Intro to language
- 1. Intro to course: Language O’Grady, 2011 Chapter 1
- 2. What is language? • How would you define language?
- 3. When do we use language? • Talking • Thinking • Reading • Writing • Listening
- 4. What is linguistics? • The study of language WHAT DO WE STUDY ABOUT LANGUAGE? o How it is used o How it is acquired o How it changes over time o How it is represented in the brain
- 5. Language is creative • What does this mean? o For example: use nouns as verbs • Pull the boat on to a beach – beach the boat • Clean the floor with a mop – mop the floor • Put the wine in bottles – bottle the wine HOWEVER, o There are systematic constraints that determine the boundaries of this “innovation”. For example: a verb is rarely coined if a word with its intended meaning already exists to put the milk in the fridge – to fridge the milk (refrigerate already exists to express this meaning)
- 6. So what about creativity in language? • It is systematic and rule – governed • Can you explain?
- 7. All native speakers can: • Produce and understand an unlimited number of utterances (including novel ones) • Recognize utterances and patterns that are not acceptable in their language. LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
- 8. How do we investigate linguistic competence? • Focus on the mental system – GRAMMAR WHAT IS GRAMMAR? • Intricate system of knowledge that encompasses sound and meaning, form and structure
- 9. Components of Grammar • Phonetics • Phonology • Morphology • Syntax • Semantics
- 10. Characteristics of Grammar • Generality • Parity • Universality • Mutability • Inaccessibility
- 11. GENERALITY • All languages have grammar: o If a language is spoken it must have a phonetic and phonological system o If it has words and sentences, it has morphology and syntax o If it has meaning, it also has semantic principles
- 12. PARITY • All grammars are equal • “Primitive language”? • Good grammar vs. bad grammar? FOR LINGUISTS: • The analysis of language reflects the way it is actually used and not an idealized vision of how it should be used.
- 13. UNIVERSALITY • Grammars are alike in fundamental ways For example: o All languages have a set of contrastive sounds that help distinguish words from each other (minimal pairs). In English “t” and “d” help us recognize “to” and “do” as two different words. o All languages have more consonant sounds than vowels. o All languages have a “b” and a “p” sound. o All languages have a vowel that sounds like “ah” in that.
- 14. UNIVERSALITY • There are universal constraints on how words can be put together in a sentence. 1. Ned lost his wallet. 2. He lost Ned’s wallet. (in no language could “he” in 2 be referring to Ned) • There are also constraints on how much variation is possible in each language. o Some languages move their question words at the beginning of a sentence (English, Spanish etc.) and some don’t make this move (Mandarin) o No language however, places question words at the end of a sentence in its basic word order.
- 15. MUTABILITY • The features of language that are not universal and fixed are subject to change over time. For example: • Minor changes can occur very quickly (lexicon) • A more drastic change such as the placement of the negation in English for example could take a long time: Before 1200: Ic ne seye not. (I don’t say) / He ne speketh nawt. (He does not speak). By 1400: “ne” was used infrequently and “not” typically occurred by itself. (I seye not the wordes. / We saw nawt the knyghtes.
- 16. INACCESSIBILITY • Grammatical knowledge is (for the majority of native speakers) subconscious. For example: • Speakers of a language know what sounds right and what doesn’t in their language, but they are not sure how they know it. • Beyond the most obvious grammatical concepts (articles go before nouns), native speakers can’t really explain how their language works. Try to explain: I went to school. / *I went to supermarket. The use of “or”: Mary drank tea or coffee. / Mary didn’t drink tea or coffee.