Language Lecture 9 Overview Quiz

o Language involves both Displacement and Productivity: Displacement refers to the ability to talk about things other than the present moment, and Productivity (generativity) is the inherent novelty of language as we generate new sentences. o Five Levels of Language Analysis: Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Morphology, and Conceptual Belief. o Phonology: The sounds of language and the rules for combining them. English has about 46 phonemes; sounds are influenced by place, manner, and voicing. Categorical perception allows us to perceive the same sounds as belonging to the same category. o Syntax: Arrangement of words to show their relationship in a sentence. Syntactic Grammar describes how words are sequenced to form meaningful sentences. Chomsky's Transformational Grammar aims to describe the universal aspects of syntactic knowledge. o Semantics and Morphology: Retrieving word meaning from memory and relating words to one another. Morphemes, the smallest units of meaning, can be free or bound. Case Grammar involves determining the semantic roles of words and computing meaning based on those roles. o Conceptual Belief (Competence vs. Performance): The internalized knowledge of language rules versus actual language behavior. Chomsky argues that competence is a purer basis for understanding linguistic knowledge. o Dysfluencies and Linguistic Intuitions: Irregularities in speech and people's intuitions about the acceptability of sentences. o Whorf's Hypothesis: The idea that language shapes thought; raises questions about the relationship between language and thought and the ability to think about ideas that are not named in our language. o Chomsky (1957): Argues that the study of linguistic competence is more essential than performance. o Phonology: + Sounds of language + Rule system for combining them + English has about 46 phonemes + Uses place, manner, and voicing to influence the range of phonemes + Categorical perception allows us to perceive the same sounds as belonging to the same category + Productivity allows a small number of units to generate an infinite number of words + Speech perception involves the problem of invariance, as sounds are not invariant o Syntax: + Arrangement of words to show their relationships + Syntactic Grammar describes how words are sequenced to form meaningful sentences + Universal aspects described by Chomsky's Transformational Grammar + Constituents of the sentence and the relationships among them + Ambiguous sentences can have multiple deep structures + Transformational rules convert deep structures into surface structures + Limitation: Makes meaning a secondary factor to the syntactic component o Semantics and Morphology: + Retrieving word meaning from memory + Generates meaning based on the relationships between words + Morphemes: smallest units of meaning - Free morphemes can stand alone - Bound morphemes contribute to word meaning but are not words themselves + Case Grammar involves determining the semantic roles of words and computing meaning based on those roles + Deep structure involves the relationships among the various constituents of the sentence o Competence vs. Performance: + Internalized knowledge of language rules + Actual language behavior + Chomsky argues that competence is a purer basis for understanding linguistic knowledge o Dysfluencies and Linguistic Intuitions: + Irregularities or errors in otherwise fluent speech + Chomsky’s approach to studying language- involves asking people to judge whether a sentence is “acceptable” o Whorf's Hypothesis: + Language shapes the way we think about the events in the world around us + Raises questions about the relationship between language and thought + Can we think about ideas that our language doesn’t name?