GK Introduction to Linguistics

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GK Introduction to Linguistics

• First session Getting to know

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Getting to know each otheran absolute essential
for a good course atmosphere

• In groups of 3 people
• Introduce yourselves to each other
• Write on a sheet of paper
• Your (first) names
• One thing that the three of you have in common
  (NOT the subject you study!)
• One thing that could enable someone reading your
  paper to locate your group in this room.

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How can we study grammar in linguistics?

• Test your unconscious knowledge of English grammar

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Lets play odd-one-out!
You will now see two groups of words that do not
exist in English. Nevertheless, you will easily
be able to say which member of the group could
not possibly be an English word, while the others
couldwell be.
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Find the odd-one out and try to explain in as
much detail as possible why the word could not
possibly be an English word

• clee,
• tono,
• grmpf,
• cowee,
• soorot

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Find the odd-one out and try to explain in as
much detail as possible why the word could not
possibly be an English word

• To re-clee,
• a tono-tarian system,
• a cowee-ist,
• to soorot-al-ation-ise

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Create a sentence from the following nonsense
words

• To re-clee,
• a tono-tarian system,
• a cowee-ist,

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What is strange about the following sentences?

• Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
• Drinnen waren Leute, schweigend ins Gespräch
  vertieft,als ein totgeschossner Hase auf der
  Sandbank Schlittschuh lief.

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Find a context in which you can actually say

• Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

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You know a lot about the grammar of English

• Possible sound combinations
• gt grmpf
• Possible word structure
• gt to soorot-al-ation-ise
• Possible sentence structure
• gt A tonotarian system a cowee reclee
• Possible meaning relations
• gt Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
• Possible context effects on meaning
• gt In certain contexts, you CAN meaningfully
  say colourless green ideas sleep furiously

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You know a lot about the grammar of English

• Possible sound structure Phonology
• Possible word structure Morphology
• Possible sentence structure Syntax
• Meaning Semantics
• Interaction between meaning
• and context in language use Pragmatics
• the essentials for the description of language
  structure
• The core disciplines of linguistics

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What is grammar?, part 2
incorrect or variable?
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Use your intuition to evaluate the correctness of
the following sentences!

• I only want to study English.
• Only I want to study English.
• I want only to study English.
• I want to only study English.
• I want to study only English.
• I want to study English only.

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A famous grammatical rule of English

• Do not split infinitives!

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BUT This rule is not true (anymore) in English!

• e.g.
• The mission of the USS Enterprise is to boldly
  go where noone else has gone before.

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Note There are also truly ungrammatical
structures

• I want only to study English.
• I wants to study English.
• I want to study English language.

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Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive!

• It is the task of the grammarian to describe, not
  prescribe to record the facts of linguistic
  diversity, and not to attempt the impossible
  tasks of evaluating language variation or halting
  language change. (David Crystal 1996 4)
• The custom of speaking is the original and only
  just standard of any language (Joseph Priestley,
  Rudiments of English Grammar, 1761)

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Methodology of descriptive linguistics

• Collect data from a language (corpora,
  grammaticality judgements, )
• Analyse data
• Find generalisations
• Formulate generalisations as grammatical rules
• Test rules
• Basic Assumptions These rules reflect what
  native speakers unconsciously know about their
  language.