Anthropology 1027A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Onomatopoeia, Noam Chomsky
3 Dec 2014
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What is linguistics: scienti c study of language - how it works, how its used, how it changes over time. Yes: miriam is eager to talk to. Un nished, needs to talk to someone: canadians hockey like. No, word order: how to create novel sentences, english has approx. 50 sounds: vocabulary is in nite, but the rules are nite. Linguistic knowledge: linguistic competence - what you know, linguistic performance - how you use this knowledge, linguistic knowledge is mostly unconscious. Universal grammar: noam chomsky, the human brain contains an unlimited set of rules to understand language, all human languages have a common foundation; there is a structure that is followed within every langauge. Summary: linguistics is the study of language as a system of rules and variations, linguistic knowledge is often unconscious, all native speakers have linguistic competence, linguists describe, not prescribe.
