|
December 19, 2005 |
|
" " " " " I have posted all the
grades that I have up to this moment (except for the final exams turned in
today). Please take the time to
remove your graded work from my mailbox. Please also review your online
grades. I will be
calculating your final grades soon, so it’s better for you to tell me NOW if
you think I entered any of your grades incorrectly. A couple of people have
asked to meet with me this week.
It is very difficult for me to get on campus over the next couple of
days. I’m happy to advise by
email. Another option is to come
during the exam time on Wednesday and ask me questions then. |
|
December 15, 2005 |
|
All copies of Homework
#10 that you turned in on Tuesday are graded and in my mailbox for you to
take. [also: I know that the word “apocalyptic” is
spelled wrong on the exam.
Consider it the one error for this assignment] Again, have a great
holiday break! |
|
December 13, 2005 |
|
Today we went over the
homework and reviewed syntactic tree building. I tried to explain why tree structure is useful in terms
of attachment ambiguity and the use of words like “him” vs. “himself.” (Wikipedia has
a bit more complicated version of the him/himself thing, but it’s simpler
than any linguistics website that I could direct you to –you don’t need to
know this for the exam, I mention it purely because it’s interesting) At the end of class I
passed out the FINAL EXAM. ·
The exam is due
between 4 and 6pm in Bartlett 61 on December 21st. This is the scheduled exam
time/place. ·
YOU CAN PASS IN YOUR EXAM
EARLIER. Everything else you need to know involves my mailbox. Helen Stickney’s Mailbox ·
My mailbox is in 226
South College. ·
In the mailbox are multiple
large envelopes. ·
One envelope contains
extra blank exams. ·
One envelope is for
your completed exams. ·
One envelope is for
turning in any late work that you want to give me (and also any slips showing
proof that you did a linguistics experiment) ·
One envelope contains
graded homework assignments
--please take them.
University policy requires me to hold on to them for a few years if you don’t pick them up, so do me a favor. ALSO:
I will try, as quickly as I can, to grade the homework you passed in today so
that you can look at it while doing your exam. So look in this folder over the next
couple of days. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS about the exam or anything
else, please email me and ask, or set up a
time to meet with me. I’m still
available to be helpful. HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY
BREAK!! |
|
December 8, 2005 |
|
As you may have noticed, I’m
taking longer than usual to post the lecture notes. This is due to the peculiar circumstances of needing to be
at school to upload things (my computer at home is useless) and the fact that
I’m having some trouble with the left half of my body that makes it difficult
for me to sit for more than 30 minutes at a time without pain. Please be forgiving. I will post the lecture notes in
spurts over the next few days, hopefully having everything from this week
posted by the end of Monday. In addition, I will be forgiving of you. If you have any homeworks that you didn’t turn in due to one circumstance or another, feel free to turn it in before the end of the semester and I will grade it accordingly. Today we discussed Phrase Structure Rules and tree drawing some more. PS Rules tell you what can be appear in any particular phrase. Tree drawing gives you a structure for those phrases (and ultimately can define the relationship between words in a sentence in strikingly accurate ways). We looked at sentences in Afar and made PS Rules for that language. To write PS Rules for another language: · Label the category of each word, N, V, P, etc. · Use English PS Rules, meaning, and your intuition to figure out which words belong in which phrases. · If you find that “yellow ball the” in Language X means “the yellow ball” in English, then you can assume that for Language X the NP looks something like: (AP) N (Det). ß I’ve made the assumption here that the Adjective Phrase and the Determiner are optional because probably not all Noun Phrases have them ---but you should go with what the data tells you. If all the NPs you have have adjectives in them, then you don’t need to put parentheses around the AP. We then motivated using IP instead of S to represent the sentence. (IP is discussed on page 160 in your textbook). Why use IP instead of S? · Moving toward making all of the elements in the tree have the same structure. · It gives us a head to put Auxiliaries like “might,” “could,” and “will” in, instead of making VP have two specifiers in sentences like “John will probably sleep.” · Remember that a phrase in the tree has power over everything beneath it (=inside it). IP is the highest phrase that we currently have and it is headed by tense and mood. Tense and words like “might” and “could” tell us information about the entire sentence. If I say “John will kiss Mary,” the “will” tells us about the time period of John kissing Mary. Likewise if I say, “John might kiss Mary,” the “might” is giving us information about the possibility of John kissing Mary. Hence tense and mood give us information relevant to the whole sentence, so it is only appropriate that it heads the highest phrase in the sentence. · IP means Inflectional Phrase because the objects that head IP are involved in the verb’s inflection. Homework due Tuesday Dec. 13: PDF |
|
December 6, 2005 |
|
Today we started by taking one of the constituent trees
from the homework and changing it from this to this. (for
some reason, the right side of these images is getting cut off… Hopefully the
problem is solved for image links below) I pointed out how in in the framework we are building, most of the phrases look identical with a head, bar and phrase level –and places for complements and specifiers to attach. I then added an extra bar level for optional things (you only need to draw this when an optional phrase is attaching). In the sentence “John kissed Gina under the mistletoe” the NP “Gina” is the complement to the verb, the PP “under the mistletoe” is an adjunct. Whereas a complement’s information is implied by the (preceding) head, and therefore required, an adjunct provides extra non-essential information to the sentence. This is a tree of the Verb Phrase “kissed Gina under the mistletoe.” The bar level to which adjuncts attach (as seen in the link above) is call V'' (V double bar, or X'' because phrases other than verbs can take an adjunct –see below). Complements always precede adjuncts (as exemplified in (a) and (b) below) (a) I kissed Jane under the bridge. (b) *I kissed under the bridge Jane. (Also, if we tried to put the adjunct first, but attach the phrases to the correct spots in the VP, the lines would cross, yikes!) Adjuncts attach more freely than complements because they are not required information. Which is why we can have ambiguous sentences when an adjunct has two possible attachment sites. Like the Groucho Marx joke "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he
got into my pajamas I'll never know." The reason this joke is funny is because the sentence “I shot an elephant in my pajamas” has two meanings. We can account for these two meanings by attaching the adjunct “in my pajamas” to different locations in the tree. For the meaning “I was doing the shooting while wearing my pajamas” the adjunct is attached to the VP. For the meaning “The elephant was wearing my pajamas when I shot him” the adjunct is attached to the NP. [structural ambiguity related to ambiguity in meaning is also discuss on pages 219-220 in your textbook] We then moved on to talk about Phrase Structure Rules. PS Rules are another way to talk about how words group together to form sentences without having to do tedious constituency tests. Early on in modern linguistic theory these rules were thought of as part of the grammar, stipulating what phrase fit where. The most basic rule is this: S --> NP VP It tells us that a sentence is composed of a subject Noun Phrase and a Verb Phrase. This is not enough information to make a sentence however because we need instructions telling us what an NP is composed of and what a VP is composed of. NP --> (Det) (AP…) N (PP…) This tells us what we find in an NP. With these instructions we can create a Noun Phrase like “the dog”, but we can’t say anymore yet because we don’t know what’s in an Adjective Phrase nor what’s in a Prepositional Phrase. However, if we say that an Adjective Phrase contains an adjective, and a Prepositional Phrase contains an Preposition and a Noun Phrase, then we can begin building extremely large (in fact, infinite) NPs. AP --> A PP --> P NP Tree of “the alien from Uranus.” The PP rule says that a PP conatins a P and an NP. The NP rule says that NP’s optionally contain PP’s. We now have a combination of rules that is recursive. Our NP can be infinitely large because it can contain a PP that contains an NP that contains a PP that contains an NP… Therefore, if we had enough memory and attention to process it, a noun phrase could go on for quite a long time. “The silly girl from New Mexico with the big basket of potatoes from the field near the big rock under the massive oak tree near that house on the hill…” We then went on to discuss Verb Phrases. We came up with 5 different types of verb phrases depending on what type of complement (if any) they required. VP1 is intransitive, it doesn’t take a complement. Intransitive verbs are verbs like “sleep,” “die,” and “arrive.” VP2 is transitive, it takes one noun as its complement. Transitive verbs are verbs like “devour,” “hunt,” and “kiss.” VP3 is ditransitive (or double object), it requires two NP complements. Ditransitive verbs are verbs like “give” and “loan.” [example: “I loaned Jane a hat”] VP4 also requires two complements, but in this case the first one is an NP and the second is a PP. These are verbs like “put.” Note: VP3 and VP4
are the only cases in which I’m
allowing three branches --- because these verbs require two complements. VP5 requires an entire sentence as its complement. These are verbs like “think,” “believe” and “wonder.” We went on to talk a bit more about things that precede heads but are still in the phrase: Adverbs are the specifiers of Adjectives and Verbs. We also placed helping verbs (auxiliaries) inside the Verb Phrase, but ultimately we will want to have only one item that can appear in the specifier position of any given phrase.
Miraculously, by the end of class we had quite a substantial list of phrase structure rules. S --> NP VP NP --> (Det) (AP…) N (PP…) PP --> P NP AdvP --> Adv AP --> (Adv) A VP1 --> (Aux) (AdvP) V (PP…) VP2 --> (Aux) (AdvP) V NP (PP…) VP3 --> (Aux) (AdvP) V NP NP (PP…) VP4 --> (Aux) (AdvP) V NP PP VP5 --> (Aux) (AdvP) V S Now that we’ve dones some work in syntax, I think it is safe for you to read the syntax chapter in your textbook. It may even help solidify some of the material for you. Pages 151-165 may provide some insight. If you read beyond that you will see material that we haven’t covered yet (but which I hope to cover). |
|
December 1, 2005 |
|
Today we continued using constituency tests to find constituents and then transforming those constituent boxes into trees. We then took the next step and started labelling the nodes of the trees. The basic idea is that each major lexical category projects a phrase above it. (Actually, in current theory, all of them do, but we’re going to leave some out in order to simplify this section). A noun is the head of a noun phrase, a verb heads a verb phrase, etc. Phrases correspond to the nodes that we drew on our constituency trees. Hence, each constituent is a phrase. So the sentence “Melissa ate cheesecake” looks like this. If you notice, the NP “cheesecake” comes within the VP. The NP is the verb’s complement. All heads can take complements. A complement provides information about entities whose existence is implied by the head. –In the example above the verb, “eat” implies that something was eaten. In English, complements always appear to the right of the head. Nouns can also have complements. The phrase “the destruction of the city” is a Noun Phrase (NP). The head noun is “destruction” and its complement is the Prepositional Phrase (PP) “of the city.” So what do we do with “the”? It also relates to the noun, but it comes on the left. “The” is in the specifier position. A specifier gives us more precise (specific) information about the head of the phrase. In a phrase like “the cat,” the determiner “the” gives us more precise information about what we’re referring to than just saying “cat.” In English, specifiers always appear to the left of the head. (Every head can potentially take a specifier. Specifiers of nouns are determiners. Specifiers of prepositions are words like “right.” Specifiers of adjectives are adverbs. And so on.) TWO RULES ABOUT DRAWING TREES: 1. The lines in your tree must never cross. 2. Branches in the tree are always binary. Having said this, how do we account for a head that has both a specifier and a complement? -- If we can’t have three branches, then we must have more places in the tree for the branching to occur. To do this we include another level between the head and the phrase-level, in the Noun Phrase we call this N-bar, in class I will draw this as a capital N with a line over it, or like this: N'. The complement to the head will branch beneath N'. The specifier of the head will branch beneath the Phrase level. EXAMPLE: Tree of “the destruction of the city.” (or, as I prefer to draw it) Homework due Tuesday Dec. 6: PDF. |
|
November 29, 2005 |
|
Today we discussed the Pinker chapter again briefly. The idea is that we have a grammar that provides us with hierarchical organization for connecting words in sentences. This idea makes more sense than a word chain model because it can explain relations between words (e.g. “if .. then” and referring pronouns) in a way that a word chain model cannot. The first step to discussing the grammar of sentences (syntax) is figuring out how words group together to fit into the sentence framework. Those groups are called constituents. I like to imagine constituents like complicated nesting dolls that all fit together finally to make the biggest doll (constituent), the sentence. We started finding constiuents with CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Pronominalization: If a word (or series of words) in a sentence
can be replaced by a pronoun, then that word (or series of words) is a
constituent of that sentence. (see handout for a list of pronouns) Coordination: If a word (or series of words) in a sentence
can be coordinated with an equal pair of words and the sentence is still
good, then that word (or series of words) is a constituent of the original
sentence. · For the purposes of this class, coordinators will be just “and,” “or,” and “but” Examples: a. the cats or the snakes b. that pigs can fly and that mustaches will talk c. yours and mine d. up or down e. pigs will fly but girls will walk Fragment Answers: If a word (or series of words) in a sentence
can be used as the answer to a question about the information contained in
that sentence, then the word (or series of words) is a constituent of the
sentence.
=> What can the magician that Jane likes do? Make a rabbit appear. Topicalization: If a word (or series of words) can be moved
to the beginning of the sentence, then that word (or series of words) is a
constituent of the original sentence.
à The strategy I used for identifying
constituents was to go from left to right, performing tests on each
word. Then I went from right to
left performing tests on pairs of words, then from right to left performing
tests on larger and larger groups of words. ***** Once we identified the various constituents we put them in boxes, like nesting dolls. We were then able to transform those boxes into tree structure, with each box representing a node on the tree. If there is only one thing in a box, it projects a line straight up to a node. If there are two things in the box, then they create a branching node. |
|
November 22, 2005 |
|
Today the three people who showed up to class and I discussed how sentences are formed. I’m hoping to convince you that sentences have modular components and are not just strings of words. These modular components are defined by what’s in them (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) so we want to make sure we have clear ways to identify different lexical categories. The following are diagnostics for lexical categories. Every diagnostic does not work for every example of a category (e.g. a Noun might pass some noun-diagnostics, but not others). Use the following as a general guide. For each category, noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, and determiner we talked about:
Very few of the properties that we talked about held for all of the words in that category, but we got a sense of which diagnostics worked well and which didn't. NOUNS:
VERBS:
(for a random interesting discussion on verbs vs. nouns, look here) ADJECTIVES:
ADVERBS:
PREPOSITIONS:
The list of prepositions for English includes: at, by, in, on, near, to, from, down, off, through, past, out, up, of, for, with, about, along, below, during, above, among, beneath, across, around, beside, inside, after, before, between, outside, against, behind, beyond, over, under, into, upon, without, onto, within... DETERMINERS (articles):
The list of determiners for English includes: the, a, an, some, many, this, that, those, every, each, most... [NOTE: most of the above was lifted from Chris Pott's handout http://courses.umass.edu/ling201/A/handouts/201A-lecture-9-27.pdf ] As we move ahead and look at sentence structure, the above descriptions will become very useful --so it is good to understand what they mean. Homework due Tuesday Nov. 29: A 1-2 page reaction paper on the reading (see below). What did you think of it? What did you learn? What didn’t you understand? Etc. |
|
November 17, 2005 |
|
Today we reviewed some morphology and then had Quiz II. On Tuesday we start syntax. I handed out a reading assignment for over the break (although I’d advise beginning the reading now –it’s long). It is from the book The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker. The chapter is entitled “How Language Works.” If you were not in class and need a copy of this reading, there are copies in my mailbox in 226 South College. There is also a copy of the book available at the library, but it is not on reserve. Homework due Tuesday Nov. 29: A 1-2 page reaction paper on the reading. What did you think of it? What did you learn? What didn’t you understand? Etc. |
|
November 15, 2005 |
|
Today we started late. The first 20 minutes was taken up by a linguistics experiment given by Keir Moulton. We then went over the homework. After that we discussed various topics that can be found in your book (while referencing the class word list. Topics included: Inflectional marking: · Ablaut · Reduplication Inflectional morphology involving: · Case · Gender Other morphological processes: · Clipping · Blends There will be class on Tuesday November 22nd. I will give you more details on Thursday. MORPHOLOGY QUIZ ON THURSDAY. You may find it helpful to read pgs 140-142 and 147-149 in your textbook if you haven’t already. |
|
November 10, 2005 |
|
Today we discussed infixes in Tagalog and reduplication in Samoan before moving on to discuss compounds, compounds and more compounds. We talked about how Tagalog infixes come after the first consonant –but what if a word didn’t start with a consonant? There are numerous possibilites, but we ended up saying that most likely the infix um would just stick on the beginning of the word (other possibilities being that it would come after the first consonant that occurred in the word somewhere, that it would stick on the front but would take a form that had an epenthesized consonant, etc.) Samoan reduplication looks simple at first glance, like English n’night or b’bye –just repeat the beginning of the word. But when we look at all of the data we see that it’s always the second to last syllable that gets repeated. It’s only in one or two syllable words that it’s going to look like the first syllable is what undergoes reduplication. We then moved on to discuss compound words. A compound is formed when two free morphemes combine to make a word. Compounds can be nouns, verbs or adjectives and they can be composed of two (or more) words of the same category, or of words belonging to different categories. (see your textbook, pg. 123, for trees of these compound words) Right Hand Head Rule: The head of a compound is always the rightmost element. The head controls the compound and determines the category of the entire structure. Compounds can be made of more than two words, but the branching is always binary. Hence, if you have a three-word compound, two join first to make a new word and then join with the third word. There can also be derivational affixes within a compound. To draw a tree of this, we build the derivational tree first to make the whole word, and then we join it with the other word in the compound. We also talked about endocentric versus exocentric compounds (see page 125 in your book). Homework due Tuesday Nov. 15: PDF |
|
November 8, 2005 |
|
http://people.umass.edu/hstickne/index_files/witcher.jpg Today we reviewed the first two parts of the homework and talked about why the word “happinessable” is impossible. –When you just have a row of suffixes they must attach in the order you find them in the word. “happy” first combines with “-ness”. “ness” attaches to Adjectives to make Nouns. “-able” should combine next, but “-able” attaches to Verbs to form Adjectives. “happiness” is not a verb, so the derivation crashes. We then looked at the list of words that you all contributed to the class. We discussed the trees of “assumption”, “foolishness”, “honkified” and “undeniable.” We looked at infixes in Tagalog (which come right after the first consonant of the first syllable of the word). We talked a lot about affixes. Affixes can: · Make grammatical changes to a base (inflectional); example: king, kings · Change meaning (derivational); example: king, kingdom · Change category of base (derivational); example: king, kingly · Can be restricted regarding where they appear; example: -li (N à Adj) only attachs to nouns of a particular semantic type; -en (Adj à V) only attaches to monosyllablic adjectives that don’t end in a vowel. · Sometimes show up with different forms; examples: in-, im-, ir-, and il-; zero derivation; reduplication Reduplication is when all or part of a word is repeated to make some sort of morphological change. (see the Samoan example on the Tagalog handout). Homework for Thursday: finish reading the morphology chapter. If you don’t have time for the whole chapter, make sure you read the section on compound words. |
|
November 3, 2005 |
|
Today we talked about the difference between derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes · Significantly change the meaning of the root/base, change the category, or change both. · Are often highly restricted in what they can attach to. · Attach before inflectional affixes. Inflectional affixes · Do not change the category of the root/base to which they attach. · Change only the functional/grammatical meaning of the root/base. · Can attach to almost any root (e.g. plural ‘s’ can attach to almost any noun). · Attach after derivational affixes. EXAMPLE: “kingdoms” -dom -- derivational suffix (changes meaning from person to place) -s -- inflectional suffix (same meaning, just more than one) We briefly discussed an extended past tense allomorphy that included [´d] along with [t] and [d]. We then went on to discuss the words you brought in. We will discuss these and compound words on Tuesday. Derivations (not to be confused with derivational affixes) are the orders in which we combine affixes with a base. If you look at page 120 in your book, the word “unhappiness” has two potential derivations. Only one derivation is actually possible because the affixes have rules about what categories they can attach to. “un-“ must attach to “happy” first because “un-“ attaches to adjectives (or verbs, but verbs aren’t relevant here). If “-ness” were to combine with “happy” first, the category would change to noun, in which case “un-“ would be unable to attach to the new base because “un-“ doesn’t combine with nouns. Homework, for Tuesday November 8, 2005: PDF. (Note: if, for some reason, you can’t read the example in problem 2 in the PDF, it’s like the trees for intieable, one is built one way, and one the other way. Your job is to figure out which one is right.) |
|
November 1, 2005 |
|
Today we began the section on Morphology. Everything we covered today is in your textbook, so if you missed class or were confused by today's lecture please make sure you have read the first two sections in the morphology chapter. We started out discussing words (the smallest free forms that have meaning) and morphemes (the smallest unit that carries information about meaning or function). Morphemes can either be free or bound. Free morphemes can stand on their own as a word. Bound morphemes must be attached to another morpheme. The morphemes that are bound and free in English are not always the same as those in other languages. In Hare words for body parts are not free morphemes they must be attached to a possessive morpheme. In Thai the past tense is represented by a separate word (a free morpheme), while in English it is bound (-ed). Conversely, in English our future tense, “will” is represented by a free morpheme, while the future morpheme is bound in Spanish. Sometimes the same morpheme will have a few phonological variations. These are allomorphs. For example [t] and [d] are allomorphs of the past tense morpheme in English. We can describe their alternation based on the environments that they occur in. However, this description does not hold for all [t]’s and [d]’s at the end of words, just for the past tense –which is why they are allomorphs and not allophones. Allophonic variation must hold for the entire language, not just a set of morphemes. We investigated affixes, looking at prefixes, suffixes, and infixes. We discussed how they change words --X attaches to Y and makes Z-- (a list of affixes and what affect they have on a word is in your textbook). Your textbook does not discuss English infixes, but, as we discussed, there are a few. We then began to discuss derivations, the order in which affixes attach to a base. We saw that there is a particular order in which affixes get added, based on what they can attach to. If there is more than one order in which the affixes can attach, then we should end up with a word that has more than one meaning. For example, "untieable". click here to see trees of "untieable" (sorry, still having trouble getting images to appear in this document) In (a) we have the representation of the meaning “not possible to tie.” In (b) we have the representation of the meaning “able to be untied.” It is important to note that the order of attachment that we choose to represent can have far-reaching consequences on meaning. For the rest of this semester we will be paying close attention to how things are composed and what effects that has on the language. Homework, for Thursday November 3, 2005: Bring me three or four words (on a sheet of paper with your name on it) that we can talk about in class. They can be complex words with many affixes, or slang, or something that baffles/interests you. Just be sure to bring in English words. |
|
October 27, 2005 |
|
Today was the midterm. It is always good to occasionally check your grades online to get a good sense of where you stand (and to make sure that I am recording them correctly). Homework, for Tuesday November
1, 2005: Read the first two
sections in the Morphology chapter in your textbook. |
|
October 25, 2005 |
|
Today we did problem sets reviewing for the Midterm |
|
October 20, 2005 |
|
Today we talked about syllalbes. Syllables group together to form words. Syllables are composed of segments (phones). Each syllable consists of an onset, a nucleus, and a coda. In English our nuclei are generally vowels, in fact all languages use vowels as nuclei. In English we can sometimes use liquids and nasals as nuclei as well (but these sounds can also be onsets or codas). The word “knicknack” is syllabified as: Wd
ru s
s F g h f g h O N C O N C | | |
|
| | [ n I k . n Q k ] There are various
possibilities for syllable structure in a language. Below are some examples (where C = consonant and V =
vowel; Vowels represent nuclei,
the consonants to the left are onsets, those to the right are codas) CV ß most common.
(no coda = “open syllable”) V CVC ß also common.
(has a coda = “closed syllable”) VC CVCC CCVC CCVCC CCCV … etc. All languages require
syllable nuclei. Many require
their syllables to have onsets.
Some prohibit codas. Phonotactics are the various constraints that any given
language may have on its syllable structure. When I attempt to say the
Russian word [lgat], it comes out as [l´.gat]
because my English interferes and prohibits the [lg] onset. So I epenthesize a vowel, and make it a two-syllable word; each
syllable containing an English-friendly onset. Spanish prohibits complex
onsets of the form [sp] [st] and
[sk]. So a spanish speaker will
epenthesize a vowel before the
cluster, and shift the syllabification so that the [s] is in the coda of one
syllable and the [t] is in the onset of the next syllable. English: “stupid” [stu.pid]
;
Spanish: “estupido” [Es.tu.pi.do] So how do you syllabify a
word? Three steps: 1) Find all the nuclei first (usually vowels) 2) Look at everything to the left of each nuclei. If there is more than one segment,
decide if all the segments together are an allowable English onset (can they
start an English word?). If they
are not an allowable onset, drop the leftmost segment and try again. 3) Everything that is left over after you’ve made
nuclei and onsets are codas. Sometimes allphonic
variation can happen when a segment appears in a particular place in a
syllable. As happens with Cuban
Spanish. /s/ à [h] / coda position /s/ à [s] / elsewhere THERE IS A MIDTERM EXAM
OCTOBER 27TH.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25TH WILL BE REVIEW. Homework, for Tuesday October
25, 2005: PDF. |
|
October 18, 2005 |
|
Today we discussed allophones. If there is a phonetic distinction between two sounds in your language, that distinction will either be contrastive or complementary. If these two sounds are contrastive, you can find a minimal pair in which they contrast. This gives you evidence that the two sounds are separate phonemes in the language that you are analyzing. If the two sounds are complementary, you will find that they appear in distinctive environments, i.e. they have complementary distribution. This gives you evidence that they are allophones of the same phoneme. You can then write a rule about their distribution. HOW TO LOOK AT DATA: 1) Look for minimal pairs relating to the sounds you are investigating. If you find them, stop, you are looking at two separate phonemes. 2) If you cannot find a minimal pair, then look at the environments in which these sounds occur. Are they in complementary distribution? 3) To analyze the environments in which each sound occurs: a. Make a chart listing what sounds come before, what sounds come after and what pair of sounds surround the segment in question. b. When your chart is complete, look for patterns. Can any of the environments be defined as a natural class (e.g. “voiced things”, “alveolar things”, “fricatives”, “voiceless stops”, etc.) 4) Write a rule describing the environments in which the allophones appear. FOR EXAMPLE, in class we looked at Cree, a language spoken in Canada. We compared the sound [k] with the sound [g]. There are no minimal pairs containing these two sounds, so we have no evidence that they are different phonemes. So we must look to see if they are in complementary distribution. This will give us evidence that they are allophones of the same phoneme. CHART (sorry, for some reason the picture won’t imbed. If you want to look at this chart while reading the stuff below, try opening the link in a separate window). Looking at the chart above we can see that [k] and [g] don’t contrast in what comes before them (they both can have [a] before them). The same can be said for what comes after them. When looking at the sounds [k] and [g] come between, however, we see a pattern in the [g] column. [g] always appears surrounded by vowels. Thus, we can assume, because [g] has a patterned distribution that [k] and [g] are allophones of the same phoneme. We can write a description: The phoneme /k/ is phonetically realized as [g] when it appears between two vowels. It is phonetically realized as [k] otherwise. Or we can write a rule: /k/ à [g] / V__V /k/ à [k] / elsewhere Homework, for Thursday October 20, 2005: PDF. (please note, because you only have until Thursday to do this assignment, problem 4 is extra credit, and problems 1, 2, & 3 are each worth one point more). |
|
October 11, 2005 |
|
Today we stopped talking about pronunciation strictly in terms of ease of articulation and started talking about the psychology of language sounds and the patterns that we impose on them. As a linguist interested in phonology, I want to discuss what are the sounds for a particular language, it’s phonemic inventory, and what are the language-specific rules that determine how these phonemes manifest when we use them in words and phrases. In order to find out what the phonemes of a language are we look for minimal pairs. · A minimal pair is a pair of words whose pronunciation is identical except for one segment. If there is a difference in meaning between these two words, then we can be sure that these two segments are phonemes of the language –segments that are psychologically represented in the language-speaker’s brain as members of his set of language sounds. Some minimal pairs in English: · [pQt] and [bQt] : “pat” and “bat” · [s√N] and [s√n] : “sung” and “sun” · [flAj] and [f®Aj] : “fly” and “fry” These minimal pairs show us that /p/ and /b/, /N/ and /n/, and /l/ and /®/ are all phonemes of English. In Khmer,
however, /p/ and /ph/ are considered separate phonemes. For a speaker of Khmer, [pç:N] and [phç:N] are two distinct words with different meanings
(pronounced roughly like the English “pong”). In English we wouldn’t differentiate between an aspirated
and an unaspirated /p/ in “pong” because they are just two versions of the
same mentally represented phoneme in English. The answer key to Homework #3 (Segments & Transcription) is online. |
|
October 8, 2005 |
|
Your quiz grades have been posted. Graded on a 10pt scale. In case you curious, I didn’t think to put how many points each question was worth on the quiz, so I will post it here: 1) 4pts 2a) 2pts 2b) 3pts 2c) 1 pt |
|
October 4 & 6, 2005 |
|
Forgive me for being a bit slow with the lecture notes this week. On Tuesday and Thursday we discussed Speech Production, and looked at what happens when we take these segments we’ve been looking at and actually put them together to form a word. We find that the segments often interact in various ways. Segments come together to make up syllables. Most of us have a subconscious knowledge of how to break up our words into syllables (try clapping the beat of a word). We discussed how certain properties, called suprasegmentals, can affect more than just one segment. Suprasegmentals tend to effect a syllable, a phrase, or a whole sentence. For example, we use stress to change the pitch/length/loudness of a syllable to affect various meaning changes (or sometimes because a word just requires a stress point). Some languages use tone to make distinctions between words or to make subtle changes in meaning. (for more about tone see Wikipedia). English is not a tone language, but we use intonation (a general pattern of pitch over a phrase or sentence) to add meaning to our utterances. For example, the sentence “You gave him a tattoo.” could have various extra meanings depending on which word was stressed or whether you had rising pitch at the end, etc. Rising pitch at the end would give us a question, “you gave him a tattoo?” Compare: · You gave him a tattoo. · You gave him a tattoo?? · YOU gave him a tattoo. · You gave HIM a tattoo? Etcetera. We then discussed various articulatory processes, interactions that segments have when they appear near each other. ASSIMILATION: The influence of one segment on another, resulting in a sound becoming more like nearby sounds in terms of one or more of its phonetic characteristics. --- the [n]
in “tenth” is pronounced with the tongue touching the teeth, rather than at
the alveolar ridge. In this case,
[n] has assimilated the place of articulation of the neighboring [P]. DISSIMILATION: A process whereby one segment becomes less like another segment in its environment. --- some
people pronounce “fifths” as [fIfts] rather than [fIfPs]. Instead of a row of voiceless
fricatives, the end sequence of the word is now broken up by a voiceless
stop. METATHESIS: A process that reorders a sequence of segments. --- “ask”: [Qsk] vs. [Qks] DELETION: A process that removes a segment from certain phonetic contexts. --- “gasped”: I pronounce it [gQst] rather than [gQspt] because I avoid saying two voiceless stops in a row. EPENTHESIS: A process that inserts a segment into a particular environment. --- many people do not differentiate their pronunciation of “prince” versus “prints” because in the word “prince” they epenthesize a voiceless alveolar stop in between the [n] and the [s] Homework, for Tuesday October 11, 2005: Read the first two sections of Chapter 3, Phonology. |
|
September 29, 2005 |
|
Today we we discussed vowels and transcription. We started out discussing the flap (tap) where the tip of the tongue taps against the alveolar ridge (in words like “bitter”). We then moved on to discuss vowels. We looked at the trapezoidal chart (that roughly represents the shape of the oral cavity) and identified vowels based on their position: high, low, back, front and mid. Vowels are hard to identify –especially since many of us pronounce vowels differently. I will expect you to be able to tell the difference between a front vowel and a back vowel when transcribing, but if you’re slightly off in which vowel you use, I will not be taking off points. TRANSCRIPTION IS HARD. Why is it hard? · We may each have different ways of pronouncing things · Sometimes it is hard to hear the difference between one sound and another · As a student new to phonetics, you are not used to thinking about how sounds are made –and separating this from how you spell words. THEN WHY ARE WE LEARNING PHONETICS AND DOING TRANSCRIPTION? · I want you to have some knowledge of how sounds are made. Transcribing gives you the opportunity to explore the sounds of English. · When we start investigating phonology it will be very important to know information about various language sounds (i.e. place of articulation, manner of articulation, etc.) because the sound patterns of a given language are in some part formed by the range of sounds that that language uses –and how they interact. If you have trouble with transcription on the homework, make use of your textbook. Pages 25-37 may contain information that is helpful to you. NOTE: The homework I handed out today is Homework 3. It was accidentally labeled “2” at the top. This is important to note in terms of accessing homeworks and answers online. The essay you wrote was Homework #1, “Creativity & Grammaticality” was Homework #2, “Segments & Transcription” is #3. Homework, for Tuesday October
4, 2005: Segments &
Transcription. PDF. If, for some reason you need an online copy and your
computer makes the IPA symbols in the PDF copy come out all funny. Please email me immediately so that I
can get you something you can read. |
|
September 27, 2005 |
|
Today we went over the inventory of English Consonants. We explored how to make each sound and placed those sounds on a grid based on Place of Articulation and Manner of Articulation. I will not draw this chart here, but suffice to say it is in your textbook and if you’re so interested you can also find a full chart here or here: http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/linguistics/pages/bcs-main.asp?v=chapter&s=02000&n=00020&i=02020.10&o Aspects of articulation that we discussed today that you should be able to identify: Place of Articulation: · Bilabial · Labio-dental · Dental · Alveolar · Alveo-palatal · Palatal · Velar · Glottal Manner of Articulation: · Voiced/voiceless · (Oral) stop · Nasal · Fricative · Affricate · Approximant (your book makes a distinction between “liquids” and “glides”, but for our purposes both fall into the category of “approximant” These distinctions allow us to describe all of the consonant sounds of English. Remember: If you look at the IPA chart and are confused about what symbols make what sounds, there is a nice list on page 36 of your textbook which lists each IPA symbol and gives a word that the corresponding sound is found in. Homework, for Thursday September 29, 2005: Finish reading Chapter 2. |
|
September 22, 2005 |
|
Today we talked about linguistic competence, the subconscious knowledge that we each have regarding how to speak and understand our language. We reviewed Grammaticality (as defined by linguists) and the pitfalls in accessing what is grammatical in a particular language (see lecture notes from Sept. 20). We watched a bit from The Alphabet Conspiracy to begin our discussion of Phonetics, the study of human language sounds. We will be studying articulatory phonetics (how sounds are produced), largely ignoring acoustic phonetics (how sounds are perceived). We discussed how speech sounds are made by modifying the movement of air at various points along the vocal tract. We then began looking at segments and how they differ. We discussed: · b – voiced labial stop · p – voiceless labial stop · d – voiced alveolar stop · t – voiceless alveolar stop I’d like to point out here that your book has links to more information on various topics online. The website is not always consistently functioning, but you can investigate various topics at: http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/linguistics/ Homework, for Tuesday September 27, 2005: Handed out in class. PDF version available here. |
|
September 20, 2005 |
|
Today the class was split between the discussion of Nicaraguan Sign Language and Grammaticality. Nicaraguan Sign Language: I spent the first half of class discussing issues that came up from your essays. · We talked about Pidgin formation and what pidgin languages look like. (You can find more information on pidgins on Wikipedia). · We talked about Nicaraguan culture and deaf awareness and how this affected the lives and language-learning of the Nicaraguan deaf. · We talked about language education in the U.S. & Nicaragua in light of information about the Critical Period for language acquisition. · And finally we talked about Judy Kegl as a linguist: her abilities to decipher the language, and what linguists do when attempting to study a language. This last topic moved us into the second area of discussion, Grammaticality: When a linguist studies a language (or a particular aspect of a language), he/she wants to know what people actually say. This is how we define grammaticality in linguistics. We want to know how people actually talk, not what the rules are that your English teacher had to force down your throat. So how do we find out how people naturally talk? Sometimes we eavesdrop. Sometimes we design complicated experiments. But most often we just ask people “Does this sound natural to you?” Nevertheless, there are some PITFALLS to asking people for their judgements, including: Processing Difficulties: Sometimes we hear a sentences, and, even though it is a perfectly okay sentence of English, we cannot interpret it. Example: “Buffalo buffalo buffalo.” We can combat the confusion of processing difficulties, by adding other words. · Buffalo tend to buffalo other buffalo. Semantic Incoherence: Sometimes a sentences perfectly grammatical in terms of English sentence structure, but it doesn’t make much sense. Examples: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” “Brad made the block of wood cry.” We can combat the confusion of semantic incoherence by adding “I dreamt that…” at the beginning of the sentence, or by substituting similar words while keeping the sentence structure intact. “Brad made the block of wood cry.” à “I dreamt that Brad made the block…” “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” à “Happy green frogs croak noisily.” Context Dependency: Sometimes a sentence doesn’t make sense out of the blue, but makes sense when given the appropriate context. Example: “George guesses journalists.” We can combat this confusion by making sure we provide (or are provided) the appropriate context. Q: “What does Donald Rumsfeld eat for breakfast?” A: “George guesses journalists.” Prescriptive Pressure: There are many perfectly grammatical sentences that English Teachers, Grammar Police and grouches say are not “grammatical.” But if you can use it naturally, then, according to theoretical linguists, it is grammatical. Prescriptivists would frown on sentences like: · There
were like ten thousand people in my neighborhood for the Warped Tour. · Who
are you going to give that to? · There
are a number of errors in my explanation. · Who
left their notebook on my desk? We can combat prescriptive pressure by: · listening
to actual conversations · asking
people for their judgements · pay
attention as you read · search
the internet (GOOGLE!) In class I talked about “you and I,” “me and you,” and
“you and me.” I found an article
relating to this on Language Log:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002386.html Homework, for Thursday September 22: Read Chapter 2, sections 1-4 in your textbook. |
|
September 15, 2005 |
|
We went over a variety of topics today. For those of you who find this too abstract or dreadfully boring, HANG IN THERE! We will soon be analyzing language more specifically and concretely. Today we discussed the basics of what modern theoretical linguists are talking about when they talk about "grammar", and how linguists approach the study of language. What you should have gotten from the reading (Contemporary Linguistics, Chapter 1): • humans are specialized for language • human languages are creative, have a grammar, change over time • grammars are alike in basic ways • grammatical knowledge is subconscious in all native speakers of a language We started with the concept of the innateness of language that was promoted by the Silent Children video. We contrasted this with the idea that children are born as blank slates, ready to memorize what they find in the world around them. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate for more discussion of this concept). One way that we know that language is not just a verbatim regurgitation of what we hear our parents say is that language is creative. We discussed how we can be incredibly creative with language use and can understand creative language use, but that this creativity is constrained by the rules of our grammar. We looked at creativity constrained by the grammar in various usages: · “Patricia melted the igloo with her flamethrower” --creative sentence formation. We are creating (and understanding) new sentences all the time. –but there are rules that constrain the order in which words go together to form sentences (SYNTAX) • "bangtastic" -- creative word formation, but constrained by the order in which word pieces can go together (MORPHOLOGY) • Noun --> Verb. -- New verbs can be created from nouns, but as we saw with "midnighted" not every noun can undergo this transformation. (MORPHOLOGY, SEMANTICS) • "flib" vs. "bfli" -- new words can be created but they conform to the sound patterns of our particular language. (PHONOLOGY) • "antidemocratizationism" -- when we create a new word we subconsciously know how to put together the pieces (prefixes and suffixes), we know how to break down the meaning, we know where the stress should go, we know how to pronounce it (MORPHOLOGY, SEMANTICS, PHONOLOGY) The principle goal of linguistics is to describe how language is actually used. They seek to describe and understand/explain the constraints upon language use (as exemplified by constraints found in particular grammars). We talked about how grammars can differ in wildly different ways, and yet at the same time seem to have related constraints. EXAMPLES: · word order · use of pronouns · position of question words · double negative (we discussed AAE, but the same constraint holds for the use of the negative in French) · use of “like” in English (as an example, here’s link to someone’s webpage who has written a number of papers on “like”: http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~isa/academic.html) We also discussed language change over time and various factors effecting that change. Next week we will look more at the idea of descriptive versus prescriptive perspectives on language –and we will try to divorce ourselves from the English teacher in our head. NOTE: Apparently Yoda speaks “Anglo Saxon” (and older form of English) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3778001.stm |
|
September 13, 2005 |
|
Today we watched the BBC Horizon video “Silent Children… New Language” This video investigates the issue of whether language is innate and what Nicaraguan Sign Language can tell us about this question. If you’re interested here’s more of Chomsky’s thoughts on the issue: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1996----.htm Here’s also a link to the Nicaraguan Sign Language Project, run by Judy Kegl. Homework, for Thursday September 15: 1 page reaction essay to “Silent Children” |
|
September 8, 2005 |
|
Welcome to the course! Today we went over course policies and the preliminary syllabus. These can also be found here. I will be compiling a list of your emails and sending a test email soon just to make sure I can reach all of you. If you do not want your email available to the entire class, please let me know. In class today I gave a whirlwind tour of what the study of linguistics is, what I study, and the theory that humans are innately predisposed to learn language. On Tuesday, if all goes well, we will watch a video about Nicargaun Sign Language and continue on the topic of innateness before launching into a discussion of what we mean when we talk about language and grammar. For additional reading on innateness, check out: The first few paragraphs of http://www.2think.org/htmw_review.shtml, which basically says what I said in class, but more eloquently. Also, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition On Tuesday we will hopefully watch a video on Nicaraguan Sign Language. Homework, for Tuesday
September 13: Read Chapter 1 in
your textbook |
