ATCS (lec06) The structure of language

Lecture Summary

I present the historically dominant view that languages are systems of interconnected symbols, and that they have an essence which can be abstracted from the use which is actually made of them in real contexts such as conversations.

I then present the notion of the lexicon and lexical items. Lexical items are principally words; I introduce the notion of word-classes (parts of speech) and show what sorts of information needs to go into the entries of lexical items.

I then introduce the notion of linguistic rules, both in the lexicon and in grammar. These are recurrent patterns, not instructions about how to behave. I concentrate on the notion of constituency and show how you can test whether some string of words is a constituent of a higher unit.

I end (if there's time) by asking where these structures and rules are, and how they get there.

Reading

Chapt. 7 in the Green et al. textbook is quite unsuitable for this purpose, and students must read one, or preferably more, of the following:

(** are the easiest STARTING points. Don't also FINISH with one of these!)

** Aitchison, Jean (1987) Teach yourself linguistics. Hodder and Stoughton, third edition. [Parts I and II and chapter 11. Note that library catalogue records title as simply Linguistics.]
Aitchison, Jean (1989) The articulate mammal. Unwin Hyman, third edition.
Aitchison, Jean (1994) Words in the mind. Blackwell, second edition. [Part I and chapters 9 and 11.]
** Fromkin, Victoria and Robert Rodman (1998) An introduction to language. Harcourt Brace, sixth edition. [Chapters 1, 3, 4 and pp. 328-45, 350-8.]
Hudson, Grover (2000) Essential introductory linguistics. Blackwell. [Esp. pp. 57-150.]
Lyons, John (1968) Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge University Press. [Esp. pp. 1-3 and part II.]
Lyons, John (1981) Language and linguistics. Cambridge University Press. [Esp. chapters 1, 4 and 8.]
Pinker, Stephen (1994) The language instinct. Penguin. [Esp. chapters 1-5, 10, 12.]
oo Trask, R.L. (1999) Language: the basics. Routledge, second edition. [Esp. chapters 2, 3 and 8.]
Wardhaugh, Ronald (1993) Investigating language. Blackwell. [Esp. chapters 1, 3, 4, 7 and 8.]
** Yule, George (1996) The study of language. Cambridge University Press, second edition.

Note: a very handy guide to technical terminology is:

Trask, R.L. (1999) Key concepts in language and linguistics. Routledge.

If you can't find any of this material, look in any other introductory book on linguistics for word-structure, grammar and acquisition of language by children.

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