Introduction to Linguistics

• Linguistics is the scientific study of language as a system and a social phenomenon.
• It is descriptive, not prescriptive, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods.
• Prescriptive linguistics lays down rules on how language should be used.

Big Questions in Linguistics

• Do all languages share a common underlying structure?
• Does the language(s) you speak shape the way you think?
• Is language learned and processed differently from other skills in the brain?
• Are standard and non-standard language varieties equally systematic and rule-governed?

Knowing a Language Involves

• Its function (knowing how to communicate)
• Its form (knowing words and rules for putting them together)

Areas of Linguistic Study

• Phonetics: the study of speech sounds, e.g., [s], [l], [ai], [d], [z].
• Phonology: the study of sound patterns, e.g., /slaidz/.
• Morphology: the study of word structure and their parts, e.g., "slide-s".
• Syntax: the study of sentence structure, e.g., "these slides are amazing".
• Semantics: the study of meaning, e.g., these slides are a member of the set of all amazing things.
• Pragmatics: the study of how context affects linguistics, e.g., "this is a compliment about the slides".
• Factives: presuppose the truth of something, e.g., "realize" in "I realized she is a doctor".
• Performative Utterance: sentences that perform actions only in the right context.

Key Features of Language

Arbitrariness

• The connection between words and their meanings is not natural or inherent.
• The word "dog" could have been any other word; meaning comes from social convention.
• Onomatopoeia, words that imitate sounds, are an exception as they are less arbitrary.

Discreteness

• Language is made up of separate, distinct units, i.e. sounds (phonemes), words, or phrases.
• Each unit has meaning/function and can combine to form larger structures.
• With discreteness, a variety of meanings can be created by combining basic units, like building with blocks.

Rule Governedness

• All languages have rules for how words and phrases are put together, ensuring consistency and understandability.
• Without rules, communication would be chaotic.

Productivity

• Productivity refers to the ability of language to create new and unique sentences, even if never heard before.
• There is a finite set of rules and words, but they can be used to generate infinite sentences.
• Productivity makes language dynamic, allowing for the expression of new ideas.

Speech Production

• Speech is powered by air coming up from the lungs.
• Voice is created by how air is molded by the vocal tract, exiting through the mouth and nose.
• Vocal folds in the larynx vibrate when air passes through to produce sound in "voiced" speech.
• "Voiceless" speech doesn't cause vocal folds to vibrate.
• In nasal speech, the velum is lowered, and air goes through the nose.
• In oral speech, the velum is raised, and air goes through the oral cavity.
• Consonants: airflow through the oral cavity is obstructed.
• Vowels: airflow through the oral cavity is not obstructed, and vowels are voiced.

Key Features for Identifying Consonants

• Voicing (voiced or voiceless)
• Place of articulation (where airflow is obstructed)
• Manner of articulation (how airflow is obstructed, including nasality)
• Liquids have central and lateral articulation.
• Articulators create obstructions throughout the mouth.
• Active articulator and passive articulator - tongue and roof of mouth

Places of Articulation

• Bilabial: using both lips, e.g., Pet, Bet, Wet (oral), Met (nasal).
• Labiodental: combining teeth and lip, e.g., Fine (voiceless), Vine (voiced).
• Interdental: tongue between/behind teeth, e.g., Thin (voiceless), This (voiced).
• Alveolar: Tune, Rune, Soon, Zoo, [l], [d] (oral), Noon (nasal).
• Post-alveolar: SHip [∫], Genre/meaSure [3], CHip [t∫], Gym[dz].
• Palatal: Yes[j].
• Velar: Kit (Voiceless), Gift (voiced) (orals), kiNG / think [n] (nasal).
• Glottal: narrowing or closing vocal folds, e.g., Hat, uh-oh [?] “glottal stop”.

Manners of Articulation

• Oral (plosive) stops: [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g], [?].
• Nasal stops: [m], [n], [η].
• Fricatives: partial obstruction, causing turbulence (buzzing) eg [f], [v], [z], [s], [h], [J], [0], [5], [3]
• Affricative - a stop plus a fricative eg. [t∫], [d3]
• Liquids – constriction but not turbulence eg [l] lateral liquid(lateral because air comes from side of the mouth), [r] central liquid (central because air is coming into the centre of the mouth)
• Glides - aka semi vowels eg [j], [w]

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

• A special set of characters representing all speech sounds in every language, for phonetic transcription.
• Write IPA in square brackets.
• Focus on broad transcription.
• No single correct IPA exists, as words can be pronounced and transcribed differently

Vowel key Features

• Lip rounding: some vowels are rounded, some are unrounded.
• Tongue height: [i] is a high vowel, [e] is a mid vowel, and [a] is a low vowel.
• Tongue frontness: [i] is a front vowel and [u] is a back vowel.

Variable Vowels

• Prone to variation between people and regions causing: vowel shifts, mergers, and splits.
• Shift: a vowel's changed position.
• Merger: vowels formerly distinct merge as one.
• Split: one vowel splits into two.

GenAm Monophthongs (examples)

• [i] sheep, key, seize
• [I] ship, kit, rip -[ɛ] set, mess
• [æ] trap, ham, arrow
• [u] goose, few, who
• [u] foot, full, look, could
• [A] strut, cub, hum
• [o] thought, hawk
• [a] lot, stop, calm
• [3] nerd, hurt [only occurs before r in stressed syllables]
• [ə] writer, accomplish [for unstressed, reduced vowels]

GenAm Diphthongs (examples)

• [ai] my, side, aisle, choir
• [er] face, weight, steak
• [01] boy, coin
• [au] mouth, crowd, flower
• [ου] goat, sew, stove

Postvocalic r

• Rhotic: [r] following a vowel is retained
• [r] changes the sound of the preceeding vowel
• [ɔ:] - colon used to indicate long vowel
• RP is non-rhotic
• When r comes after a vowel and before a pause or a consonant, it is deleted and realized as a schwa [ə] or replaced with a long vowel (:)

Phonology

• Study of the structures and patterns of sounds within languages
• Speech sounds aka “Phone,” every symbol in IPA is the most basic unit of speech
• Not every language uses every phone in IPA
• Phone: surface realization of a speech sound written in []
• Phoneme: underlying abstract representation of sound written as //
• Allophones: possible phonetic pronunciations/realizations of phoneme.
• Minimal pair: words that differ by only one phoneme, which changes the meaning.
• If 2 phones don't create a minimal pair it is said “they cannot appear in the same phonological environment”

Phonological Environment

• Refers to surroundings and positionings within a word, including:
  • Phones that come before or after.
  • Location in the syllable and word.
  • Whether the syllable is stressed or unstressed.
• Contrastive distribution: 2 phones can occur in the same phonological environment = yields minimal pairs eg. [b] and [p]
• Complementary distribution: 2 phones cannot exist in the same phonological environment= no minimal pairs
• Free variation: 2 phones can exist in same phonological environment but as alternative pronunciations of the same word, swapping the phones does not result in a new word. Eg "then” [den] or [den]

Identification of allophones of the same phoneme

• Not in contrastive distribution eg [h] and [n] Phonetically similar eg place and manner of articulation Aspiration - the little h in [th] represents burst of air

• Phonological rules aim to capture all data (maximize parsimony).

• If rule involves specific phoneme, more practical is writing it using IPA

• Common phonological processes:

  • Assimilation.
  • Dissimilation.
  • Epenthesis.
  • Deletion.
  • Metathesis.

• Phonotactics are the Constraints on where phonemes can appear in a language, syllable is central to phonotactics.

Morpheme

• It is defined as the smallest meaningful unit in a language.

• A word must contain at least one morpheme, but morphemes don't need to be able to occur in isolation.

• Types:

• Bound vs. Free

• Prefix

• Suffix

• Infix

• Circumfix. Productive vs. Unproductive.

• Inflectional Affix is to express certain grammatical information, for example, past vs present tenses. In these instances, the word stays the same part of speech.

• Derivational Affix creates new word with different meaning, often different part of speech. Can also be split into class changing and class maintaining affixes

• Allomorphs are the irregular affix forms, which are alternative surface forms of the regular inflectional affixes

• Bound roots form the core meaning of a word.

• Grammaticalization is when a morpheme gradually changes to to serve a fixed grammatical function

• Roots - Morphemes that are the primary meaning unit of a word

• Compound Word – words that contain more than 1 root

• Un- adjective and verb (not)

• Word - a segment surrounded by spaces in written language

Syntax

• Syntax is study of the rules.
• Top down, starting with the whole sentence then breaking it down
• Bottom up, starting with individual words and using rules, figure out how they fit together
• Morphological tests are used to determine if a word can take plural -s (tests if noun)

The following are all about identifying constituents:

• Topicalization test: move the part of speech to the front
• Clefts Test: insert a string between "is "and "that"
• Pseudoclefts Test: insert "is what after a string)
• Substitution test: replace with a pronoun

Rules for words/ phrases

• NP -> (det) (Adj)* N (Prepostional Phrase)
• VP -> V (NP) (NP) (PP)
• PP -> P NP
• S -> NP VP

Semantics

• Semantics is the study of meaning
• Pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to linguistic meaning
• Lexical semantics is the study of meaning and words
• Frege’s puzzle:
  • if a & b have the same object, then a=b means the same a=a
    • a=b informative statement because b & a dont have the same sense
• 2 meaning types:

1. reference - what the word is in the real world
2. sense - our perception and description of the word/ phrase

Constant and Variable reference

• Constant - always refer to the same: “the first president”
• Variable - changes over time: “friend”
• Homophones - pronounced the same
• Homographs - spelled the same
• Hypernyms - more general term for word
• Hyponym - a more specific term for word Synonyms Antonyms - opposite

Sentence Entailment

• if A includes B

Sentence Paraphrases

• If A includes B & B includes A, they are paraphrases

Sentence Presuppositions

• background implicit assumptions within a sentence
• constructions that trigger these:

1. regret - the regret
2. realized
3. clefts
4. temporal clauses
5. change of state

What is a pragmatic?

• the study of meaning in context
• Arthers classifications:

1. location - speakers intention
2. illocution - speaker said it that way
3. perlocution - the resulting effect

Subclass of speech acts

• Performatives: acts that change social reality

1. Explicit: involves a performative verb
2. Formulaic: does not include a performative verb but has a conventional phrase
3. Implicit: there's no performative verb or special phrase

Searle classifications of speech acts

1. representative
2. directives
3. commissives 4 . expressives
4. declarations

Gricean Maxims

1. Qty - be truthful
2. Quality - dont share if lack evidence/ is false
3. Relation - be relevant
4. Manner - be clear

Politeness Theory

1. Positive - highlight friendliness
2. negative - avoid conflict

Linguistic determinism vs Linguistic Relativism - determinism - how we think will determine language available to us - relativism - language will change the way we process - how does language change the thought? 1. get in habit of thinking of X 2. metaphors to use emotion

Aphasia info

Brocas - cant do well with constructing Wernicke = cant comprehend