LING 1 Study Guide - Comprehensive Final Exam Guide - Grammar, Universal Grammar, Syntactic Category
Document Summary
In terms of function for us to communicate with each other. We have a finite set of building blocks (sounds and words) and rules on how these are combined this is unconscious/implicit knowledge. The inventory of sounds in our language: phonetics. Knowledge of sounds sequences/system/ what sequences are possible: phonology. Word is an arbitrary pairing of sound and meaning (even for signing) The relationship between the form and meaning of a word is arbitrary. Our knowledge of sound sequences allows us to determine what constitutes a possible word. Knowledge of morphology (word structure) lets us build more complex words. Asterisk before a word or sentence not well-formed. We build complex words from rules that combine elements smaller than the word (morphemes) Wh questions: question word stands in place of object. Knowledge of meaning (semantics) for both words and sentences. Mass nouns (not countable) work with other specific articles. Noam chomsky: human linguistic knowledge is creative.
