Linguistics (chapter 1)

By King Meera -
Linguistics is a systematic study of the manner in which language works. Language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular region/country for talking/writing in.

PROPERTIES:
Displacement: ability to refer to past and future time – to talk about things and events not present in the immediate environment.
Arbitrariness: the aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the world whereby there is no “natural” connection between a linguistic form and its meaning.
Productivity: the potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite – humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations.
(Fixed reference: animal communication has a fixed set of signals – each signal in the system is fixed as relating to a particular object or occasion and cannot be manipulated)
Cultural transmission: the process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next.
Duality: human language is organized at two levels (sound and meaning) simultaneously – with a limited set of discrete sounds, we are capable of producing a very large number of sound combinations (words) which are distinct in meaning.

Linguistics as a science: explicit, systematic, objective
Human language distinct w.r.t. other forms of communication: reflexivity, communicative and informative signals, displacement

THEORIES:
1.       Structuralism: language as a set of structures (interrelated, arbitrary etc)
2.       Theory of generative grammar: (Chomsky) the concept of innateness where certain grammatical rules are innate, where combinations are dictated by a sort of grammatical instinct
3.       Behaviourism: language is a matter of habit formation
4.       Cognitive linguistics: language was a matter of language formation; the more you expose yourself to language, the better you get at it
5.       Neurolinguistics: specific language functions are located in specific areas of the brain; language faculties located in left hemisphere; anterior speech cortex prepares for production of sound, posterior speech cortex is for understanding and comprehension of speech sounds, motor speech cortex is for actual production; any of these areas if harmed affect one’s speech; overly simplified the process though
6.       Critical period hypothesis and lateralization
7.       Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: we see the world through language; used kinship terms as example

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