3What is Language2_removed (3).pdf

What kind of Building Blocks and Rules? English: two big white cows Romanian: doua vaci mari şi albe two cows big and white Korean: kbighɯn hin so tu mari white cow two “classifier” Hausa: manyan shanu farare biyu big cows white two What kind of Building Blocks & Rules? — Meanings of...

What kind of Building Blocks and Rules? English: two big white cows Romanian: doua vaci mari şi albe two cows big and white Korean: kbighɯn hin so tu mari white cow two “classifier” Hausa: manyan shanu farare biyu big cows white two What kind of Building Blocks & Rules? — Meanings of words/parts of words (building blocks) and how to use these meanings (rules): Semantics ¡ The form of a word is arbitrary. Can you guess the meaning of these Zuni words? nowe: ma’wi: k’yawe: beans anteloupe water — The relationship between the form and meaning of a word is arbitrary. — This is true of both spoken and signed languages. — Exceptions: words like buzz & signs like eat, baby What kind of Building Blocks & Rules? — Semantics: you know how to assign meaning to a given sentence. The bear promised the monkey to dance. The bear persuaded the monkey to dance. Noam Chomsky (a linguist) and Creativity of Language — What we have outlined so far are the building blocks of language (phonetics, lexicon) and the rules that we have for putting them together (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics). — An amazing thing speakers know: how to use a finite set of building blocks and rules to potentially create and understand an infinite set of novel sentences. We all know how to be creative! — For example, every day speakers create and understand novel sentences: The monkey told the bear that if he didn’t dance he was going to tell the giraffe about the incident the other night.