September+17th

September 17th 2009 Macs are evil, etc. For the summaries, you must get your articles from a variety of sources. Not just JSTOR. Be selective. Good to get something from books, etc. No narratives, need to be good journal articles, a good variety is very important. To send lists, don’t send all pdf files. Example of what you need to do is on elearn.memphis.edu. MUST be APA. No overviews of anything. Has to be research oriented. How do we know which journals are good or not? The shorter the name, the better the journal. Good journals: Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, Language Teaching, ESL Writing, ESL Reading, Second Language Acquisition, etc. "The Appalachian Journal of Hillbilly Syntax" is probably not a good journal. Also, go to the back of the book and use those journals. They are generally very good. Also, you can google with ‘Journal of…’ (ie, Journal of Hillbilly Syntax) Use the chapters as themes. Don’t ask Phil about themes unless you want him to laugh. Be sure to check with the list of must do’s for the summary. Travis is awesome b/c he’s helping with the notes.

Very critical for Nativists: LAD, part of the mind, which exists only for language processing. Modular (used for one thing and one thing only, unrelated to any other cognitive processes), and damage to Broca and Wernicke areas affect language and NOTHING else, thus modular. This is proof of the LAD. Homework: dif between broca and wernicke true for both spoken and sign language. UG is a theory, but not scientific. The major goal prevents us from testing impossible hypotheses. A language can ba SVO, SOV, but cannot be VOS, etc. If we had to examine out env for every possibility, find a limited number of possibilities. Eg, men’s room and women’s bathroom, not more. Do not need to speculate hypotheses for grammar rules, because no other possibility exists. “Not really UG” rules: All languages have nouns, verbs, adj, but even that is a stretch. There are nouns that are happy to be verbs and adjectives, etc. Syntax trees are good for things like negative scope analysis. All languages have structure, but all are different. No language is ‘free’, with no structure. “If X is true, then Y will be true”. Turkish and Japanese have a similar typology, but no related. Has postposition (ki kara), not preposition. If the verb comes at the end of the sentence, then the language will be postposition. Head rules: only pre or post, not both. All rules follow each other, logical. Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) Associated with ‘imprinting’. Lorenz and his goslings This affects all species in some way. Things must be done by a certain age, you lose it. The goslings must be imprinted to its mothers by a certain age or they will never be imprinted. Critical period until about 12/13 (puberty). Must be exposed to a certain amount of language by a certain age. Most of the evidence by this is abused kids, but there is some compelling evidence from deaf kids. If a deaf child is in a signing community, they will sign fluently. If they are not, they try to lip read and when they do learn signing, they are not as fluent as native speakers. You WILL speak well if you don’t have enough exposure, you will speak well, but never like a native. Neural pruning: Neural plasticity: Inconsistent use of hig frequency words, ie, function words, pronouns, numbers, etc. Overuse of formulaic or simple terms. Look at the unicorn example in the ppt. We move the second ‘is’, the main one, not the first one. That’s the rule, folks, don’t change it. Very young children logically say this sentence correctly. How does a three year old know this? Very complex sentence, but young kids can do it. Inborn set of rules? Can it come from the environment? No, not really. Can’t come from environment, yet they are good at it. Rewards and imitations may contribute, but only a small part. All of the stuff we talk about related to Chomsky is really from the 60’s, not today. Pragmatics do not fit in Nativism. How do we change language for situation? Formal, informal, etc. Small children are bad at pragmatics, have to learn it. Must be an environmental factor. We do a ton of learning, and language is just one. Why do we need an LAD? Why haven’t we found it yet? Why, after 40 years, do we not have rules of UG and why does Chomsky change them? The poverty of the stimulus: why don’t nativists check this out? Thus, nativism is untestable. Cognitivists: Piaget, Vygotsky, etc. See key terms in ppt. Major difference between the Nativists and Cognitivists: Environment. Language is used to represent something learned, symbols. Language develops from social interaction (for the most part), Vygotsky was a socialist, into ‘it takes a village’ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) There’s what you can do alone, with help, and what you can’t do. Learning best takes place with help. Declarative knowledge became proceduralized (locking the door when we leave the house, do we remember as we drive away? Not usually). For V, it was becoming internalized. Concious awareness, problem solving, etc. Develops around time child enters school. Changes very much as child enters changing environment. Piaget vs. V: P: individual, V: Group learning Language is extremely contextual. We learn all of this through interaction.