LING 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Arbitrariness
8 Jun 2016
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Document Summary
Lexicon: vocabulary, things about language that are not systematic and must be memorized. Phonology: combines sounds into larger units like words. Syntax: combines words into larger units like phrases and sentences. Semantics: relates the meaning of larger expressions to the meaning of their parts. Phonology: discrete meaningless elements combined into meaningful words. Words are build out of phonemes and become meaningful. Meaning-sound relationship is arbitrary: no way to predict the meaning of a word from the phonemes that constitute it. Syntax: words are combined into phrases, according to an entirely di erent set of principles. Meaning of whole related to meaning of parts according to some rules. Sounds are generally meaningless; combined into meaningful words. Discrete combinatorial system : a small number of units combined to form messages. Productivity: existing patterns can be extended to create new expressions. Discrete in nity : there is no nite limit on the number of messages that can be encoded in human language.
