ANT253H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: African American Vernacular English, James Hardy Vaux, Lexical Semantics
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Panini showed that it is necessary to study the structure of words and languages to understand their meanings and aesthetic events. Aristotle said that language can be analyzed by identifying the parts of a sentence: subject and predicate in order to conclude that the means of logical thinking is manifested within language. Dionysius also studied the structure of words and languages and realised that sentences can be composed of nouns, verbs, pronouns, etc. In the old days the quality of somebody"s grammar can be used to judge whether the person is of high class or lower class. A group of french scholars (port-royal circle) carried out surveys to see which parts of grammar are similar across all languages (the idea of a universal grammar ) and which are specific to various languages. Wilhelm von humboldt said that the structure of a certain language is a representation of how its users view reality (think of slang with rebelliousness).
