Basisvorlesung

Question 1

List some of the types of differences between varieties

Answer 1

• grammatical
• pronunciation
• spelling
• lexical
• morphology
• phraseology
• inflection
• valency

Question 2

Name the two main standard varieties of English

Answer 2

British English

American English

Question 3

Name the two main standard accents of English

Answer 3

Received Pronunciation

General American

Question 4

Explain the difference between idiolect, sociolect and dialect

Answer 4

idiolect
speech habits peculiar to a particular person

sociolect
determined by social group/status/role/class

dialect
determined by to a region

Question 5

List the means used to understand how language works

Answer 5

• intuition (Chomsky)
• elicitation tests (Quirk)
  > performance / judgement tests
• authentic language (Sinclair & Quirk)
  > documentation
  -analysis

Question 6

List Chomsky’s aims

Answer 6

• not to account for language of speech community
• to describe what goes on in the mind
• to account for the competence of the ideal speaker/hearer

Question 7

Explain Chomsky’s concepts of competence and performance

Answer 7

competence

• speaker’s/hearer’s knowledge of language
• implicit knowledge

performance

• actual use of language in concrete situation
• what one does

Question 8

Explain the difference in aim between Chomsky and Sinclair & Quirk

Answer 8

Sinclair & Quirk

• not interested in workings of the mind
• want to be able to describe language

Chomsky

• wants to know what goes on in the mind
• wants to find the structure to language

Question 9

List some characteristics of corpora

Answer 9

• collection of authentic texts
• selected by certain criteria
• machine readable (usually)

Question 10

List some of the uses of corpora

Answer 10

corpora can be used to establish:

• valency patterns and their frequencies
• (significant) collocations
• frequencies of words/constructions
• co-occurence of words-words / words-constructions
• use in particular varieties/genres
• use by certain (groups of) people

NOTE
insights based on corpora:
- description of language
- nature of language
- what goes on in mind

Question 11

List some of the problems of corpora

Answer 11

- size
> large amounts of text required
- design
> balanced?
> genres
> spoken & written
> speakers of different regions, ages genders etc

Question 12

List some of the features of Chomsky’s model

Answer 12

• relates sentences to one another
• postulates underlying structures
• postulates mental operations
• attempts to account for nature of language

Question 13

Explain how the usage-based approach conflicts with Chomsky’s views

Answer 13

nature of language
> Usage based:
- no underlying structures 
- non-derivational
> Chomsky:
- underlying structures
- derivation (deep structure - transformation - surface structure)

acquisition of language
> Usage based:
- languages can be learnt
- no language specific genetic determination
- grammar is emergent
> Chomsky:
- languages are not learnt
- humans are genetically equipped with language faculty
- grammar is inborn (Universal Grammar)

Question 14

Explain why language can be learnt from a usage-based point of view

Answer 14

• language is made up if constructions (form-meaning pairings)
  > children can learn constructions
• children have very little linguistic creativity
  > they copy/repeat
• poverty of evidence/stimulus
  > child directed speech is simplified
• usage of grammatical constructions before awareness/understanding of those constructions
  > generalisation & frequency based abstraction

Question 15

Explain the use of linguistics for (foreign) language teaching

Answer 15

• the system used to teach language is often not helpful to the learner
• confusion of form & function
• the way grammar is taught is a relic of traditional school grammar based on Latin

Question 16

Summarise some examples of linguistic insights and their relevance to language teaching

Answer 16

- gerund
> irrelevant classification in Modern English based on Latin
- aspect vs tense
> useful change of terminology?
- lack of future tense in Modern English
> useful terminology?