PSYC 432 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Idiolect, Nicaraguan Sign Language, Universal Grammar
Document Summary
Why are rules helpful: don"t need to memorize individual words. Morphology rule: add an s-like suffix: one wug, two wugs. Phonology rule: how you pronounce the s-like suffix (s, z, es) Syntactic rule: how do you know who is the doer in a sentence cat chased the rat . What is and what is not a rule: descriptive vs. not. Language or dialect: language: grammar of a community, dialect: grammar of a smaller community, community of practice (eckert): smaller group, idiolect: grammar of a single person. Linguistic processing is automatic and unconscious: associations with words seems to influence behavior. Where does language come from: nativist view: chomsky. Humans are prepackaged with knowledge of the kinds of structures that make up human languages: universal grammar. Poverty of the stimulus: children learn complex structures with no explicit teaching. Social communities give rise to fully developed languages (nicaraguan sign language: non-nativist view.
