LIN 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Deep Structure And Surface Structure, English Plurals
Linguistics
How Inquiry Works:
• Consciousness-raising
-knowledge ingrained that language users do not know they even use it
• English Plurals: Example:
1. Fork and one more = forks
2. Spoon and 2 is spoons
3. Rosebush then 2 rosebushes
• Just add a “s”?
1. To form the plural of fork, you add a hissing sound, the first sound in the word
sap.
2. To pluralize spoon, you add a buzzing sound, the first sound in the word zap.
3. To pluralize rosebush, you add an entire extra syllable, sounding similar to the
word is.
• Here is something that you definitely know, but you cannot state it out loud.
• It is unconscious knowledge.
• The second principle of linguistics is, Language knowledge is often unconscious, but
careful inquiry can reveal it.
• Linguists espouse a variety of theories about language; differences between these theories
are sometimes quite striking even to laypeople and sometimes so subtle that only well-
read linguists can understand the distinctions being made.
• This consensus sees, in every corner of human linguistic ability, at least two layers:
1. a surface structure consisting of the sounds we actually speak and hear
2. the marks we write and read, and a deep structure which exists in the minds of
speakers.
• The deep and surface structures are often strikingly different and are connected by rules
which tell how to move between the two kinds of structure during language use.
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