The Science of Language

Study guide for week 1: The goals for this week are to: 1) begin thinking about language from a scientific perspective and differentiate between scientific and non-scientific approaches to linguistic behavior (prescriptivism vs. descriptivism . 2) Become acquainted with some of the fundamental assumptions that are accepted in linguistic inquiry (use of intuition, UG, innateness). 3) Learn the levels of description used in analyzing language.

Readings for week 1:
Language Files: 1.1—1.4;
Pinker: Chapter 1.

Exercises from the text:
Language Files: File 1.2, ex. 1; File 1.3, ex. 1-6; File 1.4, ex. 1-7.

**WARNING** If you feel like you understand the concept associated with a particular exercise from the text, please stop. Write “got it” and move on to the next exercise. **WARNING**

Additional exercises:

1. State some “rules” of grammar that you’ve heard. For example, you may have been taught that It’s me is incorrect and that the correct for is It’s I.

Now ask yourself the following questions about these “rules”:
a. Who did you learn this rule from?
b. Was there any rationale or explanation for using the rule?
c. Does anyone follow this rule?
d. What do you think about someone who doesn’t use the rule”
e. What would you say to someone who tells you that you are saying something in the wrong way?

2. A small set of words in languages may be onomatopoetic, that is, there may be words whose sounds “imitate” what they refer to: ding-dong, tick-tock, bang, zing, swish, plop are such words in English. Make up a list of ten such words. Test them out on your friends to see if they are truly “nonarbitrary” with respect to the connection between sound and meaning.

3. In what way (level of grammar) is each of the following sentences broken?

a. Jade likes to play a game called "sbilling."
b. I done have will four years of college.
c. Vince ate a giant sequoia for breakfast.
d. Ian hitted the ball out of the park.
e. Dogs are my favorite type of fruit.
f. I just saw a movie from Aksktland.

4. Which of the following do you think are universals of human behavior. Do all cultures have them? Are they part of our instinct.

a. Writing systems.
b. Body adornment.
c. Baby talk.
d. The arbitrary relationship between forms and meanings.
e. Articles (words like “a” and “the”).
f. Syntactic rules that determine which sentences are well formed.
g. Methods to enlarge the vocabulary.
h. Classification of kin.
i. Cooking.
j. Language.
k. Dance.
l. Facial expressions.
m. Gossip.
n. Jokes.
o. Metaphor.
p. Words for “sidewalk,” “adultery,” “desert,” and “mountain.”
q. Prefixes
r. Folklore.
s. Ways to combine sentences or phrases or words into complex units.
t. Play.
u. Fear of death.
v. Tickling.
w. Pronouns

Essential concepts:

behaviorist
discreteness
displacement
iconic/arbitrary representation
innateness
interchangeability
linguistic performance/competence
linguistic universals
morphology
phonetics
phonology
pragmatics
prescriptive/descriptive grammar
productivity
rationalist (nativist)
semantics
sign
signified
signifier
species specific instinct
syntax