Thoughts

The first three chapters of Carnie provide a detailed primer for understanding language syntax, which is the level of linguistic organization that bridges the gap between sounds and meaning.  The first chapter serves as a traditional introduction to the reading.  It speaks less about syntax, and more so introduces foundational concepts and definitions like Language and generative grammars.  It also highlights how speakers of a particular language may not formally understand why a certain phrase that they hear is incorrect; however, intuitively they can identify that it is off.  While the first chapter introduces blanket concepts, the second chapter delves into the foundational building blocks of syntax.  It defines different parts of speech and the ways in which parts of speech are determined by their distributions.  The third chapter is where we really delve into syntactical structure.  Here, Carnie takes the parts of speech he defines in chapter two and organizes sentences into hierarchical structures like constituent trees and bracketed diagrams.  He provides a set of rules used to produce these diagrams also well as constituency tests that determine whether a particular diagram is validly constructed.  Thus, the structure of these first three chapters are as follows: foundational blanket concepts, foundational building blocks, let's turn these building blocks into syntactical structures.

More specifically, I thought the exploration of language learning versus acquisition in the context of conscious versus unconscious knowledge was a particularly interesting section of the Carnie reading.  Relating it real life examples, in my own day to day life I admit that I'm generally unfamiliar with the specific formalities and rules of the English language. Having interacted with many friends from different countries who have to learn English as a second language, I've heard multiple times how English is a stupid language that makes no sense because of all of the words that have exceptions to their conjugations.  More often than not, I'm unconscious of this knowledge because I suppose I just acquired it as a native speaker.  Contrasting this with my own study of the Spanish language, I'm very familiar with the different grammatical rules and hearing an incorrect phrase I can pinpoint grammatically why the phrase is ill-formed.  I think this example speaks to the point Carnie makes in chapter one that addresses how Language is innate whereas many elements of language are learned.

Relating Carnie to previous readings, I can see that in the chain of linguistic organization--sound, syntax, and semantics--we've moved from last week's reading of sound into this week's reading of syntax.  Akin to the ways in which Carnie organizes chapter two to serve as the building blocks of chapter three, I feel as though last week's articles, particularly the Gussenhoven reading, provided a good base for this week's readings by introducing the vocabulary of sounds that exist in human speech that serve as the raw materials which are then organized (syntax) to create meaning (semantics).