LING 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Universal Grammar, Doghouse, Empiricism
Document Summary
Tacit linguistic knowledge: knowledge of a set of linguistic rules that we cannot fully spell out. Unlike conscious knowledge that can be specifically taught. Grammaticality: an expression judged by and only by native speakers to be grammatical---well-formedness of possible expressions in their language. Eg. distinguish between possible and impossible words, which is recognizable among native speakers, regardless of whether the words actually exist or not. Ambiguity judgments: (cid:28673)(cid:28660)(cid:28679)(cid:28668)(cid:28681)(cid:28664) (cid:28678)(cid:28675)(cid:28664)(cid:28660)(cid:28670)(cid:28664)(cid:28677)"(cid:28678) (cid:28668)(cid:28673)(cid:28679)(cid:28680)(cid:28668)(cid:28679)(cid:28668)(cid:28674)(cid:28673)(cid:28678) (cid:28679)(cid:28667)(cid:28660)(cid:28679) (cid:28660)(cid:28673) (cid:28664)(cid:28683)(cid:28675)(cid:28677)(cid:28664)(cid:28678)(cid:28678)(cid:28668)(cid:28674)(cid:28673) (cid:28667)(cid:28660)(cid:28678) (cid:28672)(cid:28674)(cid:28677)(cid:28664) (cid:28679)(cid:28667)(cid:28660)(cid:28673) one meaning. If a sentence is ambiguous, it could be paraphrased. I know strong women and men. (are men strong?) Sometimes in ambiguous cases, people would have a preference. I wanna go to a movie. (want to=wanna) Conclusion: we cannot always take words and contract them. Native speakers have intuitions about the expressions of their own language. In this case, wanna could be limited to something about oneself that is subjective. Nativism: knowledge is part of our innate endowment, built in at birth.
