LING 1 Study Guide - Spring 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Grammar, Universal Grammar, Syntactic Category
LING 1
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Week 1, Lecture 1
● What is Language?
○ In terms of function→ for us to communicate with each other
■ Speakers encode meanings into sounds
■ Listeners decode speech sounds
○ A system of knowledge
■ What do we know when we know a language?
● We have a finite set of building blocks (sounds and words) and
rules on how these are combined → this is unconscious/implicit
knowledge
■ How do we acquire this knowledge as children?
● What kind of building blocks and rules?
○ The inventory of sounds in our language: phonetics
■ International Phonetic Alphabet
○ Knowledge of sounds sequences/system/ what sequences are possible:
phonology
○ Knowledge of words→ lexicon [mental dictionary]
■ Word is an arbitrary pairing of sound and meaning (even for signing)
■ The relationship between the form and meaning of a word is arbitrary
● Exception: onomatopoeic words
○ Possible v. impossible words
■ Our knowledge of sound sequences allows us to determine what
constitutes a “possible” word
○ Knowledge of morphology (word structure) lets us build more complex words
■ Asterisk before a word or sentence → not well-formed
■ We build complex words from rules that combine elements smaller than
the word (morphemes)
● Ex: -ent, -iate, -ed
○ Knowledge of phrases and sentences: syntax
■ English: subject, verb, object
■ Differ by language
■ Wh questions: question word stands in place of object
○ Knowledge of meaning (semantics) for both words and sentences
■ Count nouns work with specific articles
■ Mass nouns (not countable) work with other specific articles
Week 1, Lecture 2
● Noam Chomsky: human linguistic knowledge is creative
○ We are able to understand and produce an infinite set of novel utterances
○ There is no longest sentence
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
○ Creativity is a universal property of human language
● Rules: linguistic knowledge is infinite use of finite means
● All spoken language is governed by rules-- set of rules is called a grammar
○ Every speaker has a mental grammar of the rules of his language that he
follows in producing, understanding, and making judgements about his language
● Why don’t we usually use sentences that go on and on if we have that capacity?
○ Competence: a speaker’s linguistic knowledge of his language
○ Performance: how a speaker puts his linguistic knowledge to use
■ Performance factors:
● Memory limitations
● Shifts in attention and interest
● Psychological and physical states
● Linguistic and nonlinguistic context
○ Our knowledge of our language is perfect, though our performance may be
affected by a variety of factors
● Speech errors
○ Spoonerism: kind of speech performance error in which sounds are transported
● We also experience errors of comprehension:
○ Garden path sentences (ex. The ball thrown in the air dropped. The ship docked
at the port sank.)
● Grammar
○ Prescriptive grammar/rules: intended to teach people how they should speak
according to some arbitrary standard
○ Descriptive grammar/rules: linguists are interested in describing and
understanding the rules that people actually follow in speaking and
understanding their language (not prescribing usage standard)
○ Every native speaker has perfect knowledge of the rules of his native language;
these rules may be different for different people. Everyone speaks a “dialect” or
an “idiolect.”
■ All dialects are rule-governed, fully expressive, logical
■ There are no inferior languages
● Language universals
○ Universal Grammar: the blueprint/laws of language
■ How do languages differ?
■ What do all languages have in common?
○ Some language universals
■ All languages have nouns and verbs, have a way to indicate whether an
event is completed or not, ways of marking negation/asking a question,
indicating more than one, have recursive rules, share certain constraints
● Language differences
○ Parameters
■ Word order, how questions are formed, how negation is done
● Language universals and language acquisition
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
In terms of function for us to communicate with each other. We have a finite set of building blocks (sounds and words) and rules on how these are combined this is unconscious/implicit knowledge. The inventory of sounds in our language: phonetics. Knowledge of sounds sequences/system/ what sequences are possible: phonology. Word is an arbitrary pairing of sound and meaning (even for signing) The relationship between the form and meaning of a word is arbitrary. Our knowledge of sound sequences allows us to determine what constitutes a possible word. Knowledge of morphology (word structure) lets us build more complex words. Asterisk before a word or sentence not well-formed. We build complex words from rules that combine elements smaller than the word (morphemes) Wh questions: question word stands in place of object. Knowledge of meaning (semantics) for both words and sentences. Mass nouns (not countable) work with other specific articles. Noam chomsky: human linguistic knowledge is creative.
