ENGL 471 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: George Lakoff, Noam Chomsky, Tabula Rasa
30 Jan 2017
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Example: advertisers, convincing us that we need something. George lakoff linguist at berkeley so much more than we think of, take for granted, manipulation possibilities. * innatism (theory of): root is nat, meaning born. Prior to innatism we had the theory of behaviorism. Overt teaching, someone has to explain it to us language acquired by imitation, reinforcement. Observations foot, feet, foots (starting to understand plurals) child hasn"t heard an adult say foots (points more toward innatism) Origins of things, someone had to be first. 1950"s noam chomsky, apply plato"s questions to language. How do we learn so much about language without being taught? is there a specific biological endowment? something about the human body that allows language yes, human body selected language as important attribute. Produce language; vocal cords close to airways, also make it more possible for humans to choke to death. Upright position innatism is used to help solve plato"s problem language comes from describing our physical world.
