ALDS 2203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Word Formation, Transformational Grammar, Linguistic Universal

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies
• Course: ALDS 2203
• Professor: Trudy O' Brien

Document Summary

Alds 2203 chomsky & innatism (nativism / mentalism) Provoking a paradigm shift: from behaviourism to innatism. Structuralism (& behaviourism) focused on components of language & on environmental triggers that stimulated learner to behave, linguistically, in certain ways. Analysis of language began w/ micro-elements (minimal units of meaning in sound or word formation: phonemes & morphemes) & developed theory of syntactic relations. Learners stimulated to respond to environmental triggers which, in association w/ predictable patterns, would be imprinted in brain. Through contrastive analysis or by focusing on competing language features, learners would understand differences b/w their mother tongue & target language. Focus in structuralist framework = product, not process. Sentence: sequence of selected syntactic items combined into unit in accordance w/ certain patterns of arrangement, modification & intonation in any given language. Had he done the honourable thing, they might not have been fired.