syntax (chapter 1)

• pragmatics: meaning in context of discourse
• semantics: literal meaning of phrases and sentences
• syntax: phrases and sentences
• morphology: words
• phonology: phonemes
• phonetics: speech sounds
• Morphology studies the structures of words.
• Morphology are the smallest units of study in morphology.
• Morphology studies how words are formed.
• Morphology looks at the words and their individual relation to what is being expressed within the sentence.
• Syntax studies the structure of sentences.
• Syntax is the smallest unit of study in syntax.
• Syntax studies word order and the role of words within the sentence structure.
• Syntax looks at the components of the words in a sentence and their relation to each other.
• Syntax refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.
• Syntax is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of a language.
• Syntax, in computer contexts, the term refers to the proper ordering of symbols and codes so that the computer can understand what instructions are telling it to do.
• Syntax refers to the ways symbols may be combined to create well-formed sentences (or programs) in the language.
• Semantics reveal the meaning of syntactically valid strings in a language.
• Pragmatics alludes to those aspects of language that involve the users of the language, namely psychological and sociological phenomena such as utility, scope of application, and effects on the users.
• Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey. - Roman Jakobson
• Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems. - Ferdinand De Saussure
• Syntax is complex, but the complexity is there for a reason, for our thoughts are surely even more complex, and we are limited by a mouth that can pronounce a single word at a time. - Steven Pinker
• Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialized linguistic structures. - Jean Piaget
• Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort of producing the sentences of the language under analysis. - Noam Chomsky
• Teaching Grammar explicitly states the rules of a language and is used to learn another language or dialect.
• Teaching Grammar assumes the student already knows one language and then compares the grammar of the new language to the one they already know.
• Universal Grammar (UG) refers to the universal properties that all languages share. It has evolved considerably since first it was postulated and, moreover, since the 1940s, when it became a specific object of modern linguistic research.
• It is a major goal of linguistic theory to discover the nature of UG.
• If children are born with UG, then they can acquire language so quickly and easily because they already know the universal properties of language and the only need to learn the specific rules of the language(s) they are acquiring.
• Universal Grammar would suggest that all languages possess the same set of categories and relations and that in order to communicate through language, speakers make infinite use of finite means, an idea that Wilhelm von Humboldt suggested in the 1830s.
• A grammar must contain a finite system of rules that generates infinitely many deep and surface structures, appropriately related.
• Noam Chomsky is an American linguist. His work in the 60s focused primarily on the English language and other European languages like it.
• European languages tend to pair the subject of the sentence and the action they are doing in a similar structure. They follow a structure known as nominative–accusative alignment. But there is another type of alignment known as ergative–absolutive alignment. This treats subjects, objects, and different kinds of verbs in different ways.
• Languages like Basque, Mayan, and Nepali Sign Language all use ergative-absolutive alignment. The presence of these languages challenged the idea of a universal grammar.
• A descriptive grammar is a set of rules about language based on how it is actually used.
• Descriptive grammar assumes that the only authority for what is exists in a language is what its native speakers accept and understand as part of their language.
• (no native speakers) Descriptive Grammar Rule #1: In English, the article precedes the noun and any adjectives modifying the noun.
• (no native speakers) Descriptive Grammar Rule #2: In English, demonstratives agree in number with the nouns they modify: that and this go with singulars; those and these go with plurals.
• (no native speakers) Descriptive Grammar Rule #3: In English, Use only one question word at the beginning of an English sentence.