LING101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Linguistic Prescription, Part Of Speech, Arbitrariness
1 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
A system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures or written symbols that encode or decode information. Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are manipulated . * combination of lexicon and a grammar. Lexicon- dictionary of arbitrary signs (meaning, pronunciation, word class, etc) Grammar- which consists of rules for manipulating signs and constraints on their distribution. Rules for putting sounds together - phonology. Prescribes a particular manner of speaking, signing and or writing. Often makes value judgements by making claims about the correctness of different language forms. Punctuation conventions can aid readability and interpretability. Shared conventions facilitate written communication among speakers of different varieties. Claim: who is for subjects, whom is for objects. Attempts to describe language as it is actually used by native speakers. Prefers to ignore prescriptive grammar rules, except when making sociolinguistic observations.
