• Opposite of scientific models
• tend to involve beliefs, values, and norms that are justified by authority, frequently a supernatural authority, rather than by evidence.
• They are widely shared, and rarely questioned

• Speakers of a language have to know what the distinctive sounds of their language are.
• English speakers must “know”, for example, that the sounds /p/ and /b/ contrast in words like pat and bat.
•  They must also know to pronounce the /p/ of pat differently from the /p/ of spat and the /p/ of optical.

• speakers need to know how to combine the sounds of their language into meaningful units: words, prefixes, suffixes, etc.
• For example, English speakers “know” how to form the plural of words like cat, dog, and bush by adding the appropriate suffix to form cat[s], dog[z], and bush[əz].

• Speakers have to know how to combine their words into meaningful sentences that call attention to something and then provide information about it.
• Again using English as an example, English speakers “know” how to form yes-no questions from statements like She is in the kitchen ( Is she in the kitchen?) by ppropriate movement of is.

• speakers must know how to use their language appropriately to accomplish what they want in a given social situation.

• This guy contributed the important realization that syntax and meaning are independent of each other.
• “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

•  Language is patterned at a number of levels of organization: sounds are patterned into phonemes, phonemes into syllables, syllables into words, words into phrases, phrases into sentences, sentences into larger units of discourse.

This process is where all languages allow

for sentences that contain a subject and a predicate.

• Unlike most animal vocalization systems, which require that a stimulus be physically present for the vocalization to take place, human language allows us to talk about things that are absent in either space or time, or both

• suggests that there is no point in trying to rank languages on any kind of scale.
• All human languages that we have any direct information about appear to contain all the characteristics necessary for language.
•  no qualitative difference between a language and a dialect; the  reasons why a particular variety of speech gets labeled as a dialect instead of as a language are political or social.

means they can occur without anything attached to

them.

• they must occur attached to a noun, in the case of the plural, or to a verb in the case of the past tense.

their job is to help form the content morphemes into

a meaningful sentence.

 the rule which English speakers apply to newly-created words or words borrowed from other 

languages.

the complete replacement of one form by 

another. 

 the combination two or more free morphemes.

ex: Black+bird=Blackbird

Some languages make 

relatively little use of such processes, preferring instead to signal meaning primarily by word 

order and juxtaposition

Free morpheme

VS 

bound morpheme

morpheme that can stand alone

VS

morpheme that must be attached to a root

• is a process which creates new words, not just a different form of the same word
• affixes are the only way of doing this.

Voiceless/ Voiced

consonants

lower lip + upper teeth

ex: vat, fat

tongue + space between teeth

example: then, thin

tongue + alveolar ridge

example: dough, toe

tongue + palate

example: jeep, cheap

tongue + velum

example: goat, coat

completely stopped, released quickly

example: pin, fin

completely stopped, released slowly

example: cheap, jeep

continuous release with friction

example: sheep, sip

released through nasal cavity

examples: meat, neat

released without friction

example: lap, rap

released with tongue movement

examples: yet, wet

dʒ AND  tʃ

voiced labiodental fricative

VS

nonvoiced labiodental fricative

Voiced dental fricative 

VS

Voiceless dental fricative

Voiced alveolar fricative 

VS

Voiceless alveolar fricative

palatal voiced fricative 

VS

palatal nonvoiced fricative

 ʒ

VS

∫

completes of complements the meaning of the head

EXAMPLES: PP-into the kitchen

VP- moved the cheese

operations or rules that govern the combining of words into phrases, and phrases into

sentences.

allows us to combine two elements of language into a larger element.

EX: The + Cat = the Cat

the rules of language apply to structures

(Noun, Noun Phrase, etc.) rather than to particular words or phrases.

This rule moves the Auxiliary verb to the front of the sentence to form a yes/no question:

The cat has eaten the mouse.... TO...

Has the cat __ eaten the mouse?

This rule moves an interrogative pronoun (“Wh- word”) to the front of the sentence:

The cat eats mice... TO....

What does this cat __ eat __?

cultural preferences that are correlated with the culture in some way

EXAMPLE: for English, Male > female

Singular > plural

Urban > rural

White > black

Ranking is comparitive and absolute

can have either spatials (Happy=up, sad=down)

or conflict (argument=war)

spelled the same with opposite meanings

EXAMPLE-buckle ( to fasten OR to come apart)

rent (to or from)

are comprised of either homophones (sounding alike), example: pin/pen or read/reed

or homographs (same spelling but diff. meaning)

example: dove (V) or dove (N)

kinds of something

example: Dogs: chihuahuas, poodles, labs, etc

part/feature that is the standard for the whole idea

Example: "washington threatens tehran"

"oops, I think I just stepped on the trunk."

What kind of trunk?

"Rabid animals and kids..."

WHO is rabid, the animals or the kids?

Sentences are not simply strings of words placed one after the other; rather, they have an

internal logic that is structured into ___________ which occur at different _______ in a phrase

structure.

Parts of something

EXAMPLE: body parts (leg, arm, hand)

the word, phrase, or sentence is a clue to the inner state of the speaker.

EXAMPLE: I don't gamble VS I never waste my money

the sign looks like or invokes an image of what is

referenced.

EXAMPLE: female/male signs on door of bathroom

the sign points

to its referent; there is a necessary, logical connection.

EXAMPLE footprints in the sand

• the signs neither look like nor point to their referents.
• Symbolic signs (symbols) stand for their referents in an arbitrary but conventional relationship.

• genetically determined and therefore consistent across the species
• compare with bipedalism

in semantics this means that the sign is arbitrary

EXAMPLE: casa, maison, house, etc.

• Although the words may be different in diff. languages, in all languages the word refers to the whole object
• one of the guiding principles of children's language acquisition
• Universal grammar

• "Fuzzy" categories that run on clines or continuums
• not whole things
• vary cross-culturally and geographically

• vowels and consonants
• nouns and verbs
• predication
• tense
• negation
• personal reference

• voiced stops
• adjectives/adverbs
• definate/indef. articles
• specific tenses
• grammaticalized data source
• 3rd person pronouns

Comprised of principles (fundamental rules or guides)

+

principles (variables)

picks out or locates in some way specific instances of a head

EXAMPLE: NP- the book

VP- will go

adds to the meaning of a phrase

EXAMPLE: NP- the black cat

VP- ran swiftly

some languages allow speakers to omit subject pronouns, others don't

EXAMPLE: yo quiero agua can drop the yo