LIN 1310

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LIN 1310

• TOPIC 2 Some Basic Concepts

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LIN 1310

• Some Basic Concepts-Part 1

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linguist

• polyglot
• multilingual

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Linguistic Approach

• Descriptivist
• NOT prescriptivist

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Origins of prescriptive rules

• Overt prestige
• Upward mobility
• Overt versus covert prestige
• Flight of the elite

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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GRAMMAR

• Describing a language in a systematic way
• A grammar includes
  Sounds phonetics and phonology
  Words morphology
  Sentences syntax
  Meaning semantics

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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

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GRAMMAR

• Examples of these mistakes
• Slips of the tongue
  Getting your mords wixed
• Stuttering or False Starts
  Letslets go shopping
  I wentI saw the birds
• Freudian slip substituting a word you didnt
  mean to say

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GRAMMAR

• Linguistic Competence
  peoples 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

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GRAMMAR

• INTUITION
• Since linguistic performance may contain errors,
  some linguists use their own intuition to avoid
  this issue

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• Example of problems with linguistic intuition
  Garden Path Sentences
  
• The horse ran past the barn fell.

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• The horse ran past the barn fell.
• The horse (that/which) ran past the barn fell

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METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS

• Difference between competence and
  metalinguistic knowledge of a language
• Competence speakers unconsciously acquired
  knowledge of the grammar of a language
• Metalinguistic awareness/knowledge conscious
  knowledge about ones own unconscious competence

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METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS

• Linguists possess more metalinguistic awareness
  than the average person
• Childrens metalinguistic awareness increases as
  they mature
• One does not need to have metalinguistic
  awareness to have competence

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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

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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 aint got no money.
• For some dialects He doesnt have any money.

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Examples from page 9 of OA

• (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.

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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

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LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS

• Common principles of organization in the human
  brain
• Underlie the structure of all human languages

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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

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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

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BASIC TENETS OF THEORY

• All languages are rule governed
• All languages have a grammar, even so-called 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