LINA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Linguistic Competence, Grammaticality, Pronoun
Document Summary
Lecture 2 - productivity competence vs performance phonetics. The underlying patterns (rules) of language are not obvious. We have unconscious knowledge of the patterns and rules of our own knowledge (cid:862)g(cid:396)a(cid:373)(cid:373)a(cid:396)(cid:863) as used (cid:271)(cid:455) li(cid:374)guists: 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. Example: he might could wear a size 8 . Sentence = pronoun + modal verb (of possibility) +modal verb (of capability) + main verb + article + noun. He could might wear a size 8 . He will should wear a size 8 . 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. In human language, the relationship between form (sounds) and meaning (concepts) is: rule-governed, symbolic (and therefore arbitrary) iconic (and therefore non-arbitrary)
