CHOMSKY: is mentalist, because, for him, the reason for studying language is that language is a mirror of the mind, to understand better how the human mind produces and processes language. We should study Language to
learn something that will show us the inherent properties of the human mind.
Its theory is formal because it’s precise and explicit, Chomsky used formulas and definitions in the style of mathematics to describe and model linguistic competence.
He focuses attention on idealized utterances because of the interest in underlying mental structures rather than on actual performance.
Three interrelated theories which linguistics should seek to develop: Theory of Language Structure, Theory of Language Acquisition and Theory of Language Use. Developing a Theory of Language Structure is logically prior because we must know what language is, so we can develop theories about how it’s acquired and used.
What does a Theory of Language Structure seek to characterize ?
It seeks to characterize: what is language?, what is it that we know when we know a language?, what are the
defining characteristics of natural language that differentiate them from artificial languages or from animal communication systems?, do languages differ from each other in unpredictable ways, or do they all share certain common, universal properties?
A grammar : It’s a model of the linguistic competence of the fluent native speaker of the language.
Competence: is the “speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language”.
Performance: Is the “actual use of language in concrete situations”.
What is Linguistics primarily concerned with? Why?
Linguistic is primarily concerned with competence, because we have to understand what a native speaker knows about his language before studying the performance errors (tiredness, drunkenness, etc.) on this knowledge (Theory of Performance).
How many types of competence does Chomsky distinguish?
He distinguishes two types of competence: grammatical competence and pragmatic competence. Pragmatics is concerned with the role played by nonlinguistic information such as background knowledge and personal beliefs in our use of sentences. It’s the native speaker’s pragmatic competence that enables him to bring into play non- linguistic information in the interpretation of sentences. Natives speaker’s grammatical competence is the knowledge of the grammar of his language.
Native speaker’s linguistic competence: (intuitions: well-formedness, sentence structure)
The native speaker’s grammatical competence is reflected in two types of intuitions that speakers have about their
native language: Intuitions about sentence well-formedness and intuitions about sentences structure; the native speaker has the ability to make judgments about whether the sentence is well-formed or not, whether it has a particular structure or not.
Native speakers of English would agree that “THIS is a graMMAtical SENtence” is phonological well-formed in respect of its stress pattern (it’s okay to pronounce the sentence with primary stress on the capitalized syllables).
But, “This is A grammatiCAL senTENCE” it’s phonologically ill-formed in respect of its stressed pattern.
Phonological competence is also reflected in intuitions about phonological structure.
Native speaker’s morphological competence.
Morphological competence is reflected in the native speaker’s intuitions about morphological well-formdeness and structure. For example, native speakers of English know that van vans, can cans.
But, that the plural of man is not mans, but men. The same thing happens with the past form.
Native speaker’s semantic competence.
They have intuitions about semantic well-formedness and structure. “I thought that Mary was ill, but it turned out that she wasn’t.” is well-formed; but “I realized that Mary was ill, but it turned out it wasn’t.” is semantically ill- formed.
Native speaker’s syntactic competence.
It has to do with syntactic well-formedness. The native speaker is able to judge whether such-end-such and sequence of words is a grammatical sentence in his language or not.
They also have intuitions about the syntactic structure of sentence. They have “gut-feelings” about which words in a sentence “go with” or “modify” which other words, for example in “some people can be very selfish”, some “goes with” people and not with “very”.
According to Chomsky, should Linguistics be descriptive or prescriptive?
Linguistic should be descriptive. (what people actually say, how we speak and why, relating it with the context; not about what we SHOULD say or how to speak).
Compare the notion "well-formedness " with the notion " correctness".
Sentences syntactly well-formed can be seen as incorrect or with a “bad grammar” by a certain self-styled socio- cultural elite (correctness). All native speakers have to some extend their own individual way of speaking. Sentences would be accepted as well-formed by only a certain percentage of English people, because of their own idiolect which they assume it’s represented of the language as a whole.
Compare the notion "acceptability" and "well-formedness" .
Expressions “well-formed” may have conflicts with our personal beliefs about the world. Sentences that aren’t
linguistically ill-formed in any way can be simply pragmatically anomalous, in the sense that they express ideas that don’t conform to our view of the way the world is.
Our judgment about the ill-formedness of sentences depends entirely on our cultural, religious, or personal beliefs, not on any linguistic knowledge that we have about our language. There we have the distinction between acceptability and well-formedness: native speakers give judgments about the acceptability of sentences (a performance notion), sentences that may be simply pragmatically odd in some way. Acceptability judges the informant well-formedness.
So, native speakers of a language have the ability to make performance judgments about sentence acceptability. Because of performance factors, these judgments cannot always be taken to be reliable.
Competence : is the underlying mental processes which we carry out in our production of language; it’s the mental repository of the rules by which our language organizes. It allows us to generate an infinite number of sentences. It’s defined as infinite rule-governed creativity in the following way: creativity of language refers to the speaker’s ability to produce new sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are familiar. (resemblance means that we can understand sentences that aren’t word-for-word exact repetitions of any sentences we have heard before). This shows that language
cannot simply be learned by imitation, much of what we say in normal language use is entirely new.
In language we have: a set of morphological rules (how words are built up out of morphemes), phonological rules (how words, phrases, and sentences are pronounced) and semantic rules (how words, phrases, and sentences are interpreted). These rules demonstrate that language is rule-governed, to formulate appropriate sets of syntactic, morphological, phonological, and semantic rules. One evidence is that, for example, on hearing pairs, the children formulate morphological rules such as forming the plural of nouns by adding an –s on the end. Also,
overgeneralizing, they guess rules of sentence and sometimes make the wrong guess. It’s infinite because the set of well-formed sentences in any natural language is infinite. There is no theoretical upper limit on the length of sentences in any language. This means that, given any sentence of English, we can always form a longer one by adding another Adjective, Prepositional Phrase, Clause, Adverb, Conjunct, etc.
What argument did Chomsky put forth against the claim made by behavioral psychologists that language is habit structure ?
Chomsky says that we cannot innovate by habit, and the characteristics use of language (by a speaker and a hearer) is innovate. We are constantly producing new sentences in our lifetime, that’s the normal use of language.
What aspects does the acquisition of a language involve ?
Acquiring a language involves formulating an appropriate set of syntactic, morphological, phonological, and
semantic rules.
A generative grammar: is a grammar that incorporates an explicitly formulated set of syntactic, semantic, morphological, and phonological rules that specify how to form, interpret and pronounce a given set of sentences, and generate that set of sentences.
An adequate generative grammar: is a system of rules of sentence formation, interpretation, and pronunciation that will generate the infinite set of well-formed sentences in the language.
Linguistic gradually builds up a set of rules of sentence formation, pronunciation, and interpretation which form the basis of his eventual grammar of the language. For example:
We know that the sentence “the government won’t commit itself” is correct, but the sentence “Itself won’t be commited” isn’t. Why? Because “itself” cannot be independent, so we try to formulate a rule about that: Reflexives (itself) cannot have independent reference, but require an antecedent to take their reference from.
In the sentence “Some governments won’t commit itself”, we know something is wrong; just as in “She won’t commit itself”, and “We congratulated themselves”. So, we end up knowing that we need to concord number, gender and person, and can formulate the following rule: Reflexives cannot have independent reference, but must take their reference from an antecedent which is compatible in number, gender, and person with the reference.
What are the criteria of adequacy that a linguist should propose for a particular grammar?
The weakest requirement for any grammar of a language is that it attain observational adequacy, that is if it correctly specifies which sentences are (and aren’t) syntactically, semantically, morphologically, and phonologically well-formed in the language. A higher level of adequacy is descriptive adequacy, that is if it correctly specifies which sentences are (and aren’t) syntactically, semantically, morphologically, and phonologically well-formed in the language, and also, properly describes the syntactic, semantic, morphological and phonological structure of the sentences in the language in
such a way as to provide a principled account of the native speaker’s intuitions about this structure.
What level of adequacy must a Theory of Language attain?
It must attain, at least, observational adequacy, but it would be important that it attain descriptive adequacy too.
What three characteristics does explanatory adequacy subsume ?
Universality: an adequate linguistic theory must be able to provide us with a descriptively adequate grammar for every natural language.
Maximally constrained: the theory must provide us with technical restricted devices, that can only be used to describe human language, not for the description of other communication systems. It’s important because only a maximally constrained theory of language can lead to the development of an adequate theory of language acquisition. We can only explain language acquisition in children if we assume that grammars contain a constrained set of principles, and that the child is born with a language faculty that endows him with the knowledge of what principles are “possible” and “impossible” linguistic rules and structures.
Psychological reality: for Chomsky, the language is the mirror of the mind, so by analyzing language we can learn something about the way the mind produces and processes language. The ultimate aim is to uncover the neuro- physiological mechanisms which make language possible.
What does LAD stand for?
It stands for Language Acquisition Device, which provides an abstract specification of the range of possible and impossible rules and structures in natural language.
How does Chomsky define UG?
UG is Universal Grammar, all the universal properties that all languages have in common.
What does the Innateness Hypothesis posit?
The Innateness Hypothesis includes the principles of general linguistic, regarding the nature of rules, their
organization, the principles by which they function, the kinds of representations to which they apply and which they form. It’s important the use of the Language Acquisition Device, that is an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interactions with experience, it converts experience into a system of knowledge of one or other language.
The inter-relatedness of universals and innate knowledge leads to the conclusion that we can uncover universal properties of language by detailed studies of Particular Grammar. Whatever knowledge a native speaker has about his language which he cannot have acquired through experience must be attributable to innate knowledge, and what is innate must be universal.
Universals provide the key to understanding language acquisition, only if we hypothesize that child has innate knowledge of these universals, and they also provide the key to explanation since it can only proceed from
universal principles.
How many types of universals does Chomsky distinguish? Explain them.
He distinguish two types of universal: the absolute universals that is a property which all languages share without any exception, for example the structure-dependence principle (that says that all grammatical rules re structure- dependent); and the relative universals, that represents a general tendency in language, but one which has some
exception, for example the consistent serialization principle (languages tend to place modifying elements either consistently before or after modified elements).
When do we say that a linguistic phenomenon in a particular language is marked ? A marked phenomenon is one which goes against some relative universal (general tendency in language), is exceptional in some way. For example, English generally places Modifiers before Heads: good food, very interesting, so the order Head +
Modifier will be a marked construction.
When do we say that a linguistic phenomenon in a particular language is unmarked ? An unmarked phenomenon is one which accords with universal principles (whether absolute or relative) in language. It’s the normal, or regular, usual. For example, the reverse order of Head + Modifier is generally not grammatical in English (food good, interesting very), so the order Modifier + Head is the unmarked word order in English phrases of the relevant type.
Sir William Jones’ contribution to the field of linguistics
He proposed that many languages sprang from a common source. He observed that Sanskrit had a strong resemblance to Greek and Latin, which led him to suggest that the three languages not only had a common root but they were related to the Gothic, Celtic, and Persian languages. The impact of the work was enormous, as it brought about the separation of religion from language and eschewed mythology for a more scientific approach to linguistics.
Charles Darwin’s contribution to the field of linguistics
He said that particular languages have to be learned but there is an instinct to learn a language in the first place.
He also pointed out the relation between the brain and the language
Linguist work in the 18th and 19th centuries
In the 18th century, the comparative method began to develop (with Sir William Jones), which had a set of principles that allowed languages to be systematically compared according to their sound systems, grammar and vocabulary, to show the “genealogically” related. It was the starting point for diachronic studies of language.
In the 19th century, we can find Charles Darwin’s explanations regarding the evolution of language from a historical point of view. There we also have an important figure for the field of linguistics: Saussure.
The father of linguistic: Ferdinand de Saussure is considered the father of modern linguistic because several of his revelations about the nature of language revolutionized the way that this object was viewed, and have had a profound impact on language study up to this day.
Instead of a diachronic approach, he emphasized a synchronic approach that focuses on describing language at a given point in time as it exists as a system.
He viewed language as a system of signs that consists in two parts: signified and signifier. The signified is the concept which is referred to, and the signifier is the label used for that concept. This relationship is arbitrary because there is nothing in an object that tells us why it should be named like that. There are differences across languages, dialects, and registers in what is named.
How many types of relationships can we find between different elements of the language?
Language is a set of signs that are: members of a system, and defined by their relationships to each other. We know that something means by knowing what it doesn’t mean.
Elements of language have a relationship to each other, they can string together on the syntagmatic dimension (order of letters or words), and on the paradigmatic dimension (substitute set of choices).
9. Saussure made a distinction between la langue and la parole:
La lague refers to the “hoard deposited by the practice of speech in speakers who belong to the same community, a grammatical system that exists in the mind of the speaker”, it belongs to all of us as it’s a collective social product.
