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Chomsky Generative Grammar Essentials
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1
Question
According to Chomsky, what is a grammar?
Page 2
Answer
A model systematic description of the linguistic abilities of native speakers that enables them to speak and understand their language fluently.
2
Question
What does Chomsky call the speaker-hearer's knowledge of their language?
Page 2
Answer
Linguistic competence.
3
Question
What is the goal of the descriptive study of a language according to Chomsky?
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Answer
The construction of a grammar, which is the system of rules specifying the sound-meaning relationship.
4
Question
How does Chomsky distinguish between competence and performance?
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Answer
Competence is the abstract system of rules and implicit knowledge; performance is what the speaker actually does with that knowledge.
5
Question
What is grammatical competence for a native speaker?
Page 2
Answer
The native speaker's knowledge of language, ability to distinguish between languages, know grammatical rules and structures, and make intuitive judgments about well-formedness.
6
Question
What is pragmatic competence?
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Answer
The ability to use language effectively in context to achieve a specific purpose and to understand language in context, according to linguistic factors.
7
Question
What is morphology in linguistics?
Page 4
Answer
The branch of grammar that studies the structure of words, divided into inflectional morphology, lexical, and derivational word formation.
8
Question
What does productivity mean as a characteristic of human language?
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Answer
A general term in linguistics for the unlimited ability to use language to say new things.
9
Question
What is duality in human language?
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Answer
The ability of human language to form discrete meaningful units.
10
Question
What is recursivity in grammar?
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Answer
Descriptive rules which are capable of repeated application in generating a sentence.
11
Question
What is Universal Grammar according to the text?
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Answer
The aspects of language that all languages have in common.
12
Question
How can generative grammar be tested as a theory of competence?
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Answer
With grammaticality judgment tasks to decide whether sentences are grammatical (acceptable) or ungrammatical (unacceptable) for native speakers.
13
Question
What is the typical word order in basic sentences for English and French?
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Answer
Subject-Verb-Object (SVO), and they do not allow alternative word orders in simple basic sentences.
14
Question
What are the six possible word orders mentioned for languages?
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Answer
SVO, VSO, OVS, OSV, SOV, VOS.
15
Question
What is Traditional Grammar as a type of syntactic analysis?
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Answer
The collection of prescriptive rules and concepts about the structure of language that is commonly taught in schools.
16
Question
What is Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC)?
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Answer
A method of sentence analysis first mentioned by Leonard Bloomfield, involving binary segmentation based on subject-predicate through tree diagrams or bracketing.
17
Question
Why do we use categories in constituent analysis?
Page 8
Answer
They are necessary to provide a principled account of linguistic phenomena and because of the structure dependency principle linked to the innateness hypothesis.