CO SCI 136 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Universal Grammar, Noam Chomsky, Language Acquisition Device
Document Summary
What is science? it is not: -research/search of information. Scientists are people who have acquired large amount of factual knowledge it is : -creativity. A constant conflict among disputable ideas (some of these are more strongly accepted than others) Particular ideas cannot easily be shown or proven to be true. Scientists strive for generally accepted (but in no way unindisputable!) knowledge about the world >< [ linguists strive for knowledge about language ] "language is a cognitive system which is part of humans" mental or psychological structure" - [] linguists do not only describe the diverse characteristics of individual languages, but also seek to discover the deeper properties which all languages share. These common properties may give us an insight into the structure of the human mind. Linguists investigate how linguistic knowledge of this kind is acquired, how it interacts with other mental processes, how it varies from person to person and region to region (even within one language)
