LING 101: Introduction

This page was prepared by William Idsardi as a study resource for his LING 101 course at UDel. You may find it useful when pareparing for exams. Note that the material covered by these notes may not exactly match the topics covered in LING 101 when taught by other instructors. To return to the "Study notes" page use the navigation bar at the left.

Communication

• Language is a means of communication--
  transferring thoughts from one mind to another
• But we can't use direct mind-to-mind communication (mental telepathy)
• So we have to use indirect means (language) to encode our thoughts
• Speaker encodes meanings into sounds
• Listener decodes sounds into meanings
• Meaning <===> Sound

Science

• Linguistics is the scientific study of human language
• Linguistics asks the question
  "What do we KNOW when we know a language?"
• Some of the things we know are:
  • Sounds: [b] is a sound of English
    [x] and [y] are not sounds of English (but are sounds of German)
  • Sound Patterns: English words can begin with [tr] but not with *[rt]
    (compare Russian "rtut'" = 'mercury')
  • Words: The English word for "dog" is [dag]
  • "read" is to "read-er" as "reside" is to "resid-ent"
    ('someone who Xs')
  • Word Patterns: "a big ball" is an English phrase; *"ball big a" is not
  • Social Conventions
  • ...

Creativity

• Language use demonstrates the creative capacity of the human mind
• We can understand and produce totally new sentences
• Language provides infinite variety through
  • a finite set of elements and
  • rules
• How can it do that? Through COMBINATIONS of elements by rule.
• Especially through "recursion"--putting sentences inside sentences!
• This is the dog [that chased the cat [that killed the rat [...]]]
• What's the longest sentence of English?
• There is no longest sentence!
• How can we prove this?
• Let's say we have a sentence, S, that we believe to be the longest.
• But then we can make a longer sentence--
  "The longest sentence of English is not S"
• Recursion allows for an infinite number of sentences by allowing sentences inside other sentences.
• Human language in not limited to the here and now.
• We can talk about yesterday, tomorrow, or worlds that are entirely fictional.
• "There is not a giraffe standing next to me."
• Negative, conditional, and counterfactual statements are all possible.
• Recursion and displacement are features of human language which are not observed in animal "languages".

Knowledge versus Perfomance

• Linguistics studies what people KNOW when they know a language.
• Most of the time we learn what people KNOW by what they DO.
• But sometimes what people actually DO does not reliably indicate what they KNOW.
• Someone with laryngitis still KNOWS their language, they just have a medical, physical problem performing (DOING) speech.
• Many external factors can affect performance.
• Linguistics abstracts away from such complicating factors to study the true system of knowledge.
• But we must use what people DO to discover and test our theories about what people KNOW about language.
• Much linguistic knowledge is "implicit", that is, people are not conscious of what they know.

Grammars

• What's in a Grammar?
• Fundamental elements (sounds, words, meanings, ...)
• Rules of combination

Description

• Linguists DESCRIBE what people know about language.
• They do NOT tell people how to speak, they study how people DO speak.
• Physicists do not tell planets how to move.
• Chemists do not tell atoms how to combine.
• Anthropologists do not tell people how to live.

Difference between Languages

• Languages can differ in:
  • the fundamental elements
  • the rules of combination
• The units and rules can be different for all of the modules of language:
  • sounds
  • words
  • sentences
• But all languages are equally complex, they all have units and rules.
• Dialects differ in the same way -- units and rules.
• Languages change in the same way -- units and rules.
• Children learn languages in the same way -- units and rules.
• Any child can learn any human language if exposed to it.