LINGUIST 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Generative Systems
12 Sep 2016
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What words and sentences mean: a shared system: mental grammar. Scientists make empirical observations: how humans behave, things we say and understand, these are facts of nature as linguists we can observe, similar to how a biology observes how the life works. Not value judgments: not going around saying this language is good, the other is bad, teachers, editors and bloggers are the one"s enabled" to doing that. Linguists describe but don"t prescribe: should usually indicates a prescription, if showing some sort of judgement, or a bias, it"ll be a prescriptive statement. Speaking a second language, want someone to prescribe how native speakers say that word. As a parent, when children are learning, parents have strong desires, kids will learn whatever is in the environment say this and don"t say that . Learning politeness standards as well, starting a new job, or something, but someone can say that"s not how we do things here .
