In Carnie's introduction to syntax, he explains several times how the science of linguistics is based largely on "intuition" or "judgment". Which, as he mentions, doesn't sound great in a scientific setting. However, what I found interesting was how this is alright because Language falls under the realm of "subconscious knowledge" for humans. I have never really considered our production of language to be a subconscious or instinctual function, considering how often I need to focus a conscious effort into what I want to say or write but after this and last week's reading it makes complete sense to view it in that way. Last week outlined all of the complex physiological aspects of speech that seem to just happen naturally, and this week helped me better understand the kind of mental gymnastics my brain is completing behind the scenes when I listen to speech or read an article. This week, once again, I was impressed and intrigued by all of the things that I process unknowingly.
In chapters 2 and 3 Carnie progressed into more concrete subjects that actually are taught to some extent, or at least my past English teachers have tried to teach things like parts of speech and sentence structure. I've even become familiar with the trees in chapter 3 in the form of Context-Free Grammars in Computer Science classes. So, for me, the most interesting parts of this week's reading came from chapter 1. Specifically, the section discussing language acquisition and the Universal Grammar. The thing that always pops into my head first when I'm doing these readings is how this affects my ability to learn a second language. This week I found the role of the Universal Grammar and word orders especially interesting. It made me wonder how this theoretical Universal Grammar works when an English speaker is trying to learn a language with a different word order, like Turkish or Irish. It would make sense that learning languages with different word orders than your native tongue would be much more difficult as you would need to shift your basic understanding of the sentence structure.
Interesting self-reflection on your own thoughts regarding the intuition of language we as humans have. I too also had never considered that language might be subconscious or instinctual, up to this class. Now I wonder if some individuals inherently have a better grasp on language that makes them the great authors and speakers within our history.
ReplyDeleteI think you do a good job at summarizing the Carnie article. I also wrote some comments about trying to understand theoretical universal grammar and what one should do when learning a second language. I'd love to learn about what kind of environmental factors originally caused language to form and govern its synactical structure.
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