Outline of the First Handout

What is linguistics?
It is the scientific study of language

Who is a linguist?
A linguist is sometimes mistakenly defined as a person who speaks many languages.
However, a linguist is a person who inspect language from different sides ; its history ,
use and place in the society.
 What are the major branches of linguistics?
1- Theoretical linguistics
It is concerned with linguistic knowledge i.e. competence . It inspects the mental
representation of linguistic knowledge. In Chomsky's terminology. This mental grammar
is termed generative grammar . He and his proponents distinguish between competence –
the mental grammar- and performance –the actual production of language .
2- Applied linguistics
It identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems i.e. it
is concerned with performance. Discourse analysis, language assessment and language
pedagogy are major sub-branches of applied linguistics.

Other branches of linguistics
There are other branches of linguistics such as:
Descriptive linguistics analyzes languages synchronically and diachronically.
Historical linguistics is concerned with the language development over time.
Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between languages and society.

History of linguistics
Page 5 &6.

What is the aim of the linguistic theory?
A linguistic theory aims at answering the following three questions:
1) What constitute linguistic knowledge? (Competence).
2) How is knowledge of language acquired?( Acquisition).
3) How is knowledge of language put to use? (Performance).
What constitute linguistic knowledge or competence?
Competence
Lexicon
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Phonology
See page 7-11
 Mental grammar:
1- It refers to mental system; cognitive part of the brain which is acquired without
any instruction – it is innate- .
2- Mental grammar is concerned with all aspects of linguistic competence. On the
other hand, traditional Grammar is used to refer to syntax only.
3- Mental grammar differs from one person to another (it is relative and
idiosyncratic).
 Descriptive Grammar:
1- It idealizes forms of mental grammar of all the speakers of language community.
2- Descriptive grammar reveals (is a picture of) the mental grammar unlike
prescriptive grammar which prescribes what speaker’s grammar should be.
Therefore, linguistics has little interest in prescriptive grammar
3- Descriptive grammar is based on linguists’ analysis of specific language.
Therefore, descriptive grammar unlike universal grammar is concerned with
accidental differences among languages.
4- It serves as basis of pedagogical or teaching grammars which are used to tech
second language or variations within the same language.
 Universal grammar
1- The grammar of all languages is constrained by universal laws. ( Noam
chomsky’s theory of language)
1- Universal grammar doesn’t deny the existence of accidental differences among
the languages which are the subject matter of descriptive grammar.
2- This view was used to explain the idea that there is a biological basis for language
acquisition. The child enters the word with genetically determined mental system
known as Universal Grammar (Noam Chomsky’s theory of language
acquisition).
What are the arguments that support Noam Chomsky’s universal grammar?
1- The logical problem of children language acquisition. This problem is
concerned with explaining the ease, rapidity (very fast) and uniformity (pass
through the same stages) of language development in face of impoverished data is
called the logical problem of language acquisition. The only explanation was the
existence of biological–endowed system or genetically determined system called
U.G.
2- The creative aspect of language. Children are exposed to finite set of sentences,
yet they can understand infinite number of sentences that they have not heard
before.
3- Although children receive different input, they develop systematic linguistic
knowledge.
4- Despite poor input children are exposed to (poverty of stimulus), yet they can
develop rich and uniform linguistic knowledge. One of the examples of the
poverty of stimulus is that input children receive lacks negative evidence. U.G.
enable children to overcome poverty of stimulus
5- Another support for U.G. comes from the fact that written systems are derived
from spoken languages which are developed on the basis of U.G. therefore a child
can speak a language, yet can’t write it without previous instruction.
 How we put our linguistic knowledge into use?
1- The difference between competence and performance is revealed through the
errors we make (performance errors). When we hear ungrammatical sentences;
though it sounds ungrammatical, yet we don’t know where the error lies.
2- Our performance is not a perfect mirror of our competence because of
performance errors.
3- The relationship between competence and performance is the subject matter of
psycholinguistic.

Doing Linguistics:
Linguists can have access to two types of data to develop a theory of grammar:
Naturalistic data:
1- It consists of actual speech being written or recorded.
2- It is a useful source for positive evidence; an evidence that a given sentence is
grammatical.
3- It is not a reliable source for positive evidence because it is difficult to judge a
sentence as being ungrammatical because we have never heard it before.
Experimental data:
1- It depends on native speakers’ intuitions of judging a sentence as grammatical or
not.
2- It is a useful source for negative evidence.

Acceptability and grammaticality
Acceptability and grammaticality are not the synonymous because unacceptability is not
always related to ungrammaticality. Sometimes, the sentence can be grammatical, yet
unacceptable; for instance, unacceptability can be attributed to performance errors.