Quennie V. Ancheta

-To understand currentideas, we need toknow where they camefrom.

Can’t we just observe language and describe it without bothering with difficult things like theories?

The human mind always operates with some notion of the way the universe works.

The human mind finds it easier to understand things if we break it down into smaller pieces

Language exists in people’s heads

Language is ‘rules’ that we know: competence

–You can observe what goes in and out of the box, but you can’t observe what goes on inside which changes the input to the output

–By studying the input and output we can imagine what must be going on inside

–Imagined processes = theory

American structuralism (C1900 – 1960)

Transformational Grammar (1957 – 1964)

Standard Generative Theory (1964 – 1980)

Government and Binding TheoryGeneralised Phrase Structure GrammarLexical Functional Grammar (1980 –present)

Minimalist ProgrammeOptimality Theory (1993 – present)

We can only study what we can observeWe can observe sound– So we can study phonetics

If we assume that phonology is based on phonetics, we can study phonology tooIf we assume that morphology is based on phonology, we can study morphologyIf we assume that syntax is based on morphology, we can study syntaxWe can’t study semantics – leave that to philosophers

–The unit of phonology (phoneme) is a collection of phones (observable) and distinguished in terms of the distribution of phones

–The unit of morphology (morpheme) is a combination of phonemes and distinguished in terms of distribution

–The unit of syntax (word) is a combination of morphemes, distinguished by distribution

Rationalist approach

–The mind exists and can be studied

–Some knowledge comes from the mind itself

Discovery procedures are foolish and limiting

–You get your data from wherever you can find it (not limited to observable data – i.e. Intuition also acceptable)

…is that branch oflinguistics that is mostconcerned with developingmodels of linguisticknowledge.

phonology, morphologysyntax semantics

…is the study of thearticulation, theperception and thephysical aspects ofspeech sounds.

Articulatory phonetics

Auditory phonetics

Acoustic phonetics

Articulatory phonetics analyses the movementsof speech organs by which certain sounds areproduced.

Auditory phonetics is concerned with theperception of speech sounds through the ear(hence auditory), and begins with the anatomyof this organ in a similar way to articulatoryphonetics.

Acoustic phonetics studies the physical aspectsof speech sounds.

…is the branch of theoreticallinguistics concerned withspeech sounds at a higherlevel than phonetics, i.e theirstructure and organisation inhuman languages.

…is the study of wordstructure.

“A person who knows alanguage has mastered asystem of rules that assignssound and meaning in adefinite class of possiblesentences.”

- Noam Chomsky

…is the study oflanguage structureand word order.

Speakers of a language recognize thegrammatical sentences of theirlanguage and know how the words ina sentence must be ordered andgrouped to convey a certain meaning.All speakers are capable of producingand understanding an unlimitednumber of new sentences that havenever before been spoken or heard.

They also recognize ambiguities,know when different sentences meanthe same thing, and correctly interpretthe grammatical relations in asentence, such as subject and directobject. This kind of knowledge comesfrom their knowledge of the rules ofsyntax.

The notion of structure stays

–Words group into phrases

–Phrases group into sentences

New type of rule for producing structure

–S NP VP

A set of such rules makes a Phrase Structure Grammar

–Grammar is a set of rules that are part of the mind

But phrase structure rules are not enough to describe human languages–Discontinuous constituents

[A man with blue eyes] walked into a shop[A man] walked into a shop [with blue eyes]

To describe this phenomena we need transformations–Rules which alter structures to form other

structures (e.g. By moving things about)

What does the grammar manipulate?– From structuralism we have always assumed that

words are the basis of syntax

– But transformational analyses started to discover that units smaller than words undergo syntactic processes:

He is always sad

He always phones his mother

– Some have suggested that this leads to a theory where syntax always manipulates items smaller than the word and that words are constructed by syntax

…is the study ofintensive meaning inwords and sentences.

www.wikipedia.com

Barker, Chris: Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics; Oxford University Press;2007.Chomsky, Noam Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. The Hague: Mouton.1964Fromkin, Victoria: Introduction to Linguistics: Cengage Leraning Asia, 2010.Lyons, John: Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics; Cambridge University Press; Melbourne, Australia; Digital Printing 2001.

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