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    1.2 Mental Grammar - Essentials of Linguistics

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    1.2 Mental Grammar - Essentials of Linguistics

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    1.2 Mental Grammar – Essentials of Linguistics

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    1.2 Mental Grammar - Essentials of Linguistics

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    ESSENTIALS OF LINGUISTICS

    CONTENTS

    1.2 Mental Grammar

    Linguistics is part of the broad field of cognitive


    science, which studies the human mind.
    Linguistics focus specifically on the mental
    grammar: the system that all speakers of a
    language have in their minds, which allows them
    to understand each other. The mental grammar
    of every language includes phonetics, phonology,
    morphology, syntax, and semantics.

    1.2 Mental Grammar

    CHECK YOURSELF

    Newspaper headlines occasionally have


    unexpectedly funny interpretations, such
    as, "Two cars were reported stolen by the
    police yesterday."

    Which part of your mental grammar leads


    to the possibility that the police could have
    done the stealing or the reporting in this
    headline? Check all that apply.

    ! Syntax

    ! Morphology

    ! Phonology

    ! Phonetics

    ! Semantics

    ! Check "

    !Reuse "Embed #

    VIDEO SCRIPT

    We know now that Linguistics is the scientific


    study of human language. It’s also important to
    know that linguistics is one member of the broad
    field that is known as cognitive science.

    The cognitive sciences are interested in what


    goes in the mind. And in linguistics, we’re
    specifically interested in how our language
    knowledge is represented and organized in the
    human mind.

    Think about this: you and I both speak English.


    I’m speaking English right here on this video and
    you’re listening and understanding me. Right
    now I’ve got some idea in my mind that I want to
    express. I’m squeezing the air out of my lungs;
    I’m vibrating my vocal folds, and I’m
    manipulating parts of my mouth to produce
    sounds. Those sounds are captured by a
    microphone and now they’re playing on your
    computer. In response to the sound coming from
    your computer speaker or your headphones,
    your eardrums are vibrating and sending signals
    to your brain, with the result that the idea in
    your mind is something similar to the idea that
    was in my head when I made this video.

    There must be something that your mind and my


    mind have in common to allow that to happen:
    some shared system that allows us to
    understand each other’s ideas when we speak.
    In linguistics, we call that system the mental
    grammar and our primary goal is to find out what
    that shared system is like.

    All speakers of all languages have a mental


    grammar: the shared system that lets speakers
    of a language understand each other. In
    Essentials of Linguistics we devote most of our
    attention to the mental grammar of English, but
    we’ll also use our scientific tools and techniques
    to examine some parts of the grammars of other
    languages.

    We’ll start by looking at sound systems: how


    speakers make particular sounds and how
    listeners hear these sounds. If you’ve ever tried
    to learn a second language you know that the
    sounds in the second language are not always
    the same as in your first language. Linguists call
    the study of speech sounds phonetics.

    Then we’ll look at how the mental grammar of


    each language organizes sounds in the mind; this
    is called phonology.

    We will examine the strategies that languages


    use to form meaningful words; this is called
    morphology.

    Then we take a close look at the different ways


    that languages combine words to form phrases
    and sentences. The term for that is syntax.

    We also look at how the meanings of words and


    sentences are organized in the mind, which
    linguists call semantics.

    These five things are the core pieces of the


    mental grammar of any language: they’re the
    things all speakers know about a language. All
    languages have phonetics, phonology,
    morphology, syntax and semantics in their
    grammars.

    These five areas are also the core subfields of


    theoretical linguistics. Just as there are other
    kinds of language knowledge we have, there are
    other branches of the field of linguistics, and
    we’ll take a peek at some of those other branches
    along the way.

    LICENSE

    Essentials of Linguistics Copyright © 2018


    by Catherine Anderson is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
    4.0 International License, except where
    otherwise noted.
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    Previous: 1.1 Linguistics is Science

    Next: 1.3 Creativity and Generativity

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