Introduction

Question 1

What is linguistics?

Answer 1

• scientific study of language
• subfields:
  ° Phonetics + phonology
  ° morphology + syntax
  ° semantics + pragmatics (meaning and use)
  ° sociolinguistics
  ° cognitive linguistics (relationship between brain + language)
  ° historical linguistics
  ° comparative linguistics (comparing different languages)
  ° computational linguistics

Question 2

Which grammatical categories are there?

Answer 2

• parts-of-speech (word classes)
• -> adjectives, verbs, nouns,…
• phrases (constituents)
• grammatical relations (syntactic functions) –> Satzglieder

(examples look at notes)

Question 3

What is a grammatical rule?

Answer 3

= descriptive (linguistics) rules vs. prescriptive (grammar) rules
° linguistic approach to the study of language
° linguistic norms are time-bound (f. ex. “My car is being broken”)
- also known as grammar vs. incorrect grammar

important differences:

• trad. grammar concentrates on written language; linguistics concentrates on spoken language (evolution; learning)
• trad. grammar based on Latin language; linguistics doesn’t use pre-established (Latin based) categories

Question 4

Why is spoken language more primary?

Answer 4

learning it first; not all languages have a writing system; much older (evolution)