LING notes- linguistics as a science

The knowledge a native speaker has about their language is

unconscious

• it is mental grammar

Competence

What a person knows

• the principles and rules they follow (even unconsciously)

Performance

How a person puts their knowledge to use

Prescriptive rules

Rules that tell people how they should speak (or write)

• stipulates right vs wrong

• usually requires effort to learn

• Are often broken

Example of a prescriptive rule

Don’t end your sentences with a preposition

counterexample: Prepositions are words you don’t end a sentence with

Example of a prescriptive rule 2

Don’t split your infinitives

counterexample: We want to successfully complete this course

Prescriptive rules can run

counter to our native competence

Descriptive rules

rules that describe how people actually use their language

• often learned and use subconsciously

• not really rules but rather descriptions

What are the rules linguistics study?

Descriptive rules

• The goal of linguistics is to develop a theory that correctly models native speaker’s knowledge of their language

The scientific method may uncover descriptive rules we are not familiar with because

Descriptive rules are usually tacit- we are not consciously aware of using them 

Language is unique to

humans

Animal Communication

• there are a wide variety of communication systems, employing different modalities, encountered in the animal kingdom

• Signals are most often associated with mating, threats by predators, and access to food

Vervet monkey calls

Vervet monkeys have distinct calls depending on the predator

Bee dance

Honey bees use a ‘dance’ to indicate the location of nectar to other honey bees

Trees

• When threatened, can ‘warn’ neighboring trees by releasing special toxins

Unique properties of human language

• Creativity/Generativity

• Displacement

Creativity in language

Human grammar is generative

• an infinite number of expressions can be generated

language can be broken down and recombined

• not all types of communication can do this

Displacement

The capability of language to communicate about things that are not immediately present

Temporal displacement

• “I will visit Maine in March”

Spatial displacement

• “My car is parked across the parking deck right now”

• Humans are the only animals with a communication system with a communication system with these properties 

• Language can be broken down into parts and its productive 

• It can be displaced

Nim Chimpsky

• A project led by Dr. Terrace at Columbia 

• Nim was raised in a human family and taught ASL by a series of human 

• Nim learned 128 signs and produced sequences of signs 

• Most of Nim’s signs are mimics of his teachers’ signs 

Koko the gorilla

• Was taught ASL by Dr. Patterson starting at a young age and eventually 1000 signs 

• Understood some english 

• Signing suggested complex emotional intelligence, including expressions of love, sadness, and humor 

• Koko was known for her affinity for kittens, which she referred to as “pets” and treated with care 

Universal grammar

All human languages share a common underlying structure or set of grammatical rules, which is innate to the human brain.  

• proposed by Noam Chomsky
  

Languages do not need to have a writing system or be taught in school to have a grammar

• rules are not taught to infants, but they somehow know them

Speakers have a mental grammar of a language

Languages do not need to have a writing system or to be instructed in school to have a grammar. All speakers of a given language share a mental grammar 

“Grammar” here refers to a sense of “Rules”

 - Rules of sound pattern

- Rules of word formation 

- Rules of sentence structure 

- Rules of structure meaning mapping 

Core Principles of Universal grammar

Principles

Parameters

Language acquisition device

Principles- UG

Universal rules that apply to all languages

• E.g., all languages have subject, object, and verb 

• E.g., structural dependency: all languages can form phrases 

Parameters- UG

Language specific settings

• E.g, different languages have different word order 

• English: SVO, Korean, Japanese: SOV, Arabic: VSO

Whether the language can drop pronouns 

E.g., pro-drop: some languages, like Mandarin can drop the pronoun while the sentence remains to be grammatical; while English can’t do this 

Language acquisition device- UG

A specialized processor in human brain 

• Contains the innate principles necessary for language learning 

• Activated and influenced by the language exposure and the environment 

• Enables children to navigate the intricacies of language, process linguistic input, and generate grammatically accurate sentences

• Unique to humans 

Uniformity in acquisition

• Kids worldwide hit the same language milestones (babbling- words- syntax) on a similar timeline, regardless of culture. 

Usage based theory

 An alternative theory to UG, proposed by psycholinguist Tomasello 

• Kids learn language through paying attention to the statistical information, not innate grammar

  • E.g, the learner keeps track that 95% of the input has the SVO word order

• Take LLMs like ChatGPT as an example

  • UG insight: If language relies on innate rules, could we code those into AI? Early AI tried this (eg, rule based systems), but they failed at flexibility

The scientific method

Linguistic analysis

• Make empirical observations and form generalizations (descriptive rules) 

• Form hypotheses which make falsifiable predictions

• Test these predictions by collecting further data 

• Revise hypothesis based on gathered data  

Full form- regular: it is 

Reduced form- contracted: it’s 

The scientific method

may uncover descriptive rules we are not familiar with because… Descriptive rules are usually tacit- we are not consciously aware of using them