LINGUIST 1AA3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1.1,1.2, 5.1.1,5.1.2: Linguistic Competence, Jamaican English, Phase Boundary

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LINGUIST 1AA3
• Professor: Magda Stroinska

Document Summary

Chapter 1 (pg 1-11); chapter 5 (pg 139-143, 144-148) Chapter 1 language: a preview: linguistics = study of how language works. 1. 1 specialization for language: we do not know how many languages there are in the world today, one approximation: 6909 languages, many languages are at the brink of extinction (ie: indigeneous) Vocal cords to create seal over passage to lungs. To move food to teeth/back into throat to articulate vowels and consonants. From a linguistic perspective, nothing wrong with grammars that permit different or unusual structures: ie: i am not going vs. Chapter 5 syntax: the analysis of sentence structure: we say that an utterance = grammatical if native speakers judge it to be a possible sentence of their language. How can we determine a word"s category: meaning, nouns = people/places/things, verbs = designate actions/sensations/states, adjectives = designate a property/attribute of noun, adverbs = denote properties/actions of actions and states designated by verbs.