TACIT VERSUS CONSCIOUS KNOWLEDGE * Tacit vs. conscious knowledge * Descriptive vs. prescriptive rules * Each human language corresponds to a highly complex system of rules * Linguistics involves studying these rules and their implications

SPEECH AND PHONEMES * The Language Faculty is a mental system that converts a physical signal (sound or sign) into meaning, and vice versa. * The Language Faculty makes several intermediate step between sound and meaning. * Phonemes are the smallest segment of speech that leads to meaningful contrasts between words is. * The properties of the vocal folds (the source), such as frequency and amplitude, are not critical to speech sounds. * It is the properties of the vocal tract (the filter) that are critical. * Formants are the highest amplitude peaks in the frequency spectrum created by the human vocal tract. Different formants lead to different speech sounds.

ARTICULORY FEATURES AND CATEGORICAL PERCEPTION * Formants are the physical properties of phonemes that appear to be most critical to speech perception * However, we don’t use formants directly (we know this because of the three problems with formants). * Instead, during comprehension we convert formants into the articulatory features that the speaker used to create the formants. * Consonants are each made up of three features: place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. * Vowels are each made up of two features: tongue height and tongue backness * The exact process used to convert formants into articulatory features is an active area of research. * Categorical Perception

EMPIRICISM VS NATIVISM * Two main accounts of the presence of knowledge: * innate (nativism) * through experience (empiricism) 
 * History of ideas & arguments
 * Modern Nativism: