Scientific study
What is Descriptive Grammar?
Is the objective, nonjudgmental study of how a language is actually used by its speakers, rather than how it should be used
What is Competence?
This term refers to a speaker's underlying, subconscious knowledge of their language.
What are Intuitions (or Grammaticality Judgments)?
Linguists primarily use these "gut feelings" from native speakers to determine if a sentence is valid.
What is UG (Universal Grammar)?
This acronym stands for the innate genetic endowment that allows humans to learn language.
What is the Lexicon?
The mental dictionary of words that a speaker knows.
What is an empirical science?
Is a branch of knowledge that relies on direct observation, experimentation, and measurable evidence to understand, describe, and predict natural phenomena.
What is Performance?
This term refers to the actual use of language in concrete situations, which can be affected by memory, distraction, or errors.
What is an Asterisk?
This symbol is placed before a sentence to indicate that it is syntactically ill-formed or ungrammatical.
What is the Poverty of the Stimulus?
Children learn language surprisingly fast despite this problem, where the data they hear is often incomplete or "messy.
What is Generative Grammar?
A set of rules that can produce (or "generate") an infinite number of sentences from a finite set of words.
What is Syntax?
This term refers to the rules and principles that determine the structure of sentences in a language.
What is Performance?
A sentence that is technically grammatical but impossible for a human to process (like a sentence with 10 center-embeddings) is a failure of this.
What is Falsified?
When a theory makes a claim about data that turns out to be false, the theory is said to be this.
What is Structure?
The fact that children do not make errors like "Is the man who tall is happy?" suggests they instinctively know rules are dependent on this.
What is Phonology?
The study of the sound systems of language, distinct from syntax.
What is Grammatical (or Well-formed)?
To a linguist, a sentence that follows the subconscious rules of a native speaker’s mental grammar is labeled this, even if it makes no sense (like "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously").
Who is Competence and Performance?
Noam Chomsky is the linguist famous for distinguishing between these two "C" and "P" concepts.
What is Explanation (or Explanatory Adequacy)?
A good theory not only describes the data but achieves this deeper level of understanding.
What is Innate?
Universal Grammar is hypothesized to be this, meaning it is born with us rather than learned.
What is Semantics?
The study of meaning in language.
What are Structure-Dependent rules?
The text contrasts "linear order" rules (like "move the third word") with these types of rules, which real human languages actually use.
What is a "Black Box"?
This metaphor is often used to describe the internal mechanism of the mind that linguists try to deduce by looking at inputs and outputs.
What is Acceptability?
If a speaker says "I can't say that," they are giving a judgment of this, which is distinct from grammaticality.
What is Plato's Problem?
The logical problem of language acquisition is often called this "Problem," named after an ancient Greek philosopher.
What is Constituency?
Is where words group together into larger units.