language

language

1. behaviourist approach

   • language is verbal behaviour
     • Skinner
     • no internal representations
     • trial and error
       • generate sound
       • reinforcement

2. cognitive approach

   • language is internal symbols & rules allowing communication
     • Chomsky
     • english language knowledge
       • software
     • innate constraints
       • hardware

3. grammatical rules

   • prescriptive
     • how lang. should be used
       • use formal language
         • appropriate/inappropriate
     • learnt explicitly
   • descriptive
     • how language is normally used
       • grammatical/ungrammatical
       • slang rules
   • ability to process novel grammatical sentences
   • syntactic rules don't depend on meaning
   • operate on grammatical constituents
     • nouns
     • adjectives

4. compositionality

   • meaning of sentence is determined by structure & meaning of it's parts
   • animals
     • Kanzii

5. animal language

   • arbitary associations
   • compositionality depends on structural knowledge
   • don't use social language

6. syntactic categories

   • compositionality depends on syntax

7. Hockett's design features

   • semanticity
     • communicate meaning
   • arbitariness
     • no relationship between language forms & world
   • discreteness
     • language is made up of unite with discrete categories (nouns)
   • generativity
     • fixed set of symbols combined to convey infinite set of meanings

8. talking

   • larynx box is deeper in humans
     • produce wide rang of sounds
     • increases liklihood of choking
     • adaptation for language - Lieberman
       • size exaggeration hypothesis- ohala

9. pragmatics

   • literal/implied
     • can you pass the salt?

10. conversation

    • Grice
    • quantity
      • be informative
    • quality
      • be truthful
    • relation
      • be relevant
    • manner
      • be clear

11. linguistic internal representaions

    • phonemes
      • sounds which distinguish meanings
    • morphemes
      • linguistic atoms of meaning
    • syntactic categories
      • rules with syntactic constituents
    • semantics/concepts/thematic roles
      • meaning
    • pragmatics
      • rules of language use