Linguistic Principles Lecture Notes (LING/PSYC 307B)

L I N G U I S T I C P R I N C I P L E S L I N G / P S YC 3 0 7 B JA N U A RY 9 T H GABRIELLE MANNING Week 1 roadmap Syllabus/introduction Linguistic concepts Research paper reading 2 LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS 3 Human language...

L I N G U I S T I C P R I N C I P L E S L I N G / P S YC 3 0 7 B JA N U A RY 9 T H GABRIELLE MANNING Week 1 roadmap Syllabus/introduction Linguistic concepts Research paper reading 2 LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS 3 Human language LANGUAGE IS… Species-specific: only humans have language Species-general: all communities and individuals within a given community have language 4 Human language All humans use language 5 What is linguistics? The study of the structure and rules of language Speaking a language can feel as easy and natural as breathing (First language) speakers have knowledge about language they may not be conscious of Various levels of language 6 What are these levels? My coffee is probably cold! Phonetics & phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics 7 Phonetics & phonology maɪ ˈkɔfi ɪz ˈprɑbəbli The study of the acoustic details and koʊld! how they’re articulated International phonetic alphabet (IPA): a notation system that uses a set of symbols to represent language sounds Documented and possible sounds from all spoken languages Universal use You can check it out here! 8 Phonetics & phonology maɪ ˈkɔfi ɪz Phoneme: the smallest unit of ˈprɑbəbli language/sound that changes the koʊld! meaning of a word /t/ vs. /d/ tan vs. dan Minimal pairs: words that vary by a single sound/phoneme Allophone: sounds that are variants of the same phoneme [t] vs. [th] Stan vs. tan 9 Phonetics & phonology Phonotactics: permissible [vzɡrə.mʌ.zʲdʲit.sə] [splaʃ] combinations of phonemes (language specific) “to roost” “splash” English? English? Russian? Spanish? [es.plaʃ] Infants use phonotactics (and statistical learning) to identify word boundaries in continuous speech English French Pseudo-words: created based on the karpal mamen stoodle joi phonotactics of the language broin lornet 10 Morphology The study of word formation and I’m going to grammatical categories reheat my coffee when class is Morpheme: the smallest bundle of over. sounds related to systematic meaning Free morphemes: base words that contain meaning when they stand alone Content words: denote semantic components N: hat, computer, house V: walk, sleep, eat Adj: nice, fun, big Function words: establish syntactic Articles: the, a, an structure Prepositions: under, by, to Conjunctions: and, but, or 11  Morphology I’m going to Bound morpheme(affixes): no linguistic reheat my coffee meaning until combined with a root or when class is base word over. Inflectional morphemes: adds a grammatical properties N: pen + s = pens N: -s (-es), -’s (‘s) V: walk + ing = V: -ed, -ing, -en walking Adj: -er, est Adj: smart + est = smartest Derivational morphemes: changes the meaning Prefixes: of a word pre-, un-, re + heat = reheat (heat again) re- prevent + able = preventable (able Suffixes: -ion, -ate, - to be avoided) able 12 Morphology Vouloir[2.sing]- Do tu de you[2.sing] la crème Morphological rules allow for us to glacé[fem] want ice cream avec derive words using affixes tawith tarte your aux Common and sometimes required in frambroise[plur] raspberry pie? various languages (e.g., Turkish) ? antidisestablishmentaria nism … and mark number, case, grammatical gender, person - inflectional morphology 13 Morphology wugs Ricked 14  Syntax The study of sentence formation from grammatical rules, principles, and processes I like coffee! Word order: the order of syntactic constituents Language dependent Certain languages are flexible with word order SOV: “I coffee like.”Japanese, Korean most common SVO: “I like coffee.”English, French VSO: “Like I coffee.” Arabic (standard), Welsh VOS: “Like coffee I.” Malagasy, Fijian OVS: “Coffee like I.” Hixkaryana, least Guarijío/Huarijío common OSV: “Coffee I like.” Xavante, Warro 15 Syntax Syntactic/structural ambiguity: when a sentence can have multiple interpretations English Sherlock saw the man using Sherlock sawbinoculars the man who was using binoculars Spanish Sherlock saw the man using binoculars Sherlock used binoculars to see the man Sherlock saw the man using binoculars 16 Semantics The study of logic and meaning of a I like word, phrase, or sentence coffee[+drink, +hot] Semantics is distinct from syntax “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” – Noam Chomsky Syntactic objects possess thematic roles Agent: perform the action Patient/theme: undergoes the action Recipient: entity receiving something Etc… 17 Pragmatics What do you The study of language use in like to drink in the morning? context I like coffee! Extralinguistic circumstances can influence how we interpret a message Our beliefs Our intentions Our identity Our socialization Etc… Questions related to pragmatics focus on our linguistic competence 18 Competence vs. performance Competence: knowledge of the structure of language Performance: application of knowledge of the structure of language The squirrel that the dog Structures can initially seem that the man saved chased ungrammatical if they are hard to ran up the tree. process (difficult on the performance side) *The that squirrel the dog that tree saved man chased Certain structures are ran to up. ungrammatical and cannot be saved (difficult on the competence side) 19 Language is productive! Infinite number of sentences Large but finite number of words Smaller amount of morphemes Dozens of (sounds) phonemes 10-20 phonological features consonants: labial, velar, etc. vowels: back, high, etc. 20 Language is recursive! Recursion (nesting): repeated sequential use of related linguistic elements or structures within one another Used to create an infinite number of sentences Thethe rattheate dog the catkilled chased malt 21 WHAT ABOUT SIGNED LANGUAGES? YES! Do these linguistic concepts apply? 22 What are signed languages? Languages that use the visual- manual modality Complete natural languages Grammar Phonology Syntax Morphology Signed languages are not necessarily mutually exclusive! Hands = articulators Manner of articulation = movement 23 Phonology Discrete number of articulations 19 shapes or manual configurations open palm, closed/partially closed fist, etc. 12 locations where the sign is articulated upper brow, cheek, upper arm, etc. 24 movements performed by hand or arm hands moving up, down, to the side, etc. Signed languages have minimal pairs! 24 Morphology Signed languages have a rich morphological system Nouns are derived into verbs using different movements Grammatical person is indicated according to whom the message is signed 25 Syntax Signed statements have word order E.g., ASL is typically SVO Flexibility in word order SVO English: I went to Ireland a year ago TIME + SVO ASL: last year me went Ireland 26 Productivity New signed messages are constantly created from a limited number of movements Some signs are even recursive! 27 Just like spoken language… Signed languages have: Dialects, registers, and accents Poems and songs Finger fumblers (like tongue twisters) Slips of the hand (like slips of the tongue) SO…signed languages represent a different modality of human language! 28 Reading research papers 29 Types of articles 30 Types of articles Primary source Review papers articles Primary source: information that is Review papers: an overview of collected or experienced first-hand various research studies in a particular field Scholarly, peer-reviewed journals No original research Contains standard components (e.g., abstract, introduction/background, methods, discussion, etc.) Typically presents why the results of some of the studies may or may not In the abstract, look for statements like: be valid The research we conducted shows… The aim of our study was… We looked at two groups of children… Important to keep in mind: The results showed… reviews are useful but are not in- 31 Types of articles Book chapters Original research or review papers Related to other chapters in the book under a common theme (e.g., FLA, grammatical gender processing, etc.) Often not peer-reviewed 32 Primary source article sections 33 Article sections Abstract Introduction and/or background Methods Participants Stimuli Procedure Results Results/Discussion Discussion Discussion/Conclusion Conclusion 34 Abstract Brief overview of the paper (150-500 words) You should be able to read the abstract to see if it is relevant to your own research Typically includes: An introduction to the topic A summary of the participants and task A summary of the results van Heugten & Shi (2009) 35 Introduction/background Introduction and Background are often used interchangeably Includes: An introduction to the topic of the conducted research A review of relevant previous literature that helped formulate the RQ(s) At the end of this section, researchers situate their RQ(s) in the “gaps” in the literature and state their hypotheses 36 Methods Participants Stimuli Procedure Information about the Information about the Explanation of the participants of the items used for testing task completed by study participants E.g., sounds, images, Can include: written words, etc. E.g., head-turn Languages preference paradigm, participants are exposed to eye-tracking, etc. L1, L2, L3, etc. Age Place of birth, place Participants, stimuli, and procedure of current residence Socioeconomic differ from study to study depending status on the RQ(s) Etc. 37 Results Report findings based on the methodology used Statistics, general observations, etc. No interpretation of the data here – stating what was found “Children’s accuracy patterns (Figure 2) were consistent with a propose-but-verify learning procedure and not a global-intersective one. In particular, while children in the Same condition were well above chance (mean =.83, SD =.22, t(15)= 6.00, p