LIN 1340 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Stigma, North Germanic Languages
3 Feb 2015
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Non-standard language; is it just bad grammar? review. Why is language" hard to define: cannot look only at lin features, also social/historical, eg scandinavian languages (similar lin features but diff langs) or. Mandarin/cantonese (mutually unintelligible but same lang, 2 dialects) Bad grammar; what is it? socially stratified: non-standard features found more frequently (but not exclusively) in speech of certain social groups (often the lower class) Jean aitchison: a linguist is interested in what is said, not what she/he thinks ought to be said . Descriptive linguistics (describe language in all aspects whether standard/non standard) Interested in rules/principles of all varieties of language, not necessarily from grammar books but acquired in speech communities. Lin competence covers phonetics/semantic/syntax/morphology mental grammar internalized set of rules (not just syntax but lexical etc as well) Eg: i seen him" = perfectly rule governed, descriptive, 1000s do it. > vs i dr who tv on last night saw" doesn"t follow any internalized rules.
