Language

Question 1

Language is NOT…

Answer 1

writing
prescriptive grammar
thought

Question 2

productivity

Answer 2

ability to produce/understand unlimited number of new sentences

Question 3

phase-structure

Answer 3

hierarchical structure of a sentence built from rules

Question 4

deep structure

Answer 4

the way words are assembled by phrase structure rules

Question 5

surface structure

Answer 5

the way words are assembled after a transformation has been applied and moved a phrase into an empty position in the deep structure

Question 6

creativity in language acquisition

Answer 6

children can’t memorize sentences (must generalize)

generalize from the beginning of language acquisition

Question 7

poverty of the stimulus

Answer 7

sentences like “is the man who is tall here? are not common in child’s input, thus their preference of a structure dependent-rule over a linear rule shows that the structure dependence of rules are innate.

Question 8

articulation

Answer 8

output of language interface

Question 9

speech perception

Answer 9

input of language interface

Question 10

pragmatics

Answer 10

cognition and social psychology of language interface

Question 11

Chomsky’s Contributions

Answer 11

Productivity
syntax is NOT = semantics
syntax is NOT word-by word (hierarchical structure

Question 12

Phase Structure ——-> Productivity

Answer 12

1. Ability to express unfamiliar meaning
2. Vast number of combinations
3. Infinity through recursion

Question 13

why is speech recognition so hard?

Answer 13

1) acoustic variability due to coarticulation

2) illusion of segmentation (scene analysis)