Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Introduction to Linguistics - Coggle Diagram

- - - - How sounds work in language
    - - The structure and formation of words
    - - The physical aspects of sounds in language, like how we produce and perceive them.
    - - Syntax is about how words are organized to form sentences in language.
    - - Semantics is about the meaning of words and how they combine to create meaning in sentences.
- - - - Morphemes:
        A meaningful morphological unit of a language that cannot be further divided
        
        Words
        
        Phrases: A group of words without a subject and a verb
        
        Clause:
        Contains a subject and a predicate and can stand alone as a complete thought (independent clause) or cannot stand alone and depends on another clause to form a complete thought (dependent clause).
        
        Sentence:
        A group of words that expresses a complete thought and contains at least one independent clause.
        
        Discourse
- - - - Linguists wish to describe a language, to show how a native speaker of a given language speaks. It is accepted that any native speaker can tell the difference between what is grammatical and ungrammatical.
        Grammatical: a sentence conforms with the rules of the mental grammar.
        Ungrammatical: a sentence deviates from the rules of this mental grammar.
        This kind of grammatical analysis is called descriptive and it does not suggest how people should speak. It is a scientific observation and, eventually, an explanation.
        This approach differs from traditional accounts of grammarians who wanted to impose rules on how people speak. These grammarians did not want to describe but to prescribe, therefore they are called prescriptive grammarians. This is the grammar largely used on primary education, for example.
    - - As “Mental Grammar” we designate a set of grammatical rules which are internalized in the human brain (in a part of it called “faculty of language”). In the scheme below, Syntax can be understood as “mental grammar” the rules of which are applied on the Lexicon (the speaker’s vocabulary).
        PF = Phonetic Form.
        
        Lexicon syntax: refers to the relationship between a language's vocabulary (lexicon) and the grammatical rules (syntax) that determine how words and expressions are structured into coherent sentences.
        
        Syntactic structure: the organized arrangement of words and phrases in a sentence, following grammatical rules that define their relationships and hierarchy to form coherent language.
        
        Semantics: the study of meaning in language, focusing on how words, phrases, sentences, or larger linguistic units convey meaning and how those meanings are understood and interpreted.
        
        PF: in linguistics, also called phonological form, is a way to describe how language is represented in the mind at the sound level. It shows how words and sentences are supposed to be spoken and is derived from their surface structure. Phonetic form connects with another level of language called Logical Form, which deals with meaning. In short, PF helps us understand the spoken aspect of language and how it links to the underlying meaning.
        
        Thought system: refers to the underlying cognitive framework or mental structure that shapes how language is processed, understood, and used to represent ideas, concepts, and beliefs.
        
        Speech system: encompasses the physical and cognitive mechanisms involved in producing and perceiving spoken language.
    - - Descriptive grammar: a true model of the mental grammar of language speakers.
        In other words, a descriptive grammar describes the linguistic rules that people use when they speak their language.
        The point of view of a descriptive grammarian is that grammars from every language and dialect are equal.
    - - Prescriptive Grammar: attempts to prescribe what rules of language people should use to speak “properly”.
        The view of a prescriptive grammarian is that some grammars are superior to others. Prescriptive grammars usually do not accept dialectal variation but present a standard, official language.
        During the Renaissance, a middle class of English speakers wished to talk like the upper class, so they started buying handbooks that told them how to speak “properly”.
        Lowth decided that “two negatives makes a positive,” therefore people should not use double negatives.
        Despite the fact that everybody was already using double negatives in English (and communication was just fine). The sentence I don’t have none was then grammatical.
        Despite the fact that many languages of the world require the use of double negatives, e.g. French: Je ne veux parler avec personne “I don’t want to speak with anyone” (literally: “I not-want speak with no-one”).
    - - A teaching grammar explicitly states the rules of a language and is used to learn another language or dialect.
        Teaching grammars assume the student already knows one language and then compares the grammar of the new language to the one they already know.
    - - Universal Grammar (UG) refers to the universal properties that all languages share.
        Part of a biologically endowed human language faculty.
        The basic blueprint that all languages follow.
        It is a major goal of linguistic theory to discover the nature of UG.
      - Sign Languages: Evidence for language universals
        
        Deaf children exposed to sign languages go through the same stages of language acquisition as hearing babies.
        Deaf children babble with their hands.
        Signed languages are organized in the brain just like spoken languages are.
    - - All normal children acquire language relatively quickly, easily and without instruction by “picking up” words and grammatical rules from what they hear.
        Children learn the world’s languages in the same way and pass through the same stages of acquisition
        If children are born with UG, then they can acquire language so quickly and easily because they already know the universal properties of language and only need to learn the specific rules of the language(s) they are acquiring.
  - - - Parrots can mimic words, but their utterances carry no meaning.
        They cannot dissect words into discrete units.
        Polly and Molly don’t rhyme for a parrot.
        They cannot deduce rules and patterns to create new utterances
        If the parrot learns “Polly wants a cracker” and “Polly wants a doughnut” and learns the word “bagel,” the parrot will not say “Polly wants a bagel”
    - - convey messages associated with the immediate environment
        songs are used to stake out territory and attract mates.
        There is no evidence of internal structure in these songs, although they may vary to express varying degrees of intensity.
        Birdcalls and songs are similar to human languages in that they contain regional dialects, are passed down from parents to offspring, and can only be acquired before a certain age
    - - Honeybees have a communication system that relies on dance to convey information about the location and quality of food sources to the rest of the hive.
        Round dance: food source is within 20 feet from the hive.
        Sickle dance: food source is 20 to 60 feet from the hive.
        Tail-wagging dance: food source is more than 60 feet from the hive.
        The number of repetitions of the basic pattern in the tail-wagging dance indicates the precise distance, with a slower repetition rate indicating a longer distance.
        The bee dances are theoretically able to create an infinite number of messages.
        But, the messages are confined to the subject of food sources.
        If there are any special circumstances regarding the food source, the bee cannot convey that information.
    - - Nonhuman primates have communication systems in the wild to convey information about the immediate environment and emotional state (stimulus-response).
        Humans have attempted to teach human language to other primates.
        These nonhuman primates were taught sign languages because their vocal tracts cannot produce the sounds of human language.
        Researchers concluded that while nonhuman primates can string two signs together and show flashes of creativity, their use of language is nowhere near human linguistic ability.
- - - - Sound symbolism: there are some words whose pronunciation seems to reflect the meaning.
        Onomatopoeia:
        English cock-a-doodle-doo and Finnish kukkokiekuu
        English gobble gobble and Turkish glu-glu
        English gl and the concept of sight:
        glare, glint, gleam, glitter, glossy, glance, glimpse
        but there is also
        gladiator, glucose, glory, glutton, globe, etc.