LIN102H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Universal Grammar, Linguistic Universal, Linguistic Competence
26 Oct 2017
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Enables speakers to use a finite set of rules to produce a n infinite number of sentences they have generally never heard before, no limit on the length of the sentence. Only a narrow band can be found- language universals. Chomskyan view: linguist, limited by universal grammar, biologically endowed language faculty. The study of the structure of words and how they are formed. Meaning (not reliable): nouns refer to persons Reliable: related forms: nouns take plural s, adjectives take comparative/superlative er/-est, verbs take past ed, progressive ing, etc. Reliable 2: distribution: nouns appear with a/an/the determiners, adjectives with very, verbs with can/will. What is a word: an arbitrary pairing of sound and meaning, the smallest free from found in a language. What is a morpheme: a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. Man can be further broken down to the sounds/segments [m], [a], [n]: because there are no meanings, man cannot be broken down into 3.
