LING 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Onomatopoeia, Iconicity, Noam Chomsky
14 May 2018
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UNIT 1
Chapter 1: What is language
- its estimated that around 5000 languages are spoken around the world
- knowing a language means knwning what sound (or signs in the case of sign
language for deaf people) are in that language and what sounds are not
o this unconscious knowledge is revealed by the way speakers of one
language pronounce words from another language
- know sounds and sound patterns
- knowing a language is knowning that certain sound sequences signify certain
concepts or meanings → know how to relate sound and their meanings (ex.
boy is different from toy and girl)
- relationship between speech sounds and the relationships they represent in
the languages of the world is arbitrary so if you don’t know a language, the
sounds spoken to you will be mainly incomprehensible
Form and meaning
- linguistic Ferdinand de Saussure pointed out the conventional pairing of the
sound (form) and the concept (meaning)
- For sign language, signs that may have originally been mimetic (similar to
miming) or iconic (with a nonarbitray relationship between form and
meaning)
- These signs become conventional so knowing the shape or the movement
of the hands does not reveal the meaning of the gestures in sign language
Iconicity in language
- sound symbolism is found in words who;s pronunciation suggest the
meaning (as in the word hiss)
- onomatopoeic: sounds of the words imitate the sounds of nature
Creativity of Linguistic knowledge
- knowledge of a language enables you to combine words to form phrases and
phrases to form sentences
- Creative aspect of language use: knowing a language means to be able to
produce a sentence never spoken before and to understand sentences never
heard before
- You can make sentences as long as you want using your knowledge but it will
probably be a new sentence never heard or spoken before
Sentences and Non sentences
- linguistic knowledge includes RULES for forming sentences and making
judgments
- anyone who knows a language can produce and understand sentences that
have never been uttered before. Chomsky refers to this as the knowledge
aspect of language use
- first written words of language that have been found are 6000 years old
- when you know a language you know the sounds words and rules for
combinations
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Document Summary
Unit 1 its estimated that around 5000 languages are spoken around the world. Form and meaning linguistic ferdinand de saussure pointed out the conventional pairing of the sound (form) and the concept (meaning) For sign language, signs that may have originally been mimetic (similar to miming) or iconic (with a nonarbitray relationship between form and meaning) These signs become conventional so knowing the shape or the movement of the hands does not reveal the meaning of the gestures in sign language. Sound symbolism is found in words who;s pronunciation suggest the meaning (as in the word hiss) Onomatopoeic: sounds of the words imitate the sounds of nature. Knowledge of a language enables you to combine words to form phrases and phrases to form sentences. Creative aspect of language use: knowing a language means to be able to produce a sentence never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before.
