LIN200H1 Lecture Notes - Arbitrariness, Linguistic Prescription, Structural Linguistics
Document Summary
Lecture 1 introduction to language: design features of human language proposed by hockette, the feature that distinguish human language from other communication systems. Displacement: the ability to talk about things that are not present-in remote time (past and future) or space (here or elsewhere) Arbitrariness: no logical connection between the form of sign and the thing it refers to, onomatopoeia- still arbitrary, because different languages have different words for the same concept. Productivity: the ability to understand and create never-heard-before utterance. Discreteness: messages in the system are made up of smaller, repeatable parts rather than indivisible units-sentences are made up of words; words are made up of units of sound. Duality: the productivity of language given a discrete set of units-suffixes attach to the words and create new words, prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar. Prescriptive grammar: set of grammatical rules prescribed by a language authority.
