What is Linguistics?

many things to different people, but as practiced in the

UCLA Linguistics Dept. it is
the scientific study of human language
a subfield of cognitive psychology focusing on that part of
the human mind/brain responsible for human ability to
acquire and use language
the central questions of linguistics from this perspective are:
What must be going on in our heads such that we can
understand someone speaking, read this slide, talk, and
write/type?
What WAS going on in our heads as infants and children
that allowed us to learn to do these things?
1

What linguistics (under this conception) is NOT:

speaking lots of languages (linguist polyglot); linguists
can work with speakers of other languages without
necessarily learning to speak those languages
teaching English (or anything else) as a second language
studying the origins of words (etymology)
telling people how to talk better; preventing the demise of
English

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar

Examples of prescriptive grammar rules:

Pinkers analogy: Would we ever say bird song or dog

barking is being degraded by sloppy usage?

Examples of prescriptive grammar rules:

Its wrong to ever split an infinitive.
A preposition is something you must never end a
sentence with. (This is an outrage up with which we
must not put.)
Say you and I, not you and me
(We and they came to fisticuffs over this.)
Say less money but fewer expenses
Use who for subjects, whom for objects
(Who are you referring to? To who are you referring?)
(Whom do they think is the cheater?)

 We are generally not interested in such explicit prescriptive

rules
We study tacit knowledge (cf. bicycle riding) and seek to
describe it: later we will see fancy examples of what that
consists of; heres a seemingly trivial one:
A dog bit a man means something rather different from
A man bit a dog
remarkably, every human who can see or hear learns (at
least one) language by age 5, assuming no serious
cognitive impairment or deprivation of contact with
language (signed languages, such as ASL, are
linguistically virtually identical to spoken languages)
after puberty, most people cant do this so wellWhy?
5

Examples of your tacit knowledge about English

Example 1: Pronominal reference
1) McGee appeared to Gibbs to believe in himself.
2) McGee appeared to Gibbs to believe in him.
3) McGee appealed to Gibbs to believe in himself.
4) McGee appealed to Gibbs to believe in him.

1) McGee appeared to Gibbs to believe in himself.

2) McGee appeared to Gibbs to believe in him.
3) McGee appealed to Gibbs to believe in himself.
4) McGee appealed to Gibbs to believe in him.
How did you come to know this?
Did someone teach you this?
Could you have learned this pattern simply by listening to
people talk?
In particular, could you have learned what is NOT possible?
Did you say some things and get corrected for saying
them wrong?
7

Example 2: Implicit participants

1) Rachel is eager to please.
2) Rachel is easy to please.

Who is doing what to whom?

Example 2: Implicit participants

1) Rachel is eager to please people.
(Rachel will please people.)
2) Rachel is easy for people to please.
It is easy for people to please Rachel.

How did you come to know this?

Example 3: Negative inversion

1) With no roommate Lana would be truly happy.
2) With no roommate would Lana be truly happy.
What would make Lana happy?

10

3) With no roommate
Lana would be truly happy.
If she had no roommate,
4) With no roommate would Lana be truly happy.
There is no roommate who Lana would be truly happy with.

How did you come to know this?

11

Example 4: Contraction and ellipsis

1) Nathans tired but Im not.

2) Im tired but Nathans not.
3) Im not tired but Nathans.
4) Nathans not tired but Im.
5) Nathans tired and Im too.
6) Im tired and Nathans too.

12

1) Nathans tired but Im not tired.

2) Im tired but Nathans not tired.
3) *Im not tired but Nathans tired.
4) *Nathans not tired but Im tired.
5) *Nathans tired and Im tired too.
6) *Im tired and Nathans tired too.
(* = impossible)

There is a rule here, but not one any grammar expert (or
language maven) has ever mentioned.
13

Example 5: Adjective positions

1) The reporter interviewed every possible candidate.
[ambiguous]
2) The reporter interviewed every candidate possible.
[unambiguous]
3) The reporter interviewed every possible candidate possible.
[both meanings together]
4) The reporter interviewed every possible possible candidate.
[which possible means what?]

14

 in Italian its the other way around:

Maria ha intervistato ogni possibile candidato
[unambiguous (potential candidate)]
Maria ha intervistato ogni candidato possibile
[ambiguous]

15

Take-home message
All native speakers of a language demonstrably know (tacitly)
a great many systematic things about their language that
a) they are unaware of
b) they cannot explain
c) they were never taught
d) in many cases, they could not have (subconsciously)
figured out simply from observing and imitating or
generalizing what other people say by general
principles of reasoning
How can this be? One of the great mysteries of the universe!
A provocative suggestion: They were born knowing (most of)
this. [Technically: The human brain is genetically prewired with (most of) the properties of human language(s).]
16