Linguistic Knowledge
*Language: Gift only to human
- We talk all the time, even in sleep
- Language makes humans human.
*Linguistic knowledge
- The ability to speak and be understood by others
- The knowledge that most speakers are unaware of
c.f. writing letters is different ability.
*But what dose it mean to 'know' a language?
- the sound system
- words
- the creativity
- sentences & nonsentences
Knowledge of the sound system
*Knowledge unconsciously what sounds are in that language & what sounds are not
e.i. English [f] / Korean [p]
*Knowledge of sounds is language specific
Knowledge of Words
*Knowing that certain sound sequences signify certain concepts or meanings
*The sound units that are related to specific meanings -> words
*The arbitrary relationship between form (sounds) & meaning(concept)
*Sound symbolism : sometime pronunciation suggests meaning
*Most onomatopieic words
The Creativity of Linguistic Knowledge
*Creative aspect of language use: being able to produce new sentences never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before.
*There is no 'longest sentence'
*Creativity is a universal property of human language: all languages are like that.
Knowledge if Sentences & Nonsentences
*To memorize and store an infinite set of sentences is not possible: The brain is finite.
*Putting one word after another in any order does not form sentences
*Linguistic knowledge includes determining which strings of words are and which are not sentences
Linguistic Competence vs. Performance
*Distinction by N. Chomsky
*Competence: -The native speaker's idealized knowledge to produce sentence of a language, language universal(independent), complete and perfect, linguistic knowledge
*Performance: The actual use of that language in concrete situations, incomplete and imperfect (e.g. slips of tongue)
Grammar
*The sounds and sound patterns, the basic units of meaning such as words, and the rules to combine all of these to form sentences with the desired meaning. - Rules or principles
*Two models of grammar: Descriptive grammar, Prescriptive grammar
Descriptive Grammars: 기술문법
-What native speakers know about their language in order to make use of it.
-Every human being who speaks a language knows its grammer.
-Linguistic describe the grammer of the language that exists in the minds of its speakers.
-Grammaticality
*grammatical (depending on dialect, style, etc): She doesn't know, she don't know
*Ungrammatical (regardless of style): She not know, She known't
-NO language or dialect is superior to any other in a linguistic sense.
-No grammar, therefore no language, is either superior or inferior to any other.
-Every grammar is equally complex, logical, and capable of producing an infinite set of sentences to express any thought.
Prescriptive Grammars: 규정문법
-Rules of proper usage that distinguish "good" grammar from "bad" grammar: I is okay -> Bad
-An attempt to tell the users of the language how to use it in order to speak correctly
-Grammarians wish to prescribe rather than describe the rules of grammar
-They believed that language change is corruption, and that there are certain forms that all educated people should use in speaking and writing -> Language Purists
Fallacies concerning Grammar
-There are languages that have "no" grammar or "little" grammar.
-Certian types of grammars are simpler and hence more "primitive" than others.
-Grammars should be "logical"
-Grammars "deteriorate" or "evolve"
Teaching Grammar
-Grammar used in school to fullfill language requirements.
-State explicity the rules of the language, list the words and their pronunciations, and aid in learning a new language or dialect.
-Assumes that the student already knows one language and compares the grammar of the target language with that of the native language. (모국어 간섭)
Language Universals
-Laws representing the universal properties of all languages constitute a universal grammar
-N. Chomsky: There is a universal grammar that is part of the human biologically endowed language faculty.
Human beings are born with an innate "blueprint" for language -> Universal Grammar
-The linguist's goal is to discover the "laws of human language"