Assignment -I

How chomsky’s theory of syntax explain some aspects of cognition in general?

Syntactic theory​ is about rules and principles that determine -how people combine words to
make meaningful sentences.Sentences are not just strings of words-in the same way words are
not just strings of morphemes.There are strict syntactic rules about structure and
sentences-how to combine words in specific ways to reach the meaning.Structure at phrasal
and sentence level to create well-formed structures, we have to check that those rules, when
applied logically, also will not lead to irrelevant structures.
Based on Chomsky Linguistic theory- It is emphasized that an ideal language interaction
without unaffected by inappropriate grammatical conditions i.e. ​ memory limitations​,
distractions, shifts in ​attention and interest​, and errors in language knowledge in daily
performance.

Thus the theory has two major points;

Competence​ is the pre-vocal condition of a speaker. Whenever we want to speak something,
we start thinking about the same into our mind and start structuring by formatting words for the
ideas to be said. Then we express that idea. This collection of ideas formulation , thoughts
process , views, words formatting and grammatical structures is called competence. In this
process of pre-vocal situation we distinguish grammatical sentences from ungrammatical one.

Performance​ is the delivery of words and sentences we decide to put forward. It is the
performance of the ideas, views, thoughts , words and grammatical structures which was
decided into our mind to speak before speaking. “Performance” is the performance of the
speaker. The better competence leads performance .

And for​ human cognition​ competence is attributed to mental imagery of thought formulation and
ideation of comprehension and production with methodologies in order to conceptualise the
process.For the performance part human parsing system operates incrementally, analyzing
syntactic structure in real time as each word is heard or read.
The operation of the parser is refers to performance parameters such as limitations on working
memory and the time necessary to complete mental operations/computations.

Transformational grammar​ is part of the theory of ​generative ​grammar​, especially of natural

languages. It considers grammar as a system of rules and principles that formulate exactly
those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language with help of
defined operations and processes (i.e called transformations) to formulate new sentences from
existing structures.
Another aspect of linguistic theory , it must be able to describe how any normal human child
masters the complexities of his mother tongue at such a young age, and how children all over
the world master languages which are enormously different from one another in terms of
vocabulary, word order.To justify this, it has to show how a child's brain, when exposed to
primary linguistic data, uses special innate abilities or strategies i.e. ​"Universal Grammar"​ and
selects the correct grammar of the language over many other grammars compatible with the
same data.According to Chomsky, a human child's mind is equipped with a​ "language
acquisition device"​ formed by inborn mental properties called ​"linguistic universals"​ which
eventually constructs a mental theory of the child's mother tongue.

This is how syntactic theory contribute to​ cognitive aspect of human psyche​, since it is
concerned with discovering a mental reality underlying actual behavior." With this mentalist
interpretation of syntactic theory, in general the rule and principles of this theory approach
toward the field that is part of a broader theory of human mind, i.e. the cognitive sciences. Here
comes the concept of perception of semantic meaning in cognitive aspect of language
acquisition.The ​deep structure​ is the abstract structure that allows the native speaker of a
language to know what the sentence means. It may then be said that the deep structure
expresses the semantic content of a sentence, whereas the ​surface structure​ of a sentence
determines its phonetic form
cognitive aspect of linguistic knowledge involves not just knowledge of the language, but
knowledge of the world as mediated by the language.In addition, some aspect of cognitive
underlying i.e ​memory , perceptual​ meaning play role in language acquisition .

References:

1. George yule ,The study of language, IV edition,96-98,(2010)

2. Rohib Adrianto Sangia ,Cognitie Mechanism & syntactic theory 2-3,(April 2014)
3. Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press. ISBN
0-262-53007-4.
4. Andisheh Saniei ,Who Is An Ideal Native Speaker?! , International Conference on
Languages, Literature and Linguistics 3-4,(2011)
5. Pamela dibi anak john linggir, Stephanie gloria binti jugi, |Syntax available at:
https://www.slideshare.net/gloriousteph/syntax-62903280

Date : 26 October 2019 Dharmesh sharma(Msc I sem.)

19MNMS12