Psychology 2134A/B Lecture Notes - English Phonology, Vocal Tract, Universal Grammar

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2134A/B
• Professor: Marc Joanisse

Document Summary

Cats run after dogs- acceptable english sentence. *run cars dogs after- same words but different order leads to unacceptable, ungrammatical sentence. Noam chomsky: what do we know when we know language: prescriptive grammar rules telling you what is right and what is wrong: grammars that teach you how to speak properly (do not say aint etc) Descriptive grammar: want to describe what language users know and not what is right. But, there are lots of deep similarities across languages. There is no such thing as a primitive language: different civilizations, some people live in huts with few belongings etc. however still have language to communicate. There is no correct or best form of a language: all languages are equivalent to one another. Nothing can be expressed in one language, that cannot be expressed in another language. Plato (400 bce: look at sounds animals make. Panini: early scientific theory of grammar, studied sanskrit (indian)- 4000 rules how we explain grammatical utterances.