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Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language,as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general,computational linguistics draws upon linguistics,computer science,artificial intelligence,mathematics,logic,philosophy,cognitive science,cognitive psychology,psycholinguistics,anthropology and neuroscience,among others.
Charles Francis Hockett was an American linguist who developed many influential ideas in American structuralist linguistics. He represents the post-Bloomfieldian phase of structuralism often referred to as "distributionalism" or "taxonomic structuralism". His academic career spanned over half a century at Cornell and Rice universities. Hockett was also a firm believer of linguistics as a branch of anthropology,making contributions that were significant to the field of anthropology as well.
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning,both in spoken and written forms,and may also be conveyed through sign languages. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity,with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement,which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences,and the ability to refer to objects,events,and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.
The following outline is provided as an overview and topical guide to linguistics:
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words,it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language,to understand it,and to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.
Universal grammar (UG),in modern linguistics,is the theory of the innate biological component of the language faculty,usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible human language could be. When linguistic stimuli are received in the course of language acquisition,children then adopt specific syntactic rules that conform to UG. The advocates of this theory emphasize and partially rely on the poverty of the stimulus (POS) argument and the existence of some universal properties of natural human languages. However,the latter has not been firmly established,as some linguists have argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare,and the theory of universal grammar remains controversial among linguists.
In linguistics,transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar,especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations to produce new sentences from existing ones.
Generative grammar,or generativism,is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistics,deriving from logical syntax and glossematics. Generative grammar considers grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. It is a system of explicit rules that may apply repeatedly to generate an indefinite number of sentences which can be as long as one wants them to be. The difference from structural and functional models is that the object is base-generated within the verb phrase in generative grammar. This purportedly cognitive structure is thought of as being a part of a universal grammar,a syntactic structure which is caused by a genetic mutation in humans.
Second-language acquisition (SLA),sometimes called second-language learning—otherwise referred to as L2acquisition,is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is regarded by some but not everybody as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines,such as psychology and education.
Syntactic Structures is an important work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky,originally published in 1957. A short monograph of about a hundred pages,it is recognized as one of the most significant and influential linguistic studies of the 20th century. It contains the now-famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously",which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no discernible meaning,thus arguing for the independence of syntax from semantics.
In linguistics,linguistic competence is the system of unconscious knowledge that one knows when they know a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance,which includes all other factors that allow one to use one's language in practice.
Poverty of the stimulus (POS) is the controversial argument from linguistics that children are not exposed to rich enough data within their linguistic environments to acquire every feature of their language. This is considered evidence contrary to the empiricist idea that language is learned solely through experience. The claim is that the sentences children hear while learning a language do not contain the information needed to develop a thorough understanding of the grammar of the language.
In the field of psychology,nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to the "blank slate" or tabula rasa view,which states that the brain has inborn capabilities for learning from the environment but does not contain content such as innate beliefs. This factor contributes to the ongoing nature versus nurture dispute,one borne from the current difficulty of reverse engineering the subconscious operations of the brain,especially the human brain.
In linguistics,grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar,the goal of which is to formulate rules that define well-formed,grammatical sentences. These rules of grammaticality also provide explanations of ill-formed,ungrammatical sentences.
In linguistics,the innateness hypothesis,also known as the nativist hypothesis,holds that humans are born with at least some knowledge of linguistic structure. On this hypothesis,language acquisition involves filling in the details of an innate blueprint rather than being an entirely inductive process. The hypothesis is one of the cornerstones of generative grammar and related approaches in linguistics. Arguments in favour include the poverty of the stimulus,the universality of language acquisition,as well as experimental studies on learning and learnability. However,these arguments have been criticized,and the hypothesis is widely rejected in other traditions such as usage-based linguistics. The term was coined by Hilary Putnam in reference to the views of Noam Chomsky.
The input hypothesis,also known as the monitor model,is a group of five hypotheses of second-language acquisition developed by the linguist Stephen Krashen in the 1970s and 1980s. Krashen originally formulated the input hypothesis as just one of the five hypotheses,but over time the term has come to refer to the five hypotheses as a group. The hypotheses are the input hypothesis,the acquisition–learning hypothesis,the monitor hypothesis,the natural order hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesis. The input hypothesis was first published in 1977.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguistics is based on a theoretical as well as a descriptive study of language and is also interlinked with the applied fields of language studies and language learning,which entails the study of specific languages. Before the 20th century,linguistics evolved in conjunction with literary study and did not employ scientific methods. Modern-day linguistics is considered a science because it entails a comprehensive,systematic,objective,and precise analysis of all aspects of language –i.e.,the cognitive,the social,the cultural,the psychological,the environmental,the biological,the literary,the grammatical,the paleographical,and the structural.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax is a book on linguistics written by American linguist Noam Chomsky,first published in 1965. In Aspects,Chomsky presented a deeper,more extensive reformulation of transformational generative grammar (TGG),a new kind of syntactic theory that he had introduced in the 1950s with the publication of his first book,Syntactic Structures. Aspects is widely considered to be the foundational document and a proper book-length articulation of Chomskyan theoretical framework of linguistics. It presented Chomsky's epistemological assumptions with a view to establishing linguistic theory-making as a formal discipline comparable to physical sciences,i.e. a domain of inquiry well-defined in its nature and scope. From a philosophical perspective,it directed mainstream linguistic research away from behaviorism,constructivism,empiricism and structuralism and towards mentalism,nativism,rationalism and generativism,respectively,taking as its main object of study the abstract,inner workings of the human mind related to language acquisition and production.
The main purpose of theories of second-language acquisition (SLA) is to shed light on how people who already know one language learn a second language. The field of second-language acquisition involves various contributions,such as linguistics,sociolinguistics,psychology,cognitive science,neuroscience,and education. These multiple fields in second-language acquisition can be grouped as four major research strands:(a) linguistic dimensions of SLA,(b) cognitive dimensions of SLA,(c) socio-cultural dimensions of SLA,and (d) instructional dimensions of SLA. While the orientation of each research strand is distinct,they are in common in that they can guide us to find helpful condition to facilitate successful language learning. Acknowledging the contributions of each perspective and the interdisciplinarity between each field,more and more second language researchers are now trying to have a bigger lens on examining the complexities of second language acquisition.
In language acquisition,negative evidence is information concerning what is not possible in a language. Importantly,negative evidence does not show what is grammatical;that is positive evidence. In theory,negative evidence would help eliminate ungrammatical constructions by revealing what is not grammatical.
References
- ↑ Department of Linguistics: Faculty, University of Pennsylvania, archived from the original on 2018-09-08, retrieved 2018-09-07.
- ↑ Bloomfield Book Award 2018 Presented to Charles Yang, Linguistic Society of America, archived from the original on 2018-09-07, retrieved 2018-09-07.
- ↑ John Simon Guggenheim Foundation: Charles Yang, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, archived from the original on 2018-09-08, retrieved 2018-09-07.
