Module 4: Grammar and Language Universals

Linguistic Knowledge

• Unconscious knowledge, this include the linguistic systems such as the sounds, structures, meanings, words, and rule for putting them all together.

Complex Cognitive Systems

• Our ability to speak, understand, and make judgements about the grammaticality of sentences; our knowledge of rules of language.

Grammar

• A systematic ambiguity (many meanings), it is an explicit theory constructed by linguists and proposed as a description of the speaker’s competence; the competence itself.

• The speakers’ knowledge about the units and rules of their language.

Phonology

• Combining sounds into words

Morphology

• Rules of word formation

Syntax

• Rules for combining words into phrases and phrases into sentences.

Semantics

• Rules for assigning meanings

Lexicon

• Mental dictionary of words and grammar

Shared Knowledge

• The common parts of knowledge that make it possible to communicate through language; the shared language

Descriptive Grammar

• It does not tell you how you should speak; it describes your basic linguistic knowledge

• It explains how it is possible for you to speak and understand and make judgements about well-formedness, and tells what you know about the sounds, words, phrases, and sentences of your language.

Grammaticality/Grammatical

• Conforming to the rules of grammar

Ungrammaticality/Ungrammatical

• Deviates from the rules of grammar.

Dialect

• Variety of language through geographical differences.

Language Dominance

• One language is superior to the other; it should not exist.

Language Purists

• someone who is preoccupied with the purity of a language and its protection from foreign or altered forms.

• Believes that some versions of language are better than others, and that there are certain correct forms that all educated people should use in speaking and writing that language.

• They wish to prescribe rather than describe the rules of grammar; the rise of prescriptive grammars.

Some Language Purists

• Greek Alexandrians in the 1st Century

• Arabic Scholars at Basra in 8th Century

• Numerous grammarians of the 18th and 19th century

The Renaiisance

• Middle class people wanted their children to speak the dialect of the upper class which led to the publication of prescriptive grammars.

Bishop Robert Lowth in 1762

• Wrote “A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes”

• Prescribed a number of new rules for English, many of them influenced by personal taste.

• Before his book, “all class” uses “double-negatives”, but he believed that it creates a positive, therefore, one should say "I dont have any” instead of “I dont have none”.

• Most of these prescriptive rules were based on the Latin Grammar and made little sense for English.

Prescriptive Grammars

• The goal is to tell people the rules that they should follow in using a language.

The Great British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

• Credited to the response rule that is against of ending a sentence with a preposition: “on, at, to”

Standard Dialect

• Widely accepted dialect in school, politics, and every day lives but is not superior to other language.

Social Prestige

• Social prestige refers to authority status conferred to people who are recognized and appreciated for their expertise, competence, and knowledge

Linguistic Profiling

• The practice of making assumptions about a person's race, social class, education, or national origin based solely on auditory cues like their accent, dialect, or speech patterns

Teaching Grammars

• Used to learn another language or dialect.

• Used on schools in foreign language class. It gives the words and their pronunciation, explicitly states the rules of the language, especially where they differ from the language instruction.

• Compares the rules of native language to target second language that is learned through culture

Gloss

• The parallel word in the student’s native language; house = maison. It expects that if you know what a house is, you also know a maison.

General Grammar

• The parts the pertain to all languages; he study of the core rules and structure that shape all human languages

Johann Heinrich 1960

• General grammar is distinct from special grammar.

• General Grammar reveals those features which relate to the method and etiology of grammatical concepts, which are common to all languages.

• General Grammar is the pattern “norma” of every particular grammar

Robert Kilwardby

• Universalist, who said that linguists should be concerned with the discovery of the nature of language in general.

• He did not consider the characteristic of particular grammars, he said they are irrelevant.

Chomwsky’s Universal Grammar

• The basic blueprint that all languages follow. It specifies the different components of the grammar and their relations, and how the different rules of these components are constructed.

• Parts that pertain to all languages.

Llinguists’ Goal

• Uncover the laws of human language, while physicits’ goal is to reveal the laws of physical universe.

ESL

• English as Second Language

Individual Grammar

• Unique feature of a language’s grammar

Etiology

• Cause and reason behind a language

Chomsky’s Innativism

• Innate ability to acquire a language