Syntax 1 Introduction

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Syntax 1Introduction
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Lecture Summary

• Linguistics, what is it?

• Description and Explanation
• Descriptive versus Prescriptive
• Knowledge of language explicit versus tacit
• Some areas of linguistic inquiry

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What is linguistics?

• Linguistics is the study of human language
• Looks at what is common to all human languages
  and also how they differ
• What must a speaker know to speak (or sign) a
  language?
• Why are languages the way they are?

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Description and explanation

• These are two facets to the study of human
  language
• Linguistics must describe how a language behaves.
  
• What rules or conventions do speakers follow to
  produce meaningful utterances.
• Example contraction of is
• (1) a. Ronaldo is good at football. ? Ronaldos
  good at football.
• b. Im amazed how good Ronaldo is at football.
• -/-gt Im amazed how good Ronaldos at
  football.

Linguists describe speakers grammaticality
judgments what they say and what they dont say,
and more importantly, what they accept and what
they dont accept.
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Description and explanation

• As well as being able to describe a language,
  linguists also try to explain why languages are
  the way they are.
• There are different types of explanation.
• External explanations factors that are outside
  the language system itself and which relate to
  the broader culture of the speakers or the way
  humans experience the world, or how human beings
  are.
• Examples
• Many human languages have words like up and down
• English king and queen

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Description and explanation

• How the human body is formed.
• The sorts of sounds that are found in human
  languages must obviously fall in the range of
  sounds that humans are capable of making and
  hearing.
• How the human brain works
• This has an effect on the languages we speak.

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Description and explanation

• Internal explanations factors internal to a
  language may determine what is acceptable and
  what is not.

• a. Ronaldo is good at football. ? Ronaldos good
  at football.
• b. Im amazed how good Ronaldos at
  football.
• (2) a. Joe will be there. ? Joell be there.
• b. Joell be there, but I doubt that Sue
  will. (ll)
• (3) a. Sandra says shes (has) worked hard,
• but whether she has (s) or not...

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Description and Explanation

• Descriptive Generalization
• (1) - (3) show us that the distribution of
  full and contracted forms of these words
  follows a consistent pattern.
• The linguist aims to describe this pattern on the
  basis of data observed AND to explain why the
  language patterns this way.

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To recap

• There are two things that linguistics does
• describes the phenomena found in specific human
  languages and in human language in general, and
• attempts to explain why things are the way they
  are.

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Descriptive vs Prescriptive approaches

• Linguistics
• describes utterances
• describes languages
• takes a descriptive approach to language
• is not about what people ought to say
• Example
• I didnt see nobody and I didnt do nothing.
• A linguist wants to
• describe the utterance
• work out the words and the forms of the words
  that the speaker used
• what they mean
• what rules the speaker used to combine these
  words to make this utterance.

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Descriptive vs Prescriptive approaches

• What do you think of when I say grammar?
• The rules that tell you what is right and what
  is wrong?
• What sort of rules? Prescriptive rules?
• Examples
• you must not use double negatives
• I didnt see nobody
• you must not end a sentence with a preposition
• Who did you give the book to? (To whom did you
  give it?)
• you must not split infinitives to boldly go ...

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Descriptive vs Prescriptive approaches

• In linguistics
• we take a descriptive approach, not a
  prescriptive one
• were interested in what people do say
  (descriptive) not what they should say
  (prescriptive).

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Descriptive versus prescriptive approaches

• Linguists are interested in describing language
  variation

(4) I didnt see nobody, and I didnt do
nothing. (5) I didnt see anybody, and I didnt
do anything.

• Which speakers say (4) and which speakers say (5)
  to express the same meaning?
• What does this distribution correlate with?
• Age? Social class? Education level? Region?.

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Knowledge of language

• Linguistics is primarily interested in describing
  the knowledge that speakers have about their
  language.
• What form does speakers knowledge take?

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Explicit vs Tacit knowledge

• Any speaker of a language must somehow know the
  rules
• of their language but this knowledge usually
  isnt explicit.
• Example
• Petes an awesome drummer is an acceptable
  English sentence
• but
• What an awesome drummer Petes is not an
  acceptable English sentence.

Any native English speaker will agree with these
judgments, but probably wont be able to tell you
when they can and cant reduce is to s.
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Explicit vs Tacit knowledge

• Linguistics distinguishes between explicit
• and tacit knowledge.
• It is the linguists job
• to make explicit the rules that govern language,
• to say precisely what it is that the native
  speaker tacitly knows.
• We want to discover the principles that govern
  language use.

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Some areas of linguistic knowledge explored by
linguists
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Knowledge of the sound system of language

• Speakers of a spoken language must know about the
• sounds which make up their language.
• what sounds
• where are they used
• (Signers of sign languages have similar knowledge
  about
• the components of their signs.)
• The branches of linguistics which deal with the
  sound
• system are phonetics and phonology.

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Knowledge of the sound system of language

• Phonetics and Phonology are
• covered in the other introductory linguistics
• subject, LING1005 / LING6105.

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Knowledge of word forms Morphology

• Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of
• language.
• Example
• A word like unbelievable consists of three
  meaningful parts or morphemes
• a prefix un-
• the root believ(e)
• the suffix able

The branch of linguistics which studies how words
are formed is morphology
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Knowledge of how words combine to form sentences
Syntax

• To put words together to form sentences,
• a speaker must know the rules which govern which
  words can combine with which other words
• This area of linguistics is called syntax, and
• with morphology is the focus of the first half of
  this course.

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Other areas of language

• Semantics the area of linguistics that deals
  with how meaning is encoded in language
• Pragmatics deals with the use of language in
  context.
• Historical linguistics studies languages
  changing over time
• Dialectology regional variation
• Sociolinguistics studies language and social
  context
• First and second language acquisition - looks at
  how children or second-language learners come to
  know language
• Differences between spoken, signed and written
  language
• We will discuss some aspects of these different
  branches
• of linguistics in this course.

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Further reading

• Fromkin et al (2005) Chapter 1.