LING 3007 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Phoneme

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 3007
• Professor: Daniel Siddiqi

Document Summary

Beyond seeking to explain the world, linguists develop theory to explain the natural world. The first of these mandates is called descriptive adequacy, where linguists must be able to correctly and adequately describe the world. The second is explanatory adequacy, where linguistic theory must be able to adequately explain the world. Levels of adequacy are important in evaluating linguistic theory. For example, a rule which is able to describe all occurrences of a surface representation of a phoneme serves descriptive adequacy. However, in order to achieve explanatory adequacy, it must be able to abstractly describe the process occurring, and will be able to predict. The following rule can be written in two ways. The first able to describe where aspiration occurs, but it not able to explain where it occurs, as the second rule is able to. In this language, nasals and stops are a natural class, as is explained by the second rule.