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Poverty Of The Stimulus
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. The POS is often used as evidence for universal grammar. This is the idea that all languages conform to the same structural principles, which define the space of possible languages. Both poverty of the stimulus and universal grammar are terms that can be credited to Noam Chomsky, the main proponent of generative grammar. Chomsky coined the term "poverty of the stimulus" in 1980. However, he had argued for the idea since his 1959 review of B.F. Skinner's ''Verbal Behavior''. The form of the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguistics is concerned with both the cognitive and social aspects of language. It is considered a scientific field as well as an academic discipline; it has been classified as a social science, natural science, cognitive science,Thagard, PaulCognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). or part of the humanities. Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to phenomena found in human linguistic systems, such as syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences); semantics (meaning); morphology (structure of words); phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages); phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language); and pragmatics (how social con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Plurals
English nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns. Phonological transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation and General American. For more information, see English phonology. Meaning Although the everyday meaning of ''plural'' is "more than one", the grammatical term has a slightly different technical meaning. In the English system of grammatical number, singular means "one (or minus one)", and plural means "not singular". In other words, plural means not just "more than one" but also "less than one". This less-than aspect can be seen in cases like ''the temperature is zero degrees'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Innatism
Innatism is a philosophical and epistemological doctrine that the mind is born with ideas, knowledge, and beliefs. Therefore, the mind is not a ''tabula rasa'' (blank slate) at birth, which contrasts with the views of early empiricists such as John Locke. Innatism asserts that not all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses. Plato and René Descartes were prominent philosophers in the development of innatism. Both philosophers emphasize that experiences are the key to unlocking this knowledge but not the source of the knowledge itself—essentially, no knowledge is derived exclusively from experience.Stich, S. P. (1975). ''Innate ideas''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Difference from nativism ''Innatism'' and ''nativism'' are generally synonymous terms referring to the notion of preexisting ideas in the mind. However, more specifically, innatism refers to the philosophy of Plato and Descartes, who assumed that God or a similar being or proce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Government And Binding
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution, a statement of its governing principles and philosophy. While all types of organizations have governance, the term ''government'' is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations. The major types of political systems in the modern era are democracies, monarchies, and authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, and tyranny. These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and mixed governme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Generative Anthropology
Generative anthropology is a field of study based on the hypothesis that the origin of human language happened in a singular event. The discipline of Generative Anthropology centers upon this original event which Eric Gans calls The Originary Scene. This scene is a kind of origin story that hypothesizes the specific event where language originated. The Originary Scene is powerful because any human ability: our ability to do science, to be ironic, to love, to think, to dominate, etc can be carefully explained first by reference to this scene of origin. Because The Originary Scene was the origin of all things human; Generative Anthropology attempts to understand all cultural phenomena in the simplest terms possible: all things human can be traced back to this hypothetical single origin point. Eric Gans and the origin of generative anthropology Generative Anthropology originated with Professor Eric Gans of UCLA who developed his ideas in a series of books and articles beginning wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The 'Language Instinct' Debate
''Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate'' is a book by Geoffrey Sampson, providing arguments against Noam Chomsky's theory of a human instinct for (first) language acquisition. Sampson explains the original title of the book as a deliberate allusion to ''Educating Rita'' (1980), and uses the plot of that play to illustrate his argument. Sampson's book is a response to Steven Pinker's ''The Language Instinct'' specifically and Chomskyan linguistic nativism broadly. The title, ''Educating Eve'', was dropped after the first edition because the allusion to ''Educating Rita'' "was deemed unduly mysterious". Geoffrey Sampson, ''The 'Language Instinct' Debate'', revised edition, (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005), 2. The revised edition (2005) contains an additional chapter and "many passages, from a few words up to new chapter-sections, that discuss relevant scientific findings which have emerged since the first edition, or respond to objections made by cri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously
''Colorless green ideas sleep furiously'' is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book ''Syntactic Structures'' as an example of a sentence that is grammatically well-formed, but semantically nonsensical. The sentence was originally used in his 1955 thesis ''The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory'' and in his 1956 paper "Three Models for the Description of Language". There is no obvious understandable meaning that can be derived from it, which demonstrates the distinction between syntax and semantics, and the idea that a syntactically well-formed sentence is not guaranteed to be semantically well-formed as well. As an example of a category mistake, it was used to show the inadequacy of certain probabilistic models of grammar, and the need for more structured models. Senseless but grammatical Chomsky writes in his 1957 book ''Syntactic Structures'': It is fair to assume that neither sentence (1) nor (2) (nor indeed any part of these sentences) has ever occurred i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups.Fernald LD (2008)''Psychology: Six perspectives'' (pp.12–15). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Hockenbury & Hockenbury. Psychology. Worth Publishers, 2010. Ψ (''psi''), the first letter of the Greek word ''psyche'' from which the term psychology is derived (see below), is commonly associated with the science. A professional practitioner or researcher involved in the discipline is called a psychologist. Some psychologists can also be classified as behavioral or cognitive scientists. Some psyc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are: ''relativization'', ''complementation'' and ''coordination''. There are two ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developmental biology, cytology, psychology, physics, computer science, chemistry, medicine, statistics, and Mathematical Modeling, mathematical modeling to understand the fundamental and emergent properties of neurons, glia and neural circuits. The understanding of the biological basis of learning, memory, behavior, perception, and consciousness has been described by Eric Kandel as the "epic challenge" of the Biology, biological sciences. The scope of neuroscience has broadened over time to include different approaches used to study the nervous system at different scales. The techniques used by neuroscientists have expanded enormously, from molecular biology, molecular and cell biology, cellular studies of individual neurons to neuroimaging, imaging ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Applied Linguistics
Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field which identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems. Some of the academic fields related to applied linguistics are education, psychology, communication research, information science, natural language processing, anthropology, and sociology. Domain Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field. Major branches of applied linguistics include bilingualism and multilingualism, conversation analysis, contrastive linguistics, language assessment, literacies, discourse analysis, language pedagogy, second language acquisition, language planning and policy, interlinguistics, stylistics, language teacher education, forensic linguistics, and translation. Journals Major journals of the field include ''Research Methods in Applied Linguistics'', ''Annual Review of Applied Linguistics'', ''Applied Linguistics'', Studies in Second Language Acquisition, ''Applied Psycholinguistics'', ''Internat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Context (language Use)
In semiotics, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, context refers to those objects or entities which surround a ''focal event'', in these disciplines typically a communicative event, of some kind. Context is "a frame that surrounds the event and provides resources for its appropriate interpretation". It is thus a relative concept, only definable with respect to some focal event within a frame, not independently of that frame. In linguistics In the 19th century, it was debated whether the most fundamental principle in language was contextuality or compositionality, and compositionality was usually preferred.Janssen, T. M. (2012) Compositionality: Its historic context', in M. Werning, W. Hinzen, & E. Machery (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of compositionality', pp. 19-46, Oxford University Press. Verbal context refers to the text or speech surrounding an expression (word, sentence, or speech act). Verbal context influences the way an expression is understood; hence the norm of no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
