LING 100 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Part Of Speech, Vocal Folds, Animal Communication

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 100
• Professor: Anne Rimrott

Document Summary

Grammar-the mental system that allows human beings to form and interpret the sounds, words, and sentences of their language. Characteristics of grammar: generality-all languages have a grammar. They are more or less equal in complexity. All human societies have complex language: parity-all grammars are equal. No good or bad grammars: universality-grammars are alike in basic ways. E. g. all languages have more consonant sounds than vowel sounds: mutability-grammars change over time, inaccessibility-grammatical knowledge is subconscious. Speakers of a language know what sounds right and what doesn"t but they don"t know why this is the case. Intuition-subconscious knowledge of the rules of a language (i. e. it sounds right) Components of grammar: phonetics-the articulation and perception of speech sounds (i. e. the inventory and structure, phonology-the patterning of speech sounds, morphology-word formation, syntax-sentence formation, semantics-the interpretation of words and sentences. *linguists describe grammar instead of prescribing how to speak. Descriptive grammar-the systematic study and description of a language.