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Intorduction To Linguistics - Lecture notes, lectures 1 - 8

Academic year: 2015/2016
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University of Westminster

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1 Introduction to Linguistics Linguistics the scientific study of language observe, describe, theorise, analyse, explain Factual Objective Systematic Famous linguists throughout history: Panini Plato Aristotle Aristophanes St Augustine Descartes Chomsky Research Questions in Linguistics: What do we know about our language? How do we come to know this? (Language acquisition) How do we use this linguistic knowledge? (Psycholinguistics) How is this knowledge stored in our brains? (Neurolinguistics) should be seen as a Chomsky Every native speaker of a language has internalised such a system Internalised language competence (tacit knowledge of language) Externalised language performance (actual use of the language) EXAMPLES OF RULES Statements and tag questions cannot be both positive or both negative John is clever, he? John sad, is he? words have different syllable stress depending on their word class I want an increase in my salary increase is a noun and the stress is on the first syllable I want my salary to increase increase is a verb and the stress is on the second syllable Properties of Human Language: 1. Learnability all human languages are learnable (as opposed to formal languages) 2. Infinity there is no limit to producing length 3. Displacement one is able to talk about things outside of the present moment etc 4. Arbitrariness because of the differences in languages, the used to represent an object in one language has an arbitrary relationship with that object (exceptions include onomatopoeic words and used and understood universally) 5. e. Forming questions from statements: John is clever John clever? (The copular verb is moved to the beginning to form the question) It is raining it raining? (The auxiliary verb is moved to the beginning to form the question) General rule: take the auxiliary or copular verb to the beginning to form a question from a statement What you know when you say you speak a language: Phonetics (sound) Phonology (sound systems) Semantics (meaning) Syntax (sentence categories) Morphology (word and combination) Pragmatics (usage) Some adjectives when before the noun adjectives) determine what kind of that noun yet they are not determiners Morphological A noun is a word that can take the plural suffix A verb is a word that can take the past tense suffix An adjective is a word that can take the comparative suffix However What about prepositions or other categories? What about exceptions to these rules? Some languages such as Creoles or Chinese do not follow these rules Syntactic A noun occurs in the following blank space: is A verb occurs in the following blank space: will An adjective occurs in the following blank space: became extremely An adverb occurs in the following blank space: drives very A preposition occurs in the following blank space: is right the An auxiliary verb occurs in the following blank space: you stop Evidence that Categories Exist Stress placement on monosyllabic words (a phonological rule) relies on categorical information whether the word is a noun, adjective or a verb Suffixing comparative form to a word (a morphological rule) depends on whether the word is an adjective or not Interpreting ambiguous strings such as or men looked What position a word can occur in (its syntactic distribution) depends on its category (e. only an adverb or an adjective can follow Why do we need categories? To know the category of a word means you can predict where it occurs in a phrase or sentence Different linguistic rules apply to different categories Having categories enables us to state linguistic generalisations Subcategories Nouns: Count or mass Common proper Abstract concrete Animate inanimate Verbs: Transitive (needing an object) intransitive Stative Ergative unergative Unnaccusative Adjectives: Transitive intransitive Stative or dynamic Prepositions: Transitive intransitive (These books) is the head and the determiner would change depending on the amount of the head Dependants as complements: He bought a book She is fond of syntax and are heads and their dependents are complements (Dependants as complements are obligatory unless with nouns, unless the noun comes from an adjective) Dependents as adjuncts: The tin on the shelf the is an adjunct as it is optional, extra information COMPLEMENTS MUST BE NEXT TO THE HEAD (Adjuncts may follow) How to differentiate between complements and adjuncts: Obligatory (except with several nouns) optional Selected heads not selected Linearly adjacent to heads may or may not be next to the head Why do we need phrasal categories? Syntactic reasons: pronouns can only replace strings of words which are phrases The man he is reading the magazine John went to Paris and Mary went to Paris went there did too Pronouns can be (so), (he, she, etc), Semantic reasons: ambiguity e. man looked very could be an AP or an ADVP Morphological reasons: e. hat The hat Does the go at the end of the noun or the NP? The mayor of New hat Representing the Internal Structure of Sentences: Constituents: words in a sentence are grouped into units (phrases) and these units are combined to form the sentence the This can also be represented in a Phrase Marker: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. (Martin reads his book in the library) A phrase marker is a set of nodes liked lines and it reveals the internal structure of a given sentence. Why do we need them? Phrase markers can be used to explain ambiguity e. man the the man had a telescope the the telescope was used to see the man Phrase Structure Rules: S VP VP NP, PP PP NP NP (AP), N AP Affixes can be derivational or morphological Inflectional Provide grammatical information Give different forms of a word Are class maintaining Are productive can be added to many nouns) Are semantically predictable Cannot (no more than one per word) Occupy peripheral positions Are only suffixes Form a small and closed set Relevant to syntax Cannot be replaced with simplex (monomorphemic) word Derivational Provide semantic information Give different words with different meanings Can be or Are partially productive Not semantically predictable Can Occupy both peripheral and positions Can be prefixes or suffixes Form a large and potentially open set Not relevant to syntax Can be replaced with simplex, monomorphemic words E. tall er inflectional teach er derivational Derivational affixes must be closest to the root: bak er s (The is derivational, the is inflectional) Root: what gives a word its meaning Base: is a root with an affix Stem: is a base with an inflectional affix Allomorphy: Can be phonologically conditioned (pronounced differently): cats, dogs, horses Can be grammatically conditioned (different depending on Can be lexically conditioned (the word determines the plural form it takes): infants, children, 5 Semantics The study of word meanings of words and the relationships between words Principle of Compositionality: The meaning of an expression can be determined the meaning of its individual parts, the way in which they combine and the order in which they occur. Exceptions: idioms, lexicalised compounds (e skindeep) or lexically derived words (e considerable) Lexical (sense) relations between words Studies the relationships between words Synonymy different words, same meaning Homonymy same form, different meanings Polysemy same form, different but related meanings Hyponymy a specific word and a more general term Meronymy relationships Antonymy opposites, which can be complementaries e dead and alive, gradables e hot and cold, reversives e start and stop, conversives or relational e above and below Componential analysis Meanings of words are analysed in terms of their semantic features or primes Relationships between words can be captured comparing the semantic features that characterise them Man Woman Girl Used in computational linguistics Only really useful for nouns Predicate calculus The meaning of e John gave Mary the book cause AND cause have Works best with verbs The study of sentence meanings of words and the relationships between sentences TRUTH CONDITIONS: to understand the meaning of a sentence, one must know in what circumstances the sentence is true or false Sentence Relations 1. Entailment is a entails that John is male John is an adult John is an adult Only true if all the entailments are true 2. Contradiction killed Bill and Bill Part 1 implies that bill dies Part 2 negates this 3. Presupposition stole my Presupposes that the chair exists 4. Ambiguity saw the witches flying over the The subject of could be or could be 5. Paraphrase bought 5 cars were bought Different ways of writing sentences which mean the same thing e the s in measure e the ch in chain Vowels: i: e bean e barn e born e burn e pit e e pet e pat e putt e pot e put e another Primary Cardinal Vowel Chart: Dipthongs (a shift from one vowel to another): e bay e buy e boy e no au e now e peer e pair e poor The Vocal Tract: Larynx the glottis and the vocal chords Mouth and nose superglottal cavities ORAL CAVITIES: luvula, velum (the soft palate), hard palate, alveolar ridge, teeth, lips, tongue THE NASAL CAVITY: velum is lowered Active articulators: Lips (rounded, unrounded or neutral) Tongue (raised or lowered) Velum (raised or lowered) Glottis (vocal chords vibrating or not) Passive articulators: Upper teeth The alveolar ridge The palate Criteria for classifying consonants Place of articulation Manner of articulation Voicing Criteria for classifying vowels Place of articulation Shape of lips Describing Speech Sounds Place of articulation: lower and upper lips lower lip upper teeth Alveolar alveolar ridge Palatal hard palate (n) Velar soft palate Pharyngeal pharynx Glottal the larynx Manner of articulation: Oral air pushed through mouth Nasal air escapes through nose Stops obstruction in vocal tract (can be bilabial, alveolar, velar, glottal, nasal) Plosives bilabial, alveolar and velar Fricatives articulators brought close enough to produce friction Describing Speech Sounds Vowels Tongue height e e Front or back of tongue Lip rounding Rounded Spread Neutral (hesitative) Phonology Every language has its own phonological system The basic unit of phonology is the phoneme Another important concept is the syllable Syllables Words can be analysed in terms of syllables 1. Central Phonemes: Abstract unit of phonological analysis Placed in forward slashes: Two sound segments are phonemes if substituting one for the other results in a change in meaning e like pat bat, lip lid, line lime 7 Child Language Acquisition (One of the applications of linguistics) Logical problems of language acquisition: Children acquire adult language with ease, without help, in a short period of time Adult grammar is complex Input undermines the grammar they require (Poverty of Stimulus) Input is often degenerate Input contains no negative evidence Acquisition path Pre linguistic stage Babies who are just a few days old can recognise the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds. Early months: noises (crying, cooing etc) 6 months: babbling (primarily CV etc) months: speech (1st word) Linguistic stage months: holophrastic stage (1 word at a time) On average, a ba will know around 70 words the time they are 17m old, some children will prefer referential words (mummy, teddy etc), others will favour expressive words (hi, e etc) months: telegraphic stage (words are gradually brought together e predominantly words from open word classes, can be used to express possession, location, recurrence, demonstration) 22 months onwards: multiword stage (more than 2 words in a sentence e play little Single words: Pronunciation: Tend to follow specific patterns e replacing fricative sounds and with stops and and reducing consonant clusters Usage: Overextension: using one word to apply to other similar things e for most Underextension: using a word in one application but not all e for snow, but not for paper or a white wall How children learn languages: Behaviourist Theory (B. Skinner): Children come to language learning with a Learn through imitation However Research has shown that children do not learn through imitation Children are creative and produce words that are not in their environment Nativist Theory (N. Chomsky): Children have a predisposition to learning languages The stages are biologically predetermined There is a biologically determined critical period (evidence from Genie)

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Intorduction To Linguistics - Lecture notes, lectures 1 - 8

Module: Linguistics (1LIN400)

University: University of Westminster

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1 – Introduction to Linguistics
Linguistics = the scientific study of language
observe, describe, theorise, analyse, explain
Factual
Objective
Systematic
Famous linguists throughout history:
Panini
Plato
Aristotle
Aristophanes
St Augustine
Descartes
Chomsky
Research Questions in Linguistics:
What do we know about our language?
How do we come to know this? (Language acquisition)
How do we use this linguistic knowledge? (Psycholinguistics)
How is this knowledge stored in our brains? (Neurolinguistics)
"Language should be seen as a rule-based system" - Chomsky
Every native speaker of a language has internalised such a rule-based system
Internalised language (I-language) = competence (tacit knowledge of language)
Externalised language (E-language) = performance (actual use of the language)
EXAMPLES OF RULES
Statements and tag questions cannot be both positive or both negative
John is clever, isn't he?
+ve -ve
John isn't sad, is he?
+ve -ve
Bi-syllabic words have different syllable stress depending on their word class
I want an increase in my salary - increase is a noun and the stress is on the first syllable
I want my salary to increase - increase is a verb and the stress is on the second syllable
Properties of Human Language:
1. Learnability - all human languages are learnable (as opposed to formal languages)
2. Creativity/Discrete Infinity - there is no limit to producing sentences/sentence length
3. Displacement - one is able to talk about things outside of the present moment -
past/future/conditional etc
4. Arbitrariness - because of the differences in languages, the word/sound used to represent an
object in one language has an arbitrary relationship with that object (exceptions include
onomatopoeic words and signs/symbols used and understood universally)
5. Structure-dependency - e.g. Forming yes/no questions from statements:
John is clever ➡️ Is John clever? (The copular verb "is" is moved to the beginning to form the
question)

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