LING 1F94- Midterm Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 18 pages long!)
11 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
A word is not a sequence of letters because orthographic systems do not equal language. The reality of language does not depend on writing, it is created in our brains as part of a community of speakers. A word is a sequence of speech sounds: needs meaning associated with it and needs to follow phonotactic constrains of language. Needs meaning (sometimes; chomsky separating meaning from syntactic structure) Sentences consist of a sequence of phrases that conform to the syntactic constrains of the language. Sentences express the meaning of a proposition (semantics) Isn"t just something that starts with a capital and ends with a period. Sentences are defined by particular patterns of phrases. Can find independent evidence for syntactic categories forming different levels of. Verbs can be inflected in english (-ing, -s, -ed) Prepositions do not permit this range of inflection (att-ing, att-ed*) Adjectives have a comparative form in er (tall & taller, lovely & lovelier)
