Summary From Language to Linguistics -
week 1–3
24/09/2025
Week 1 - Phonetics & Phonology
Linguistics & types of linguistics
● Theoretical linguistics (generative linguistics) : The form and structure of the kinds of linguistic
knowledge speakers possess → grammar: mental representation of linguistic knowledge
Grammar → a set of rules that characterizes and generates all & only the sentences that we as
speakers of a language are able to produce and understand.
● Competence: linguistic knowledge (represented as a mental grammar) that governs our
attempts to speak
● Performance: language use, the utterances that we actually pronounce
○ extra-linguistic conditions affect performance too
● Descriptive linguistics: analyses of the grammars of languages → a list of all the rules we have
internalized during the course of language acquisition – descriptive grammars are idealized
forms of the mental grammar
○ prescriptive grammar: a grammar that tells us what we can and cannot do with a
language
○ Linguists are descriptivists, not prescriptivists – there is no ‘correct’ way to do language
Branches of linguistics:
● Historical linguistics: study of language change
● Anthropological/ethno-linguistics and sociolinguistics: language as part of culture and society
● Dialectology: how to fragment one language into many
● Applied linguistics: language planning, literacy, bilingualism and SLA, discourse and conversation
anlysis, language assessment
● Computational linguistics: natural language computer applications
● Mathematical linguistics: study of formal and mathematical properties of language
● Pragmatics: language in context
● Neurolinguistics: study of the biological basis of LA and development and the
brain/mind/language interface, uses imaging technologies
● Psycholinguistics: branch of linguistics concerned with linguistic performance
1
, ○ Child language acquisition
History of Linguistics
● Panini wrote the first grammar (Sanskrit) - ca. 500 BCE
● De Saussure was the first to pay attention to the structural principles of language rather than to
in which ways language changes.
● Sapir and Bloomfield were concerned with developing a general theory of language.
○ Sapir: mentalist → linguistic theory has to correspond the mental representation of
linguistic knowledge
○ Bloomsfield: behaviorist → preclusion any concern for mental representation of
language and the mind
○ Chomsky: generative grammar → a theory concerned with the biological basis for the
acquisition, representation and use of human language and the universal principles
which constrain the class of all languages.
Basic principles
If one defines grammar as the mental representation of one’s linguistic knowledge, then a general
theory of language is a theory of grammar.
● lexicon: vocabulary in the mental dictionary
● morphology: structure of words
○ roots
○ suffixes, prefixes (affixes), infixes, circumfixes and
knowledge of where to put them in a word
● syntax: structure of phrases, constraints of well-formedness of
sentences
○ grammatical: well-formed
○ ungrammatical: ill-formed
○ grammatical ≠ semantically true → colorless green
ideas sleep furiously
● semantics: meaning of words and sentences
● phonetics and phonology: language sounds and the sound
system
Grammars
Descriptive grammar: idealized forms of the mental grammars of all the speakers of a language
community
● Universal Grammar: the idea that all grammars share linguistic universal principles (f.ex. EPP
(every sentence needs a subject)), because a child enters the world with an innate predisposition
2
, to acquire languages which adhere to these universal principles → genetically determined
mental system
○ While UG constrains the grammars of all human languages, there are differences
between languages. These differences constitute cross-linguistic variation →
parameters.
○ In order to fix the parameters a child acquiring language filters out the input it gets.
● F.ex: the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language is a proof that UG exists → innate capacity
(and need) of language creation
Linguists have little interest in prescriptive grammars
Grammar describes the systematic relationship between form (syntax) and interpretation (semantics) in
a language
The logical problem of language acquisition (LPLA)
Even though humans are not exposed to enough stimuli to be as linguistically competent as they are,
they still are. → is a part of our knowledge then innate? → This idea opposes the blank slate theory
In the course of acquiring a language, children are exposed to only a finite set of utterances. Yet they
come to use and understand an infinite set of sentences. → the problem of the poverty of stimulus
The problem of no negative evidence
How can children learn certain syntactical constraints if they are never presented with negative
evidence? → direct information that certain sentences are ungrammatical
→ Poverty of stimulus
● People can judge grammaticality without explicitly being told the rules
● Structural ambiguity tells us that we have knowledge of ambiguity and is evidence of innateness
→ we just ‘know’ certain sentences are ambiguous → evidence that sentences are hierarchically
structured
Connection between linguistic theory and language acquisition → By analyzing the structure of
individual languages, linguists try to determine which aspects of our linguistic knowledge are universal
and hence, arguably, available to the child as part of UG, and which aspects are language-particular and
hence to be learned on the basis of linguistic input that the child receives
Linguistic performance
Differences between competence and performance can be revealed through slips of the tongue
(spoonerisms - the queer old dean vs. the dear old queen)
3
week 1–3
24/09/2025
Week 1 - Phonetics & Phonology
Linguistics & types of linguistics
● Theoretical linguistics (generative linguistics) : The form and structure of the kinds of linguistic
knowledge speakers possess → grammar: mental representation of linguistic knowledge
Grammar → a set of rules that characterizes and generates all & only the sentences that we as
speakers of a language are able to produce and understand.
● Competence: linguistic knowledge (represented as a mental grammar) that governs our
attempts to speak
● Performance: language use, the utterances that we actually pronounce
○ extra-linguistic conditions affect performance too
● Descriptive linguistics: analyses of the grammars of languages → a list of all the rules we have
internalized during the course of language acquisition – descriptive grammars are idealized
forms of the mental grammar
○ prescriptive grammar: a grammar that tells us what we can and cannot do with a
language
○ Linguists are descriptivists, not prescriptivists – there is no ‘correct’ way to do language
Branches of linguistics:
● Historical linguistics: study of language change
● Anthropological/ethno-linguistics and sociolinguistics: language as part of culture and society
● Dialectology: how to fragment one language into many
● Applied linguistics: language planning, literacy, bilingualism and SLA, discourse and conversation
anlysis, language assessment
● Computational linguistics: natural language computer applications
● Mathematical linguistics: study of formal and mathematical properties of language
● Pragmatics: language in context
● Neurolinguistics: study of the biological basis of LA and development and the
brain/mind/language interface, uses imaging technologies
● Psycholinguistics: branch of linguistics concerned with linguistic performance
1
, ○ Child language acquisition
History of Linguistics
● Panini wrote the first grammar (Sanskrit) - ca. 500 BCE
● De Saussure was the first to pay attention to the structural principles of language rather than to
in which ways language changes.
● Sapir and Bloomfield were concerned with developing a general theory of language.
○ Sapir: mentalist → linguistic theory has to correspond the mental representation of
linguistic knowledge
○ Bloomsfield: behaviorist → preclusion any concern for mental representation of
language and the mind
○ Chomsky: generative grammar → a theory concerned with the biological basis for the
acquisition, representation and use of human language and the universal principles
which constrain the class of all languages.
Basic principles
If one defines grammar as the mental representation of one’s linguistic knowledge, then a general
theory of language is a theory of grammar.
● lexicon: vocabulary in the mental dictionary
● morphology: structure of words
○ roots
○ suffixes, prefixes (affixes), infixes, circumfixes and
knowledge of where to put them in a word
● syntax: structure of phrases, constraints of well-formedness of
sentences
○ grammatical: well-formed
○ ungrammatical: ill-formed
○ grammatical ≠ semantically true → colorless green
ideas sleep furiously
● semantics: meaning of words and sentences
● phonetics and phonology: language sounds and the sound
system
Grammars
Descriptive grammar: idealized forms of the mental grammars of all the speakers of a language
community
● Universal Grammar: the idea that all grammars share linguistic universal principles (f.ex. EPP
(every sentence needs a subject)), because a child enters the world with an innate predisposition
2
, to acquire languages which adhere to these universal principles → genetically determined
mental system
○ While UG constrains the grammars of all human languages, there are differences
between languages. These differences constitute cross-linguistic variation →
parameters.
○ In order to fix the parameters a child acquiring language filters out the input it gets.
● F.ex: the development of Nicaraguan Sign Language is a proof that UG exists → innate capacity
(and need) of language creation
Linguists have little interest in prescriptive grammars
Grammar describes the systematic relationship between form (syntax) and interpretation (semantics) in
a language
The logical problem of language acquisition (LPLA)
Even though humans are not exposed to enough stimuli to be as linguistically competent as they are,
they still are. → is a part of our knowledge then innate? → This idea opposes the blank slate theory
In the course of acquiring a language, children are exposed to only a finite set of utterances. Yet they
come to use and understand an infinite set of sentences. → the problem of the poverty of stimulus
The problem of no negative evidence
How can children learn certain syntactical constraints if they are never presented with negative
evidence? → direct information that certain sentences are ungrammatical
→ Poverty of stimulus
● People can judge grammaticality without explicitly being told the rules
● Structural ambiguity tells us that we have knowledge of ambiguity and is evidence of innateness
→ we just ‘know’ certain sentences are ambiguous → evidence that sentences are hierarchically
structured
Connection between linguistic theory and language acquisition → By analyzing the structure of
individual languages, linguists try to determine which aspects of our linguistic knowledge are universal
and hence, arguably, available to the child as part of UG, and which aspects are language-particular and
hence to be learned on the basis of linguistic input that the child receives
Linguistic performance
Differences between competence and performance can be revealed through slips of the tongue
(spoonerisms - the queer old dean vs. the dear old queen)
3
