LINA01H3 Lecture 2: LINA01 Lecture 2
Document Summary
The nature of the rules: the underlying patterns (rules) of language are not obvious, we have unconscious knowledge of the patterns and rules of our own language. grammar as used by linguists: mental grammar is in our (individual) heads, shared by speakers of a language (with some variation) = linguistic competence, a model of this grammar is called descriptive grammar. So, what do linguists do and why: linguists analyze language to discover the underlying system, linguists build a model of the system that describes and explains how speakers speak and understand their native language. Productivity: productivity means that you can create new forms (words, sentences, not memorized lists of sentences. Productivity interacts with rules: the fact that there are non-sentences suggests that there are rules being violated. Productivity (= creativity: we can produce (and understand) potentially infinitely long sentences therefore, there are an infinite number of sentences, language doesn"t allow for open-ended creativity.
