A Mini-history Linguistics the Study of Language - Lecture Notes | LING 2100, Study notes of Linguistics

Download A Mini-history Linguistics the Study of Language - Lecture Notes | LING 2100 and more Study notes Linguistics in PDF only on Docsity! A Mini-history of Linguistics “Grammar” • Instituted by the Greeks • Continued by the French, the British • Based on logic • Rules distinguishing btw ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ forms • “Prescriptivism” – a literary genre 5-ish c. BC Comparative Philology (Grammar) • Sir William Jones • Franz Bopp (Sanskrit, Germanic, Greek, Latin) • Jacob Grimm, among others • Languages could be compared with one another • Explaining the forms of one language by reference to the forms of another, related one 5-ish c. BC “Grammar” 1770’s Philology 1800’s 1770's 1800's V g “Grammar” Philology Comparative Philology Latin: | genus, generis, genere, genera, generum ... Greek: génos, géneos, génel, génea, genéo:n... Sanskrit: dzanas, djanasas, d3anasi, djanassu, dZanasa:m ... 5-ish c. BC “Grammar” 1770’s Philology 1800’s Comparative Philology In Greek, the ‘s’ fell off in between vowels: geneos < *genesos In Latin, the ‘s’ became an ‘r’ in between vowels: generis < *genesis Structuralism Units only exist as part of the total structure. • The radius of a circle does not exist without the circle. Structuralism Units do not exist independently of other units united in the system of structural contrasts. • Could there be ‘two,’ but not ‘one,’ ‘three,’ or ‘sixteen’? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, .... -2, 0, 2, 4, 6, ... 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, ... 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, ... Generative Grammar • Noam Chomsky • Innate Universal Grammar • Core properties of language are not the result of its communicative function, nor are they learned through experience. • Grammar is modeled as an algorithm that generates (predicts) only grammatical sentences of a language. 5-ish c. BC “Grammar” 1770’s Philology 1800’s Comparative Philology 1870’s Neogrammarians 1900’s Structuralism 1950’s