Introduction to Linguistics

1 Summary

Linguistics is the study of mental grammar

Throughout this class well see that there are many things you know about your language that
have not been taught
Making a grammaticality judgment (denoted within the field with an asterisk *): note that
grammatical or ungrammatical in this class refers to your mental grammar, not
prescriptive grammar
Examples of grammatical vs. ungrammatical
Grammatical
The angry panda who you adopted swung
its tail through the tree.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
flack
flacker
flackers
Vermonter, New Yorker
paint a barn red
John cleaned the garage up.
John cleaned it up.
John cleaned up the garage.

Ungrammatical
*The mother of John likes himself (John).
*The red big dog ran.
*dver
*flackser
*Kansaser
*see a barn red

*John cleaned up it.

Whats the difference between John stuffed the turkey with breadcrumbs and John stuffed
breadcrumbs into the turkey? Has anyone ever sat you down to teach this difference to you?

What is the difference between prescriptive grammar and mental grammar?

Prescriptive grammar
What people should say (who gets to
define this?)
Think high school English, MLA
handbook, etc
Examples:
Dont split infinitives
No double negatives
aint isnt a word

Mental grammar/descriptive grammar

What people actually say

Examples:
Attach plural -s after -er if youre
attaching both (eg. flack-er-s, not
flack-s-er)
Where can English speakers
insert expletives? (expletive
infixation example)
More to come!
Internal
When determining whether something is
grammatical or ungrammatical, you have
to rely on your gut feeling

External
When determining whether something is
grammatical or ungrammatical, you have
to rely on remembering what someone
else has told you
1

NOT something we are interested in for

this class

Prescriptive grammar vs. mental grammar summary

Prescriptive grammar
List of rules
External
Memorize rules youve been taught to
know something is wrong
Conscious
Artificial, cultural phenomenon
Remember prescription

Unconscious
Natural

Prescriptive rules are arbitrary, and those given the social authority to define prescriptive
rules are historically lucky!
Example: be dropping in AAE is not bad/lazy/incorrect/uneducated English. It is as
structured and rule-driven as contractions in SAE
If you are good
I dont care what you are!
Who is it?

Mental grammar/descriptive grammar

List of rules
Internal
Gut feeling that something is wrong

AAE be dropping
If you good
*I dont care what you!
*Who it?

SAE contractions
If youre good
*I dont care what youre!
*Whos it?

Mini linguistics problem: expletive infixation

2 Some terms
Mental grammar, prescriptive grammar, descriptive grammar, grammaticality judgment, African
American English, Standard American English

3 Test your comprehension

What is the difference between prescriptive grammar and descriptive/mental grammar?
What does AAE stand for?

4 Further (optional!) reading

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/most-of-what-you-think-you-know-about-grammar-iswrong-4047445/?no-ist