LING 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Philology, Universal Grammar, Wysiwyg
Document Summary
What speakers know when they know a language. What language users have in their brains. Language as a cognitive system: structural properties of language. Interactions between languages and other cognitive factors- perception, memory, learning. Brains exist in bodies, bodies exist in societies. Language as social sys interaction between lang and external factors- social, cultural, historical: nonrandom variation and heterogeneity, language vs languages- universality and diversity. Being speakers of a natural language- extensive amount of specialized knowledge. Wysiwyg- ex: microsoft word- what you type in is what you get. Not wysiwyg - ex: html/programming what you type isn"t what you get out. Language- not wysiwyg bc full of hidden structure, which speakers must be able to access and represent. Ex: ambiguity: unlockable- cant be locked vs can be unlocked. Structures that cannot occur in any language. Young children learn 10-20 words a day + much growth in linguistic complexity. Independence between language and acquisition and general intelligence.
