LING 200
WEEK 1 FRIDAY
The * means that its ungrammatical, not possible
Do practice quiz, not graded!
· Linguistic is the scientific study and analysis of the structure of language
· It’s a science
· Studying and looking at language, using scientific methods
· Language is structured-it’s organized
· What does it mean to ‘know’ a language
· Can be understood by another speaker of the language
· Just by asking. If they can understand- presumably they know the same language
· Common knowledge
· If you hear someone speaking, you can usually tell if they speak it
· By recognize familiar and unfamiliar.
· Linguistic competence
· What you know about your language. The knowledge a speaker has about their native language
· The knowledge you know about your language is HIDDEN.
· How do linguistics study the unconscious knowledge
· By observing speakers, see what they do and say.
· this is called LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE.
· You can indirectly observing by looking and listening.
· Levels of linguistic structure
LOWEST: Phonetics/Phonology (sounds)
Morphology (words, how their built)
Syntax (Sentence larger unites of words)
HIGHEST: Semantics (meaning that relates to word and sentences)
·
· PHONETICS
· Study of the physical properties of speech sounds
· The fundamental building blocks of language
· Focuses on acoustics, pronounce and how sounds are formed
· E.g, how many sounds of English are there? Around 40.
· PHONOLOGY
· The organization of the speech sounds
· E.g blick vs bnick
· MORPHOLOGY
· The formation of words = suffix, prefix
· E.g quick adding ly = quickly
· E.g fastly = *fastly (ungrammatically)
· SYNTAX
· The structure of phrases and sentences.
· Putting words together to sentences.
· Mixing words can get different meanings, you can mix, but you cant go to far.
· E.g the cat chased the dog vs the dog chased the cat.
· Cant do “the cat dog the chased”
· SEMANTICS
· The study of meaning of words and or sentences.
· The meaning of near can have multiple meanings
· Proximity, how close something is
· But not inside.
· E.g. “I once shot an elephant in my pajamas”
· Who is wearing the pajamas?
· Me, or the elephant is in my pajamas,
· Different meanings without even changing the order
· Linguistic competence
· Lexicon (mental lexicon)
· Mental dictionary, that stores everything WE know about our words, meanings, etc
· Mental grammar
· More of the rules, a mental grammar.
· A system of rules that govern how sounds of our language word, how its built etc.
· All the things that we consider ungrammatical e.g bnick, fastly, is in this section of mental grammar.
· Grammar in linguistics can mean different things
· Mental grammar is linguistic competence that tells us the rules.
· Most people in grammar think of grammar based on school- prescriptive grammar.
· Prescriptive grammar prescribes rules governing what people should/shouldn’t say to be considered correct or proper.
· E.g its not funner, its more fun.
· My friend and I, not me and my friend.
· Linguistics is more focused with descriptive grammar
· Which describes the rules that govern what people do or can say in their language.
· Just governs what people do say.
· Come up with the rules by seeing what we observe native speakers say
· E.g funner- its not proper but it is said a lot.
· “in English, adjectives precede the nouns they modify.” .
Lecture 2- October 1, 2018
WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
1. Language “an abstract cognitive system that uniquely allows humans to produce and comprehend meaningful utterances.”
2. Question: is language unique to humans?
Design Features of Language
1. Charles Hockett(1960)- known for coming up with design features of language.
2. 9 characteristics that distinguish language from other communication systems.
3. Language must have ALL 9 features:
a) Mode of communication- body language, pheromones
b) Semanticity- has meaning to that message
c) Pragmatic function- purpose, there’s a reason why you are sending that message
d) Interchangeability
i) A user can both transmit and receive messages
ii) Between elephants both female and males can send and receive messages
iii) In moth society females send out pheromones to look for a male and they receive but they don’t send one back
iv) Humpback whales only males sing beautiful songs to communicate but the females don’t send it back.
e) Cultural transmission
i) Some aspect of communication system is learned from other users
ii) E.g. Japanese child of French speaking parents will speak French
iii) E.g cuckoo birds will be left by their mum and adopted by a different kind of bird but will still make cuckoo sounds because of biological
iv) Killer whales on the other hand adapt to the pods sounds instead of the one they were born with.
f) Arbitrariness
i) There is not necessarily a connection between form of signal and its meaning.
ii) Iconic connection is when a dog growls and they don’t need to talk for humans to understand that when a dog growls it’s a sign that you could be bit.
iii) Puffer fish blowing up physically as a sign to communicate that they aren’t small and timid.
iv) Even onomatopoeia can be arbitrary
g) Discreteness
i) Larger, complex messages can be broken into smaller discrete parts
ii) A sentence can be broken down into words
iii) E.g I am sam→ I →am→sam→ ai→ ae m→ s ae m
h) Displacement
I. Ability to communicate about things not present in space or time.
i) Productivity
I. Users can create infinite number of novel utterances that others can understand
II. “eating a squirrel taco without ranch dressing is like playing leapfrog with a unicorn- a very bad idea basically”
4. Pheromones: leaving a scent or something
Vervet monkeys
· 3 alarm calls for different predators
· Baby vervets watch adults for appropriate response to alarm calls
· Often make alarm calls incorrectly
Lecture 4-3/10
QUIZ 1 TOMORROW!!!!!
What is phonetics?
1) The scientific study of human speech sounds
· How they are produced(articulatory)
· How they are perceived(auditory)
· Their physical properties(acoustic)
Decoding the speech stream
1) Speech is continuous. There are no ‘spaces’ between words, yet we hear discrete, separate units
Phonetic transcription
1) A method of representing continuous acoustic stream as discrete, linguistic units
2) IPA: International Phonetic Alphabet: a standardized set of symbols used for representing all possible human speech sounds
Why use IPA?
1) Uses a one to one correspondence between symbol and sound
IPA VS orthography
1) Same letter may represent different sounds
· Dad, father, about, many, ate
2) Different letters may represent the same sound
· Believe, receive, people, amoeba, sea, funny, tree
3) A sequence of letters may represent one sound
· Shoot vs nation; thing vs this; foot vs food
4) One letter may represent a sequence of sounds
· Box, use
5) Some letters have no sound
· Gnaw, size, sword, debt, damn, bomb
IPA
1) Some symbols will look and sound familiar:
[b n w..]
2) Some will look familiar but sound unfamiliar:
[x q]
3) Some will sound familiar but look unfamiliar:
4) Some will look and sound unfamiliar:
Monday week 3
· Review of consonants
· For consonants, three-part classification system:
1) Voicing
2) Place (of articulation)
3) Manner (of articulation)
· What is the difference between consonants and vowels?
· Articulatory
· Consonants → Airflow contsiction
· Vowels→ air flows freely
· Acoustic
· Consonants→quieter
· Vowels→longer, louder
· Vowels
· Four chambers in the vocal tract
· Oral cavity
· Pharynx (behind the tongue)
· Area between lips
· Nasal cavity
Length, shape of each cavity affect resonance/quality of vowel
· Duck call vowels demo
· Articulatory Description
· 4 part classification system for vowels
1) Tongue height
· High: [i] ‘beat’ [I] “bit” [u] ‘boot’ [U] ‘put’
· Mid: [e]/[eI] ‘bait’ [E] ‘bet’ [o]/[oU] ‘boat’ [vupside down] ‘but’/ [eupside down] ‘the’
· Low: [ae] ‘hat’ [a] ‘hot’ ‘bar’
2) Tongue advancement
Tongue position
· Midsagittal views of tongue position in 3 vowels
3) Lip rounding
· rounded: with rounded lips, back vowels
· unrounded: with unrounded lips
4) Vowel tenses
· Tense: more extreme (or peripheral) tongue position; [i] [e] [u] [o]
· Lax vowels: [I] [] [u] [c] [a] [ae] [] []
5) Dipthongs
Dipthongs: two part vowels that transition one vowel to another in the same syllable
Wednesday Lecture week 3
HW 1 due tomorrow
Phonology
1) The study of the organization of speech sounds in a language:
· How they function
· How they are distributed
Function
1) Contrastiveness vs noncantrastiveness
2) Do the sounds function to distinguish meaning
Contrastiveness
1) Sounds are contrastive if interchanging them can change meaning of word
Ex: English [p]/[b]=contrastive
[læp]’lap’ vs. [læb] ‘lab’
English [t]/[r]= non-contrastive
[kIti] ‘kitty’ vs. [kIri] ‘kitty’
2) Languages can differ in which sounds are contrastive
Ex: Spanish [t]/[r]=contrastive
[pata] “animal leg’ vs. [para] ‘for’
Hindi [p]/[ph]= contrastive
[phal] ‘blade’ vs. [pal] ‘take care of’ [bal] ‘hair’
3) Minimal pair:
· Words that differ by a single sound in same position and have different meanings
· Ex: m/n: [sɅm] ‘sum’ vs. [sɅn] ‘sun’
· Ex: k/g: [BɅk ‘buck’ vs. [bɅg] ‘bug’
· Ex: s/S: [mƐsi] ‘messy’ vs. [mƐfi] ‘meshy
· Ex: [fil] ‘feel’ vs. [fIL] ‘fill’ vs [fel] ‘fell’
4) Sounds in minimal pairs may be contrastive in multiple features or a single feature:
· Ex: voicing is contrastive in alveolar stops:
[bæt] ‘bat’ vs. [bæd] ‘bad’
· Place is contrastive in nasals:
[sɅm] ‘sum’ vs. [sɅŋ] ‘sung’
· Manner is contrastive in voiceless alveolars:
[mƐs] ‘mess’ vs. [mƐt] ‘met’
· Vowel height is contrastive in front on unrounded lax V:
[pIt] ‘pit’ vs. [pƐt] ‘pet’
5) Sounds in a minimal pair
· Contrast
· Unpredictacble
· Belong to different phonemes
Phoneme vs allophone
Phoneme:
1) Abstract mental representation of set of sounds (‘allophones’) considered by native speakers to be same sound
2) Serve to distinguish meaning
Allophone:
1) The different phonetic realizations of a phoneme
2) Allophones of same phoneme are noncontrastive
Phoneme vs. Allophone
Top stop little kitten
[thap][stap][lIrl][kIɁņ]
Phoneme → /t/
Allophones → [th] [t] [r] [Ɂ]
A) Distirbution
· Contrastive distribution: when sounds can occure in same phonotec environment (i.e may form a minimal pair)
Ex: Initial: [su] ‘sue’ vs [zu] ‘zoo’
Medial: [fʌsi] ‘fussy’ vs. [fʌzi] ‘fuzzy’
Final: [lus] ‘loose’ vs. [luz] ‘lose’
· Complementary distribution: when (phonetically similar sounds never occur in exact same phonetic environment, but in mutually-exclusive (or complementary) environments.
Ex: Eng ph/p: [phæt] ‘pat’ [spæt] ‘spat’
[phul] ‘pool’ [spul] ‘spool’
[phik] ‘peak’ [spik] ‘speak’
Sounds in complementary distribution
· Are allophones of a single phoneme
· Are noncontrastive
· Do not occur in minimal pairs
· Are predictable (based on environment)
Friday lecture week 3
Review
Phonemes
· Abstract, mental units
· Contrastive
· Unpredictable, contrastive distribution
Allophones
· Surface, phonetic units
· Noncontrastive
· Predictable, complementary distribution
Phonological rules
/Phonemic/representation
↓
Phonological rules
↓
[Allophonic] representation
1) Account for predictable properties of pronounciation
2) Have 3 parts:
3) A) phonemes that undergo the tule
B) Result of the rule
C,D) environment where the rule applies
4) /A/ → [B] / C__D
5) “A becomes B in the environment between C and D
Some phonological rules of English
1) Aspiration:
“/p,t,k/ become aspirated at the beginning of a word”
Ex: /p,t,k/→[ph,th,kh]/#__ [#=word boundary]
2) Flapping:
“/t,d/ become a flap after a stressed vowel and before an unstressed vowel”
Ex: /t,d/→ [r]/ ṽ__v
3) Assimilation: sound becomes more like neighbouring sounds in some phonetic features
Bleed [blid] plead[pholid]
Drain[dɹeIn] train[thoɹeIn]
graze[gɹeIz] craze[khoɹeIz]
glass[ glæs] class[kholæs]
“/l,ⱹ/→ [ol, oɹ]/ voiceless C__
Natural classes
Phonological rules tend to refer to natural classes
1) A class of sounds, with features in common (to the exclusion of all other sounds in the language), that are treated as a group by the phonology.
2) Ex: In English is [ ʃ, ʧ]= voiceless postalveolars
[ɪ,ʊ]= High lax vowels
3) Flapping: [t,d]
Alveolar stops undergo the rule
4) Voicing assimilation: [l,ɹ]
Liquis undergo the rule
how to do phonological analysis
1) Check for minimal pairs:
If yes→ stop(=contrastive distribution)
If no→go to 2
2) List phonetic environments for each sound (state using natural classes)
3) Do the envrionemnets overlap?
If yes→stop (contrastive distribution)
If no= complementary distribution (go to 4)
4) Write the rule that accounts for the distribution
Daga: [t] vs [s]
[jamosivin] I am licking [wagat] holiday
[jamotain] they will lick [out] little
[asi] grunt [topen] hit
[anet] we should go [use] there
[senao] shout [sinao] drum
[Urase] hole [tave] old
Wednesday Lecture week 4
WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY
· The study of words and the rules for word formation in a language
What is a word
· A meaningful unit of language that can stand on its own
· Ex: bee, think, scratch, squirrel
· Complex words: Beehive, thinks, scratching, squirrelly
· May be composed of one or more morphemes
MORPHEME
· The smallest meaningful linguistic unit
· Simple words: Apple, cat salamander= morphemes
· Complex words: Scratching→Scratch(morpheme) and -ing(morpheme)
· Played→ Play(morpheme) and -ed(morpheme)
· Obviously scratch can stand on its own but -ing cant
TYPES OF MORPHEMES
· Free vs bound morphemes
· Roots vs affixes
· Derivational vs inflectional affixes
· Content vs function morphemes
FREE VS. BOUND MORPHEMES
· Free morphemes: can occur as simple words all by themselves, so they can stand on their own
Ex: Cat, eat, green, pumpkin, the, is
· Bound morphemes: Cannot stand alone, must be attached to other morphemes
· Ex: birds, tapping, burped, reapply, unscrew
ROOTS VS. AFFIXES
· Roots: The base to which affixes attach; cannot be analyzed into smaller parts
· Can be free or bound
· Free roots:
Cat→ cats, catty, catlike, uncatlike
Love→ loves, lovely, loving, unlovable
· Bound roots:
struct: construct, destruct, obstruct, instruct, structure
tain: contain, detain, retain, obtain, pertain, attain
· Affix: morphemes attached to a root (or affixed base)
· All affixes are bound
· Prefix: beginning of a word (Ex: prepay, undo)
· Suffix: end of word (Ex: sadness, sadly, sadder)
· Infix: in the middle of a root word
A) Tagalog [-um]: [bili] ‘buy’→ [bumili] ‘to buy’
· Circumfix: ‘around’ a word (at both ends)
A) German [ge—t]: spiel- ‘play’→ gespielt ‘(past participaton)’
· Kindnesses= bound suffix eventhough it is in the middle it is still a suffix because there is no “kindes” word
DERIVATIONAL VS. INFLECTIONAL AFFIXES
· Derivational Affixes: Make or derive a new word with a new meaning from another. (may exchange lexical category)
· VERB + -er →noun
Ex: worker
Singer
· ADJ + ness→ noun
Ex: Sadness
Fairness
· It doesn’t work when this happens:
· Un- + ADJ → ADJ
Ex: unhappy
Unfair
· Re-+ VERB→ Verb
Ex: Redraw
Redo
· Inflectional Affixes: indicate grammatical function; do not change the lexical category or basic meaning of the word
· Verb: 3rd person singular: -s (he walks)
· Past tense: -ed (he walked)
· Progressive: -ing (he is walking)
· Past participle: -en (They have eaten)
· Noun: Plural: -s (two cats)
· ADJ: comparative: -er (she is older)
· : superlative: -est (she is oldest)
· NOTE: THEY ARE ALL SUFFIXES
CONTENT VS. FUNCTION MORPEHEMES
Content morphemes: Have some kind of semantic meaning of their own
· Noun/ verb/ adjective/ adverb roots:
· Crocodile, swim, red, noodle, fast..
· Derivational affixes: uncool, reapply, quickly, gladness
Function morphemes’:
· Provide information about grammatical function by relating words of a sentence
· Do not have substantial semantic content of their own
A) Inflectional affixes: -s, -ing, -ed
B) Determiners: a, an, the, this
C) Conjunctions: and, but, or
D) Prepositions: in, of, from, for
E) Pronouns: I, you, he
F) Auxiliaries: am, is, are
Friday lecture week 4
Morphological processes
Processes of new word formation
· Affixation
· Derivational affixes: Form new words with new meaning and (possibly) new lexical category created
· Inflectional affixes: indicate grammatical roles without changing lexical category
· Reduplication: forming new words by doubling a whole word (total reduplication) or part of it (partial reduplication)
· Indonesian plural(total):
· Ex: Orang ‘person’ orang-orang ‘people’
· Ex: Lalat ‘fly’ lalat-lalat ‘flies’
· Tagalog future tense (partial):
· Ex: Bili ‘buy’ bibili ‘will buy’
· Ex: Kain ‘eat’ kakain ‘will eat’
· Alternation: morpheme- internal changes
· Plural: man~men, goose~ geese
· [æ]~[ɛ] [u]~[i]
· Verb tense: ring~ rang~ rung
· [ɪ] ~ [æ] ~ [ʌ]
· Derivational: strife(n.)~ strive(v.), use(n.) ~use(v).
· [f] ~ [v] [s] ~ [z]
· Suppletion: morphological inflection indicated with phonetically unrelated form.
· Verbs: go ~ went
· I am ~ I was
· Adjectives: good ~ better ~ best
· Bad ~ worse ~ worst
· Compounding: combination of two (or more) independent words to form a new one
· Adj noun verb
Adj bittersweet blackboard smalltalk
Noun headstrong doghouse spoonfeed
Verbs blowdry pickpocket sleepwalk
· Stress patern in compounds differs from phrases
· Ex: green house vs. greenhouse
· Blends: Combining parts of two words ( usually beginning of one + ending of another)
· Ex: Brunch = breakfast + lunch
· Ex: motel= motor + hotel
· Ex: Smog= smoke + fog
· Clipping: shortening a word by deleting syllable(s)
· Gasoline
· Laboratory
· Demonstration
· Examination
· inFluenza
· telephone
· Acronyms: using initial letter(s) of each word in a phrase/title to form a new pronounceable word
· PIN: Personal Identification number
· HUB: Husky Union Building
· CHID: Comparative history of Ideas
· Conversions: deriving new word with new lexical vategory from another without change in form (a.k.a. zero derivation)
· Ex: I like to laugh (V) → You have a funny laugh (N)
· I picked up the mail (N)→ I need to mail a letter (V)
· The beer was cold(ADJ) → she enjoys the cold(N)
· He was texting in class → texting is not allowed
Productivity
In morphology: Processes that apply freely in the formation of new words are productive
Monday lecture week 5
MORPHOLOGY 3: MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Morphological analysis
· The key is comparison
· Compare similar forms with recurring phonetic units and meanings
· Ancient Greek:
· [graphɔ:] ‘I write’
· [graphɛ:] ‘he writes’
· [Phɛ:si] ‘you speak’
· “phɛ” is not a morpheme
· Do not assume morpheme order is same as English
· Tagalog:
· Kumakain ako ‘I eat’
· Kumakain siya ‘he eats’
· Do not assume every English contrast will be expressed in other languages
· Zulu:
· [abafazi] ‘married women’
· [abafani] ‘boys’
· [abazali] ‘parents’
· [umfazi] ‘married woman’
· [umfani] ‘boy’
· [umzali] ‘parent’
· [aba-]= plural
· [um-]= singular
· What is the order of morpheemes in a trukish word
· Noun + ‘little’ (adj) + plural + poss+ preposition
· “my little teeth” = diʃ dʒik ler im in
· Turkish
· [denizler] ‘oceans’
· [evler] ‘houses’
· [Eller] ‘hands’
· [diʃler] ‘teeth’
· [paltolar] ‘coats’
· [adamlar] ‘men’
· [kaplanlar] ‘tigers’
· [kurtlar] ‘worms’
· Allomorphs: different phonetic realizations of the same morpheme
· What is the conditioning environment for the two plural allomorphs?
· [-ler] if vowels of the root are front
· [-lar] if vowels of the root are back
· Allomorphy in eglish:
· I[m]balance
· I[n]tolerable
· I[ŋ]complete
· I[ɹ]responsible
· I[n]adequate
· I[m]precise
· I[n]decisive
· I[ŋ]grate
· I[l]legal
· I[n]efficient
· Im-, in-, iŋ-, ir-, il- are all allomorphs of the same morpheme ‘not’
· What is the condition environment for the different allomorphs?
· /in-/ ‘not’ the least one showing up
ENGLISH PLURAL ALLOMORPHY
· What is the plural morpeheme in English?
· Plyral of..
· ‘cat’[khæt]→ ‘cats’ [khæts]
· ‘dog’ [dag]→ ‘dogs’ [dagz]
· ‘bee’ [bi:] → ‘bees’ [bi:z]
· What is the conditioning environment for the two plural allomorphs?
· [-s] after voiceless consonants
· [-z] everywhere else
· English plural morpeheme:
· /z/ is basic occurring in widest set of environments and /s/ is restricted
