LING 301 Exam 1 Questions and Answers

Prescriptive Rule - A rule that tells speakers what they should and shouldn't do Descriptive Rule - An observation of what native speakers do Hidden knowledge - Speakers are not consciously aware of our language Competence - What speakers know about their language (conscious or not) Performance - What we do with our knowledge of language (when we speak) Linguistics - The scientific study of a language. The attempt to understand the descripted grammar of a language Grammer - Set of patterns in a language Phonology - the study of speech sounds in language grammar - Something is grammatical if it is something a native speaker would say if it is readily comprehensible and interpretable and if it is non-random in it's structure. Pattern based, not random. Ungrammatical - An utterance is ungrammatical if it is random, unstructured, incomprehensible, and uninterpretable, and if native speakers would never say it that way. All communication systems have: - mode of communication, semanticity, pragmatic function Mode of communication - Refers to the means by which messages are transmitted Semantics - Meaning! Pragmatic Function - It serves a purpose Some communication systems have - Interchangeability, cultural transmission, arbitrariness, discreteness Interchangeability - The ability to send and receive messages. Humans do this, not all animals. Cultural transmission - Information about meaning learned through culture Arbitrariness - There's no intrinsic relationship between form and meaning Form + meaning - Linguistic sign Discreteness - Having complex messages that are built up out of smaller parts Human language has - Displacement, productivity Displacement - Humans can talk about things that are not present in space or time Productivity - Human language can be combined in infinite ways, because it is discrete. Nativism - Nativists believe that there is something innate in human language that guides are language acquisition