Transcript Generative Linguistics rules are intended to go beyond accounting

Morphology
 The
study of the internal structure of
words. Emerged as a linguistics subbranch until the nineteenth century.
 It played a pivotal role in the
reconstruction of the Indo european.
Morphology in American Structural
Linguistics

Dominant School of linguistics viewed linguistics not as
much as theory of the nature of the language but rather
as a body of descriptive and analytical procedures.
Ideally analysis was expected to proceed by focusing
selectively on one dimension of language structure at a
time before tackling the next one. Each dimension was
referred as linguistic level.
Semantic
deals with meaning
Syntantic
deals with sentence structure
Morphological
deals with word structure
Phonology( phonemics)
deals with sound systems
 Language
was seen as separated stages
( Doctrine of separation)
This structuralist methodological insistence
in the separation of the levels
One of the structuralist main contributions
was the recognition of the fact that words
may have intricate internal structures.
They showed that words are analysable
interm of morphemes.
Generative Linguistics rules are intended to
go beyond accounting for patterns in the data
to a characterization of speakers linguistic
knowledge.
The primary objective of generative grammar is
to model a speakers` linguistic knowledge
Chomsky
Competence
primary
object
Knowledge of the
rules of a language
that makes the
productionand
understanding of an
indefinitelarge number
of new utterances
Performance
Actual use of
language in
real
situations
Chomsky

Human linguistic capacity is innate.
 The human child is born with a blue- print of language
which is called Universal Grammar.
 Universal Grammar is the faculty of the mind which
determines the nature of language acquisition in the
infant and of linguistic competence.
 The language faculty of the mind is the same in all
humans, this can only differ form each other within the
limits predetermined by the neurology and physiology of
the human brain, with determine the nature of universal
grammar.

Universal grammar is modular in structure: it
consists of various sub-systems of principles
that consist of parameters( right/ left handed)
which are fixed by experience on the basis of
simple evidence of the kind available to the
child.
 The parametric approach assumes that the
infant acquiring a language makes very clever
guesses or hypotheses about rules of grammar
beign acquired on the basis of rules already
acquired after experience of a particular
language.
Place of morphology in early generative
grammar

Morphology received a lot attention when structuralism
peaked in 1950s
 Generative grammarians initially rejected the validity of a
separate morphological module.
 Generative grammar was a dominant school in the
second half of the century the study of word structure
was in the shadows for more than a decade.
 Ie emerged in the mid of 1970s scholars Robins(1959)
and Mathews(1972,1974) made important contributions
to morphology.
Word formation
phonology
syntax
Morphology – Phonology interaction
The selection of the form thet manifests agiven
morpheme mey be influenced by the sounds thet
realice neighbouring morphemes.
E.g. a before a consonant an before a vowel
Morphology – Syntax interaction
The form of a word may be affected by the syntactic
constrution in which the word is used.
walk
walk
walks
walked
Morphology – Lexicon interaction
Major role of the lexicon or dictionary is to list the
meaning of words
Word
•Particular physical realization of the lexeme in
speech or writing.
•Representation of a lexeme that is associated with
certain morpho-syntactic properties.
( i.e. noun, verb adjective, ec.)
Morpheme
Smallest, invisible units of semantic content or
grammatical function which words are made up.
f/ o / o / t /f/ /u/ /t/