LING 320 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Noam Chomsky, Transformational Grammar, Speech Community

• School: McGill University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 320
• Professor: Charles Boberg

Document Summary

Main function of language is to communicate with others. Noam chomsky: variation exists. it is chaotic and random performances cannot be determined by looking at individuals use of language within different contexts systems of rules within the grammar units individuals in a homogeneous speech community. Variation does exist not random governed by principles/rules systematic. Language is one of the ways we project ourselves gestures: we use to identify ourselves within a group or to contrast ourselves. Data should come from observation of language being used in the speech community (language as it actually exists) Observer paradox: subjects may over or under preform depending on the image they would like to project. Subjects will say what they believe the linguist wants to hear, so they will over report (cid:374)or(cid:373)s (cid:894)li(cid:374)guist (cid:449)ill (cid:271)e soli(cid:272)iti(cid:374)g people"s opi(cid:374)io(cid:374)s of la(cid:374)guage) Competence vs (is the uniform set of grammatical rules) Performance (grammar: peoples knowledge of their own (cid:373)other to(cid:374)gue (cid:448)ariatio(cid:374) (cid:449)ill set i(cid:374)(cid:895)