LIN 1310
TOPIC 2: Some Basic
Concepts
LIN 1310
Some Basic Concepts-Part 1
linguist
• polyglot
• multilingual
Linguistic Approach
• Descriptivist
• NOT prescriptivist
Origins of prescriptive rules
•
•
•
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Overt prestige
Upward mobility
Overt versus covert prestige
Flight of the elite
WRITTEN VS SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Written language:
• Tends to be more resistant to change
• Supports prescriptivists’ arguments against
language change
• Prescriptivists often cite written forms in
support of their pronouncements
WRITTEN VS SPOKEN LANGUAGE
• Prescriptivists view written language as the
basis for spoken language
• Example – persistent archaisms in written
English include few contractions, preserved
subjunctives and “whom”
‘If I were King’
‘Whom shall I say was calling’
WRITTEN VS SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Spoken language:
• 1) The basis for written language
• 2) Children learn to speak first
• 3) Very few children fail at speaking
• 4)Many languages have never been written
• 5) Oral culture pre-dates the written
tradition
• 6) Usually the object of descriptive
linguistics
IMPORTANCE OF STANDARD
LANGUAGE
• The standard is generally the most widely
accepted and broadly understood form of a
language
• In some cases, it is officially sanctioned by
a government
• The standard is most often used for second
language teaching
SYNCHRONY VS DIACHRONY
Synchronic approach to language:
• Study of a language at a single point in time
• Usually, but not necessarily, the present
• Most linguists today focus on language as it
is spoken at one point in time
SYNCHRONY VS DIACHRONY
Diachronic approach to language:
• Historical Linguistics
• Study of the process of language change
• Comparison of a language at 2 or more points in
time
• Compare related languages and look at how they
diverge from earlier form
• Reconstruct earlier or proto forms
GRAMMAR
•
Describing a language in a systematic way
•
A grammar includes:
Sounds – phonetics and phonology
Words – morphology
Sentences – syntax
Meaning – semantics
GRAMMAR
• Linguistic description is based on empirical data –
what people really say
• Informants or Consultants are native speakers of a
language who provide this empirical data
• Sometimes people violate grammatical rules that
they unconsciously acquired as a child –they make
mistakes
• These mistakes are not systematic, they are
usually noticeable and are like short circuits
GRAMMAR
Examples of these mistakes
1. Slips of the tongue
‘Getting your mords wixed’
2. Stuttering or False Starts
‘Let’s…let’s go shopping’
‘I
went…I saw the birds’
3. Freudian slip – substituting a word you
didn’t mean to say
GRAMMAR
Linguistic Competence
• people’s sub- or unconsciously-acquired
knowledge of the grammar
• allows one to produce and understand a
theoretically infinite number of grammatical
utterances
Linguistic Performance
• may contain errors that do not reflect
competence
• not always an accurate representation of the
competence that underlies it
GRAMMAR
INTUITION
Since linguistic performance may contain
errors, some linguists use their own
intuition to avoid this issue
• Example of problems with linguistic
intuition Garden Path Sentences
• The horse ran past the barn fell.
• The horse ran past the barn fell.
• The horse (that/which) ran past the barn fell
METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS
Difference between competence and
metalinguistic knowledge of a language
Competence: speaker’s unconsciously
acquired knowledge of the grammar of a
language
Metalinguistic awareness/knowledge:
conscious knowledge about one’s own
unconscious competence
METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS
• Linguists possess more metalinguistic
awareness than the average person
• Children’s metalinguistic awareness
increases as they mature
• One does not need to have metalinguistic
awareness to have competence
GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS
• Competence allows people to judge what is
grammatical in a language and what is not
• Grammaticality judgments are independent of
metalinguistic knowledge
• Speakers can only make accurate grammaticality
judgments for utterances from their native dialects
GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS
EXAMPLES
*Cat chasing dog up tree the is the the.
The dog is chasing the cat up the tree.
*He wash the dishes last night.
He washed the dishes last night.
*I have three record.
I have three records.
? He ain’t got no money.
For some dialects: He doesn’t have any money.
Examples from page 9 of O&A
• (16) a. Mary ate a cookie, and the Johnnie ate
a cookie too.
• b. Mary ate a cookie, and she ate some cake
too.
• (17) *Mary at a cookie, and then Johnnie ate
some cake too.
• (18) Mary ate a cookie, and then Johnnie had
a snack too.
GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS
It needs washed.
Grammatical or ungrammatical?
Grammatical in Pennsylvania dialects
Ungrammatical for most of us
It needs to be washed
or
It needs washing
LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS
• Common principles of organization in the
human brain
• Underlie the structure of all human
languages
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
• The sum total of all language universals
• All languages have structures from among those
permitted by UG
• One goal of linguistic theory is to learn about
language universals
• Another goal is to identify all the properties of UG
• To accomplish these goals, we use the same
descriptive tools to describe all languages
ARGUMENTS FOR
LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS
• Any child can learn any language
• First language acquisition is similar across
languages
• Children acquire language despite relative
cognitive immaturity
• Points 1, 2, & 3 suggest limits on language
structure related to neural pre-wiring
BASIC TENETS OF THEORY
• All languages are rule governed
• All languages have a grammar, even socalled non standard ones
• A grammar cannot be a list of all possible
words and sentences
• A grammar is capable of infinite output
from an organism that has finite storage
capacity