Synopsis:
- Human brains are designed to acquire a language
- They contain a "universal grammar"
- We speak because our brain is meant to speak
- Performance vs competence
- we understand sentences that we have never heard before
- The number of sentences in a language is potentially infinite, but there is a finite system of rules that defines which sentences can be built
- That system of rules is what identifies a language and differentiates it from other languages.
- Grammar= rules that account for all valid sentences of the language
- Independence of syntax from semantics (well-formed vs meaningful sentence)
- Application of formal logic to linguistics
- Language = set of sentences
- Sentence = finite string of words from a lexicon
- Grammar = set of rules that determine whether a sentence belongs to the language
- A language is "recursively enumerable"
- Deductive approach to language: how to derive all possible sentences of a language from an abstract structure
- "Deep structure" = fundamental relationships among linguistic components
- "Surface structure" = the sentences that are actually uttered
- One deep structure for many surface structures
- Chomsky's "standard theory":a grammar is made of a syntactic component (phrase structure rules, lexicon and transformational component), a semantic component (a "logical form" that assigns a meaning to the sentence) and a phonologic component (which transforms it into sounds)
- "Deep structure" = fundamental relationships among linguistic components
- "Surface structure" = the sentences that are actually uttered
- One deep structure for many surface structures
- Chomsky's "standard theory":a grammar is made of a syntactic component (phrase structure rules, lexicon and transformational component), a semantic component (a "logical form" that assigns a meaning to the sentence) and a phonologic component (which transforms it into sounds)
- Learning a language = innate knowledge plus experience
- Universal linguistic knowledge ("universal grammar")
- Language "happens" to a child, just like growth
- Government binding: differences between languages can be summarized into a set of constraints
- Universal grammar = linguistic genotype
|
