Linguistics: cognitive science & human instinct

Linguistics

Scientific study of language

profound biological mystery

Linguistics constitutes a

Applied Linguistics

Translation, writing, education

Theoretical Linguistics

word formation processes, structural sounds

Forensic Linguistics

language for interrogation

Language is reflexive

we learn languages through languages (translating)

Descriptive Grammar

Linguists are interested the speakers do follow stored in their mental grammar called….

Prescriptive Grammar

socially embedded notion of how grammar should be

Noam Chomsky

Father of modern linguistics:

CH 1 - Language is a behavior that is ____ across all nations

unform: no human culture lacked language

Instincts

shared by all healthy members of the species

CH 2 Instinctive behavior emerge before they are really

needed

Birds learn to sing before

sexual maturity

Humans learn language in the

womb

CH 3: Instinctive behavior is automatic

language acqui is not something that humans can give up

CH 4: The emergence of an instinct follows a predictable

sequence of milestones: cooing-babbling-speaking

CH 5: Teaching language is mostly ineffective

No evidence prove that it is effective,

Acquisition

learning language without proper instructions

Learning

mostly prescriptive rules

CH 6:  There is a critical period learning languages

10-12 yo: CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS

Feral Children

never got to acquire language because they were too old

FOXB2

Grammar gene – people who lacks this are commonly speech impaired

Language is separate from general intelligence

tied to a separate specialized mental sub-system

LANGUAGE is a socially shared code or conventional system for expressing concepts through

arbitrary symbols and rule-governed combinations of symbols

Arbitrary

: whatever name is given to you is because of the community’s decision

dynamic system

changes across different culture and time which makes it evolve.

Pragmatic function:

Some functions of human language include helping individuals to stay alive, influencing others’ behavior and finding out more about the world

Interchangeability

Human can both produces messages and comprehend the messages of others

Discplacement

Ability of language to communicate about things, actions, and ideas that are NOT present in space or time while speakers are communicating.

Productive

In any language it is possible to produce an infinite number of sentences = no such things as the longest sentence ever

Discreteness

Property of language that allows us to combine discrete units to create larger communicative units. Everything is noise but we combine it to make words

Mental Lexicon

the repository of all lexical knowledge possessed by an individual language user.

Linguistic Competence

hidden knowledge of language, instictual

Linguistic Performance

the way people produce and comprehend language

Lexicon

vocabulary of a person