the human "faculty of language" which enables us to learn and use any
particular language.
b. Things that all language learners know unconsciously are that a language has its
own set of sounds (alphabet) that combine according to certain patterns to
form words, and that the words themselves recombine to form phrases and
sentences.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
c. A major aim of the linguistic theory is to discover the nature of universal
grammar.
The Development of Grammar
a. Children acquire language as quickly and effortlessly as they do because they do
not have to figure out all the grammatical rules, only those that are specific to
their particular language. The universal properties are part of their biological
endowment.
Sign Languages: Evident for Language Universals
a. ASL and other sign languages do not use sounds to express meanings. They are
visual-gestural systems that use hand, body, and facial gestures as the forms
used to represent words and grammatical rules.
b. Sign languages are fully developed languages, signers create and comprehend
infinite numbers of new sentences.
c. The universality is expected because, regardless of the modality in which it is
expressed, language is a biologically based ability.
What is Not (Human) Language?
a. Are non-human languages and modes of communication like humans? Can
another species be taught a human language?
The Birds and the Bees
a. Many species have a non-vocal system of communication.
b. Discreteness: not being made up of a fixed set of invariant signs; it is infinite.
Human languages are composed of discrete units--sounds, words, phrases-- that
are combined accorded to the rules of the grammar of language.
c. Displacement: the capacity to talk or sign messages that are unrelated to here
and now.
d. Displacement and discreteness are two fundamental properties that distinguish
human language from the communication systems of birds and other animals.
e. Critical period: crucial time for acquiring a language.
Can Animals Learn Human Language?
a. It is clear that simply knowing how to produce a sequence of speech sounds is
not the same as knowing a language.
b. Some chimpanzees have been trained to use an impressive number of symbols
or signs. But a careful examination of their multi-sign utterances reveals that
unlike children, the chimps show little creativity or spontaneity. Their
“utterances” are highly imitative echoic), often unwittingly cued by trainers, and
have little syntactic structure. Some highly intelligent dogs have also learned a
significant number of words, but their learning is restricted to a specific context
and it is likely that their “meanings” for these words are very different from the
symbolic or referential meanings that would be learned by a human child.
c. Nonhuman primates signals cannot be broken down into discrete units and
rearranged to create new meanings. They also lack the property of
displacement. They have no way of expressing the anger they felt yesterday or
the anticipation of tomorrow.
Language and Thought
a. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
i.
In 1929, Sapir wrote: Human beings do not live in the objective world
alone, nor in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but
are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has
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become the medium of expression for their society . . . we see and hear
and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language
habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
ii.
Whorf made even stronger claims: The background linguistic system (in
other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely the
reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper
of ideas, the program and guide for the individual’s mental activity, for
his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in trade .
. . We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.
iii.
The strongest form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is called linguistic
determinism because it holds that the language we speak determines
how we perceive and think about the world. According to this view
language acts like a filter on reality. This form of the hypothesis is false.
Peoples' thoughts and perceptions are not determined by the words
and structures of their language.
iv.
A weaker form of the hypothesis is linguistic relativism, which says that
different languages encode different categories and that speakers of
different languages therefore think about the world in different ways.
b. Many of the specific claims of linguistic determinism have been shown to be
wrong.
c. Current research shows that language does not determine how we think about
and perceive the world. Future research should show the extent to which
language influences other aspects of cognition such as memory and
categorization.
Chapter One Summary
a. Speakers use a finite set of rules to produce and understand an infinite set of
possible sentences.
b. These rules are part of the grammar of a language, which develops when you
acquire the language and includes the phonology, the morphology and lexicon,
the syntax, and the semantics.
c. The sounds and meanings of individual words are related in an arbitrary fashion.
d. Linguistic competence is different from linguistic performance in where you
have the competence to produce a big sentence, but performance limitations
such as memory and endurance keep this from occurring.
e. The descriptive grammar of a language represents the unconscious linguistic
knowledge or capacity of its speakers.
f. Mental grammar does not teach the rules of the language; it describes the rules
that are already known.
g. Prescriptive grammar attempts to legislate what your grammar should be.
h. Teaching grammars are written to help people learn a foreign language or a
dialect of their own language.
i. Universal Grammar provides a blueprint for the grammars of all possible human
languages.
j. Sign language shows that the ability to hear or produce sounds is not a
prerequisite for language learning.
k. The ability of human beings to acquire, know, and use language is a biologically
based ability rooted in the structure of the human brain, and expressed in
different modalities.
l.
A basic property of human language is its creativity--a speaker's ability to
combine the basic linguistic units to form an infinite set of "well-formed"
grammatical sentences.
m. Human languages consist of discrete units that combine according to the rules
of the grammar of the language called discreteness.
n. Human languages also allow us to talk about things that are removed in time
and space from our immediate environment or mental or physical state called
displacement.
o. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that the particular language we speak
determines or influences our thoughts and perceptions of the world. The
evidence of this hypothesis has failed. Most recent experimental studies suggest
that the words and grammar of a language may affect aspects of cognition, such
as memory and categorization.
Do you speak American?
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/prescriptivism/
 Languages often have alternative expressions for the same thing and a given word that can
carry different senses or function as different parts of speech.
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Linguistic Variation is where languages naturally adapt to their situations of use and also reflect
the social identities of their speakers. It is inevitable and natural.
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Descriptive grammarians ask, "What is (language) like--what are its forms and how do they
function in various situations?" And Prescriptive grammarians ask, "What should English be like-what forms should people use and what functions should they serve?"
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Prescriptivists seek to preserve earlier forms of language so that people can understand sacred
texts and historical documents. Modern grammarians aim to describe rather than prescribe
linguistic forms and their uses.
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Prescriptivists would argue that double negatives violates logic whereas descriptivists would
note that different social groups favor one expression or the other in conversation whilst
observing both forms in common use demonstrating their grammaticality.
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Prescriptivists argue that despite educated usage, pronouns should have objective forms after
preposition.
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Some claim that the real issue about linguistic right and wrong is one of deciding who wields
power and who doesn't. This views language as a form of cultural capital. Stigmatized forms are
typically those used by social groups other than the educated middle classes--professional
people.
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The job of grammarians is to describe language as it exists in real use, including describing the
positive and negative values attached to different ways of speaking.
Grey Matters: Understanding Language Video
The combination of all these interactions at an early age is essential for the acquisition of language. This
process is called enculturation.
Animal communication primarily conveys the "Emotions" of the species in question whereas, Human
communities can convey information about the external world and/or the emotions behind it.
McGurk effect is a demonstration that our ears can be fooled by what our eyes see and we integrate
automatically.
There is not a single language module or gene and there couldn't be.
Dimensions of language:
imitation
control over respiration
control over articulators
sequencing
memory
sociability
auditory processing
predictive learning
If there is a language organ, then it would be the brain.
Linguistic Competence (reading)
Foreign Language Teaching Methods
Speaking
Lesson 1: Defining Communication
Communicative Competence
-There are four different sub-competencies:
~grammatical ( ability to create grammatically correct utterances)
~sociolinguistic (ability to produce coherent and cohesive utterances)
~discourse (ability to produce coherent and cohesive utterances)
~strategic (ability to solve communication problems as they arise)
Jigsaw Task
-A jigsaw task is a specific kind of information gap task.
-A jigsaw task is a pedagogical task in which information is distributed among members of a small group
who must fit the pieces of the "puzzle" together in order to complete the task.
-A gap task is a task that requires learners to communicate with each other in order to fill in missing
information and to integrate it with other information.