1

Introduction to Linguistics

1 Summary

Linguistics is the study of mental grammar

Throughout this class well see that there are many things you know about your language that have not been taught

Making a grammaticality judgment (denoted within the field with an asterisk *): note that grammatical or ungrammatical in this class refers to your mental grammar, not prescriptive grammar

Examples of grammatical vs. ungrammatical

Grammatical Ungrammatical

The angry panda who you adopted swung

its tail through the tree.

*The mother of John likes himself (John).

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. *The red big dog ran.

flack

flacker

flackers

*dver

*flackser

Vermonter, New Yorker *Kansaser

paint a barn red *see a barn red

John cleaned the garage up.

John cleaned it up.

John cleaned up the garage. *John cleaned up it.

Whats the difference between John stuffed the turkey with breadcrumbs and John stuffed breadcrumbs into the turkey? Has anyone ever sat you down to teach this difference to you?

What is the difference between prescriptive grammar and mental grammar?

Prescriptive grammar Mental grammar/descriptive grammar

What people should say (who gets to define this?)

Think high school English, MLA

handbook, etc

What people actually say

Examples:

Dont split infinitives

No double negatives

aint isnt a word

Examples:

Attach plural -s after -er if youre attaching both (eg. flack-er-s, not

flack-s-er)

Where can English speakers insert expletives? (expletive

infixation example)

More to come! External Internal

When determining whether something is

grammatical or ungrammatical, you have

to rely on remembering what someone

else has told you

When determining whether something is

grammatical or ungrammatical, you have

to rely on your gut feeling

2

NOT something we are interested in for

this class

Prescriptive grammar vs. mental grammar summary

Prescriptive grammar Mental grammar/descriptive grammar

List of rules List of rules

External

Memorize rules youve been taught to know something is wrong Conscious

Artificial, cultural phenomenon

Remember prescription

Internal

Gut feeling that something is wrong

Unconscious

Natural

Prescriptive rules are arbitrary, and those given the social authority to define prescriptive rules are historically lucky!

Example: be dropping in AAE is not bad/lazy/incorrect/uneducated English. It is as structured and rule-driven as contractions in SAE

AAE be dropping SAE contractions

If you are good If you good If youre good

I dont care what you are! *I dont care what you! *I dont care what youre!

Who is it? *Who it? *Whos it?

Mini linguistics problem: expletive infixation

2 Some terms

Mental grammar, prescriptive grammar, descriptive grammar, grammaticality judgment, African

American English, Standard American English

3 Test your comprehension

What is the difference between prescriptive grammar and descriptive/mental grammar?

What does AAE stand for?

4 Further (optional!) reading

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/most-of-what-you-think-you-know-about-grammar-is-

wrong-4047445/?no-ist