LING 080 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Linguistic Competence

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 080
• Professor: Tony Cook

Document Summary

Linguistics - the study of how language works - how it is used, acquired, changes over time, represented in the brain, etc. Our speech organs are specialized for breathing and eating as well as language. Newborns and infants respond to language even if they don"t understand. Native speakers - those who have acquired a language as children in a natural setting. Language needs to be creative to give us freedom to produce new words and sentences as needed. There also exists the presence of systematic constraints that establish the boundaries within which innovation can occur. Nouns evolve to be used as verbs, but this doesn"t always work (can use for periods of time but not points in time, ex: summered, but not nooned) The sounds of words also govern the language - different languages have different available sounds. The ability to form and interpret sentences is subject to systematic limitations.