Review Notes 1

Question 1

What Question was Plato trying to answer?

Answer 1

How do we come to a rich and specific knowledge of language when our input is imperfect?

Question 2

What did Darwin contribute to phonology?

Answer 2

He was one of the first people who tracked his children’s speech patterns in a journal.

Question 3

What claim did Jakobson make about child language?

Answer 3

That it “unfolds” as children get older. (and folds back as people age)

Question 4

What statement did Jakobson make about features?

Answer 4

That they were universal in that they were relevant to all human languages.

Question 5

What theory did Chomsky contribute that revolutionized Linguistics?

Answer 5

Universal Grammar: the idea that language was genetically innate to all humans

Question 6

What did Chomsky avoid studying?

Answer 6

Childhood Language Acquisition.

Question 7

What did Universal Grammar allow linguists to do?

Answer 7

Ask the right questions; engage in the typology of language theory; create a number of useful models.

Question 8

What two camps was Linguistics divided into? What characterized them?

Answer 8

Generative Linguistics (Chomskyian) and Functionalist Linguistics (Behavioural)

Question 9

What does SPE stand for, and what made it relevant?

Answer 9

Sound Pattern of English; written by Chomsky and Halle and integrated UG into phonology. Introduced factorial typology.

Question 10

What is factorial typology?

Answer 10

A listing of the facts, used to describe what actually happens in language.

Question 11

What was SPE’s claim?

Answer 11

Features, which were the primitive elements of phonology, had to be innate because they were the building blocks of the language.

Question 12

What did Functionalists use as an example to disprove UG?

Answer 12

The ‘fis’ phenomenon; a child will say ‘fis’ meaning ‘fish’, yet not parse the mistake.

Question 13

What is Optimality Theory (OT)?

Answer 13

A model of ordering language using a hierarchy of constraints.

Question 14

What does Optimality Theory tell us about phonology?

Answer 14

That phonetics can’t be separated from phonology; it is an integral part of phonology.

Question 15

Who was working on CLA in Generative Phonology? What did they contribute?

Answer 15

Smith (book on Child Language), Spencer (made predictions based on structural representations), and Fikkert & Levelt (did a study on Dutch children)

Question 16

Who was working on CLA in Functionalism? What did they contribute?

Answer 16

Bybee, theorized that children learned frequent words faster, Vihman, studies kids at 50 words or less, others proposed that kids learn words, not features.

Question 17

What did OT tell us about CLA?

Answer 17

Kids might have difficulties learning certain parts of language because of constraints.

Question 18

What is Exemplar theory?

Answer 18

A theory from Functionalism that states that memory is integral to CLA. Kids learn through what they hear and remember.

Question 19

What is Emergentism?

Answer 19

A school of thinking that sits between Generative and Functionalist phonology.

Question 20

What is the basic premise of Emergentism?

Answer 20

There is some level of linguistic capability that is uniquely innate in humans, but elements such as features are learned, not innate.