LING 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cultural Artifact, Body Plan, Universal Grammar
Document Summary
9/27 class notes: languages, like faces, are superficially diverse and is important to us socially. May conceal substantial uniformity arising from shared structural features. Reflection of shared body plan, blueprint underlying physical structure. System that allows us to communicate or express our thoughts: there is uniformity arising from shared structural features. Language is manifestation of thoughts in my head. Naturalism: structure can be inferred from analysis of behavior of speakers: reverse engineering problem. Production: input----> black box ----> output (meaning) (physical signal) Perception: input----> black box ----> output (physical signal) (meaning) We make explicit hypotheses about what goes on inside black box. Formalism: hypotheses about structure of this subject are explicit formal models. Structure of language specific aspects of language system. Linguistic aspects that allows speakers to speak and understand. Capacities that can be mastered depend on internal structure of organism. Also depend on being in right conditions/right environment: genome making language possible.
