Outline of the First Handout

Define 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 i.e.
polyglot. However, a linguist is a person who inspects language from different sides; its
history, use and place in the society.

Branches of linguistics:
Theoretical linguistics is concerned with linguistic knowledge i.e. competence. It
inspects the mental representation of the 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.
Applied linguistics covers areas such as conversational analysis, language assessment
and language pedagogy.
Descriptive linguistics refers to the study of language and language families from both
synchronic and historical points of view.
Historical linguistics is concerned with the theory of language change i.e. why and how
human languages develop.
Psycholinguistics is mainly concerned with performance.

History of linguistics
Page 5 &6.

What is the aim of the linguistic theory?
According to Chomsky, linguistic theory aims at answering the following three
questions:
1) What constitutes linguistic knowledge? (Competence).
2) How is knowledge of language acquired? (Acquisition).
3) How is knowledge of language put to use? (Performance).
What constitute our linguistic knowledge (competence)?
Competence
Lexicon
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Phonology
See page 7-11
 Mental grammar:
1- It is that 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 teach
second languages or variations within the same language.
 Universal grammar
1. There is a biological basis for language acquisition. The child is born with
genetically determined mental system known as Universal Grammar (Noam
Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition).
2. The grammar of all languages is constrained by universal laws. ( Noam
chomsky’s theory of language)
3. Universal grammar doesn’t deny the existence of accidental differences among
human languages which are the subject matter of descriptive grammar.

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
(poor input). The only explanation was the existence of biologically–endowed 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 and produce 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.

How we put our linguistic knowledge into use?
1. Performance is the actual use of language
2. Our performance is imperfect mirror of our competence because of performance
errors.

Doing Linguistics:
Linguists can have access to two types of data when developing a theory of grammar:
Naturalistic data:
1- It consists of actual speech being written or recorded (unstructured).
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 negative evidence because it is difficult to judge
sentences as being ungrammatical since they have never been heard before.
Experimental data:
1- It depends on native speakers’ intuitions of judging sentences as grammatical or
not (structured).
2- It is a useful source for negative evidence.

Acceptability and grammaticality
Acceptability and grammaticality are not 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.