e-Content Submission to INFLIBNET
Subject name: Linguistics
Paper name: Introduction to Linguistics
Principle Investigator Prof. Pramod Pandey
Centre for Linguistics, SLL&CS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi 110067
Phone: 011-26704226 (O), M- 9810979446
Email:
Paper Coordinator Prof. Raghavachari Amritavalli
Professor (Retd), English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad – 500
007
Module Id Lings_P1_M1
Module name Language as a mental object: the faculty of language
Content Writer R. Amritavalli
Email id
Phone 9490148757
Content Writer Prof. Aditi Mukherjee
Professor (Retd), Department of Linguistics,
Osmania University, Hyderabad 500007
1
, Module 1: Language as a mental object: the faculty of language
Objective:
To explore issues about language proficiency, aptitude, attitude and motivation
Outline
1. Introduction
2. Universality and Uniformity
3. Language in the mind
3.1 Empiricism and Rationalism.
3.1.1. Plato’s problem
3.2 The language module: a mental organ
4. What constitutes knowledge of language?
4.1 Hierarchy, Recursion and Discontinuous dependencies: Some properties of
Universal Grammar
4.1.1 Hierarchy
4.1.2 Recursion
4.1.3 Discontinuous dependencies
5. Summary
6. Answer to the picture puzzle
7. Questions
1. Introduction and overview
Every human being has Language. Every human being speaks at least one, if not more, languages. There
are no human societies that do not have speech, although they may differ in many other ways (they may
or may not build boats, for example). Babies are not born speaking a language, but by the time a child is
about three years old, s/he is found to be speaking the language(s) of her community: whether Assamese,
Bangla or Chinese, or Sinhala, Swahili or Turkish. How does this happen?
In this unit you will learn that language and its acquisition are universal phenomena that occur uniformly
in all human beings (section 2). Generative linguistics views language as a form of knowledge in the
mind. The theory of Language is a contribution to a theory of how human knowledge is organized in the
mind, and how knowledge structures that are biologically specified guide our analyses and our perception
of the world through the senses (section 3). On this view, one of the “organs” of the mind is “the faculty
of language.” In section 4, we illustrate three properties of human language: hierarchical organization
and structure dependence, recursion, and discontinuous dependency.
2. Universality and Uniformity
2
Subject name: Linguistics
Paper name: Introduction to Linguistics
Principle Investigator Prof. Pramod Pandey
Centre for Linguistics, SLL&CS, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi 110067
Phone: 011-26704226 (O), M- 9810979446
Email:
Paper Coordinator Prof. Raghavachari Amritavalli
Professor (Retd), English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad – 500
007
Module Id Lings_P1_M1
Module name Language as a mental object: the faculty of language
Content Writer R. Amritavalli
Email id
Phone 9490148757
Content Writer Prof. Aditi Mukherjee
Professor (Retd), Department of Linguistics,
Osmania University, Hyderabad 500007
1
, Module 1: Language as a mental object: the faculty of language
Objective:
To explore issues about language proficiency, aptitude, attitude and motivation
Outline
1. Introduction
2. Universality and Uniformity
3. Language in the mind
3.1 Empiricism and Rationalism.
3.1.1. Plato’s problem
3.2 The language module: a mental organ
4. What constitutes knowledge of language?
4.1 Hierarchy, Recursion and Discontinuous dependencies: Some properties of
Universal Grammar
4.1.1 Hierarchy
4.1.2 Recursion
4.1.3 Discontinuous dependencies
5. Summary
6. Answer to the picture puzzle
7. Questions
1. Introduction and overview
Every human being has Language. Every human being speaks at least one, if not more, languages. There
are no human societies that do not have speech, although they may differ in many other ways (they may
or may not build boats, for example). Babies are not born speaking a language, but by the time a child is
about three years old, s/he is found to be speaking the language(s) of her community: whether Assamese,
Bangla or Chinese, or Sinhala, Swahili or Turkish. How does this happen?
In this unit you will learn that language and its acquisition are universal phenomena that occur uniformly
in all human beings (section 2). Generative linguistics views language as a form of knowledge in the
mind. The theory of Language is a contribution to a theory of how human knowledge is organized in the
mind, and how knowledge structures that are biologically specified guide our analyses and our perception
of the world through the senses (section 3). On this view, one of the “organs” of the mind is “the faculty
of language.” In section 4, we illustrate three properties of human language: hierarchical organization
and structure dependence, recursion, and discontinuous dependency.
2. Universality and Uniformity
2
