INTRODUCTION

TO LINGUISTICS
IRENE M. CASIPIT
PRAYER
INNATENESS
What is Innateness Theory?
Innateness is a theory that people are born with the knowledge of
a language: they acquire language not only through learning.
Human language is complex and considered one of the most
difficult areas of human cognition. However, despite the
complexity of the language, children can accurately learn the
language in a short period of time. Moreover, research has shown
that language acquisition by children (including the blind and
deaf) occurs at ordered developmental stages.
 Language Acquisition Device
According to Chomsky, humans are born with a set of language learning
tools called LAD (language learning device). LAD is an abstract part of
the human mind, which contains the ability of people to acquire and
reproduce language. Chomsky suggested that children can develop
language rules through hypothesis testing because they are equipped with
LAD. LAD then translates these rules into basic grammar. Hence,
according to Chomsky, LAD explains why children seem to have an innate
ability to acquire a language, and explains why a child does not need
explicit instruction to learn a language.
 PRESCRIPTIVE &
DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
It is the traditional approach of grammar that tells people how to use the
English language, what forms they should utilize, and what functions
they should serve. Prescriptive grammar is essential as it helps people use
formal English speech and writing. In addition, "those who follow it (or
those who endorse others to follow it) claim that doing so will help to
streamline one's words and make one's prose more elegant" (Tamasi &
Antieau, 2015, p. 24-25). Schools aim to teach prescriptive grammar to
provide people a common standard of usage.
PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
Examples:
In English, less goes with mass nouns (e.g. “ less money”), and “fewer” goes
with count nouns (e.g., “ fewer items.”)

In English, speakers should not split infinitives (e.g., “to boldly go;“) instead,
write or say (“to go boldly.”)

In English, speakers should not use passive voice (e.g., “The meeting was held
by the university;”) instead, write or say (“The university held the meeting.”)

In English, speakers should avoid phrasal verbs (e.g., “come over to have some
tea;”) instead, write or say (e.g., “visit me to have some tea.”)
This is how native English speakers actually talk and write,
and it has no concrete idea of the way it should be structured
(Tamasi & Antieau, 2015, p.28). It is not saying how it
should be used; however, it focuses on describing the
English language as it is used. It is also not saying that there
is a right or wrong way to use language.

DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
Examples:
English Adjective order: (opinion, size, physical quality, shape, age,
color, origin, material, type, and purpose (e.g., “This is a  beautiful,
small, green, American island.”)  
Some native speakers say:
~ “I am younger than him” instead of “I am younger than he.”
~ “He graduated American university” instead of “He graduated
from American university."
~ “I ain't going nowhere.” instead of “I am not going anywhere.”
LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
AND PERFORMANCE
•competence is an abstract, internalized ability
•performance is the behavior of producing actual,
authentic utterances
LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE
Competence:
is a term used in linguistic theory, especially in generative grammar, to
refer to person’s knowledge of his language, the system of rules which
a language user has mastered so that it would be possible for that user
to be able to produce and understand an indefinite number of sentences
and recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.
 LINGUISTIC
PERFORMANCE
Performance:
In linguistics, the term “performance” has two senses: (1) a technique
used in phonetics whereby aspiring practitioners of the subject are
trained to control the use of their vocal organs; and (2) a term used in
the linguistic theory of transformational generative grammar, to refer
to language seen as a set of specific utterances produced by native
speakers, as encountered in a corpus.
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December
7, 1928) is an American linguist,
philosopher, cognitive scientist,
historian, social critic, and political
activist. Sometimes called "the father of
modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a
major figure in analytic philosophy and
one of the founders of the field of
cognitive science.
WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. In contrast to
other language-related disciplines, linguistics is concerned with
describing the rule-governed structures of languages,
determining the extent to which these structures are universal or
language-particular, positing constraints on possible linguistic
structures, and explaining why there is only a fairly narrow range
of possible human languages.
LEVELS OF
LANGUAGE
PHONOLOGY
Phonology is the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across
languages. Put more formally, phonology is the study of the categorical
organization of speech sounds in languages; how speech sounds are organized
in the mind and used to convey meaning. In this section of the website, we will
describe the most common phonological processes and introduce the concepts
of underlying representations for sounds versus what is actually produced, the
surface form.

An example of phonology is the study of different sounds and

the way they come together to form speech and words - such
as the comparison of the sounds of the two "p" sounds in "pop-
up."
MORPHOLOGY

Morphology is the branch of linguistics (and one of the major

components of grammar) that studies word structures,
especially regarding morphemes, which are the smallest units
of language. They can be base words or components that form
words, such as affixes. The adjective form is morphological.
MORPHOLOGY
SEMANTICS
Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentences; at its
simplest, it concerns with the relation of linguistic forms to non-linguistic
concepts and mental representations in order to explain how sentences
are understood by the speakers of a language.

CONNOTATION DENOTATION
- Connotation refers to the - Denotation is the precise,
wide array of positive and literal definition of a word
negative associations that that might be found in a
most words naturally carry dictionary.
with them
SEMANTICS
 SYNTAX
In linguistics, "syntax" refers to the rules that govern the ways in
which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. The
term "syntax" comes from the Greek, meaning "arrange together."
The term is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of
a language. 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.
BASIC WORD ORDER
1.S-V
2.S-V-O
3.S-V-C
4.S-V-O-C
1. S-V (Subject-Verb)
BASIC WORD ODER
Ex. Marie smiled.

2. S-V-O (Subject-Verb Object)

Ex. The mother watered the plants.

3. S-V-C (Subject-Verb-Complement)
Ex. James is strict.

4. S-V-O-C ( Subject Verb Object Complement)

Ex. The crowd made the lion angry
OVERVIEW ON STRUCTURE
OF ENGLISH
The "S" is a category label. All your trees must come labeled from now
on (We've passed the point in the course where you use some unlabeled
trees to get used top things).
What the label labels is called a node. The points in the tree the branches
come from are called nodes. In this little incomplete tree, the S is
the mother node. The NP and VP are the daughter nodes.
The NP node and the VP node now have daughters of their own. The NP node has
two daughters, a Det ("Determiner") node and an N ("Noun") node. The VP node has
one daughter, a V ("Verb") node. Generally speaking a Noun Phrase will have an N
daughter and a verb phrase will have a V daughter. These are called their head
words. 
Application:

1. Frank took the child from Boston

2. Fred threw the dog a bone
Application:

1. Frank took the child from Boston

Application:

1. Fred threw the dog a bone

THANK YOU!