LING 100A Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Infinitive, Linguistic Competence, Onomatopoeia
9 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Tend to have unconscious knowledge of our languages. Symbolic; a sub discipline of semiotics- the study of signs that humans use for communication: signs are elements that represent other elements i. e. + represents a mathematical concept, cultural signs that convey meaning. You can retrieve the meaning if you"re from that culture. Sequences of sounds; the vast languages of the human languages are spoken, and most do not have writing systems. You can use the sounds to convey a particular concept and then interpret other sounds to add meaning to the concept. Concept sign; sound=meaning, the sound can be a sequence of a sound or sign and then the meaning can theoretically stand for a concept. cat [kaet]; arbitrary- no way to predict the meaning of the word unless you know the language, you have to learn the meaning of the words by convention by exposure. A lot of cultural knowledge with symbols to understand it.
