What is a language?
- The linguistic perspective: a language as a set of conventions
- Knowing a language means having knowledge of different sorts of
conventions.
- A text to think about
Phonetic knowledge
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You know how to translate abstract linguistic categories into
articulatory gestures.
For example, you know the combination of glottal and tongue movements
that are required to execute the syllable
/ðə/ (the).
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You know how to classify particular acoustic patterns as belonging
to particular linguistic categories.
For example, you know how to decide that this waveform represents
/ðə/ (the)
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You know how to use the patterns of loudness and pitch in your
language to help you find boundaries between units.
For example, you know that in English, words tend to be stressed on
the first syllable. This helps you decide that in
the leaves had fallen off the trees, "fall" is probably the
first syllable of a word.
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Units: phonetic features
Phonological knowledge
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You know what sounds can legally follow what other sounds in your
language (phonotactics).
For example, in off the trees, you know that the first consonant
is not /h/ because it cannot appear in this position in English.
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You know how the same abstract sound gets realized in different
ways in different environments.
For example, you know that the two [t] sounds in I will go to Toad's house
belong to the same category (phoneme) even though they are pronounced quite differently.
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You know how phonological units at one level (for example, phonemes) combine to form phonological units at a higher level (for example, syllables).
For example, you know how the sentence the leaves had fallen off the trees
is organized into syllable and higher-level metrical units (with stresses on
leaves, fall, and trees).
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Units: phonemes, moras, syllables, metrical feet, phonological phrases
Morphological knowledge
-
You know what order to put, or expect, the morphemes in
in a polymorphemic word.
For example, you know to say mess-y and not y-mess.
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You know how the sounds in a morpheme change when it combines with
another.
For example, you know to pronounce the ed in raked as /t/
and the ed in started as /əd/.
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You know how to interpret or produce a word consisting of a novel
combination of familiar morphemes.
For example, you can guess what aspartamey means if you know what
aspartame means.
- Note: morphology is one aspect of language that differs dramatically between languages,
with some languages, like Chinese and English, relatively simple, and many others, quite complex.
Some Swahili examples:
ninaandika 'I write', siandiki 'I don't write', niliandika 'I wrote' sikuandika 'I didn't write', nilikiandika 'I wrote it (book, etc.)', niliiandika 'I wrote it (letter, etc.)', nilichokiandika 'which I wrote (it; book, etc.)',
nikikiandika 'if I write it (book, etc.)', hakijaandikwa 'it (book, etc.) hasn't been written',
nilimwandikia 'I wrote to him/her', nisingalimwandikisha 'I wouldn't have caused him/her to write',
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Units: morphemes
Syntactic (and semantic) knowledge
- You know what order to put the constituents of a sentence in
to signal a particular meaning.
For example, you know to say Frog worked hard and not Frog hard worked.
- You know what roles the constituents of a sentence play in the
state or event referred to by the sentence.
For example, you know that in he will never know who raked his leaves, he is the KNOWER, who raked his leaves the INFORMATION
that is (not) known, and leaves the PATIENT of the raking.
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You know how certain words have to agree with others, even when failure to agree would not interfere with communication.
For example, you know that you should say these messy leaves have covered rather than this messy leaves has covered.
- You know where to expect gaps in particular patterns.
For example, you know that in the pile of leaves that Frog had raked for Toad, you should not expect raked to be followed by a direct object (that is, *the pile of leaves that Frog had raked them for Toad is ungrammatical).
- Units: phrases, clauses, sentences
Semantic knowledge
- You know how words and sentences relate to objects and relations
in the world.
For example, you know what kind of a thing to expect the noun rake and what
kind of event to expect the verb rake to refer to.
- You know how to figure out the temporal relationships among the events and states
referred to in sentences.
For example, in the pile of leaves that Frog had raked for Toad blew everywhere, you know that the raking happened before the blowing.
- You know how to "find" the thing that is referred to by a definite
noun phrase (such as the guy who always parks in front of my driveway).
For example, you know what is referred to by the light in when they each turned out the light.
- Units: semantic features, objects, relations, variables, worlds,
mental spaces
Pragmatic knowledge
- You know how figure out what anaphors (such as pronouns in English) refer to.
For example, in
The leaves had fallen off the trees. They were lying on the ground.
you know that they refers to the leaves and not the trees.
- You know how to
get somebody to do something for you using language.
For example, you know to say could you pass me the salt rather
than you're going to pass me the salt or I want the salt.
- You know how the meanings of words such as go and come change
with the context.
- You know how to begin, end and take turns in particular kinds of discourses, for example, phone conversations, in appropriate ways.
For example, you know that it is inappropriate to simply say "good-bye" and then hang up if you want to end a phone conversation.
- Units: utterances, discourses, turns
Knowledge of varieties of language
- You know what forms sound more formal than others and how to
select the forms that are appropriate to the situation.
For example, you know not to write "LOL" in the cover letter for a
job application or to say "highly inappropriate" when
disciplining your three-year-old daughter (except for comic effect).
- You know when somehow has said something that is politically
incorrect.