2 Linguistic Principles
Main Points
- Linguists have attempted to identify those grammatical features that appear in all languages. Four pervasive properties are duality of patterning, morphology, phrase structure, and linguistic productivity.
- American Sign Language shares these linguistic properties with spoken languages. Sign language differs from spoken language in its iconicity and simultaneous structure.
- A language consists of an infinite set of sentences. A person who knows a language knows its grammar, which consists of a finite set of rules.
- Transformational grammar distinguishes between two levels of sentence structure: deep structures and surface structures.
- Several controversies exist within grammatical theory, including whether grammatical rules are psychologically real, the role of syntax in grammar, and whether knowledge of language is innate.
Basic Grammatical Concepts
Although languages differ in a number of ways, the differences are not random, and there are impressive underlying similarities.
✨ Duality of patterning: At one level, there is a large number of meaningless elements that are combined to form the words. And another level at which there is a larger number of meaningful elements. All languages have a systematic set of rules for combining the former into the latter.
some concepts to remember:
phones---speech sounds, two sounds are different phones if they differ in a physically specifiable way. e.g. aspirated and unaspirated [p]
phonemes---differences in sound that make a contribution to meaning.
distinctive features---a characteristic of a speech sound whose presence or absence distinguishes the sound from other sounds.
✨ Morphology: the way in which we use words is to use different forms of the same word to convey different shades of meaning.
morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit in a language( free morphemes, bound morphemes)
✨ Phrase Structure: syntactic rules that specify the permissible sequences of constituents in a language. Each phrase- structure rule "rewrites" a constituent into one or more other constituents. By using a series of rules, we can derive a sentence from top to bottom(that is, from the largest to the smallest constituent).
Phrase- structure rules provide a good account of one type of sentence ambiguity called phrase- structure ambiguity.
✨ Linguistic Productivity: our ability to create and comprehend novel utterances (Linguistic Creativity).
Recursion is closely related to language production for there is no limit to the number of times we can embed one sentence into another.
Linguistic productivity distinguishes human language from animal communication systems, which consist of a small number of discrete signals.
✨ Duality of patterning: At one level, there is a large number of meaningless elements that are combined to form the words. And another level at which there is a larger number of meaningful elements. All languages have a systematic set of rules for combining the former into the latter.
some concepts to remember:
phones---speech sounds, two sounds are different phones if they differ in a physically specifiable way. e.g. aspirated and unaspirated [p]
phonemes---differences in sound that make a contribution to meaning.
distinctive features---a characteristic of a speech sound whose presence or absence distinguishes the sound from other sounds.
✨ Morphology: the way in which we use words is to use different forms of the same word to convey different shades of meaning.
morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit in a language( free morphemes, bound morphemes)
✨ Phrase Structure: syntactic rules that specify the permissible sequences of constituents in a language. Each phrase- structure rule "rewrites" a constituent into one or more other constituents. By using a series of rules, we can derive a sentence from top to bottom(that is, from the largest to the smallest constituent).
Phrase- structure rules provide a good account of one type of sentence ambiguity called phrase- structure ambiguity.
✨ Linguistic Productivity: our ability to create and comprehend novel utterances (Linguistic Creativity).
Recursion is closely related to language production for there is no limit to the number of times we can embed one sentence into another.
Linguistic productivity distinguishes human language from animal communication systems, which consist of a small number of discrete signals.
Summary
Words are composed of phonemes, which, in turn, have distinctive features. In each instance, the smaller units are combined in a rule- governed manner to produce the larger units. Words consist of one or more units of meaning, or morphemes. The system of grammatical morphemes in a language provides speakers with a way of signaling subtle differences in meaning. Phrase- structure rules codify our intuitions about the groupings of words in a sentence. Some sentences are ambiguous and may be grouped in more than one way. Linguistic productivity refers to the fact that there is no limit to the number of sentences in a language.(recursion)
Insights From Sign Language (has its own set of grammatical rules and is a language that is independent of English)
✨ Differences between signed and spoken language
Arbitrariness-- no intrinsic relationship exist between the set of sounds and the object to which the sounds refer(spoken language)
High degree of Iconicity--many of the signs resemble the objects or activities to which they refer(sign language)-----part iconic part arbitrary
✨ Similarities between signed and spoken language
Arbitrariness-- no intrinsic relationship exist between the set of sounds and the object to which the sounds refer(spoken language)
High degree of Iconicity--many of the signs resemble the objects or activities to which they refer(sign language)-----part iconic part arbitrary
✨ Similarities between signed and spoken language
Duality of Patterning/ Morphology/ Reciprocity/ Linguistic Productivity/ Phrase Structure
✨ Significance of Sign Language
Researches that has benefited from the study of sign language: Language production/ Language acquisition/ the link between language and the brain
Transformational Grammar( an influential theory of grammar formulated by Chomsky in the late 1950s--- inspired a considerable amount of psycholinguistic work in the 1960s and early 1970s)
✨ Language and Grammar
From a linguistic perspective, a grammar is a description of a person's linguistic knowledge.
Within linguistic theory, a language can be defined as an infinite set of
well-formed sentences. A grammar is a formal device with a finite set of rules that generates the sentences in the languages.
Evaluation of Grammars: Chomsky suggested three criteria( observational adequacy--- the grammar must specify what is and what is not an acceptable sequence in the language; descriptive adequacy--- the grammar must specify the relationships between various sequences in the language; explanatory adequacy---the ability to explain the role of linguistic universals in language acquisition.)
Chomsky(1957) initially developed transformational grammar because of the descriptive inadequacy of a grammar based on phrase structure rules.
✨ Deep and Surface Structure(Transformational Grammar)
Evaluation of Grammars: Chomsky suggested three criteria( observational adequacy--- the grammar must specify what is and what is not an acceptable sequence in the language; descriptive adequacy--- the grammar must specify the relationships between various sequences in the language; explanatory adequacy---the ability to explain the role of linguistic universals in language acquisition.)
Chomsky(1957) initially developed transformational grammar because of the descriptive inadequacy of a grammar based on phrase structure rules.
✨ Deep and Surface Structure(Transformational Grammar)
Deep structure is the underlying structure of a sentence that conveys the meaning of a sentence.
Surface structure refers to the superficial arrangement of constituents and reflects the order in which the words are pronounced.
To fully capture these grammatical relationships, we need to posit a second level of structure, which in turn brings into play a new set of rules called transformational rules.
To fully capture these grammatical relationships, we need to posit a second level of structure, which in turn brings into play a new set of rules called transformational rules.
✨ Transformational Rules
Within transformational grammar, the entire derivation of a sentence is a two-part process. First, phrase- structure rules are used to generate the underlying tree structure we have referred to as the deep structure. Second, a sequence of transformational rules is applied to the deep structure and the intermediate structures( those between the deep and surface structure), ultimately generating the surface structure of sentence.
Summary
Summary
Transformational grammar assumes that sentences have a deep structure and a surface structure. The deep structure is derived by a series of phrase-structure rules, and the surface structure is derived from the deep structure by a series of transformational rules. Transformational grammar can explain certain aspects of language, such as deep-structure ambiguity, that cannot be accounted for entirely by phrase- structure rules.
Issues in Grammatical Theory
✨ Psychological Reality of Grammar(whether linguistic principles have psychological reality)
✨ The Centrality of Syntax(whether our grammatical knowledge is better described in structural or lexical terms)
✨ Is Language Innate?(whether our linguistic knowledge may be innate)
✨ Is Language Innate?(whether our linguistic knowledge may be innate)
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