The purpose of this study is to explain the phenomena of linguistic deviance in English cognitive-semantically. English was created by people not by computers or God. So, English is not always grammatical or regular. Linguistic deviance exists in all ...
The purpose of this study is to explain the phenomena of linguistic deviance in English cognitive-semantically. English was created by people not by computers or God. So, English is not always grammatical or regular. Linguistic deviance exists in all languages. These phenomena manifest that all prescriptive rules cannot reflect complex and subtle human mind.
English has become very irregular or deviant in pronunciation and word-form because of its historical and sociological growth process such as the Norman Conquest, the Great Vowel Shift, the invention of typography, many loan words, and the others.
Language is rule-governed. Language reflects human mind and human society. So, language has very flexible and creative characteristics. English words are irregular in word-formation such as conversion, derivation, compounding, singular-plural form, male-female form, etc. And many phrases and sentences have even contradictory words. The phenomena of linguistic deviance have special meanings rather than deteriorative ungrammatically. Grammaticality has nothing to do with interpretability.
Structuralism and transformationalism have their own limitations because they regard language as autonomous system which has nothing to do with cognitive competence.
Cognitivists think that the understanding and use of languages has something to do with conceptional system, world experience, non-linguistic knowledge, cultural background, and so forth. This view enables us to explain linguistic deviant phenomena with psychological plausibility.