Welcome to the webpage for Sections 2 and 5 of Ling 201. This site should be used in conjunction with the main course webpage, where you can access the syllabus and other essential course information and materials.
12 April
This afternoon's lecture by Geoff Nunberg, which I announced in class last week, will not be held today; it has been postponed until September.
16 February
Please remember to write your name on all homework assignments and quizzes! Not doing so could result in your not receiving credit for your work. Also please remember that I will not accept late homework.
9 February
Today was the first quiz, of which there will be seven more. Please note now that no late taking of quizzes will be permitted, without exception.
2 February, first section meeting
For those who may have missed the first lectures, remember that all course materials and assignments can be downloaded from the main course webpage main course web page; click on materials for course packets distributed in lecture, and on assignments to download and print assignments.
A few people were not registered for the section they attended today. Double check on Spire to confirm which section you are actually registered for, and then be sure to attend that regularly. If you need to switch sections and are uncertain about how to do so on Spire, you can consult these instructions. Also remember that several, smaller sections of 201 are still open to enrollment.
We discussed the linguistic subfield pragmatics and the type of phenomena that it seeks to account for; we also began to speculate on the complex ways in which pragmatics might interact with the linguistic systems we have been studying so far in this course (i.e. morphology and syntax). We reviewed Grice's Maxims, and discussed some some of the examples of naturally occurring instances of maxim flouting you described in Assignment 6, which was due today.
Exam 2 was returned. We discussed word order typology, using data from a variety of languages spoken natively or studied by members of the class. We considered the ease with which our system accounts for certain well attested orders (SVO and SOV), and why verb initial languages, on the other hand, present challenges to our current system. We saw how appeal to movement might provide a possible resolution.
Exam 2 was today. I also returned last week's quiz and Assignment 5.
Quiz 4. We reviewed our principles for drawing VP trees, and then discussed the structure of NPs, focusing particularly on the nature of Determiners and the function of N'.
We reviewed what we've learned so far about VP structure, and then practiced drawing trees. Here are the phrases we used, as well as some additional phrases for which it would be good to try to draw the corresponding trees when practicing on your own.
Section is cancelled today, but I welcome you to please contact me if you would like to arrange an appointment (for this week or the week after break) to discuss any questions about any of the course material so far.
We discussed Assignment 3, which was due today; as part of this discussion, we reviewed tree structure and the relevant terminology. Make sure you understand all of the terms we discussed (on page 14 of Handout 7).
We discussed compounds, and the tests for identifying them (Use Handout 9 as a guide in reviewing!)
I returned the exam, and we discussed it. We worked on the morphological puzzle involving data from the (now dead) language Orkhono-Yeniseyan. It is found on page 19 of Coursepack 2, and also on the second page of this handout.
I returned Asssignment 2. Here are some very clarifying comments on Questions 5 and 6, courtesy of TA Kathryn Pruitt.
Exam 1 was today. I will return these to you next week, and we will spend a bit of time going over the correct answers. If you have any remaining questions about the test, Assignment 2, or any of the material covered so far, next section would be a perfect time to raise them.
Assignment 2 was due. The main topic for today was syntactic categories, and how to apply tests such as those in Handout 5 (Unit 2) to determine syntactic category. It would be helpful to review this handout, and ask me if you are unclear about the nature of these tests.
We reviewed the notion of recursion by going over Handout 4 from Coursepack 2, and then we began morphology. Handout 6 contains useful morphological terms you should be sure you understand. I also handed out these two morphology puzzle. We didn't have time to start going over them in class, but you might look at them and begin thinking about them on your own before the next section meeting.
Today was the first discussion section meeting. We reviewed the notion of grammaticality, and how we can get at it with the help of native speakers' intuitions and judgments. We also considered factors that can obscure grammaticality judgments, including prescriptivism and processing factors. I mentioned this wikipedia article about the grammatical but very difficult to process 'buffalo sentences'. Wikipedia also has articles on a few other sentences we discussed in class, including this very famous sentence devised by Noam Chomsky. Examples of the sentences containing multiple center embeddings I mentioned in class can be seen here.