LING 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Waggle Dance, Reverse Engineering, Universal Grammar
Document Summary
Homework: read lecture notes and finish chapter 2, watch bee waggle dance video on ccle. Readings on ccle other than lecture notes are optional. Languages are like human faces: superficially q diverse, diversity is socially and psychologically v impt to us, but it may conceal substantial uniformity arising from shared structural features. Language is a system that allows us to communicate or express our thoughts. The language that i speak is a manifestation of a system in my head. Mentalism: the object of study is a mental capacity. Naturalism: the structure of this object can be inferred from an analysis of the linguistic behaviour of speakers. Big idea #3: we make explicit hypotheses about what goes on inside the black box. Formalism: hypotheses about the structure of this object are explicit formal models supposed to predict speakers" behavior. Basically knowledge vs use/structure (static) vs flow (dynamic)
